The old gentleman looked up at Nang and me, and into us, and through us, with eyes that smiled into vacancy4, and at that moment, I think, I first began to entertain some doubts of his complete benevolence5.
"Holy One," stammered7 the porter, "not two pipes ago I let this gentleman out to go on a long journey. And here he is. And he has not come back, for I barred the gate behind him."
"Oh, well, Nang, what difference does that make?" purred the Holy One, soothingly8. "You may go now."
The porter went away, shaking his head and muttering, and my heathen priest and I were left alone together.
"And have you had," said he, raising himself a little on his hollowed slab, "an easy and a pleasant journey?"
"I did not go for pleasure," I answered sulkily, for I felt that he was mocking me.
"Ah, yes," he answered quickly, "it was for instruction. I forgot. And did you gain instruction from my Little Gods?"
"This time you sent me," I reminded him, "to see some Little Devils."
The spark in his eyes flickered9 into flame again. "Did I!" he murmured, purringly as a cat. "How I keep forgetting. But after all, it's merely a matter of names. Did you like what you saw?"
"No," I answered bluntly, "I did not. Your Little Gods, or your Little Devils, whatever you choose to call them, seem to me the veriest fiends. And cowardly fiends, at that. They catch men like rats, in traps, and drown them, helpless, as men drown rats."
"My son," purred my old heathen priest, "I wouldn't call them cowards, if I were you. They might not like it."
"Like it or not," said I, hotly, "they are cowards, if what I've seen of them is a fair sample of their ways. Do they never give a man a fair chance, in the open, to fight for his life, and for things dearer to him than life?"
"For life and things dearer than life," echoed my old heathen priest, and yawned, ever so slightly, and stretched his old legs out on his slab. "Dear me, I don't see why they shouldn't. Though of course I know nothing about it. Suppose," he suggested, "you look that up for yourself. I dislike to seem selfish, but really this is an hour which I invariably devote to a nap."
He made a little imperative11, dismissing gesture with his hand, and—
"An' this," says big Terry Clancy, reaching over and getting a grip on the little man's collar, "this is our Scuts, the married man."
I never served in a company yet—and I've served in so many, first and last, that I'll never do anything else—I never served in a company yet that didn't have a bully12 and a fool in it. You can always tell them. No one ever dares to cuss out the bully, and somebody is all the time cussin' out the fool. In the old company the bully was Clancy, relieving me, as Special Orders says. We had some argument about it at first, being about of a size and the biggest men there, but Terry was younger than me, and he relieved me. The fool was a poor little yellow dog that we called Scuts. I don't even remember his name. He was the most helpless, discouraged, weak-eyed little hombre the sun ever dodged13 behind a cloud to keep from shining on. Worse than that, he had cold feet. All through the China campaign he was so scared he needn't have been afraid at all. A bullet couldn't hit such a little wrinkled, pinched-up thing as he was, even if it wanted to. But of course he got it worse than if he'd been just plain fool. The company don't stand for cold feet.
Even the officers got to jollyin' about him. "The little man," the Captain always called him. "H'm," grunts14 the Captain, the day we was getting it so bad in front of Tientsin. One of them club-footed Chinese bullets had just bored through his leg, and it looked like he'd bleed to death before the Doctor could fix him up. "H'm. Artery15 gone, you say? Where's the little man? He's just about the size to crawl in and hang onto it till you're ready to tie it. H'm."
It was the boys telling that to each other, and the Old Man's sending down the line afterwards to know if anybody had the makings of a cigarette, that kept the company from breaking that day, I reckon. We got it hard. If the Old Man had been with us after that, Scuts would sure have had to go. But he being in hospital, the Lieutenant16 just took the whole outfit17 with him, the part that could walk, anyway, and Scuts went back to Manila with us, and down to Samar.
"An' this," says Terry, picking Scuts off the bench and shaking him careless, like he was a rag baby, "is the idol18 of his company, the bold bad soldier lad that won the heart an' tuba-stand of the prettiest little brown girl in Samar. Boys," says he, spinning the little man round with a thumb and finger in the back of his neck, "let me present the husband of the beauteous Marie. Bow to the gentlemen, Scutsy."
"Aw, lemme go, Terry," says Scuts, blushing pink inside of his yellow skin, and grinning like a puppy that's just been kicked. "Aw, you lemme go."
