Honorably Discharged

by Hapsburg Liebe

Honorably Discharged

BY HAPSBURG LIEBE

An American soldier in the Philippines, with racial hatred prompting him, refuses to salute a negro officer and is dishonorably discharged from the army. He plans revenge, but weakens when his chance comes.

IT was hot, insufferably hot, there in San Fernando de la Union that afternoon. The palm fronds were as still as though they were marble; the flowers and the grass were dusty and wilted. The narrow streets were deserted save for a perspiring American patrol, and now and then, a prowling dog too utterly thin to furnish a family of Igorots with a half-decent meal. The Filipinos were taking their siestas on the bamboo floors of their houses; most of the two companies of the black Forty-eighth were laughing and singing and throwing dice in the shade of the fragrant ylang-ylangs; most of the third battalion of the white ——th were lounging, stripped of their blue shirts, about the old Spanish Government building which served them as quarters.

Private Dunwoody, Tennessee mountaineer, lay on his back on his cot. One hand held a wide blue handkerchief ready to mop his face; the other held a manual of arms before his keen, dark eyes—Dunwoody did want to be a good soldier. He had to spell his way through the little book, being almost entirely without education.

First Sergeant Bell walked to Dunwoody’s cot. He stood looking down upon the lanky hill man with a mixture of sympathy and something else on his countenance. Dunwoody knew he was there, but he didn’t seem to care anything about it. For to Dunwoody a man was a man, no more, no less; V-shaped sleeve chevrons—even shoulder straps, for that matter—counted for very little indeed, with Dunwoody.

“I’m afraid you’ve got yourself in to a little trouble, Dun,” Bell finally said. “You refused to salute a black lieutenant this morning, didn’t you?”

Dunwoody’s lean cheeks flared a proud and angry red. His eyes glittered and his thin, sensitive lips quivered. He flung the manual of arms to the floor and got quickly to his feet. The non-commissioned officer backed instinctively from the half-wild, uncouth, honest man from Tennessee’s hills.

“I shore did refuse!” Dunwoody snapped hotly. “I more ’n refused to s’lute him; I told him that if my hand ever went up to him, it would knock every speck o’ life outen him. And I meant it! What did he say about it, anyhow?”

“He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even report it. Major Lipsworthy saw it all; he told the captain to speak to you; the captain has sent me to tell you to come to his quarters. Now keep your head. Don’t get mad, for heaven’s sake! You’ve been a good soldier, a fine soldier. I want to keep you. Get ready now and go to Captain Blair.”

Dunwoody went pale. He stared at Sergeant Bell and was silent. Bell continued easily, “It’s not the man you’re supposed to salute, it’s the position he holds, the uniform he wears.”

“Saw it right off where you’re at!” clipped Dunwoody. “If they want the uniform s’luted, let ’em take it off and hang it on a bush and I’ll stand at ’tension and s’lute it until I’m as green as hell in the face, sir! All right, I’ll go down to the cap’n’s shack and I’ll tell the cap’n—and Major Lipsworthy, too, if he happens to be thar—the same as I’ve told you!”

Bell shook his head gloomily and walked away. Dunwoody slipped his blue shirt on, tightened his belt a notch more than he usually wore it, and went down to the Calle de la Concepcion, San Fernando’s principal street.

Captain Blair’s quarters were in a high-floored house of nipa and bamboo and hewn mahogany. Dunwoody climbed the ladder-like steps with a quick, nervous tread, entered by the low doorway and stood at attention. Captain Blair sealed an envelope, addressed it, threw it into a box and half turned in his folding campchair. He began to caress his brow with the air of a person who finds himself in a quandary.

“Did you want me?” asked the mountaineer.

His speech was stinging. The commander of company L took his hand from his brow and looked seriously toward Dunwoody.

“Yes, sir,” said he, “I wanted you. I’m going to put it plainly, without frills or garnishment: you will have to salute all commissioned officers, black or white. You’re in the army and you’ll have to abide by the rules and regulations of the army. In saluting a negro officer, you are saluting his position, his uniform, and not the man himself.”

Dunwoody went almost pallid. He raised his head a little higher.

“I won’t do it,” he declared in a low, bitter, determined voice. “I never will do it. I’d die first. I’d be burnt alive first. Thar hain’t enough power on earth, in heaven nor in hell, to make me do it. And a man as would do it, sir, hain’t got as much principle in him as a yaller dawg—which applies to you, Cap’n Blair, if you want to take it thataway!”

