The controversy over the distribution of the fund in Manila for the death in any form of General Lawton permitted the unholy scheme to simmer its way into publicity. The United States authorities employed secret detectives to investigate the matter and if possible to locate the persons who claimed to be responsible for the act. Marie soon found herself under surveillance and she quickly left the city.

Making her way north on horse back along the same route she had taken when on her way to Baler about a year before, she came to the city of San Miguel where one of the hardest battles of the war had been fought. The troops engaged in this fight had become so disorganized that all formation by regiments, companies, etc., had been broken up. Unfortunately, one of the Americans’ dead privates could not be identified. He was buried where he fell, and a board tombstone was placed at the head of his grave, on which was carved this lonely word,

“UNKNOWN”.

As Marie passed over the old field, she saw this grave and read the solemn word on its headstone. “Alas!” she muttered, “I wonder if the same sad fate will some day overtake me.”

The body of this “unknown” soldier was exhumed by the government a few months later and brought back to the United States for burial. Upon its arrival the following pathetic poem appeared in “Leslie’s Weekly”;

Her personal safety demanded that she continue her journey northward, without delay; also her inclination to rejoin Aguinaldo and his troops—although his exact whereabouts were unknown—invited her in this direction.

At San Isidro, from which place Aguinaldo had been driven, she saw some American soldiers administering the water cure to some Filipinos in order to make them reveal the whereabouts of their wily general. Marie was angry. She yearned to shoot, but she was no longer on the aggressive; she was now a fugitive from justice. At this place she inspected the old Filipino prison and on its walls found the names of Gilmore and his party, whom she had helped to capture at Baler, who had been imprisoned there, and who were still alive when Aguinaldo was driven from the city of San Isidro by the approach of the Americans. She determined to take her revenge on them for this water cure punishment, if she ever found them. But the opportunity never came. So journeying on toward the northern part of Luzon she had many experiences, and she came in contact with tribes whom she had never seen before and whose dialect was foreign to her. Many things combined to retard her progress. Often she grew very weary and would have turned back, except for fear.

Following up the valley of the Pampanga river and thence on northward along the Barat, she passed through the province of Nueva Ecija, crossed the Caraballo mountains which form its northern boundary, and then entered the province of Nueva Vizcaya, where she came upon the head-waters of the Rio Magat river.

In crossing the Caraballo mountains she made her way through a deep gorge at night. It was now about the middle of February. A full moon shone at its best. The weather was ideal. Journeying was abnormally pleasant. Under favorable conditions, during times of peace, the trip she was taking would have been a delightful outing. Just now things were different. Small garrisons of American soldiers had crowded forward and were occupying the largest cities along her route. As yet she had not gotten beyond them. “A guilty conscience needs no accuser”; everywhere that she went she imagined herself to be under suspicion.

Far up in the Caraballos she came across a little mountain torrent which leaped down over the mountain side from one rocky ledge to another at quite regular intervals in a series of waterfalls until it beat itself into a turbulent spray in the bed of the chasm below. The laughing moon filtered its beaming rays through the thin sheet of shimmering water as it danced down its course from precipice to precipice, and seemingly converted it into a great silvery stair-way connecting earth with heaven. Marie’s heart throbbed with emotion. The dashing of the falling water on the rocks below in the bed of the canon made a hollow sound as its echoes reverberated through the gorge above.

A half mile farther up, the valley widened somewhat; and finding here some grass for her pony to forage on, she stopped for the night. The flimsy saddle was removed from her horse and converted into a crude pillow, in true cowboy style. Marie was uneasy. This was the first night in all her adventures that she had been absolutely alone, separated from both friends and foes, with no house to shelter her weary head, with the cloudless canopy of the silent heavens arched above her, the silvery moonbeams dancing in her face, and with no voice, save the echoes of her own, to answer back the whispers of night.

It is often only in such a silent nook as this, with no one present but God and self, that humanity asserts itself and the tenderest portions of the human soul become paramount and give rise to sacred thoughts. Even the savage cannot escape it, for he, too, feels his responsibility to something outside of self. No doubt the self-conscious criminal would be the most susceptible to it.

What a night for Marie! Solitude gave rise to fear; fear, to conscious criminality; a sense of wrong-doing, to grief. Would morning never come? Every time she fell into a doze her sleep was disturbed by dreams of the past. Recollections of her dying benefactor in the woods by the San Mateo river, of Gilmore’s comrades bleeding by his side, and of Lawton in the arms of his aide, filled her soul with remorse and suggested to her with an unspeakable vividness that in all probability she would pay the penalty on both sides of the grave. Awakening from one awful dream, she would, after listening to the stillness of the night for a time, lapse into another. Again she would suddenly awake and begin to fumble her rosary and repeat selections from a Catholic prayer book. Would she dare to turn back? Behind her was certain death; before her, the possibility of life. She resolved to go on.

The night whiled away. Her pony ate his fill and lay down to rest. Beaded dew drops collected themselves in close proximity upon the grasses and foliage about her feet. The cool mountain air from without and fear from within caused her to shiver a great deal. Day finally came; Marie rode on.

Following the Magat river she finally reached the city of Bayombong with a population of 20,000 people. Here she learned from the natives that Aguinaldo and a loyal remnant of his appointed congress had passed through the city ahead of her, en route northward.

At Bayombong she was advised to follow down the Magat river for twenty miles, then to bear to the northeast along the pathway made by Aguinaldo and his followers in their recent retreat. This she did, crossing another range of mountains near Fort Del Pilar, which had been erected by the Filipinos to circumvent as well as to prevent the progress of the Americans, should they attempt to follow them. On the farther side of this slope she came upon the headwaters of the Rio Grande de Cagayan river, which she followed on to the north for several weeks, enjoying the hospitality of the natives along the course, until at last she came upon the beautiful city of Ilagan at the confluence of the Cagayan and Pinacanalan rivers.

It was now late in April. Marie was tired and needed rest. At Ilagan she was cordially received by the curious natives who were eager to learn some news concerning the war which was being conducted several hundred miles further south. Marie grew cheerful. There were no Americans in the city, and nobody knew of any within the valley. She felt that at last she had successfully eluded her supposed pursuers and that she was safe. Ilagan is the capital of Isabella province. It has a population of approximately 60,000 people. Marie’s natural ability, information gathered in the school of experience, knowledge of the details of the war, and her willingness to talk (quite a number at Ilagan could speak Spanish) made of her a sort of responsive idol for the entire populace.