Part 8 (1/2)
The colony showed signs of breaking up. The native scouts had gone, leaving their weeping ”_hindais_” on the sh.o.r.e. ”Major O'Dowd,”
his wife, and Flora had also departed to a station _sin Americanos_ up in the interior. At this, the doctor, for the first time in his life, broke into song, after the style and meter of immortal Omar:
”Hiram, indeed is gone; his little Rose Vamosed to Lintogoup with all her clothes; But still the Pearls are with us down the line, And many a _hindai_ to the _tubig_ goes.”
”Tubig,” he said, ”did not mean 'water.' It was more poetical, expressing the idea of fountain, watering-place, or spa.”
It was my last day at Aloran. In the morning I ascended a near elevation, and looked down upon the sleepy valley spread below. There was the river winding in and out; there was the convent, like a doll-house in a field of green. Vivan had gone on with the trunks and boxes packed upon a carabao. The ponies were waiting in the compound. Valedictories were quickly said; but there was little Peter with his silken cheeks, the brightest little fellow I have ever known. It seemed a shame to leave him there in darkest Mindanao. Turning the horses into the Aloran River at the ford we struck the high road near the _barrio_ of Feliz. Galloping on, past ”Columbine” bridge, ”Skeleton” bridge, ”Johnson's Despair,” and Fenis, we arrived at Oroquieta in good time.
But what a change from the old place as we had known it! Hiram, indeed was gone. The doctor had set out for pastures new. The ”Arizona Babe” and ”Foxy Grandpa” had departed for fresh fields. Like one who, falling asleep in a theater, awakes to find the curtain down and the spectators gone, so I now looked about the vacant town. The actors had departed, and ”the play was played out.”
Chapter XIII.
In Camp and Barracks with the Officers and Soldiers of the Philippines.
Bugle-calls, loud, strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the bra.s.s throats of bugles; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier; troopers in blue s.h.i.+rts, with their mess-kits in their hands, running across the street for rations; men in khaki everywhere, raising a racket on pay-day, fraternizing with the Filipinos when off duty; poker games in the barracks, with the army cot and blanket for a table; taps, and the measured tread of sentries, and anon a startled challenge, ”Halt! Who's there?”--such were the days in Cagayan in 1901.
The blue sea, stretching out into the hazy distance, sparkled around the little _nipa_-covered dock where commissary stores and sacks of rice were piled. The native women, squatting on the ground, were selling mangoes and bananas to the boys. ”Cagayan Mag,” who vended the hot bottled beer for ”jawbone,” digging her toes into the dust, was entertaining the surrounding crowd with her coa.r.s.e witticisms. The corporal of the guard, reclining in an easy steamer-chair, under his tent extension, was perusing the news columns from the States, by this time three months old. A sunburnt soldier, with his Krag upon his shoulder, paced the dock, wearily doing the last hour of his guard.
”Do you-all like hawg-jowl and black-eyed peas?” drawled ”Tennessee Bill,” s.h.i.+fting his bony form to a more comfortable position on the rice-sack.
”Reckon I ort ter; I wuz bo'n in Geo'gy,” said his comrade, as he rolled a rice-straw paper cigarette.
After an interval of several minutes the same conversation was repeated. Suddenly a sharp toot sent the echoes scudding back and forth among the hills. A moment later the small transport, with the usual blur of khaki in her bows, came swinging around the promontory.
”Pshaw! I thought it wuz the pay boat comin'” grumbled Bill.
Then, as the _Trenton_ pulled up to the dock, signs of activity began to animate that place. The guard, with leveled bayonet, began to shoo the ”Gugus” off the landing. Down the hot road, invested in a cloud of dust, an ambulance was coming, drawn by a team of army mules and bringing the lieutenant quartermaster and his sergeants.
”Why, h.e.l.lo!” said Bill; ”if here ain't little Wantz a-comin'. Got his discharge an' gone married a _babay_.”
The soldiers crowded around the ex-hospital corps man, who, still in his khaki suit, was standing on the sh.o.r.e with a sad-looking Filipino girl in tow. Her feet were bare and dusty, and she wore a turkey-red skirt caught up on one side, and a gauze _camisa_ with a _pina_ yoke, and the stiff, flaring sleeves. Her head was bare, and her black hair was combed uncompromisingly back on her head. Her worldly goods were done up in a straw mat and a soiled bandana handkerchief, and were deposited before her on the ground.
”This is the gal,” said Wantz; ”old Justice de Laguna's daughter, and the same what uster sell beer to the Twenty-eighth over at Tagaloan. She ain't no beauty, but she's a good steady trotter; ain't you, Dell?” The girl looked stupid and embarra.s.sed, and did not reply.
A ”rooky,” who had joined the company, stood on the dock disconsolately. His blanket roll and locker had been put off the boat. This was his first appearance in the provinces. He was a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water, and a raw recruit.
The men were set to work immediately landing the commissary stores. They stripped their shoes and socks off, rolled up their trousers to the knee, and waded through the shallow water, carrying the bales and boxes on their shoulders to the sh.o.r.e.
The road up to the town was lined with _nipa_ houses, shaded with banana-trees and bonga palms. This was the road that was almost impa.s.sable during the rainy season. As the ambulance rolled heavily along, scores of half-naked babies, shaped like peanuts, shouted after you a ”h.e.l.lo, baby!” and the pigs, with snouts like coal-scuttles, scattered on either side the thoroughfare. This was the famous ”Bolo alley,” down which, only a few months before, the _Insurrecto_ army had come shouting, ”_A la! a la!_” firing as they ran.
You pa.s.sed the market-place, an open hall filled with the native stalls, where soldiers loafed around, chatting with the Visayan girls--for a freemasonry exists between the Filipino and the soldier--d.i.c.kering with one for a few dhobie cigarettes, sold ”jawbone,” to be paid for when the pay-boat comes.
The troops were quartered in old Spanish buildings, where the sliding windows of the upper floors disclosed the lanes of white mosquito-bar. Back in the courtyard, where the cook was busily preparing mess, a mangy and round-shouldered monkey from the bamboo fence was looking on approvingly. The cook was not in a good humor. All that the mess had had for three weeks was the regulation beans and bacon, without a taste of fresh meat or fresh vegetables.
Things were as bad, however, at the officers' mess, where the rule was that the first complaint should sentence its author to conduct the mess himself until relieved in a like manner. As might be imagined, such a system naturally discouraged an improvement of affairs. Exasperated, finally, beyond his limit, Lieutenant Breck came out with--”If this isn't the rottenest apology of an old mess”--saving himself by quickly adding, ”But I like it; O, I like it; n.o.body can tell how much I like this mess!”