the Filipino glanced back expecting the end, and the rapid change to satisfaction and triumphant ferocity as pursuer and pursued realized what had happened.  Then the race changed.  It was the Supervisor who panted wearily back toward his scattered fellows, and it was the Filipino with a kris to whose muscles hope of victory lent fresh energy.  Fortunately, this young constabulary lieutenant, who had been a non-commissioned officer of volunteers, saw what was going on, and picked off the Filipino with a long range shot from his rifle.  The kris was secured, and its beautiful blade and tortoise-shell scabbard, inlaid with silver, went as a present to Mrs. Wright when she visited the province.

Somewhere in his “Rulers of the South” Marion Crawford speaks of the wonderful rapidity with which news flies among the native population in warfare, and he cites as an illustration that “when Sir Louis Cavagnari was murdered in Cabul, in 1879, the news was told in the bazaar at Allahabad before the English authorities received it by telegraph, which then covered more than half the whole distance between the two places.”  This same condition beset the American officers in the Philippines.  Secretly as they might act, they found the news of their movements always in advance of them, and the crafty native hard to surprise.

Among the leaders in Panay a certain Quentin Salas who operated both in Antique and Iloilo provinces was noted for his daring and cruelty.  The American troops spent much time in pursuit of him, and among others the doughty Captain of volunteers.  The Captain said that Salas made his headquarters in a certain pueblo, and often word was brought that the insurrecto would be found there on a certain day.  The Captain tried all devices, forced marches, and feints on other pueblos, but to no purpose.  He always arrived to find his quarry gone, but breakfast waiting for him (the American) at the convento, or priest’s house.  The table was laid for just the right number of persons, and the priest was always affable and amused.  The Captain grew desperate.  He gave out false marching orders, and tried all the tricks he knew of.  Finally, he let it be known that he intended to march on Salas’s pueblo the next morning, and he did so, and actually arrived unexpectedly, or at least so nearly so that breakfast was not ready.  The Filipinos had assumed that his announcement cloaked some other invention, and had expected him to branch off at the eleventh hour.

The Captain searched the town from garret to cellar, but no Quentin Salas.  He unearthed, however, the usual score of paupers and invalids.  One of these was a man humped up with rheumatism, as only a Filipino decrepit can be.  The Americans finally departed, leaving this ruin staring after them from the window of a nipa shack.  Months afterward, when peace had been declared, the officer heard his name called in the government building at Iloilo, and saw a keen-eyed Filipino holding out his hand.