strategic mistake. Instead of turning her victorious energy upon the
vacillating troop outside, she allowed herself to be hypnotised by the
already thoroughly conquered. At the head of the stairs, pirouetting
madly and roaring like a bull, was the be-kettled colonel, and upon him
she turned her batteries. It was a wonderful exhibition. Things culinary
flew through the air--three saucepans, a rolling-pin, a grill, a teapot,
a pile of tin plates. Then came canned goods: tomatoes, pears, peaches;
beef, roast and corned; mutton, chicken, hare, pork, peas, maize, string
beans; jellies: apple, currant, lemon, cherry; jams: apricot, peach,
grape, plum, lychee. Two hams and a small sack of flour came as an
interregnum. Blind, deaf, helpless, the poor colonel swayed, doubled
up, whirred, thrashed his arms beneath the avalanche. Resonant
whang-angs of his headgear announced particularly brilliant shots; dull
thuds more vital ones. At last, with a parting shower of little potted
cheeses, the widow's ammunition ran out. She folded her arms, drew
herself up to her full height, and, her eyes shining humorously beneath
her shaggy brows, "Well, boys," she asked, "what is it you want?"
Gomez was coming up the stairs again, under safe escort.
"We are ladrones, madam," he explained, politely. "We want--we want----"
he stammered, uneasy, before that great dominating figure. "We
want--ah--the dinero, the money----" he stopped, then with a vague
apologetic shrug of his shoulders: "the dinero, and you."
"Ah?" sang the widow, sardonically, "you want me, do you?"
Gomez hesitated. He was not at all sure about that. But his orders were
imperative.
"Papa Gato wants you," he said, with more precision.
"Ah--it's your papa wants me, is it? Very well----" her lips tightened
into a line ominously straight--"he shall have me; oh, yes, indeed!"
Thus it was that an hour later the widow, erect and tense in a carro
drawn by a pacific carabao, surrounded by an escort of tulisanes with
the grave and preoccupied air of people bearing a case of dynamite,
followed by the holiday-decked populace and the delirious blare and roar
of the band, passed along the main street, by the Casa Popular, beneath
the triumphal arch, to the outskirts of the pueblo, and on into the open
country.
The band, marking time with the populace on the edge of the town, which
they were not to leave, was playing "Hail the Deliverer, Hail!"
III
Long and in detail will Major General Gomez remember (he has now ample
leisure for such exercises of memory between the four walls of a place
called Bilibid) that march back to camp. And his bringing it to a
successful termination will always stand as his most serious claim to
military glory.
It was not that the train was cumbersome. It consisted, in fact, only of
three carros, the first one containing the widow, the second the
camphor-wood chest, inside of which was the town treasury, and the
third, Mr. Rued, second-class inspector Philippine constabulary--a
roaring mad inspector, it might be added, and tied up like a sausage. He
had been surprised in bed; the ignominy of his taking was deep in his
soul, and found vent in a stream of expressions Biblical and strenuous
and not at all complimentary to his captors.
No, the widow was the matter.
It was that curious performance of Mr. Rued which caused the first
outbreak. After listening meditatively for some ten minutes, the widow
suddenly realised that here was something highly improper.
"Colonel," she cried, rising in her cart like a jack-in-the-box, "you
will please place more distance between me and that blasphemous person
yonder."
There was a pause in the procession. New intervals were tried. But the
widow's carabao was slow, and the inspector's, possibly impressed by the
fervent soliloquy going on behind him, persisted in coming up within
earshot.
"Captain, I refuse to continue under the present conditions,"
ultimatumed the widow. And, springing out of her cart, she squatted
resolutely in the centre of the road and refused to budge.
A happy inspiration came to Gomez. He appealed to the inspector's
chivalry.
The inspector was cooling a bit by this time, and he was a man of some
intelligence.
"You cut that rope that holds me like a chicken," he said, "and I'll
parleyvoo."
Gomez cut the rope, and the inspector agreed to keep his feelings
unexpressed.
The procession moved on. The carabaos laboured, the carros creaked and
groaned and wailed. The sun mounted, more biting every moment. The
ladrones lit cigarettes and shuffled along the road. The widow dozed.
A more pronounced lurch of her cart suddenly awakened her, and again her
clamour was resounding in the heated silence.
Again it was the unlucky inspector. His cart had crept up little by
little, till close to the widow's, and her eyes had opened upon the fact
that he was not properly clad. Now, such a thing at times is excusable.
It isn't your fault if a band of pestiferous ladrones pounce upon you in
the morning and whisk you out in your pajamas.
