Part 16

In due time Señorita Rivas left the hotel for quiet lodgings on Vallejo Street. But before she disappeared from the court, a gentle-mannered old man, with knotty hands, called and introduced a companion. “This is the young man I spoke to your excellency about. I present Señor Thomas Vincent.” Then the gray-haired man slipped away, and Thomas Vincent was left looking down into the dark face of Maria Rivas. He did not know why he was there, nor who she was, nor even the name of the man who had introduced him. But he was not sorry.

She let him stand while she glanced him over. Vincent drew himself up at her somewhat insolent manner, and was rewarded by a smile.

“Will you accept an invitation to supper to-night if I press you very hard?” she asked him in smooth English.

Vincent turned his eyes about the court. Then he looked down at her again, and nodded curtly. “Certainly, madam.” He flushed, and went on, “But I failed to catch your name. I am awfully embarrassed.”

She got to her feet, and held out a slender hand. “I am Miss Mary Rivas,” she said, quietly. “My father was formerly the president of Honduras. I went to school at Bryn Mawr, and I met your sister there. That’s why, when I found you were in San Francisco, I asked to have you brought and introduced.”

Vincent looked at her very soberly, almost pityingly. Then he offered her his arm, and they went into the supper-room, where everybody turned to watch their progress, knowing neither of them.

When she removed to the flat on Vallejo Street, Miss Mary Rivas told Vincent to come and take the first dinner with her. “We’ll christen the new place,” she said gayly, “and, besides, I hope you’ll find that I’m really American and can cook.”

That night at nine o’clock when the Mexican maid had departed giggling to the kitchen, Vincent’s hostess leaned forward over the table at which they sat, and rested her elbows on it. Her bare arms framed her face in a sudden way that took Vincent’s heart out of its regular beat. He leaped to his feet when Maria Rivas, dropping her head, burst into a torrent of sobs, her white shoulders heaving as her agony got the better of her.

As he stood there biting his lips she threw back her head and darted up and to the window. He heard her moan, as if she saw and heard something too awful to comprehend. He walked over and stood back of her till she swung round, and he saw the tear-stained face relax and the swimming eyes close. He carried her to the table, and laid her down across it, and rubbed her hands. Then the maid came in, still giggling hysterically, and together they revived her until she sat up between Vincent’s arms and slid from the big table to the floor. Vincent sent the astonished maid out by a gesture of command.

“Now, what’s the matter?” he demanded, hoarsely. “If you’re in trouble tell me.”

She panted before him. “It was what I remembered,” she replied. “How can I forget?”

“After I had been five years in the States papa sent for me to meet him in Colon. I got off the steamer, and he was waiting on the wharf. I knew he would do it just that way. He put on his glasses with both hands and looked at me as if he were very glad, and oh! I loved it, for it was just like it was when I was a little girl and ran into the big room.

“But trouble came in Panama, and papa thought we’d better come up to San Francisco. ‘I’ve been so busy down here one way and another,’ he said, ‘that I’m always suspected of conspiracy. Your mother is dead, and the fun of life is out of it. We will live peaceably as befits an old man and his daughter.’”

Vincent’s voice broke in on her story. “When was this?”

“Five years ago. And everything went all right till we got to Amapala. There a friend of papa’s came on board and showed me a paper. It said papa was not to be allowed to land in Honduras, as he was plotting an insurrection. He put on his glasses to read it. When he looked up at me, he said: ‘We shan’t see where your mother is buried, nor the place where you were born.’ He shook hands with the friend, and said nothing more.

“On the day we were at Ocos, in the afternoon, I saw the _comandante_ come on the steamer with some soldiers. He said he wanted to arrest papa, but that if papa came along willingly he would not use force.

