After a while a little brown boy, a net over his shoulder, came singing down the beach. At the sight of the two strangers he turned and ran, but the Maestro was up and after him and had him in his strong arms before he could reach the shelter of the coconuts. A few words in his own patois and the soft voice of the white lady reassured the little savage, and he led them along a trail through the trees to a small barrio of tuba-gatherers. At the door of one of the huts the urchin's mother, an immense fat crone, greeted them. They climbed the rickety bamboo ladder into the dwelling and accepted the seat of honour, a sagging bamboo bench, while with many pitying exclamations at their plight, the rotund lady busied herself and stirred up a most abominable smoke upon her cooking platform. When the repast was ready itwas seen to consist of two eggs and a banana swimming in suspicious grease, but the visitors were not fastidious. Meanwhile the boy outside climbed a tall palm, and soon the glade was resounding with the whacks of bolos and the crash of coconuts tumbling to the ground. They drank the milk and ate the white meat and gently refused some atrociously fermented tuba pressed ardently to their lips. All this time the Maestro was busy with his questions and he found that they were on Negros, some thirty miles south of their town, with Bago, a large village, where they would be able to secure a carabao and cart, only a few miles away.
So, as soon as was compatible with the somewhat deliberate Filipino courtesy, they started toward Bago, the whole population of the barrio watching them disappear through the trees. They soon struck the road and swung upon it. The sun, still low, dealt gently with the new arrival, and the country was beautiful. To their left the flashing-green rice-fields sloped toward the sea, and the shimmering waters showed here and there through the curtain of palms. To their right the high sugar cane, serried and plumed, throbbing mysteriously with small animal life, walled the view. They were somewhat dilapidated. The Maestro was barefooted and hatless, and his once-white suit hung lamentably upon his frame; the girl'shair had come loose and fell like a golden cataract down her back; but their hearts were purring with ineffable joy and everything was good. Hand in hand they strode along like children, stopping here and there to pick a flower and gaze into each other's eyes, while Jack raced madly, now in front, now behind them.
After a while a horseman came into view down the golden ribbon of road, riding toward them. As he neared he showed as a white-jacketed cork-helmeted Caucasian upon a diminutive native pony. The Maestro was gazing intently at the approaching figure. Suddenly he stopped short, his mouth open in astonishment.
"Well, I'll be danged," he exclaimed, "if it isn't the sky-pilot!"
"The sky-pilot?" asked the girl, astonished by this strange demonstration.
"Sure," corroborated the Maestro; "that's Huston, the missionary."
"The missionary!" ejaculated the young lady. She turned toward the Maestro; the Maestro turned toward her, and their eyes met. A slight blush rose to her cheeks.
"What luck!" cried the Maestro fervently. "Here, you sit down there," he said, pointing to a little mound by the side of the road. And not waitingto see if his invitation had been accepted, he rushed ahead toward the horseman.
The little pony was pulled up short, and the girl, sitting down with her eyes rigidly ahead, caught snatches of an animated conversation. Finally the missionary dismounted and the two men came toward her.
"Are you willing?" asked the missionary, as he stood, hat off, before her after the introduction. He was a young man, clean-shaven, very different from her preconceived idea of his kind, and there was a little gleam of fun in his blue eyes.
"Well——" she hesitated and looked intently at the tip of her foot, peeping beyond the bottom of her skirt. A cricket in the cane burst out in a shrill laugh. She raised her head and plunged her eyes steadily into those of the amused inquisitioner.
"I'm always willing to do what Lad wishes," she said, placing her hand upon the Maestro's shoulder.
They moved beneath the shade of a bamboo thicket, and the missionary, standing before the boy and the girl, the bridle of his pony passed around his arm, read words out of a little book that he had taken from his saddlebag.
But before he had gone very far, the Maestro began to fumble at his jacket. With some difficulty he drew from some inward recess a little buckskinbag, and when the missionary, hesitating, stopped in the middle of a passage, the Maestro nodded his head encouragingly. "Go on; it's all right," he said, and he passed something that glittered upon the ring-finger of the girl.
"Whom God hath united let no man part," said the missionary. He closed his book, stepped forward, and kissed the girl on the forehead.
"That was well done," said the Maestro. And he also kissed the girl, but not on the forehead.
They stood together for a while, speaking in absent-minded tones, the missionary of his missions, the Maestro of his schools, and then the Maestro and the girl started on again toward Bago. But Huston did not mount right away. He stood looking at them as they walked along the road, side by side, as they were to be through life, the dog frisking gleefully at their heels. They came to a turn in the highway and with a sudden joyous skip they vanished behind the cane, hand in hand like children.
Huston rose slowly into his saddle. "Come on, little horse," he said kindly; "come on; we're not in this."
When Sergeant Blount's detachment marched into San Juan, and in the centre of the plaza grounded arms with a crash that ran along the stone flagging in vibrating menace, the little pueblo cowered in a completeness of fear and abject surrender never reached before. Like lizards a few brown beings here and there slid out of sight; and the big blue-shirted men, grouped there beneath the white sunlight, found themselves as in a vacuum of heat and silence. But they had an uneasy sensation of eyes, eyes timorous and hostile, shifting and malevolent, from behind closed shutters and torn nipa walls peering upon them in tremulous distrust. In her stall at the head of the street, Eustefania, hundred-year-old, wrinkled, black, toothless, was hastily gathering up her store—two mangoes, a cluster of bananas, a dozen rice cakes, five twine-wrapped cheroots—into her pañuelo with trembling hands. And Pedro Lasco, crouching upon the stone steps of the church, a cigarette between his fingers, found his simple and complex soul filled with a new and inexplicable tumult.
For from the man standing there at the head of the little troop there radiated Mastery. Pedro, in his blind, dark way, tried to analyse the impression, to find how this particular being differed from other tall, gaunt, brutal Americans that he had met in the past, before whom he had quailed physically, but never morally; but immediately he was submerged in that feeling he so hated—of confusion, blackness, bewilderment—which invariably seized him whenever he, man of a primitive race, sought to penetrate his own soul, obscure with complications beyond his power to read. This alone he could tell:—that this man, among his six-footers, towered by half a head, that his shoulders were broad, that his hair was golden like that of the Santa Madre seen once, long ago, in the cathedral at Lipa. Later, by patience of eye and obstinacy of contemplation he discovered other facts:—that the campaign hat of the Sergeant was wider-brimmed and more rakishly set than those of his fellow; that his belt hung down loose along the right thigh, to the weight of a huge, silver-mounted six-shooter which was not the regulation Colt's; that, when he walked, his feet tinkled with long, rotary spurs, and that a red bandana, knotted negligently about the neck, flamed up the blue and khaki with splendour.
The men stood at ease in the centre of the plaza.The Sergeant took from his breast pocket a cake of tobacco, bit off a piece with a slight swagger, then looked about him carefully. His eyes met those of Pedro. "Alica, caybigan—come here, friend!" he shouted with cavalier amicability.
