Possibly, Henry Falkins told her, she could follow later by sea.
For three days, the command, with its train of fifty mules pushed on through a level country, well watered, and seemingly uninhabited. On the fourth, it struck the mountains, and from that point crawled, scrambled and panted. Up slopes steep and slippery with untrodden grass, where hoofs and feet shot treacherously out, the column crept, until the mules balked, and their burdens had to be transferred to human shoulders; a half-dozen pack animals shot over cliff edges, and burst like balloons in rocky gorges below.
Then, descending into a valley where the grass grew long and lush along the waterways, and lay brownly parched a little distance back, the column readjusted its impedimenta, and mended its pace. Sometimes the heat over the grass simmered in misty waves, and the marching men clamped their unshaven jaws, and set their eyes eastward. The eyes were growing blue-circled and weary, and the infantrymen picked up each foot with a sense of distinct and separate effort. Sometimes from the long grass at the side broke an unwarned din of rifle-fire, as the "point" ran into an ambuscade, and then the column closed up and in the merry response of volleys for the moment forgot its weariness. Sometimes the parched grass, kindled by unseen and hostile hands, burst into scorching sheets of flame at the front, necessitating tedious detours. In this fashion, at the end of ten days, they came to the town with the church, and found the cruiser awaiting them. The escort returned at once, and left the First Battalion of the 26th Regiment, United States Volunteers, to attend to its knitting, with the Pacific Ocean in front of it and the ragged mountains at its back.
There was much to be done, for not all of the command was to stay there. In near-by towns smaller detachments under company officers were to establish themselves and put the fear of God and the Eagle into rebellious hearts. That these outlying factions might not be cut off from headquarters, nerves of telegraph wires must be strung across the hills and through the bijuca tangles of the bosque. These lines must, in places, follow bolo-cut tunnels through the jungle where the air was hot and fetid; where one fought for breath and was blinded by the streaming sweat, and where the stiffness of one's spine oozed out in flaccid weariness. Also, it proved immensely diverting to the loyal amigos to creep out by night with a pair of wire-nippers and undo in a moment what men had moiled through days to accomplish. When these wires sputtered and fell dead it was usually a fairly good indication that news of some fresh atrocity would finally percolate, and that a new "punitive expedition" must fare forth.
And yet in the town itself, and even in the smaller garrisons clustered about it, there was no overt act of rebellion—only ghastly news from the hills and hinterland.
In these days, former top-sergeant Peter Spooner, now battalion sergeant-major with the 26th Volunteers, became more than ever a force in himself. The smattering of Spanish which he had picked up in old Mexico had become a fluent stream. He was so valuable in a dozen ways that the semi-clerical work of sergeant-major often fell to other hands, while Black Pete was out on special detail. His scouting expeditions were effective of such results that the name of the dark giant became with the people of the enemy, as it had once been in the Kentucky mountains, a word to conjure with. In short, Black Pete Spooner was such a treasure of a "non-com" as gave his superiors food for mess-table boasting.
"Spooner," declared his captain, "could command a battalion if called on. He absorbs detail. He has even picked up the Morse code, and only yesterday I found him relieving the signal-corps man at the key. That's an example of his versatile efficiency."
In many scouting expeditions, Sergeant Newton Spooner likewise won for himself the bitter hatred of the guerillas. These mountain men had, in common with the enemy, the ability to become invisible, and often when they were supposedly being stalked it was found that they were really stalking.
So the days passed, and at last a steamer brought fresh supplies and also Mrs. Henry Falkins, who would no longer be denied.