Chapter VII The Juramentados
There was a mistiness among the mango trees as we went out into the moonlight. It was a mist from the ocean, but it made an uncanny milkiness in the air, which seemed to cling to the long dew-damp leaves of the tropic trees as we descended into the Labanyon Valley; and that queer uncanniness stayed with me. I could not throw it off.
At the picket line I left a note to be carried back with the relief. It was to my First Lieutenant, explaining my absence and stating that, if I were not back by daylight, he was to assume the command. And if, before daylight, he heard any continual rapid fire, he was to send the company to the sound of it, for it would mean that we needed help.
The picket would be relieved at midnight. I asked him not to awaken Lieutenant Clarke until then.
“Captain,” said the picket, touching his cap, “excuse me, but if you weren’t here I’d arrest Moriarty and Davis and send them back into camp. ’Tis a fool thing they are doing.”
“But what about our comrades out there, cut off, doubtless, and surrounded by these savages?”
“Then why not take a company?” he asked respectfully.
“They’d be butchered,” said Moriarty. “It’s the three of us slippin’ around an’ nosin’ in that can save ’em if we find ’em. And with these rifles and six Colts we’ll be all of a company for arrows and bolos.”
“Look,” said the sentinel, “do you see that?” He pointed to a dim red star, glowing just above the mountain top. “That’s a signal fire—and that, and that. Captain,” he pleaded earnestly, “go back and let the boys all go with you. It’s a fool thing, but if you will go—now listen—when I hear you shoot, if shooting is on, I am going to fire and waken the camp; the boys will want to come to your relief.”
Moriarty laughed. “Now don’t let your old gun go off too suddent loike. We’ll be back without firin’ a shot!”
But I, Eloise, as I went down into that valley, became for a moment all but a weakling when I thought of you! We went quietly out into the moonlight, slipping along from the shadow of one great mango to another. Sometimes these trees made a continuous shadow—so thick they were—and our going was easy. But when we emerged into a moonlit space we stooped and crawled through the high grass, for we were an easy target for their sharpshooters on the peaks above.
We were fully a mile from camp before we crossed a crevasse, about twelve feet wide, spanned by a culvert or small bridge. I remember noticing the little bridge and thinking that if it should be burnt by the enemy in our rear, we would never be likely to get back into our camp again.
There was a Filipino village which lay off to the left in a mountain gorge, and, scouting carefully around the side of the mountain, we approached it over the last one-hundred yards, crawling through the grass and under mango and cocoanut trees up to within fifty yards. It lay before us, a dozen shacks on bamboo cane shocked with the coarse straw of the rice stalk. The usual squalor and emptiness was around, but there was not a sound, not a living thing. Moriarty nudged me. “There’s hell in there somewhere, Cap’n,” he whispered, “it looks too peaceful loike.”
It was a Filipino cur that gave us the first clue. They are a half wild breed but little beyond the wild things from which they came. As we lay in the grass listening, this dog which had come back for some morsel he knew of, smelt us, and, barking, bolted down a wooded path to the right. We saw him clearly as he ran up a hillside and over into a gorge beyond.
“There’s where we’ll find the family,” said Moriarty. “We’ll cut around and go into the rear.”
It took us a good hour to do it, crawling through bamboo and cane, under mango and desert palm, through the tall grasses, and over crevasses. Often we lay quiet in them, resting.
It was a weird and unexpected sight that we saw. Before us lay a little cup in the mountain gorge, a natural amphitheater, framed by a small grove of palms and cocoanuts. Savage figures were going through queer rites.
We stopped, puzzled. “That isn’t the village people,” whispered Davis. “There are no women or children there, they are headmen and warriors, and that is some ceremony they are performing.”
We crawled up within fifty yards, and then I wished I had not come, for Moriarty gripped me quickly, and pointing to two naked men bound and laid out on the ground, whispered, “Ross and Billings!”
“We’re too late, Captain, they’ve been killed and now they are fixing to mutilate them, cut off their heads and cut out their hearts and fill their stomachs with stones.”
I nodded. It was the savage’s way of mutilating all our dead.
We recognized the fighting men easily. There were dozens of them, squatted in a circle, armed with bolos, borangs, and spears. But in the center stood a strange figure in a long black robe, his parted hair hanging down his back. Around him stood six men, fierce savages, with shaved heads, and half naked bodies.
