Terry Read online

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE STRICKEN VILLAGE

  A week later, Terry stood at the window looking down over theblistering plaza. Davao was torpid under the noonday heat. Threecarabaos grazed undisturbed on the forbidden square: another of theawkward powerful brutes dawdled up the dusty road, hauling a decrepittwo-wheeled cart on which a naked-backed, red-pantalooned nativedozed: Padre Velasco, the aged Spanish priest, waved a weary hand atTerry from his window in the old adobe convento. As he watched he sawthe soldierly figure of Sergeant Mercado emerge from the _cuartel_ andhurry toward him.

  Entering the room the soldier saluted stiffly and reported that apatrol had just come in from the foothills with the information that amysterious fever had attacked the Bogobos in the barrio of Dalag, thata score were stricken and four already dead.

  Terry hastened to the quarters of the Health Officer to apprise him ofthe facts. He found him cursing the heat, sweating profusely, thoughwearing nothing but a thin kimono. A very fat man, Doctor Merchant,inclined to be fussy about little things but magnificent in bigthings, and thoroughly imbued with the idea that his work ofprotecting the natives against their own sloth and filth was the onlyinteresting problem in the universe. Alarmed at Terry's report, heordered 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 offduty--so why should I?"

  He came out fuming over a missing button: "Confound it all! I neverhave--how do you keep so immaculate, Terry? You always look as if youwere on your way to a dinner or dance!" Wiping the perspiration fromheavy jowl and neck he lumbered about the room collecting medicinecases, saddle bags, two big canteens, finally answering Terry'squestion.

  "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 ridiculouslysmall pony, then watched the sweating, cussing, bighearted doctor rideout into the sun on his errand of mercy. As the tough little pony borehis heavy burden into the trail and out of sight in the brush, Terrydecided 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 fromMajor 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 amatch and scattering the charred remnants over the polished mahoganyfloor. He passed a grim afternoon with the Macabebes on the targetrange, where the scorers wagged bull's eye after bull's eye, fortwenty-seven of the Macabebes were expert riflemen, forty-three weremarksmen.

  He saw that Matak, serving dinner, was gripped in one of thesmoldering moods that often preyed upon him. Though his attentions tohis master were even more meticulous than usual, he moved with an airof somber detachment. Terry had often pondered on the history of thequeer Moro and now he studied him as he cleared the dishes and lightedthe desk lamp.

  "Matak," he said.

  The Moro came to him, his melancholy eyes fixed steadfastly upon themaster of his choice.

  "Matak, you know that I have never asked you anything about your pastlife. I am not going to ask you now, unless there is something inwhich 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 Terryunderstood his purpose, the tight muscles of his face relaxed and heslid forward to kneel on one knee and raise Terry's hand to his lipsin 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 smallboy--twelve years old--my family live east coast Basilan. Very happyfamily, master: father, mother, sister, me; three carabaos we have, alittle house, chickens, a little _vinta_ in which to fish--everythingMoro family want. We hurt nobody, just work.

  "One night, very late," his face darkened, "men come. They stealcarabaos, everything. My father wake up, go out to see, and theylaugh--and kill him. I--a little boy--see them do it: see them kill myfather--with bolos. Then they kill my mother--the same man--the samebolo. I see that, too: they say she too old, and they laugh." He spokeslowly, hesitating before each short sentence, his black eyes dulledwith 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 shepretty 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. Shehurt him, so he draw knife, kill her, and throw her in sea: then otherFilipino holding me hit me with bolo and throw me in too."

  He whipped off his thin cotton camisa and exposed a deep scar whichfurrowed his left shoulder. It had severed the clavicle, andimproperly knit, drew the left arm slightly forward.

  "I swim ashore, two miles, to Lassak. Next morning I take boat, findsister, 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 withleft eye all white. I know him any time, any place. That nine yearsago. 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 bigFilipino with left white eye. Nine years I no tell anybody, justlisten, 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, placedhis hand upon the Moro's shoulder--the scarred shoulder--and lookeddown into his now emotionless face:

  "Yes, Matak, I will help," he said simply.

  Content, the Moro turned silently on his bare heels and padded outinto the kitchen.

  Usually Terry strolled the dark streets before going to bed, butto-night a heavy downpour kept him indoors. Outside, the square wasloud with the drum-fire of the heavy fall on iron roofs, the rush ofwater through shallow dirt gutters; inside, the big house roared, theroof trembled overhead. He paced the floor, sleepless, worried withthinking of Matak's terrible story, of the Doctor striving to succorthe stricken village, of Sakay's joining Malabanan.

  There was another worry, too. Though there was nothing in theeternally verdant land in which he was living to make the fact seemreal, the calendar indicated that Christmas was less than two weeksdistant, and for the first time since the days when she had firstintruded upon his boyish consciousness as something different,something wondrously dear and fine and unattainable, he had sent Deanenothing.

  * * * * *

  He was awakened before daylight by the arrival of a spent Bogoborunner 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 amile he overtook Lindsey, who had spent the night in town. They rodetogether several miles to where the trail, soaked with the night'srain, forked toward Lindsey's plantation: the sun shone white hot, theearth steamed through its mat of decayed vegetation.

