Adventure, November 18, 1917
FOLLOWING our Camp-Fire custom, Clyde
making its evening meal on the body of my
B. Hough, rises and introduces himself on the mother’s son.
occasion of his first story in Adventure:
AT NINETEEN I lied my way past a
Regarding my story, “Darcy Deserts.”
recruiting officer and joined the Eleventh
The anthill torture referred to was, on several Cavalry, a new regiment then being formed at occasions, meted out to American soldiers by Fort Myer, Va. After some preliminary
the insurgents. In the early days of the training the Eleventh was sent, via Suez Canal insurrection a certain officer (I don’t to the Philippines.
remember his name) was captured by the
For the next two years I graced the
Filipinos and held for several months. In hills of Luzon and played tag with the little writing up his experience in one of the Brown Men. At the expiration of my magazines he expressed the belief that he enlistment in the cavalry I returned to the would have been executed had it not been for States, put on the brakes at St. Louis long
a large cross tattooed on his chest. The natives enough to see the Fair and then re-enlisted in seemed to fear him on that account. Otherwise the Marine Corps. Did guard duty, as a
my story is purely imaginary.
marine, in San Francisco during, the fire and earthquake and, believe me, that was the
ABOUT myself there is not much to tell. I
nastiest little party I ever attended. I
was born on a small farm in Anson County, N.
succeeded in making the officers of the
C. I think I was born with the wanderlust
Marine Corps think I was a good sergeant. But boiling in my blood. At any rate the farm was was finally discharged on account of a heart too small, too slow or something. So at the
that refuses to recognize, speed laws.
ripe old age of fourteen I drove the cows to pasture one Sunday morning, turned them in,
SINCE then I have been in California making
fastened the gate and kept going.
a living in ways too numerous to mention.
The next few years were divided And by the way, my name is pronounced just between going to sea, hoboing and working in as though it was spelled Huff. No, I am not
cotton-mills. It was my boast that I never
German. My forefathers came from Holland in
worked in any one mill longer than two 1600.
weeks.
I think that’s about all so I’m going to
One of my hobo trips took me to the
roll a smoke and crawl under the blanket.
Everglades in Florida, where I stayed awake
Buenos noches, hombres.
all night, one night, keeping a fire going to prevent a somewhat insistent panther from
Adventure, November 18, 1917
OW Darcy was a peaceable man. That
In his ears still rang the tantalizing chorus of is, more peaceable than an Irishman
snickers and chuckles that had been flung after Nor a soldier is apt to be. But one him as he left the squad-room. At noon he afternoon, in barracks at Vigan, “Bully” avoided his roommates and ate at the guard-Willets called him a name—a name that table, sullen, silent.
means fight—and when the Bully next found
The afternoon heat was even greater
himself he found, also, that he was minus two than that of the morning and Darcy’s grouch
front teeth.
grew apace. His hands were sore and he was
The next morning at “office hours”
beginning to see red. In the squad-room, that Colonel Brady sentenced Darcy to pull weeds
night, he got all the “ragging” he had expected or the parade-ground with his bare hands for and bore it without visible resentment. He had three days.
done what he had sworn not to do and felt that
“I will not tolerate disorderly conduct
he deserved the “ragging.” Nevertheless it was in quarters,” the colonel concluded and turned hard to stand even for one evening.
to his morning mail.
Some time that night, flat on his
Darcy went back to his squad-room
stomach, Darcy wormed his way past the line
and to add to his humiliation learned that
of sentries. He took with him, a belt, a
Willets had gone free; no charge having been revolver, one hundred rounds of ammunition
made against him. Then Darcy, in his anger at and enough to eat for two days. Less than a
the injustice of the whole affair, swore by all mile from town, in an open field, he hid in the his Irish ancestors that he’d pull not a weed.
shed of an old cane mill, knowing that
But discipline is a mighty factor in the army, absolute safety lay in his very nearness to the so when, half an hour later, the police sergeant barracks. Here he remained two days, waiting told Darcy it was time to go to work he
for any possible searching party to become
donned his brown fatigue uniform and went.
discouraged and return to quarters.
