The men don’t want to leave the caves. It is cool inside during the day and there is water running, cold water, in one of them. The American is fevered, mumbling, and sleeps through the first day inside. Fulanito is strutting, proud of his capture, for even if the American is a negro he might be worth somebody in a trade. There was trading in the early days of the campaign, when they were still an army, a half-dozen insurgentes descalzos equal to one American captain. Orestes comes back to report the American column has in fact marched on over the mountains toward Subig and there seem to be no more behind them. The woman from Las Ciegas brings the American water twice without being told to.
The fever of the negro breaks on the afternoon of the second day. Diosdado goes to sit by him.
“Do you understand your situation?” he asks, speaking slowly.
“I got to carry or you gone shoot me.”
Diosdado smiles. “We do not wish to do this. We should be fighting on the same side, you and I.”
“We’re not.”
The man is not stupid. Diosdado asks the woman from Las Ciegas, who speaks Zambal and Tagalog, to bring some of the broiled kamote left from the morning meal, then watches him eat.
“Do you like these?”
“Like eatin em more than carryin em,” says the American. “You a general?”
“Teniente. A lieutenant—in name only. As we have disbanded the army, rank is no longer so formal.”
“Where you learn to talk?”
“In Hongkong. From the British.”
He resembles the mountain negritos in the nap of his hair and the shade of his skin, but his features are what Diosdado guesses is a combination of the African and the European. The man cocks his head as he looks back, calculating.
“How you mix?”
“In Zambales many of us are partly Chinese. And I have a Spanish grandfather on my mother’s side of the family,” he explains. “You, on the other hand, are a Royal Scot.”
The man almost smiles. “They call me Roy in the company.”
“And why do you fight for them?”
It is what he has been wanting to ask, what truly puzzles him, but suddenly out loud it sounds rude.
Royal Scott considers, shrugs slightly. “S’what I signed up to do.”
“But why?”
“Best job they offerin.”
“A job killing people you know nothing about.”
“All I got to know is they shoot at me and I shoot back.” The man softens his voice. “I’m a p’fessional soldier, Regular Army,” he says, face growing blank with belief. “You fight who they say to fight.”
“A mercenary.”
“Pay aint bad, when it comes.”
“Did you ever think,” asks Diosdado, trying to make it sound offhand, “of doing what we have done? Defying your oppressors?”
“You mean the white folks?”
“Of course.”
“Quick way to get yourself hung.”
“But your comrades here, men of color, are trained soldiers, they have arms—”
“Back home they got eight, nine white folks for every one of us. Got more guns than anybody can count, got a navy, got cannons. You seen em, seen what they can do—”
“Somebody is fighting back. They shot your president.”
The American’s face reveals very little, the information seeming to confuse more than to shock or upset him.
“Colored man do it?”
“No.”
“That’s good, then. Colored man shoot the President, there be hell to pay.”
“If you join with us,” says Diosdado, “fight with us, you would be a free man.”
“Free to go home?”
Diosdado can think of nothing to counter this. No, the man is not stupid.
He looks at his soldiers, most of them sitting at the mouth of the cave, moving as little as possible, making grim jokes with each other in soft voices. He is not certain that a one of them could articulate a vision of the future they are fighting for, but each, he knows, would risk his life unthinkingly for any of the others.
“Mule don’t care which side is loadin weight on his back, and a mule don’t kill nobody,” says the American. “Just think bout me like I’m a mule.”