“Juramentado!” I whispered. “That’s a Mohammedan priest in the center and he is making Juramentado of the six—look!”
I heard both Davis and Moriarty slip the bolts of their Krags. To say Juramentado to any soldier was like crying wolf to a shepherd and his flock.
We lay still, seeing the mystic savage rite no white man ever saw before. We could hear the words of the priest which, spoken in a mixed Moro-Spanish, we easily interpreted. The six we soon learned were Moros from Mindanao and had sailed over to sacrifice themselves to our army.
It was indeed a weird rite he went through, and strange words he used:—how, if each killed his Christian before dying, it meant first heaven and an houri; and if two Christians a second heaven and two houri, up to the seventh heaven and a harem if they died within our lines with seven of our dead each to his credit.
“And now behead them,” he ordered, pointing to the two American soldiers, “and anoint your bodies with their blood!”
Instantly we saw our error in supposing our friends were dead, for when the bound soldiers saw two of the Juramentados seize their borangs, each made a violent effort to break his bonds.
“That priest is mine,” said Moriarty, “I’ve always loved ’em.”
We fired together. The priest, two Juramentados, and five warriors lay dead or dying. The others were instantly an awakened den of wolves.
I flinch, Eloise, in writing you this, for it brings the tears even now as I write. Its ending was in blood and the passing of two I loved as only one man learns to love another who has backed him to death in the last ditch. They rushed us quickly, for their leaders were Juramentados and they never retreat, but like a wounded jungle lion charge instantly the men who have wounded them. They were ten to one against us, and fast and furious was their rush, but, though it was only a short distance, we bunched, and shoulder to back shingled the ground with their dead, stopping many of them, who died at our very feet. The others swarmed upon us, led by howling Juramentados, until even now I awake at night with their twanging hyena howl in my ears. Our Colts crackled fiercely for an instant in their faces. Then Davis fell and I would have followed him had not Moriarty, shooting quick and shouldering between us, blown out the brute’s brains with the last shell in his revolver....
I was dazed, bloody, and knocked down into the fissure at our backs by the glancing borang blow of the last of the Juramentados.... When I came fully to myself I crawled for protection under an outcropping rock, and none too soon, for the fanatic above hurled a spear the next instant that quivered in the spot I had just left.
And, emboldened by the frenzied Juramentado, and seeking my blood, I saw other heads, peering from over the fissure side and around boulder and rock.
I was protected for a time under the boulder. I was faint, and hearing running water I drank.
I prayed that I might not faint again. The wound on my head was a clean cut. “If only I do not faint again,” I kept saying while I bathed my wound, and, packing my cap with my handkerchief, pulled it tight over my temples to shut off the blood.
Then I became calm and indifferent. I marvel even now to think how undreading of death I was, feeling that I was so soon to die; undreading, for in all the queerness of my head and the dizziness and throbbing and the bitterness of the knowledge of the unequal fight, I thought always of you and of Andrew Jackson, who when shot by Dickinson, clinched his teeth on a bullet to keep from biting his tongue, clinched, stood, and killed his man!...
Down in that death hole with savages above me waiting for a chance to brain me or bolo me to death, I heard—I’ll swear I heard Aunt Lucretia say, “Would Andrew Jackson faint or fight here, Jack?”
Yes, Eloise, believe me or not, but then I knew I would not faint again. I crawled further under the rock, lying flat, face up, and drew both my Colts....
My belt still held the shells. The fight I had with myself must have been long, for they found forty-three empty shells at my side next day.... I don’t remember distinctly what happened, for my head would spin every now and then and I had to close my eyes.
Then I fired twice, thrice... A fool was starting down to see where I was, a fool, and he met a fool’s fate at my feet... So for hours I shot that way and none dared to try to come down again, none but one who suddenly dropped upon me from the left like a tiger from a cliff, the last of the red painted things who sought death in order to gain Paradise.
He died literally on me; and he died quickly. He did not know that having killed his companions with my right, I was on my back with a Colt also in my left. So died the last of the Juramentados....
I knew this would end it, and I was glad, for I was beginning to forget, with the fever flame licking amid the fagots of my brain. I had strange deliriums.... Æons passed with me wallowing in the water beneath me, thrusting my burning head into it and not knowing it.... And then came the end of the delirium in the great joy of the volley of shots above me and the cheers of the First Tennessee. I heard our General telling me I was all right, and then the dreams returned, for I saw you on Satan, in khaki, riding with the firing line; and then my head was in your lap, and you were crying over me and kissing me, before all the boys. And like one in a nightmare, when strange things happen, I told them it was not real, that I was touched of a borang in my head, and was a double weakling for dreaming and then being such a fool as to weep over a dream. But they only cheered me and laughed.
