es; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount
before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier;
troopers in blue shirts, with their mess-kits in their hands, running
across the street for rations; men in khaki everywhere, raising a
racket on pay-day, fraternizing with the Filipinos when off duty; poker
games in the barracks, with the army cot and blanket for a table; taps,
and the measured tread of sentries, and anon a startled challenge,
"Halt! Who's there?"--such were the days in Cagayan in 1901.

The blue sea, stretching out into the hazy distance, sparkled around
the little _nipa_-covered dock where commissary stores and sacks
of rice were piled. The native women, squatting on the ground, were
selling mangoes and bananas to the boys. "Cagayan Mag," who vended
the hot bottled beer for "jawbone," digging her toes into the dust,
was entertaining the surrounding crowd with her coarse witticisms. The
corporal of the guard, reclining in an easy steamer-chair, under
his tent extension, was perusing the news columns from the States,
by this time three months old. A sunburnt soldier, with his Krag upon
his shoulder, paced the dock, wearily doing the last hour of his guard.

"Do you-all like hawg-jowl and black-eyed peas?" drawled "Tennessee
Bill," shifting his bony form to a more comfortable position on
the rice-sack.

"Reckon I ort ter; I wuz bo'n in Geo'gy," said his comrade, as he
rolled a rice-straw paper cigarette.

After an interval of several minutes the same conversation was
repeated. Suddenly a sharp toot sent the echoes scudding back and
forth among the hills. A moment later the small transport, with the
usual blur of khaki in her bows, came swinging around the promontory.

"Pshaw! I thought it wuz the pay boat comin'" grumbled Bill.

Then, as the _Trenton_ pulled up to the dock, signs of activity began
to animate that place. The guard, with leveled bayonet, began to shoo
the "Gugus" off the landing. Down the hot road, invested in a cloud
of dust, an ambulance was coming, drawn by a team of army mules and
bringing the lieutenant quartermaster and his sergeants.

"Why, hello!" said Bill; "if here ain't little Wantz a-comin'. Got
his discharge an' gone married a _babay_."

The soldiers crowded around the ex-hospital corps man, who, still in
his khaki suit, was standing on the shore with a sad-looking Filipino
girl in tow. Her feet were bare and dusty, and she wore a turkey-red
skirt caught up