"Caybigan—friend!" The obscure emotions in Pedro's breast surged suddenly into something almost definite, something big and soft that was sweet and compelled. Slowly he came down the steps in feline grace of movement and stood gravely before the big man, one foot slightly in front of the other, his right hand upon his pliable waist. The Sergeant looked down upon him, pulling at his blonde mustache. He smiled. The smile passed over Pedro in a shadow of indefinite discomfort; unconsciously he stiffened up, a little defiant.
"You take us to the best house here, caybigan," said the Sergeant.
The smile had gone, and that other sensation, of sweetness and good will, again possessed Pedro. "Opo," he answered simply.
And this was the beginning of the bond. Pedro showed the Sergeant the house best suited for cuartel, the natural spot for a horse-corral, the watering place at the river. That night, after he had been dismissed and had eaten his rice and fish, Pedro squatted long upon the bamboo floor of his little hut, pondering inhis rudimentary way over the day's events. It was a poor hut, small, astonishingly bare; for Pedro's wealth was below, beneath the high, post-elevated floor. There, laid crosswise upon sustaining poles, were his hunting spears, harpoons, and paddles; keel-up upon the ground his banca, long, sharp-prowed, reptilian, and, hanging from post to post in heavy folds, ensilvered with fish-scales, his great dragnet. But his mind was not upon his riches; what he tried to read within him was dark and shifting; this only he could draw plainly from it:—a passionate desire to serve that big, golden-haired man with the jingling spurs, the red bandana, the rakish sombrero, to serve, blindly, unquestioning, like a dog, with fatigue of body, and outpouring of sweat, and tongue-licking of boots. But even this feeling was not clear like a simple flame; athwart it there leaped a contradictory shadow. The smile; it was the smile. Pedro tried to consider it squarely, but that bewilderment which possessed him always when he attempted to read his soul, complicated with complications of which he had not the key, seized him with acute distress; and with an impatient gesture he brushed away the obsession, as he would a fly buzzing importunately before his eyes. He lingered long upon the clearer impulse, the idea of service, of devotion. "Caybigan," he murmured softly; "caybigan"—and in thebalmy silence of the night the drawled syllables hung long with lingering sweetness.
Early the next morning he was about the cuartel, and when the Sergeant emerged, splendid in the rising sun, he was standing before him, alert of body, grave of eyes. "Hello, caybigan," shouted the Sergeant gaily; "going to help me, eh?" He pulled at his golden moustache; he smiled. A vague discomfort possessed Pedro; unconsciously he drew back one step in deer-like movement. But as the smile disappeared and the Sergeant stood there, pensive with the day's plans, the impulse to serve this being, to toil, suffer for him, again swelled within his heart in choking longing. They were together all that day. Pedro took the Sergeant over the whole pueblo, pointed out the natural points of defense, of vulnerability, showed him where the outposts should be placed, took him to the ford, circled wide about the huddle of huts, discovering all the hidden trails radiating out to the plains, the hills, toward the lairs of the Insurrectos.
"Good-night, caybigan," said the Sergeant as they parted that evening.
"Paalan, caybigan," answered Pedro.
All day he had longed to slip that word "caybigan," and now he stood still a moment, tremulous like a wild thing, noting the effect. But the Sergeant seemed to accept. He turned on his heelwith a gesture of the hand and tinkled into the cuartel, while Pedro sped to his hut, his heart in tumult. There he squatted long in the anguish of obscure analysis. It was the smile again, that almost imperceptible twitch of the corners of the mouth which the Sergeant had always as he looked down upon Pedro. Pedro tried to picture it there, in the darkness; but it eluded him mockingly, vivid before him for the time of a spark, then gone before he could pounce upon it, seize it in interpretation. It was a torturing game.
That day was only the first passed in a service that as time went on, grew increasingly closer, more exacting from the one, more sacrificing from the other. It was in the midst of the Bell campaign. Dragging the country like a net, there marched ceaselessly large bodies of men. Behind them nipa roared; black volutes of smoke rose heavily to the sky, broke against the turquoise lid and, rebounding, filled the air with acrid haze. At night the horizon glowed as with phosphorescence; great, scorched trees threw their thousand arms in hysterical gesture to a lurid heaven. The country took on a bleached, tortured, convulsive aspect. The rivers ran pink with the blood of slaughtered cattle. And night and day, along the highways, the awed populations passed, women with babies astride their hips, upon their heads pañuelos knottedabout a few handfuls of rice; men limp-armed, empty-handed; barefooted they pattered along the roads in thousands, toward the reconcentration camps, noiseless, speechless, stupefied, sullen-eyed and half mad. But up in the hills grim Malvar, starving, still hung on; though some of his men began to trickle down, famished, enfevered, without volition, sucked down by the void of desolation made about them.
And the great cry, reiterated incessantly from headquarters, a-thrill in men's mouths, on telegraph and telephone, was a ceaseless "Get the guns; get the guns; get the guns!" And the soldiery, wild with powder, fire, and carnage; that great cry ringing in their enfevered brains like a hallucination, "got guns" by deeds which, in their rare, cooler moments, came back to them as incredible nightmares. It was in this work that Sergeant Blount, athirst for praise and splendour of fame, threw himself with his ferocious energy and that Pedro proved the invaluable helpmate. He had been a great hunter; he could track like an Apache; and to this he united a singular faculty for obtaining information among his people. To the two caybigans the slightest starting point sufficed—a rumour, for instance, that a man with a gun had passed a certain place at a certain time. Instantly they had saddled and were off, and from thespot Pedro trailed like a hound, leaping from sign to sign. Often the trail led into the bosom of the hills and regretfully they had to stop before the probability of disappearing into an insurrecto stronghold. But often also the trail, circling, doubled back to one of the few pueblos, such as San Juan, kept here and there like oases in the desert of desolation, as baits, as constant, hypnotising promise of ease, of rest, of plenty to the outlaws starving, desperate, in the hills. And then Pedro's more subtle faculty came to the fore. He questioned, threatened, cajoled, bluffed, pleaded, leaped from induction to induction, till he had settled upon the man, the treacherous "amigo" in league with the enemy. Sometimes even there Pedro's persuasive powers were enough; more often Blount then began to act—and there were scenes better left undescribed. So, little by little, the cuartel filled with a strange captured arsenal, and Blount's soul with satisfaction. Sometimes it was a Mauser, oiled, polished, pretty as a toy; more often a rusty Remington or German needle-gun; but also there were pathetic makeshifts—a piece of water-pipe tied to a rough-hewn block of wood, loaded by the muzzle and set off by the hot butt of a cigarette.
So Pedro rode, slept, ate, toiled with the Sergeant, and by the whole pueblo, soldier and native, he was called "Caybigan"; by all except Eustefania,crouching day after day like a mahogany sculpture upon the latticed floor of her little tienda. The old woman was jealous. One day when the soldiers, in wild hilarity, had seized upon her basket of embryo ducks cooked in the shell and were hurling them at each others' heads, Blount had interfered. And now, whenever he passed, splendid, along the street, the old woman, like a statue coming to life, descended tremulously from her pedestal and, running in front of him, bowed low and tried to kiss his hand.
