CAYBIGAN
When Sergeant Blount's detachment marched into San Juan, and in the centre of the plaza grounded arms with a crash that ran along the stone flagging in vibrating menace, the little pueblo cowered in a completeness of fear and abject surrender never reached before. Like lizards a few brown beings here and there slid out of sight; and the big blue-shirted men, grouped there beneath the white sunlight, found themselves as in a vacuum of heat and silence. But they had an uneasy sensation of eyes, eyes timorous and hostile, shifting and malevolent, from behind closed shutters and torn nipa walls peering upon them in tremulous distrust. In her stall at the head of the street, Eustefania, hundred-year-old, wrinkled, black, toothless, was hastily gathering up her store—two mangoes, a cluster of bananas, a dozen rice cakes, five twine-wrapped cheroots—into her pañuelo with trembling hands. And Pedro Lasco, crouching upon the stone steps of the church, a cigarette between his fingers, found his simple and complex soul filled with a new and inexplicable tumult.
For from the man standing there at the head of the little troop there radiated Mastery. Pedro, in his blind, dark way, tried to analyse the impression, to find how this particular being differed from other tall, gaunt, brutal Americans that he had met in the past, before whom he had quailed physically, but never morally; but immediately he was submerged in that feeling he so hated—of confusion, blackness, bewilderment—which invariably seized him whenever he, man of a primitive race, sought to penetrate his own soul, obscure with complications beyond his power to read. This alone he could tell:—that this man, among his six-footers, towered by half a head, that his shoulders were broad, that his hair was golden like that of the Santa Madre seen once, long ago, in the cathedral at Lipa. Later, by patience of eye and obstinacy of contemplation he discovered other facts:—that the campaign hat of the Sergeant was wider-brimmed and more rakishly set than those of his fellow; that his belt hung down loose along the right thigh, to the weight of a huge, silver-mounted six-shooter which was not the regulation Colt's; that, when he walked, his feet tinkled with long, rotary spurs, and that a red bandana, knotted negligently about the neck, flamed up the blue and khaki with splendour.
The men stood at ease in the centre of the plaza. The Sergeant took from his breast pocket a cake of tobacco, bit off a piece with a slight swagger, then looked about him carefully. His eyes met those of Pedro. "Alica, caybigan—come here, friend!" he shouted with cavalier amicability.
"Caybigan—friend!" The obscure emotions in Pedro's breast surged suddenly into something almost definite, something big and soft that was sweet and compelled. Slowly he came down the steps in feline grace of movement and stood gravely before the big man, one foot slightly in front of the other, his right hand upon his pliable waist. The Sergeant looked down upon him, pulling at his blonde mustache. He smiled. The smile passed over Pedro in a shadow of indefinite discomfort; unconsciously he stiffened up, a little defiant.
"You take us to the best house here, caybigan," said the Sergeant.
The smile had gone, and that other sensation, of sweetness and good will, again possessed Pedro. "Opo," he answered simply.
And this was the beginning of the bond. Pedro showed the Sergeant the house best suited for cuartel, the natural spot for a horse-corral, the watering place at the river. That night, after he had been dismissed and had eaten his rice and fish, Pedro squatted long upon the bamboo floor of his little hut, pondering in his rudimentary way over the day's events. It was a poor hut, small, astonishingly bare; for Pedro's wealth was below, beneath the high, post-elevated floor. There, laid crosswise upon sustaining poles, were his hunting spears, harpoons, and paddles; keel-up upon the ground his banca, long, sharp-prowed, reptilian, and, hanging from post to post in heavy folds, ensilvered with fish-scales, his great dragnet. But his mind was not upon his riches; what he tried to read within him was dark and shifting; this only he could draw plainly from it:—a passionate desire to serve that big, golden-haired man with the jingling spurs, the red bandana, the rakish sombrero, to serve, blindly, unquestioning, like a dog, with fatigue of body, and outpouring of sweat, and tongue-licking of boots. But even this feeling was not clear like a simple flame; athwart it there leaped a contradictory shadow. The smile; it was the smile. Pedro tried to consider it squarely, but that bewilderment which possessed him always when he attempted to read his soul, complicated with complications of which he had not the key, seized him with acute distress; and with an impatient gesture he brushed away the obsession, as he would a fly buzzing importunately before his eyes. He lingered long upon the clearer impulse, the idea of service, of devotion. "Caybigan," he murmured softly; "caybigan"—and in the balmy silence of the night the drawled syllables hung long with lingering sweetness.
Early the next morning he was about the cuartel, and when the Sergeant emerged, splendid in the rising sun, he was standing before him, alert of body, grave of eyes. "Hello, caybigan," shouted the Sergeant gaily; "going to help me, eh?" He pulled at his golden moustache; he smiled. A vague discomfort possessed Pedro; unconsciously he drew back one step in deer-like movement. But as the smile disappeared and the Sergeant stood there, pensive with the day's plans, the impulse to serve this being, to toil, suffer for him, again swelled within his heart in choking longing. They were together all that day. Pedro took the Sergeant over the whole pueblo, pointed out the natural points of defense, of vulnerability, showed him where the outposts should be placed, took him to the ford, circled wide about the huddle of huts, discovering all the hidden trails radiating out to the plains, the hills, toward the lairs of the Insurrectos.