“‘I am under the American flag,’ papa said. ‘I know who has done this. It would mean my death if I went with you.’ Suddenly I heard a shot and then another. I hurried to papa’s room. Outside there were two soldiers aiming into it. I saw papa sitting on his camp-stool and his two revolvers were in his lap. He was hunting for his glasses, but the chain had slipped down. He could not see to shoot. One of the soldiers, after a long time, fired his gun again, and father suddenly picked up his revolvers, and I cried out again. He didn’t shoot, and I know now that he was afraid of hitting me. Then he fell. The soldiers fired again and ran away, panting and yelling to each other. I went in to papa, and he asked for his glasses, sitting up on the floor very weakly. When I found them and gave them to him, the blood was running very fast down his breast. He put on his glasses with both hands, wrinkling up his forehead in the old way, and looked at me very----He looked.... He said, ‘I am glad I could see you, little one ... before I go.’ That was all.”

She went to the window and stayed there, immobile, while Vincent walked up and down behind her. At last she turned around. “That was five years ago. No one has done anything to punish them.”

Vincent, because she was suddenly to him the woman, did what every man once in his life will do for one woman: he sacrificed his sense of humor. With all seriousness he stiffened up. “It was under my flag he was shot down. I’ve served under it. Give me another flag for Guatemala and I’ll go down there and those murderers shall die against a wall, with your flag flying over their heads, its shadow wavering at their feet on the yellow sand.”

Maria Rivas, because she was the Woman in this case, understood perfectly. “A revolution?” she said, very quietly. He bent over her hand gravely and youthfully. His manner was confident, as if he saw very clearly what was to be done and knew how to do it, not as if he had promised a girl with tear stains on her cheeks to overturn a government because of a murder one afternoon on a steamer in a foreign port.

This was the beginning of the affair. Its continuation was in a little town on the Guatemalan coast, where Vincent landed with a ton of munitions of war, marked “Manufactures of Metal,” and thirty ragged soldiers. A month later he had a thousand insurgents and twenty tons of munitions, and his blood had drunk in the fever that burns up the years in hours. The first thing Vincent did under its spell was to march on Ocos and take it. When the town was his and the _comandante_ in irons, the young man took out of his pocketbook a little list of names, made out in Maria Rivas’s hand. He compared this list with the list of prisoners, and ordered out a firing squad. Half an hour later the shadow of the flag made by the Woman in the Vallejo Street flat wavered over the sand on which lay six men in a tangle. Generalissimo Thomas Vincent went out into the sun and looked at the last postures of the six, and then out across the brimming waters of the Pacific. A mail steamer lay out there in the midst of a cluster of canoes, the American flag drooping from her staff.

An Irishman in a major’s uniform came out of the cool of the barracks and stopped beside Vincent. “Another week ought to see us in the capital,” he said slowly. “But I don’t like this business, general. These beggars don’t amount to anything. Why did you order them shot?”

A barefoot girl of some ten years crept around the corner of the sunbaked wall. She picked her way over the sand, darting hot glances fearfully at the two officers. Suddenly she stooped over the crooked body of one of the motionless ones. She tugged at the sleeve of a shirt, and as the face turned slightly upward to her effort, she fell to beating on the ground with both hands, and sobbed in the heat, dry-eyed.

Vincent strode over to her, and gently picked her up. Her quick sobs did not cease as he carried her into the shade, his own face drawn and white. He looked over at the major, who stood gnawing on his stubby mustache. He did not reply to the question until the major repeated it angrily. “It was because ... they deserved it....” Vincent stopped, and then went on, almost inaudibly, “God knows why I did it, and then there’s ... the----” He stopped once more, for the girl’s hard sobs had ceased, and her lithe hand had darted from the folds of her scanty gown to the young general’s throat, and the major saw him set the burden softly down, and then fall forward, the blood pouring around the blade of a knife deep in his throat.

With an oath the major leaped over to him and lifted his head. Vincent’s eyes looked clearly into his. Then the wounded man looked over at the little girl, poised for flight, a dozen feet away. He nodded at her with an air of absolute comprehension, and then died.

THE BLOOD OF A COMRADE

By Neil Gillespie

“A short, severe war is less cruel than a long drawn-out fight,” said the captain, easily. “Of course it is! Everybody knows it! So why do the people at home criticise us, and libel and court-martial us because we use every means in our power to prevent further rebellion?”

“They ought to be thankful we don’t use Spanish methods,” said Wilcox, the junior member of the mess. He was only six weeks out of his cadet gray, and a new arrival at Camp Chicobang.