Captain Blair rose. He was astounded; for him, a commissioned officer, to be thus spoken to by a private soldier was an unheard-of thing! He stepped quickly toward Dunwoody—and Dunwoody, blind with rage, forgetting all that which he should have remembered, muttered a blood-red oath and knocked him down!

Captain Blair rose dazedly. His mouth and the back of his head were bleeding. He fingered the butt of his revolver as though half minded to use the weapon upon the man who had so savagely attacked him. Dunwoody stood silent and menacing, his fists clenched hard, his eyes shining and black.

Then there was a grave voice from the doorway: “An act which merits death, or such other punishment as a courtmartial may direct.”

It was Major Lipsworthy—stern, a strict disciplinarian, all of a soldier and nothing more or less. He bellowed for the corporal of the guard. He approached Captain Blair.

“Go to the hospital, Captain Blair,” he ordered gruffly. He looked toward Dunwoody. “Stand where you are. You’re under arrest.”

The captain climbed down the steps and went down the street. When he had gone, the negro lieutenant whom Dunwoody had refused to salute, entered. He walked up to the major, raised his right hand respectfully to his hat and said jerkily:

“Major, sir, I wish to say that I have no charges to prefer against this man. I am from the South, and I understand it all, sir. These may not be the words of an officer, sir, but they are the words of a man who tries to be white under his black hide.”

Major Lipsworthy frowned and began to twist at his upturned, iron-gray mustaches. Dunwoody stared at the negro as though he could not believe that which his own ears had heard. Then he spoke to the black lieutenant.

“You,” he said, “you’re a lot whiter than this here thing as calls hisself commander o’ the—”

"Hush!” roared Major Lipsworthy.

The corporal of the guard ran up the steps, took charge of Dunwoody, and led him to a cell in the old Spanish prison, which stood not far from Dunwoody’s former quarters.

Time dragged like an eternity to the mountaineer behind the bars of iron and the thick, strong walls of mildewed stone. No fate worse than imprisonment may come to the hill man. Dunwoody was silent, sullen, morose; there were few of those who held guard over him who did not feel in some unaccountable way afraid of him. Being primitive, a man whose religion was to believe in the doctrines of a square deal and an eye for an eye, of course Dunwoody planned vengeance—he planned it during the hot hours of the day and during the still watches of the night. If he were to be disgraced, then he would be fully, entirely, completely disgraced. No halfway doings for him!

When the day of the courtmartial came, Dunwoody’s expectations were realized. He was given the army’s yellow brand, a dishonorable discharge, which disfranchised him at home and made him less than a nobody. As he walked out of the vicinity of his former quarters, with his head held proudly and his eyes filled with fire, he knew that many were watching him go. And here Dunwoody made the most serious mistake of his life, perhaps. He thought he was the object of contempt, when he was really the object of much sincere sympathy. He was as desperate as a man may become.

Now, the mountaineer, Dunwoody, like a great many other and better educated American soldiers, was not without his sweetheart among the natives. Her name was Andrea Borja; she was half Spanish, and very pretty and charming in her way—a sort of brown Venus, she was. For him she had played the guitar and sung quaint songs in minors, a thousand times; a thousand times had she made and lighted cigarettes, and cooked arroz for him. Being, as he thought, utterly friendless among those of his own race, it was but natural for Dunwoody to turn to Andrea for comfort, for food, for songs and for cigarettes. So he slowly wended his way through the gathering twilight shades toward the thatched house in which Andrea lived with her mother and a man whom she called her father because he happened to be her mother’s husband.

Old Minia met him at the foot of the ladder, spat betel, and wrung his hand warmly. Dunwoody thrilled at the friendly touch.

“Where will I find the Senorita Andrea?” he whispered in Spanish. There were those there in San Fernando who had said more than once that Dunwoody could speak Spanish far better than he could speak English.

Minia spat betel again, turned, and pointed a lean forefinger toward the doorway above. Dunwoody climbed the ladder silently and entered the half dark room. He found Andrea sitting cross-legged on the slatted floor, combing her long black hair.

“Carissima!” said he, eagerly.