And yet in this service, in this renunciation, Pedro did not find the complete satisfaction that he craved. A heavy uneasiness was with him always, in rest or work, in peace or peril; a dull irritation, an obscure anguish that he could not fathom, but which each day became more oppressive, more insistent. It was the smile of his caybigan. At night he faced the distress of mental analysis, hour after hour, contemplating fixedly that smile. In its presence a strange weakness, a subtle debility, possessed him; to resist this he dwelt upon his past achievements. He had been a great hunter of hill and water. At the deer runs he was always leadingginete, galloped madly after the tremulous game, hour after hour, over mountain, down precipice, till he had worn it down, rode flank to flank with it and, seizing the moment, plunged his long lance into the throbbingspot behind the shoulder. And once when acaimanhad snatched his goat off the bank of the river, he had plunged into the black pool; seeking the saurian into the oozy depths where sullenly it lay like a rock upon its prey, he had twined about it his big net and, springing back to the surface, with his friends had triumphantly dragged it out to earth. Loud had been sung his praises during the fiesta that followed, while the viscous thief, corralled with bamboo poles, both eyes gouged out, died slowly beneath the sun, upon the baking strand. Yes, he was a big man; even his caybigan, with hair of gold and tinkling spurs, could he have done better? But before the smile, malign there in the dark, all this, all these deeds, this valour seemed bleached of colour and meaning. A heavy discouragement weighed upon him.
One night, at last, he came to a conclusion. And it expressed itself in one word, short and electric.
"Patay!" he said; "patay—kill!"
He would kill the smile.
He climbed down the bamboo ladder and, beneath the floor, went directly to the big net, hanging from post to post. From one of the flaccid folds he drew an object. In three leaps he was up again, and in the faint light of his little tin lamp, for a while he acted like a child with a doll. He crouched down, the thing upon his knee, spoke to it with tenderaccent, stroked it with long, gentle caress. But it was not a doll; it was a gun, a dainty Mauser carbine. It was oiled and polished, and beautiful, but he spent two hours over it, cleaning, oiling, snapping the delicate machinery. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he went down again and laid the precious toy among the secretive folds of the net.
The following evening, as in the moonlight the Sergeant rode out to inspect the outposts, a shot rang near and a bullet wailed overhead. Pedro, through the bush screening him, saw the great horse shy and rear, saw the Sergeant's graceful, almost lazy recover. Then man and beast stood still, black, statuesque in the sheen of moon, the horse with ears cocked forward, trembling beneath the compelling reining hand, the man erect and proud on the high-pommelled saddle. There was a silence long as infinity. The horse champed resoundingly at the heavy Mexican bit. Pedro panted. Slowly the Sergeant turned his head, from the thicket to the right, to the golden ribbon of road ahead, then smoothly, in imperceptible movement, to the left. His eyes were upon Pedro; they seemed to pierce the screen of brush to halt penetratingly upon the assassin. And upon the face, clear in the moonlight, appeared the smile.
A sense of immense helplessness whelmed Pedro; he crouched lower; his hands, flaccid, dropped theirhold upon the gun which sank softly in the high cogon. There was a long, throbbing silence. Then the tinkle of spur rang out in silvery note. With an elastic bound the horse leaped forward, immediately to be checked by the powerful guiding hand; and slowly they moved down the moonlit road, horse and man, huge, black, granite-hewn—unconquerable.
But Pedro, sneaking back, low behind the thicket, pressed both hands to his breast as if to hold there the germ of an idea he felt within; and with feverish haste hiding his gun, he crouched down at his accustomed place to face it. It was a dolorous process. The thing sparked, flamed, wavered, went out completely, sparked anew. He contemplated it fixedly, encouraged it, fanned it; and finally for a moment it blazed, vivid, calm, unforgettable.
"Alipusta!" he shouted triumphantly; "alipusta—contempt!" "Alipusta," he repeated slowly, contemplatively, the triumph of discovery sinking into the ashes of realisation. Yes, that was it; it was contempt, that smile, the smile of his caybigan; contempt, thorough, tranquil, absolute.
During the following days, Pedro worked with renewed frenzy. There was some rumour of the presence of an Insurrecto camp near the pueblosomewhere. Pedro went about the taos, cajoled, threatened, flattered, begged, cross-questioned, menaced in the full exercise of his singular gift, progressing from rumour to probability, from probability to certainty, and then he searched the country like a hound, along subterranean trails, springing from trace to trace, hour after hour closer. But all the time he shot sly side glances at his big caybigan, in ambush for the smile, the smile of contempt which, as he worked more and more feverishly, nearer and nearer success, came to the Sergeant's lips with growing frequency, with less and less restraint, with increasing insolence. And at his heart a desire gnawed, a black, obscure desire for something, something—he could not tell what—something he could not determine, but which now was indispensable to him, without which he could not live; something that tasted like water to his thirst, but was not water. He wished no more to kill; the new longing overwhelmed the other more primitive impulse. It was something bigger, grander, more magnificent; it tore at his bowels, a want, vague, unnamable, but of corrosive violence. On the third day they located the camp; travelling sinuously along a trace of trail they saw at last, through the bamboo thicket, the pointed roof of the Insurrecto cuartel—a nipa hut in the centre of a clearing. They stopped a moment in consultation; then Pedro slid smoothlythrough the cogon toward the camp. Half-an-hour later he was back, sprang up suddenly as from the earth at the feet of the Sergeant.
"Tacbo—gone," he said.
The Sergeant was accustomed to such disappointments. Tilting back his wide-brimmed sombrero in philosophical gesture, he followed Pedro toward the clearing. But as they broke out of the thicket he gripped his guide's arm with iron fingers and with a bound threw himself back into cover. For before the hut human figures sprawled in feigned sleep, their guns stacked behind them, and at the windows shadowy forms lurked. "What the devil——" he began fiercely.
"Tacbo," reiterated Pedro; "manicâ—dolls," he added shortly.
The Sergeant understood, and with a swaggering clink of spurs stepped out again. It was as Pedro had said. The recumbent figures upon the ground were dummies of grass and cloth; the stacked guns were rough wooden counterfeits. They climbed the bamboo ladder into the house. More of the grotesque shapes were there, legs divergent and back-jointed; two leaned at the window, their hollow bellies bent at right angles over the sill, in solemn, peering attitudes. In the breeze their loose white camisas moved softly in undulating shivers; their big straw hatsflapped like wings of bats. Hanging from the central rafter was a lamp, smouldering in yellow spark and sooty smoke; and against the harsh downpour of clear sunlight outside this little, soiled flame gave to the whole crew of contorted bodies an aspect of death, of carnage, of decay. The Sergeant caught himself sniffing the air. "Let's get out of this," he said.
