I waited for the Springfield fire to weaken, dreading that we would be driven in, but when it kept up as if it never would stop, I was sure that we had whipped them. The Filipinos began to retreat past the hut in disorder, the officers as badly scared as the privates. I was watching them, laughing, when four niggers broke into the hut, tied my arms, packed me on a mule, and rushed me off.
For four or five days I was carried back and forth behind the Filipino army, dodging out of every skirmish, as the Americans pushed Aguinaldo back all along the circle. One night we spent in Mariquina, and left early in the morning, whilewhite flags were flying to lure our troops into the town. Then we travelled southwest towards Pasai. I wondered what they were keeping me for, and why they didn’t either kill me or let me go. Then I remembered what I’d heard of Spanish prisons, and I stopped wondering and began to pray.
We ended, finally, in a church the insurgents were trying to hold while our boys were getting ready to charge. I was driven up into a bell-tower half battered to pieces from our shells and filled with smoke. A squad of natives were firing from the windows.
There in a corner was Señor Aguilar, in the uniform of a Filipino colonel, and I knew that my case was to be settled at last. He looked black. I didn’t have long to wait this time. The niggers threw me down, and put a Filipino uniform blouse on me, taking it from a dead soldier on the floor. I didn’t try to resist. What was the use?
Then Aguilar said to me: “I hope you have enjoyed your journey, Señor Roberts. My men took care to make it as interesting as possible. A man who has the courage to refuse the hand of an Aguilar deserves distinguished treatment.” Hegot as far as that with his Spanish sarcasm, and then his native Filipino savagery got the better of him.
“You d—— fool, did you think for a moment that I’d let an American hound like you marry my sister? Do you think I would let a man live who had played with her? No, by heaven, nor die, either, except like a dog. I have let you live long enough to be hanged by your own countrymen. You’re a deserter, and I’ve given some interesting information to your spies. And you’ll be caught fighting in our ranks!” Then he drew his revolver and pointed to the dead Filipino on the floor. “Take that gun, and go to the window, and shoot down your brother dogs!” he cried.
I don’t know why I didn’t shoot him, instead, right there, but I had lost my nerve. I went to the window and fired at a bare space. And then, if you’ll believe it, I saw my own regimental flag coming up with Old Glory, as my own bunkies formed for the rush. It was Colonel Knowlton’s command that was to take the church. I don’t know what ever became of Aguilar, for I just stood up in the window and cheered as the boys came on. They charged with a yell that did myheart good to hear, for I lost myself and my danger watching the way they did the work.
But I remembered soon enough. The Filipino fire died away, and the insurgents scurried out of the building like rats. I was pulled back with them as they retreated, but as we crossed a dry creek bed I stumbled and fell. Just then a detachment of my own company came up, skirmishing, and saw me. I threw up my hands, and a corporal covered me. I knew him well; he used to drive in the little donkey-cart with me in Manila when I marketed.
He dropped his rifle and said, “Good God! It’s Roberts.”
I tried to explain how I’d been knocked out and captured, but they wouldn’t believe me. I had been posted for a deserter, and Aguilar had fixed me. All I could do was to ask them to shoot me right there, as if I had been killed in the battle. But they had cooled down some while I talked, and they couldn’t do it in cold blood. Finally, the corporal said:
“See here, boys, I enlisted to fight, and not to be a hangman. Roberts has messed with me, and I can’t do it. Perhaps what he says is true; Idon’t know. If you want to arrest him, go ahead. But I’ll be darned if I want it said that the old 114th had to shoot a deserter. Come on, and let him take his chances!”
He turned his back on me, and they followed him. I ripped off my canvas coat and ran down the creek and hid till night.
There wasn’t a man on the whole island, nigger or white, who wasn’t my enemy, and I didn’t expect I’d ever escape. But there was a woman. She wasn’t exactly the kind you’d ever suspect of having a heart, but she saved my life. She hid me in a shed outside of the town, and fed me and nursed me till I was able to get away on a blockade runner and come to San Francisco. I owe that woman something, and if I’m ever flush again, she’ll get it back.
So it was a woman who sent me to the Philippines, it was a woman who got my promotion, a woman who tortured me like a fiend, and a woman who saved me. And the queer part of it is that the last one was what most people would call the worst of the lot!
Admeh Drake was seeing his own phantoms ofthe Philippines on his cot; the man with the yellow beard, Maidslow,aliasRoberts, was looking with eyes that saw beyond the walls of the Hammam, when the Hero of Pago Bridge brought himself back with a jerk.
“You’ve told me all except how you got here,” he said.
“Plain drunk,” said Maidslow, “the first I dared get after I left the Islands. But it isn’t safe for me to stay in San Francisco, now Colonel Knowlton is back here. If Maxie saw through the beard, he will, and the place is full of Secret Service men.”
Admeh Drake suddenly jumped from the couch.
“What will you give me if I get that legacy for you?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“Done!” cried the Hero. “See here, it’s too easy! Colonel Knowlton don’t know your real name’s Maidslow, does he?”
“No, I enlisted as Roberts.”
“Dead to rights. He’ll take Maxie’s word when she identifies her husband to him. All right again. Well, let me play Harry Maidslow, and go with Maxie to the Colonel. I take my thousand, and you take the rest and—Maxie. How’s that?”
“If Maxie will stand for it, I’m ready,” said the deserter.
During the rest of the night, the man who went for a soldier and wished he hadn’t, and the man who didn’t go and wished that he had, lay in an upper corridor of the Hammam discussing the details of their conspiracy.