"Sergeant," shrilled the widow (with concern Gomez noticed that each
time she addressed him it was with a diminution of title). "Sergeant,
dress that man!"
Gomez demurred. Again the widow sprang from her cart and sat in the
road. Again the train was blocked.
"I will not budge till you have clothed that man," the widow declared.
"I insist upon a pair of trousers."
There was a hurried questioning of the band, a general denegation, and
Gomez returned, discouraged.
"Senora, no hay pantalones," he announced.
"Give him one of your own men's," she commanded briefly.
Again the troop, drawn up in line, was questioned, but still more
vehement were the denegations. It was not that they needed them so much
for covering, those precious pantaloons; they were full of holes and
covered little; but they were all more or less be-striped, and the men
very properly refused to part with their insignia of rank. The
inspector, also, was interested. After a careful inspection, a horror at
the thought of placing against his skin such garments as were displayed
before him made his hair rise on end. Diplomatically he suggested to the
widow that a transfer would only add to the shame of the situation, for
it would leave one of the ladrones with nothing on at all, while he, at
least--
But he had pronounced his own doom. "I'll fix you," said the widow
briefly. Untying the bundle of clothes she carried, she drew out a
skirt, a short khaki walking-skirt, and after an insufficient smoothing
of creases with the palm of her hand, she threw it at Gomez. "Put that
on him, my man," she said.
But the inspector protested. He, too, got down from his cart and
squatted upon the road. And there they sat in the middle of the road,
each behind his cart, the military man and the school-teacher, in a
grim, silent battle of wills. And there was little hope of either ever
yielding, for, really, they were not especially interested in the
progress of the caravan. Gomez was, and at length he lost patience.
There was a terrific struggle, twenty colonels bit the dust beneath the
sledge-hammering of the desperate inspector's fist; but numbers
prevailed at last, and again Mr. Rued was in his cart, trussed up like a
pig for the market, and, flaccid about his legs, the unspeakable
garment. But his cart had to be left far in the rear, for he evidently
considered himself released from his former promise.
And the procession moved on. There were minor obstacles. Once, the widow
lost her glove and the command had to scatter back upon the road for a
full half-hour of microscopic search till she found that it had
miraculously caught on the axle of her cart. At the barrio where they
stopped for the midday rest, she sent back six distinct messes of eggs
to the presidente's kitchen and finally invaded it herself, till the
muchachos, beneath the severity of her eyes, had evolved some turnovers
satisfactory to her esthetic soul. And little by little, her bitter will
was imposing itself more heavily upon the column. Colonels became
muchachos and generals valets. When they stopped that night at Talisay,
the best house of the pueblo was placed at her disposal; the presidente
hustled at her orders, the kitchen was in panic, the household
terrorised. Somewhat softened by her undeniable success, she sent for
the inspector, who was brought to her, betrussed and beskirted. The long
ride in the sun with his elbows together upon his spine had weakened him
somewhat, and his remonstrances had sunk to unintelligible mumblings.
Graciously she cut off his cords, and as he stood swaying before her,
"Well," she said; "aren't you ashamed of yourself, young man? Think of
your mother; how would she have felt had she heard you a while ago----"
A last spark of defiance flared in the indomitable man. "My mother
wasn't an old-maid she-cat," he muttered. But instinctively, in spite of
his courage, his voice had sunk too low to be heard.
"I have a son," began the widow, again. "He----"
"Lordie, but I'd like to see the little nincompoop!" said the inspector.
But the widow was unshakable in her good humour. She ordered a room
prepared for Mr. Rued, and later sent him a cup of tea of her own brew,
which he promptly threw into the face of the astonished muchacho.
They started again at sun-up. They left the road and filed along a
narrow and steep trail. The widow insisted upon a chaise. One was
improvised out of bamboo; and thus, as the shadows of night crept up the
flanks of Taal, she made her triumphal entry into camp upon the
shoulders of the four strongest colonels.
Papa Gato had watched the procession winding up to him through the high
fern, but as it neared a sudden timidity sent him back to his hut. Gomez
found him there, in great indecision, alternately twirling his little
moustache and rearranging upon his breast the seventeen medals he had
decreed upon himself for extraordinary valour.
"Greetings!" he said, with a forced air of decision. "Have you been
successful?"
Gomez took off his sombrero and mopped his brow. "I have her--and the
dinero--and a constabulary inspector," he answered evasively.
"And she is here!" whispered Gato with emotion. "I suppose I should go
greet her."
