In town the big vaquero was a schoolboy on a holiday. He was a perfect panther for prowling around the streets at night, and in the market-place, where we now missed the scattering of khaki, he became acquainted with the natives, and drank tuba with them. He came back with reports about the resources of the town. There was an Indian merchant stranded at Ramon’s, who had a lot of watches for sale cheap. He purchased some lace curtains at the Chino store, and yellow piña cloth for a mosquito bar, and with this stuff he had transformed his bed into a perfect bower. It was almost a contradiction that this wild fellow, who was more accustomed to his boots and spurs at night than to pajamas, should have taken so much pains to make his sleeping-quarters dainty. Streamers of baby-ribbon fell in graceful lines about the curtains, while the gauze mosquito-bar was decorated with the medals he had won for bravery.
A photograph of his divorced wife occupied the place of honor near the looking-glass. In reminiscent moods Skim used to tell how Chita, of old Mexico, had left him after stabbing him three times with the jeweled knife that he had given her. “I didn’t interfere with her,” he said, “but told her, when she pricked me with the little knife, it was my heart that she was jabbing at.” Skim also told me of his expedition into “Dead Man’s Gulch,” “Death Valley,” and the suddenly-abandoned mining-camps among the hills of California. And he had met the daughter of a millionaire in Frisco, and had seen her home. “And when I saw the big shack looming up there in the woods,” he said, “I thought sure that I’d struck the wrong farmhouse.”
Skim rented a small place surrounded by a hedge of bonga palms, and here he entertained the village royally. He was a favorite among the girls, and lavished gifts upon them, mostly the latest illustrated magazines that belonged to me. He ruled his awkward soldiers with an iron hand, and they were more afraid of him that of the Evil One. Of course, they could not understand his Spanish, and would often answer, “Si, señor” when they had not the least idea of what the orders were. Then they would come to grief for disobedience, or receive Skim’s favorite reprimand of “Blooming idiot! No sabe your own language?” When his cook displeased him, he (the cook) would generally come bumping down the stairs. The voice of Skim was as the roaring lion in a storm. Desertions were many in those strenuous days; for the constabulary guards were not the heroes of the hour.
Always insisting on strict discipline, Skim, on the day we made our trial hike, marshaled his forces in a rigid line, and, after roll-call, marched them off in order to the hills. The soldiers took about three steps to his one, and, trying to keep up with him through the dense hemp-fields, they broke ranks and ran. We followed a mountain stream to its headwaters, scrambling over bowlders, wading waist-deep in the ice-cold stream, and by the time we broke the underbrush and pushed up hill, big Skim had literally hiked the soldiers off their feet. They were unspeakably relieved when we sat down at noon in the cool shade, upon the brink of a deep, crystal pool, and ate our luncheon. Skim, insisting that the canned quail—which retained its gamy flavor—was beyond redemption, turned it over to the soldiers to their great delight.
In spite of his severity, Skim had a soft heart, and when all dressed in white and gold, he would go up to visit Señor Roa and his daughters; while the girls would play duets on the piano, Skim, with a little chocolate baby under either arm, would sing in an insinuating voice one of his good old cowboy songs, regardless of the fact that he was not in tune with his accompaniment. He always appeared on Sundays cleanly shaven and immaculate in white, and when the girls went by his house to church, their dusky arms glowing among the gauze, appealed to him and made him sad.
No one could ever contradict Skim, though he couldn’t even write his own name legibly. His monthly reports were actually works of art. “Seenyor Inspekter of constabulery,” he would write, “i hav the honner to indite the following report. i hav bin having trubel with the moros. They was too boats of them and they had a canon in the bow. i faired three shots and too of them fell down but they al paddeled aeway so fast i coodnt catch them.” And again: “On wensday the first instant i went on a hike of seven miles. i captured three ladrones four bolos, one old gun and too durks.” Then after practicing his signature for half an hour on margins of books or any kind of paper he could find, he used to sign his document with a tremendous flourish.
I rather miss the rock thrown at my blinds at 4 o’clock A. M. A little catlike sergeant, a mestizo, is in charge of the constabulary, and the men are glad. No longer does the huge six-footer, with his army Colt’s, stalk through the village streets. The other day I got a note from Skim: “i dont think i ain’t never going to come back there eny moar,” he wrote above the most successful signature that I had ever seen. A few months later Skim was badly crippled in a fight with robbers. He was sent to Manila to the civil hospital. On his discharge he was promoted, and he now wears three bars on his shoulder-straps. He has been shot three times since then, and he has written, “If i dont get kilt no more, i dont think that i wont come back.”
To-day the constabulary is well organized. They have distinguished themselves time and again in battle-line. They have put down the lingering sparks of the rebellion. They look smart in their brand-new uniforms and russet boots. But it was only a year or two ago that Skim had crowded their uncivilized feet into the clumsy army shoe, and knocked them around like puppets in a Noah’s ark. Skim, if you ever get hold of these few pages written in your honor, here’s my compliments and my best wishes for another bar upon your shoulder-straps, and—yes, here’s hoping that you “won’t get killed no more.”