I remember very distinctly when I awoke in the hospital at Cebu. It was night and the tropic moon lay half masted in the sea. I saw the gunboats out in the bay and Old Glory floating from fort and mast head. But I did not see the Indiana. I knew I was feverish and yet so sane, so sane that it hurt as does all great saneness which follows a great sleep. Then a sea-gull cried as it swept past my window, and that lone sea-gull’s cry quite overcame me: for then I remembered my first dream, and you, and now I awoke and you were not there.... I turned my face to the wall. Then I felt someone kneeling by me, her arms around me, her kisses on my cheek. I heard someone saying, “Jack, Jack, be still, and be very calm, for it is I, Eloise, your Eloise. I have nursed you a month—I have slept by your side, darling, right here by your side, your own Eloise. And now it is all right and so sweet that—hold my hands—Jack—tight—tight Jack—we are going to say again our little prayer, thanking God together as of old....”
Then the next day when I was stronger and the danger had passed, we spent the morning alone in the little hospital ward holding hands sillily, talking always, and kissing when we could. And you told me how it had all been: how Elsie and her father had found you and taken you home with them to the great English surgeon who had cured you: how, knowing I was here in the Philippines you had come as a trained nurse to be near me: and how it had been fixed between the General and you that we were to meet the very day that came so near being my last. And you told of the strange dream you had that night, of my call that seemed to come to you, and how, mounting a pony and dressed in khaki that you might pass the line as a soldier, you rode to our camp alone through the night, following the army’s path over the mountain, reaching our last line at daylight, to find the battalion gone since midnight, to our rescue. Taking Satan you followed: and it was Satan and you who found me: for they had rescued Ross and Billings and found the bodies of poor Davis and Moriarty, but they could not find me. All day they had ridden and searched; and all day, delirious and fever stricken, I had lain in the fissure under the boulder: and in the still of the evening, when the boys had all but despaired, and you, heart-wrung and broken, had rested a moment in the General’s fly, suddenly there came a strange whistling up the canyon, and Satan had broken loose going to it, the boys following: and they had found me in wild delirium, but dreaming of home and blowing the call of old for Satan with the whistle I had forgotten was in my pocket. Even as you told me all this, old Hawthorne came in with the familiar twinkle in his eye and bending over me stroked my forehead as my dead sire would have done, saying, “Well, Colonel Ballington, how do you feel to-day?
“Jack,” you cried, “he shall not tell you first! I hadn’t got to that, General. Please let me tell it all to him, my own self.”
The General laughed and nodded, enjoying our happiness as if it were his own.
“It is all too good, Jack,” you went on, “but the President himself has appointed you a Colonel in the regular army. And see—we have saved it till you wakened—our dear old General and I—here is the message President McKinley sent when he heard you had led them from the Indiana’s deck to the rescue of the Regulars.”
Then you read the message yourself, with tremor and tears:
“No more splendid exhibition of patriotism was ever shown than was shown a few days ago in the Philippines. That gallant Tennessee Regiment from our Southern border, that had been absent from home and family and friends for more than a year, and was embarked on the good ship Indiana homeward bound—when the enemy attacked our forces remaining near Cebu, these magnificent soldiers disembarked from their ship, joined their comrades on the firing line and achieved a glorious triumph for American arms. That is an example of patriotism that should be an inspiration to duty to all of us in every part of our common country.”
“It is good of him,” I said, “God bless him—the sweetest, gentlest man who ever sat in that chair. But if I get well I am going home and to my trees.”
But still the old General stood smiling, and I knew there was more to come. And, seeing it, you came over, smiling funnily yourself, and with little tears, too; and kneeling, you laid your face against mine. “Jack, forgive us, it was a mean thing to do, but you have been married a month to-day and don’t know it! But when we brought you here, you talked all right—though you were a little flighty—and begged so hard for me to marry you then—and—and—somebody had to sleep right here with you, nursing you day and night, for the surgeon said it would all be in the nursing and a mighty poor little chance at that—Jack—for it was a terrible blow, cutting to your brain—and you begged so—and—I didn’t want ever to leave you again while you lived, and after the Chaplain married us holding your hands in mine and kneeling here just as I am now—it looked as if marrying had killed you, Jack—you went down so quickly and deeply into the valley—and now to see you well—”
You were crying in my arms. I could only kiss you, calling you wife.