"Sure!" said Gomez detachedly; "go on to her; I am tired, I'll wait
here."
And throwing himself upon the cot, he turned his face to the wall.
But as his chief left the cabin, he sprang up like one possessed, rushed
to the door and peered maliciously outside.
Indistinct in the gloaming, a feminine form could be descried, regally
erect, upon the high-borne chaise. Gato approached with beating heart.
"Do not fear, senorita; we shall not harm you," he said softly. "You are
our guest; the house is yours----"
He was very near now.
"The house is yours, and----"
There was a sudden movement of the enigmatic figure upon the chaise. A
furious slap sent his sombrero whirling to the ground.
"You boorish little boy, you," rasped the voice of the widow; "you
little brute! What do you mean, _what_ do you mean by standing with your
hat on, before an American lady!"
IV
"Gomez," said Papa Gato disconsolately; "Gomez, I can't stand it any
longer!"
This was in the commandante's hut, during the burning hours of the
siesta, and ten days after the arrival of the widow. Gato and Gomez were
lying stomachs down upon a petate in attitudes of limp discouragement.
"It's pretty bad," murmured Gomez meditatively.
"We're up against it," went on Gato (all this took place in Tagalog, but
is translated into equivalent English).
"We sure are," echoed Gomez sombrely.
There was a long, pained silence.
"Gomez," whined Gato, "I haven't a pulgada of authority left!"
"You certainly haven't," said Gomez, a certain appreciation brightening
his manner.
"And you have less!" went on Gato.
"The she-cat!" spit out Gomez, all appreciation gone.
"She bosses the camp!"
"She sure does."
"We have to eat at tables now."
"With forks."
"And say grace."
"With our faces in our plates."
"We have school every day," went on Gato, sinking deeper and deeper into
despair.
"_Do_ we; well, I guess! 'Do you ssee dde hhett? Yiss, I ssee dde hhett.
How menny hhetts do you ssee? I ssee ttin hhetts. Oh, look at de moon,
she is shining up there. I loof de name of Wash-ing-ton, I loof my
coon-tree, too'--ah, it makes me sick!" And Gomez spit upon the ground.
"Gomez, Gomez; we must do something!"
"Go ahead"--graciously.
"Gomez"--hopefully--"let's chop off her head!"
"You can't"--gloomily.
"Good Lord, Gomez; don't you think, with my best bolo, very well
sharpened, if we hit hard, very hard, that maybe----"
"That's not it. Remember the speech she made to us the first day:
"'Keep that in your heathen minds. I'm an American woman, an American
woman, remember! That means I am sacred, sacred! If you harm me, if you
as much as touch one of my hairs----'"
"But she has only two or three, Gomez!"
"Don't interrupt me--'If you as much as touch one of my hairs, you know
what will happen. The American soldiers will come after you. Not the
scouts, not the constabulary, but the American soldiers. They will
follow you like hounds, ten thousand, a hundred thousand of them, if
necessary. They will never let you rest. They will avenge me--well, you
know the American soldier, my friends. Don't get him mad. I am the
American woman; I am sacred!'"
"But, Gomez; do you think that is all true?"
"It is; I know."
"But, Gomez; the Americans, they are not fools. They can see. They must
know that she is old like my grandmother, that she is seven feet tall,
that she takes out her teeth at night, that----"
"It doesn't matter; she's an American woman."
"Ah, these Americans; what a singular people!"
A long contemplative silence.
"Gomez, Gomez"--with sudden inspiration--"let's poison her!"
"Now you're talking like a babe; there's the same objection."
"Oh!"--more silent despair.
"Gomez, let's take her back, back to Taal!"
"Umph--what do you think the Taal people would do to us?"
"Madre de Dios, Gomez, is there no way, none at all?"
"None I can see."
"Then let me die!"
But hope in human breast is indestructible. It was Gomez who, after all,
found the solution.
"We'll take her to some other town, some town where she is not known,
absolutely not known," he proposed in rapt accents.
"Bagum-Bagum!" exclaimed Gato, rising to his feet; "there's ten thousand
pesos in the treasury!"
"We'll raid the town and leave her there!"
"But say, there 're some constabulary there; do you know how many?"
"No, I don't know. But the constabulary inspector knows."
"She's freed him, too!"--Gato flew from the immediate consideration of
practical things to a bitter recapitulation of wrongs. "He walks around
the camp as if he owned it. And she gave him my best pantaloons, those
with the gold stripes----"
"Never mind," said Gomez soothingly; "we'll question him to-morrow."