They climbed down the rude stairs again, and instinct, more than Pedro's guidance, took the Sergeant to the right, some fifty yards into the bush—and there it was, the trench:—parallel to the trail, broad, deep, and all littered with signs of recent occupancy.
The Sergeant stood still, looking at the hut, at the trench, at the trail. He twirled his moustache pensively; muttered exclamations came to his lips.
It was a pretty arrangement. A detachment, coming along the trail behind the guides and bursting out into this clearing, with its lure of men recumbent upon the ground, of stacked arms, of vague forms at the windows, shadowed forth by the lamplight behind, would immediately charge in attempted surprise. Then from the brush to the right, the trench's enfilading murder—it was pretty indeed.
Again the Sergeant took in all the details, his head turning from point to point, from the hut to the trail, from the trail to the trench, then back again, assuringhimself of the perfection of the plan. And Pedro looked at the Sergeant; as if hypnotised he stepped closer, in long, feline strides, coming suddenly at far intervals, his whole lithe body a-quiver. For there, in the eyes of the Sergeant, the caybigan, growing stronger, clearer, more certain every moment, there it shone, his Desire, the form and shape at last of his obscure torturing desire. It was that—that which shone in the eyes of the Sergeant as he contemplated the perfection of the plot—it was that he longed for, thirsted for, that which he must have himself, absolutely, to guard and treasure and cherish. It was there, the torturing want of his entrails, there, but not his, not his yet.
Back in his hut that night, after hours of obscure battling, he named it at last. "Magtaca," he said, with heavy finality; "magtaca—admiration."
And then instantly he leaped to the next step.
"For the enemy, magtaca; for the caybigan, alipusta."
He hissed out the last word like an expectoration.
Yes, that was it:—for the enemy, admiration; for him, the friend, the servitor, the caybigan, contempt.
Pedro slid down to the big net below. And long in the dim light of his little lamp he oiled and cleaned and polished and caressed.
A mysterious enemy began to vex the little detachment of San Juan with the puerile attacks.
Every night a Mauser bullet came wailing down the Lipa road and passed over the outpost with a resounding hiss. The first time this occurred, the lone sentinel, returning the fire, doubled back prudently upon the guard rushing out to his support. Tense in vigilance the little troops waited for the attack. But it did not come. At regular intervals a lone bullet screeched above their heads, and that was all. Finally they charged along the highway. A few more detached shots met them; then there was silence.
The following night the same thing took place—the wail of the lone bullet, the alarm, the pursuit—and nothing.
A new plan was tried. Four men were placed at the outpost with saddled horses within reach. At the humming approach of the first shot they leaped into their saddles and thundered down the highway; it stretched before them, moon-golden between the black thickets, and deserted. Returning they scouted the brush, the big horses crashing down the thick vegetation. But there was nothing.
A corps of native beaters was added the next night. They searched the bush thoroughly on both sides ofthe road. The shrill katydids dropped into silence; lizards, snakes, iguanas, loathsome beasts of obscurity rustled off in panic. But that was all.
Caybigan was called to the rescue. For two days he worked upon the inhabitants of the pueblo. But for once his wonderful faculty failed him; he found no trace of the secret enemy.
An ambush was prepared. Ten men at early dawn lay down in the bush near the spot from which it was calculated the bullets came. All day they lay there, low, without a whisper, without a movement. But when night came, it was the other outpost, at the opposite extremity of the pueblo, which was attacked.
After this last effort the thing was accepted as routine. There was a childishness, a puerility about it that made the men smile. They grew rather to like this little excitement, breaking the monotony of long vigils.
But gradually the affair grew more interesting. The man was learning to shoot. Each night the leaden missile screeched a little lower, a little closer. Finally, one night, the guard, when relieved, was found walking his post with his left arm limp along his side, neatly punctured by one of the mysterious bullets.
On the same morning, Blount, walking along the main street, was stopped by old Eustefania.
"Mi capitan," she said, cringing before him, "do you wish to know who shoots your soldiers at night?"
"Who?" asked the Sergeant curtly.
"Caybigan," she said.
From the depths of their caves her eyes glowed at him, fixed, violent.
And to the Sergeant the answer came as the revelation of something long and obscurely felt. Caybigan's absence from the night alarms, his singular failure to track down the sharpshooter, the ridiculous fiasco of the attempted ambuscade—a thousand and one little links suddenly clinked shut at the word in a chain of evidence, of certainty.
The Sergeant turned sharp on his heel; his spurs rang on the stone flagging. In the centre of the plaza Caybigan, in his graceful, elastic pose, half-confident, half-wild, was bandying with three of the blue-shirted soldiers. Blount made straight for the group. When near he began to run, his face convulsed with the rage, half real, half assumed, which experience had taught him invaluable for such moments. With a tiger leap he bore upon Pedro, clutched his throat with his great hands, and threw him to the ground.
Pedro went down without a quiver of resistance, and he lay there a white figure in the gray dust, his arms thrown out in a cross-like attitude of infinitesurrender. His brown eyes looked up into the cold green light of the Sergeant's with golden luminosity; he smiled gently. "And this from my caybigan," he said.
"None of your Julius Caesar on me," snarled the Sergeant, who had a vague acquaintance with the classics. "Your gun; where is it?"
"I have no gun, caybigan."
The Sergeant drew his revolver, and brutally he jammed the handle into the mouth of the prostrate man with a sharp twist that sent the pointed stock up against the palate, jerking the lower jaw down in distorted gap. "Water," he said shortly.
One of the men with whom Pedro had been talking brought a hollow bamboo full of water. Holding it above the prone figure he tilted it carefully. A silvery cascade poured down; it struck the distended nostrils in diamond rebound, streamed into the cavities at each side of the clamped revolver. Immediately Pedro was clutched by an agonising sensation of drowning. He gasped, gurgled; his knees, as if automatically, snapped up to his chin. And the water came down, calmly, steadily, in pretty silver flow, while he drowned, drowned, drowned.
"Wait a moment," said the Sergeant. The man with the tube gave it a slight tilt, the flow ceased. Slowly Pedro emerged from the torturingsensation; an immense weakness dissolved his bones; he trembled.
"Your gun," snarled the Sergeant, shaking him ragefully.
But Pedro, limp, eyes closed, waited for a little strength.
"Your gun," thundered the Sergeant.
And Pedro opened his eyes with a long sigh, like a very sleepy child. "I have no gun, caybigan," he said, very gently, very wearily.
They began again. The water slid down in silver prettiness, splashed upon the face in diamond drops; and Pedro drowned. And each time when they stopped, and he had regained strength, he smiled gently at his caybigan and said, "I have no gun, caybigan."
After a while fury rose like a red foam into the brains of these men, mad with ceaseless, ineffectual carnage, with bitter, unavailing toil, with the sense of their impotence in this eternal war against a vacuum. They threw themselves upon that limp, resistless body, shell of the impalpable soul unconquered within. They beat and kicked and choked.
But Pedro, very weak, very tired, very broken, still smiled gently and said, "I have no gun, caybigan."
