Terry
by Charles Goff Thomson · English · Gutenberg #20563 · 413,389 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Terry
Author: Charles Goff Thomson
Release date: February 11, 2007 [eBook #20563]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20563
Credits: Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Richard J. Shiffer
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TERRY ***
Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Richard J. Shiffer
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of
public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital
Libraries.)
[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as
faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other
inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious error by
the publisher is noted at the end of this ebook.]
TERRY
A TALE OF THE HILL PEOPLE
BY
CHARLES GOFF THOMSON
Late Lieut.-Colonel, U. S. Army.
Formerly Assistant Director of Prisons
for Philippine Government
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1921
DEDICATED TO
MR. E. J. B.
WHO HAS GIVEN OF HIS
COUNSEL, SPIRIT AND SUBSTANCE
TO NEEDY YOUNG MEN
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The poem "Casey" used in Chapter IX was written by the late Arthur W.
Ferguson, formerly Executive Secretary for the Philippine Government.
It has been edited and amplified but is substantially as written by
him. A man of unusual facility, Mr. Ferguson composed the verses under
circumstances somewhat similar to those set down herein, and with like
spontaneity.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE FOX 1
II TERRY DECIDES 18
III MINDANAO 33
IV THE FANATIC 52
V NEW FRIENDS, AND AN ENEMY 66
VI THE LAND OF HEMP 80
VII THE PYTHON 98
VIII THE STRICKEN VILLAGE 111
IX MALABANAN STRIKES 126
X MALABANAN 141
XI INTO THE FORBIDDEN HILLS 157
XII THE MAJOR FOLLOWS 175
XIII THE HILL PEOPLE 198
XIV AHMA 211
XV THE SIGN 220
XVI CIVILIZATION DAWNS IN THE HILLS 239
XVII "SUS-MARIE-HOSEP!" 250
XVIII THE FOX SKIN 262
TERRY
CHAPTER I
THE FOX
The frosty silence of the snow-mantled hills was rent by the vicious
crack of a high-powered, small-calibered rifle. The hunter sprang from
the thicket in which he had lain concealed and crossed the gully to a
knoll where a black furry bundle had dropped to the snow after one
convulsive leap.
Exultant, Terry bent down to examine the silky black coat.
"Right through the ear. Well, Mister Fox, you're mine--though you did
lead me a merry chase for twelve days! You laughed at me till the snow
came--knew I wouldn't bring you out of your hole with formalin, that
it was a square game we played. But to-day everything broke against
you, boy,--sun and wind and snow. And perhaps hunger."
The twinge of pain that stabs every true sportsman as he realizes that
he has extinguished a spark of life shadowed Terry's thin, sensitive
face. It was a face of singular appeal, dominated by a queer twist of
upper lip that stamped his mouth with a permanent wistfulness. Even in
the bracing cold of the winter morning his skin was white, but the
clear pallor was belied by the swift energy with which he moved and
the eager sparkle of his dark gray eyes. He picked up the fluffy
bundle and stroked the sleek fur.
"Hard luck, old boy! But now you'll never be hungry again, or cold.
And I haven't hunted you all this time just for the sake of the
sport." His face lighted. "You're going to be a proud little fox. If
foxes have souls--and I don't see why we should deny you what we lay
selfish claims to for ourselves--yours will rejoice in the purpose of
your end. Every night and every morning you--"
He broke off as the distant pealing of church bells came to his ears,
carried faintly but clearly by the light wind that whispered over the
snowy stretches of rolling meadowlands. For a long time Terry stood
facing toward the invisible village, his face moody and inscrutable.
As the sound of the bells died away he shook off the spell with
conscious, humorous effort and picking up his rifle and the fox he
went into the thicket to secure and adjust his snowshoes.
Ignoring paths and sleighroads he made his way toward the town. The
crisp pine-laden air charged his muscles with exuberant excess of the
fine energy of youth and he made his way swiftly across the sparkling
snow that blanketed the gentle landscape, through the thickets of
evergreens and across the tiny, ice-edged creeks that flowed in swift
escape from winter's frozen grip.
Keen-eyed, he stopped a moment in study of a group of pheasants that
huddled in a clump of underbrush. They played possum till he passed
on. A rabbit, reared up in nervous-nosed inquiry, watched him
furtively as he approached the rock behind which it had vainly sought
concealment. Terry laughed at its ridiculous plight.
"You'd better improve your strategy, you young scamp, or you'll wind
up in the pot of some one who hunts rabbits!"
He watched its jumpy flight into a distant copse of young pines, then
went on swiftly. In an hour he paused at the top of a last steep
grade. Lake Champlain stretched her flat-frozen bosom to the north and
south of him. The more level timbered areas of the opposite shore were
broken here and there by clearings in which white farm houses and red
barns nestled like doll houses.
At the foot of the slope directly beneath him a village lay primly
along the lake shore. It was a square-built town, its limits almost
rectangular, its breadth and width checkered into exact squares by
wide, straight streets. It was an old town: a score of its flat-roofed
structures had been built while the Mohawks still guarded the Western
Gate of the Long House, and many of the great, old-fashioned homes had
stood when Ethan Allen strutted through its streets.
It was not a snug little town, there was no air of hospitality to
encourage strangers to tarry within its gates, but seemed to promise
"value received" for any who came, paid their way and attended
strictly to their own affairs.
Thus Terry saw the town in which he had been born and had spent all
of his twenty-six years except the four at Princeton. He tarried, his
eyes fixed upon the cemetery which limited the eastern edge of the
town, to which his father and mother had been carried when he was a
boy of eleven.
He faced about in lingering appreciation of the blue-vaulted expanse,
then descended toward the village. Whipping off his snowshoes at the
border of the village he entered the main street, which ran straight
through town to the lake front. No one was in sight on the broad
thoroughfare and he found a measure of relief in its emptiness, for
though he did not adhere to the rigid New England doctrine that
governed his neighbors, he found no pleasure in wanton violation of
their stiff code. Realizing that with snowshoes, gun and fox he jarred
heavily upon the atmosphere of the quiet Sunday morning, he hurried
down the street.
He encountered no one, but as he passed by the ice-incrusted watering
trough at the central square and approached the block made up by
Crampville's three churches, the big doors of his own church were
flung open and the congregation emerged. As the decorous crowd filed
out Terry hesitated a moment, then kept on his way.
The progress of the lone figure along the opposite side of the street
was the topic of conversation at nearly every dinner table in
Crampville that Sunday. It became a sort of small-town epic, so that
they still tell how stern the elders looked, and how white Terry's
face against the background of black fur which he had thrown across
his shoulder in order to free his right hand that he might gravely
raise his crimson hunting cap in respectful salutation of families he
had known from childhood. And they still tell, too, how Deane Hunter,
flushed with mortification at her father's frigid refusal to recognize
Terry's greeting, checked the nudges and whisperings by calling out a
cheerful "Good Morning, Dick." Her courageous voice still rang in his
ears as he entered the iron-fenced yard that surrounded the home of
his fathers.
Inside the great, high-ceilinged house Terry stood a while in somber
reflection, then shrugged his trim shoulders and passed through the
shadowy rooms out into the barn. In five minutes he had cleaned and
oiled his rifle, but an hour passed while he carefully removed the
pelt and tacked it taut upon a stretching board.
He was in the library, reading, when his sister and brother-in-law
came downstairs in response to the dinner bell. Susan and her husband,
Ellis Crofts, had lived in the old mansion since their marriage two
years previously, rather against Ellis' desires. He had wished to set
up an establishment of his own, but had yielded to Susan's pleadings
and Terry's sincere letter from college asking him not to be
instrumental in closing up a house that had been lived in continuously
by the Terrys of four generations.
They had been among the last to emerge from church, but had come out
in time to see Terry as he opened the gate, and had heard enough of
the murmured comment to understand its significance. It had been
difficult for them to control their emotions as they kept slow step
with the throng down the broad sidewalk. Susan, mortified but loyal to
the core, had set her face in defiant smile lest she burst into tears:
Ellis, devoted to Terry but tickled by the situation, had smothered
his snickers in protracted fits of coughing.
Terry threw aside a handbook on the curing of pelts and rose at their
entrance, smiling:
"Well, do you good folks think you are safe in sitting at the same
table with an unrepentant sinner?"
Susan had been crying. "Oh, Dick! Why did you do it? How do you do
such things?"
He waved his hand in humorous deprecation. "Easy. It's the simplest
thing I do. It isn't difficult if you have a knack for it."
"But, Dick, it's no joke. I saw the three elders of our
church--Ballard, Remington and Van Slyke--talking about it, and they
were very bitter. And you know they can expel any church member."
Terry made no answer save to put his arm around each and lead them
into the dining room. But Susan was not content.
"Dick, I wish you would explain it to Ballard or Van Slyke. They are
influential men and both are very religious."
Ellis took a hand: "Their religion is all right, so far as it
goes--but they mix it up with their dyspepsia too much to suit me!"
As his wife turned rebuking eyes upon him he pursued doggedly: "Not
that their dyspepsia and religion are always mixed; they have their
dyspepsia seven days in the week!"
She joined in their laughter over Ellis' exaggerated defense, then
turned again to her brother.
"What are you going to do with that nasty thing you shot, Dick?"
"Nasty?" broke in Ellis in quick alarm. "You didn't shoot a skunk, did
you?"
She ignored her husband and persisted: "Tell me why you shot that fox,
Dick. You have been out hunting nearly every day for two weeks and
have shot nothing else, so I know you have a reason."
"I'm not going to help eat it!" Ellis broke in. "I've heard they are
stringy--and a bit smelly."
"Ellis, will you stop being ridiculous? Dick, why have you hunted that
fox so long?"
Ellis had seen that Terry was not to be pumped, that this was another
of his queer quests. He tried again to shunt Susan away.
"Maybe it was a personal matter between him and the fox, Sue."
She turned on him a look she endeavored to make disdainful, but only
succeeded in raising another laugh from both. But she was not to be
deterred. Her eyes lit with sudden inspiration.
"I'll bet--I'll bet anything--" she began.
"Susan Terry Crofts! Even Dick would not bet on Sunday!"
"I will bet anything," she insisted, "that it is something for
Deane--for Christmas!"
In the slight flush that rose in her brother's face Susan learned
that she had hit the mark. But she was instantly sorry that she had
pressed the issue, as she had learned long before to respect what was
to her his queer reticence.
Ellis hurried into the breach: "Wonder what Bruce will give Deane this
Christmas? He is about due to present her with something really worth
while--like a patent mop!"
Even Terry laughed. The struggle for Deane's favor between Bruce
Ballard and Terry had been in progress nearly ten years and had become
one of the town's institutions. The first formal offerings tendered by
the two boys on the occasion of her graduation from high school
typified the contrasting characters of the rivals: Terry, idealistic,
impressionable, reserved, had sent her a beautiful copy of the "Love
Letters of a Musician," while Bruce, sincere, obvious and practical,
had given her a hat-pin.
On her succeeding birthday Terry, after a six-hour climb, had won for
her a box of trailing arbutus from Mount Defiance's cool top; Bruce
had sent her candy. From his medical college at Baltimore Bruce had
sent, as succeeding Christmas gifts, an ivory toilet set, a thermos
bottle, a reading lamp and a chafing dish.
Terry's offerings on those occasions had been a Japanese kimono
embroidered with her favorite flower--a wondrous thing secured by
correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese
kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of
India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish
eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter joy of the
world.
The rivalry had divided the town into two camps. The pro-Bruce
faction, composed largely of men folk, claimed for their protégé a
splendid common sense in selection of his gifts: but the women and
girls, who made up the other group, envied Deane not only the gifts
Terry gave her, but also--and more so--the rarefied romantic spirit of
the youth who conceived and offered them.
Deane realized that both Bruce and Terry stayed on in the dull old
town principally to be near her. This was true of Bruce particularly,
as he was a young surgeon of such promise that he had twice been
invited into junior association with Albany's greatest specialist. She
had strongly urged him to embrace the increased opportunity for
service and profit which the city afforded.
But Terry was only six months out of college, a six months spent in
futile effort to adjust himself to the theme of the village, to find
appropriate outlet for that urgent desire to be of use in the world
which dominated his character. As the Terrys were of those families
termed "comfortable" in Crampville, he felt no need of devoting
himself to adding to an already ample estate. At his sister's request,
he had undertaken to manage a shoe store that represented one of their
holdings but at the end of a couple of months had given it up--also in
accord with her wishes. Higgins, their old clerk, had come to her with
tearful warnings that Terry's unwillingness to refuse credit to any
one who came in with a tale of hard-luck was ruining the business:
and Terry had lost the custom of several good families by declining to
humor their crotchety unreasonableness.
But Higgins did not know how they came to lose the trade of the Hunter
family. At the end of a trying day of insistent demand for smaller
shoes than feminine feet could accommodate, of viewing bunions and
flat arches and wry-jointed toes, he had written Deane:
DEANE DEAR:--
I used to think that the true glory of Trilby rested in the
wondrous mesmeric voice--but after a month in the shoe
business I know better. Between perfect vocal cords and
perfect feet, give me the feet.
The word "shoe" used to bring to my mind thoughts of
calfskin, kid, patent leather. But no more! Now I think
of--well, many things.
I am glad that your family is not among those who favor this
establishment with its patronage. I am very happy in this,
as it is good to think that your dear shoes are but a part
of you, are incidental to your being, and not a consequence
of drear barter and "fitting."
I will not be over to-night. But I will be thinking of you.
DICK.
A bit puzzled, she had shown the note to her father. Irate, he had
issued a mandate that produced the effect Terry had asked. Mr. Hunter
was acutely sensitive about twin corns which had been a part of his
toes so long that he honestly thought them congenital.
After quitting the store Terry had turned his attention to their farm
properties but, as a careful investigation covering three months had
demonstrated them to be in capable hands, he had returned them to the
full management of the old tenants at the end of the harvest. He had
then studied the possibilities of enlarging their only other business,
a small pulp plant, but after satisfying himself that the meager water
power was being fully utilized and that the location of the mill at
Crampville precluded competition with those more favorably located
that were operated with steam power, he had abandoned the project. For
a month he had been seeking outlet for his restless energy.
Deane, anxiously watching his endeavor to fit himself into one of
Crampville's narrow grooves and vaguely understanding his unvoiced
craving for wider horizons, dreaded the break she knew would take him
away. Susan, studying him with the uneasy solicitude of an older
sister, saw in Deane an anchor which would hold him to the town. Ellis
had been less concerned, as he had recognized that Terry's intolerance
of the village was but the outcropping of a sane young spirit that
gauged the peaks and sought real service. He had been trying lately to
prepare his wife for Terry's departure to other fields, as he thought
it inevitable. It was a word to this effect that had precipitated the
tears with which she had greeted her brother before dinner.
Ellis plagued Susan throughout the leisurely meal, Terry adding an
occasional word whenever the flow of affectionate badgering lagged.
Fanny, who had served them since they were children, bustled in and
out, redfaced, wholesome, fruitlessly trying to press upon Terry an
excess of the over-ample dinner. It was a sort of unwritten law in
Crampville that the Sunday dinner should be sufficiently heavy to
drive the menfolk to a long digestive nap.
Ellis lingered at the table after Terry had excused himself and gone
out into the barn again. Susan helped Fanny clear the old mahogany
table, then sank into a chair beside her abstracted husband.
"Sue," he said finally, "Dick hasn't said anything lately about
accepting that position in the Philippines, has he?"
A worried look crept into her smooth face: "No. I supposed he had
decided against it."
He patted her hand consolingly: "Don't be too confident about his
staying home, Sue. He wants to see things--do things! There isn't much
in this town to hold one of his nature."
"There's--Deane," she said, hopefully.
"Sue, don't be so sure of that, either. You know that you and I hold
different theories about that. Don't bank too heavily on yours." He
drummed the polished table a moment before continuing: "He received
another telegram from Washington yesterday--I thought he might have
mentioned it to you."
"No," she quavered.
"Nor to me. Guess he doesn't want to worry you."
She was close to tears again: "I wish he had never met that young
Bronner in college--he gave Dick all these crazy ideas about going to
those horrid islands where his brother is!"
"Well, Sue, he made me feel the same way--and I'm a fat married man! I
enjoyed his stories of his brother's experiences with the wild people
over there. It must be an interesting life."
"You don't talk like that to Dick, do you?" she implored.
"Of course not. But I think you've been too sure that he would stay on
here indefinitely--I think it will take very little to tip the scales
the other way."
He yawned prodigiously, rousing Susan to an ire that stemmed the flow
of tears which had threatened to overflow her blue eyes. Then, content
with his tactics, he went upstairs for his traditional nap.
* * * * *
Later, Terry came into the big living room and stood in front of the
fireplace a long time, his lean face grave and thoughtful. Decision
made, he wrote a note of sincere apology to Doctor Mather, his pastor.
He also wrote Deane that he would not be over in the evening but would
see her during the week, and made the delivery of the notes an excuse
to get the faithful Fanny out into the crisp December afternoon.
The light in the Terry library burned long after Crampville's other
lights had winked out. He had been picked up by Stevenson and carried
by that pathetic master into the far places of the earth.
* * * * *
The next morning he was in the barn, his gay mood revealed by the
running talk addressed to the pelt on which he worked.
"Well, old boy, only four days to get you into shape for your
dedication, but the book says it can be done. So you might as well
soften up now--"he vigorously rubbed the dried bare side with some
oily preparation--"as later."
"What a destiny, old chap! Surely no other fox ever born to lady-fox
can be as happy as you're going to be!" He rubbed industriously.
"You're not for me, you know. No, sir! I wouldn't bring you out of the
hills into this burg--where they kill ambition by preaching content
with your lot, where the hoarders of pennies are venerated and the
pluggers canonized--I wouldn't bring you here just for me. For I'm not
worthy of you. No, sir-ree! Don't you know I'm no good--didn't you see
that yesterday? Why, Old Samuel Terwilliger said I'm an atheist
because I quoted Ingersoll's graveside oration--said no Christian
would repeat anything that man ever said, even if his watch is a
bargain at a dollar!... Samuel likes bargains."
Working rapidly, with no lost motions, he rambled on, congratulatory,
reproachful, whimsical. Having carried the curing to a point where a
twenty-four-hour time process was the next essential factor, he
carefully pegged the skin to the barn door.
* * * * *
That evening Susan came running home excitedly, having learned that
one of the elders had asked that a meeting be called to consider
Dick's case, and that the young pastor had very promptly and very
emphatically vetoed the proceeding. It seemed that Bruce had heard of
the move and persuaded his father not to support it, after a stormy
scene in which he had threatened to resign his own membership if they
moved against Terry.
Ellis looked long at Terry: "Nothing small about Bruce, Dick. Some
fellows, under the circumstances--all the circumstances--might have
let you have it to the hilt."
Terry smiled gravely. "Good old Bruce," he said.
He left the room, slowly, and sat alone in the library. It had struck
deep, that even one God-fearing but not God-loving old man should
think him unfit to sit in the church in which his father and mother
had been married, from which they had been carried side by side for
their long rest. It was midnight when he went up the broad staircase
to his room.
The following afternoon he dropped in to see Father Jennings, the
gentle little priest who had been beloved by two generations of all
denominations--and those of none. Terry loved the old study, which in
forty years had taken on something of the priest's character. It was a
comfortable room; cheerful in its wide windows, warm with a bright
hearthfire, and well worn with long years of service.
Terry had found friendship and counsel here since his boyhood, had
been one of the procession that passed through the door in search of
wisdom and cheer. All the gossip of the town came to the priest: he
knew of Terry's hunting trip and of the climax which had scandalized
the sterner factions of the community. He was of those who knew Terry
best, and entertained no misgivings about the state of his immortal
soul.
They talked fitfully, as intimate friends do. The old man knew that it
was worry over the town's harsh reaction to the Sunday fox hunt that
had brought Terry to him. He broached the subject.
"Dick, I have wanted to see you since Sunday morning. I had a question
to ask you nobody else could answer."
As Terry turned to him with somber mien he concluded, his eyes
twinkling: "I wanted to know if it was the best fox ever!"
And that was all, though Terry stayed to sup with him. Till nine
o'clock they sat before the fire, the priest in a worn rocker drawn up
close to the hearth: the single log burning glorified his fine old
face as he placidly rocked and pondered.
He had spent the morning among his foreign parishioners, who lived in
the squalid section of the town, across the river. A frugal,
law-abiding lot, they furnished the brawn needed in the three pulp
factories and lived a life apart from the balance of the towns-people,
bitterly but voicelessly resenting the villagers' careless ostracism
of all who came under the easy classification of the term "wop." There
existed a tacit agreement among property owners that no house north of
the river should be sold or leased to a foreigner, and that no garlic
might taint the atmosphere their children breathed in school, they had
erected a small schoolhouse upon the southside. So, sequestered six
days in the week in a settlement that was entirely foreign,
communicating their thoughts in the tongues of the Mediterranean and
the Balkans, the southsiders mingled with Americans only during the
brief hours of Sunday worship.