Andrea looked around, recognized the mountaineer, and sprang to her feet. That same moment saw her arms go about his sun-burned neck, saw his arms close about her bare, well-shaped shoulders. Then Andrea led him to a seat beside a window, and they sat down.

“That accursed prison!” muttered Andrea. “But now you are free—Maria mia, and I am glad! I tried to see you, carissimo, but they would not let me pass. I tried to take you food and cigarettes. They would not let me pass. There is anisada here; will you drink?”

Dunwoody said in two languages that he would.

Andrea rose, found a match and lighted a cocoanut-oil lamp; then she brought her American sweetheart a bottle almost full. Dunwoody drank deeply and passed the bottle back. Andrea gave him a lighted cigarette and dropped to the seat very close to him. He put an arm about her waist, and she smiled happily up into his eyes.

“I have been thrown out of the army, like a dog,” he told her.

“No!” cried Andrea.

“Yes!” declared Dunwoody. “It is so. I can never go back home now. I am disgraced among all Americans, forever disgraced. It was not right, chiquitica! There is but one thing left to me, and that is vengeance. And I will have vengeance!”

The liquor which he had drunk was beginning to magnify things. He looked down into Andrea’s now sober eyes and smiled for the first time in months. He tightened his arm about her—he was the drowning man, and she was the straw, one may say. A tear rolled down his cheek; Andrea wiped it away tenderly with a Chino-silk handkerchief and kissed him. Again did Dunwoody tighten his sinewy arm about her. Again did she kiss him.

“If I cannot go back home,” he said, a trifle thickly, “I must stay here. I don’t want to stay here alone, Andrea; it is not the usual thing, but—I want to marry you.”

“It is the anisada talking now!” said Andrea.

“No!” and Dunwoody shook his head. “How could I stay here alone, Andrea?”

Andrea’s dark face took on a look of supreme happiness. She rose, put a thin Chino-silk mantilla about her shoulders and took Dunwoody by the

“Let us go to the padre,” she smiled.

Dunwoody went to his feet. He staggered a little. He allowed Andrea to lead him to the padre, who married them and gave them his blessing.

They hurried back to the bamboo and nipa hut that Dunwoody now thought of as home. They had barely seated themselves beside the window, when old Benito Borja entered. He walked silently across the little room, stopped, and stood looking with searching eyes down upon the mountaineer’s flushed face.

“Señor,” he said in a low, grave voice, “I know everything. I heard all you said to Andrea, my daughter, now your wife. I ask you, señor, did you mean that which you said of vengeance?”

Dunwoody rose. He seemed very tall standing there before the slim little Ilocano. He shot his jaw out and took old Benito by both shoulders in a grip of iron. “I mean it,” he growled.

“Then you may have your vengeance very easily,” smiled Benito. “Come with me, señor. Don’t speak; don’t make a noise. All will be plain to you later.”

Benito gave to Andrea a glance full of meaning. Andrea stepped to Dunwoody and said to him sweetly:

"Go, husband! I will go with you.”

The three of them stole out of the hut and through the outskirts of the town. Benito, shrewd, cunning, led the way unerringly, even when they entered the hill country that lay to the east and to the north; not once did he pause, not once did he appear to be in doubt concerning direction. Dunwoody followed him closely, almost eagerly; and close behind Dunwoody walked the graceful brown Venus who called him her husband.

When they had covered some four miles since leaving the outer reaches of San Fernando, a thin Ilocano voice cried out sharply the challenge:

“Alto! Quien pasa?”

The trio halted. The leader answered in muffled tones:

“‘Sta bien, Gregorio. It is Captain Benito Borja and two friends—and one of them is an American.”

“Pasa,” said the man of the insurgent outpost.

Borja turned to Dunwoody. “Come,” he invited.

The three passed a little knot of brown men in ragged, dirty-white uniforms, and entered a winding carabao path that led through a thicket of bamboos and into a grassy valley. In this valley there was a campfire, and sitting about it Dunwoody saw five serious-looking Filipinos with crude epaulets on their shoulders and long Spanish sabres at their sides. Beyond them, a brown horde lay at rest.

Dunwoody, who had been the finest marksman in his regiment, had done some scouting. He had seen the much-wanted and notorious rebel, Beltran Angga, who was but little behind Emilio Aguinaldo and Luk Ban in generalship and in shrewdness. Among the five men gathered about the fire, Dunwoody recognized Beltran Angga!