Then from this orgy of violence Blount felt himself slowly emerge, white of face, cold in sweat, staggeringas if drunk. He snapped up Pedro into his arms and laid him in the shade of a giant mango growing out of the ruins of a crumbled wall near by. An immense discouragement, a poignant disgust made him tremble as with bodily weariness. Down on one knee he bent over Pedro. Pedro felt the warm breath like a caress on his ear. "Caybigan," implored the Sergeant; "caybigan, amigo, friend, tell us, go on, tell us where you keep that gun, tell it to me, for me, for my sake."
Pedro opened his eyes, and they smiled, golden, at the Sergeant.
"I have——" he began.
"No, not that, not that," cried the Sergeant, in frenzied fear of hearing again that answer which maddened him, blurred his brain with red haze. "Tell me, come, tell me; whisper it, low, right there, in my ear; come, caybigan."
"If I tell you, then will we be friends?" asked Pedro wistfully.
"Caybigan," said the Sergeant, "we have worked together, eaten together, hunted together. We are friends. I don't want to hurt you, sure I don't. Tell me, tell me—and I'll love you like a son—like a little, foolish son," he added with sudden access of tenderness.
"Well," began Pedro; "the gun, it is——"
But his eyes, fixed upon the Sergeant, froze suddenly as if before an apparition. The Sergeant was smiling, smiling the smile of yore, the unconscious smile of contempt, fatal, invincible.
"Go on; go on!" whispered the Sergeant breathlessly.
"I have no gun, caybigan," said Pedro monotonously.
The Sergeant sprang to his feet, livid. "Come on, fellows!" he shouted; "we'll hang him!"
They got a rope, noosed it about Pedro's neck, threw the loose end over a projecting branch of the mango and, standing him upon a box, secured it.
In that position they left him for five minutes, to let Fear seep into his stubborn heart. Every minute, in cold, tense accents, the Sergeant asked, "Where is the gun?"
Pedro did not answer. He stood there, very still, calling to himself all the strength left in his miserable racked body, composing himself as for some great and splendid sacrament. Then, as for the fifth time the question was asked, his right arm shot up towards the mountains, dark in the distance.
"Malvar is over there with ten thousand men," he shouted with high, clear voice. "Viva Malvar; the Americans are sons of curs!"
Somebody kicked the box.
But as, the whole earth lurching beneath him, he plunged into the Infinite abyss, he took with him a wild, tumultuous, and exquisite joy. For at his last words of defiance, upon the face of his golden-haired caybigan he had seen—fluttering uncertain at first like the heralding colours of the dawn, then glowing clear, certain, resplendent—the expression he had caught at the lone cuartel in the bosque, the look of esteem, of admiration, full, unreserved, complete, for which he had thirsted so agonizingly, and which now at last had come to him, his beyond the power of Man to take away, at the paltry price of treachery and torture and death.
This is to explain how young Theodore Pinney, after his meteoric début in the P. I. constabulary—consisting in nothing less than the capture of Papa Gato, fiercebandelero, who for years had terrorised the region of the Taal—squatted into a fat civilian job and forsook all dreams of glory. And it's not at all about young Pinney, but mostly about his mother, the widow.
"The widow;"—by that short, somewhat ominous and not too respectful cognomen she was known by all the bureau—the educational, of course—from superintendent to lowest clerk; and throughout the archipelago by men departmental and non-departmental. This name, based on fact, like most things based on fact, was a lying thing. Close your eyes and say "widow"; the vision is of something subtle, arch and tantalising—lustrous eyes, comely form (somewhat pudgy), kittenish ways. But she was long and lean and angular; her bosom was arid and her tongue triple-forked. "Old-maid" wouldhave expressed her infinitely better; but there was the fact, the stubborn fact, which manifested itself with slight provocation by a grim tightening of the thin lips, and the phrase—proverbial now throughout the P. I.'s—"Mr. Pinney, well, the less said about him the better. He was ahandsomeman, but he was awickedman"—the "handsome" being pronounced with a rising inflection, and the antithetic adjective with a drop into tenebrous basso-profundo.
Of Pinneypèrethis is all we ever knew, although in departmental circles he was a subject fertile of delicious speculation. That to be wicked he had had ample temptation, knowing the widow, we cheerfully granted; but what chance he ever had had to succumb, knowing the widow, we could not imagine. Of Pinneyfilswe knew still less, nothing at all, in fact, what little there was being the property of the postal authorities and consisting of records of money orders sent monthly by the widow to a well known western college town. But of the widow herself, good Lord, we knew only too much.
For she was a terror and a pest. From the day she placed her number tens upon Philippine soil the islands knew no peace. The educational department became a nightmare, and clamour filled all the others. She had a passion for "little trips"—and her will was adamant and her tongue a visitation. They allknew her. Her appearance at the Civil Hospital heralded the disappearance of the resident chief. "Give her what she wants, anything she wants," he yelled at his clerk, as he exited. And when she sallied out for fresh conquest she held under her arm a certificate of ill-health. At the educational bureau the superintendent saw her coming. Out he sprang, through door or window. "Give her what she wants," his parting wail floated to the clerk. And so, with a glance at the medical certificate, and a few timid questions as a matter of form, he made out Document No. II—sick-leave on full pay. A few minutes later the major of the army transport service found the outer world urgently calling, and as he dodged the widow on the stairway, "My clerk, madam, has orders to give you what you wish," he murmured, tense with an immense hurry. And the clerk provided; and a few days later the widow wandered aboard some inter-island transport, made law to the quartermaster, terrorised the steward, possessed herself of the best cabin, anchored her chair in the most desirable deck space—and off she sailed on one of her adorable little voyages. From Aparri to Bohol, through Vigan, Ilo-Ilo, Cebu, Dumaguete, and Zamboangua, she was known, her clamour had resounded, for transportation, for commissary privileges, for bull-carts, cargadores, and military escorts.
One day, though, she decided to settle down.
She caught the superintendent at his desk and asked him for a provincial post. The superintendent saw his main chance staring him in the face. He was an intelligent and discreet man, so he did not decide hastily. For a whole afternoon he pored diligently over a map of the archipelago. Finally he settled on Taal, in the volcanic region of Luzon. It was just at the end of the dry season; he calculated that she could just get there. Then the rains would begin—and the roads were without bottom. Besides, there was Papa Gato ambuscaded somewhere upon the flanks of the great volcano surmounting the pueblo. Many things can happen in six months. The superintendent was not an imaginative man; but that day he certainly smiled to visions.
So, with a last array ofreclamas—transportation, carts, provisions, military escorts—the widow, her worldly goods upon a carabao-drawn carro, herself in a shaky quilesa, set out toward her Palestine. And the rains began and shut her off behind their impenetrable curtain.