In his morning visit Father Jennings had again met with several
evidences of Terry's curious influence over the foreigners. Terry
understood them instinctively, grasped their viewpoints and ideals,
and was the only layman on the northside in whom they confided, called
in to settle knotty problems and to partake of the hospitality they
lavished upon appropriate occasions of weddings, christenings and the
neverending procession of days of patron saints. Subtle, romantic,
circumscribed by alien environment, they recognized in him a kindred
spirit and opened their hearts wide to him. Terry, his ardent young
pastor--Dr. Mather--and Father Jennings were the only northsiders whom
they called friends. None of the three had been named on the town's
"Committee on Americanization." ...
The priest roused from his revery and for a long time contemplated the
quiet, thoughtful lad who sat beside him. Gradually a deep concern
spread across his comfortably aged features, a presentiment of
impending loss shadowed his pleasant eyes. He reached out to lay his
hand on Terry's forearm.
"Dick," he said, "there is plenty for you to do right here in
Crampville--what is this I hear about your going to the Philippines?"
CHAPTER II
TERRY DECIDES
Christmas Eve, the large snowflakes drifted slowly down out of a
windless sky. The dusk was cheerful with the sound of sleigh bells
that announced the arrival or departure of last-hour shoppers.
Terry, at his desk in the great living room, surveyed the finished
trophy happily. It was an unusually black and lustrous pelt. He buried
his face in the silky mat a moment, then drew out paper and pen, and
wrote:
DEANE-DEAR:--
Some three years ago a mother fox suffered that this one
might be born: denied herself food that he might satisfy his
urgent little appetite as he grew bigger and stronger. When
he was big enough he left her and forgot her--she may have
suffered then, too.
He lived as foxes do. Things died that he might eat;
rabbits, pheasants, chickens, field-mice. He stalked all
things less strong and clever than himself. A cruel cycle,
but it is the law of the wild, something that you and I
cannot alter.
He enjoyed the summers best, with their longer days, fuller
larders, sweet wood odors, long naps in the cool shadows of
the thicket. But winter came, with its hardships and its
cold, a cold that little foxes feel the same as you and I.
But it was this cold that stimulated and silkened his fur,
made it this wondrous, prized thing.
Then I came, and he ceased to be what he was--a hunter of
smaller, weaker things--and became what you see here: a
finer thing--a token. Your kind heart need find no cruelty
in a merciful shot that spelled no pain and that by stopping
him assured that gentler, weaker things will live on and on.
_And he_ will be glad, too, as not _only_ is he forever
freed from cold and hunger and stark fear, but his is to be
a tender office.
Will you lay it at your bedside, that each night it may
cushion your last step at slumbertime, and each morning
soften the first contact between the vistas of dreamland and
the less yielding surfaces of life to which we wake.
So even the things of the wild are made to serve. To
serve--is that not the law of man?
My part in it? But little: none other than I will have
touched it till it reaches your dear hands. I shaped it,
wrought to preserve its beauties that it might give you
pleasure.
To give pleasure--is that not the law of love?
A very, very Merry Christmas!
DICK.
He sent his gift, at about nine o'clock. In gay mood, he wandered
about the great house: entered the kitchen where Fanny was singeing
the Christmas turkey: returned to the living room to throw a fresh log
in the wide fireplace. His mood was too expansive for indoors. He
donned short coat and thick cap, but as he passed out of the gate a
scared little lad, a foreigner, rushed up breathlessly and begged him
to come--trouble was brewing on the southside.
His questions elicited meager information. Excited, the lad relapsed
so often into his native tongue that Terry could make nothing of his
tale.
Hand in hand they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge
and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose
in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock
and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of
Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the
reefered figure that smiled up at him through the falling flakes,
Tony's dark scowl faded as he reached out his powerful hands and with
a joyous shout fairly lifted Terry into the house.
Terry laughed as the gaudily dressed occupants of the room crowded
around him, and greeted most of the score of swarthy men and women by
name. Tony masterfully stripped him of his overcoat and cap and placed
them in the kitchen from which emanated odors of strange things
cooking. The room was stifling with heat and with smells--beer,
garlic, tobacco, perfumes, kerosene.
Tony charged in from the kitchen with a bottle of beer but Terry shook
his head. Tony was hospitably insistent, "What! No beer?"
"No thanks, Tony."
"What's matt'? Bad stomach?"
"Yes," smiled Terry, "call it that."
He plunged into the business in hand. "Tony, what's the trouble here
to-night?"
Tony's first word of explanation was instantly submerged beneath a
chorus of voices; the excited crowd surged around Terry, as voluble of
gesture as of tongue. Pandemonium descended.
Terry finally silenced the din by standing on his chair and
pantomiming his desire to be heard. "Now, listen to me," he began,
after quiet was restored, "I'm going to ask you all to keep silent,
and to promise me that no one will speak except those I call by name."
They all promised--each one not once but in a series of lengthy
assurances which he had to raise his hand to cut short.
"Now, Tony, you first. What's the matter?"
Tony's face registered his utter disgust. "What'sa matt'? What'sa
matt'? Evra teeng 'sa matt'! Tommor' we christen our bab' and evra'
bod' want a name heem!" He glared at the restless circle which ringed
them.
The odd wistful twist at the corner of Terry's mouth disappeared for a
moment in his slow smile; this was so like these people, who bore big
troubles stoically and reacted powerfully to inconsequentials.
He called on several others. All were relatives of Tony or of his
wife; sisters, brothers, several "in-laws," Tony's father, two uncles.
Each had his or her name for the child, and sound reasons for the
choice.
"Tony, where is Felice?" he asked, noting that Tony's wife was not in
the crowded dining room.
Tony took him into a dimly lighted room, where his wife lay in bed;
the guiltless cause of all this dissension, obviously inured to
clamor, was asleep in her arm. She smiled up at Terry as he sat down
on the edge of the bed and took her hand.
Tony stood looking down at Felice and their first-born, his heart in
his eyes.
"Tony, what does Felice wish to name your son?" Terry asked suddenly.
Receiving no answer, he looked up at Tony and read in the agonized
contrition of Tony's dark face that she had not yet been consulted.
Tears glistened in the forgiving eyes Felice turned on Tony, and as he
flung himself down at the side of the bed and buried his face in her
pillow, Terry tiptoed out of the room and softly closed the door.
In a few minutes Tony flung the door open and strode into the room,
unashamed of the tears that shone on his rough cheeks.
"You all a go to hell-a with your a-names! Felice, she name-a our boy
and to-morrow we go Padre Jenneeng. She a name heem"--he paused with
true Latin sense of the value of suspense--"She a name heem--Reechar'
Terree--Ricorro!"
A moment of hesitation, of assimilation, and then a hubbub of
delighted acceptance and acclaim. Terry stayed but a few minutes,
realizing that much as they liked him, there would be more spontaneity
at the fiesta if there were none but their own people at the table.
He went in and thanked Felice gravely for the honor she had conferred
upon him, wished for them all a merry Christmas, and passed out amid a
medley of thanks and benedictions.
The snowfall had ceased. He crossed to the North Side and hastened up
Main Street, and though it lacked but an hour of midnight, he found
Judd's jewelry store still open. He went in and found young Judd about
to close up.
Judd, hollow eyed with the fatigue of the long day, studied his old
friend's beaming face: "Hello, Sir Galahad!" he said.
Terry eyed him scornfully: "Hello, Rut!" He drew himself up proudly.
"Behold in me a new dignity--I am now a god-father!"
Having in mind the parents' love for the elaborate, he gayly selected
an ornate silver cup for the infant.
"I'll engrave it for you after the holidays," Judd offered.
"Good old boy, Judd! The initials will be R--T--R."
He buttoned his coat and went to the door: Judd was musing over the
monogram: "Richard--Terry--what's the 'R' stand for, Dick?"
Terry grinned as he called back through the open door.
"Why,--Romance, of course!"
* * * * *
He tramped far out the north road through the new fallen snow, his
whole being glowing. The stars sparkled through the clear cold air in
myriad chorus of the message of hope that one in the East had heralded
to a sadder world on another Christmas eve. The snow-flung star beams
illuminated the peaceful countryside: there was no moon, no light
save the great glow of the heavens, no shadows under gaunt oaks or
huddled evergreens.
He was in harmony with the night. He followed the sleigh-rutted
highway for several miles, then swung back to town along a
woodcutter's trail that edged the lakeshore, winding through the new
growths of pine and balsam whose night-black branches were outlined by
the white fall.
He loved the open: there was no loneliness here.... Magic-wrought,
Deane's phantom figure kept apace, matched step with step along the
shore trail through the hushed woods, across the white sheen of open
spaces. Ever, when summoned thus, she came to share the hours and the
places that he loved best.
Love surged hot through his veins: love of friends, of living, of
youth, love of a woman ... probably his gift lay at her bedside now,
as she slept....
Unconsciously he slowed his pace and lifted his fine, pale face
upward: his low, clear baritone flooded the broken woods, carried far
out across the silent frozen lake, unechoed; it was vibrant with the
very spirit of yuletide--love of man and woman.
Love, to share again those winged scented days,
Those starry skies:
To see once more your joyous face,
Your tender eyes:
Just to know that years so fair might come again,
Awhile:
Oh! To thrill again to your dear voice--
Your smile!
It was long past midnight when he reached town, his mood chilling
indefinably at sight of its dark houses.
"You're a queer old town," he muttered. "You go to bed on this night
of nights--yes, and you batten your windows tight against this
glorious air--and all of the other glorious things."
Passing the suspicious village constable, he penetrated even his
callous heart with the most gladsome Christmas greeting he had heard
in many a year.
Home, he stirred the dying logs into flame and sank into a deep
cushioned chair drawn up before the glowing embers. The long day had
taken no toll of his lithe frame: sleepless, he sat long in pleasant
retrospection of the day, which had brought him opportunities to
contribute to the sum of peace on earth and to give pleasure to those
whom he loved.
His gift to Deane had approached even his exacting criterion of what
was fit for her. He envied the skin its rapturous reception, the
sparkle of bright eyes its beauty would invoke. It was characteristic
that his vision did not carry him to the daily contact of pink toes he
had assigned as its function. And it was characteristic of him, too,
that he did not think of the gifts which had come for him.
He would see the elders, he mused, and apologize for what must have
seemed to them a deliberate flaunting of their standards ... he had
been a little careless, lately ... he would remedy that ... it was a
good town--his failure to settle down had been a fault ... he would
find something to do, worth doing--and do it.... Deane's friendship
might ripen into something mellower, and then....
He reached into an inner pocket and withdrew a telegram, bending
nearer the fireplace to read it.
Washington, D. C.
Richard Terry, Crampville, Vermont.
Wire will you accept commission second lieutenant Philippine
Constabulary period immediate decision essential period if
you accept wire date you will be able to sail from San
Francisco
Wilson Insular Bureau
The glow from the fire which ruddied his face revealed the struggle of
the minute before decision came. With an expression curiously mingled
of renunciation and relief he tossed the paper among the glowing
embers. He rose as the sheet took fire and in the brief flash of light
which marked the consumption of the telegram he saw a familiar-looking
package on the library table in the shadow cast by his big chair. He
carried it to the now fainter glow of the hearth and saw that it was
addressed to him in Deane's trim hand. He opened it eagerly, to see
what form her remembrance had taken.
It was the fox-skin, returned. Vague, trouble-eyed, he read the
inclosed note.
DEAR DICK:--
I am sending you back your present. Father insists, because
you secured it on Sunday.
It hurts me, Dick, dreadfully, but you know how he feels
about such things.
It is the loveliest present I ever received--and it makes me
want to cry, sometimes, when I think of your doing such
things for me and thinking about me as you do. I _AM_
crying, now, Dick.
Though I can not have it, your present will always be
mine--I can never forget that you were good enough to wish
me to have it.
And will you accept my very best wishes that your Christmas
may be a very merry one.
DEANE.
He sank back into the chair again, sickened.... "That your Christmas
may be a very merry one."
* * * * *
Susan, first down in the morning, raised the curtains to the brilliant
Christmas morning, and turned to find him sitting in the chilled room
before the dead fire. Shocked by the haggard face, she hurried to him.
"Dick, are you sick?" As she sank by the side of his chair her hand
brushed against the rich fur which lay across his knees, and she
understood. She placed a pitying arm about his shoulders.
"I feared it, Dick--I feared it! You know how he is--her father. I'll
never speak to him again as long as--" She burst into tears.
Gently he withdrew her arm and took her hand in his.
"It's all right, Sue, it's--all--right."
Through her tears she read the pain that lurked in his eyes, the agony
that betrayed the patient smile. She sobbed convulsively, heartsick in
her helplessness to ease this young brother to whom she had been half
mother.
"That's what you always say--about everything: 'it will be all
right.' When you were a boy it was always the same--'it's all right.'"
He comforted her with quiet words till the storm abated. Then, "I'm
going to miss you, Sue-sister," he said.
She stood up, comprehension dawning in her wide eyes.
"You're going away!"
He nodded gravely.
Slowly, fearfully, she asked, "When?"
"To-night."
"Way off to--those--Philippines?"
He nodded, then unable to bear longer the hurt in her tremulous face,
he sought refuge in the ridiculous; he struck an attitude.
"I'm going in quest of adventure--riches--romance! I'm going to sail
the Spanish Main--seek golden doubloons--maids in distress--the
Fountain of Youth! I'm going to cross strange waters--travel
untraveled forest ... see unseen peoples ... know unknown hills...."
An odd light flickered in his eyes, as if he half believed what he
spoke. Fanny appeared at the kitchen door and with her cheery call of
"Merry Christmas," the light faded from his face as he turned in quick
response.
He turned to his sister in mock reproof: "Shure and it's ye that has
not yet wished me aven a dacent top o' the marnin', let alone the
gratin's of the sason! Shame on ye--ye heartless, thoughtless,
loveless--"
He broke off, laughing at her bewilderment: she never could keep apace
with his quick moods. Noting a tear still glistening he took her
cheeks between his hands and kissed the wet eyes, then asked her to
get word to Deane that he would be over some time during the evening.
Surprised and pleased that he should ask her to participate in his
affair with Deane, she hurried to the desk set in a deep bay window.
Ellis, sleepy-eyed, came down with his hearty greetings of the day,
and was surprised to find Sue bent earnestly over her writing.
"Say," he said, "can't you wait till after breakfast to thank
everybody for their presents? What's the rush? Say, Dick, did you hear
yet what Bruce gave to the lady of his heart? No? Well, he out-Bruced
Bruce this time! He gave her a patented, electric foot-warmer!"
Terry smiled his appreciation of Ellis' chuckling loyalty and escaped
upstairs to his room. Ellis wandered aimlessly over to the Christmas
table and noted the number of unopened packages marked with Terry's
name, then called up from the foot of the stairs:
"Come right down here, you ungrateful Non-christian, and see what
Santa Claus brought you! You got more than any of us and--"
He desisted as he suddenly became aware of his wife's frantic signals,
and reading the grievous trouble in her twitching face, he went to
her.
* * * * *
Susan, entering Terry's room at dusk, found him standing at the window
staring out into the evening, watching the shadows paint out one by
one the landmarks he had known from boyhood. Two large leather bags,
packed but still open, stood at the side of the bed. The two frames
which had held the pictures of his father and mother lay upon the
table, empty, beside letters addressed to Father Jennings, Doctor
Mather, and Tony Ricorro.
He did not hear her but continued at the window, his relaxed shoulders
giving an unwonted aspect of frailty to his body. She tiptoed out of
the room, crept back again to look through brimming eyes at the lonely
figure silhouetted against the darkening window, then stumbled into
her own room and closed the door.
* * * * *
Terry returned to Deane in the sitting room after bidding her father
and mother a courteously friendly farewell. Mr. Hunter, vaguely
disturbed, had followed his wife upstairs reluctantly; he was not
quite confident that his decision regarding the fox skin had been
justified, and would have been glad had Terry given him opportunity to
discuss it. In a moment his voice sounded down to them as he defended
himself against his irate spouse.
"I don't care what you say, Marthy, he's got to settle down and--"
Then their door closed.
For a long time Deane and Terry stood voiceless, each leaden with a
dull misery. The shock of his announcement had paled her and she
stared hopelessly at him out of wide blue eyes, her full red lips
aquiver at the hurt she read in the gray eyes and the queer wistful
mouth.
She broke the pulsing silence: "I never understand you, Dick,--quite.
Is it because of the fox skin?"
He shook his head uncertainly, barely conscious of her words in a last
rapt gaze at her, vaguely aware that this was the picture of her that
he would carry in his mind through the years to come. Rounded, long of
lines, apart from him she looked as tall as he, though there was a two
inch discrepancy; the wide eyes and generous, curved mouth indicated
her infinite capacity for affection. The shadow of a dimple flickered
high on her left cheek: the quickened beat of heart pulsed in the
white column of her throat.
"Is it because you hate the town, Dick?" she asked tremulously.
Again he shook his head slowly: "No, Deane, it is not that. The town
is all right--it is not that."
He paused, brooding, then went on: "Last night I did not
sleep--much--thinking about it. It's all my fault.... I do not fit. So
I am going away, going to try to find my own place, somehow."
Tortured by his patient smile, she followed him out into the dim hall,
half blinded by her burning tears. She sobbed unrestrainedly as he
slipped into his overcoat.
He came to her, his hand outstretched, his voice husky.
"Good-by, Deane-girl," he said.
Taking his hand she stepped close to him, misty-eyed, atremble.
"Good-by, Di--Oh, Dick! Don't go! Don't go way over to those awful
Islands!"
He steadied her with an arm about the shaking shoulders. She leaned
full against him and in the soft contact his pulses leaped. He fought
to resist the temptation to take advantage of her mood, knew that for
the moment she was his if he but pressed his claim.
Suddenly she looked up at him, glorious in her grief and surrender.
"Shall I--do you want me to--to--wait?"
For a few moments it seemed that he had not heard the low voice.
Then: "Don't wait, Deane-girl,--don't wait."
Then the arm was gone from about her shoulder.
"But I will, Dick, I will!" she sobbed, but as the words fell from her
lips she heard the door close and felt the gust of cold air that
chilled the hall.
* * * * *
She was still awake when the midnight accommodation whistled its
impending arrival from the north. She listened, tense, as the train
came to a stop in the town. A brief halt, then it sounded its
underway, the pistons accelerated their chugging beat and it passed
out of Crampville into the south.
She stood, still-breathed, dry-eyed, till the last grinding rumble
died out of the frosty night, then as a full realization of her loss
came home, she dropped to the side of the bed and buried her face in
the coverlid.
The floor where she knelt seemed cold and hard.
CHAPTER III
MINDANAO
The old _Francesca_, directed by a nervous and none too competent
Tagalog captain, maneuvered in the six-mile tidal current which swept
west through the Straits making Zamboanga a nightmare to all the
native skippers who called at that port. Crab-like, she crawled
obliquely to within a few hundred feet of the low-lying town, then the
screw churned up a furious wake as the anxious Tagalog on the bridge
swung her back into the Straits to circle in a new attempt. Carried by
the tidal rush the old tub circled in a great ellipse.
Alone at the rail on the dingy promenade Terry stood enjoying his
first glimpse of Mindanao. Seven months in Luzon had brought him
countless tales of this uncertain southland--tales of pirates, of
insolent, murderous datos defiant behind their cotta fortresses, of
kris and barong wielded by fanatic Moros gone amok; of pearls as large
as robins' eggs, of nuggets tossed as playthings by naked children of
the forests, of mysterious tribes who inhabited the fastnesses of
inaccessible hills.
He wore the service uniform of the Constabulary, the field uniform of
khaki blouse and breeches, tan shoes and leggings, and stiff-brimmed
cavalry Stetson. The smart uniform set his erect figure off trimly
and added to the impression of alertness conveyed by his steady gray
eyes.
In the two wide swings back into midstream that ensued before the
steamer approached near enough land to get ropes to the little brown
stevedores who waited on the dock, Terry had ample opportunity for
study of the tropic panorama. The sea was dotted with Moro vintas,
swiftest of all Malayan sailing craft; tide and wind borne, some
scurried at tremendous pace toward the fishing grounds of the Sulu
Sea, others tacked painfully into the Celebes. A Government launch,
its starred and striped flag brilliant against the green sea in the
morning light, left its jetty and headed south toward the dim
coastline of Basilan. A score of gulls, that had followed the ship
down from Sorsogon, fattening on the waste thrown overboard after each
meal, circled around the ship aimlessly, uttering unpleasant cries.
