is movements.

William Van Osdol was his name, and he was a second lieutenant in the
--th Infantry. After several months of hard service in the Philippines
he earned for himself the unenviable sobriquet of "Carabao Bill,"
because his awkward movements, ox-like strength, and slow but sure
gait were so much like the sturdy animal that formed our "cracker line"
that that name could not but suggest itself.

In Cuba he served as a sergeant in one of the regular infantry
regiments. He was the proud possessor of a bayonet scabbard, several
times punctured by Mauser bullets, which he had worn in the charge up
San Juan Hill. It was for "gallant and meritorious conduct" during this
fight that won for him the recommendation for commissioned rank; and
it was but shortly after he had returned from fever-ridden Santiago,
when in the hospital at Montauk Point, that the much-coveted document,
making him an officer in the United States Army, reached him.

Van Osdol was a born fighter. The set of his lower jaw and the quick
snap of his light blue eyes left nothing to be guessed at on that
line. While he was not a picturesque nor dashing officer, yet his heavy
growth of fiery red locks was ever to be seen in the front of the fight
and seldom under cover. An Irish corporal, who had once fallen a victim
to his disciplining, declared, "The sorril-topped lootenint hain't
brains 'nuff to git scart," but this was not true. While not a man
renowned for brilliancy of intellect, yet he was a level-headed thinker
whose judgment was always good on minor matters. He was frequently
selected to conduct scouting expeditions where good "horse sense" and
nerve were much more expedient than a superabundance of gray matter
abnormally developed with theories of fine tactics and maneuvers.

When the --th Infantry, to which he belonged, was doing duty at
a convent some fifty or sixty miles from Manila, on the Manila
and Dagupan Railroad, the Tagalos gave the usual annoyance. Their
threatenings and feeble attacks came mostly from the west, but as
the rainy season approached the torrential showers soon flooded that
vicinity, so they changed their base of harassing to a village of
bamboo and nipa palm huts on the further side of a river running
parallel to the American outpost line on the south, about five
thousand yards away. The intervening ground was taken up with rice
paddies, banana groves, cogonales, or tall grass, and occasionally
a bamboo jungle.

T