And this was the beginning of the bond. Pedro showed the Sergeant the house best suited for cuartel, the natural spot for a horse-corral, the watering place at the river. That night, after he had been dismissed and had eaten his rice and fish, Pedro squatted long upon the bamboo floor of his little hut, pondering in his rudimentary way over the day's events. It was a poor hut, small, astonishingly bare; for Pedro's wealth was below, beneath the high, post-elevated floor. There, laid crosswise upon sustaining poles, were his hunting spears, harpoons, and paddles; keel-up upon the ground his banca, long, sharp-prowed, reptilian, and, hanging from post to post in heavy folds, ensilvered with fish-scales, his great dragnet. But his mind was not upon his riches; what he tried to read within him was dark and shifting; this only he could draw plainly from it:--a passionate desire to serve that big, golden-haired man with the jingling spurs, the red bandana, the rakish sombrero, to serve, blindly, unquestioning, like a dog, with fatigue of body, and outpouring of sweat, and tongue-licking of boots. But even this feeling was not clear like a simple flame; athwart it there leaped a contradictory shadow. The smile; it was the smile. Pedro tried to consider it squarely, but that bewilderment which possessed him always when he attempted to read his soul, complicated with complications of which he had not the key, seized him with acute distress; and with an impatient gesture he brushed away the obsession, as he would a fly buzzing importunately before his eyes. He lingered long upon the clearer impulse, the idea of service, of devotion. "Caybigan," he murmured softly; "caybigan"--and in the balmy silence of the night the drawled syllables hung long with lingering sweetness.
Early the next morning he was about the cuartel, and when the Sergeant emerged, splendid in the rising sun, he was standing before him, alert of body, grave of eyes. "Hello, caybigan," shouted the Sergeant gaily; "going to help me, eh?" He pulled at his golden moustache; he smiled. A vague discomfort possessed Pedro; unconsciously he drew back one step in deer-like movement. But as the smile disappeared and the Sergeant stood there, pensive with the day's plans, the impulse to serve this being, to toil, suffer for him, again swelled within his heart in choking longing. They were together all that day. Pedro took the Sergeant over the whole pueblo, pointed out the natural points of defense, of vulnerability, showed him where the outposts should be placed, took him to the ford, circled wide about the huddle of huts, discovering all the hidden trails radiating out to the plains, the hills, toward the lairs of the Insurrectos.