All morning the low-hanging, yellow
About ten o’clock on the third night of
sun seared his bent back and gripped at the
his desertion, Darcy left the shed and started base of his brain. His thoughts ran to mutiny.
south. He was making his way slowly and
Darcy Deserts
3
carefully through tall grass along the bank of a the idea came like a shock. Yell as loud as he great ravine not four hundred yards from an
could—that was the only thing to do. It would outpost where he had often done duty. bring the bolo down on his throat and end the Suddenly he stopped, tensed, and stood dead
whole nasty business. A few moments before
still. Had he heard some one move? He was
he had kept silent so they would not kill him not sure—not until it was too late—until then and there. But then he had not realized; something sailed out of the grass, lasso-now he had and he wanted just that.
fashion, and jerked him off his feet.
He drew in his breath to yell, and as he
All he was sure of then, was that his
did, the man with the bolo stooped and cut the mouth was full of hair. They had thrown a
rope that bound his legs. This action checked dogskin over his head and face and drawn it
the cry on his lips. Why it did is hard to tell.
tight. A half dozen or more hands laid hold of Perhaps it was not the action. Perhaps—well, him from all sides. His belt and revolver were would they kill him if he did hablar? Or peeled off. His arms and legs were bound with would it merely serve, to bring the guard and a rough grass-rope. Then they carried him into term in prison and, after that a “yellow
the jungle. He knew it was the jungle for he discharge?” Anyway he of the bolo motioned
felt the branches slash his hands as the Darcy to get to his feet and he did.
“gugus” ran. He did not know how far they
The gugus formed in single file with
went—it seemed like miles to him for he was
Darcy in the center and moved off through the slowly suffocating—before they dropped him
dense jungle. The leader walked directly
to the ground and one of them hissed in his
behind the prisoner with his drawn bolo
ear——
&n
bsp; threateningly near. And Darcy promised
“No hablar.”
himself with each step that at the next he
And as they untied the dogskin he felt
would take a chance and cry the alarm. But
the keen, cold edge of a bolo laid lightly
like tomorrow the next step never came and
against his jugular vein. Had he been of a
soon he heard the leader’s bolo rattle home in mind to cry out, he needed no other warning.
its bamboo sheath. Then he knew they were
The sight of other butchered soldiers was still out of hearing of the barracks and that he had fresh in his memory and he had no inclination lost his only hope of dying a white man’s
to have them practise their skill on him. He death.
knew now that he was in the hands of
As well as he could judge it was then
Malavete’s notorious ladrones. So he thanked about eleven o’clock, and they traveled the
God for the chance to breathe pure air again rest of the night without a halt. Their way lay and lay quiet.
over foot-wide trails, around steep
For two or three minutes an ape-
mountainsides, down deep ravines and along
looking Igorot, the leader, stood over him
the dry beds of rivers that would be raging
fondling a naked bolo that flashed and torrents when the rainy season came on.
shimmered in the moonlight. And Darcy tried
Darcy had been in the mountains and
to think of a plan—some scheme—some trick
jungles most of his time in the Islands, and to outwit those dog-eating pygmies, but his
with his regiment had made some record-
brain could not work, it was frozen with breaking hikes. But those wiry little devils fear—not fear of death but hours of slow
with their skinny bow-legs and bare feet,
torture staked out on an ant-hill with his body could hike rings around anything he had ever gashed all over.
seen. He was all in when they finished the trip Then the ice in his brain melted and
with a two-hundred foot climb and raised their
Adventure
4
heads above the brink of a straight-up-and-
of it now. He spit out his betel-nut viciously, down cliff. It was just before sunup and there threw away the burned-out cigaret and lit a
before them stood Malavete’s barrio, ragged fresh one. That meant business and he went
and dirty against the red-streaked eastern sky.
straight to the point, though the same devil’s Usually things look cleaner and better
politeness was still in evidence.
in the early morning. It is then that a shabby
“Perhaps,”
he
said, “there is a pack
frame house can be dreamed a castle, and a
train coming up from Vigan soon. The señor
common yard-fence the castle walls. But no
would likely know when. Or better still, the poet’s fancy could have changed that huddle
señor may know the easiest and safest way to of nipa shacks. It stood out offensively on the reach the stores at the big American barracks.
clean mountain-top like a running sore on a
And remember, señor, only the truth will
beautiful face. And the stench of it was count in these matters. If our people are ill-sickening.
advised—well, the señor has probably heard
But the gugus had not brought Darcy
of other soldiers who lived many hours longer there to see the sights. They marched him
than they wished. But if the señor gives honest straight through the barrio to Malavete’s casa.
and faithful information, the señor shall come And the whole gibbering breech-clouted tribe to no harm—what say you, señor?”
tumbled out of their shacks and followed
behind. In his casa Malavete sat cross-legged FOR a few brief seconds Darcy hesitated.
on the bamboo floor and chewed betel-nut and Then came the thought of old Jerry Darcy.
smoked a cigaret. He looked at Darcy with
Some two hundred years ago old Jerry had put cunning eyes that peered out from a face in quite a little unpleasant time on the wheel, which might have been carved from the rough, all because he refused to gossip with the
brown bark of a dead oak tree. Then he raised English about matters concerning Ireland. And a vino-palsied hand and spoke in the dialect of young Darcy said to himself:
his tribe.