From her isolation, after a while, news began to filter, vague, insufficient, broken, like the irritating snatches of a telegraph line out of order; first the regular official reports, secondly popular rumour. She had evidently taken hold. The monthly reportsshowed the school attendance of Taal rising by leaps and bounds to astonishing totals. Rumour, however, corrected in some degree the superintendent's satisfaction. It appeared that this remarkable increase was largely due to her personal herding ofbataswith the aid of a bigbaston. Once, it seemed, she made a regrettable slip, took one of the leading citizens of the pueblo for a little boy, and, he proving recalcitrant, cracked his crown with her persuader ere she had discovered her mistake. This caused some trouble to the central office, but, as the superintendent remarked to the Secretary of Education, "One cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, and he (the leading citizen, evidently) was a bad one, anyway." Pompously couched recriminations, also, came from the Taal municipality. It was claimed that she had taken upon herself the collection of taxes, that she levied thereon five per cent. for school purposes, that she had deposed the treasurer and had appointed one of her own, who happened to be her muchacho, so that the books and funds were securely locked up in her stout camphor-wood chest. But as the town officials were suspected of sundry peculations, the new system was regarded as somewhat of an improvement. Besides, at that time she was absolutely invaluable with a contribution toThe Philippine Teacher(the superintendent's special hobby) upon the "Model NipaHome," an article embellished with diagrams and elevations and cross-sections. A few weeks later, it is true, there came from Mr. Rued, a constabulary second-class inspector, stationed in Taal, a most virulent protest about the burning of some two hundred shacks that happened to conform only too distantly with the ideal "Model Nipa Home." Mr. Rued, being a mild man, thought this method of civic improvement too strenuous. With this, his chief in Manila thoroughly agreed, and, leaving him full discretion as to methods, ordered him to take all necessary measures—which command, mysteriously enough, remained forever without answer.
It was just about this time that Papa Gato, living in idyllic ease in his impenetrable bosques up the sides of the Taal, began to feel that vague but imperious self-dissatisfaction which is the peculiar appanage of us unfortunate humans—the inward command to work. The Mexican pesos of his last raid were becoming deplorably few, his store of palay was low, and the contributions of the villagers spoke of failing memories. It was time for another raid.
But this time, with his more earthy preoccupations there mingled blue-hazed dreams. Gato, in spite of a real practical genius, often proven by the ingenuity of his methods of extracting from recalcitrants information as to the whereabouts of their hiddenwealth, Papa Gato was sentimental. Even before the revolution, whose impassioned call had led him into a mode of life from which he had never been able to free himself, even when a humble cochero in Manila, he had been a dreamer. And now, Pope spiritually—this for the benefit of the rural population, but treated by his own camp followers with large, American-imported winks—king administratively, Marescal de Campo militarily, this deplorable trait was still with him. The life of an outlaw, even in the Philippines, has its disadvantages. Gato's particular disadvantage, which he now set himself to nullify, was this: he had never seen an American woman. He had never seen one of those golden-hairedmaestras, which the American nation (with that inconsistency which prompts them to shoot—alternately and with equal firmness, precision, and dispatch—lead and book learning into his people) sends to far pueblos like angelic visitations. But there was one in Taal. He had heard that she was wonderful (it speaks eloquently of his sentimentalism that he had never sought to find out in what she was wonderful; his imagination immediately made her so in the mode that he would have her so—stately, golden-haired and seraphic). So it was that Taal was chosen as the field of his next exploit.
With his usual courteous foresight, he sent intothe town an announcement of his intention to capture the treasury and themaestra. This was his regular mode of procedure, and not so fatuous as it may appear. It had the double effect of warning his friends—he had many in all places—and of paralysing his enemies. This time, however, he was surprised with an official answer from the municipal council, sitting in executive session. This answer was three varas long and redundant with rhetoric; but reduced to plain and precise English it might well be set down thus:
"For God's sake, take her away, and you can have the money, too."
This alacrity seemed to him highly suspicious, so, with strategic cunning, he decided to hold camp with his main force, and to send off his brigadier-general, Gomez, with a force of two lieutenant-generals, five colonels, ten majors, twenty captains, and a few lieutenants for the more facile work in Taal.
Thus it was that, soon after, the good people of Taal were aroused at sun-up by a ragged burst of musketry, a hullaballoo of yells and beating tom-toms, and the crackling of burning nipa. They were prepared for such a contingency, however; and when, after this little preliminary demonstration, Gomez'sdisreputables burst along the main street, they met a reception that halted them in uneasy distrust.
For out of all the houses, humblebalayor grandcasa, the populace was pouring holiday-decked, faces shining with welcome—man, woman, and child, tao and distinguido, all ranks, all sexes, all ages. White linen, shimmering jusis, diaphanous piñas united in fiesta colouring. Peace and rejoicing, a mild, ecstatic expectation, reigned upon all the faces; the niños and niñas especially were full of a goatlike hilarity and tumbled on the green amid the tulisanes, upsetting majors and colonels indiscriminately. And—could it be—was he blind?—no, it was true, indubitably true; before Gomez's eyes, in front of the Casa Popular and spanning the main street, a graceful bamboo arch of triumph rose against the pink dawn. And across the top, in six-foot letters of bejuca, was the following inscription:
To the Liberator of the Pueblo—the Inhabitants of Grateful Taal.
But out of the Casa Popular the municipal band was emerging in joyful blare, and Gomez had just time to compose himself into the pose of his new rôle before he was greeted by the presidente, dressed in church-day black, his head covered with the derby ofceremony. After a short exchange of courtesies, the band wheeled, the presidente placed himself at its head, Gomez at the head of his own troops, and presidente, band, tulisanes, and populace started down the street. "To the maestra!" shouted the presidente, with a heroic gesture. "To the maestra!" echoed Gomez. "To the maestra!" roared the tulisanes. "To the maestra!" yelled the populace, squeaked the women, piped the niños and niñas. And pell-mell they flowed beneath the arch.
Before the original Model Nipa Home the band halted and with an ominous snort came to silence. A hush fell over the assembled multitude. One of the shutters of the Model Home slid back; a lean, yellow arm, at the end of which dangled a steaming coffeepot, pushed out of the opening. Suddenly the coffeepot parabolaed through the air and landed upon the presidente's ceremonial derby.
"Caramba!" roared that official, suffocated and scalded; and he beat a hasty retreat into the hoi-polloi. The mysterious arm mysteriously disappeared. Forming a cordon of lieutenants about the Model Home, Gomez and three of his colonels mounted the stairs and beat down the light bamboo door.
But behind the door stood the formidable widow. Long and gaunt, in her morning wrapper, her be-frilled nightcap askew upon her head, her hornspectacles trembling with indignation at the end of her aquiline nose, she confronted them, a figure of righteous fury. Behind her was a well-constructed pyramid of utensils, from which she drew with promptness and discernment. In a jiffy the nearest colonel was helmeted down to the chin with a big iron kettle, the second was sneezing to death under a stream of tabasco sauce, while Gomez himself was retreating beneath the tom-tom din of an empty coal-oil can, plied with vigorous repetition upon his cranium.