V
So it was that, upon getting up, a little later than usual, the next
morning, the widow found the door of her hut locked from the outside. As
has already appeared, the widow was a person of considerable executive
ability. She wasted no time in idle recrimination, but promptly kicked,
through the nipa wall, a hole out of which she emerged, fresh, vigorous,
and unruffled.
An interesting scene met her interrogative eye. In the centre of the
clearing a tripod had been constructed out of three great pieces of
green bamboo. And even as she looked a man was tying a supple liana to
the apex, while another worker tied a slip knot to the loose extremity.
Then a little fire of twigs was started beneath.
"Umph," grunted the widow; "I wonder what these heathen think they're
going to cook."
She was not left guessing long. Out of one of the huts, again bound hand
and foot, Mr. Rued was being carried by six stalwarts. He was strangely
silent. And his face was pale and tense. He was borne to the tripod; the
loose end of the liana was passed in a slip knot around his body, a
little below the waist, then--one, two, three--the carriers suddenly let
go, and the inspector, dangling at the end of the liana, swung neatly,
head downward, over the little fire.
Papa Gato sauntered up close, "And now, will you tell us how many men
there are in Bagum-Bagum?" he asked suavely.
The inspector did not answer. His face was very red and his jaws were
very salient. A few dry twigs were placed upon the fire, which sprang
up, crackling. There was a faint smell of burning hair.
Something like a beskirted cyclone whirred into the circle. Biff--bang;
two kicks scattered the little fire to the four winds. Zip--the liana
was cut with a big jackknife, and the widow, gurgling and choking, was
bending over the luckless Mr. Rued. "You poor dear," she gulped; "you
poor baby"--and she pressed him to her arid bosom. "Here, water, you
heathen, water!"
But the inspector, very much alive, was struggling to get loose; and her
glance, falling upon Papa Gato, watching the strange performance with
wonder-dilated eyes, suddenly changed the nature of her emotion. "You
devil!" she shrieked, and she sprang to her feet; "You fiend!"--and she
started toward him.
To Papa Gato's eternal credit be it said that he held his ground for
several distinct seconds. But the vision of vengeance bearing down upon
him was more than mortal man could bear. He broke one step, hesitated,
then all his courage oozing out of him suddenly, he turned deliberately
and ran. Once around the clearing he loped, the sound of flapping skirts
ominous in his ears; then a second time, for the widow had picked up a
stick, and with mechanical precision it was rising and falling only a
few inches behind his head; a third lap he began, and by that time all
the dogs of the camp had joined the chase in tumultuous glee. And it was
a strange sight, up in that lonely clearing, surrounded on all sides by
an impenetrable and poisonous vegetation, beneath the shadow of Taal,
brooding and sinister with its black banner of vapours, in the hollow
silence of high altitudes, that man running in sober earnest, with an
immense concentration of his simple purpose, and behind him that
incredible woman, flashing-eyed, hook-nosed, her garments to the wind,
seemingly gliding over the high grass, a gigantic and fearful witch,
riding a broomstick. In the centre, from a few dying embers, a little
smoke rose, and about that were grouped the tulisanes, in frozen
attitudes, like a bronze bas-relief, and they looked at their running
chief, at the pursuing woman, without a gesture, without a cry, without
the single flapping of an eyelid. And behind the nightmare couple ran
the dogs, the curs of the camp, snarling and laughing and gurgling like
a pack of hyenas.
To this preoccupation of man and dog may be ascribed the ensuing
catastrophe. For suddenly, close, so close that the vibration of it
could be felt, but muffled in the impenetrability of the jungle, a shot
rang out. This was followed by a crepitating volley; a buzz of lead
passed overhead. Silently, with a minimum of movement, the ladrones, as
if at a preconceived signal, slid across the clearing and into the
wilderness beyond. Just at that psychological moment, the widow caught
up with Gato. Calmly, dexterously, as one spanks a child, she upset him,
face down, and resolutely sat upon him. Then, readjusting her skirts
about her limbs and her spectacles upon her nose, she grimly waited.
Shouts came to her ears, a hewing and hacking of bushes, a crackling of
bamboo. Vague brown spots appeared against the metallic green foliage;
they massed, detached themselves and burst into the clearing--a
detachment of constabulary. At their head, charging furiously, was a
lieutenant, slender and boyish, in accoutrement ridiculously new. He was
enjoying himself immensely. A fine ardour was in his face; his cap was
off, his hair streaming in the wind; he held a naked sword extended up
and forward in statuesque gesture. Across the clearing he came, straight
as a bee; his eyes flashing, his nostrils distended, all a-thrill with
military glory.