The captain smiled, pleasantly. “No?” he said. “Haven’t we a _reconcentrado_ system similar to theirs? Haven’t we a blockade? We’re merely taking up affairs where they left them, and following Spanish methods in our own way. When this rebellion began, we tried to treat the natives as civilized creatures, but, thank heaven, we’re learning sense at last.”

The subaltern flushed to the roots of his close-cropped hair. “Do you mean to say that any measure, however cruel, is justifiable in war?”

“About that,” said the captain, amused at the boy’s interest in a subject which was a stale one to the rest of the mess. “This business has got to be straightened out, and that’s exactly what you and I are here for. War is wrong; therefore it is cruel and brutalizing. ‘Benevolent assimilation’ talk is all rot, and as for civilized warfare, there’s no such thing. The measures used are adopted as circumstances arise, and must be cruel or barbarous, as the necessity calls for.”

Wilcox was staring at him, half in horror, half in fascination. “And men can talk that way in the twentieth century,” he murmured.

The captain smiled again. “The only way to carry on war with this people is to do to them as they first did to us. As long as we spare them, they’re going to think we’re weaklings, and grow bolder by result. They haven’t any honor; you can’t treat them as white men. Their own methods are what they expect, and their own methods are the only means by which this fighting will ever be stopped. It may involve an awful lot of suffering for non-combatants, but we can’t help that. When the people cry out ‘Enough!’ then the insurgents will lose their support and the rebellion will be at an end--for a while.”

Wilcox was playing nervously with his fork, and biting his lips as if to keep back words he would not speak. He was young, and his high ideals of the calling he had chosen had made him blind to the hard facts with which he was now brought face to face. It was impossible to believe that his own countrymen--officers of the United States army--could be so cruel, so barbarous. He did not care what the captain said; bloody treatment must serve only to alienate this struggling people. If the rebellion had once been handled differently, what was the cause of this reversion to the savage? Had the lust of blood so crazed the white men that they forgot their race, their civilization, their upbringing? Wilcox pitied the Filipinos; they, at least, were fighting for their liberty.

“By the way,” said the captain, “did any of you fellows hear that the general expects to catch Luiz Maha, who killed our policeman down at Binaran, and tried to murder the port commander?”

“Been wounded?” asked some one.

“No, but his wife had a baby recently, so he probably won’t move his quarters so easily. They’ll shoot him on sight.”

“Well, I hope they see him soon,” said the medico. “He’s made more trouble for us than any other _insurrecto_ in that part of the island.”

A sudden sound of running feet was heard through the din of the rain outside. The door of the mess-hall rasped open, and a dripping figure appeared on the threshold.

“The colonel’s compliments to the commanders of K and O Troops, and will they please report to him immediately? Outpost No. 2 has been cut up by _insurrectos_, and Lieutenant Ellard and men at No. 4 have been captured.”

* * * * *

In the blackness of the night before dawn, a long line of men, lying flat on the soggy earth, wormed their way through the tall, rank grass. On the crest of a steep ascent the leading figures halted cautiously, and one by one the men came to a standstill, each with a hand on the foot of the man ahead. A light was beginning to streak the east when the captain consulted the native guide in a soundless colloquy.

“What does he say?” asked Wilcox, the subaltern. He was wallowing in the mud like a carabao, and his clothes were coated with dirt.

“The _hacienda_ of the _insurrecto comandante_ is just below us,” returned the captain. “They’ll be perfectly unsuspecting, and unless they’ve had time to move on, it’s likely we’ll find our men hidden there.”

In the gray dawn the Americans drew their lines about the little plantation, and lay in an unseen circle a stone’s throw from the brown nipa-hut. The subaltern saw a frowsy woman with two naked children go into the shack. A tall man in ragged white was putting out the wash to dry.

“By the eternal,” whispered the captain, excitedly, “if it isn’t a Spaniard! We’ve had rumors that the Gugus were keeping some prisoners up here as slaves.”