The Filipinos rose and began to stare hard toward the mountaineer. Borja raised his hand.

“Hold, friends!” he said. “Do this man no harm. He is with us. I will explain, General Angga.”

He explained. The five officials shook hands with Dunwoody in true American fashion. Then the eight sat down, and Beltran Angga proposed to give Dunwoody a major's place.

"No,” objected the mountaineer. “I don’t want to ally myself with your army. What I want is vengeance. I want command of all these forces for one day, and that day is tomorrow. Give me that, and I’ll make a master stroke for both you and myself.”

“What are your plans, señor?” inquired the careful Beltran Angga, passing a handful of native cigarettes.

Dunwoody took a cigarette and lighted it from a brand that Andrea had taken from the fire.

“I’ve planned for months,” he said slowly, his native drawl creeping in to his Spanish. “Early in the morning I’ll send a message to Major Lipsworthy. That message will tell him that a big force is coming up the coast to attack the town. He’ll take his six hundred men and start down the coast to surprise the enemy, of course. While he’s gone, I’ll lead your forces into San Fernando and hide them in the upper stories of the buildings. When the Americans return, we’ll kill them all—we’ll have cover and every advantage—”

“I see,” smiled Angga. “It should work out well. It is a great idea, Señor. But it is hard for me to believe that you are in earnest, señor. Can you convince me?”

Dunwoody puffed hard at his cigarette before he answered.

“Suppose you stay at my side when I lead your forces into San Fernando, and at the first sign of treachery on my part, shoot me. What do you think of that?”

“My men are from this moment until sunset tomorrow, in your hands, señor,” declared Beltran Angga. “You are unarmed. What weapons do you wish?”

Dunwoody’s eyes glinted triumphantly. “I want a Krag rifle; one I’m used to,” he said. And he got it.

He withdrew from the fire and lay down on the grass, that he might sleep. Andrea, whom he had for the moment forgotten, followed him, sat down, and took his head in her lap. She began to caress his hair and to croon tenderly in her outlandish native dialect; but he was thinking, and he paid no attention to her—had her words been Spanish instead of Ilocano, he would not have heard what she said.

For vengeance was in his hands—a great vengeance, a blood-red vengeance. Oh, he would make them sorry: the officers for their trying and condemning him; the enlisted men for their looks of contempt. It was all upon their own heads. He had tried and tried hard, to be a worthy soldier. They wouldn’t let him. Very well, then, he would be something else.

He wished that he had just one little swallow of anisada. He went to sleep wishing that, and dreamed of seeing half-starved Igorot dogs gnawing the severed head of Major Lipsworthy.

He awoke at dawn. His head still lay in Andrea’s lap; Andrea’s head lay on his breast; she was sleeping peacefully. He took her by a bare shoulder and shook her gently. She sat up and smiled down upon him; then she kissed him. He rose and took up the Krag and the belt of cartridges the insurgent commander had given him. There was something magnificent in the feel of a rifle in his two strong hands.

“Chiquito!” murmured Andrea, very proudly.

“Chiquitica!” smiled Dunwoody.

Beltran Angga walked up. In his right hand he carried a stub-nosed, blue automatic pistol. He exhibited it threateningly.

“At the first show of treachery, Señor,” he frowned—“this!”

“My bargain,” replied Dunwoody. “Let us get ready. We will march to a point behind the hills that overlook San Fernando. The army will wait there, and you and I and my wife, will steal to the brow of the hill nearest the town. I will write the message there and Andrea will take it to the American commander; I would trust no one to hurt her; besides, she can tell a good story about my being wounded and at her house down the coast. You understand? When we see the Americans leave to the southward, we will fall back to our forces and march them through the gap in the hills and take possession of San Fernando.”

“I understand,” replied Beltran Angga, pleasedly.

The march was on almost before sunrise. At the head of the long, ragged, dirty-white column, walked Angga, Dunwoody, and Andrea; and Angga kept his automatic pistol ready to use at any moment.