The young sun mounted swiftly in a cloudless sky, hot on the trail of
the cool morning breezes, white in its threat of blistering punishment
of all who dared its shafts.
The hawser snubbed, the drum of the rusty winch rattled and banged on
worn bearings to a tune of escaping steam, laboriously warping the
smelly hull alongside the dock. Terry watched the sturdy little Moros
spring into agile life as the vessel slowly neared the pier, then he
turned to look over the town which was built flush with the edge of
the narrow beach, extending each way from the shore end of the pier.
The galvanized-iron roofs of the taller buildings--church, convent,
club, a few more pretentious dwellings,--were visible above the low
foliage and between the tall acacias and firetrees which jagged the
skyline. A heavily laden breeze identified unmistakably several long
buildings as copra warehouses.
It seemed a busy town, as towns near the equator go. In the street
into which the pier opened a thin stream of pedestrians passed by in
brief review before the watcher: Moros, a few Filipinos, a Chino
staggering under a heavy balanced pinga, two white-clad Americans,
while several rickshaws, Moro drawn, jogged by with patrons concealed
under raised tops. Then a big foreign touring car turned the corner
and drew up in front of the government building to deposit a middle
aged American, immaculate in fresh pongee.
Terry, observing him idly from where he stood at the rail, saw a
larger, uniformed American swing the corner with vigorous stride and
after saluting the older man accompany him respectfully to the
entrance to the big building, where they stood a moment in
conversation. Terry's interest quickened as he recognized the big
American as a member of his own service; he watched him approach the
ship through the crowd of half-nude sweating Moros who now swarmed the
dock.
Terry, hastening down the ship's ladder, met the tall officer as he
reached the end of the pier.
He was a loosely knit, raw-boned man of about thirty-five, of serious
but pleasant mien. As he stepped to meet Terry, Terry saw that he wore
the leaves of a Major.
"Lieutenant Terry?" he asked, responding with friendly informality to
Terry's stiff salute.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm Bronner. Mighty glad to know you. We've been looking for you ever
since receiving a copy of the Headquarters Bulletin ordering you down
here. Have a good trip?"
"Well, Major, the _Francesca_ is no Empress liner but we got along all
right. I am very glad to know you, Major. Your brother and I were
roommates at college--he used to tell me of your experiences with the
head hunters--"
"Huh!" the Major interrupted. "Guess he stretched things some. Fine
boy. Wants to come over when he graduates this June, but his mother
says one son over here is enough. And she's right."
Terry liked the big irregular features. In the steady eyes he saw
something that forced instant credence to the stories told of the
Major's resourceful bravery under difficult situations, a bravery
which had made the name of Bronner famous in a service made up of
intrepid men.
"Welcome to Moroland," the Major continued. "I hope you like it down
here--I think you will. If I didn't I wouldn't have requested your
transfer. You are assigned to the most interesting of the Moro
provinces,--Davao. You go there to command a Macabebe company. Your
baggage still aboard?"
"Yes, sir."
"Forget the 'sir'! Leave your stuff on board--the _Francesca_ sails at
daylight to-morrow, and you go on to Davao with her. Had breakfast? I
thought not. Pack a bag with what you will need for a day ashore--put
on a white uniform for to-night. My orderly will take you to my
quarters where you can get a shower and some breakfast. Join me at the
Service Club for lunch."
Throughout the abrupt discourse Terry had endured the frank appraisal
of the shrewd black eyes. He experienced a pleasant reaction when the
Major again extended his broad hand.
"Lieutenant, I said a minute ago that I was glad to know you. Let me
repeat it--I mean it. Adios, till lunch time."
He pushed his way good-naturedly through the throng of Moros who were
handling the bales and boxes unloaded from the roach-ridden hull and
walked off the pier, disappearing into the government building. Terry
boarded the vessel, warmed by the friendliness of his new chief, and
by the time the orderly arrived had thrown a few things into his bag
and was ready to go ashore.
He followed the soldier down the main street, a dusty thoroughfare
lined with the usual assortment of structures which adorn Philippine
provincial towns: adobe, tile-roofed business houses honeycombed with
little box-like shops in which the Chinese merchants displayed their
wares: square wooden houses set high on stone understructures: scores
of bamboo shacks stilted on crooked timbers, unkempt, wry, powdered
with the dust risen since the last rains.
Though it was not yet nine o'clock, they sought the shaded side of the
street with the habit which becomes instinctive near the equator, and
welcomed the coolness of Bronner's low house.
The cook and the houseboy looked after him with the unobtrusive
perfection of service found only in the East. A good breakfast cheered
a stomach outraged by the greasy mess perpetrated upon native boats in
the name of Spanish cookery, and a cool shower bath eliminated the
stench of stale copra which had clung to his nostrils if not to his
clothing. An hour before noon he left the house and strolled about the
scorching town, regardless of where he went so long as he found shaded
walks on which to tread.
* * * * *
Most Philippine towns are coast towns, and most coast towns are flat
and uninteresting unless you are interested in their peoples--and you
are not interested in them unless they are of a different tribe than
you have known previously.
Take a couple of dusty--or muddy--streets, unroll them along some
freshwater stream just above a line of palmed beach: place an immense,
deserted-looking softstone church in an unkept square flanked with a
few straggled acacias and a big convent in which a native priest lives
in weary and squalid detachment from a world he knows nothing about:
line the two streets with an assortment of rusty bamboo and
mixed-material houses which impress one as never having been built but
as always having stood there: sprinkle a few naked, pot-bellied, brown
children staring at each other in pathetic, Malay ignorance of the
manner and spirit of play: set a few brown manikins in the open
windows--women who let life fly by in dull wonder of what it is all
about: add a few carabaos lying in neck-deep content in mudwallows,
and a score of emaciated curs which snarl at each other in habitual,
gnawing hunger and which greet their masters with terrified whines:
spread over it all a pall of still moist heat and a sky arched by a
molten sun. Contrive all this, then imbue every object--human and
creature, animate and inanimate,--with an air of hopelessness, of the
futility of effort, and you will have a typical Malay town as the
Americans found them.
But not so where the American has set his impious foot--impious of the
dogma that you can not change the East, nor hurry it. He enjoyed the
finesse of the phrase, quoted it, then jumped in to hustle the East.
The old timers,--Spaniards and Britishers for the greater
part--shrugged at each other over their heavy tiffins and nine o'clock
dinners; these crazy Americans would soon learn! But the crazy,
enthusiastic Americans, engineers, health officers, executives, school
teachers, Constabulary, labored on in the glory of service: eradicated
cholera, built roads and bridges, brought six hundred thousand
children into school that two score tribes might find a common tongue,
fought the devastating cattle plagues, wiped out brigandage and
piracy, brought order and first semblance of prosperity to eight
millions of people.
Young men did it all. The old-timers suddenly found that they were
living in new times, in clean, healthful towns: found that business
was increasing by leaps and bounds as the natives fell in behind the
young Americans with a quicker stride than Orientals had ever known.
And they are the reasons--those few thousands of smooth-faced
Americans who laughingly threw themselves at the wall of immemorial
sloth and apathy--why Kipling's phrase is seldom quoted east of India,
and now not often there. And they are the reasons, those carefully
chosen, confident young men of whom too many are buried over there,
that we have so much of which to be proud in what has been done in our
name for a backward, unfortunate people.
But we, you and I, do not know very much about it all: it is so far
away and we are so busy with our affairs, our politics, our--
... You know ... we are just too busy to bother about those Tagalogs
and headhunters who live over there where Dewey licked Cervera, and
Aguinaldo was king of the Igorotes or something, and Pershing rose
from a captain to a general: why, I heard one of those Filipinos make
a speech about independence and he was so smart and bright--he had
been sent to our congress or something and was handsome and polished
and....
Yes, he doubtless was. That is why he was sent: but he bore about the
same mental relation to the race he is supposed to represent as a
Supreme Court Justice bears to a Georgia cracker!
* * * * *
Terry had thoroughly assimilated the atmosphere of the Luzon provinces
in his seven months in the Islands, so he found a real pleasure in
studying a Moro town which had been under the energizing influence of
the Army for nearly two decades. He wandered slowly through the native
quarter, cutting down clean cross streets lined with neat nipa huts
inclosed behind latticed bamboo fences, enjoying the novelty of a
community different from any he had known. Every detail of the well
kept streets testified to the strictness of the standards set by the
white men who governed the town. The few Moros whom he encountered on
the noon-deserted streets passed him silently and with averted eyes,
wary, secretive, entirely alien. One looked him square in the eye,
leaving him uncomfortable with the antipathy unveiled, the cold,
everlasting contempt of the Mohammedan for the unbeliever whom he does
not know.
He walked with lids half-closed against the white glare and the heat
waves which danced above the tortured roads and roofs: by the hour set
for his luncheon engagement he had covered the town thoroughly,
including the beautiful post which had been turned over to Scouts when
the Army at last finished its tedious Moro project.
He found the Major waiting him at the Club, a large, single-story
building set in a grove of tall palms at the edge of the beach and
cooled by the breezes from the Straits. He followed him out on the
wide veranda built over the water's edge, passing through a friendly,
incurious group of young Americans who sat at little round tables in
groups of three and four. Major Bronner responded to a dozen greetings
as they crossed to a table set for two at the edge of the veranda. In
a moment the deft tableboy had their service under way.
"Well," began the Major, "you will have a busy time of it during the
rest of your stay--I wish it were to be longer. This afternoon I want
you to come to the office with me--there are lots of things to talk
over about your work down there. The Governor will see you about five
o'clock. How do you like Zamboanga?"
"It's clean, and interesting, Major."
"'Clean and interesting!' That is a boost! Though we can't take much
credit for the 'interesting'--the Moros furnish that!"
The white-smocked servants moved noiselessly about the cool veranda,
serving the score of Americans with that perfect impersonal care found
nowhere except among Oriental servitors: the subdued clatter of silver
against dish and the tinkle of iced drinks was often drowned in
outbursts of merriment from one or other of the little tables. Most of
the Americans were mere youths, though two were evidently in their
forties. Bronner noted Terry's study of a group of three who sat
nearby, heavily tanned men evidently not quite at home in the club.
"Davao planters," he explained. "Hemp planters: you will know them.
Three good men: they're going down on your boat."
Lunch finished, coffee and cigars furnished excuse for the white-clad
crowd to linger on the darkened porch: scraps of shop talk reached
Terry's ears, a jargon of strangely twisted English and Spanish words.
Bridges, appropriations, rinderpest, lack of labor, artesian wells,
cholera--such was their table talk, as such was their life.
The breeze freshened, gently stirring the potted plants which flanked
each row of tables; the hot stillness of the noon gave way to the
sibilant murmur of the cocoanut palms whose bases were lapped by the
quickening ripples. The breaking of the withering calm was the signal
for departure to office and field. The veranda cleared rapidly.
Bronner, watching the three planters, interrupted their departure.
"Lindsey--just a minute."
He took Terry to their table and introduced him.
"Lieutenant Terry, gentlemen: Mr. Lindsey, Mr. Cochran, Mr. Casey.
Lieutenant Terry goes to Davao to-morrow as Senior Inspector. You will
be able to help him, till he learns his way down there--and later he
may be able to help you."
Terry shook hands with the three in turn. All were out-doors men,
bronzed, diffident with the social shyness of men who live their lives
alone or among none but alien people. Lindsey and Cochran were
square-set, serious young men: Casey, older, but of eager,
enthusiastic mien.
The Major discussed them as he and Terry left the club.
"They're three of the best planters in the Gulf. You'll have no
trouble with them. But you may with some others, those who have a
fancied grievance against the government just now. I had better start
at the beginning.
"You know the best hemp in the world grows down there--soil, climate,
rainfall all combine wonderfully to make it the one ideal spot for
hemp production. In another twenty years it will probably rate as the
richest single agricultural area on the globe--that's why those little
fellows over there"--he indicated a pair of Japanese passing on the
opposite side of the street--"are piling into Davao so fast these
days.
"The world needs hemp--and areas where it can be cultivated are rare.
Three years ago a little stampede occurred into Davao; the pioneers
are a mixed lot--about sixty Americans, a few Britishers, a scattering
of Moros and Filipinos and nearly two hundred Japs. The Japs are
quiet--you will seldom see them: they stay on their places and 'saw
wood'; they're backed by some syndicate--probably their government.
But the others are lone handers, working on their own 'shoe-strings'
or financed by the contributions of optimistic shareholders in Manila.
"They are good men, these planters. You will like them. They went into
the fastnesses of Mindanao, braved the wild tribes, cleared their
land, planted hemp, working largely with their own hands--and in a
climate where they say the white man shall labor only with his head.
You will hear all about their troubles and difficulties--you won't
hear much else down there but hemp--hemp and wild tribes! Hemp and
wildmen--that's Davao!
"About their grievance. They cleared and planted rapidly and have
raised fabulous crops, but when it came time to strip the hemp for
market they found that the wildmen upon whom they had banked as
potential labor would not work. A few came and stayed, but most of
them quit after earning a few pesos. So the hemp rotted in the field.
Desperate, facing ruin, some of the planters went after labor too
strongly, frightened and browbeat the Bogobos into working. The scheme
worked, so a condition approximating peonage was developed upon
several of the plantations.
"We ordered it stopped. Those planters are very sore, looking for
trouble. That's the story--and the condition you must face, and
overcome. You've got to hold down that class of planter, but at the
same time encourage the Bogobos to work for them. It means prosperity
for the planters, and money and comfort for the Bogobos--and it will
keep them out of the hills: we want the Bogobos near the coast, under
civilizing influences. They are newly won to us and apt to fade away
into the foothills on the least provocation."
* * * * *
Crossing the acacia-shaded lawns of the beautiful plaza he stopped in
front of the artistic concrete bandstand, jerking a big thumb at the
dedication inscribed upon the ivy-covered façade.
"Pershing Plaza," he read aloud. "He was the last military Governor,
you remember. I knew him: a good man. No genius--just a good man, hard
worker: has two traits that will carry him a long way if he gets the
chance--common sense and industry. Wants to know everything about
everything, and never quits working. Surrounds himself with workers:
gives his men their jobs and doesn't bother them while they do
them--just wants results.
"'Make good or make way!' Some slogan! Pershing, Wood, Scott,
Carpenter,--America has sent some of her best into Mindanao. I'm glad
to be here--aren't you?"
At the sudden question Terry turned to him.
"Yes," he said. "I hope to be--useful."
They had reached the entrance to the government building: the Major
paused at the foot of the mahogany staircase to conclude earnestly:
"It is fashionable just now in Manila to decry this effort to
institute civil government among the Moros--but I know you are not of
the type to be influenced. Governor Mason is making good: you will
see that after you have been here a month. He is a wonder,
Terry,--probably the only man who could handle this situation with a
few Constabulary. Study, patience, and square-dealing, backed by
occasional use of troops, prepared the Moros for this experiment, and
Governor Mason is carrying it forward almost alone--opposing the
backward tendencies of Sululand with little else save personality,
inspiration and a wonderful knowledge of Malay character.
"You're going to like it down here," he wound up suddenly, confused by
his own unaccustomed oratory.
Mounting the polished stairway, they passed down the tall concrete
corridors and into the Major's office. He drew up a chair for Terry
and seated himself behind a desk whose orderly array of accessories
bespoke his methodical bachelor habits. The walls were covered with
large-scale maps of Moroland showing location of various tribes,
scattered settlements and district boundaries, with great blank areas
eloquent of the unknown character of unexplored fastnesses. The
crosses which indicated the distribution of Constabulary forces
controlled from his office dotted every sizable island: pins bearing
the names of government agents showed into what remote regions our
trail-breakers had penetrated. One purple-flagged pin showed a
veterinarian warring against a cattle plague in Jolo: a blue flag
thrust into one of the blank spaces of Mindanao indicated the
whereabouts of a fearless ethnologist from the Field Museum: a red
sticker bore the name of an engineer who had been out of touch for six
weeks, running the line of a new trail across the great bulk of
Mindanao. The map was symbolic of the Constabulary, whose duty it is
to know all, to protect all.
Leaving Terry to his study of the maps the Major spent an unapologetic
fifteen minutes clearing the mass of papers that had accumulated
during the lunch hour, then turned to him. For an hour he outlined the
salient problems which would confront the young officer in his new
assignment. He was all business, curt, concise, definite. He touched
upon the ordinary service activities of drill, patrol, secret service,
supply and report, then took up those phases which required delicate
and original handling.
"Now, Lieutenant, we did not pull you down here to handle an ordinary
job--you know it means something these days to get a Mindanao
assignment."
Terry did know it. Only men who had demonstrated unusual ability in
their line had been sent to Moroland under Governor Mason. As the
months went by the northern provinces were being stripped of their
crack men for assignment to the southern experiment, so that detail
there had become a mark of distinction. He had been as surprised as
pleased at his summons from Sorsogon, a poor, colorless province
where he had spent seven months in uneventful, and as he thought,
inconspicuous service.
The Major detected something of what was passing in his mind: "You
were selected because of your understanding of native character, your
sympathy with them: that, and your faculty for learning dialects. By
the way, what is your method of studying these languages--your record
of three dialects in half a year is remarkable."
"There was little else to do--and I like to study them."
The Major noted the slight flush of embarrassment. He reached into a
drawer and pulled out a card, scanning it carefully before continuing:
"Your qualification card indicates that you are an unusual pistol
shot: it reads 'Pistol rating--two-handed expert, extraordinary in
accuracy and rapidity.'"
Disregarding Terry's increased embarrassment he pushed the question:
"How did you acquire such skill?"
"Well, as I had to carry a sidearm, I thought to make it useful--it is
not much of an ornament. After I became really interested it cost me
about fifty dollars a month for ammunition."
"Well, things happen down here! Some day you may be glad you spent the
money--your skill may come in handy!"
"On--men?" It was the one aspect of the service from which Terry
shrank.
"Well, I hope not. It seldom comes to that. But a number of hard
characters have been concentrating recently in the Davao Gulf, a batch
of discharged convicts who served long terms for brigandage and
murder. We have been watching them, but nothing significant transpired
till last month."
The muscles of his heavy jaw tightened as he went on: "You have heard
of Malabanan, haven't you?"
"The ladrone leader?"
"Yes, he. He was released from Bilibid prison last summer and came
through here last month. One of our operatives uncovered him on the
boat--traveling as an ordinary steerage passenger. He went to Davao,
and I fear it means trouble. I think he gathered that tough crew
together to operate in Davao, thinking to test us out now that the
Army is gone."
His face was grim as he snapped: "Terry, watch him! And if he makes a
single move--smash him! Make no false starts, do not arrest him unless
you are sure that your evidence will convict in the courts. Give him
plenty of rope--but if he breaks loose ... smash him hard!
Understand?"
Terry nodded quietly, but something in his competent face contented
his chief. He repeated his warning against premature action:
"Be sure you can get him before you move--he is slippery and has
friends in high native circles. We do not want to be turned down in
the courts at this stage of the game, and it may be he intends to play
the game square--plant hemp, for instance. But if he wants a
showdown--smash him good and plenty!"
He briefly reviewed the substance of his instructions: "You can see
that your work is going to call for a good deal of tact and patience:
patience with the angry planters, with the wild people. Everybody is
scared and jumpy down there just now, and we want to restore their
confidence."
Terry had listened attentively throughout the interview, speaking only
to answer questions. He broke the silence which followed:
"Major, I have heard a great deal about the Hill People of Davao: will
I be near them?"
The Major eyed him queerly for a moment before answering: "About
thirty miles as the bird flies," he said, "but about a million to all
intents and purposes! No living man has been among them--those who
have tried have left their bones rotting in the dark forest. They kill
all who attempt to reach them, expeditions in force find nothing as
the Hillmen simply fade away before their approach.
"I don't want you to attempt to go among them--in fact I expressly
forbid it, as it means certain death. But some day we hope to open the
Hills up, to win among them: it is one of the Governor's cherished
ambitions. So learn what you can about them from the old Bogobos who
live in the foothills, and report any interesting traditions you may
hear. Pieced together, the tales may make a helpful contribution--may
help solve the riddle of how to get to them peaceably. Not that you or
I are likely to live long enough to see it done--they are too
confounded wild, too inaccessible behind their jungled hills."
He shrugged his broad shoulders in eloquent dismissal of a vain hope,
and rose: "I want you to meet the Governor. I'll see if we can get to
him yet."
He strode out of the office, returning immediately to inform Terry
that the Governor was closeted with the two Moro datos whom he had
fetched to the capitol by launch.
