By the time the regiment was ordered to the Philippines Fagan's record loomed black with five trials. But the campaigning brought relief. A man was required only to have his rifle in good condition, and be on hand to use it. The regiment spent weary days, dragging about like a slow snake under the burning sun, soaking and shivering in the mists of evening, till men began to sicken. But not Fagan. His melodious bellow would ring triumphant along the lines each night, "I'se been wo'okin' on the ra'alroad," and cheer the drooping men, till the voices of the company wits were demanding, "Who's dat ar white man got a ra'alroad?"
And then, one day, the scouts reported that the main body of the enemy was near, that elusive body for which the regiment had been groping so long. After a little the snake broke out into a fan, and went crawling across a muddy rice-paddy toward a cane-brake. Then a flight of strangely drawling insects sang overhead, and as always, when firing is wild and high, some men in the reserve, 'way in the rear, lay down very suddenly.
The merry bugles rattled, and the fan dissolved into a thin brown line of men who advanced swiftly to the edge of the brake, firing as they went. And then, all at once, the brake was alive with dizzily flashing steel. A little brown man rose in front of Fagan, and a flash darted straight at his head. Instinctively his muscles reacted, and he ducked backward like a boxer. So the bolo missed his head, but the sharp point, tearing downward, ripped through shirt and flesh on his breast.
Fagan stared stupidly at the dripping red edges of the blue cloth till the sharp tingle of the flesh stirred him. As before, he felt a blinding impulse to strike, and whirled his heavy rifle in one hand, as a boy might a stick. He looked down at the quivering, moaning thing before him, and a mad joy of strength surged over him. A little way apart a struggling group was weaving in and out with darts of steel and quick flashes of rifles, and hoarse gruntings and cursings. He ran toward it, swinging his broken rifle round his head. "Give 'em heyell, boys," he shouted. "Kill the damn niggers."
From that day he was called Wild Fagan, and Fagan the Nigger-Killer, and as the campaign progressed, his renown passed beyond his regiment. "Heard about that wild nigger in the Fifty-fourth?" asked the Cavalry, borrowing a pinch of Durham and a pit of paper from the Mountain Battery. "Don't sabe fire his rifle. Just butts in and swats 'em with it, like he was wantin' to play gollf." The story grew till the Marines, returning from shore service, told the Fleet, half-seriously, of a wild regiment come straight from Africa, "what only knew how to fight with war-clubs." And jacky, ever ready to believe, swore softly in admiration, and spat over the rail, and dreamed of having a little go with that regiment, some night in Nagasaki, when every one had had about seven drinks all round.
Even the officers began to boast. "Oh, you mean our man Fagan," the Colonel would say to guests at mess. "Yes, he's a good man. Expensive—a rifle lasts him about a day when things are lively;—but efficient. Yes, highly efficient. The natives are beginning to dodge the regiment. Yes, I'll let you see him after dinner. Finest build of a man you ever laid eyes on. Like a cat, you know, like a cat and a grizzly rolled into one."
And Fagan through it all was unchanged, good-natured, childlike as ever. He was even a bit ashamed of his strength. "That little scrap down by the bridge?" he would say to a group of admirers. "Oh, that all wa'n't nothin'. That big Fillypeeno? Oh, yes, I hit him. Yes, I raickon I smashed him some," he would muse with his slow smile. "I broke my gun on him. Anybody got any tobacca? I nevah can keep no tobacca."
It was after the fighting was done and the regiment went into stations of companies in the villages that the change began to come. The men, keyed to exertion and excitement, found the idleness of barrack life first pleasant, then irksome. And they were at home in these sunny islands, far more at home than ever in the States. They read the freedom of the land in the burning sky, and the clicking palms, and the lazy air. More than anywhere else, they read it in the dark, admiring eyes of the brown, slim, soft-moving girls. The men began to be absent at check roll-call at Taps.
Then all the wisdom and tact of an officer was needed. Too great easiness meant loss of control, harshness meant desertions. For a time Lieutenant Sharpe did very well. He overlooked what he could, and was unangered in his firmness when he must be firm. But nature and fixed habit overcame him, and Fagan was naturally the chief sufferer, for the officer had grown into the belief that Fagan was the probable cause of every misdemeanor in the company. So it was a reprimand, and then another sharper, and then the summary court—where the Lieutenant was prosecutor and jury and judge—sentenced Fagan to the loss of a month's pay for attempting to run the guard at some unearthly hour of the night. Within a week he repeated the offence, and Lieutenant Sharpe, with the fear of God and the Regulations in his heart, and wondrous small understanding in his head, sentenced him to a "month and a month." A month of confinement will give any man much time for reflection, and the Lieutenant hoped it might prove salutary.
Fagan received his sentence with ominous lack of his former protestations, and went quietly to the guard-house. But being neither an accomplished thinker nor an expert in moral theory, he did not reflect. He merely sat there and brooded. "All I'm lookin' for is jus' a fayah show," he told himself, over and over again. "He use me right, an' I'll use him right. Ain't I the bes' fightin' man in the regiment, ain't the Kuhnel done said so, a whole plainty o' times? When they's fightin', I'll be there. But that little Lootenant—Lawszee, couldn' I smash him—all I want is jus' a straight deal."