Winning the Wilderness Part 47

Something lost behind the Ranges!

Over Yonder! Go you there!

And the Twentieth Kansas, under Colonel Fred Funston, broke camp and hurried to San Francisco to be ready to answer that call.

Thaine Aydelot had never been outside of Kansas before. Small wonder that the mountains, the desert, the vinelands, and orchard-lands, and rose-lands of California, the half-orientalism of San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean with its world-old mystery of untamed immensity should fill each day with a newer interest; or that the conditions of soldier life at Camp Merritt beside the Golden Gate, to which the eager-hearted, untrained young student from the Kansas prairie brought all his youthful enthusiasm and patriotism and love of adventure, should wound his spirit and test his power of self-control. Small wonder, too, that the Twentieth Kansas Regiment, poorly equipped, undrilled, and non-uniformed still, should make only a sorry showing among the splendid regiments mobilized there; or that to the big, rich City of San Francisco the ragged fellows from the prairies, who were dubbed the "Kansas Scarecrows," should become the byword and laughing stock among things military.

One neglect followed another for the Kansas Twentieth. The poorest camping spot was their portion. The chill of the nights, the heat of the days oppressed them. The filth of their unsanitary grounds bred discomfort and disease.

But no military favors were shown them, and the same old stupid jests and jibes of the ignorant citizen of the other states were repeated on the Pacific seaboard. When the thirtieth of May called forth the military forces in one grand parade the Twentieth Kansas was not invited to take part.

For Thaine Aydelot, to whom Decoration Day was a sacred Sabbath always, this greatest of all indignities cut deep where a man's soul feels keenest. And when transport after transport sailed out of the San Francisco harbor, loaded with regiments for the Philippines, and still the Twentieth Kansas was left in idle waiting on the dreary sand lots of Camp Merritt and the Presidio reservation, the silent campaign that really makes a soldier was waged daily in Thaine and his comrades.

"Don't complain, boys," Captain Clarke admonished his company. "We'll be ready when we are called, and that's what really counts."

Other commanders of the regiment gave the same encouragement. So the daily drilling went on. The sons of the indomitable men and women who had conquered the border ruffian, the hostile Plains Indian, and the unfriendly prairie sod, these sons kept their faith in themselves, their pride in the old Kansas State that bore them, and their everlasting good humor and energy and ability to learn. Such men are the salt of the earth.

Todd Stewart made a brave struggle, but his slide on the muddy ground at Camp Leedy was his military undoing, and his discharge followed.

"I'm going to start back to old Gra.s.s River tomorrow," he said to Thaine Aydelot, who had called to see him with face aglow. "I've made the best fight I could, but the doctor says the infantry needs two legs, and neither one wooden. But best of all, Thaine, Jo has written that she wants me to come home. It's not so bad if there's a welcome like that waiting.

She is slowly overcoming her dislike for country life. But I can't help envying you."

"Oh, you'll stand on both feet all right when you get them both on the short gra.s.s of the prairie again, and, as you say, the welcome makes up for a good many losses."

Something impenetrable came into his eyes for the moment only and then the fire of enthusiasm burned again in them, for Thaine's nerves were a-tingle with the ambition and antic.i.p.ation of the young soldier waiting immediate orders, and he changed the subject eagerly.

"I came to tell you something, Todd. We are to sail the seas on the next transport to Manila, sure. And we'll see service yet, all right."

Thaine threw his cap in air and danced about the bed in his enthusiasm.

"Glory be! Won't Fred Funston do things when he hits the Orient? Best colonel that ever had the U. S. military engines to buck against."

Todd rejoiced, even in his own disappointment.

"But see here, Thaine, me child, I also have a bit of news that may interest you plumb through. My surgeon isn't equal to the Philippines either, nor the Ephesians, nor Colossians, and he's going back to some fort in the mountains. Who do you s'pose will take his place? Now, who?"

"How should I know? Seeing I've got to get this regiment off, I have to leave the hospital corps to you. Who is it?" Thaine asked.

