IX
CAYBIGAN
When Sergeant Blount's detachment marched into San Juan, and in the centre of the plaza grounded arms with a crash that ran along the stone flagging in vibrating menace, the little pueblo cowered in a completeness of fear and abject surrender never reached before. Like lizards a few brown beings here and there slid out of sight; and the big blue-shirted men, grouped there beneath the white sunlight, found themselves as in a vacuum of heat and silence. But they had an uneasy sensation of eyes, eyes timorous and hostile, shifting and malevolent, from behind closed shutters and torn nipa walls peering upon them in tremulous distrust. In her stall at the head of the street, Eustefania, hundred-year-old, wrinkled, black, toothless, was hastily gathering up her store—two mangoes, a cluster of bananas, a dozen rice cakes, five twine-wrapped cheroots—into her pañuelo with trembling hands. And Pedro Lasco, crouching upon the stone steps of the church, a cigarette between his fingers, found his simple and complex soul filled with a new and inexplicable tumult.
For from the man standing there at the head of the little troop there radiated Mastery. Pedro, in his blind, dark way, tried to analyse the impression, to find how this particular being differed from other tall, gaunt, brutal Americans that he had met in the past, before whom he had quailed physically, but never morally; but immediately he was submerged in that feeling he so hated—of confusion, blackness, bewilderment—which invariably seized him whenever he, man of a primitive race, sought to penetrate his own soul, obscure with complications beyond his power to read. This alone he could tell:—that this man, among his six-footers, towered by half a head, that his shoulders were broad, that his hair was golden like that of the Santa Madre seen once, long ago, in the cathedral at Lipa. Later, by patience of eye and obstinacy of contemplation he discovered other facts:—that the campaign hat of the Sergeant was wider-brimmed and more rakishly set than those of his fellow; that his belt hung down loose along the right thigh, to the weight of a huge, silver-mounted six-shooter which was not the regulation Colt's; that, when he walked, his feet tinkled with long, rotary spurs, and that a red bandana, knotted negligently about the neck, flamed up the blue and khaki with splendour.
The men stood at ease in the centre of the plaza. The Sergeant took from his breast pocket a cake of tobacco, bit off a piece with a slight swagger, then looked about him carefully. His eyes met those of Pedro. "Alica, caybigan—come here, friend!" he shouted with cavalier amicability.
"Caybigan—friend!" The obscure emotions in Pedro's breast surged suddenly into something almost definite, something big and soft that was sweet and compelled. Slowly he came down the steps in feline grace of movement and stood gravely before the big man, one foot slightly in front of the other, his right hand upon his pliable waist. The Sergeant looked down upon him, pulling at his blonde mustache. He smiled. The smile passed over Pedro in a shadow of indefinite discomfort; unconsciously he stiffened up, a little defiant.
"You take us to the best house here, caybigan," said the Sergeant.
The smile had gone, and that other sensation, of sweetness and good will, again possessed Pedro. "Opo," he answered simply.
And this was the beginning of the bond. Pedro showed the Sergeant the house best suited for cuartel, the natural spot for a horse-corral, the watering place at the river. That night, after he had been dismissed and had eaten his rice and fish, Pedro squatted long upon the bamboo floor of his little hut, pondering in his rudimentary way over the day's events. It was a poor hut, small, astonishingly bare; for Pedro's wealth was below, beneath the high, post-elevated floor. There, laid crosswise upon sustaining poles, were his hunting spears, harpoons, and paddles; keel-up upon the ground his banca, long, sharp-prowed, reptilian, and, hanging from post to post in heavy folds, ensilvered with fish-scales, his great dragnet. But his mind was not upon his riches; what he tried to read within him was dark and shifting; this only he could draw plainly from it:—a passionate desire to serve that big, golden-haired man with the jingling spurs, the red bandana, the rakish sombrero, to serve, blindly, unquestioning, like a dog, with fatigue of body, and outpouring of sweat, and tongue-licking of boots. But even this feeling was not clear like a simple flame; athwart it there leaped a contradictory shadow. The smile; it was the smile. Pedro tried to consider it squarely, but that bewilderment which possessed him always when he attempted to read his soul, complicated with complications of which he had not the key, seized him with acute distress; and with an impatient gesture he brushed away the obsession, as he would a fly buzzing importunately before his eyes. He lingered long upon the clearer impulse, the idea of service, of devotion. "Caybigan," he murmured softly; "caybigan"—and in the balmy silence of the night the drawled syllables hung long with lingering sweetness.