“The Darcys of today can stand just as
“Ah,” he said, “the saints have sent a
much as could the Darcys of two hundred
stranger amongst us. May the saints be years ago.”
praised.”
So he answered Malavete not at all,
Then to Darcy:
but stared, in silence, with the blankest look
“The señor is a soldier. May we ask
he could assume.
what is the señor’s rank?! Not, that we would Malavete rose, walked to the back of
be impertinent, but that we may entertain the the room and opening a door turned to Darcy.
señor according to his station.”
“Will the señor look?”
“No sabe,” and Darcy shook his head.
It was a command in the guise of a
Malavete knew that Darcy understood
question.
what he had said as well as Darcy knew that
Darcy was led across the room to the
Malavete was making sport of him for open door. Three walls and a roof had been amusement.
joined onto tie main house. There was no floor
“It is unfortunate,” he resumed, “that
and no windows. But by the little light that the señor does not understand our speech.
drifted in through crevices he saw three white Who knows? we might become congenial men lying on the bare ground. Except for an friends?”
old shirt on each they were naked. And where There had been humor of a sort in the
spots of light fell on their bodies the skin play-acting but, evidently, Malavete was tired showed chalky as though there was no blood
Darcy Deserts
5
underneath. The joints were the largest parts big American barracks, the lye will cease to of their limbs. They made no move or sound
drip. If the señor; does not discover the way, and Darcy wondered if they were dead.
later we will remove the señor’s shirt and let
“They live,” said Malavete divining the lye drip on other parts of the señor’s naked the other’s thought, “and yet they wish not to back.”
live. You Americans are a curious people.
With that he shambled away toward
Why, we dare not leave a bolo or anything
his casa, the servants carrying the big sharp in their reach,”—a silence and then—
sunshade over him. The lye, accelerated by the
“come, señor, what say you?”
sun, began to bite in. Darcy tried to move his As before, Darcy gave no answer. head a little so that the drip would miss his Malavete understood the prisoner’s silence neck, but it was no use. The stakes on either and merely waved his men to take him away;
side held like a vise. Then he began to think of and Darcy knew what that meant.
the “easiest and safest way.”
They took him into the dirty little
Why not? What were the army or its
center square of the barrio, lashed him to a affairs to him? The next instant he hated
coconut tree and went back to their chief. The himself for the thought and remembered old
women and children stood around gaping and
Jerry. No! By the saint
s, he might be a
giggling, but Darcy was too tired even to be deserter but never a traitor. Old Jerry had
annoyed by them, and soon fell into sleep or stood the gaff; and he had as much nerve as
some sort of harassed unconsciousness. And
old Jerry any day.
when he awoke the sun was high in the eastern The lye was dripping with monotonous
sky at frying heat. The gugus were driving
regularity now, and the sun was driving each two-forked posts in the ground about the drop deeper and deeper. Once Darcy cried out length of a man apart.
with all the strength he had. But after that he This finished they laid a pole in the
took his tongue between his teeth and nearly forks from one post to the other. Then they
bit the end of it off trying to keep it still.
brought a clay pot filled with ashes, tied it to Minutes were eternities to him, though he had the pole so that it hung about four feet from been there less than an hour when Malavete
the ground. Next they poured water on the
returned and asked:
ashes; and by the time the water soaked
“Has the señor discovered the way?”
through and dripped from a small hole in the Darcy made no answer and Malavete ordered
bottom of the pot, it was strong lye. When all his men to loosen the stakes and ropes, stand was ready they staked Darcy out, face down,
the prisoner1 up and take off his shirt. To do with the back of his neck under the drip.
this, they cut the ropes that had bound his
Living God! He had expected the anti-
hands since the night before.
hill, but not this. This was pure, raw hell—a
“Ah, señor,” said Malavete, “is it not
torture to make men curse the mothers who
good to be unbound and free from the sting of bore them and the fathers who begat them.
the lye?”