“Hello, Benito! where did you come from?” he began, and offered a friendly hand to the native; continuing, “You don’t look much like the chap I found in the cogonales, trying to hide from me a short time back, beyond the north line. I thought you’d moved from this land of strife, lizards, and mosquitos, and staked out a claim in the celestial regions. Did not know you at first. You must have seen some pretty tough times before I found you if this is how you look after undergoing a month of American cruelty.”
He ran on in this train, not giving the dusky soldier-merchant a chance to answer, but all the time studying the face and taking in every line of the splendid specimen of a Tagalo before him.
Benito was taller than the average of his tribe. His muscular limbs showed a strength and athletic training that would be the envy of any Yale man or West Pointer. His back was as straight as the proverbial ramrod and as supple as the leaf of the cocoanut palm. His eyes were brown, and fairly danced with good nature and intelligence. They were frank, too, an unusual thing with a native. All in all, he was a perfect model of the physical man in bronze.
He placed his tray, laden with the luxuries he had cried, on a box near by, and seated himself in such a natural and easy manner, making himself so perfectly at home, that Sever’s feeling of surprise at the action, soon changed into one of amusement over the unusual familiarity of a Tagalo toward a hated “Yankee.” But he was to find out that this compatriot of Aguinaldo was unusual in many ways.
After talking over his experiences at the First Reserve Hospital at Manila, Sever asked his guest what he intended doing.
Benito replied that his future was undecided. While in Manila he had seen Juanita, and they had decided that he should seek the Capitan and ask his advice. That was how he happened to be peddling along the line.
“You don’t intend to return to the army again?” asked Sever.
On receiving an emphatic negative answer, the Captain continued: “How did you happen to cast your fortunes with the insurgents in the first place, and why were you so terror-stricken when first discovered after you had been wounded?”
Benito’s answer to this double query was lengthy, but in effect he said: His father had been a captain in the Corps d’Elite, Aguinaldo’s body-guard, during the Filipino insurrection against Spanish rule. Hoodwinked and misguided by the juntas as to the designs of the Americans, he continued in the service after the Spaniards had been driven out. During the outbreak against the Americans on February 5, 1899, he was killed. Shortly afterward he received word that he must take his father’s place. He knew what it meant to refuse to enter the insurrectionist service after having once been notified. Fearing assassination should he refuse, he at once joined his father’s regiment and was given his father’s company.
His regiment gradually fell back into the interior as the Americans advanced. Nothing but tales of brigandage, rapacity, and cruelty were heard of the actions of the enemy.