“To succeed in life,” he writes, “the youth of America have only to see an old man seated upon a railing and smoking a clay pipe. Then go up and ask him for a match.”
March, 1899
[The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 79, pp. 324–329.]
THE CLAN OF NO-NAME*
Unwind my riddle.
Cruel as hawks the hours fly;
Wounded men seldom come home to die;
The hard waves see an arm flung high;
Scorn hits strong because of a lie;
Yet there exists a mystic tie.
Unwind my riddle.
I
She was out in the garden. Her mother came to her rapidly. “Margharita! Margharita, Mister Smith is here! Come!” Her mother was fat and commercially excited. Mister Smith was a matter of some importance to all Tampa people, and since he was really in love with Margharita he was distinctly of more importance to this particular household.
Palm trees tossed their sprays over the fence toward the rutted sand of the street. A little foolish fishpond in the center of the garden emitted a sound of redfins flipping, flipping. “No, mamma,” said the girl; “let Mr. Smith wait. I like the garden in the moonlight.”
Her mother threw herself into that state of virtuous astonishment which is the weapon of her kind. “Margharita!”
The girl evidently considered herself to be a privileged belle, for she answered quite carelessly, “Oh, let him wait.”
The mother threw abroad her arms with a semblance of great high-minded suffering and withdrew. Margharita walked alone in the moonlit garden. Also an electric light threw its shivering gleam over part of her parade.
There was peace for a time. Then, suddenly, through the faint brown palings was stuck an envelope white and square. Margharita approached this envelope with an indifferent stride. She hummed a silly air, she bore herself casually, but there was something that made her grasp it hard, a peculiar muscular exhibition, not discernible to indifferent eyes. She did not clutch it, but she took it—simply took it in a way that meant everything, and, to measure it by vision, it was a picture of the most complete disregard.
She stood straight for a moment; then she drew from her bosom a photograph and thrust it through the palings. She walked rapidly into the house.
II
A man in garb of blue and white—something related to what we call bed-ticking—was seated in a curious little cupola on the top of a Spanish blockhouse. The blockhouse sided a white military road that curved away from the man’s sight into a blur of trees. On all sides of him were fields of tall grass, studded with palms and lined with fences of barbed wire. The sun beat aslant through the trees, and the man sped his eyes deep into the dark tropical shadows, that seemed velvet with coolness. These tranquil vistas resembled painted scenery in a theater, and, moreover, a hot, heavy silence lay upon the land.
The soldier in the watching place leaned an unclean Mauser rifle in a corner and, reaching down, took a glowing coal on a bit of palm bark handed up to him by a comrade. The men below were mainly asleep. The sergeant in command drowsed near the open door, the arm above his head showing his long keen-angled chevrons, attached carelessly with safety pins. The sentry lit his cigarette and puffed languorously.
Suddenly he heard from the air around him the querulous, deadly swift spit of rifle bullets; and an instant later the poppety-pop of a small volley sounded in his face, close, as if it were fired only ten feet away. Involuntarily he threw back his head quickly, as if he were protecting his nose from a falling tile. He screamed an alarm and fell into the blockhouse. In the gloom of it, men with their breaths coming sharply between their teeth were tumbling wildly for positions at the loopholes. The door had been slammed, but the sergeant lay just within, propped up as when he drowsed, but now with blood flowing steadily over the hand that he pressed flatly to his chest. His face was in stark yellow agony; he chokingly repeated: “Fuego! Por Dios, hombres!”
The men’s ill-conditioned weapons were jammed through the loopholes, and they began to fire from all four sides of the blockhouse, from the simple datum, apparently, that the enemy were in the vicinity. The fumes of burnt powder grew stronger and stronger in the little square fortress. The rattling of the magazine locks was incessant, and the interior might have been that of a gloomy manufactory if it were not for the sergeant down under the feet of the men, coughing out: “Por Dios, hombres! Por Dios! Fuego!”
III
A string of five Cubans, in linen that had turned earthy brown in color, slid through the woods at a pace that was neither a walk nor a run. It was a kind of rack. In fact, the whole manner of the men, as they thus moved, bore a rather comic resemblance to the American pacing horse. But they had come many miles since sunup over mountainous and half-marked paths, and were plainly still fresh. The men were all practicos—guides. They made no sound in their swift travel, but moved their half-shod feet with the skill of cats. The woods lay around them in a deep silence, such as one might find at the bottom of a lake.
Suddenly the leading practico raised his hand. The others pulled up short and dropped the butts of their weapons calmly and noiselessly to the ground. The leader whistled a low note, and immediately another practico appeared from the bushes. He moved close to the leader without a word, and then they spoke in whispers.
“There are twenty men and a sergeant in the blockhouse.”
“And the road?”
“One company of cavalry passed to the east this morning at seven o’clock. They were escorting four carts. An hour later, one horseman rode swiftly to the westward. About noon, ten infantry soldiers with a corporal were taken from the big fort and put in the first blockhouse, to the east of the fort. There were already twelve men there. We saw a Spanish column moving off toward Mariel.”
