The Code of the Mountains

by Charles Neville Buck

Then, one morning, the mestiza girl bade a smiling farewell, which was also tearful, and was kissed by the major's lady. She was going away, she explained, to relatives who dwelt in the mountains. She waved her hand vaguely toward the Cordilleras: "Mucho distance away. No longer could she see the beautiful señora, or"—and here her dark lashes drooped and her olive cheeks flushed—"or the tall, brave soldado Americano."

Sergeant-Major Peter Spooner walked with her, as far as the outskirts of the town, and the two talked in low voices, in Spanish. So the Deacon was the last to bid her farewell, as befitted the man who had most impressed her heart.

If the sergeant-major was cast down, he only devoted himself more industriously to the service, and gave no sign.

And the service had need of him, for a few days later came word of a sizeable force of the enemy camped in the mountains, and bent on mischief. In one of the few loyal villages the presidente had been murdered and many Americanista houses put to the torch. Swiftly enough the battalion prepared for pursuit and punishment. Yet to go out in force would mean failure, so several scouting parties left in advance of the column. One went under the command of Lieutenant Sperry, and Sergeant-Major Peter Spooner was included at his own request.

It was thought natural that the sergeant-major should wish to be one of the avengers. The native girl had gone that way; might be in that region where amigos were being slaughtered, and it was perhaps known to the guerillas that she had loved an American soldier whom they blackly hated.

The detail embraced only twelve men, one of whom returned. But even that one did not return to the town by the church.

At a considerable native village, some ten miles away and lying at the edge of the mountains, was garrisoned a platoon of the battalion under the command of Teniente Barlow. The road between the town with the church and this subsidiary station was, for that country, good, and the garrisoned village itself was as safe as a fortress. It was beyond that the work lay.

When Mrs. Falkins learned that a company from headquarters would march at once to follow up what news the scouts brought in, she promptly announced that as far as the village she would accompany the expedition. The major raised no objection. It was a pleasant thought that he could defer his farewell with his wife until he left the edge of the safety-zone, and meet her there on his return. Mrs. Falkins rode her native pony along that ten mile-march with a feeling of exhilaration and pride. These men who marched and fought behind her husband, were to her all members of a great family, of which he was the head. They were no longer raw men, "unmade, unhandled, unmeet," but seasoned and tempered veterans, and her young heart thrilled with pride as she drank in the morning air, and gazed with fascination at the vivid colors of the forests and the weird picturesqueness of the thatched hamlets by the way.

For five days after their arrival in the village, they awaited news from the hills. They had hoped for definite tidings before that time, but as yet the delay had caused no anxiety. The scouts might have found the reconnaissance a larger enterprise than they had anticipated. So those at the village invoked the philosophy of patience—and waited.

It had been some time since Lieutenant Barlow had seen a woman from God's country. He was one of the men who had come to the regiment with its reorganization, and now he was glad that he had turned a native bungalow into a fairly comfortable place for the quartering of his superior and his superior's wife. There was a small thatched porch, shaded against the mid-day glare by a grass curtain. From this verandah when the moonlight flooded the village, one had a view not to be despised. Across a bare space of so-called plaza stood the house occupied as headquarters, and now, on the fourth evening after their arrival, its office stood open-doored and vacant, save for the musician of the guard, who must remain on duty there until tattoo.