In Camp and Barracks with the Officers and Soldiers of the Philippines.
Bugle-calls, loud, strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the brass throats of bugles; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier; troopers in blue shirts, with their mess-kits in their hands, running across the street for rations; men in khaki everywhere, raising a racket on pay-day, fraternizing with the Filipinos when off duty; poker games in the barracks, with the army cot and blanket for a table; taps, and the measured tread of sentries, and anon a startled challenge, “Halt! Who’s there?”—such were the days in Cagayan in 1901.
The blue sea, stretching out into the hazy distance, sparkled around the little nipa-covered dock where commissary stores and sacks of rice were piled. The native women, squatting on the ground, were selling mangoes and bananas to the boys. “Cagayan Mag,” who vended the hot bottled beer for “jawbone,” digging her toes into the dust, was entertaining the surrounding crowd with her coarse witticisms. The corporal of the guard, reclining in an easy steamer-chair, under his tent extension, was perusing the news columns from the States, by this time three months old. A sunburnt soldier, with his Krag upon his shoulder, paced the dock, wearily doing the last hour of his guard.
“Do you-all like hawg-jowl and black-eyed peas?” drawled “Tennessee Bill,” shifting his bony form to a more comfortable position on the rice-sack.
“Reckon I ort ter; I wuz bo’n in Geo’gy,” said his comrade, as he rolled a rice-straw paper cigarette.
After an interval of several minutes the same conversation was repeated. Suddenly a sharp toot sent the echoes scudding back and forth among the hills. A moment later the small transport, with the usual blur of khaki in her bows, came swinging around the promontory.
“Pshaw! I thought it wuz the pay boat comin’” grumbled Bill.
Then, as the Trenton pulled up to the dock, signs of activity began to animate that place. The guard, with leveled bayonet, began to shoo the “Gugus” off the landing. Down the hot road, invested in a cloud of dust, an ambulance was coming, drawn by a team of army mules and bringing the lieutenant quartermaster and his sergeants.
“Why, hello!” said Bill; “if here ain’t little Wantz a-comin’. Got his discharge an’ gone married a babay.”
The soldiers crowded around the ex-hospital corps man, who, still in his khaki suit, was standing on the shore with a sad-looking Filipino girl in tow. Her feet were bare and dusty, and she wore a turkey-red skirt caught up on one side, and a gauze camisa with a piña yoke, and the stiff, flaring sleeves. Her head was bare, and her black hair was combed uncompromisingly back on her head. Her worldly goods were done up in a straw mat and a soiled bandana handkerchief, and were deposited before her on the ground.