The tall man glanced toward the jungle and saw a line of blue and khaki-clad figures spring into view. His eyes bulged from his head, and he stood motionless with amazement. Suddenly, with a shout of “Vivan los Americanos! Viva la Libertad!” he dashed forward, open-armed. A burly sergeant met him with a knock-out blow on the chin, and the Spaniard staggered back, rubbing his face without resentment. He understood that silence was demanded.

“Over the hill!” he cried, dancing about with pain and excitement. “They’ve just left here with three _Americano_ prisoners. Hurry and you will catch them! Hurry, hurry, but take me with you.”

Once more they dashed into the forest. The subaltern, running beside the rescued man, noticed that his shirt was stained with blood, and the fluttering rags gave glimpses of the raw, flayed skin beneath.

“What does that mean?” he asked in his school-boy Spanish.

The man smiled. Past sorrows were nothing to him now.

“I have been two years a prisoner,” he said. “One receives many beatings.”

“Have you never tried to escape?”

“What was the use? My friend tried, but they caught him and cut off his head--after roasting his legs.”

Wilcox said nothing, but there was a strained look about his eyes. To him the last twenty-four hours had been horribly unreal. Stopping only for food and drink, the troop had followed the track of the _insurrectos_ deeper and deeper into the hills. He had seen his men surprise and shoot down a native in sight of his wife, and as excuse the captain had said that the man was a war traitor, a leader of insurgents, and a persecutor of _Americanistas_. But Wilcox felt sickened. The captain and the men became repulsive to him. They were like a lower order of beings to which he refused to be degraded. The army was his only outlook, but could he ever be in sympathy with such things as he was experiencing every day?

Suddenly a man in the ranks cried out, and the column came to a jolting halt. The subaltern looked, and turned pale. By the trunk of a moss-grown tree, his arms bound above his head, a rope about his half-naked body, stood an American soldier. Across his mouth from corner to corner a _bolo_ had slashed, and the bleeding flesh hung loosely over the jaw. His head was sunk forward, but he was not dead as his captors had intended he should be after a few days’ lingering.

His “bunkie,” who had first seen the pitiful figure, cut the heavy hemp with his bayonet, but the column waited only a moment. A hospital corps man was left behind with a detail, and the troop took up its march the more cautiously for knowing that it was hot on the trail.

The subaltern felt that his nerves were strained to the breaking point. Through the throbbing whirl of his brain came a sickening thought. If the natives were capable of such a deed as this, how would they treat the other two prisoners? Surely they would not dare to harm an American officer. His mind refused to comprehend the thought of Ellard cold and lifeless. The image of his classmate and chum was too fresh, too vividly active to be rendered null. No, the natives could not be so cruel, they could not be so inhuman. And yet that bound figure by the tree! How slowly the men moved! Why did they linger when every minute might mean life or death to the prisoners?

The men passed over another spur and dropped into the valley below. With every step they moved more cautiously. Tense and alert, the subaltern crept onward, braced for he knew not what. He saw the captain, crawling on all fours, become entangled in a trailing vine, and felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh. It was broad day now, and the heat grew stifling in the breathless woods.

A shout and distant laughter echoed across the valley, and the captain halted abruptly. After a moment’s consultation, the troop divided, and at the head of his creeping file, the subaltern turned to the right. Nearer and nearer sounded the native voices, and the men knew that they were close to the insurgent camp. For ten heartbreaking minutes they wormed their way over the damp, brown loam, now and again catching a glimpse of the little clearing, until they had made a complete half circle.

Slowly they drew near the edge of the trees, and the subaltern heard the sound of hasty digging. A strange look appeared on the set faces of the men, but Wilcox did not notice. He wondered what the natives were doing, fearing to look for dread of what he might have to see, and yet impatient to know if Ellard was alive. He moved his body until, dirt-color himself, he could watch unseen.

Thank God! At the opposite end of the clearing stood Ellard, upright and unharmed. Before him, in the centre of the field, was a rectangular hole like a grave, and the natives were throwing the earth clods into it. Evidently they were burying some one who had died, but why did they seem amused? Brady was nowhere in sight. Was it his body they were burying?

Yelling like an army of blue fiends, the captain’s detachment burst into the clearing. Surprised and confused, the _insurrectos_ turned to flee, and met the fixed bayonets of the subaltern’s men.