"They haven't promised to be good boys yet," he chuckled, "but they
will before he finishes with them! His Secretary says that he expects
you and me to go down to San Ramon with him to-night at seven sharp,
to dine with Wade, the prison superintendent. You're in luck,
Lieutenant. It will be an evening you won't soon forget."
So it proved to be.
CHAPTER IV
THE FANATIC
Terry, refreshed by a shower and change to formal white uniform, was
listening to the Major's grave summing up of the Moro problem when the
arrival of the governor's car took them both down to join him. As
Governor Mason alighted to meet him Terry felt the magnetism of the
man who had been selected to attempt the difficult Moro venture.
Governor Mason had grown up in the island service, had been identified
with the inner government circle since the days of the First
Commission, and had been retained and promoted by each succeeding
administration. Far-sighted, patient, wary, suave, he was the most
consummate master of Island policy developed under the American
regime. A press bitterly hostile to the idea of giving the Moros civil
government had attested to his proven capacity by moderating its
criticism following the announcement that he would head the new
government.
Terry was welcomed with a graceful simplicity that made him feel at
home. Immediately he fell under the spell of this man whose spirit
enthused the small band of whites who were redeeming a people from
their prehistoric lethargy. He was fit to lead; the sweep of line from
temple through jaw bespoke an uncompromising force of character, but
was gentled by the deep cleft of chin: something in the poise of head
gave him the manner best described as aristocratic but it was toned
down by the mischievous gleam which flickered, often without obvious
reason, in the thoughtful eyes.
The big car bore them swiftly through the cooling evening over smooth
coral roads which were laid down like ribbons on the green tableland
over which they sped: they shot under groves of tall cocoanut trees,
past clumps of feathery bamboo which flanked the highway. Dusk was
near when they entered the reservation and drew up in front of a
red-roofed bungalow set on a great lawn facing the prison inclosure.
Superintendent Wade rose from the wide veranda and came down to meet
them, a tall, smooth-faced man of young middle-age, evidently on most
intimate terms with the Governor and the Major. While expressing his
pleasure in being privileged to entertain Terry, he bent upon him the
searching look of appraisal which is instinctive in the Orient, where
the masses are controlled by the white man's prestige, a prestige
which may suffer through attitude or actions of each newcomer.
Terry halted a moment at the curb, rapt in appreciation of the spot.
Acres of lawn, splashed with flaming red and yellow canna beds, swept
from roadway to edge of sea: wide shell roads, smooth as planks, wound
in great curves into the dark groves of cocoanut palms which
surrounded the inclosure on three sides and extended back a thousand
acres in symmetrical rows of towering trunks which created endless
shaded glades: turning slowly, he saw the immaculately policed prison
inclosure showing through the steel grillwork which an intelligent
mind had substituted for grim and stuffy prison walls. It seemed less
prison than sanctuary.
The development of the prison farm, the development of its Moro
inmates, was Wade's life. "Lieutenant, I am glad you like it," he said
simply. "It is home to me."
The Governor had strolled out on the lawn for a lingering look around
him. Returning to the veranda he eyed Wade and Bronner quizzically.
"Each of you has too fine an establishment for the barren needs of
bachelors. I wish you had more confidence in the blissful state of
matrimony!"
Wade shook his head decisively. The Major snorted.
"Huh! No petticoats for mine!"
A stolid Moro servant padded up with a tray bearing four cocktails: in
a moment carried them kitchen-ward, rejected.
The Governor laughed: "Not one in four! An unusual showing, Wade." He
turned to Terry: "You never drink?"
"I--I don't care for it, Governor."
A pause, and he added, flushing slightly: "That was not quite honest,
sir. I have never tried it."
As they moved to the table the Governor exchanged a glance of
delighted approval with the Major over the nice amend.
The steady breeze off the Straits that blew across the veranda where
they sat at dinner roused the sea into a little confusion of beach
sounds. They ate leisurely, talking of the strange things of Sululand,
talked as men do who find surpassing interest in the little and the
big things of their work; and Terry listened as they deliberately drew
him within their circle.
It was a dinner deserving of the time given up to it. Following a
vegetable soup the Moro bore in a great lapu-lapu, fresh from the
Straits: if you have never tasted the flaky substance of a
lapu-lapu,--don't! For once you do, you will be forever impatient of
the quality of all other fish. Roast duck followed, with sweet corn,
camotes, tart roselle sauce, a papaya salad, an ice, and pili nuts;
all perfectly prepared, and flawlessly served by the expressionless
Moro boy who moved noiselessly about the snowy table.
"I want to brag a little, Governor," Wade said as he and the Major
lighted cigars over a second cup of black coffee. "Everything we ate
to-night--with the exception of such things as salt and pepper and
cream,--was the product of this farm. You will be able to report at
the end of the year that we are eighty per cent self-supporting."
Pressed by the Governor, Wade explained to Terry his system of
handling the six hundred Moro inmates. He stopped midway in a graphic
account of three prisoners whom he had sent out with instructions to
fetch in a runaway convict dead or alive.
"I didn't ask you down here to talk you to death!" he apologized.
"But what happened?" insisted the Major. "Did the three skip too?"
Wade glared at him. "Skip? My trusties? I guess not! They came in last
night after dark, after being gone in the interior for three weeks,
carrying a gunnysack. I was sitting out here, so they came right up
and without a word emptied the sack on the veranda floor. They had
stayed out till they got him--his head rolled out of the sack and
landed right under where you're sitting, Major. Then the three walked
over to the prison gate and reported in."
A moment later the Major moved his chair.
The Governor had been quietly studying Terry. "How did the Philippines
first impress you?" he asked. "About as you anticipated?"
Terry hesitated, then responded to the authority of the kindly eyes:
"No, sir. I had read enough typical stories of the tropics to absorb
an atmosphere, but I did not find it. You know what I mean, sir: all
that stuff about _dulce far niente_, manana, gin-soaked
beach-combers,--that sort of thing. But I don't find it, sir. I find a
spirit of hustle, of getting things done despite obstacles, a spirit
which the natives seem to be absorbing,--though rather slowly."
The Governor was frankly interested: "You doubtless have formed some
opinion regarding the Filipinos--their fitness for independence?"
Terry felt the three pairs of eyes drilling him as he answered: "It
seems to me, sir, that--disregarding such baffling obstacles to
independence as their absolute defenselessness as a nation, the
profound ignorance of the masses, lack of a common tongue, and all
that,--I think that in view of the fact that under our guidance they
have advanced further than under four hundred years of Spanish rule,
it would be kinder if we waited decision until we see what a second or
third generation of English-speaking natives are like."
He reflected a moment, serious, then added: "In short, sir, I think
that it would be a great injustice to them to mistake our own driving
force for their capacity."
"Sus-marie-hosep!" exclaimed the delighted Major, who had fidgeted
while his protégé was undergoing the Governor's test, "Don't mistake
our driving force for--I'd like to hear the native demagogues argue on
that thesis!"
The Governor surveyed Terry with added interest, but was
non-committal.
They fell silent, listening to the dark sea, in its gentlest mood,
caressing the beach: the wind flowed past them steadily, like a soft
current, stirring the long fronds into purring contact. A sharp
challenge from an alert native sentry rang clear, followed by the
crunching sound of a heavy iron gate opening and closing with grating
finality. The hourly call was sounded by a guard, who, unseen by them,
paced the main entrance to the inclosure: "All's Well." It sounded six
times from invisible lips. Terry pondered its ironic message to those
who heard it from within those steel and concrete dormitories: "All's
Well," sounding to those who had crime on their souls, and had left,
somewhere, mothers, wives, children ... sweethearts.... It oppressed
him heavily.
Then a roar of laughter rose from within the prison, the free and
joyous expression of mirth from hundreds of throats, from men who
found life good. Terry looked up to see Wade observing him closely,
smiling.
"They're having 'movies' to-night," he explained. "They're crazy about
Charlie Chaplin."
Then Terry understood better the spirit of the institution, and of its
inmates. This was no dungeon, it was a school where men were being
taught how to live at peace with their kind, how to work,--and how to
laugh.
Vaguely conscious of being the object of intent scrutiny by some one
stationed behind his chair, Terry turned, restlessly, to face the Moro
servant, who stood just within the circle of light cast by the lamp,
his smoldering eyes fixed upon him. Unabashed, inscrutable, he studied
the white youth unblinkingly: then, as if decision had ripened, he
entered the full glare of the lamp and faced Wade, his master.
Astounded at the extraordinary intrusion, Wade questioned him curtly
in his dialect. The Moro responded at length, in a listless monotone
that contrasted strangely with the determined gleam of his black eyes.
Surprise flooded Wade's face, heightened to astonishment as the Moro
continued; and as he concluded his story with an expressive gesture
toward Terry, Wade struck his knee.
"Well, I'll be everlastingly consumed!" he prophesied. He searched
Terry's thin face intently, then turned to the Governor.
"This boy, Matak," he pointed to the passive Moro, "adopted me over a
year ago: just dropped in and said he was going to work for me. I
didn't need him--you know I draw on the trusties for servants--but he
would not accept refusal: he just stayed on. He is a fine servant, but
a queer fish--I let him stay for both reasons! I've tried to persuade
him to go to different friends who needed servants, but he looked them
over and then refused. I don't know where he came from, don't know
anything about his history: I only know that he is a very faithful
boy, with some grievance against life that leaves him morose and
silent.
"Now he coolly announces," he paused to again study Terry's
countenance queerly, "now he says he is going with Lieutenant Terry!"
The small but powerfully built Moro calmly returned the stare of the
four white men, his face passionless, his inert hands and thick bare
feet curiously expressive of a primitiveness beyond conception.
Evidently he had decided upon a course of action from which nothing
would sway him, and he waited until the white men should adjust
themselves to the fact. The Governor's face expressed his sympathy
with the Moro as he turned to Wade and asked permission to address his
servant.
"Matak, why do you wish to go with Lieutenant Terry?"
The Moro shifted his brooding eyes to Terry, then back to the Governor
before he answered.
"Because I like him, sir."
"Why do you like him?"
"Because he understands, sir."
"Understands what, Matak?"
"He understands us, sir,--the unfortunate. Because he is lonely too,
sir."
The Governor had been trying all evening to solve the strange appeal
of Terry's countenance: the primitive Moro had understood. Gazing at
the white youth, the Governor saw that Matak was right. The tone in
which he addressed Terry was gentle, fatherly.
"Lieutenant, do you need a boy?"
The Major's quick sympathy had been enlisted: "Lieutenant, you will
run your own mess down there," he interposed.
Meeting the black eyes turned upon him in confident expectation, Terry
found their dull appeal irresistible.
"He may come with me," he said. "I will look after him."
Matak stood motionless a moment, then stepped to Wade and slipping to
one knee pressed Wade's hand against his lips in token of gratitude
and farewell. Then he rose and went silently into the house.
The Governor, the Major and Wade were busy men with large
responsibilities: Terry found ample material for reverie in
contemplation of what was opening up before him. The incident served
to stifle further conversation. The four settled comfortably into the
long rattan chairs drawn up near the railing, each content in the mere
association with friends and occupied with his own problems.
The quiet intimacy of the group was jarred by the sudden jangle of a
telephone. Wade jumped up with a muttered excuse but before he had
crossed to the open door it rang again, insistent. They heard his
murmured "hello," then an incredulous "What!" in higher pitch. He
appeared at the door, pale, excited.
"Governor Mason," he exclaimed, "Captain Hornbecker reports that there
is a _juramentado_ loose between here and Zamboanga!"
At the startling intelligence the Governor's feet rapped to the floor:
the Major jumped to his feet, astounded.
"Why," he protested, "who ever heard of a Moro running amuck at this
time of night!"
"Hornbecker insists that it is true, nevertheless. He has sent a
detachment out after him but was worried because the Governor and you
might have started before he got word for you to wait."
The Governor shook his head decidedly: "We will not wait. Please call
my car."
The Major's protest against the Executive's endangering himself died
in his throat at a quiet look from the Governor. They hurried to the
car, Wade delaying them a few seconds while he secured three heavy
pistols, handing one to each of the two officers. They found Matak
waiting in the seat beside the driver.
A sharp order from the Governor and the chauffeur shot them out of the
reservation and into the provincial road. The big Renault roared
through the night, the kilometer posts flitting by like specters, the
headlights tunneling the cocoanut groves through which the white
highway spun.
The four Americans crouched low in the tonneau to escape the blinding
rush of air that eddied over the windshield. They shot over a bridge,
tore through a dark village, rounded a corner at top speed and took
the grassed shoulder of the road as the little chauffeur twisted the
wheel to avoid a bewildered carabao which blocked the middle of the
highway. A sickening skid, and they were back in the road. At the end
of a roaring flight down a long straightaway they rounded a sharp
curve into a short stretch terminating in a nipa village which seemed
to leap toward the rushing car. As the powerful lights swung upon the
widened road which formed the village street the alert driver saw that
which brought foot and hand to the brakes in a frantic effort that
brought the car to a grinding, sliding stop and tumbled the Americans
to the floor of the tonneau.
Crouched in the middle of the road a Moro, gone amuck, darted fanatic
glances in search of the Christians he had vowed to die killing, his
eyes bloodshot with the self-inflicted torture of the juramentado
rite. He balanced a great two-handed kris that gleamed like a row of
stars where the headlight struck its polished corrugations.
A Filipino, unaware of the terrific figure behind him, had sauntered
from the shadows into the path of light, curious, half-blinded by the
glare he faced. As he reached the middle of the road the most
terrifying of all cries issued from one of the dark windows.
"_Juramentado!! Juramentado!!!_"
At the cry his face turned sickly green in the glare. He wheeled,
uncertain, then ran blindly toward the frenzied Moro who was creeping
toward him.
It happened with the swiftness of nightmare. By the time the
Americans had picked themselves up from the bottom of the car the
Filipino's frantic burst had brought him within twenty feet of the
black-clad fanatic. His flying feet lagged to a halt, he stood stock
still in sheer horror till the Moro bounded toward him, then turned
back toward the car--too late!
The four white men leaped out just as the Filipino turned back toward
them with fear-leaden feet, and in the moment of discovery of the
Mohammedan who leaped in his shadow, they saw the glistening blade
rise above the Filipino's head and fall in a terrific sweep that
seemed to end at the point where neck and shoulder join. Before their
eyes the body opened like a book.
It seemed inconceivable, but the crazed face of the Moro showed
through the cleft which widened as the victim fell.
"God!" sobbed the Governor.
Sighting the group of Americans the blood-crazed Mohammedan bounded
toward them triumphantly, swinging a kris which no longer gleamed.
Bronner had reached the road first and stood in front. His heavy
pistol roared six times and at the last shot the leaping Moro spun
clear around and fell heavily.
He staggered to his feet and with the same implacable hatred gleaming
in his eyes came on toward them, still grasping the awful weapon.
Then, as Matak stepped out to meet him, armed only with a hub wrench,
Terry's right hand extended in swift gesture as he shot once. The Moro
collapsed to the road, limply, like a wet stocking off a line.
His race was run, but he had taken one unbeliever with him to justify
his claim to a choice seat in the Mohammedan heavens. There is a
certain impressive earnestness about the followers of Mohammed.
The dismayed villagers poured out into the street, venting their
frenzied fear by kicking the dead fanatic. Captain Hornbecker, a
round-faced officer, arrived with his soldiers. As the chauffeur had
emerged from his hiding place in the brush, the Governor turned
matters over to the captain and the four drove on into Zamboanga. All
had been sickened by the horror of the swift tragedy.
They stopped at Bronner's house to get Terry's bag, then drove him to
the wharf. The _Francesca_ was about to cast off, her dim-lit decks
loud with the confusion of misdirected effort.
Terry sent Matak aboard, thanked the three warmly for their kindness
to him; after a moment of hesitation he added something that was
drowned in a sudden rumble of winch. Two waiting sailors threw off the
hawser in response to a shouted signal from the bridge. The three
Americans remained at the end of the pier till after Terry had mounted
to the deck and the boat swung out into the current.
As they walked along the dark pier the Governor asked: "What was that
he was saying? I did not quite catch it."
"I heard only part of it," answered Bronner. "It was something about
how queer religions may be--he was thinking of the juramentado."
Wade spoke: "Did you notice how hard the affair got him? Of course it
was a pretty stiff sight."
"It wasn't that," said the Major, slowly. "From something he said to
me to-day I know that he has had a horror of some day being compelled
to kill a man--and the day came. I'm very sorry I didn't stop that
Moro devil--yet I hit him three times."
The Governor walked the short distance to his residence. Wade dropped
the Major at his bungalow, and sat oblivious to the Major's
outstretched hand, musing.
"Major," he said finally, "Matak's selecting Terry for his
master--queer, isn't it?"
"Huh!" growled the Major, "I would go with him myself--anywhere!"
CHAPTER V
NEW FRIENDS, AND AN ENEMY
The _Francesca_, no slower and no dirtier than most of the other
steamers which ply the inter-island trade routes, had waddled all
night and all day through the Celebes Sea. Afternoon found her
laboring over a becalmed mirror of sea, past rippled reefs, through
clusters of little coral islands from which straggle-plumed palms
raised wry fronds in anemic defiance of inhospitable, root resisting
soil. Mindanao lay to the west and south, vast, mysterious.
Terry stood alone at the forward end of the small promenade deck
watching the third class passengers, who, though still manifesting the
uneasiness of the Malay landsman at sea, were comfortably sprawled
upon the dirty hatch covers enjoying the seven-mile breeze created by
the movement of the vessel through the still atmosphere. Upon the
cooler side of the upper deck the first class passengers had disposed
themselves under the once-white awning. Two natives, a Tagalog planter
named Ledesma and his big-eyed, full-bosomed daughter, had withdrawn
themselves from the whites and were seated in conscious dignity near
the aft rail. Four Americans were grouped up forward, stretched out in
full length steamer chairs in the complete physical comfort born of a
cooling evening after a blistering day.
Lindsey reached out to pull up an extra chair, beckoned Terry to join
them and introduced him to the fourth member of the group, naming him
as Sears.
He was a big man, heavy-set, a bit untidy of dress and beard: his face
was flushed, and he answered Terry's pleasant salutation with a
mattered growl. Lindsey moved in his chair, uneasily.
"Lieutenant," he said, "we want to get acquainted with you. We shall
see much of each other in Davao."
Before Terry could respond a harsh voice broke in: "Yes, none of us
are stuck on ourselves down here!"
The words fell cold. Sensing the purpose to offend, Terry straightened
in his chair to face Sears. He met his surly stare squarely: their
eyes battled, but under the level gaze Sears' bloodshot eyes wavered
and lowered, the flush deepening angrily with his confusion.
Lindsey hastily summoned the deckboy to take their orders and by the
time he returned with the drinks the constraint had abated. Sears, the
only one who had ordered whiskey, settled back in his chair in sullen
relief from a situation not quite to his liking. Lindsey raised his
glass to Terry.
"To your arrival among us," he offered, pleasantly.
"To you all, sir," Terry responded.
"More hemp!" suggested Cochran.
Little Casey attested to his passion: "To breeds and breeders and
breeding!" he grinned: it was his never-failing toast at the Davao
Club.
They waited a moment for Sears, but he had gulped his drink.
It was the enthusiastic Casey who first spoke: "Lieutenant, and when
do you think you can come down to my place? I want you to see my
Berkshire boar and my two American mares!"
Cochran smiled at him, affectionately: everybody liked Casey for his
wild enthusiasms. His latest hobby was the importation of blooded
animals to cross with native stock.
"Casey," said Cochran, "if you would pay half as much attention to
your plantation as you do to your mares and that old grunter, you'd
get somewhere!"
Casey snorted: "Sure, and in about three months I'll have a colt to
show you--then you'll sing another tune! And wait till I get some
half-breed pigs--instead of the hollow-backed scrawny things we've got
now--then you'll admit that Casey was the boy!"
Casey was more or less of a character in the Gulf. His words flew so
fast they overran each other in effort to keep abreast of his racing
ideas. Thoroughly respected for his sterling character, he was made
the target of much good-natured hilarity because of his constant
hobby-riding and the rushing speech that made him almost incoherent.
His mares and boar had cost him money that could better have gone into
plantation improvements.
The conversation, drifting fitfully, touched upon a new stripping
machine which Lindsey had purchased in Manila: he was bringing it down
in the hold of the _Francesca_.
"I watched them load it," he declared. "I took no chances in being shy
a necessary bolt or belt. I'll have it set up in a couple of weeks and
if it works as well in the field as it did in the agent's
warehouse--no more labor troubles for me--no more hemp rotting in the
ground for lack of strippers!"
Cochran was mildly pessimistic. He had seen too many other heralded
inventions which worked well experimentally but failed in the hemp
fields. Of course Casey was hopeful--it was his nature.
