258 
non-com. in charge, who being new to the busi- 
ness and quite as incredulous as his men, had 
permitted them to fall into that most pernicious 
of all practices—especially in an enemy’s coun- 
try—straggling. 
This little party then tramped along by twos 
and threes strung out for nearly a mile, pipes in 
mouth, hands in pockets, whistling and singing 
as they went and worse, with their rifles, which 
should have been in their hands ready for use, 
slung over their backs, a position from which it 
takes at least a minute or two to remove them 
when encumbered with haversack, canteen and 
blanket roll; and in Moroland much, very much, 
may happen in a minute or two. 
Three of these recruits had just reached a 
point in the road from which the smoke of Camp 
Ten could be seen over the tops of the trees, 
when rounding the next bend above and coming 
toward them they saw a party of twelve or 
fourteen Moros. 
To an old hand the appearance of these natives 
would have been a signal to turn down the 
safety-latch of his rifle and prepare to repel 
boarders; but to these three the fact that there 
FOREST.-AND ‘STREAM: 
[FEB. 17, 1906. 

men had really only paid the penalty of their 
own carelessness and that would have most likely 
been the end of it were it not for the fact that 
the Moros had secured two good rifles and 400 
rounds of ammunition, which lent a very differ- 
ent color to the affair. 
The commanding officer at Camp Ten, having 
duly reported the occurrence, things began to 
happen. 
The district commander over the telephone de- 
sired to be informed as to this, and the depart- 
ment commander wanted to know about that, 
while the general commanding the division at 
Manila kept the wires hot, to the exclusion of 
all other business, trying to find out the other, 
the upshot of it all being that the commanding 
officer at Camp Vicars was directed to make an 
investigation and take such steps as, in _ his 
opinion, were necessary to recover the rifles and 
punish the offenders. 
When Pershing received the dispatch order- 
ing him to act in the matter he swore softly to 
himelf and sent for his second in command, who, 
having reported and been told the news, pro- 
ceeded—over a glass of warm water and 

RUINS 
were no small boys nor produce-laden ponies 
with them and that every man had a kris in his 
hand or a campilan over his shoulder had no 
significance. They only saw an apparently peace- 
ful band of traders to whom they paid no atten- 
tion other than to gaze curiously at them, for 
they were the first wild Lake Moros they had seen. 
On came the Moros and on went the recruits 
until they were abreast of each other but on 
opposite sides of the road. Then a sharp com- 
mand from the leader of the natives, a flash of 
knives and two of the recruits were stretched 
on the ground cut in a dozen places, while the 
third—ripped from shoulder to hip—was speed- 
ing up the trail pursued by several natives who, 
however, abandoned the chase before they 
reached the turn in the road around which camp 
could be seen, and disappeared in the jungle. 
The wounded man, nearly exhausted from 
pain, fright and loss of blood, staggered into 
camp, which immediately became the scene of 
the greatest excitement. Companies rushed to 
arins, working parties were recalled, guards re- 
enforced, and almost before the surgeons had 
had time to remove the bloody outer clothing of 
the survivor, atleast 200 men were at the scene 
of the attack, or scouring the jungle for some 
sign of the natives who had made it. But beyond 
a few foot prints in the dust of the road and the 
bodies of the two unfortunates—minus their rifles 
and cartridge belts—no trace could be found, the 
Moros having vanished as completely as though 
the earth had opened and swallowed them. 
Now the loss of two recruits, while greatly 
to be deplored, of course, was of no very great 
consequence from a military point of view in a 
land where such things happened almost daily. 
To be sure attacks on troops along the trail 
could not be regarded with equanimity and were 
to be resented on general principles. But these 
OF FORT BINADYAN, WHERE THE MEETING TOOK 
PLACE, 
whisky—to join his chief in damning both Moros 
and recruits in chunks. 
For weeks Pershing had been working on and 
perfecting the details of an elaborately thought- 
out plan to bring Said y Ducimen, the high priest 
of Bayang, and one of the most rabidly hostile 
of all the natives, into the fold; and now, just 
as success was all but his, these fool recruits had 
to go and get themselves chopped up, and to him 
was assigned the task of recovering the rifles 
they had lost and punishing the offenders, which 
meant the utter demolition of all his cherished 
plans. For every Moro in the vicinity would in- 
stantly assume a position of either armed neu- 
trality or become actively hostile, the moment it 
was known that punitive expedition had left 
our camp. 
Oh, well, such is life in the tropics, so Per- 
shing took another pull at the warm water and 
whisky—our only consolation in time of trouble 
—and sent out runners for his secret service men, 
for “orders is orders,’ and must be obeyed, no 
matter what happens. 