"You set down, Scuts," says Terry, spinning him round again and laying him on the bench. "Set down an' tell us all about it. Give us a tip. We're all wantin' to know how you did it. We might want to get married ourselves some day."
"Aw, you gwan," says Scuts, twistin' round, with that little damp grin of his. "You're joshin' me."
"Man," says Terry, "'tis no josh. Honor bright, we're all envyin' you gettin' a fine pretty little girl like that. Eh, Casey?" he says to me.
"Straight goods," says I. "The little man pulled down a cold hand that deal."
"Hear that, Scutsy?" says Terry. "Come on, now, and tell us about it."
"Aw," says Scuts, throwing a chest as big around as my arm, and twisting a few white hairs on his upper lip, which was his way of wagging his tail, "Aw," he says, "Marie, aw—I kind of helped her keepin' her books, y' know, showin' her how to spell the boys' names an' all that business, an' we got to be pretty good friends. An' one day she says to me, 'Scuts, all the girls but me has got American man, an' they laugh at me,' she says. 'Scuts, I want a 'Merican man myself.' 'All right,' I says, never thinkin' of myself, 'I'll tell the boys.' 'Scuts,' she says, 'I got plenty dinero sellin' tuba to the boys, an' I likes you. You be my man.' Aw," says Scuts, twistin' the hairs, "I looked at her, an' I seen she was pretty fair-lookin', so I says, 'All right, Marie.' An' I ain't ashamed of it, neither," says Scuts, looking round with his big blue eyes, as the crowd begins to laugh. "She's 'bout10 th' nicest girl in this town, I reckon," Scuts says.
"Scuts, you gobble the pot," says Terry, twisting him off the bench. "You run along to Marie right now, an' tell her to be sure and wrap a blanket round you before she puts you to bed. Wouldn't that beat hell, now," he says to us, watching the little man trot19 off down-town. "They're all alike," he says. "Give a white one fifty plunks to buy a dog, an' she'll come back with a blear-eyed, knock-kneed pug, and give a brown one a chance at th' company, an' she picks out Scuts. Marie's a good, girl, too. That's th' worst of it. Th' better they are th' less they know," says Terry, "an' by th' time they get all th' sabe they need, nobody'd take th'm for a gift. Who's comin' over in th' grove20 an' drink a cocoanut?"
This was along before Balangiga, and things were running easy, the Old Man being still in hospital, and the Lieutenant being only a boy. A straight boy he was, but not sure yet how he ought to take us. The country was quiet and the people friendly as bugs21, and we got careless. About half the boys was sleepin' out of quarters off and on, and the Top didn't say anything. I don't blame him. Of course me and Terry and a lot of other old-timers didn't go in for that way of doing business, but it's different with a boy. The only home he has while he's in the service is the kind he can make by hanging up his hat and ordering the drinks, and he takes it pretty rough if you don't let him have that in a place like the Philippines. So we went drifting along with only two sentries22 posted, and the quarters half empty every night, never looking for any trouble.
But one afternoon Scuts came trotting23 in, looking as yellow as Durham, and had a hablar with the Top, and then they both went across to the Lieutenant's quarters. They didn't come out till just before Assembly went for Retreat, and we smelled something. Sure enough, orders was read to keep magazines loaded, carry two hundred rounds in the belt, and not be absent from quarters between sunset and sunrise. Soon as we were dismissed, we got after Scuts.
"The natives had it fixed24 to rush us at night," he says. "Marie tipped me off. She told me not to be out of quarters to-night, an' th' Top, he figured out the rest," says Scuts, shortsighting, you might say, out into the underbrush as if he expected to see a gang of bolomen, and holding tight to his rifle.
"An' th' lady, she had another friend," sings out Piggy O'Neil. The crowd laughs, and Scuts turns a dirty pink again.
"Aw," he says, "she wouldn't tell me no lie. She's a good straight girl."
Then we began to debate it, the way we always do in the Army, if it's only a question of how far it is from New York to the moon, and finally everybody called everybody else a liar25 and we went to sleep.
In the morning everything was quiet and peaceful, so after drill the crowd was beginning to jolly Scuts for fair, when the operator stuck his head out of the window.