Sears broke his long silence: "Labor troubles, labor shortage!
Hell!--there's plenty of labor in the Gulf--if only the Government
wasn't always hornin' in on us!"
Terry knew the remark was aimed at him but refrained from comment.
Sears mistook his silence.
"But no meddlin' government is goin' to interfere with me! I'm goin'
to run my own place from now on--and get my labor where I please--and
how I please!"
As this elicited no response from the patient officer he continued
despite Lindsey's distressed signals. Emboldened, he turned directly
to Terry.
"I suppose," he snarled, "that you were sent down to be the little
fairy god-father to the Bogobos--to protect the poor heathen from the
awful planters who want to make them work. No?"
Terry stirred. "Mr. Sears, I am instructed to protect the Bogobos from
any oppression--and to aid the planters in every legitimate way. I
hope to do both."
Sears' passion seemed fed by the conciliatory tone. Terry studied the
convulsed face and through the thick veil of rage saw the lines of
worry that had aged him prematurely: the black hair was streaked with
gray and his hands were thickened and stained with toil. Moved by a
quick sympathy Terry spoke again:
"Mr. Sears, this is no time to discuss the matter. In a week or so I
will come to see you and--"
Sears interrupted in a voice hoarse with anger: "Terry, if any
government man comes--snoopin' round my place--I'll--I'll--he will
never snoop again!"
In the tense silence that followed the challenge Lindsey bit clean
through his cigar. Terry's answer was so long in coming that the trio
of Americans who listened experienced something of the faint qualm
which sickens a man when he witnesses another's backing-down. Finally
he spoke, slowly, his measured words scarcely audible above the
muffled beat of the propeller.
"Sears, I am coming to your place first. I will come within a week."
Sears jumped to his feet, shaking with the hatred he had conceived for
the young officer. Terry rose easily, looking frail in comparison with
the burly figure opposing him, but he surveyed Sears steadily,
unafraid, and not unfriendly.
Cochran coughed loudly, and again. Casey nervously undid a shoelace,
retieing it with meticulous care. Lindsey rose with studied
leisureliness and stood at the rail near Sears, ready.
But the ship's bell rang out the dinner hour, a waiting Visayan
steward stepped out on the deck hammering a Chinese dinner gong, and
in the strident din the crisis passed. Lindsey lingered to speak with
Terry after the others had passed below.
"I'm very sorry, Lieutenant. Sears is a rough fellow, but he is
half-crazed with worry. He's really not a bad _hombre_."
Terry nodded: "I can see that he is worried about something."
"It's his plantation. He has invested what little money he had in it,
has worked hard for three years, and now that he has his first big
crop he can't harvest it--the Bogobos won't work for him. He is pretty
rough with them, I guess--but if he doesn't harvest this crop he's
ruined. He's in debt--and pretty desperate."
He paused, a deeper concern crept into his face: "Lieutenant," he said
earnestly, "can't you stay away from his place--a while--till he gets
his hemp cut and stripped? He is really desperate--and always packs a
gun."
Terry smiled his gratitude. "Lindsey, I am much obliged to you. You
need not worry about it."
* * * * *
Neither Sears nor Lindsey were of the group which assembled on deck
after dinner to enjoy the brilliancy of the swift sunset. The ship had
swung through Sarangani Channel and was paralleling the west coast due
north toward Davao. The red glory of the dying sun tinted the waters
of the Gulf to the line of palm-fringed beach which edged the distant
shoreline. From the shore the land sloped gently to the west and
north, mile after mile of primeval jungle broken here and there where
brush and thorn and creeper had yielded to man's demand for more and
more hemp. Far inland the steady rise persisted, grew more abrupt and
more heavily timbered, terminating in the far interior in a dim and
mighty mountain whose dark-wooded slopes and misted crest dominated
the Gulf: the red orb of the sun had dropped behind this towering
summit.
Cochran pointed up at the distant mountain: "Mount Apo."
Terry nodded: "Where the Hill People live?"
"Yes,--where they are supposed to live: no one really knows ... you
will hear all sorts of stories."
The shadows which lurked upon Mount Apo descended over the lower
slopes, then enfolded the Gulf. The lights on the steamer shone
murkily. The three lay back watching the stars brighten overhead. For
a long time nothing was heard but the querulous mutterings of the old
boat as she waddled on her way.
Terry broke the silence: "Where is Lindsey?"
Cochran answered quickly to head off the more explicit Casey: "Oh,
he's busy--busy with Sears."
Terry understood. Cochran sparred for an opening in the silence his
friendship for Sears made embarrassing.
"Lieutenant, you are likely to have work for your soldiers pretty
soon. There's a rough outfit gathering down here in the Gulf--though
I imagine Bronner told you all about it."
"He told me something of it, but I would like to hear more."
"Well, I don't know much about it, excepting that a score or more of
tough characters have come down in the past two months. They settled
on a mangy plantation up the coast, north of Davao, but they aren't
working: just loafing around all day. They seem to be waiting for
something--or somebody. The natives are scared, and the whites don't
feel any too good about it either! You know we are scattered all over
the Gulf--everybody a mile or more away from his neighbors--and that
means a mile of jungle."
Casey flared up: "We ought to run 'em out--they're no good, probably
carabao thieves or worse--"
"How worse?" grinned Cochran. "Horse thieves--or pig thieves?"
Casey did not mind being ragged by his friends. He persisted:
"Lieutenant, you ought to run 'em out as undesirables or under the
vagabond law! They're no good--they won't work--and they're the
toughest lookin' lot I ever did see! Sure and if I had my way I'd toss
the lot into Sears' crocodile hole--the dirty, low-lived, shiftless
lot of 'em!"
Terry was interested: "Sears' crocodile hole?" he asked.
Cochran laughingly explained: "It's more or less of a joke between
Sears and Lindsey: each has a hoodoo on his place that makes it harder
to get laborers. The Bogobos fear a great snake they swear haunts
Lindsey's woods, and none of them wants to go near a pool on Sears'
places just below the ford--they claim it is the home of a monstrous
crocodile, thirty feet long. No white man has ever seen either; it's a
big joke in a way--but a costly one for them as it makes the wild men
give their places a wide berth."
"What have they done about it?"
"Everything. Got up hunting parties--stalked the places for hours and
days, tried to convince the natives that it is all bosh. But they
insist it's all true, and stay away--and loss of man power means loss
of money they both need this year. Both of them think the stories are
just the usual Bogobo exaggerations."
Terry thought Cochran not quite convinced: "What do you think?"
"I? Oh, I don't know. It's hard to swallow the stories--man-eating
snakes and crocodiles sound all right on the lips of the old Spaniards
but where our flag flies things seem to sober down. Yet I've usually
found that back of all these Bogobo tales there is an element of
truth: and two years ago when I was clearing my place I shot an
eighteen-foot python. Stumbled on it sleeping--glad it was!"
The evening monsoon had set in, rippling the surface of the sea and
humming its cooling refrain through the rigging. Casey yawned heavily
and went below to seek the planter's early sleep. Cochran remained
with Terry for a half-hour, enlightening him with a running talk of
the problems confronting the planters. He was well educated,
progressive, and backed by ample family means had developed the best
holding in the Gulf. He told Terry that on this trip he had succeeded
in persuading thirty timid Visayan families to settle upon his
plantation despite their native fear of all things Mindanaoan, and
that his profits for the year would return him sixty per cent of the
capital he had invested in his place.
"You will soon understand conditions, Lieutenant," he declared as he
rose to go below. "Most of the planters need labor, and they need
capital." He threw his cigar butt over the rail, debating the ethics
of uttering what might be thought a criticism of his associates. "And
they need farming intelligence most--too many of them were army men or
government men before coming down here, yet they tackle a highly
specialized form of tropical agriculture with utter confidence! They
aren't farmers--they're just heroes!"
He half-turned to go, hesitated: "Lieutenant, you're going to like it
down here--because we're going to like you. Now, of course it's none
of my business, but if I were you I would keep away from Sears'
place--he will make his threat good. He has it in him to become a
pretty bad man--but as I say, it's none of my business. Goodnight,
sir."
After Cochran had gone, Terry, sleepless, slowly walked the gently
rolling deck. Ledesma stood at the rail near the forward lifeboat
gazing into the soft shadows which shrouded the muttering ship. At
Terry's quiet approach he turned to address him abstractedly in the
liquid Spanish of cultured Filipinos.
"Buenas Noches, Señor Teniente."
Terry answered in the same tongue: "Good Evening, Señor Ledesma. A
fine night."
The natives' vague fear of the dark--wrought into instinct by a
thousand generations of ancestors who crouched at night around
flickering campfires in jungles through which crept hostile men and
marauding beasts--had fastened upon him, stripping him of the thin
veneer of civilization the Spaniards had laid but lightly over the
Malayan barbarism. He shifted uneasily, looked out over the starlit
sea.
"Teniente," he murmured, "I like not the night. The dead rise ... some
sing ... some complain ... drift through the black mists searching for
those they have long lost ... the vampires seek for unprotected
children.... I like not the night...."
Lost in the ghastly realms of native ghostlore, he ignored the
American. Terry rounded the deck once and when he came again to where
Ledesma had stood he found him gone to seek the cheer of lighted
cabin. Terry stopped at the forward rail, his face upturned to the big
stars which burned in the soft depths of the warm sky: the Southern
Cross poised just over the crest of Apo. Below, on the black sea, the
thrust of the vessel threw up a great welt which bordered the wedge of
disturbed waters: phosphorescence gleamed like great wet stars. The
tips of cigarettes glowed on the forward deck where members of the
crew lay prone, exchanging occasional words in the hushed voices races
not far from nature use in the still hours of the night.
The morning would find him in a strange place, among strangers ... he
leaned upon the rail in a sudden excess of yearning for those whom he
loved, summoned the spirits of those who loved him. They came to him
through the night--Susan fretting, Ellis affectionately gruff, Enrico
boisterously cheerful, Father Jennings wise, patient, watchful.
Another, fairer, unutterably dear, hovered near him: he strove, as of
old, to bridge the gap--and was baffled, as of old.
The eight bells of midnight roused him from his dejected reverie: he
straightened from the rail. The Cross had dipped into the clouded
crest: miles to the west a shorefire bit into the black mantle that
draped the Gulf. The low wailing of an infant and the guttural
endeavors of the mother to soothe it came up from the forward deck
where the native passengers lay sprawled in the profound slumber of
the Malay: pacified, it slept again, then the night was still but for
the soft sounds of displaced waters and the creakings of the ship's
old joints.
* * * * *
As he passed along the narrow, ill-lighted passage toward his cabin he
heard a voice raised in ugly imprecation:
"I'll get him if he comes, the ---- upstart! Just let him show his
face on my place, by ----, I'll fix him!"
It was Sears' voice. As he felt his way down the dark corridor, he
heard Lindsey's low tones, reproachful, conciliatory.
A few steps further brought him near Sears' door. Suddenly he
distinguished a figure outlined against the door, listening. As a
match flared in Terry's fingers, the native whirled.
It was Matak. He followed Terry to his cabin, unabashed.
"Master," he said simply, "he talk about you. He make fight talk--kill
talk--so I listen."
The seed of his loyalty fell on ground furrowed by the lonely hours on
deck. Shame at having given way to a great depression swept over
Terry--friends were in the making, this splendid friend already made
... and he had come to serve, not to seek.... He smiled into the
worshiping black eyes.
"It's all right, Matak. You do not understand. You go to your quarters
and get some sleep."
The Moro lingered. "Anything more, master?"
"Yes, Matak. Don't call me 'master': call me 'lieutenant.'
"Yes, master." He left the cabin.
Terry, always a light sleeper, was awakened toward morning by a slight
sound outside his door. Looking out into the dim corridor he saw that
Matak was standing guard over his slumbers, armed with a big bolo
whose naked length gleamed viciously in the semi-darkness.
Touched by the devotion and realizing the futility of trying to drive
him from his vigil, Terry lay back on the pillow, the rhythmic beat of
the propeller in his ears. Asleep, he dreamed, and the chug of the
screw became the beat of an engine bearing him away from the home of
his fathers.
The Moro heard the restless tossing and stepped silently into the
little stateroom, his young-old eyes fastened upon the wistful lines
that marked the competent young face. While he stood brooding over his
young master the dawn streaked through the open porthole, and a soft
splash sounded from up forward as the ship dropped her roped anchor.
They were off Davao.
Terry had come into port.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAND OF HEMP
In three months the Gulf had laid its spell upon Terry. He had come to
love the great slopes, from the sandy coastline to the last swift
grades to Apo's distant top, the loveliness of the wind-tossed palms
which fringed the water's edge, the sparkle of the ocean's blue
expanse and its quick response to moods of sun and wind.
During the noontime hours the sun was blazing hot but he could order
his work so as to avoid exposure. Out at daybreak, he usually
accomplished the duties of the day during the cool morning hours,
reading through the siesta hours in the coolness of his great open
house.
Seldom did the routine of his work--the drill, the sifting of patrol
reports, the minutiae of the service--overreach into the afternoon
hours: then he was free to range the country, to learn its trails and
towns, its people and its spirit. His big gray pony had become a
familiar sight in every village, on nearly every plantation. Sometimes
he was gone upon two-day trips up or down the coast, or riding the
narrow trails through the deep green shade of the woods, his Stetson
seldom touched by direct sunlight.
There was a never-ending pleasure in the hemp fields, great sweeps of
tall abaca plants glinting in the sun: and in the sluggish, useful
river which drained the levels, its turbid bosom bearing a few silent
native craft, its oily depths suggesting a basis for the legends of
huge crocodiles which no white man had ever seen.
He worked hard, but it was not all work. Many an early evening found
him out on the broad Gulf in an outrigger canoe he had learned to
handle with native skill, sometimes with Matak, oftener with Mercado,
the first sergeant of his Macabebe company. Sometimes, when the
surface was calm, he spent wonderful hours in studying the cool depths
of the waters, the lee-shore coral ledges which bore fairy gardens of
oceanic flora, brilliant-hued, weird-shaped, swaying gently in the
tidal current: strange forms of sea-life moved among the marine
growths,--some beautiful in form and color, others hideous. Once,
while he watched a school of smaller fish playing around a huge
sea-turtle, they disappeared as if by signal and the tortoise drew in
his scaled head and sank to rest on the bottom as a swordfish swam
majestically over the spot, then darted into deeper waters. There were
clams as large as washtubs.
Often, while Mercado--or Matak--paddled, he trolled a flashing bait to
lure the gamefish which swarmed in the depths. Rarely did such an
evening pass without a long fight with a leaping pampano or a sea
bass: with thirty or forty pounds of desperate muscle at the other end
of a hundred-yard line, the song of reel was sweet. One night he
brought in an eighty-pound barracuda but usually the larger fish cost
him line, leader or spoon.
At times the surface of the Gulf was alive with schools of leaping
fish: one evening he saw a great fish, a tanguingi, rise into the air
with nose pointed upward, till, at a height of twenty-five feet, it
reversed for a downward rush to plunge in the exact center of the
ripples its great leap had created. Once, far out on the Gulf with
Matak, he came upon a forty-foot whale asleep on the surface, rolling
dreamily from side to side: the Moro, unafraid of man or devil, turned
Malay-green with terror as Terry prodded the huge black surface with
his paddle. Awakened, it upended in a sluggish dive, the heavy flirt
of its great glistening tail smashing the left outrigger and drenching
them to the skin.
Terry had attended strictly to the affairs which properly came under
his control and in doing this and doing it well, had won the respect
of natives and whites, a respect which had warmed into admiration
among those who knew him better, into affection with those who knew
him best. The loyal Macabebes would have followed him against any foe,
and, better than that, they drilled hard and worked faithfully that
they might be a credit to their leader.
The natives knew him as "_El Solitario_," "The Solitary," partly
because he played his game alone in a quiet competent way, to all
appearances equally friendly to all, regardless of color or condition,
partly because he seemed unconscious of the lures of all those brown
maidens known to be as shady of character as of color.
He had often stopped to spend an hour or two with Ledesma on his
prospering plantation. He liked Ledesma's sincere, old-school
courtesy, and he liked him because Ledesma was known as an
Americanista, looked upon the Americans as God-sent to guide his
people out of their sloth and abysmal ignorance. But he gave up these
visits following a day when he found the dark-eyed, ripe-bosomed
daughter alone in the house and learned, in her flaming passion for
him, that she had misunderstood the reason for his calls.
The frequency of his trips to the outlying plantations had increased
as the weeks went by, especially to the pitiful holdings of some of
the poor natives. Malabanan's coming had been broadcasted across the
land, and an uneasiness had settled over the Gulf, a vague fear Terry
sought to allay. But Malabanan's record, a dark and dismal history of
hideous crime for which he had been but half punished, was known
throughout the country, and was the nightly subject of fearful
conversation in every hut on every isolated plantation.
Terry had ridden, alone, to the neglected settlement up the coast
where the gang of roughs had rendezvous, but Malabanan was away. A
dozen hard-looking natives had sullenly responded to his curt
questions. None were working, though he had arrived during the cool of
the afternoon and the fields cried for attention.
In Davao, the town, he found consuming interest. Sleepy six days in
the week it woke each Wednesday during the couple of hours the weekly
steamer anchored offshore to discharge cargo into a lighter, drop a
passenger or two, and send ashore the exiles' greatest balm--home
mail. He came to know everybody: first the other government
people--Lieutenant-Governor; Scout officers; Dr. Merchant, the
district health officer; school teachers, native postmaster. Seldom a
week passed that he failed to saunter into each of the Chinese
tiendas, making the purchase of matches or other small articles the
excuse for a half-hour's visit. Oftenest he went into Lan Yek's smelly
little shop, for there the Bogobos brought their mountain hemp to
trade for small agongs: tired from their heavy packing, they would
squat down on the floor along the wall, one of them occasionally
stepping to an agong to test it with deft contact of finger, all
joining him in rapt study of its tone, measuring the duration of the
lingering waves of sound. Terry learned, in time, that they found
greatest merit in those agongs which rang longest to lightest stroke.
Even those timid Bogobos who never left the wooded foothills knew him.
He went among them, studying their language, learning their customs
and hopes and fears, listening to their picturesque traditions.
Always, when he met a file of the beaded, braceleted folk upon the
trail, he dismounted to exchange a few words with them. Unbelievably
shy at first, in time they came to know him as word passed through the
foothills of the young white man who understood: so they brought their
problems to him, some pathetic, some ridiculous--recently he had
ridden twenty miles to settle a dispute regarding the ownership of
some yet unborn puppies.
As their confidence increased, they unsealed their tight lips in
relation of strange tales of the Hill People, unbelievable stories of
the wild tribe who lived in the forbidden mountain beyond the Dark
Forest: stories told usually by old men and old women, who shivered as
they whispered their legends to the white man by the campfire. They
told him the dread stories because they liked his quietness, his
slightly twisted, friendly smile, and because, as they told each
other, he listened as one who sees not with the eyes alone.
When he saw that the fear of Malabanan had spread among these widely
scattered, defenseless wildmen, Terry grew grimmer. But as the weeks
passed peacefully by, hope grew within him that Malabanan's presence
in the lovely, fertile Gulf boded no ill.
* * * * *
Major Bronner, arriving unexpectedly, found that Terry had been away
all day on a mission among the Bogobos. Learning from Matak that his
master would return within a few hours the Major left his bag and
crossed over to the Davao Club for dinner. Entering the club, a roomy
house furnished by the planters to provide a comfortable place in
which to put up when forced to town by business or the monotony of
their isolation, he passed straight to the dining room, discovering
Lindsey, Cochran and a dozen others he knew. As he paused in the
doorway Lindsey spied him and called him to the table he shared with
Cochran and two others. After the Major had responded to the greeting
called from all four tables, Lindsey took up the thread of a story the
Major's entrance had interrupted.
"Major, I was just telling of my experiences with the hemp machine I
brought down three months ago. As I was saying, I set the machine up
in my biggest field and tried it out in private--and Man! How she did
strip hemp! Convinced that I had the world by the tail I sent word out
to all the Bogobos in the neighborhood to come in next day to see the
machine work, and sent a special bid to the old chief who lords it
over that section.
"Well, they came all right--ready to see the crazy Americans' newest
devilment--and all set for the feast they knew I'd give! The chief
came, with the bunch who act as a staff for him, and I lined them up
right in front of the machine in the center of a crowd of two hundred
wild men--all about as scared by the machine's appearance as they
could be. I was pretty proud, and pretty happy: I gave them a good
spiel through my interpreter, telling them that from now on all who
worked for me would be free from the hard toil of stripping--nothing
to do but field work--and all that. I thought that they would admire
this new evidence of the American genius, would pile over each other
in their desire to work for me.
