The next day reinforcements came up and the whole command advanced upon Tilad Pass, where Pilar, at last, had been cornered. On the second of December a desperate conflict took place. Pilar was intrenched in the Pass near the celebrated rock known as El Obispo—"the Bishop." His resistance for a time was valorous and deadly. Corporal Parry saw him mount his horse behind the barricade, six hundred yards away. Parry was the best marksman in the regiment, and turning to his chief officer, asked if he should take a shot at him.
He fired and Pilar fell, face downward; and the Americans crushed the little band of insurgents. Gregorio Del Pilar was dead. His death in the great hills, after a most courageous battle against an overwhelming force, brought to an end a life that would have been worth much to the islands in after years. In his pockets were found valuable papers, letters and keepsakes. The letters were from his sweetheart, Dolores Jose, who lived at Dagupan, and they were tender in the extreme. Her lace handkerchief rested over his heart.
When the Americans, victorious and jubilant, fell back to camp, they had no small number of wounded to turn over to the tender mercies of the little company of Red Cross nurses and the surgeons.
One of the most dangerously injured was Graydon Bansemer. He was one of the first to cross the danger line; a Mauser ball from a distant hill tore through his side, leaving an ugly gaping wound that foretold certain death.
CHAPTER XXV — THE BEAUTIFUL NURSE
When the beautiful and mysterious nurse whose fame had gone up with the soldiers into Tilad Pass, arrived with others to take charge of the Red Cross hospital, on the day following the battle, she found the man she had been longing to see for many weary, heartsick months. She found him dying.
To the surprise of the enthralled command, she fell in a dead swoon when she looked upon the pallid face of Graydon Bansemer. She had gone eagerly from one pallet to another, coming upon his near the last. One glance was enough. His face had been in her mind for months—just as she was seeing it now; she had lived in the horror of finding him cold in death.
It was Teresa Velasquez who first understood. She knew that Bansemer's one woman had found him at last. Her heart leaped with hatred for one brief instant, then turned soft and contrite. If she had learned to care for the big American herself during the hard days when he had been so tender, she also had learned that her worship was hopeless. She had felt his yearning love for another; now she was looking upon that other. While the attendants were bending over their unconscious companion, the Spanish girl stood guard over the man who had been her guardian, the man whose life was going out before her miserable, exhausted eyes.