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.