"I nodded to the mechanic: he cranked the engine and it got off to a
fine start and before throwing in the clutch that hooked it up with
the stripper I looked out over the silent, brown-faced crowd. I had to
grin at their expectant, half-scared attitude: the old chief stood
right in front of the big machine--he was uncertain about it all, but
game. I threw her in and waved to the feeders, who tossed in the great
stalks as the big iron arms started to revolve in the air. It did make
an infernal racket--but it did strip hemp. The fiber came out of one
end, the juice ran into a trough--oh, it worked great.
"I spent a minute or two seeing that everything worked right, then I
turned triumphantly to the crowd. But, Lord--there wasn't any crowd--I
saw the last of their brown backs disappearing into the brush!
"All but the old chief. He stood right there; stiff with fright, I
guess! I stopped the machine and went over to him to ask him to tell
his young men to work for me as he could see how easy it would be for
them, now that I had this machine."
He paused, laughing ruefully. "But I didn't get a chance to say a
word. He took one last look at the now quiet iron monster, clucked
that peculiar 'Tuk!' in which they express the maximum of emotion,
uttered two words--'_Americano devils!_'--then stalked away as rapidly
as his bent old legs would carry him. He disappeared into the
woods--and hasn't been seen since!
"And worst of all, all of my Bogobos quit me, so that instead of
cornering the labor market in Davao I lost most of what I had! I'm
punching the bag every day now, getting in shape to greet the next
_hombre_ that tries to sell me a machine!"
He joined goodnaturedly in the laugh which filled the room and when it
subsided turned to the Major gratefully.
"Major, my hemp lay rotting in my fields: it meant serious loss to
me--it would have wiped me out. But Lieutenant Terry heard about it
and without saying anything to me, went among the Bogobos and
persuaded sixty of them to work for me--the most I ever had was
thirty-one. He has a wonderful hold upon them--they will do anything
he says: and I'm not the only one he has helped out; am I, boys?"
A dozen planters supported him, enthusiastic, vehement.
Cochran knew the Major intimately, his hobbies and aversions. He
turned to him solemnly.
"Married yet, Major?"
"Who--me? I guess not! No petticoats for mine!"
In the laugh which rose over Cochran's elicitation of the bachelor's
invariable formula, several of the planters moved their chairs near
the Major's table. All of these quiet, efficient Constabulary were
well liked, and the Major had been known to many of these Davao
pioneers since the days when they had fought together against
insurrectos, cholera, torturing sun, treachery; the days when capture
had meant the agony of dissection piecemeal, hamstringing, the ant
hill.
The Major's face had relapsed into gravity: "Lieutenant Terry is well
liked, then?" he suggested.
Lindsey replied, earnestly: "Major, he owns this whole Gulf. He hasn't
an enemy--not counting that gang of Malabanan's up the coast."
Burns, a gruff old planter, interposed: "He had one enemy, once."
Cochran understood that the uncommunicative Burns would go no further
and thought the Major should be enlightened.
"As I was the only witness," he began, "I guess I must tell the story.
One of our planters, Sears, took a dislike to Terry on the way down
from Zamboanga: no reason for it--he was grouchy and sore, had been
drinking too hard trying to forget his troubles.
"You know Sears, Major. His inability to get labor was ruining him and
he went too far in 'persuading' the Bogobos to work for him. Well, he
went after Terry on the boat, and it wound up with Sears threatening
to do Terry up if he came near his plantation: and Terry quietly
assured him that he would go there first of all.
"We were all worried about it for a week, as Sears is a bad man when
aroused and never goes back on his word, and we knew Terry would
go--he was all business, though quiet and white. Well, when Sears got
back to his place all of his Bogobos had left him, the fields were
deserted. It meant the loss of his crop, complete ruin, so he got to
drinking harder and finally, desperate, brought in some Bogobos at the
point of a pistol and put them to work.
"It was pretty raw, of course. Everybody knew of it that night. The
next morning I rode over to offer him some of my men and as I came in
sight of the house I saw Terry, riding his gray pony, enter Sears'
clearing from the east trail.
"I was pretty scared. I knew he was there on business--that he would
be the first one to hear of Sears' coup. I spurred up to see if I
couldn't prevent serious trouble, but when I drew near I pulled up:
there was something in his face that made me keep out, made me
understand that I was an outsider in this affair.
"Well, Sears rushed out just as Terry dismounted, his eyes inflamed
with rage--and with a whiskey hangover, I guess, though he seemed
perfectly sober. He stood at the top of the steps looking at Terry,
his face purple, trembling all over: he had his 45 in his hand. Terry
tied the reins to the lower railing, then stood looking up at Sears
with that queer expression which I couldn't fathom. Sears spoke first,
his voice husky.
"'So you've come, Terry,' he said.
"'Yes, I have come, Sears.' He looked sort of small and white compared
with Sears up there, but somehow I could not worry about him. I
thought Sears would choke for a minute, then he said:
"'If you put a foot on those steps I'll--I'll--'
"Terry didn't give him a chance to finish the threat, but stepped
forward. I noticed that his gray pony sort of nipped at him,
affectionately, as he passed his head and made the first step up.
Sears must have gone clean crazy. He raised the big pistol and fired
pointblank!
"They weren't fifteen feet apart, but he missed, and that shot passed
over Terry's shoulder and tore a great chunk out of the cantle of his
saddle. The pony tore loose and ran away. I just sat there, scared to
death!
"Terry never took his eyes off Sears and he still wore that same
expression I mentioned before: he was white as a sheet but he was not
scared. No, sir! Sears kept the pistol pointed at him and as Terry
came up another step I saw the hammer lift again, but it eased back
and the pistol wavered as Sears fell under the spell of Terry's
upturned eyes. His face changed queerly as Terry kept coming, he
stepped back uncertainly, the pistol dropped to his side. He
understood why Terry had come, and I did also, at the same time.
"Terry was SORRY for him!"
Cochran paused a moment to conquer a little catch that had crept into
his voice, and then concluded his story: "Well, Major, Sears realized
suddenly what he had tried to do and looked down at the gun in his
hands as in a dream, then offered it to Terry. But Terry shook his
head, said something in a low tone I didn't hear, and they went
inside, leaving me to cool my heels in the yard like the rank outsider
I was! They came out in half an hour, arm in arm, and Terry stepped to
the rail and sounded the Bogobo call. In about a minute a big gang of
half-naked Bogobos filed out of the woods into the clearing and
gathered around him at the foot of the steps.
"Terry talked to them awhile in their own lingo, then asked Sears if
he had living accommodations for the whole bunch. Before coming to
Sears' place he had spent the night in the foothills and persuaded
seventy Bogobos to come in and work for Sears--Bogobos, mind you, who
have always feared Sears and refused to approach his place!
"That's the story, Major,--except that Sears harvested his full crop,
is on his feet again, has cut booze and treats his men as well as any
planter in the Gulf. And he sure does worship this young lieutenant
of yours!"
The Major studied the end of his cigar. "He never reports anything
like that," he admitted. "I'm glad you told me."
"You'll hear plenty more such--" Cochran began, but was interrupted by
the loud entrance of little Casey. He tore into the room, breezy,
voluble, greeting every one with short, jerky sentences. He reached
the Major last.
"Hello, Major! How's everything? I passed Lieutenant Terry on the
trail--three miles out--he was leading his pony--said it was lame
though it hardly limped at all! Tried to get him to mount and ride in
with me--but he wouldn't--sure and he's the merciful man to beasts!"
He rambled on till the Major interrupted him with: "How are the
breeding experiments coming on, Casey? Any foals yet--or pigs?"
The little man disregarded the amused grin of the planters, pouring
forth in long eulogy of American mares and boar. "You come down to my
place in about two weeks," he wound up at last, "and I'll show you!
I'll have some cross-bred colts and pigs worth the seeing--and I'm
going to name the first one after Terry!"
"First pig?" Cochran seemed serious.
"No--first colt--the first pig I'll name for you!"
Soon the Major left Casey capably sparring with the plaguing Cochran,
and seated himself on a broad window ledge above the dark plaza,
smoking thoughtfully. He had made no mistake in sending Terry here.
Three phonographs strove against each other from different houses
along the plaza. It is characteristic of the Americans in the
Philippines that most of them take unto their bosoms these mechanical
comforts, instead of the animated talking machines which the Spaniards
affected. The sky was black with the threat of rain, low thunder
rumbled in the west, above Apo.
A few minutes, and the Major distinguished two forms making their way
along the north side of the dark plaza and as they passed under one of
the oil park-lamps he recognized Terry, leading a weary pony which
limped slightly. As the Major secured his cap and waved a cheery
goodnight to the gathering, Lindsey hurried to the door to intercept
him.
"Major, Lieutenant Terry promised to come over to my place to-morrow
afternoon. We were going to have a drive against the wild
pigs--they've been raising the devil with my young plants. You will
come along with him, won't you?"
"You bet! I haven't had any shooting in months. But you won't let that
big snake get me, will you?"
Chuckling, he left the club and crossed the plaza to Terry's quarters.
Entering, he heard Terry splashing under the shower. Terry emerged
soon, kimono clad, his face lighted hospitably when he spied the Major
sitting by the lamp-lit table.
Dressed, Terry ate and listened while the Major smoked and talked.
"Lieutenant," he finally remarked, "there is no more trouble among the
Bogobos?"
"No, sir. It has stopped--as I reported to you."
The Major regarded him closely: "What stopped it?"
"I just talked to some of the planters, and they understood."
Looking up, he flushed under the Major's quizzical gaze.
"Major, those planters at the club have been stuffing you!" he
complained.
The Major gravely discussed Malabanan. "Terry, you may not have to
move against him--I hope not, anyway. But I want you to be in a
position to finish anything he starts. Do you want me to send you an
additional company?"
"No--I can handle anything in reason with the Macabebes."
"What did you do with the secret service man I sent down?"
"I planted him up the coast where he can watch that gang."
Terry unfolded his plans for handling the situation should the
ladrones break loose upon the Gulf, and the Major was satisfied.
"It hardly seems possible," he said, "that they will try it--but with
only one company here to cover the whole Gulf--and in so remote a
settlement--it may look like easy pickings. But if Malabanan
dares--you smash him!"
The threatened rainstorm had passed to the north, leaving the night
clear and cool: a strong breeze fluttered the lamp. Matak entered to
clear the table and Terry, who had not eaten the fried chicken, pushed
it toward the Moro with goodnatured impatience.
"Matak, this chicken is only half cooked: I've warned the cook several
times--tell him to eat it."
Matak, silent and grim as ever, bore the offending dish out, while
Terry turned to the Major to discuss the morrow's sport. In a moment
their voices were drowned by the crash of dishes falling in the
kitchen, then a fearsome shriek reached the startled pair, a moaning
cry terminating abruptly in a choking gurgle. They sprang up and into
the kitchen.
Matak was astride the prostrate Visayan in the midst of the broken
crockery and bent tinware spilled from the upset table. He had the
cook's mouth pried open in determined endeavor to ram what looked like
half a chicken down the Visayan's gullet. Half-strangled and crazed
with fear the cook rolled his eyes beseechingly.
Bronner raised Matak bodily and Terry helped the trembling Filipino to
his feet. He turned to Matak sternly.
"What does this mean?"
"He would not eat it, master."
The cook broke in, almost hysterical: "Matak say I must eat cheecken,
that you say so. I say 'all right, eat to-morrow.' He say 'eat now.' I
say 'no, to-morrow.' Then he fight. I no eat to-day--notheeng--to-day
church fast day!"
As recollection came of his joking instructions to the ever serious
Matak, Terry turned to the Major but he had run from the kitchen,
choking. Having patched up a truce between them, Terry followed the
Major into the sala.
At sight of his rueful face the Major burst into fresh laughter. "His
fast day!" he chuckled. "These Moros are sure literal-minded--they
follow your words exactly. I've had some queer examples in the past
year."
They sat through the cool evening talking of their multi-phased
service, Bronner earnest and unwittingly eloquent in his summing up of
its ideals, its hopes for the future, Terry silent and thoughtful as
the big man talked about plans for Mindanao, for the Gulf.
"And some day, Terry," he concluded, after a stirring account of what
two officers, Case and Gallman, had done among the Luzon headhunters,
"some day we will get to the Hill People: the right man will come
along, and the right combination of circumstances. It is an unusual
combination--the right man plus the right place plus the right time.
Carnegie would probably have been just a tight-fisted Scot had he
lived in Napoleon's time, and Napoleon if born in this generation
might never get a headline.
"I would like to be the man who first wins to the Hills. Think of the
glory of such a life work--opening the doors for a benighted people
and leading them out of savagery into the decencies and comforts and
safety of civilization!"
The steady evening breeze had stiffened, swinging the great airplants
which hung in the big windows. The far howl of a dog sounded through
the dark: the sleepy crowing of scores of gamecocks accurately gauged
the passing of another hour. The Major suggested sleep.
Terry, in pajamas and slippers, came in to see if his guest were
comfortable for the night: assured, he crossed the sala, blew out the
light and entered his own room, closing the door behind him. Shortly,
while the Major lay watching, he threw open the door and the Major
heard him climb into bed and adjust his mosquito net.
The Major mused: "That's queer--I wonder what he does behind the
closed door?"
He fell asleep puzzling over it.
CHAPTER VII
THE PYTHON
Nothing could be more impersonal than the manner in which the Major
inspected the company. He was very curt and official: no detail eluded
his attention, no fault of equipment, quarters, drill or training
escaped comment and correction. The command was in fine shape but it
is a service in which there is but one standard--perfection, and
perfection may never be attained. The inspection consumed the morning,
but when they sat at lunch in Terry's quarters, rank had perished
again.
At two o'clock they set off leisurely for Lindsey's, Terry quiet, the
Major jovial at the prospect of a drive at the wild boar. They jogged
through the hot afternoon over a trail winding under a canopy of
foliage shrill with the plaint of myriad insect life. An hour out and
the Major was nearly unseated as his pony shied violently from a
three-foot iguana that scurried across their path in furious haste.
Farther into the woods, and they drew rein, listening to the mystic
tone of a Bogobo agong rung at minute intervals: Terry judged the gong
to be six miles distant westward, the Major contended for half a mile,
north of them. Such is the weird quality of the agong in the forest.
At four o'clock they drew up at Lindsey's roomy, thatched house set in
the middle of his clearing and in a few minutes Lindsey, soaked with
perspiration, hurried out of the tall growth of hemp ripening in his
south field.
"I feared you might not be able to make it," he smiled. "You can never
tell what the next day may bring you Constabulary fellows!"
He called his head native, a stocky Visayan, and ordered him to start
the beaters out, explaining to his guests that they would take their
places in an hour. The three then strolled through the streets of the
little village Lindsey had built for his laborers and their families,
a double row of neat bamboo huts, grass roofed, of which he was very
proud. Returning, they passed a huge machine rusting under a rough
shed, Lindsey's ill-fated hemp machine, introduced a little too early
to an ignorant people.
Lindsey unlocked a trunk and brought out three high-powered rifles,
two of them borrowed, contrary to the law of a land where firearms
must be zealously protected against falling into hostile hands. He led
the way through the long rows of abaca which drooped listless fronds
in the quivering heat, and into the cool woods which surrounded his
fields. They went on for a half-hour into deeper jungle, emerging into
a strip of natural clearing from which they could hear the beaters
converging toward them. Lindsey stationed Terry at the left end of the
break, Bronner in the center where the shooting should be best,
himself taking the right end.
As the beaters approached, crashing the underbrush and shouting
lustily, the three stood motionless, guns ready: the suspense grew
tense and the beaters grew silent as they hurried, unseen, from the
line of fire. A moment of dead silence, then Lindsey heard to his
right a dry twig snap and turning saw a big boar slip out from the
brush and pause, its ugly tusks foam-flecked. His heavy gun crashed,
the boar leaped convulsively across the clearing, falling at a second
shot. As it dropped he whirled to cover a big buck which sped across
his field of fire: as it fell he heard the cracking of a lighter
weapon to his right and thought, as he shot again and again, that his
guests were not being disappointed in their sport.
It was fast work while it lasted. Lindsey inspected with keen
satisfaction the bag of two pigs and one deer that had fallen to his
gun: he had missed one boar and another, which he had wounded, had
escaped down the trail which led to his house. He turned to see how
his friends had fared.
The Major was known as a crack shot but no game lay before him.
Approaching him, surprised, Lindsey saw that he was absent-mindedly
putting his rifle at safe the while he stared at Terry.
"Major, I'm sorry you had no chances--" Lindsey began but the Major
interrupted him.
"Chances! Chances? Sus-marie-hosep! Some of those pigs almost ran up
my breeches!" He was as nearly excited as Lindsey had ever seen him,
and they had served together in a Kansas regiment.
"Lindsey, I'm sure glad you asked me to come--I've seen something
worth seeing. I've seen him shoot!"
He pointed to Terry. His borrowed rifle stood nearby against a tree
and he was busy clipping fresh ammunition into his pistol magazines.
Five wild pigs lay in front of him near the opposite side of the
clearing. Lindsey looked his unbelief.
"Yes, he did!" asserted the Major. "I watched him do it--that's why I
drew a blank. Five pigs, five shots,--and after each shot he holstered
the gun till the next pig hove in sight! I've seen good shooting, but
such drawing--such certainty--
"Sus-marie-hosep!" he wound up, lamely.
Terry, having replenished his magazine, clipped it into the big
automatic with a deft snap, and turned round toward them. Noting their
attitude, he colored boyishly.
"Pretty lucky, wasn't I?" he said.
"Yes," agreed the Major, drily, "you were pretty lucky!"
The beaters had come up. Lindsey ordered them to carry the game for
distribution among his villagers. The sun was dipping behind the hills
as the three started back the trail through the dense woods, Lindsey
leading the way and searching for signs of the wounded boar. Every few
rods he found a pool of blood where it had paused in flight.
They entered the deep shadow cast by the spread of a great banyan tree
from whose thick branches a score of accessory trunks were sent down
to seek root in the soil. Rooting, they grew into smooth, heavy
supports for the wide-spread limbs which towered above the surrounding
forest. Terry paused a moment in the twilight of the tree, studying
appreciatively the miniature forest of trunks parented by the one
ancient growth. Suddenly a warning cry escaped his lips as he saw one
of the long dark trunks, a foot in diameter, loosen from a branch
where it hung suspended high over the Major's head.
"LOOK OUT, MAJOR!"
He leaped forward, expecting to find the Major crushed, but
involuntarily halted midway in his stride as the heavy trunk, landing
at the Major's feet with a slithering thud, writhed a terrible length
into massive folds. No eye could follow the inconceivably swift
contortions that wrapped the Major in a triple fold.
Two heavy coils prisoned his legs, a third passed round his back up
over his right shoulder to curve to the trail in front of him and rear
again in a length which terminated in a massive head poised six feet
from the Major's blanched face. Demon-eyed, unwinking, its thin lips
bisected the thick-boned jaws in frightful, moist grimace.
Lindsey, horror-stricken, stood helpless while the hammer head
catapulted at the sickened face of its victim. The Major's free left
arm, raised instinctively to blot out the sight of the living horror,
took the terrific impact, then dropped to his side, paralyzed. Still
bearing that hideous grin the flat head drew back for another blow at
the exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness
and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him,
would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast
deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head
drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the
great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his
senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind
him. With the smashing reports the poised head thudded to the ground,
the folds fell from about him and he slid down among the great
quivering coils.
Recovering consciousness, the horror crept back into his face but
receded when he saw Terry standing by him. Still faint and sick he
struggled to his feet, leaning against the trunk of the banyan and
stamping his feet weakly to restore the still numb legs. Terry helped
him hobble over to where the Bogobos, who had come up at the shots,
were grouped about the dead monster. Lindsey, kneeling to examine the
head of the great reptile, struck a match to point out the jagged
wounds that had shattered the base of the head.
"Cut the spinal cord," he explained quietly. He was as pale as the
Major. "Any other wound, even fatal,--it's death struggles would
have--I hate to think of it, Major."
At the Major's questioning look he pointed toward Terry: "He shot it.
Pistol."
The Major surveyed Terry steadfastly, striving for appropriate
expression of what was in his heart.
Then, "Terry, I am much obliged. If I ever--if ever you--I'm much
obliged!"
It was dark when they reached the house. Later they heard the
triumphant shouts which announced the arrival in the village of the
men bearing the carcass of the snake, which had haunted the
neighborhood for a generation. The celebration of its passing lasted
far into the night. After dinner Lindsey and Terry strolled to the
village to measure the python, and Lindsey ordered it skinned
immediately.
