"I think," said I angrily, "that they are Little Devils. That black man was a man. If they had given him half a chance—"
"Remember," said my heathen friend, quite calmly, "that I do not know your black man, or what they did to him. Something unpleasant, it appears. It does not matter. It is in the Game. But you think my Little Gods are Little Devils?"
"I do," I said.
"I wonder," mused my heathen priest, smiling through me into vacancy, "what he would think of Little Devils if he saw them." Suddenly his eyes glinted into mine. He made a little imperative gesture with his hand. "Go and see," he said. "This is the hour when I take another nap. And would you mind," he added, "as you're going out, just asking the porter to bring a jug of water?"
That night, when rice was eaten and the circle of darkness had shut down about our fire, Fermin Majusay, the private of Native Scouts who was my escort on the mountain, stretched out on his slim stomach and gazed into the hypnotic flames.
"I am going to tell you about my teniente," he said suddenly, "my lieutenant who is dead six months. He was a devil, that man. Listen! You have sat in the Café Puerta del Sol and watched the two old Spaniards who play forever the game called chess? Well, when the little man of Don Antonio gets in front of the little horse of Don José, does Don José say, 'Bad little man, go to another little square'? No, he says 'Muerto!'—'Dead!'—and takes the little man away. That is the game, to take all the little men off the board, and it is just the same with fighting. But all the white men I have seen, except my teniente, were afraid of the end. My teniente always laughed when the end came. He was born to be a soldier, like me.
"I remember how he laughed at Don Augusto. We were in a very bad province then. All the provinces are a little bad; that is why they sent me to take care of you, because the mountains are not safe for a white man. But that was an island in the south, and it was very bad. All the middle of it was mountains where ladrones lived, and they came down to the coast and made people give them food and money, and they stole carabaos from the plantations and killed travelers, and sometimes they burned a town and took the pretty girls away.
"We were sent there to catch them. It was very hard work. We chased them in the mountains and killed some, but that did no good. When we were in one place they were somewhere else, and when a man guided us in a little while he was dead. We knew what was the matter. It is always the same. The ladrones are in the mountains, but some man in the towns is their leader, and he gets so rich and strong that every one is afraid of him. In that island it was a planter named Augusto de los Reyes. Three times my lieutenant arrested Augusto de los Reyes and sent him down to San Pablo; and every time the judge said there was no proof and he came back, and in a little while all the witnesses against him were dead. And the ladrones in the mountains always knew when we were coming.
"If my teniente had been like other white men, he would have given up then. But he arrested Don Augusto once more. I remember the morning very well. I was orderly that day, and we were in the guard-room looking at some prisoners, and a guard came in, two in front and two behind, with this Don Augusto. He was a big, fat Bisayan, and we all looked at him, and he looked at us, and smiled. Then we didn't feel very good, for we knew what he'd like to do to us.
"But my teniente laughed when he saw him. He stood up and shook hands with Don Augusto, and he said: 'Buenos dias, Señor Don Augusto de los Reyes.' Like that, making fun. 'It is not very long since we met,' he said, 'but I am very glad to see you again. I trust you found the prison at San Pablo pleasant?'