“Go in and do what you can for her,” he briefly said. “I thought—she’d be glad to know that—that—fellow would trouble her no more.”
“That fellow?” she gasped. “You mean——”
“I mean—Yes—Latrobe—killed and buried a whole week ago.”
“And you told her!” she cried, clinching her little hands in impotent wrath. “You—brute!”
Another week rolled by. The tide of battle had swept inland and northward; and all eyes were on the plucky advance of MacArthur’s strong division, while far out to the south and east the thinned and depleted lines of Anderson held an insurgent force that forever menaced but dare not attack. The Primeval Dudes, sorely missing their calmly energetic colonel, had drifted into a war of words with their nearest neighbors on the firing line, a far Western regiment gifted with great command of language and small regard for style. The latter had crowed mightily over their more rigorously disciplined comrades because of the compliments bestowed on them in an official report, wherein the Dudes received only honorable mention. It was Captain Stricker of the volunteers who had led the dash on the rebel works across the Tripa to the left of Blockhouse 12. It was their Sergeant Finney who whacked a Filipino major with the butt of his Springfield, and tumbled out of him the batch of reports and records that gave the numbers and positions of every unit of Pilar’s division on the southward zone. It was their Corporal Norton who got the Mauser through the shoulder just as, foremost in the rush, he bayoneted the last Tagal at the Krupp guns in the river redoubt. It was his devoted bunky, Private Latrobe, who volunteered to carry the division commander’s dispatch across the open rice field and the yawning ditches that separated the staff from the rest of the charging —teenth, and who died gloriously in the rush on the rebel works. Man after man of the woolly Westerners had been referred to by name while, but the Dudes had nothing to show but their wounded colonel’s modest report that “where every officer and man appeared to do his whole duty it would be unjust to make especial mention of even a limited few.” The Dudes were getting hot over the taunts of the “Toughs,” as some one had misnamed their neighbors; and one night when there was more or less interchange of pointed chaff in lieu of fight with a common foe, there was heard a shrill voice from the flank of the rifle pit nearest the Westerners, and what it said was repeated in wonderment over the brigade before the Dudes were another day older.
“Well, dash your thievin’ gang! We made our record for ourselves anyhow. We didn’t have to rely on any dashed deserters from the regulars—as you did.”
And that was why Sergeant Sterne, of the Dudes, was sent for by the field officers of both regiments the following morning and bidden to explain, which he did in few words. He was ready to swear that the wounded Corporal Norton was the very same young man he saw in the adjutant’s office of the —teenth Regulars at Camp Merritt, and was then called Morton. And that evening the veteran sergeant major of the —teenth was bidden to report at the reserve hospital in Ermita, close to the Malate line, was conducted to the bedside of a pallid young soldier whose ticket bore the name of Norton, and was asked to tell whether he had ever seen him before.
“I have, sir,” said the veteran, sadly and gravely. “He is a deserter from the —teenth. His name on our rolls was Morton.” And that night Colonel Armstrong cabled to “Primate,” New York, the single word “Found.” Nor was it likely the lad would soon be lost again, for a sentry with fixed bayonet stood within ten feet of his bed with orders not to let him out of his sight a second.
Mrs. Garrison appeared at the hospital that very evening and heard of the episode, and reached Billy Gray’s bedside looking harassed, even haggard. During the past three days she had been accorded admission, for Gray was so much improved there was no reason to longer forbid; but on each occasion the wounded volunteer officer and the brace of attendants present had precluded all possibility of confidential talk. She must bide her time. Gray would be up in a few days, said the doctor; and then nothing would do, said Mrs. Garrison, but he must be moved to their big, roomy, lovely house on the bay side, and be made strong and well again—made to give up those letters, too, thought she; for she had wormed it out of a bystander that a packet of some kind had been given by the dying soldier to the lieutenant, and she well knew what it must be. She had even penned him a little note, since not a whisper could be safely exchanged, and headed it “Give this back to me the moment you have read it.” In it she reminded him of his promise, and—did he need to be reminded of hers? She knew that packet of Nita’s letters had been intrusted to his care. She assured him she had it straight from the surgeon who attended both Latrobe and himself, and they must reach the hands of no man on earth, but must come to her. Would he not give them at once or tell her where she could find them?