If the men of the Shirt-tail battalion had feared the dull routine of garrison duty, they were to be pleasantly disappointed. In those late January days the impending storm which the Honorable Emilio Aguinaldo was brewing for the invaders of his "republic" hung imminent on the horizon of the future.
The mountaineers went into quarters in the Binondo district of the city, but more than two score of them were always on the line of outposts which lay around Manila, resting its left on the salt marshes by the sea, and its right on the sea again at the end of a six-mile arc.
The Kentuckians rubbed elbows with a trim and seasoned command of regulars near the extreme left. To the front beyond the nipa houses and their palm-fringed gardens, lay unseen the parallel, intrenched lines of the Insurgents.
As yet there had been no clash, but each dawn brought expectancy. Private Newt Spooner, carrying his rifle on sentry duty, often glimpsed their straw hats and brown faces, above the trench embankments, and glared across the intervening spaces. Occasionally, too, when regimental officers rode along the front on inspection of outposts, Newt saw the figure of his major. Then his embryonic hatred for the brown men, who lay masked at the back of these palms and rice paddies a few hundred yards away, passed into total eclipse behind a fiercer emotion.
One night when not on outpost duty, Newt lay on his cot in the company-room of the Binondo barracks. The boy was watching the shadows that wavered on the whitewashed wall, and his face wore a lowering scowl. Top-Sergeant Peter Spooner glanced at that scowl, and a faint frown crossed his own features.
Captain Sparvin of B Company had developed into a fair officer, and in actual service a wider gulf yawned between the men who held commissions and those who held warrants than had been the case back in the hills where the company was born. Yet Sparvin more and more depended on the Deacon, and more and more left company affairs in his capable hands. The company's efficiency and deportment were the first sergeant's care. Charges were preferred or dismissed at Sergeant Spooner's suggestion. When a "non-com" vacancy occurred, the man suggested by Black Pete was usually selected to fill it. And to the confidence of the officers was added a sort of idolatry on the part of the enlisted men. It is quite likely that had B Company been out on detached service, and had Sergeant Spooner given a command contradictory to his superior, even after these months of discipline, B Company would have followed the sergeant. Yet Sergeant Spooner had his problem, and that problem was his kinsman, Newt. When Newt scowled in that fashion the top-sergeant was troubled with apprehension. One crazy man in one crazy moment can do things which cannot be undone. Yet there was no outward ground for complaint or charges. In the entire outfit was no more efficient soldier than Newt. None answered more intelligently or with a snappier quickness to commands; none kept his kit in more perfect order; none was more soldierly. The problem was intangible in its outward manifestations, but the sergeant knew that the boy was "bidin' his time."