“No more?”
“No more.”
“Good. But the cavalry?”
“It is all right. They were going a long march.”
“The expedition is a half league behind. Go and tell the general.”
The scout disappeared. The five other men lifted their guns and resumed their rapid and noiseless progress. A moment later no sound broke the stillness save the thump of a mango, as it dropped lazily from its tree to the grass. So strange had been the apparition of these men, their dress had been so allied in color to the soil, their passing had so little disturbed the solemn rumination of the forest, and their going had been so like a spectral dissolution, that a witness could have wondered if he dreamed.
IV
A small expedition had landed with arms from the United States, and had now come out of the hills and to the edge of a wood. Before them was a long-grassed rolling prairie marked with palms. A half mile away was the military road, and they could see the top of a blockhouse. The insurgent scouts were moving somewhere off in the grass. The general sat comfortably under a tree, while his staff of three young officers stood about him chatting. Their linen clothing was notable from being distinctly whiter than that of the men who, one hundred and fifty in number, lay on the ground in a long brown fringe, ragged—indeed, bare in many places—but singularly reposeful, unworried, veteran-like.
The general, however, was thoughtful. He pulled continually at his little thin mustache. As far as the heavily patrolled and guarded military road was concerned, the insurgents had been in the habit of dashing across it in small bodies whenever they pleased, but to safely scoot over it with a valuable convoy of arms was decidedly a more important thing. So the general awaited the return of his practicos with anxiety. The still pampas betrayed no sign of their existence.
The general gave some orders, and an officer counted off twenty men to go with him and delay any attempt of the troop of cavalry to return from the eastward. It was not an easy task, but it was a familiar task—checking the advance of a greatly superior force by a very hard fire from concealment. A few rifles had often bayed a strong column for sufficient length of time for all strategic purposes. The twenty men
pulled themselves together tranquilly. They looked quite indifferent. Indeed, they had the supremely casual manner of old soldiers, hardened to battle as a condition of existence.
Thirty men were then told off, whose function it was to worry and rag at the blockhouse and check any advance from the westward. A hundred men, carrying precious burdens—besides their own equipment—were to pass in as much of a rush as possible between these two wings, cross the road, and skip for the hills, their retreat being covered by a combination of the two firing parties. It was a trick that needed both luck and neat arrangement. Spanish columns were for ever prowling through this province in all directions and at all times. Insurgent bands—the lightest of light infantry—were kept on the jump, even when they were not incommoded by fifty boxes, each one large enough for the coffin of a little man, and heavier than if the little man were in it, and fifty small but formidable boxes of ammunition.
The carriers stood to their boxes, and the firing parties leaned on their rifles. The general arose and strolled to and fro, his hands behind him. Two of his staff were jesting at the third, a young man with a face less bronzed, and with very new accoutrements. On the strap of his cartouche were a gold star and a silver star, placed in a horizontal line, denoting that he was a second lieutenant. He seemed very happy; he laughed at all their jests, although his eye roved continually over the sunny grasslands, where was going to happen his first fight. One of his stars was bright, like his hopes; the other was pale, like death.
Two practicos came racking out of the grass. They spoke rapidly to the general; he turned and nodded to his officers. The two firing parties filed out and diverged toward their positions. The general watched them through his glasses. It was strange to note how soon they were dim to the unaided eye. The little patches of brown in the green grass did not look like men at all.
Practicos continually ambled up to the general. Finally he turned and made a sign to the bearers. The first twenty men in line picked up their boxes, and this movement rapidly spread to the tail of the line. The weighted procession moved painfully out upon the sunny prairie. The general, marching at the head of it, glanced continually back, as if he were compelled to drag behind him some ponderous iron chain. Besides the obvious mental worry, his face bore an expression of intense physical strain, and he even bent his shoulders, unconsciously tugging at the chain to hurry it through this enemy-crowded valley.
V
The fight was opened by eight men who, snuggling in the grass within three hundred yards of the blockhouse, suddenly blazed away at the bed-ticking figure in the cupola and at the open door, where they could see vague outlines. Then they laughed and yelled insulting language, for they knew that, as far as the Spaniards were concerned, the surprise was as much as having a diamond bracelet turn to soap. It was this volley that smote the sergeant and caused the man in the cupola to scream and tumble from his perch.
The eight men, as well as all other insurgents within fair range, had chosen good positions for lying close, and for a time they let the blockhouse rage, although the soldiers therein could occasionally hear, above the clamor of their weapons, shrill and almost wolfish calls coming from men whose lips were laid against the ground. But it is not in the nature of them of Spanish blood, and armed with rifles, to long endure the sight of anything so tangible as an enemy’s blockhouse without shooting at it—other conditions being partly favorable. Presently the steaming soldiers in the little fort could hear the sping and shiver of bullets striking the wood that guarded their bodies.
