"Good-night, caybigan," said the Sergeant as they parted that evening.
All day he had longed to slip that word "caybigan," and now he stood still a moment, tremulous like a wild thing, noting the effect. But the Sergeant seemed to accept. He turned on his heel with a gesture of the hand and tinkled into the cuartel, while Pedro sped to his hut, his heart in tumult. There he squatted long in the anguish of obscure analysis. It was the smile again, that almost imperceptible twitch of the corners of the mouth which the Sergeant had always as he looked down upon Pedro. Pedro tried to picture it there, in the darkness; but it eluded him mockingly, vivid before him for the time of a spark, then gone before he could pounce upon it, seize it in interpretation. It was a torturing game.
That day was only the first passed in a service that as time went on, grew increasingly closer, more exacting from the one, more sacrificing from the other. It was in the midst of the Bell campaign. Dragging the country like a net, there marched ceaselessly large bodies of men. Behind them nipa roared; black volutes of smoke rose heavily to the sky, broke against the turquoise lid and, rebounding, filled the air with acrid haze. At night the horizon glowed as with phosphorescence; great, scorched trees threw their thousand arms in hysterical gesture to a lurid heaven. The country took on a bleached, tortured, convulsive aspect. The rivers ran pink with the blood of slaughtered cattle. And night and day, along the highways, the awed populations passed, women with babies astride their hips, upon their heads pañuelos knotted about a few handfuls of rice; men limp-armed, empty-handed; barefooted they pattered along the roads in thousands, toward the reconcentration camps, noiseless, speechless, stupefied, sullen-eyed and half mad. But up in the hills grim Malvar, starving, still hung on; though some of his men began to trickle down, famished, enfevered, without volition, sucked down by the void of desolation made about them.
And the great cry, reiterated incessantly from headquarters, a-thrill in men's mouths, on telegraph and telephone, was a ceaseless "Get the guns; get the guns; get the guns!" And the soldiery, wild with powder, fire, and carnage; that great cry ringing in their enfevered brains like a hallucination, "got guns" by deeds which, in their rare, cooler moments, came back to them as incredible nightmares. It was in this work that Sergeant Blount, athirst for praise and splendour of fame, threw himself with his ferocious energy and that Pedro proved the invaluable helpmate. He had been a great hunter; he could track like an Apache; and to this he united a singular faculty for obtaining information among his people. To the two caybigans the slightest starting point sufficed--a rumour, for instance, that a man with a gun had passed a certain place at a certain time. Instantly they had saddled and were off, and from the spot Pedro trailed like a hound, leaping from sign to sign. Often the trail led into the bosom of the hills and regretfully they had to stop before the probability of disappearing into an insurrecto stronghold. But often also the trail, circling, doubled back to one of the few pueblos, such as San Juan, kept here and there like oases in the desert of desolation, as baits, as constant, hypnotising promise of ease, of rest, of plenty to the outlaws starving, desperate, in the hills. And then Pedro's more subtle faculty came to the fore. He questioned, threatened, cajoled, bluffed, pleaded, leaped from induction to induction, till he had settled upon the man, the treacherous "amigo" in league with the enemy. Sometimes even there Pedro's persuasive powers were enough; more often Blount then began to act--and there were scenes better left undescribed. So, little by little, the cuartel filled with a strange captured arsenal, and Blount's soul with satisfaction. Sometimes it was a Mauser, oiled, polished, pretty as a toy; more often a rusty Remington or German needle-gun; but also there were pathetic makeshifts--a piece of water-pipe tied to a rough-hewn block of wood, loaded by the muzzle and set off by the hot butt of a cigarette.