Right here, however, the widow was led off into a common enough strategic mistake. Instead of turning her victorious energy upon the vacillating troop outside, she allowed herself to be hypnotised by the already thoroughly conquered. At the head of the stairs, pirouetting madly and roaring like a bull, was the be-kettled colonel, and upon him she turned her batteries. It was a wonderful exhibition. Things culinary flew through the air—three saucepans, a rolling-pin, a grill, a teapot, a pile of tin plates. Then came canned goods: tomatoes, pears, peaches; beef, roast and corned; mutton, chicken, hare, pork, peas, maize, string beans; jellies: apple, currant, lemon, cherry; jams: apricot, peach, grape, plum, lychee. Two hams and a small sack of flour came as an interregnum. Blind, deaf, helpless, the poor colonelswayed, doubled up, whirred, thrashed his arms beneath the avalanche. Resonant whang-angs of his headgear announced particularly brilliant shots; dull thuds more vital ones. At last, with a parting shower of little potted cheeses, the widow's ammunition ran out. She folded her arms, drew herself up to her full height, and, her eyes shining humorously beneath her shaggy brows, "Well, boys," she asked, "what is it you want?"
Gomez was coming up the stairs again, under safe escort.
"We are ladrones, madam," he explained, politely. "We want—we want——" he stammered, uneasy, before that great dominating figure. "We want—ah—the dinero, the money——" he stopped, then with a vague apologetic shrug of his shoulders: "the dinero, and you."
"Ah?" sang the widow, sardonically, "you want me, do you?"
Gomez hesitated. He was not at all sure about that. But his orders were imperative.
"Papa Gato wants you," he said, with more precision.
"Ah—it's your papa wants me, is it? Very well——" her lips tightened into a line ominously straight—"he shall have me; oh, yes, indeed!"
Thus it was that an hour later the widow, erectand tense in a carro drawn by a pacific carabao, surrounded by an escort of tulisanes with the grave and preoccupied air of people bearing a case of dynamite, followed by the holiday-decked populace and the delirious blare and roar of the band, passed along the main street, by the Casa Popular, beneath the triumphal arch, to the outskirts of the pueblo, and on into the open country.
The band, marking time with the populace on the edge of the town, which they were not to leave, was playing "Hail the Deliverer, Hail!"
Long and in detail will Major General Gomez remember (he has now ample leisure for such exercises of memory between the four walls of a place called Bilibid) that march back to camp. And his bringing it to a successful termination will always stand as his most serious claim to military glory.
It was not that the train was cumbersome. It consisted, in fact, only of three carros, the first one containing the widow, the second the camphor-wood chest, inside of which was the town treasury, and the third, Mr. Rued, second-class inspector Philippine constabulary—a roaring mad inspector, it might be added, and tied up like a sausage. He had beensurprised in bed; the ignominy of his taking was deep in his soul, and found vent in a stream of expressions Biblical and strenuous and not at all complimentary to his captors.
No, the widow was the matter.
It was that curious performance of Mr. Rued which caused the first outbreak. After listening meditatively for some ten minutes, the widow suddenly realised that here was something highly improper.
"Colonel," she cried, rising in her cart like a jack-in-the-box, "you will please place more distance between me and that blasphemous person yonder."
There was a pause in the procession. New intervals were tried. But the widow's carabao was slow, and the inspector's, possibly impressed by the fervent soliloquy going on behind him, persisted in coming up within earshot.
"Captain, I refuse to continue under the present conditions," ultimatumed the widow. And, springing out of her cart, she squatted resolutely in the centre of the road and refused to budge.
A happy inspiration came to Gomez. He appealed to the inspector's chivalry.
The inspector was cooling a bit by this time, and he was a man of some intelligence.
"You cut that rope that holds me like a chicken," he said, "and I'll parleyvoo."
Gomez cut the rope, and the inspector agreed to keep his feelings unexpressed.
The procession moved on. The carabaos laboured, the carros creaked and groaned and wailed. The sun mounted, more biting every moment. The ladrones lit cigarettes and shuffled along the road. The widow dozed.
A more pronounced lurch of her cart suddenly awakened her, and again her clamour was resounding in the heated silence.
Again it was the unlucky inspector. His cart had crept up little by little, till close to the widow's, and her eyes had opened upon the fact that he was not properly clad. Now, such a thing at times is excusable. It isn't your fault if a band of pestiferous ladrones pounce upon you in the morning and whisk you out in your pajamas.
"Sergeant," shrilled the widow (with concern Gomez noticed that each time she addressed him it was with a diminution of title). "Sergeant, dress that man!"
Gomez demurred. Again the widow sprang from her cart and sat in the road. Again the train was blocked.
"I will not budge till you have clothed that man,"the widow declared. "I insist upon a pair of trousers."
There was a hurried questioning of the band, a general denegation, and Gomez returned, discouraged.
"Señora, no hay pantalones," he announced.
"Give him one of your own men's," she commanded briefly.
Again the troop, drawn up in line, was questioned, but still more vehement were the denegations. It was not that they needed them so much for covering, those precious pantaloons; they were full of holes and covered little; but they were all more or less be-striped, and the men very properly refused to part with their insignia of rank. The inspector, also, was interested. After a careful inspection, a horror at the thought of placing against his skin such garments as were displayed before him made his hair rise on end. Diplomatically he suggested to the widow that a transfer would only add to the shame of the situation, for it would leave one of the ladrones with nothing on at all, while he, at least—
But he had pronounced his own doom. "I'll fix you," said the widow briefly. Untying the bundle of clothes she carried, she drew out a skirt, a short khaki walking-skirt, and after an insufficient smoothingof creases with the palm of her hand, she threw it at Gomez. "Put that on him, my man," she said.
But the inspector protested. He, too, got down from his cart and squatted upon the road. And there they sat in the middle of the road, each behind his cart, the military man and the school-teacher, in a grim, silent battle of wills. And there was little hope of either ever yielding, for, really, they were not especially interested in the progress of the caravan. Gomez was, and at length he lost patience. There was a terrific struggle, twenty colonels bit the dust beneath the sledge-hammering of the desperate inspector's fist; but numbers prevailed at last, and again Mr. Rued was in his cart, trussed up like a pig for the market, and, flaccid about his legs, the unspeakable garment. But his cart had to be left far in the rear, for he evidently considered himself released from his former promise.
And the procession moved on. There were minor obstacles. Once, the widow lost her glove and the command had to scatter back upon the road for a full half-hour of microscopic search till she found that it had miraculously caught on the axle of her cart. At the barrio where they stopped for the midday rest, she sent back six distinct messes of eggs to the presidente's kitchen and finally invaded it herself, till the muchachos, beneath the severity of hereyes, had evolved some turnovers satisfactory to her esthetic soul. And little by little, her bitter will was imposing itself more heavily upon the column. Colonels became muchachos and generals valets. When they stopped that night at Talisay, the best house of the pueblo was placed at her disposal; the presidente hustled at her orders, the kitchen was in panic, the household terrorised. Somewhat softened by her undeniable success, she sent for the inspector, who was brought to her, betrussed and beskirted. The long ride in the sun with his elbows together upon his spine had weakened him somewhat, and his remonstrances had sunk to unintelligible mumblings. Graciously she cut off his cords, and as he stood swaying before her, "Well," she said; "aren't you ashamed of yourself, young man? Think of your mother; how would she have felt had she heard you a while ago——"
A last spark of defiance flared in the indomitable man. "My mother wasn't an old-maid she-cat," he muttered. But instinctively, in spite of his courage, his voice had sunk too low to be heard.
