“Some awful inner hunger,” Bedient whispered hours afterward.  “You see, he couldn’t talk—­as you and I do....  I’ve noticed it so long—­that these men can’t talk to one another—­only swear and joke.”

Early the next morning Cairns awoke, doubtless missing Bedient subconsciously.  It was in the first gray, an hour before Healy kicked his outfit awake.  Bedient was back in camp in time to start breakfast, having made a big detour to reach the base of the gorge.  It wasn’t a thing to speak about, but he had made a pilgrimage to the pit where the farrier had fallen....  Another time, Cairns awoke in the same way.  It was the absence of Bedient, not the actual leaving, that aroused him.  The Train had camped in a little nameless town.  Cairns, this time, found his companion playing with a child, at the doorway of one of the shacks of the village.  Inside, was an old man sick with beri-beri—­swollen, features erased, unconscious; and an old woman who also had been too weak to flee before the American party.  These two, the child, and a few pariah dogs were all that remained.  You could have put the tiny one in a haversack comfortably.  A poor little mongrel head that shone bare and scabby in places, but big black eyes, full of puzzles and wonderings; and upon his arms and legs, those deep humors which come from scratching in the night.  The infant sat upon a banana leaf—­brown and naked and wonderful as possible—­and Bedient knelt before him smiling happily, and feeding hard-tack that had been softened in bacon-gravy.

Cairns saw the old woman’s face.  It was sullen, haggard.  The eyes were no strangers to hunger nor hatred.  She watched the two Americans, as might a crippled tigress, that had learned at last how weak was her fury against chains.  He saw that same look many times afterward in the eyes of these women of the riverbanks—­as the white troops moved past.  There was not even a sex-interest to complicate their hatred.

One day Thirteen overtook a big infantry column making a wide ford in the river before Bamban.  It was high noon, but they found during the hold-up, a bit of shade and breeze on a commanding hill.  Cairns and Bedient kicked off their shoes into the tall, moist grass, and luxuriously poked their feet into the coolness; and presently they were watching unfold a really pretty bit of action.

A thin glittering cloud of smoke across the river showed where the trenches of the natives were.  The Americans in the river, held their rifles and ammunition-belts high, and wriggled their hips against the butting force of the stream.  It all became very business-like.  The battalion first across, set out to flank the native works; a rapid-fire gun started to boom from an opposite eminence, and the infantry took to firing at the emptying trenches.  The Tagals were poked out of their positions, and in a sure leisurely way that held the essence of attraction.