"Come up here, some of you, for God's sake," he says, and we didn't stop to ask questions. He was bending over his ticker, white as a sheet. "I'm a fool, all right," he says, "but this is sure gettin' on my nerve. There was a message started to go through from Balangiga ten minutes ago, and all to once— Hear that!" he says. The machine gave a jerky little chatter26. "It's like a man sendin' in his sleep," says the operator. "For ten mortal minutes that thing has been stuttering halves of words."
"Who is it?" asks Terry.
"Murphy's sendin'," says the operator.
"Then he's jokin' with ye," says Terry. "Billy always was a great hand for his—"
"Huh?" grunts the operator, bending over, as she begun to stutter again.
"What's he saying?" somebody asked, but the operator didn't seem to hear him. Then all at once he began to talk in a voice that didn't belong to him.
"Balangiga," he read, "seven-ten A.M. Company—attacked by—bolomen—while at—breakfast. Rifles in quarters. Fought with—dishes and—knives and forks—but—no good—"
"Fought with--dishes and--knives and forks."
"Fought with—dishes and—knives and forks."
"God!" says somebody, and a dozen say, "Shut up."
But the operator didn't seem to mind. "Look out for—yourselves," he read. And then he begun to call out a list of names, very slow, and between each one you could hear the crowd draw a long breath. "Sullivan—Brewster—Fleishart—Nickerson—"
"Is that Tommy Nickerson?" says somebody.
"Shut up," says Terry.
"But Tommy was my bunky for three—"
"—Slavin—" reads the operator—"Kelly—Hunt—" and so he goes on, Terry checking off till we thought he never would stop. "Fourty-five, fourty-six, fourty-seven, fourty-eight," he says. Then the machine stopped talking. "That's all," says Terry. "Fourty-eight good men that they've killed—"
"Huh?" grunts the man again, and then the machine began to click very slow, and the operator's eyes bulged27 out of his head. "Murphy!" he says. "Christ," he says, "it can't be Murphy. Murphy's sendin'. Billy," he says, jabbing at his key and then listening. The machine clicked once or twice and then stopped. The operator turns round to us. "It's Billy," he says. "Billy's been sendin' this, an' he's dead." The big fellow just dropped down on his table and cried.
We looked at him and we looked at each other, and then we went down-stairs on tiptoe, like there was a dyin' man in the house. "Fourty-nine," says Terry, whispering like—"fourty-nine men of the regiment28 killed at breakfast, with no show to help themselves. God! And we might a got the same thing only—Scuts," he says, "where's that little woman o' yours?"
"Warn't she straight?" says Scuts, throwing his chest.
"You poor fool," Terry shouts, "go and get her up here before those devils suspect she told us. Take your rifle, damn you," he says, as the little man trotted29 off. "Fourty-nine o' them killed fightin' with their mess-kits30. God!"
Just as we was getting into our kits, Scuts comes back. "I can't find her," he says. "I ast her mother, an' she just grinned at me," he says, staring out of the window as if he expects to see her there. "I can't find her," he says. "Terry, do you s'pose—"
"Scuts," Terry yells at him, "you get ready to go out on this patrol with us. Do you hear, or have I got to bat you?" he says, like he meant it.
We scouted31 down through the town, the people smiling at us just as friendly as ever, and never a sign of Marie could we get. So we swung out through the paddies and circled the town, coming back toward the quarters through the grove of cocoa-palms. The Lieutenant was on the point, and all at once he stopped short. We pushed up, and there, tied to a big palm-tree, was something I've tried hard to forget. 'Twouldn't have been so bad if she had just been dead, but all at once she—
"They cut her all to pieces an' it didn't kill her," says Scuts, surprised like.
The Lieutenant pulls his gun. "Right or wrong, I can't stand that," he says, and fires.
The little man never flinched32 at the report. "They cut her all to pieces, an' it didn't kill her," he says again, kind of like a phonograph.
"You get out of here, Scuts," says Terry, grabbing him by the shoulder and whirling him round.
"You leave me be," whines33 the little man. "God!" he says. "Cut her like that, an' it didn't kill her! An' her such a soft little thing—"
"Damn you, Scuts," says Terry, "will you cut it out, or have I got to break your head?"