Some little time later, the latter-named three persons crept to a point from which they could look down up on San Fernando. The mountaineer parted the bushes before him and bent forward. The sight of Old Glory floating in the fresh morning breeze made him go white. He stared silently, strangely fascinated, at the banner that meant so much to so many people. But it was no longer his flag, and why should he feel as he felt now? In spite of himself, he felt a great and utter sense of loneliness and of loss, and a mist came to his eyes. That he might be strengthened, he drew from his blouse pocket, his dishonorable discharge and looked at it—the yellow disgrace.

A gentle hand was placed on his elbow. A gentle voice whispered at his ear:

“What is the matter, husband?"

He turned to his wife, the tender, the affectionate, the brown Venus, the faithful unto death.

“Nothing—nothing,” he answered.

“Write the message, señor,” growled the voice of Beltran Angga, whom Dunwoody had, for the time being, forgotten.

Dunwoody turned his wide eyes once more upon the floating flag below. Then he shut his teeth together so tightly that the muscles of his jaws stood out plainly on his cheeks, sat himself down, took from his pocket a notebook, and scrawled the message to Major Lipsworthy. When he had finished it, he folded it twice and gave it into the hands of Andrea.

“Steal down to the left,” he said, “and enter the town from the south. Goodbye, carissima—wait, kiss me!”

Andrea kissed him quickly, fondly, and went.

When she had gone half an hour, Dunwoody and Beltran Angga saw six hundred Americans, one third of them black, march to the southward at a double-quick. Angga clapped a hand on the mountaineer’s shoulder.

“‘Sta bien!” he exulted. “Now, let us go back to our forces and lead them into San Fernando.”

Dunwoody glanced toward the ever ready automatic pistol; then he hastened with the insurgent officer at his heels, back to the waiting Filipinos.

The horde began to move, with Dunwoody and Angga at its head, toward the gap. Dunwoody had them close up from the rear, until they were marching fifty deep—and without any semblance of order. They went silently, as stealthily as a cloud in the night, stooping low in the grass. When the advance portion was almost through the pass, a great bass voice bellowed from the right hillside:

“Surrender!”

The insurgents stopped and sank to their knees, their rifles and bolos ready. Lined along the two hillsides were the six hundred Americans—the Filipinos were completely bottled up, beautifully trapped, without any hope of escape!

“Traidor!” screamed Beltran Angga, and turned, his face devilish, upon the mountaineer Dunwoody.

The two fired at the same time. Dunwoody saw the insurgent officer drop his pistol, seize his clothing over his heart, and sink, ashen and limp, to the ground.

Dunwoody then fell himself. Dazedly he knew that the brown men about him were laying down their arms; dimly he heard their mutterings of chagrin; then he closed his eyes to the streaming white light of the sun, and all became dark to him.

Dunwoody had not written to Major Lipsworthy the message he had intended to write. The sight of Old Glory had caused him to make a change in his plans.

The best of the old Spanish Government buildings in San Fernando de la Union was used as a hospital. It was surrounded by ylang-ylangs and palms, and flowering vines ran in riot about its cool and spacious balconies. Inside this building, on a little white bed close beside an open window, lay the mountaineer Dunwoody; and about him stood Major Lipsworthy, two grave-faced doctor and a nurse, and Captain Blair.

It was at sundown. Dunwoody opened his eyes and stared blankly upward. Slowly the light of reason came and he muttered feebly:

“You got ’em all?”

“Without a shot—there were no shots fired except by you and Beltran Angga,” answered Major Lipsworthy. “You killed Angga, Dunwoody.”

Then the major knelt beside the bed. He took from his pocket a blood-stained yellow document with a bullet hole in it and held it up before the mountaineer’s face. Dunwoody saw that the bullet that had pierced his left breast had cut away almost entirely the first three letters of the terrible word “Dishonorably"!

“Does that mean anything?” whispered the mountaineer.

“Everything!” said the major, in a voice that seemed strangely altered.

“Honorably discharged,” muttered Dunwoody. His black eyes shone with the light of delirium. He stretched his quivering hands toward the major. “Help me—to set up—quick—”

They put pillows to his shoulders and he smiled. His left hand fell to his side. He raised his right to his forehead, and stared half upward, as though at something the others might not see.

“I s’lute You,” he muttered, gasping—“Death, God, Eternity—I sa—lute—”

He fell back. Major Lipsworthy turned away blindly. The doctors covered the lifeless figure with a white cloth.

Underneath the window-ledge, on the outside, a heartbroken Filipino woman knelt, sobbing.