I was serious almost to that old gripping in the throat. But he laughed
and pressed my hand.
"To-morrow, Jack, to-morrow! You are tired now; I want you to sleep.
You have earned your reward this day, my boy, and it shall be yours
to-morrow, a promotion that you will love."
I followed him to his own tent door. A black horse stood haltered near
by, saddled as he had been for two days and nights.
I took the General’s whistle, the one I had used to train Satan to my
call in the old days, and which on the firing line the General himself
used in calls for his aides and orderlies. I blew softly the three
blasts I had taught him to know in the forest. He had not seen me for
months. He did not know I was there; but his head went up quickly with
the old devil fire in his eyes. The next minute he had thrown his great
weight back on the halter, snapping it.
His head was on my shoulder, and he was whinnying.
The General laughed. "It beats the world, Jack, that horse’s love for
you. Take him to your own tent to-night, he’ll rage like a hyena around
here all night, now that he knows you are here."
It was true. But tethered at my own camp he was quiet. The confusion
had been so great and my men were so scattered that when I came back I
ordered Moriarty to call the roll before taps. He came back quickly with
word that Ross and Billings of our company were absent. I was
surprised. Investigation among the men, tired and half asleep, showed
that they had not stopped when we took the last fort, but had been swept
on with a squad of the Regulars after the flying Filipinos, carried away
with the excitement of it.
I went quickly to the bivouac of the Regulars. They remembered the two
men, but thought they had returned, as they went off toward the right of
the little village Colena, two miles in our front and through which the
enemy had fled.
"If they aren’t here now," said an old sergeant, "no use to look for ’em
again; when we come back through that village, there wasn’t a sound, not
a kid, nor a chicken, nor a coon, nor a dog; and when you don’t hear
nothin’ in a Filipino village, when you go through, look out for hell
when you come back."
I looked at my watch. It had been full three hours since the Regulars
had returned.
"I am going after them," I said, turning to go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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