"Good-night, caybigan," said the Sergeant as they parted that evening.
"Paalan, caybigan," answered Pedro.
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.
So Pedro rode, slept, ate, toiled with the Sergeant, and by the whole pueblo, soldier and native, he was called "Caybigan"; by all except Eustefania, crouching day after day like a mahogany sculpture upon the latticed floor of her little tienda. The old woman was jealous. One day when the soldiers, in wild hilarity, had seized upon her basket of embryo ducks cooked in the shell and were hurling them at each others' heads, Blount had interfered. And now, whenever he passed, splendid, along the street, the old woman, like a statue coming to life, descended tremulously from her pedestal and, running in front of him, bowed low and tried to kiss his hand.
And yet in this service, in this renunciation, Pedro did not find the complete satisfaction that he craved. A heavy uneasiness was with him always, in rest or work, in peace or peril; a dull irritation, an obscure anguish that he could not fathom, but which each day became more oppressive, more insistent. It was the smile of his caybigan. At night he faced the distress of mental analysis, hour after hour, contemplating fixedly that smile. In its presence a strange weakness, a subtle debility, possessed him; to resist this he dwelt upon his past achievements. He had been a great hunter of hill and water. At the deer runs he was always leading ginete, galloped madly after the tremulous game, hour after hour, over mountain, down precipice, till he had worn it down, rode flank to flank with it and, seizing the moment, plunged his long lance into the throbbing spot behind the shoulder. And once when a caiman had snatched his goat off the bank of the river, he had plunged into the black pool; seeking the saurian into the oozy depths where sullenly it lay like a rock upon its prey, he had twined about it his big net and, springing back to the surface, with his friends had triumphantly dragged it out to earth. Loud had been sung his praises during the fiesta that followed, while the viscous thief, corralled with bamboo poles, both eyes gouged out, died slowly beneath the sun, upon the baking strand. Yes, he was a big man; even his caybigan, with hair of gold and tinkling spurs, could he have done better? But before the smile, malign there in the dark, all this, all these deeds, this valour seemed bleached of colour and meaning. A heavy discouragement weighed upon him.
One night, at last, he came to a conclusion. And it expressed itself in one word, short and electric.
"Patay!" he said; "patay—kill!"
He would kill the smile.
He climbed down the bamboo ladder and, beneath the floor, went directly to the big net, hanging from post to post. From one of the flaccid folds he drew an object. In three leaps he was up again, and in the faint light of his little tin lamp, for a while he acted like a child with a doll. He crouched down, the thing upon his knee, spoke to it with tender accent, stroked it with long, gentle caress. But it was not a doll; it was a gun, a dainty Mauser carbine. It was oiled and polished, and beautiful, but he spent two hours over it, cleaning, oiling, snapping the delicate machinery. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he went down again and laid the precious toy among the secretive folds of the net.
The following evening, as in the moonlight the Sergeant rode out to inspect the outposts, a shot rang near and a bullet wailed overhead. Pedro, through the bush screening him, saw the great horse shy and rear, saw the Sergeant's graceful, almost lazy recover. Then man and beast stood still, black, statuesque in the sheen of moon, the horse with ears cocked forward, trembling beneath the compelling reining hand, the man erect and proud on the high-pommelled saddle. There was a silence long as infinity. The horse champed resoundingly at the heavy Mexican bit. Pedro panted. Slowly the Sergeant turned his head, from the thicket to the right, to the golden ribbon of road ahead, then smoothly, in imperceptible movement, to the left. His eyes were upon Pedro; they seemed to pierce the screen of brush to halt penetratingly upon the assassin. And upon the face, clear in the moonlight, appeared the smile.
A sense of immense helplessness whelmed Pedro; he crouched lower; his hands, flaccid, dropped their hold upon the gun which sank softly in the high cogon. There was a long, throbbing silence. Then the tinkle of spur rang out in silvery note. With an elastic bound the horse leaped forward, immediately to be checked by the powerful guiding hand; and slowly they moved down the moonlit road, horse and man, huge, black, granite-hewn—unconquerable.
But Pedro, sneaking back, low behind the thicket, pressed both hands to his breast as if to hold there the germ of an idea he felt within; and with feverish haste hiding his gun, he crouched down at his accustomed place to face it. It was a dolorous process. The thing sparked, flamed, wavered, went out completely, sparked anew. He contemplated it fixedly, encouraged it, fanned it; and finally for a moment it blazed, vivid, calm, unforgettable.
"Alipusta!" he shouted triumphantly; "alipusta—contempt!" "Alipusta," he repeated slowly, contemplatively, the triumph of discovery sinking into the ashes of realisation. Yes, that was it; it was contempt, that smile, the smile of his caybigan; contempt, thorough, tranquil, absolute.