You may still see the trophy in the Davao Club, its scaly length
stretched along the molding on two sides of the library, where the
Major asked Lindsey to place it with this legend:
This python attacked Major John Bronner, P.C.,
on the Lindsey Plantation.
Length................24 feet, 9 inches
Greatest diameter.............14 inches
Major Bronner owes his life to the wonderful
pistol marksmanship of his friend,
Lieut. Richard Terry, P.C.
The ride home through the dewy night stiffened the Major's sore
muscles and strained joints intolerably. Terry called in the Health
Officer, fat Doctor Merchant, who looked him over and pronounced him
uninjured, leaving some vile-smelling liniment. The Major winced under
Matak's too efficient rubbing of bruised areas.
"Horse dope!" he snorted.
Later, dozing, he waked to see Terry's door close and open again after
a few minutes. Puzzled as on the preceding night, he fell asleep over
the problem.
* * * * *
Governor Mason had dropped the Major at Davao while he went on to
Mati, planning to return for a short stop at Davao in forty-eight
hours, but as they finished their leisurely breakfast they heard the
whistle of his cutter approaching Davao from the south.
"Wonder what's up," said the Major. "He's twelve hours ahead of his
schedule."
They walked slowly to the dock, the Major still stiff-legged, arriving
just as the launch was lowered over the side of the trim white boat
which lay anchored a half-mile offshore. As the launch neared shore
they saw the Governor standing on the stern seat.
He stepped up on to the little dock and greeted the Major, then turned
his smile upon Terry, apologizing:
"I planned to spend a day here with you all, but have been recalled.
As usual my departure from the capitol was the signal for a dato to
start a row!"
A group of officials and more prominent natives had gathered at the
pier. He shook hands with each, calling each by name, then gathered
the officials about him in a brief conference which disclosed his
grasp of conditions in the Gulf. At the end of the short discussion he
drew Terry aside.
"No trouble yet with that gang of roughs--with Malabanan?"
"No, sir."
The Governor's face bore a look Terry had not seen in it, an
unrelenting determination, a grimness: "Major Bronner has told you how
I want this matter handled?"
"Yes, sir. Wait, let him make the first move, then move against
them."
"Exactly! I want to demonstrate for all time that this province is as
unhealthy now for criminals as during Army days!"
For a moment he studied Terry keenly, then his gaze traveled over the
splendid vista of the Gulf appreciatively, mounting higher and higher
till it rested on Apo's dim crest. A moment and he turned to Terry
again, to find that he, too, was lost in a rapt contemplation of the
Hills.
"Lieutenant, some day ... somehow...."
"Yes, Governor."
The Major fidgeted uncomfortably in the presence of the two dreamers.
Two short blasts of the cutter's whistle restored the Governor's urban
manner. In a minute he and the Major had said their good-bys and were
bobbing over the little seas toward the ship.
The group of Americans and natives split up as they returned toward
the town but Terry lingered at the dock watching the cutter as it got
under way and raced toward the horizon, leaving a white ribbon of wake
on the blue gulf waters. Three large bancas were approaching the
shore, belated fishermen returning with the night's catch: a fleet
vinta, bearing Moro traders, bore toward Samal, its little sail
glaring white in the actinic sunlight: the morning air was hot and
filled with the heavy odors of sea and shore. It was a fair spot,
Davao, productive, peaceful.... He looked up the coast toward the
north where Malababan had settled with his unsavory crew.
* * * * *
He spent the day at the _cuartel_, correcting all the little defects
the Major's stiff inspection had uncovered. The Macabebes responded
eagerly--they, too, wanted to be perfect. They felt trouble in the
air, scented impending combat, and Macabebes thrive on combat.
Sergeant Mercado, veteran of seven campaigns in Samar and Cavite,
drilled them tirelessly, his eyes afire with the old fighting glint.
And that night he donned his starchiest uniform, pinned on his bright
service medals, and made the round of the tiendas, throwing chests at
the black-haired girls behind the counters. Great fighting blood is
usually great loving blood.
* * * * *
Terry ate dinner alone. The house seemed too big without the Major.
Restless, reading failed of its usual absorption. After a while he
took up a letter the last mail had brought from Deane and reread it.
DEAR DICK:--
Your letter telling of transfer to the Moro Province has
just come. I had to study the map to find out where it is!
If it means advancement I am glad--though we had all hoped
that when you left Sorsogon it would be to come home.
Your letters are so funny, so interesting. You write such
nice things about the natives that I am becoming fond of
them too. But the other day I read an article written by a
cynical woman who has lived in the Islands only a few
months. I read part of it to father, the part which says
that "the Filipinos are a worthless, shiftless, lazy people;
improvident, untrustworthy and immoral!" After I had read
that he thought a moment and then said:
"Well, Deane, people are just about the same as that around
here!"
Everything is going about as usual around Crampville. They
are tearing down the old watering trough in the square--it
is a nuisance to automobiles. They had some trouble over on
the South Side last week among the foreigners but Father
Jennings smoothed things out. He told me that he has a
harder time keeping them contented since you left. I learned
from him that you used to spend a good deal of your time
among them, that they idolized you.... Why did you never
talk to me about such things, Dick?
Bruce is earning a great reputation but insists on staying
in Crampville. He has been called to Albany twice during the
month to perform some special operation. He finds time to
run in on us nearly every day.
Susan and Ellis do not change: they are quite the happiest
couple we have--though they both do miss you terribly.
You never mention the native girls. Are they attractive,
lovely? Do not let one of them fascinate you. We need you
here, Dick,--Susan and Ellis, Father Jennings, the
foreigners--all of us.
DEANE.
His deft fingers fumbled as he folded the letter and locked it in the
drawer. Vainly smoothing at the lock of hair which always stuck out
from the crown of his head, he stared vacantly at the lamp shade,
oblivious to the entrance of the silent, morose Matak, who carried the
bottle of boiled drinking water into the bedroom and then went out for
the night.
A hoarse ghekko lizard croaked its raucous six-song from a rafter
overhead: a giant bat flapped through an open window, fluttered,
crazy-winged, thrice about the big room and blundered through another
window into the night: the low voweled voices of native passersby
floated up from the dark street.
But Terry heard nothing, nor felt the scent-laden breezes which roused
the heat-soaked town to life.... He was walking up Main Street again,
with rifle and snowshoes and fox, of a Sunday morning just as the
heavy church doors swung wide to the emerging congregation....
A strong gust flickered the lamp. He rose, slid shut the exposed
window and returned to his desk. In a few moments he took pen and
paper, and wrote.
DEANE-DEAR:--
Your letters come to me across the thousands of miles of
land and sea, carried by sooty train and boat, buried in a
dross of mail in prosy canvas sacks: I open them with the
delight one feels when he brushes aside the mat of damp and
frosty withered leaves to find the timid beauty of arbutus.
You think, perhaps, you might grow fond of these people? I
know that you would love this Gulf as I do. The humid heat
of the day oppresses me but little: I love the sparkling
hours of dawn, the cool of the evenings; the great tangled
stretches of green which clothe the slopes from sea to the
edge of the mountains that loom gray in the distance, like
the rim of the world. And I like the courageous planters,
toiling that the world may have its hemp: the young-old wild
tribes, emerging from their primitive mental shallows, a bit
bewildered, pathetic.
Yes, I think that you would like it all, too,
though--sometimes--I am not quite sure.
The mountains are not like our Vermont hills: more rugged,
wilder, more--what shall I say!--unsolved.... Thinking of
the home hills I can almost conceive the vast significance
of the word "eternity": but thoughts of these primeval hills
sweeps my mind backward, to the infinity of creation.
Untamed, untraveled, mysterious by day as by night, they
threaten as they beckon.
Nearly every evening, near sundown, I see a pair of wild
pigeons homing toward the crest of Apo. "Limoçons," the
Bogobos call them--"leem-o-sahns": the word falls limpid
from their lips, unaccented. They say the limoçon never was
heard to sing in the lowlands, and tell a strange legend
that it is an oracle of the Hill People, its song a
harbinger of good or evil tidings.
An old Bogobo woman told me of this one night, in a little
foothill village, when the spell of dusk had unlocked her
lips: and she told, whisperingly, of twice having heard the
Giant Agong of the Hill dwellers, once when she was a child,
again when she was grandmother to nineteen. I wish you could
have been there to watch and to listen: sitting near the
fire in front of her hut, surrounded by a circle of almost
naked wildmen who moved, uneasy, she told quaveringly of how
the booming tones had rumbled down the forested slopes, and
of how ill had befallen her people both times; when she
ceased, they stood breathless, their whole beings strained
to catch the dread sound none but she had ever heard. Yes,
she moved me, queerly ... I scarce know why.
I am lonely--a little--at times. But who is not? Yet I have
my work to keep me busy, usually happy. Just now I am facing
less pleasant duty--but it is, I fear, a work that must be
done. It is good to know that one is needed, as I am
here,--just now.
But never a day is born or dies but that I miss you all, as
I love you all ... Susan and Ellis, Father Jennings, the
foreigners ... all of you.
DICK.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STRICKEN VILLAGE
A week later, Terry stood at the window looking down over the
blistering plaza. Davao was torpid under the noonday heat. Three
carabaos grazed undisturbed on the forbidden square: another of the
awkward powerful brutes dawdled up the dusty road, hauling a decrepit
two-wheeled cart on which a naked-backed, red-pantalooned native
dozed: Padre Velasco, the aged Spanish priest, waved a weary hand at
Terry from his window in the old adobe convento. As he watched he saw
the soldierly figure of Sergeant Mercado emerge from the _cuartel_ and
hurry toward him.
Entering the room the soldier saluted stiffly and reported that a
patrol had just come in from the foothills with the information that a
mysterious fever had attacked the Bogobos in the barrio of Dalag, that
a score were stricken and four already dead.
Terry hastened to the quarters of the Health Officer to apprise him of
the facts. He found him cursing the heat, sweating profusely, though
wearing nothing but a thin kimono. A very fat man, Doctor Merchant,
inclined to be fussy about little things but magnificent in big
things, and thoroughly imbued with the idea that his work of
protecting the natives against their own sloth and filth was the only
interesting problem in the universe. Alarmed at Terry's report, he
ordered his horse saddled and rose heavily to don his field clothes.
Terry expostulated. "Doctor, you ought to wait till it cools off."
"Lieutenant, disease spreads all the time--it takes no time off
duty--so why should I?"
He came out fuming over a missing button: "Confound it all! I never
have--how do you keep so immaculate, Terry? You always look as if you
were on your way to a dinner or dance!" Wiping the perspiration from
heavy jowl and neck he lumbered about the room collecting medicine
cases, saddle bags, two big canteens, finally answering Terry's
question.
"No, you can't go with me--if I need you I'll send for you."
Terry followed him downstairs and helped him mount the ridiculously
small pony, then watched the sweating, cussing, bighearted doctor ride
out into the sun on his errand of mercy. As the tough little pony bore
his heavy burden into the trail and out of sight in the brush, Terry
decided humorously that Casey was right--bigger ponies were needed.
During the afternoon the _Francesca_ had limped in and out of port.
Among his official mail Terry received a confidential memorandum from
Major Bronner that erased the softer lines about his mouth:
Zamboanga, 12/18/191-.
Memo for Lieut. Terry.
Last night a notorious criminal, Ignacio Sakay, passed
through Zamboanga enroute to Davao.
Sakay was identified with Malabanan in some of the latter's
most vicious undertakings, was convicted of brigandage and
has been but recently released from Bilibid Prison.
Sakay is not a leader but is bold and absolutely relentless.
Among the natives he was known as "Malabanan's stiletto,"
and was supposed to do all of the killing.
You may look for immediate action from these men: Malabanan
has doubtless been awaiting his arrival.
Destroy this memorandum.
BRONNER.
Terry read the terse communication twice before lighting it with a
match and scattering the charred remnants over the polished mahogany
floor. He passed a grim afternoon with the Macabebes on the target
range, where the scorers wagged bull's eye after bull's eye, for
twenty-seven of the Macabebes were expert riflemen, forty-three were
marksmen.
He saw that Matak, serving dinner, was gripped in one of the
smoldering moods that often preyed upon him. Though his attentions to
his master were even more meticulous than usual, he moved with an air
of somber detachment. Terry had often pondered on the history of the
queer Moro and now he studied him as he cleared the dishes and lighted
the desk lamp.
"Matak," he said.
The Moro came to him, his melancholy eyes fixed steadfastly upon the
master of his choice.
"Matak, you know that I have never asked you anything about your past
life. I am not going to ask you now, unless there is something in
which I can be of help to you."
Matak faced his master, his brown features Moro-masked, inscrutable.
A moment he searched the concerned countenance, then before Terry
understood his purpose, the tight muscles of his face relaxed and he
slid forward to kneel on one knee and raise Terry's hand to his lips
in the Moros' final homage to an _apo_--a self-chosen master. Rising,
he exposed a face stripped of its mask of Oriental imperturbability.
"Master," he said, "I tell you. No other knows. When I am small
boy--twelve years old--my family live east coast Basilan. Very happy
family, master: father, mother, sister, me; three carabaos we have, a
little house, chickens, a little _vinta_ in which to fish--everything
Moro family want. We hurt nobody, just work.
"One night, very late," his face darkened, "men come. They steal
carabaos, everything. My father wake up, go out to see, and they
laugh--and kill him. I--a little boy--see them do it: see them kill my
father--with bolos. Then they kill my mother--the same man--the same
bolo. I see that, too: they say she too old, and they laugh." He spoke
slowly, hesitating before each short sentence, his black eyes dulled
with the terrible memories.
"My sister--she sixteen years old--they take her away. They take me,
too, because I soon be strong boy to work. My sister--they say she
pretty girl!" He raised his hand in unutterable execration.
"We sail all night, all day. Second night, I hear my sister scream,
see her fighting with same big Filipino who kill my father and mother.
Another Filipino hold me away, laughing ... always I know that laugh,
master!
"She Moro girl, he Filipino, so she fight hard--she rather die. She
hurt him, so he draw knife, kill her, and throw her in sea: then other
Filipino holding me hit me with bolo and throw me in too."
He whipped off his thin cotton camisa and exposed a deep scar which
furrowed his left shoulder. It had severed the clavicle, and
improperly knit, drew the left arm slightly forward.
"I swim ashore, two miles, to Lassak. Next morning I take boat, find
sister, bury her on beach. I, twelve years old, master."
He paused, a picture of implacable hatred and purpose.
"Master, I see Filipino who kill all three my family. He born with
left eye all white. I know him any time, any place. That nine years
ago. Nine years I no laugh, no sing, no play, no talk with Moro girls,
no marry--just listen--just look; listen for that laugh, look for big
Filipino with left white eye. Nine years I no tell anybody, just
listen, just look. I never find.
"But now I know I find him, soon. For I know you help Matak, master."
He had read the distressed white face correctly. Terry rose, placed
his hand upon the Moro's shoulder--the scarred shoulder--and looked
down into his now emotionless face:
"Yes, Matak, I will help," he said simply.
Content, the Moro turned silently on his bare heels and padded out
into the kitchen.
Usually Terry strolled the dark streets before going to bed, but
to-night a heavy downpour kept him indoors. Outside, the square was
loud with the drum-fire of the heavy fall on iron roofs, the rush of
water through shallow dirt gutters; inside, the big house roared, the
roof trembled overhead. He paced the floor, sleepless, worried with
thinking of Matak's terrible story, of the Doctor striving to succor
the stricken village, of Sakay's joining Malabanan.
There was another worry, too. Though there was nothing in the
eternally verdant land in which he was living to make the fact seem
real, the calendar indicated that Christmas was less than two weeks
distant, and for the first time since the days when she had first
intruded upon his boyish consciousness as something different,
something wondrously dear and fine and unattainable, he had sent Deane
nothing.
* * * * *
He was awakened before daylight by the arrival of a spent Bogobo
runner bearing a note from Doctor Merchant:
Dear Lieut:--
Can you come to Dalag for a day? These people are
panic-stricken, won't do a thing I order, won't take
treatment, but are trying to exorcise the devils of disease
by all sorts of queer rites.
I hate to ask you to come but your influence among them is
so great that it seems justifiable to ask it.
If you do come, bring your mosquito net--don't fail to do
this. The disease is mosquito-borne, and fatal if untreated.
The temperature runs are terrific--highest I ever saw.
MERCHANT.
Terry rode out of Davao at seven o'clock, bound for Dalag. Within a
mile he overtook Lindsey, who had spent the night in town. They rode
together several miles to where the trail, soaked with the night's
rain, forked toward Lindsey's plantation: the sun shone white hot, the
earth steamed through its mat of decayed vegetation.
They drew rein at the fork, dismounted. Lindsey broke the silence in
which they had ridden following Terry's brief explanation of his
mission.
"Terry," he said, "you're too young for all this worry."
Terry's face relaxed into a slow grin: "Lindsey, how old are you?"
"But your work is different--and you are different, Terry."
Terry's bantering grin gave way to a smile of singular sweetness, the
queer smile which deepened the depression at the corner of his mouth.
"Lindsey, I know what you mean, I think.... All my friends--"
He paused, gently discouraging his pony from its persistent nibbling
at his arm. Lindsey waited, hoping he would continue, but Terry looked
away, idly studying the thickly planted hemp fields that extended from
the fork to Lindsey's house, a mile distant. The still wet leaves
flaunted on great stalks fifteen feet above the wonderfully fertile
soil.
"Lindsey, I wonder if you really appreciate what you are doing in
taming a soil that was wild in jungle ages before Pharaoh's time, and
making it useful to man."
He pointed to the huge plant nearest them; "The fibers in those
stalks--I can see them, woven into a rope that may warp a steamer to
dock in Tripoli or Hoboken or Archangel: or fashioned by happy
Japanese fingers into braided hats to cover lovely heads in Picadilly
or Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kite
for some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin on
the banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped into
ugliest knot by a grim figure standing on a scaffold--though I hope
not!"
Lindsey had listened in curious wonderment to this conception of his
work. He thought it over, laughed.
"Well, maybe that's what you see, Lieutenant,--but I see wild pigs
rooting up my immature plants, lack of labor, poor transportation,
fluctuations of price, typhoons undoing a whole year's work--take my
word for it, I see aplenty!"
Terry tightened the girth, tickling the knowing pony's nose till a
sneeze compelled contraction of the expanded chest. Mounted, he seemed
loath to go, and twisted in the saddle to look down at Lindsey.
"About what you said a moment back--that I was 'different.' All my
friends have always been like that--wanted to look after me, somehow,
though I can look after myself, pretty well. I never quite understood
why they felt like that ... about me. So, I know what you meant,
Lindsey. And I want you to know that--that I like it."
Lindsey gripped his outstretched hand, then stood at the fork watching
the slender rider thread through the maze of the trail out of sight.
Mounting, he started homeward along the edge of the field trying to
interpret the strange appeal this young officer had exerted over him,
this quiet lad whose very competence and cheerfulness he somehow found
pathetic. He involuntarily halted his pony as solution came to him.
"Why, curl my cowlick!" he exclaimed aloud. "That's it--he was BORN
lonely!"
* * * * *
Terry rode into Dalag at noon and found the doctor even redder and
hotter than usual. The perspiration glistened on his hands and wrists,
dripped from his fat face and neck, and his once-starched clothes hung
limp from his rolypoly frame. Worn with loss of sleep and fruitless
efforts to bring the frightened Bogobos to reason, he welcomed Terry
weariedly to the little hut that had been sat aside for his use.
Terry took command, so quietly that the doctor did not realize it. A
few brief questions elicited the measures the doctor wished put into
effect, simple curative methods and preventive precautions.
Understanding, Terry started out, but was recalled by the doctor.
"Lieutenant, did you bring your mosquito net?" At Terry's affirmative
nod he continued: "It's a good thing you did--the village is swarming
with nightflyers, and every one of them is loaded to the hilt with
plasmodiae!"
The village, a mere scattering of crudest huts along the river front,
seemed deserted, but from nearly every hut came the low wailings of
the sick and the frightened. Noting that the lamentations had ceased a
few minutes after Terry went out, the doctor stepped to the door and
watched his progress from shack to shack, saw how the picturesque
little savages grouped about him. They knew him and listened to him
confidently, so that the parboiled doctor was as much disgusted as
pleased with the ease with which Terry secured the cooperation for
which he had begged and stormed in vain.
Under his direction they cut down all of the plant life whose upturned
leaves or fronds held stagnant, mosquito-breeding water, climbed tall
palms to brush out the rain water accumulated in the concave
depressions where frond joins trunk, even twisted off the cuplike
scarlet blossoms from hibiscus shrubs. They carried green brush to a
series of smudges he lit to cordon the village against the vicious
singing horde of germ carriers. Best of all, they ceased their
incantations over the sick, unwound the tight cords they had knotted
around the abdomens of the stricken to prevent the fever from "going
further down," opened the grass windows that gasping lungs might
obtain decent air, and swallowed the doctor's hitherto neglected
medicines.