A perfectly white smoke floated up over each firing Cuban, the penalty of the Remington rifle, but about the blockhouse there was only the lightest gossamer of blue. The blockhouse stood always for some big, clumsy, and rather incompetent animal, while the insurgents, scattered on two sides of it, were little enterprising creatures of another species, too wise to come too near, but joyously raging at its easiest flanks and dirling the lead into its sides in a way to make it fume and spit and rave like the tomcat when the glad free-band foxhound pups catch him in the lane.
The men, outlying in the grass, chuckled deliriously at the fury of the Spanish fire. They howled opprobrium to encourage the Spaniards to fire more ill-used, incapable bullets. Whenever an insurgent was about to fire, he ordinarily prefixed the affair with a speech. “Do you want something to eat? Yes? All right.” Bang! “Eat that.” The more common expressions of the incredibly foul Spanish tongue were trifles light as air in this badinage, which was shrieked out from the grass during the spin of bullets and the dull rattle of the shooting.
But at some time there came a series of sounds from the east, that began in a few disconnected pruts and ended as if an amateur was trying to play the long roll upon a muffled drum. Those of the insurgents in the blockhouse-attacking party who had neighbors in the grass turned and looked at them seriously. They knew what the new sound meant. It meant that the twenty men who had gone to the eastward were now engaged. A column of some kind was approaching from that direction, and they knew by the clatter that it was a solemn occasion.
In the first place, they were now on the wrong side of the road. They were obliged to cross it to rejoin the main body, provided, of course, that the main body succeeded itself in crossing it. To accomplish this, the party at the blockhouse would have to move to the eastward until out of sight or good range of the maddened little fort. But, judging from the heaviness of the firing, the party of twenty who protected the east were almost sure to be driven immediately back. Hence travel in that direction would become exceedingly hazardous. Hence a man looked seriously at his neighbor. It might easily be that in a moment they were to become an isolated force and woefully on the wrong side of the road.
Any retreat to the westward was absurd, since primarily they would have to widely circle the blockhouse, and, more than that, they could hear even now, in that direction, Spanish bugle calling to Spanish bugle far and near, until one would think that every man in Cuba was a trumpeter and had come forth to parade his talent.
VI
The insurgent general stood in the middle of the road gnawing his lips. Occasionally, he stamped a foot and beat his hands passionately together. The carriers were streaming past him, patient, sweating fellows, bowed under their burdens, but they could not move fast enough for him when others of his men were engaged both to the east and to the west, and he, too, knew from the sound that those to the east were in a sore way. Moreover, he could hear that accursed bugling, bugling, bugling in the west.
He turned suddenly to the new lieutenant, who stood behind him, pale and quiet. “Did you ever think a hundred men were so many?” he cried, incensed to the point of beating them. Then he said longingly: “Oh, for a half an hour! Or even twenty minutes!”
A practico racked violently up from the east. It is characteristic of these men that, although they take a certain roadster gait and hold it for ever, they cannot really run, sprint, race. “Captain Rodriguez is attacked by two hundred men, señor, and the cavalry is behind them. He wishes to know—”
The general was furious; he pointed. “Go! Tell Rodriguez to hold his place for twenty minutes, even if he leaves every man dead.”
The practico shambled hastily off.
The last of the carriers were swarming across the road. The rifle-drumming in the east was swelling out and out, evidently coming slowly nearer. The general bit his nails. He wheeled suddenly upon the young lieutenant. “Go to Bas at the blockhouse. Tell him to hold the devil himself for ten minutes and then bring his men out of that place.”
The long line of bearers was crawling like a dun worm toward the safety of the foothills. High bullets sang a faint song over the aide as he saluted. The bugles had in the west ceased, and that was more ominous than bugling. It meant that the Spanish troops were about to march, or perhaps that they had marched.
The young lieutenant ran along the road until he came to the bend which marked the range of sight from the blockhouse. He drew his machete, his stunning n
ew machete, and hacked feverishly at the barbed wire fence which lined the north side of the road at that point. The first wire was obdurate, because it was too high for his stroke, but two more cut like candy, and he stepped over the remaining one, tearing his trousers in passing on the lively serpentine ends of the severed wires. Once out in the field, and bullets seemed to know him and call for him and speak their wish to kill him. But he ran on, because it was his duty, and because he would be shamed before men if he did not do his duty, and because he was desolate out there all alone in the fields with death.
A man running in this manner from the rear was in immensely greater danger than those who lay snug and close. But he did not know it. He thought, because he was five hundred—four hundred and fifty—four hundred yards away from the enemy and the others were only three hundred yards away, that they were in far more peril. He ran to join them because of his opinion. He did not care to do it, but he thought that was what men of his kind would do in such a case. There was a standard, and he must follow it, obey it, because it was a monarch, the Prince of Conduct.
A bewildered and alarmed face raised itself from the grass, and a voice cried to him: “Drop, Manolo! Drop! Drop!” He recognized Bas and flung himself to the earth beside him.
“Why,” he said panting, “what’s the matter?”
“Matter?” said Bas. “You are one of the most desperate and careless officers I know. When I saw you coming I wouldn’t have given a peseta for your life.”