"Aw, you lemme alone," whines Scuts, meek34 as ever. "I'm a goin', ain't I?" And he turns and trots35 back to quarters, never saying another word.
When we told the boys, there was cursing like you won't hear often outside the service, but after Terry had took them out in the grove in squads36 of half a dozen, they just stopped talking and sat down quiet in the sun, cleaning their rifles and looking at the town over across the parade. All at once, a rifle cracked, and a native over there cut for cover like a hen. The Lieutenant came running down.
"Whose gun was that?" he asks.
Old John Slattery, the oldest man in the company, with twenty-eight years in, gets up slow and stiff, and salutes38. "Mine, sir," he says. "I was workin' the cartridges39 out of the magazine, an' she must've gone off accidental."
The boy just looks at us for about a minute. "The next one of you that fires a shot without orders," he says, "will stand up against the convent wall there in front of a squad37, if I'm the only man in the squad. When the time comes," he says, "you'll have all the shooting you want. Until then, you'll leave the natives alone, or you'll have to kill me."
It was hard holding in, thinking of Marie over there among the palm-trees, and the boys in Balangiga, and Billy Murphy making his little speech over the wire; but the Lieutenant was right, and when the orders did come, we didn't have any kick coming about the way he let us carry them out. It was the roughest little old fighting I've ever been through.
You'd naturally thought the little man would brace40 up and get into it, after seeing what he'd seen. But he just got peakeder and meeker41 every day. Seemed like he was half asleep, and only woke up long enough to talk about his dreams. And his talk was enough to drive you loco.
One night we'd just come into camp, when Terry pitched his rifle away and dug for his boot as fast as he could. "Damn that ant," he says. "Who'd think a little thing like that could bite worse'n a good big horse-fly?"
"Terry," says Scuts, "how do you reckon it feels to have millions of red ants crawlin' all over you, an' you all cut an'—"
At last one day we ran into them in full force in a little meadow that was broken up with clumps43 of bamboo and tall grass. We started firing in close order, for it's dangerous to get spread out in country like that, when you're fighting men with knives. But after a while, them rushing first one side of the line and then the other, and us getting after them with the bayonet, we opened out. Finally we got 'em going just like we wanted 'em, in bunches. We'd fire as they ran till they had to drop into cover, and then we'd rush 'em with the bayonet and butt1. It was the easiest sort of going, more like chasing rabbits than men, and when the recall blowed we had only five men missing, Scuts among them. The Lieutenant sent out half a dozen of us to hunt them up, and in a little hollow, 'way ahead of where anybody else had gone, we found the little man lying curled up on his face looking comfortable, the way a man that's been killed quick most always does. Around him there was a heap of dead natives, no wounded ones. Terry turned him over. He had a bolo in his hand, and he was smiling his little weak-eyed smile.
"The son of a gun!" says Terry, gulping44. "The damn little son of a gun! What the hell are you fellers standin' there for?" he says to us, picking up the little man and laying him over his shoulder. "There's four other lads you've got to find before sundown."
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1
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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ace
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| n.A牌；发球得分；佼佼者；adj.杰出的 | |
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4
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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6
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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7
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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10
bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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11
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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12
bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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13
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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14
grunts
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说； 石鲈 | |
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artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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20
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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sentries
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| 哨兵，步兵( sentry的名词复数 ) | |
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trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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25
liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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27
bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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29
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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kits
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| 衣物和装备( kit的名词复数 )； 成套用品； 配套元件 | |
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31
scouted
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| 寻找，侦察( scout的过去式和过去分词 )； 物色（优秀运动员、演员、音乐家等） | |
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32
flinched
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| v.（因危险和痛苦）退缩，畏惧( flinch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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33
whines
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| n.悲嗥声( whine的名词复数 )；哀鸣者v.哀号( whine的第三人称单数 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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trots
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| 小跑，急走( trot的名词复数 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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36
squads
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| n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍 | |
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37
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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38
salutes
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| n.致敬，欢迎，敬礼( salute的名词复数 )v.欢迎，致敬( salute的第三人称单数 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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39
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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40
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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41
meeker
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| adj.温顺的，驯服的( meek的比较级 ) | |
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42
cuffing
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| v.掌打，拳打( cuff的现在分词 )；袖口状白血球聚集 | |
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43
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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44
gulping
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的现在分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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