Bugle-calls, loud, strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the brass 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 shirts, 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 [224]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 coarse 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,” shifting 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. [225]

“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, hello!” 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 shore 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 pi?a 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. [226]

“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 embarrassed, 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 shore.

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 impassable during the rainy season. As the ambulance rolled heavily along, scores of half-naked babies, shaped like peanuts, shouted after you a [227]“Hello, 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! á la!” firing as they ran.

You passed 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—dickering 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’ [228]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; nobody can tell how much I like this mess!”

There was an officer’s club in a frame building near the headquarters. Here, in the afternoon, the clan would gather for a round of “whisky poker” for the drinks. There was a strapping young Kentuckian whose ancestors had all been army men. “The profession of arms,” said he, “is the noblest profession in the world. And that is the profession that we follow.” It was a rather sad sight, though, a few weeks later, after his wife, a little Southern girl, had gone back to the “States,” to see this giant soldier playing cards and drinking whisky with the teamsters, bar-keeps, and camp-followers, threatening to shoot the man who [229]tried to interfere, and finally being taken down in irons for a court-martial.

The only one of all his friends who did not fall away from him was one, a little, catlike cavalry lieutenant, booted and spurred, and always dressed in khaki riding-breeches, never saying much, but generally considered the most popular young officer in all the service. And there was one other faithful one, but not an officer. The “striker,” who had followed him in many a hard hike, and had learned to admire his courage and to consider him infallible, tried for the sake of the young Southern girl, to keep his master from the wretched drink.

The post of Cagayan that winter was a busy one. On Sunday mornings the stern-visaged officers would go the round of all the barracks on inspection duty. There was still a remnant of the Insurrecto army operating in the hills, and an attack upon ............