Then your old fun came back as of old. “It wasn’t a square deal, Jack—to take advantage of a sick man like that, and so, well—well, if you are willing we will call it all off and wait till we get back home where we will have a grand wedding at The Home Stretch; for I have been cheated out of my trousseau, and my honeymoon, my new shoes and the rice that ought to be in my back.”
“I have had make-believe enough,” I said, kissing you again. “That marriage holds and is good enough for me.”
Then the home going, overtaking the regiment at San Francisco and the thunder of guns and welcoming whistles as we reached our native Tennessee. And there, amid the great hubbub, and the welcoming committee as our train rolled in, stood the old General, my grandsire, holding back the crowd with his crutch that he might get to me first, and rattling around on his wooden leg, shouting to my great embarrassment:—“By God, there he is—Jack—my grandson, Jack! I raised him—He’s my daughter’s son—a game cock—the old blue hen’s chicken!...”
We have it framed now, Eloise, that telegram from the President.
“EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON. NOVEMBER 21, 1899.
On the Nation’s roll of honor is the First Tennessee Regiment U.S. Volunteers, and nobly has the distinction been won. Their country’s gratitude awaits the homecoming of these brave men.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.”
Home again, Eloise, Home and June. Born of the same May mother, but differing so, this and that other June! How un-of-kin they seem to be! That last dance, the death ride over the bars, homeless, the despair of that June a year ago.
And now home again and The Home Stretch mine!
June, and writing this to you as I sit in the old sweet place under the old sweet trees, under the hickories we loved so, and afar off is the flush of old gold above the violet of the western hills.
And the same June sounds come over to me: the call of an ewe to an errant lamb; the neigh of a mare and the answering whinny of her colt; the distant staccato clatter of binders amid the wheat.
And a wood-thrush deep in our laurel thicket rinsing clear the air around with her liquid notes....
Since Christmas I have seen it all, for it was Christmas when the boys came marching home, seen it again and again, never tiring of seeing it, life as it shuttles across the loom of the Middle Basin. If the canvas were a meadow backgrounded in green, this is how the picture would be: a patch of red-bud now and then for early spring; and later, a green sheen creeping like a high-tide over the hills. But later still, after the wheat is harvested it were a stubblefield canvassed to cleanness; there would run a riot of passion flowers and morning glories in brave, bold colors of beauty. And the picture would be June in the Middle Basin.
I have sat this afternoon watching the trees on the round breast of the hill across the way, a shield of green on the round shoulder of the hill; and as I looked I had a strange upliftingness which I knew was of poetry and that it was the melting of my heart because it was June again and home and because of the love of you.
Why should I potter and make excuse of it? If there be love there is a poem.
Take mine as it is—this voice of the trees—as the sweetness of it all came over me, listening, listening and loving you, Eloise.
WHAT SAY THE BEECHES?
What say the beeches, heart of my heart?
(Comrades we three!)
Wise in their canopied gallery of art—
Clear-visioned, true, in their cloisters apart
From the life which dwarfs when the soul is the mart
Of passions set free.
Write it, dear beeches—historian tree—
Write it for me.
My heart, it hath doubted; my soul, it hath slept.
Alone with the trees and the stars it hath wept,
Not knowing the mystery, not seeing the end—
Oh, be to it, beeches—calm beeches—its friend!
For part of the Infinite—you and the stars—
Sing it the Truth with your infinite bars.
The little leaves whisper’d, baby-voiced, low;
The finger-limbs wrote it ’mid starlighted glow:
“Love and believe, and be kind as you go!”
(O Heart, it is so!)
Why should you care for me to write of war and that last bloody fight, now that I am at home again, and my heart in the melting? Is it because it takes it all to make life, the melting, the June days, and the fight?
And why have I written all this, here, at The Home Stretch, months after it has happened, with you coming, even as I write it, down the old sweet path to me, in the old sweet way? Coming to see if I have finished my letter to you. And I wrote it because but yesterday you said, “Jack, dear, I want you to finish that letter you wrote me in the Philippines, the one you wrote to your love that was lost. Finish it, Jack, this one here at home for me, in our own home, ours, and for your love that was found!”
And so I have done it, sweetheart.