"I have a son," began the widow, again. "He——"
"Lordie, but I'd like to see the little nincompoop!" said the inspector.
But the widow was unshakable in her good humour.She ordered a room prepared for Mr. Rued, and later sent him a cup of tea of her own brew, which he promptly threw into the face of the astonished muchacho.
They started again at sun-up. They left the road and filed along a narrow and steep trail. The widow insisted upon a chaise. One was improvised out of bamboo; and thus, as the shadows of night crept up the flanks of Taal, she made her triumphal entry into camp upon the shoulders of the four strongest colonels.
Papa Gato had watched the procession winding up to him through the high fern, but as it neared a sudden timidity sent him back to his hut. Gomez found him there, in great indecision, alternately twirling his little moustache and rearranging upon his breast the seventeen medals he had decreed upon himself for extraordinary valour.
"Greetings!" he said, with a forced air of decision. "Have you been successful?"
Gomez took off his sombrero and mopped his brow. "I have her—and the dinero—and a constabulary inspector," he answered evasively.
"And she is here!" whispered Gato with emotion. "I suppose I should go greet her."
"Sure!" said Gomez detachedly; "go on to her; I am tired, I'll wait here."
And throwing himself upon the cot, he turned his face to the wall.
But as his chief left the cabin, he sprang up like one possessed, rushed to the door and peered maliciously outside.
Indistinct in the gloaming, a feminine form could be descried, regally erect, upon the high-borne chaise. Gato approached with beating heart.
"Do not fear, señorita; we shall not harm you," he said softly. "You are our guest; the house is yours——"
He was very near now.
"The house is yours, and——"
There was a sudden movement of the enigmatic figure upon the chaise. A furious slap sent his sombrero whirling to the ground.
"You boorish little boy, you," rasped the voice of the widow; "you little brute! What do you mean,whatdo you mean by standing with your hat on, before an American lady!"
"Gomez," said Papa Gato disconsolately; "Gomez, I can't stand it any longer!"
This was in the commandante's hut, during the burning hours of the siesta, and ten days after the arrival of the widow. Gato and Gomez were lyingstomachs down upon a petate in attitudes of limp discouragement.
"It's pretty bad," murmured Gomez meditatively.
"We're up against it," went on Gato (all this took place in Tagalog, but is translated into equivalent English).
"We sure are," echoed Gomez sombrely.
There was a long, pained silence.
"Gomez," whined Gato, "I haven't a pulgada of authority left!"
"You certainly haven't," said Gomez, a certain appreciation brightening his manner.
"And you have less!" went on Gato.
"The she-cat!" spit out Gomez, all appreciation gone.
"She bosses the camp!"
"She sure does."
"We have to eat at tables now."
"With forks."
"And say grace."
"With our faces in our plates."
"We have school every day," went on Gato, sinking deeper and deeper into despair.
"Dowe; well, I guess! 'Do you ssee dde hhett? Yiss, I ssee dde hhett. How menny hhetts do you ssee? I ssee ttin hhetts. Oh, look at de moon, she is shining up there. I loof de name of Wash-ing-ton,I loof my coon-tree, too'—ah, it makes me sick!" And Gomez spit upon the ground.
"Gomez, Gomez; we must do something!"
"Go ahead"—graciously.
"Gomez"—hopefully—"let's chop off her head!"
"You can't"—gloomily.
"Good Lord, Gomez; don't you think, with my best bolo, very well sharpened, if we hit hard, very hard, that maybe——"
"That's not it. Remember the speech she made to us the first day:
"'Keep that in your heathen minds. I'm an American woman, an American woman, remember! That means I am sacred, sacred! If you harm me, if you as much as touch one of my hairs——'"
"But she has only two or three, Gomez!"
"Don't interrupt me—'If you as much as touch one of my hairs, you know what will happen. The American soldiers will come after you. Not the scouts, not the constabulary, but the American soldiers. They will follow you like hounds, ten thousand, a hundred thousand of them, if necessary. They will never let you rest. They will avenge me—well, you know the American soldier, my friends. Don't get him mad. I am the American woman; I am sacred!'"
"But, Gomez; do you think that is all true?"
"It is; I know."
"But, Gomez; the Americans, they are not fools. They can see. They must know that she is old like my grandmother, that she is seven feet tall, that she takes out her teeth at night, that——"
"It doesn't matter; she's an American woman."
"Ah, these Americans; what a singular people!"
A long contemplative silence.
"Gomez, Gomez"—with sudden inspiration—"let's poison her!"
"Now you're talking like a babe; there's the same objection."
"Oh!"—more silent despair.
"Gomez, let's take her back, back to Taal!"
"Umph—what do you think the Taal people would do to us?"
"Madre de Dios, Gomez, is there no way, none at all?"
"None I can see."
"Then let me die!"
But hope in human breast is indestructible. It was Gomez who, after all, found the solution.
"We'll take her to some other town, some town where she is not known, absolutely not known," he proposed in rapt accents.
"Bagum-Bagum!" exclaimed Gato, rising to his feet; "there's ten thousand pesos in the treasury!"
"We'll raid the town and leave her there!"
"But say, there 're some constabulary there; do you know how many?"
"No, I don't know. But the constabulary inspector knows."
"She's freed him, too!"—Gato flew from the immediate consideration of practical things to a bitter recapitulation of wrongs. "He walks around the camp as if he owned it. And she gave him my best pantaloons, those with the gold stripes——"
"Never mind," said Gomez soothingly; "we'll question him to-morrow."
So it was that, upon getting up, a little later than usual, the next morning, the widow found the door of her hut locked from the outside. As has already appeared, the widow was a person of considerable executive ability. She wasted no time in idle recrimination, but promptly kicked, through the nipa wall, a hole out of which she emerged, fresh, vigorous, and unruffled.
An interesting scene met her interrogative eye. In the centre of the clearing a tripod had been constructed out of three great pieces of green bamboo. And even as she looked a man was tying a supple liana to the apex, while another worker tied a slipknot to the loose extremity. Then a little fire of twigs was started beneath.
"Umph," grunted the widow; "I wonder what these heathen think they're going to cook."
She was not left guessing long. Out of one of the huts, again bound hand and foot, Mr. Rued was being carried by six stalwarts. He was strangely silent. And his face was pale and tense. He was borne to the tripod; the loose end of the liana was passed in a slip knot around his body, a little below the waist, then—one, two, three—the carriers suddenly let go, and the inspector, dangling at the end of the liana, swung neatly, head downward, over the little fire.