And suddenly he was nose to nose with the widow, who had slowly risen
and now confronted him majestically, her foot upon the luckless Papa
Gato. An extraordinary change came over the young warrior. His martial
excitement, his keen zest, his bravado collapsed; his sword dropped till
its point touched the ground; his flaming uniform took on cringing
folds.
"Mamma!" he cried, a little wistfully.
"Boy," shouted the widow; "boy, what are you doing here! Quick, give me
this"--she snatched the sword from his hand--"that also"--she whisked
the revolver out of his holster. "Oh, that child, that child," she
wailed. Out in the jungle there were cries, hollow and muffled in the
crape of vegetation; a few shots rang, dull as if underground. Three or
four bullets whirred overhead.
"Down! Down!" cried the widow; "down, boy"--and her iron claw sank into
his shoulder, bearing him down, and unresistingly he fell upon the
luckless Gato. "That's right, sit on him," the widow whispered hoarsely;
"and don't you move, don't you budge. My God, if only I can get you out
of this----" She turned toward the jungle, straight to her full height,
a strange, inflexible figure with the sabre in her right hand, the
revolver in her left; a heroic figure, really, keeping guard there upon
her boy, her son, her baby, her treasure in life; the object upon which
had flowed all her wealth of love, of tenderness, leaving her, soul and
body, arid and sterile and bitter and awesome.
In the depths toward which she peered with watchful eyes, a vague,
mysterious tumult was taking place, lost, devoured in the brooding
silence about it. It came in multitudinous attenuated noises, like a
ventriloquist performance; murmurs rose from the ground at her feet,
wails sighed overhead.
Her back to her son, tensely keeping guard, she was questioning
feverishly.
"Oh, why did you come? How could you, how could you! Without telling me.
This country is not fit for you. And the constabulary! How could you,
how could you!"
He answered her as well as he could. Really, he would have preferred to
be out there, with his men in the jungle. But he was subjugated. The
training of his childhood had fallen back upon him like an unshakable
harness. So he remained, seated upon Papa Gato, answering hysterical
questions.
Really, it was a pretty bit of coincidence--the young man, suddenly
boiling with desire to do, leaving his college, taking a commission in
the Philippine constabulary, arriving over the sea just in time to learn
of his mother's capture, begging for a place in the rescuing party,
then, in feverish impatience, distancing with his detachment all the
others----
From the depths of the jungle, piercing above the muffled tumult, there
came a great, clear cry. Then there was absolute silence. A fly buzzed
about the group. A squad of constabulary men, soiled, bloody, and
dishevelled, carrying a bound prisoner, broke into the clearing.
Another--the affair was over.
The sword fell with a clang from the widow's hand; the revolver rolled
after it; and then, stiffly, with extraordinary dignity, she slowly fell
into the arms of her son. The widow had fainted.
But it was a weakness that was but momentary. By the time that
civilisation was reached, she was again in possession of all her
faculties. Thus it was that young Pinney sat down, and, beneath the
rigid shadow of her dominating presence, filled out a blank form of
resignation for the benefit of the chief in Manila; and thus it is that
he now catches flies in the drowsy office of one of the "snap"
departments, while the widow spanks young hopefuls in the Manila normal
school.
XI
THE MANANGETE[1]
Far down the palm-lined road they appeared, nearing with perplexing
rapidity. The head of my companion snapped forward and his eyes flamed.
They came in a file down the road, between the palm trees, in the
glowing tropic light, swinging along with smooth, resistless progress.
They seemed to glide; the bamboo poles, balanced on their shoulders,
slid as if on invisible tracks laid above the ground, and the tuba
buckets at the ends were steady as if floating in the air. Soon they
were near. The play of their great thigh muscles became visible. They
turned the corner of the plaza with a new burst of speed, and then they
passed us in magnificent action. Down their naked heels came in turn,
pounding the ground; in one long, smooth sweep from waist to toe the
legs flashed back in a quivering of ropy sinew. Their naked bronze busts
glistening with sweat, and the supple back muscles, giving at each step
beneath the bamboo poles, undulated liquidly beneath the golden skin.
Through the palm leaves covering the buckets a slight froth played like
silver lace. They passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze; the creak of
the bamboo poles shrieked in our ears; the pungent, sulphurous odour of
the tuba stung our nostrils, and then they vanished in the kaleidoscopic
colour-play of the market.