There were no chickens in the village, no eggs. The doctor bemoaned
the lack of nourishment for his sick. So Terry summoned four of the
ablest hunters and disappeared into the woods for an hour, returning
with a young buck speared through the lungs and shot mercifully
through the head. In an hour a big pot was boiling in the middle of
the street that throughout the night the sufferers might receive hot
soup made up of venison, yams, eggplant and rice, all that the village
afforded.
Doctor Merchant, watching the transformation, marveled at the method
of persuasion. There was no attempt at exercise of authority, no
raising of voice, no gestures, only patient explanation, an assumption
of mutual friendliness, a sincere and ample sympathy.
Shortly after sundown the doctor, exhausted with the worry and stress
of the hours before Terry came, distributed his bulk as comfortably as
possible on the bamboo floor, tucked in his mosquito net very
carefully, and fell into a heavy sleep, too exhausted to await Terry's
return.
It was as well that the doctor did not await him, for Terry spent half
of the night by a fire kindled at the base of a big tree in front of
the chief's abode. Seated on a stump near the blaze, surrounded by a
ring of half-nude Bogobos whose timid eyes seldom wandered from his
face, he answered their questions and erased the last vestiges of the
panic into which the epidemic had precipitated the villagers.
Interrogation at an end, he still stayed on with them. The flickering
blaze lighted the circle of little brown folk, each flare gleaming on
an eye here, glinting there on beaded jacket or brass trinkets with
which both men and women were adorned. The first mad panic had abated,
but Death had stalked through the settlement six times in as many
days, and they listened superstitiously for the stark Tread through
the woods which hemmed them in. Each whispering wind that stirred the
leaves overhead brought a deeper silence, each wail from delirious
sufferers in nearby huts tightened the little circle.
The quavering gutturals of a half-blind old woman, wrinkled and
shrivelled with a number of years no man could estimate, jarred the
dumb circle.
"My years are as the scales of a fish. Each year has brought wisdom.
Listen."
It was the invariable preface of a Bogobo legend. Terry stirred: it
was the old woman who had told him of the Giant Agong.
"This sickness takes not many more of our people. The white men will
stop it. Trust them. These white men are Bogobo friends. These white
men are strong, wise, honest. White is better blood than brown blood.
Yes. The Hill People knew this."
At the mention of the dread folk the group of tribesmen moved
uneasily. A young hunter nervously stirred the flagging fire into
brighter blaze as the old woman went on:
"Yes. The Hill People knew. Have you forgotten how the Giant Agong
rang the night the Spaniards lost their girl-child?
"No. You have not forgotten. The Hill People took her--they wanted
white blood in the veins of future chiefs. They knew what white blood
means--the Hill People know!"
Curiously thrilled by the simple legend, Terry moved nearer to the old
woman.
"Grandmother, how many years ago was this?"
"Years? Years? I know naught of your white man's years, but this I
know--it happened during the rains before the dark-eyed white men
gave way to the blue-eyed white men."
Interpreting this as referring to the departure of the Spanish troops,
he gently pressed her for further details. But she was finished.
It was dawn when the doctor rose. Groaning in the agony of the fat man
who wakes stiff from the discomfort of an unaccustomed hard bed, he
sat up, then forgot his miseries in a new worry as he saw Terry asleep
under the open window, wrapped in his saddle blanket but without the
protection of a mosquito net. He cursed, stopping midway in his
vehement outburst to cock his head at the absurd angle in which men
think their ears function best. As he heard the ominous drone of the
insects his experience had taught him to fear more than wild beasts,
he scrambled to his feet with amazing celerity.
A light sleeper, Terry awakened and lay regarding him quizzically,
enthusiastically dissecting the stream of invective the doctor poured
upon him for sleeping without his net. Suddenly sensing the
responsibility the doctor felt in having summoned him to the village,
Terry explained his lack of a net.
"Doctor, I gave my net to the chief's wife: she--she is about to
become a mother, and she had none."
"Hell's bells! What Bogobo woman isn't about to become a mother?" he
stormed, refusing to concede the justice of the act. "'She had
none'--and probably didn't use yours!"
He was facing the window, past which the chief, arrayed in all his
half-naked splendor of beads and brass, sauntered with an air of
confidence quite different from his terror of the past week.
"There goes the chief, Terry, all fancied up like a bathroom on a
German liner! But he has no pants--why don't you give him yours? He
'has none'! You make me--"
He stormed on and on. Terry, still wrapped in his blanket, sat before
him looking up with an absurdly rapt air as of a student at his
master's feet. Merchant stopped to swab the thick perspiration from
his face, laughed at Terry's humbugging pose, and desisted. Terry
slipped on his shoes, buckled on the leather leggings he had used as a
pillow and picking up his saddlebags went out to clean up at the
river.
Finding on his return that the doctor was again genuinely disturbed
over his exposure to the disease, he sought to divert him. He sneezed
violently, and as the doctor listened with professional interest he
followed it with a series which mounted in volume and vigor. Merchant
eyed him solicitously.
"You've caught a bad cold, Lieutenant."
"Yes." Terry snuffled and drew his handkerchief. "It was awfully damp
in here last night."
"Damp? How could it be damp in an open shack this time of year?"
"Well, it was. A regular mist!" He sneezed explosively, then took a
few short turns about the little hut in search of the cause of his
malady.
The doctor watched him, interested. Bending suddenly, Terry held aloft
the perspiration-soaked nightshirt which the doctor affected.
"Eureka!" he exclaimed, dramatically, then dodged the shoe the hoaxed
doctor let drive at his head.
After an hour's investigation of conditions in the village the doctor
was convinced that he could now handle the situation alone and
insisted upon Terry's returning home. His parting injunctions were
worried.
"Now Lieutenant, you watch yourself closely for several days and if
you display fever symptoms, you send for me."
After Terry had ridden down the river bank and into the long homeward
trail, the doctor's overworked conscience smote him hard:
"Hell's bells! I never thanked him for coming!"
CHAPTER IX
MALABANAN STRIKES
Next morning Terry rose as the first sleepy cock challenged the
pink-streaked day. Shaving in the dim light, he watched the plaza
merge out of its darkness and fill with the natives passing listlessly
to field or waterfront. A few short minutes and the day arrived hot
and still: hens sauntered forth to begin their tireless, day-long,
scratching search: bony curs, sleepy after their instinctive vigils
through the night, made couches in the dusty road: across from where
Terry stood at his bedroom window, the four daughters of his Tagalog
neighbor sat in a little circle on a sunny bamboo porch structure,
each intently examining another's loosened hair in a community search
for--well, for whatever might be found.
By nine o'clock he had snapped the company through a sharp drill and
by noon had finished the weekly inspection. The afternoon passed in
preparation of monthly reports scheduled to go on the mailboat
expected in that evening. It is the function of the Constabulary to
know everything that transpires: health conditions, state of crops,
appearance of any strangers, activities of native demagogues,
movements of suspicious characters, morale of the people. Everything
is observed and reported, and summarized at headquarters to form the
basis for intelligent handling of a difficult problem.
Of the epidemic he wrote: "A disease identified as a particularly
virulent form of pernicious malaria appeared last week among the
Bogobos in the barrio of Dalag. The Health Officer is on the scene and
in conference with the undersigned decided that the use of our troops
for quarantine duty was not necessary. It appears that he has the
disease under control."
Under the heading "Recommendations" he set down: "Request that the old
provincial archives be searched to ascertain if a Spanish family
living in this Gulf during the last months of Spanish occupation
suffered the loss, by abduction, of a female infant. An interesting
story to this effect has been communicated to me by Bogobos, who
attribute the crime to the Hill People."
The mailboat limped in early in the afternoon, waking the torpid town
into semblance of interested activity during the brief duration of its
stay. But before she had disappeared over the horizon native Davao had
relapsed into stupid placidity, and the Chinos had stored the meager
cargoes dropped for them--print goods, cigarettes, matches, rice, a
few small agongs, and, probably, a little opium. The lethargy of the
tropics during the hot hours is entire and complete: the angel Gabriel
himself will fail of unanimous native response unless he toots his
cheerful summons during the cool hours between dusk to dawn.
Terry still sat in the cool orderly room at the cuartel, energetically
clearing his desk of the last accumulations of the paper work he found
a chore, when the dapper sergeant entered with his mail. Sorting
quickly through the dozen official envelopes in anxious search for one
addressed in the neat hand that always quickened his pulses, he
discovered, miserably, that there was none from her. Fighting off the
discouraged feeling that accompanied lapses in her correspondence with
him, he slowly opened a letter from Ellis. Ellis' letters, few in
number, had always been cheerful but brief statements of how matters
went on at home, usually business affairs. He put Ellis' letter in his
blouse pocket to read after dinner, then attacked the pile of official
mail: he wanted no unfinished office work to keep him in the morrow,
as he planned another quiet look at Malabanan's place. When the
Sergeant bore in the lighted lamp Terry ordered him to have the launch
ready at daylight.
Night had wrapped the town when he crossed the plaza to his quarters.
Matak, silent as ever but of more cheerful countenance, set the table.
At his second laconic announcement Terry rose and crossed to the
dinner table, and as he seated himself a white missile was tossed
through the open window by an unseen hand and landed with a thud on
the bare floor. Matak brought it to him, and unwrapping the paper from
about the pebble Terry read the note. It was from the secreto whom he
had planted near Malabanan's plantation.
Sir:
At eight o'clock last night Malabanan left here with a
newcomer named Sakay and 22 of his "laborers."
From my post I could not see if they were armed.
They have not yet returned. (9 A.M.)
I will follow in banca. They sailed south in a large lorcha.
Will report further when I return.
"47"
Leaving his unfinished dinner, he paced the floor. The midnight
departure of Malabanan with his chief lieutenant and a majority of his
followers might mark the beginning of outlawry, or it might be a
legitimate excursion into the deepsea fisheries. Yet the secreto had
said nothing of nets, and a party of twenty-four men would be in each
others' way. Terry hastened over to the cuartel, checked up the patrol
chart, then called the Sergeant, who verified the position and route
of each of the two-man patrols who were covering the countryside.
Satisfied that his men would discover and report the landing of any
strangers within a few hours after they touched soil, Terry returned
to the house.
He sat on the wide ledge of the window, thinking. The night seemed
unusually warm despite the stiffening breeze which blew off the Gulf;
he opened the collar of his blouse.... Where was Malabanan--what was
he doing? He saw a man's form outlined against the bright Club window
and answered the arm waved at him: it looked like Lindsey, he
thought.... "Give 'em plenty of rope and if they make a break--Smash
'em!" He shivered at the thought of sighting a gun against a fellow
man, and again in sudden rush of memory of the night in Zamboanga....
He saw Lindsey appear again at the Club window to peer in his
direction, then turn abruptly. In a moment he saw him leave the Club
and cross the plaza, hatless.... Deane--why had no letter come--he had
expected one, wanted one....
He slid off the window ledge as Lindsey came in, sincere and direct as
usual.
"Terry," he began, "I saw you sitting here alone and came over to ask
you to join us at the Club."
"I can't, Lindsey."
Lindsey studied the unusually pallid skin: "Why not?" he demanded.
"You're working too hard, Terry, and worrying too hard. Let's forget
it all for an hour or two!"
"I'm much obliged, Lindsey, but I can't come to-night."
"The fellows asked me to get you, Terry. They think it is queer you
come so seldom."
Understanding something of Terry's weariness of spirit he strove hard
to persuade him to spend the evening in the pleasant Club, but was
unsuccessful. Desisting, he talked a few minutes with Terry and then
left, a little embarrassed, wholly disappointed.
Alone again, Terry slumped into a big cane chair drawn up by the
table. His cheeks burned; he thought, vaguely, that he must have
shaved too closely. Loosening his stiffly starched blouse, he crackled
the letter from Ellis, opened it without much interest: then his whole
being tensed.
Crampville, Nov. 23, 191-.
Dear Dick:
Everything lovely here--and things are going to pick up with
you when you read this!
Yesterday Deane's father came in the bank and asked to see
me confidentially. Thinking he had come on bank business I
took him into my private office. Well, he just sat there
facing me for several minutes, not knowing how to begin. You
would have thought he had been robbing a train or something,
he looked so absurdly guilty!
I just sat there watching him, taking a most unchristian joy
in his trouble, whatever it was: I have had it in for him
ever since--since you know what. I liked the way his Adam's
apple chased up and down his throat.
Finally he swallowed hard and began: "Ellis, I came over
to--to ask you to--to send over that fox skin that Terry
gave Deane last Christmas."
Just like that! It sure was a pill for the old boy to
swallow but he went the whole hog like the old Puritan he
is. Once started he kept going, though still phased. Said
that he was glad that you had found something worth doing
and were doing it well, that he took a lot of interest in
your goings-on--as he called it--and that Deane always read
your letters aloud. And the last thing he said before he
went out was that he hoped you would soon get spunk enough
to write her some letters she "wouldn't dast read out loud!"
He said THAT about my brother-in-law! Great leaping frogs!
What is the matter with you?
Get busy! Write--and make 'em sizzle!
ELLIS.
P.S.--I forgot to say that I am sure she made him come to
see me. Also that Sue took the skin over last night. And
also that Bruce is more than professionally interested in
the nurse he imported from Albany to look after his office.
It has been some time since he hung around Hunter's--and as
to why, I do not know, but I sure am some little guesser!
Terry had never questioned the decision he thought she had made that
Christmas eve in returning the fox skin, had thought it hers, and
final. As the burden of a year fell from him he sat quietly, smoothing
at his stubborn, crown lock, the wistful twist of mouth ironed out by
a faint smile. He bent to read the letter again but after a few lines
the words were blurred out by a salty rush to his steady gray eyes.
Rising, he went into his bedroom and closed the door quietly behind
him, emerging in a few minutes. Perfect peace lay in his eyes and they
shone with the light that will never die in this world as long as men
live, and women.
Two days to Christmas, he thought, and he had sent her no remembrance.
He stood at the window, tasting the cool thickness of the evening,
breathing the fragrance of ylang-ylang: leaf and frond, stirred by the
monsoon, purred in gentle contact. In the starlight the old stone
church outlined its old-world, old-time architecture in friendly
shadows which veiled the pitiful scars and age-stains: the bamboo
shacks across the square--wry, flimsy, smutted by a hotly jealous
sun--had yielded to the magic of the night to become little golden
houses in which the fairies abode till the morning stars should fade.
A present for her ... he pondered long, the while he stifled his
desire to go outside and shout the joy that tugged at his restraint.
Suddenly he started, tightened as the idea fastened upon him, then
fairly ran to his desk. A hurried search for cable blanks and he wrote
in desperate haste that consumed four misused forms before he
accomplished an intelligible message:
Miss Deane Hunter, Crampville, Vermont.
Christmas greetings from palmed coast to snowy shore. Please
cable will you accept so humble a Christmas offering as an
equal share in the future of one
RICHARD TERRY.
Buttoning his blouse as he ran, he raced down out of the house and
over to his orderly room, where he typed the message and sent it out
by a soldier. The dozen Macabebes lounging in the _cuartel_, who had
sprung to attention when he passed, stared at him and then at each
other--this joyous, whistling boy was new to them! He crossed the dark
plaza: natives, looking out of raised windows, wondered who that
Americano was who walked in and out of the shadows of the great
acacias, singing:
When in thy dreaming
Moons like these shall shine again:
Being natives they did not understand the English words, but being
natives and instinctively attuned to the most ancient of emotions that
throbbed in the low baritone, they listened silently and stared out
into the night long after the singer had passed.
He reached the house, hesitated. Lindsey had said that the fellows
wanted him to come over to the Club ... he had neglected
opportunities to be with these good friends. He sailed his cap up
through an open window and crossing a corner of the square went up
into the gayly lighted building.
That night at the Club became a sort of tradition in the Gulf. They
still tell, wonderingly, of how he entered--a laughing, mischievous,
fun-loving boy, and of how the crowd welcomed this new Terry that none
of them had ever known before. They talk, still, of his deviltries,
the clean jests and keen wit he whetted--always at his own expense,
and as rough old Burns put it the next morning when they talked it
over: "And he niver took a drink and he niver cussed once, I'll be
---- if he did!" As the story of Terry's night at Club spread over the
Gulf all of the planters found excuses to bring them into town
afternoons in the hope of being present when he came again. They rode
in by pony or launch every night for two weeks, and then they ceased
coming.
For two hours he held them in the spell of his infectious deviltries.
Irrepressibly gay, impish, it seemed as if he vented all of the stored
up boyishness in him, spilled it in one heaping measure. Story
followed story, in quickly shifting brogues that rocked the building
with the sidesore laughter of the transported audience; they followed
him through a seemingly inexhaustible series of anecdote, through a
dozen ridiculous parodies he sang to a one-handed accompaniment
chorded on the battered piano the while he pantomimed with free hand
and roguish face.
"Why," whispered the astonished Cochran, "the--the--son of a gun!"
The uproar stilled suddenly as, seated at the old piano, he forgot
them for a moment, saw a vision on the white wall that was not visible
to the others. A few deep chords from knowing fingers, then his low
voice, rich with the depth of his happiness:
Love, to share again those winged scented days,
Those starry skies:
To see once more your joyous face,
Your tender eyes ...
The song, or something in the deep voice, pulled at the heart-strings
of those lonely men, who, womenless, never discussed women. Burns
sniffled, then glared belligerently at the others.
Cochran whispered to Lindsey: "Just what is there about--about that
boy? Is it because he's so pale?"
"Yes, that's it--you poor fish! But it's about time you quit pinching
my arm--it's getting numb!"
Flushing slightly in realization of his lapse, Terry had sprung
astraddle the corner of the billiard table, where, absurdly solemn, he
declaimed tragically, combing the classics for sepulchral passages,
plunging the intent listeners into deepest melancholy but concluding
with a droll extemporization that swept them from verge of tears to
convulsed mirth.
Lindsey, flinging a laughter-helpless arm across a call-bell, rang an
inadvertent summons to the steward that cost him the price of the
drinks and gave Terry a breathing spell. He sat astride the billiard
table under the acetylene lights, vainly trying to smooth down his
scalplock, his eyes dancing in eager enjoyment of the hour and of the
friends who crowded around him in affectionate amazement, laughing and
shouting at each other and at him.
Cochran's voice rose above the clamor of the room in a raucous whoop.
They all turned toward where he stood near the bulletin board reading
a message he had just torn down.
He waved the sheet joyously: "I saw the steward tacking it up a minute
ago--it just arrived--from Casey. He couldn't wait to tell us--the
long awaited day has come for Casey!"
He bent with laughter, then straightened and sobered to read it aloud.
"Casey talks like the Congressional Record but he sure minces his
written words. Listen.
Davao Club, Davao.
Horray! American mare had a filly colt last night. Also
sixteen pigs by Berkshire boar.
CASEY.
A roar of merriment greeted the phraseology in which Casey had
hurriedly couched the double event of his day of days. The terse--too
terse--message passed from hand to hand till it reached Terry. He
studied it, his head cocked to one side like a puppy's and with
something of a puppy's quizzical expression. A moment and he slid
slowly from the billiard table and crossed to the corner of the room
where a typewriter had been placed for the convenience of club
members.
They watched him, glancing uncertainly at each other, as he inserted a
sheet of paper, spelled out a few hesitating words, then jerked it
out, crumpled it in his hand. Slipping in a fresh sheet he started
slowly, pausing, rapt, after each few works. As line followed line the
room became quiet save for the click of the machine, the planters
eyeing each other, waiting impatiently for disclosure of the new
deviltry his whole attitude betokened. Pausing after each few lines to
seek inspiration at the roots of his thick tumbled hair, he wrote for
about fifteen minutes.
Then, tearing out the sheet, he mounted the chair and with a face
owlish in its affectation of heavy wisdom, he thrust his hand in his
blouse in classic barnstorming attitude and read his creation.
"CASEY"
The palm-fringed gulf of fair Davao--
The garden-spot of Mindanao--
Has been the Theater where Surprise
Has pried apart our mouth and eyes.
But bounteous Nature, in her last,
Has all her former deeds surpassed!
What now are Burbank's grafting deeds
Marconi's stunts, whose genius speeds
A message on a wireless tack
And makes of space a jumping-jack?
Where now does Edison hold sway?
Or radium's finder, Pierre Curié?
Does not this deed alone suffice
To render all that men or mice
Have wrought since days of Tubal Cain
Infinitesimal, and vain?
No man before has seen a dam
Provide the rudiments for a ham.
And not content with razor-backs
Produce a q
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