"Dr. Horace Carey, M.D.!" Todd replied.

"You don't mean it!" Thaine gasped.

"Yes, he does, Thaine." It was Horace Carey who spoke, as he entered the hospital quarter, and, as everywhere else, the same engaging smile and magnetic charm of personality filled the place.

Thaine turned and gathered him in close embrace.

"Oh, Dr. Carey, are you really going?" He whistled, and shouted, and executed jigs in his joy. "Why do you go? Can you leave Kansas? You and me both? Oh, hurry home, Todd, and show Governor Leedy how to run things without us." And much more to like effect.

"I've a notion I'm the right man to go," Horace Carey answered. "I had experience in the late Civil War, which seems trifling to you fellows at the Presidio. I rode the Plains for some years more when rattlesnakes and Indian arrows--poisoned at that--and cholera and mountain fever called for a surgeon's aid. I have diplomas and things from the best schools in the East. I have also some good military friends in authority to back me in getting a surgeon's place in the army--and, lastly, I haven't a soul to miss me, nor home to leave dreary, if I get between you and the enemy; n.o.body but Boanerges Peeperville to care personally, and Mrs. Aydelot, as the only other aristocrat in the Gra.s.s River Valley, has promised to give him a home. He has always adored Virginia, Thaine, since he could remember anything."

Thaine Aydelot was only twenty-one, with little need hitherto for experience in reading human nature. Moreover, he was alert in every tingling nerve with the antic.i.p.ation of an ocean voyage and of strange new sights and daring deeds half a world away. Yet something in Dr. Carey's strong face seemed to imply a deeper purpose than his words suggested. A faint sense of the n.o.bility of the man gripped him and grew upon him, and never in the years that followed was separate from the memory of the doctor he had loved from babyhood.

When the Ohio woodlands were gorgeous with the frost-fired splendor of October word came to Miss Jane Aydelot, of the old Aydelot farmhouse beside the National pike road, that one Thaine Aydelot had sailed from San Francisco with the Twentieth Kansas Regiment to see service in the Philippine Islands. On board the same transport was Dr. Horace Carey, of the military medical staff. That winter Jane Aydelot's hair turned white, but the pink bloom of her cheeks and the light of her clear gray eyes made her a sweet-faced woman still, whose loveliness grew with the years.

The kiss of the same October breezes was on the Kansas prairie with the hazy horizon and the infinite beauty of wide, level landscapes, overhung by the infinite beauty of blue, tender skies. Boanerges Peeperville, established as cook in the Sunflower Inn, was at home in his cosy little quarter beside the grape arbor of the rear dooryard.

"Tell me, Bo Peep, why Dr. Carey should enter the army again and go to the Philippines?" Virginia Aydelot asked on the day the news reached the Sunflower Ranch.

Bo Peep did not answer at once. Virginia was busy arranging some big yellow chrysanthemums in a tall cut-gla.s.s vase that Dr. Carey had left to be sent down to her when Bo Peep should come to the Aydelots to make his home.

"See, Bo Peep, aren't they pretty? Set them in the middle of the table there, carefully. The first bouquet we ever had on our table was a few little sunflowers in an old peach can wrapped round with a newspaper. You didn't answer my question. Why did Horace go so far away?"

The servant took the vase carefully and placed it as commanded. Then he turned to Virginia with a face full of intense feeling.

"Miss Virgie, I done carry messages for him all my days." The pathos of the soft voice was touching. "I wasn't to give this las' one to you less'n he neveh come back. An Mis' Virgie, Doctoh Carey won't neveh come back no mo'. But I kaint tell you yet jus' why he done taken hisself to the Fillippians, not yet."

"Why do you think he will never come back? You think Thaine will come home again, don't you?" Virginia queried.

"Oh, yas'm! yas'm! Misteh Thaine, he'll come back all right. But hit's done fo'casted in my bones that Doctoh Horace won't neveh come. An' when he don't, I'll tell you why he leff'n Gra.s.s Riveh, Kansas, for the Fillippians."