That Pershing had a well organized and effi- 
cient force of spies we all knew, but who they 
were or how he had prevailed upon them to act 
none of us could learn. I knew two or three of 
them simply because I was occasionally, during 
Pershing’s absence, in temporary command of 
camp, and they had come to me to make their 
reports, but outside of these they were known 
only to himself. 
No one was very much surprised, therefore, 
when two or three days after the receipt of the 
order to act in the matter, Pershing told us that 
he had not only located the rifles but found out 
who had led the party that made the attack. This 
proved to be a Datto named Ahmi Benanning, 
owing allegiance to our nearest neighbor, the 
Sultan of Binadyan. 
The next thing to do was to have an inter- 
view with the Sultan, and, if possible, induce him 
to return the rifles and deliver the hostile Datto 
‘to us that he might be punished. 
A letter was accordingly dispatched requesting 
his highness the Sultan of Binadyan, Father of 
the Sun, Moon and Stars, Ruler of the World, 
Light of the Universe, etc., to meet his brother, 
the American commander, on Binadyan Hill the 
next morning to discuss matters of importance. 
In due time an answer came back saying that 
the Sultan would be most happy to confer with 
the illustrious commander of the Americans— 
upon whom it was hoped Allah would shower 
all good things—at the time and place appointed. 
So next morning Pershing and I, with a troop of 
cavalry as escort, set out for the place of con- 
ference, which was on the top of a high hill 
midway between our camp and the rancheria of 
the Sultan, known as Binadyan Hill, from the 
fact that the stronghold of the people of that 
Sultanate had once stood there. 
After waiting an hour or more—Moro custom 
demanding that the dignity of the Sultan be ac- 
centuated by keeping us waiting—the natives ar- 
rived, presents were exchanged, speeches of wel- 
come made and everything under the sun talked 
about but the one subject we had met to discuss. 
For of such is the way of the Moro, and I have 
known them to visit our camp and spend two 
whole days in speechmaking and the discussion 
of trivial matters before coming to the real ob- 
ject of their visit. 
Well, we finally arrived at the matter in hand 
and the Sultan expressed himself as being greatly 
hurt to learn that his brother could for a second 
think that any of the Binadyan people would do 
such a thing. No, indeed, he and his people loved 
their American neighbors and would never dream 
of harming them. It was utterly impossible that: 
Ahmi Benanning could have been guilty of the 
crime charged against him—by some one jealous 
of the friendship between the Americans and the 
people of Binadyan evidently—because all the 
day on which the attack was made he had been 
at his (the Sultan’s) house. Surely, the Ameri- 
can commander was mistaken and his informants 
liars and sons of liars. The Sultan had heard 
of the affair, of course, as who had not? News 
of such an outrage travels fast and he knew posi- 
tively that it was some Moros from Bacolod, on 
the other side of the lake, who were the guilty 
ones, and if we didn’t believe him, he was ready 
to prove it by any number of witnesses. 
Pershing stood pat, however, and finally suc- 
ceeded in inducing the old villain to promise that 
he would produce the man we wanted with the 
understanding that if the surviving soldier 
couldn’t identify him by picking him out from a 
number of other Moros he was to be set free and 
indemnified for the loss of his time. Then we 
went home to await developments. 
A week passed and no news having come from 
the Sultan once more a letter was sent requesting 
an interview on Binadyan Hill, and once more 
we met and talked in circles, the only satisfac- 
tion we could obtain being that Ahmi Benanning 
had gone on a visit to some relatives and would 
be brought to our camp as soon as he returned. 
The Sultan promised, however, that he would 
surely be surrendered within a week, and with 
this promise we had to content ourselves and re- 
turn to camp convinced that if we waited for 
Binadyan to produce our man we would never 
get him. but still hopeful. 
The allotted week passed, and then ten days, 
and then two weeks went by without a word 
from the Moros; then, as “the powers that’ be” 
were getting impatent and asking why something 
hadn’t been done, another letter was sent, but this 
time instead of being couched in polite terms it 
was a peremptory demand for the surrender of 
Ahmi Benanning the next morning at our former 
meeting place, and pretty strongly intimated that 
unless our demand was complied with without 
further delay there would he “something doing” 
in the vicinity of the Sultanate of Binadyan which 
would stir things up considerably. 
The next morning when we left camp for the 
meeting place we were accompanied by two com- 
panies of infantry and a mountain gun, for we 
expected trouble, and before the day was over we 
got it. 
As we expected, when we reached the place 
