It was not easy work, though much easier than lying prone and being shot to pieces. Even with random marksmanship and growing panic, the brown men were still sheltered, and many shots went home. Newt, clambering over a fence, saw at his shoulder a boy who used to sit at his side on the split-log bench at school. He saw the boy loosen his hold on the same fence and roll over and over in the rice-stubble, clawing at his breast, while his lips snarled and swore.
Then, sixty yards from the yellow rim of the trenches, the bugle rang out its most blood-quickening call, and, in answer, the line trembled and leaped forward, and mountain reticence broke at last in one prolonged mountain yell of fury and loosened passion.
And, as that barbaric howl of impending doom smote upon the ears of the Filipinos in their ordered trenches, they read in it a cue for swift exit, and their white-clad bodies began clambering out of the rifle-pits, and their brown legs began twinkling through the rice-fields behind.
The Kentuckians redoubled their pace. It was intolerable that the men whom they had left strewn along the rice-paddies should go unavenged. Yet, when they clambered across the trench fronts, it was to find them empty, save for those who lay dead.
For a moment, the victors halted, winded and almost exhausted at the trenches they had carried. Companies were as hopelessly jumbled and mixed as a galley of type that a compositor has dropped downstairs.
Private Newt Spooner and perhaps enough men to make a half-platoon, after a few moments of gasping and sweat-wiping, rose up and started on in the trail of the fleeing insurgents.
"Hold on there!" bellowed Sergeant Peter Spooner, for once losing his composure in a volley of profanity. "Where the hell do you think you're goin' to?"
"We're goin' atter 'em!" shrieked back Private Newton Spooner. "Come on, boys--we kin git 'em."
Major Falkins had seen the trouble and rushed up, his face steaming, but triumphant.
"Get back, damn you!" he ordered. "Get back to those trenches." He had neither time nor inclination to explain why pursuit was denied. Such matters as preserving division alignment were of no interest to these men.
For a moment, Newt Spooner hesitated, surveying his battalion commander with an insolent contempt, then he turned to the other restive privates.