CHAPTER XIX

THE "FIGHTING TWENTIETH"

Malolos and Bocaue's trenches know the Kansas yell; San Fernando and San Tomas the Kansas story swell; At Guiguinto's fiercest battle yon flag in honor flew; What roaring rifles kept it, all Luna's army knew; And high it swung o'er Caloocan, Bagbag and Marilao-- "Those raggedy Pops from Kansas" 'fore G.o.d they're heroes now.

--Lieutenant-Colonel E. C. Little.

Night had fallen on the city of Manila. Before it lay the bay whose waters lapped softly against pier and shipping. Behind it in the great arc of a circle stretched the American line of military outposts, guarded by sentinels. Beyond that line, north, east, and south, there radiated a tangle of roads and trails through little villages of nipa huts, past rice fields and jungles, marshes and rivers, into the very heart of Luzon.

Manila was under American military government, but Luzon was in insurrection against all government, and a network of rebellious lines of enemies fretted every jungle, hid in every village, intrenched itself in every rice field, and banked its earthworks beyond every river. While Emilio Aguinaldo, the shrewd leader of an ignorant, half-savage peasantry, plotted craftily with his a.s.sociates for the seizure of the rich capital of Luzon and dreamed of the autocratic power and heaps of looted treasure that he should soon control. For weeks in sight of the American outposts, the Filipinos had strengthened their trenches, and established their fortifications, the while they bided the hour of outbreak and slaughter of the despised Americanos, and the seizing of the rich booty afterward.

Upon the Tondo road, running north from Manila to Caloocan, Thaine Aydelot, with a Kansas University comrade, was doing silent sentinel duty.

The outpost was nearly a mile away from a bridge on the outskirts of Manila. In the attack imminent, this bridge would be one of the keys to the city, and the command had been given to hold it against all invaders at any cost.

Between Thaine and the bridge was a stretch of dusty road, flanked on one side by nipa huts. On the other side were scattered dwellings, tall shrubbery, and low-lying rice fields, beyond which lay the jungle.

Before the young sentinel the road made a sharp bend, cutting off the view and giving no hint to the enemy around this bend of how strong a force might be filling the road toward the bridge.

Thaine knew that around that bend and behind the rice d.y.k.es and in the nearby trenches were Filipino insurgents with finger on the trigger ready to begin an a.s.sault. But until the first gun of the first battle is fired, battle seems impossible to the young soldier.

As Thaine turned from the dim road, he caught the glint of starlight on the edge of a rice swamp. He wanted to fight Filipinos tonight, not memories. But the memory of the Aydelot grove and the water lilies opening their creamy hearts to the moonlight, and Leigh Shirley in her white dress with her cheeks faintly pink in the clear shadows, all swept his mind and challenged him to forget everything else.

The same grip on a principle, coupled with a daring spirit and love of adventure that had brought old Jean Aydelot to the Virginia colony long ago, and had pushed Francis Aydelot across the Alleghanies into the forests of the Ohio frontier, and had called Asher Aydelot to the unconquered prairies of the big West--the same love of adventure and daring spirit and belief in a cause bigger than his own interests had lured Thaine Aydelot on to the islands of Oriental seas. With the military schooling and unschooling where discipline tends to make a soldier, and absence of home influence tends to make the careless rowdy, the sterling uprightness of the Aydelots and the inborn gentility of the Thaines kept the boy from the Kansas prairies a fearless gentleman. Withal, he was exuberantly pleased with life, as a young man of twenty-one should be. He lived mostly in the company of Kansas University men, and with the old University yell of "Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U!" for their slogan, they stood shoulder to shoulder in every conflict.

Lastly, he was a hero-worshiper at the shrine of his colonel, Fred Funston, and his captain, Adna Clarke; while in all the regiment, the fair face of young Lieutenant Alford seemed to him most gracious. Alford was his soldier ideal, type of the best the battlefield may know. And, even if all this admiration did have in it much of youthful sentimentalism, it took nothing from his efficiency when he came to his place on the firing line.