As soon as he could break away, Wilcox ran to one side. Ellard was standing as before, still bound hand and foot. His face was half averted, but on it the subaltern saw a look of the most intense horror and dread. With a cry of dismay, he dashed forward, but a naked, brown figure was before him. Twice the shining _kris_ flashed in the air as the defenseless prisoner toppled backward. Then, dodging the subaltern’s bullet, the native turned and fled. Two privates cornered and disarmed him, but before they could put in a finishing blow, Wilcox had shouted: “Hold on there! Wait till I come!”

“As you have mercy, put me out of this life!” moaned Ellard.

The tall, strong, young athlete of a moment before lay helpless on the ground, a bleeding, legless trunk. Sobbing, the subaltern dropped to his knees beside his friend, and beat passionately at the earth with clenched fists.

“Don’t, don’t!” almost shrieked the wounded man. “I stood here powerless to move while they first cut up and then buried Brady alive, but I didn’t cry! Kill me, shoot me, have mercy on me for Christ’s sake, but don’t cry!”

A hospital sergeant came running, the captain, white with horror, at his heels. The fight was over, and a group of men were working at the grave.

Wilcox staggered to his feet, a strange curse on his lips. The beads of sweat plowed deep courses through the grime on his cheeks. Slowly, with infinite deliberation, he reloaded his revolver and strode to where the troopers held the _insurrecto_ on the ground. As he went, he muttered, like a man searching for some forgotten thought, “The measures used are adopted as circumstances arise, and must be cruel or barbarous as the necessity calls for ... as the necessity calls for....”

Three times he fired into the prostrate body. “One for Brady, one for Wright, and one for Ellard!” and then he began to laugh.

UNDER FLYING HOOFS

By Bertrand W. Sinclair.

“Mormon Jack” stretched his generous length in the shade of the bed-wagon, thereby disturbing the sonorous slumbers of Johnny Layton, who muttered imprecations as he rolled over to make room.

“You blasted Mormon renegade,” he growled.

“Why don’t you go and lie down where you won’t be disturbin’ a fellow that has to stand guard to-night?”

“You’re a cantankerous cuss,” Mormon Jack calmly returned. “If I wasn’t a stranger in a hostile camp I’d climb your carcass for them insultin’ observations. Besides, it aint good for a kid to sleep too much. I don’t see how you got the heart to lay here snorin’ like a cayuse chokin’ down, when you could be sittin’ up enjoyin’ this here beautiful scenery that’s bein’ desecrated with bawlin’ cows and buckin’ bronks and greasy, old round-up wagons. You aint got no sense of nacheral beauty, Kid. You’re just about as ornery a varmint as old man Hartley, what once inhabited this same flat.”

“I’ve heard of him,” answered the now thoroughly awakened Layton. “He happened before my time, though. Were you in the country when they cleaned him out?”

“You bet I was!” Mormon Jack replied. “I knew him before he came over here, and I was here and saw his finish. There was high old jinks on this little green bottom that day.”

“So I’ve heard. He wanted to make a sheep-feedin’ ground of the east bench, didn’t he? How was it?” Layton propped himself up on his elbow to listen.

Mormon Jack settled his head comfortably against a rolled-up bed. He rolled a cigarette daintily and inhaled many breaths of smoke before replying.

“Old man Hartley was a bone-headed cuss,” he began, at length, “that wouldn’t learn better--even by experience. He was like a fool buck-sheep that persists in buttin’ everything that gets in his way, no matter how much he hurts his head. It aint the sheep’s fault; it’s the breed of him, and the way he was raised--and I guess that was the trouble with old Hartley.

“I come across him, first time, over in the Hash-Knife country, a little while after they quit drivin’ herds up the Long Trail. The railway come in, and you could bring a bunch of cattle from the Panhandle up there in a week--it took five months on the trail. Likewise, the railway brought farmers and pilgrims and woolly-backs by the train-load, and turned ’em loose promiscus on the country, where they made more trouble with their homestead rights and barb-wire fences than all the Injuns that ever run buffalo or lifted hair.