  They drew rein at the fork, dismounted. Lindsey broke the silence inwhich they had ridden following Terry's brief explanation of hismission.

  "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, thequeer 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 nibblingat his arm. Lindsey waited, hoping he would continue, but Terry lookedaway, idly studying the thickly planted hemp fields that extended fromthe fork to Lindsey's house, a mile distant. The still wet leavesflaunted on great stalks fifteen feet above the wonderfully fertilesoil.

  "Lindsey, I wonder if you really appreciate what you are doing intaming a soil that was wild in jungle ages before Pharaoh's time, andmaking it useful to man."

  He pointed to the huge plant nearest them; "The fibers in thosestalks--I can see them, woven into a rope that may warp a steamer todock in Tripoli or Hoboken or Archangel: or fashioned by happyJapanese fingers into braided hats to cover lovely heads in Picadillyor Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kitefor some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin onthe banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped intougliest knot by a grim figure standing on a scaffold--though I hopenot!"

  Lindsey had listened in curious wonderment to this conception of hiswork. He thought it over, laughed.

  "Well, maybe that's what you see, Lieutenant,--but I see wild pigsrooting up my immature plants, lack of labor, poor transportation,fluctuations of price, typhoons undoing a whole year's work--take myword for it, I see aplenty!"

  Terry tightened the girth, tickling the knowing pony's nose till asneeze compelled contraction of the expanded chest. Mounted, he seemedloath to go, and twisted in the saddle to look down at Lindsey.

  "About what you said a moment back--that I was 'different.' All myfriends have always been like that--wanted to look after me, somehow,though I can look after myself, pretty well. I never quite understoodwhy 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 watchingthe slender rider thread through the maze of the trail out of sight.Mounting, he started homeward along the edge of the field trying tointerpret the strange appeal this young officer had exerted over him,this quiet lad whose very competence and cheerfulness he somehow foundpathetic. He involuntarily halted his pony as solution came to him.

  "Why, curl my cowlick!" he exclaimed aloud. "That's it--he was BORNlonely!"

  * * * * *

  Terry rode into Dalag at noon and found the doctor even redder andhotter than usual. The perspiration glistened on his hands and wrists,dripped from his fat face and neck, and his once-starched clothes hunglimp from his rolypoly frame. Worn with loss of sleep and fruitlessefforts to bring the frightened Bogobos to reason, he welcomed Terryweariedly to the little hut that had been sat aside for his use.

  Terry took command, so quietly that the doctor did not realize it. Afew brief questions elicited the measures the doctor wished put intoeffect, 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 affirmativenod he continued: "It's a good thing you did--the village is swarmingwith nightflyers, and every one of them is loaded to the hilt withplasmodiae!"

  The village, a mere scattering of crudest huts along the river front,seemed deserted, but from nearly every hut came the low wailings ofthe sick and the frightened. Noting that the lamentations had ceased afew minutes after Terry went out, the doctor stepped to the door andwatched his progress from shack to shack, saw how the picturesquelittle savages grouped about him. They knew him and listened to himconfidently, so that the parboiled doctor was as much disgusted aspleased with the ease with which Terry secured the cooperation forwhich he had begged and stormed in vain.

  Under his direction they cut down all of the plant life whose upturnedleaves or fronds held stagnant, mosquito-breeding water, climbed tallpalms to brush out the rain water accumulated in the concavedepressions where frond joins trunk, even twisted off the cuplikescarlet blossoms from hibiscus shrubs. They carried green brush to aseries of smudges he lit to cordon the village against the vicioussinging horde of germ carriers. Best of all, they ceased theirincantations over the sick, unwound the tight cords they had knottedaround the abdomens of the stricken to prevent the fever from "goingfurther down," opened the grass windows that gasping lungs mightobtain decent air, and swallowed the doctor's hitherto neglectedmedicines.

  There were no chickens in the village, no eggs. The doctor bemoanedthe lack of nourishment for his sick. So Terry summoned four of theablest hunters and disappeared into the woods for an hour, returningwith a young buck speared through the lungs and shot mercifullythrough the head. In an hour a big pot was boiling in the middle ofthe street that throughout the night the sufferers might receive hotsoup made up of venison, yams, eggplant and rice, all that the villageafforded.

  Doctor Merchant, watching the transformation, marveled at the methodof persuasion. There was no attempt at exercise of authority, noraising of voice, no gestures, only patient explanation, an assumptionof mutual friendliness, a sincere and ample sympathy.

  Shortly after sundown the doctor, exhausted with the worry and stressof the hours before Terry came, distributed his bulk as comfortably aspossible on the bamboo floor, tucked in his mosquito net verycarefully, and fell into a heavy sleep, too exhausted to await Terry'sreturn.

  It was as well that the doctor did not await him, for Terry spent halfof the night by a fire kindled at the base of a big tree in front ofthe chief's abode. Seated on a stump near the blaze, surrounded by aring of half-nude Bogobos whose timid eyes seldom wandered from hisface, he answered their questions and erased the last vestiges of thepanic into which the epidemic had precipitated the villagers.

  Interrogation at an end, he still stayed on with them. The flickeringblaze lighted the circle of little brown folk, each flare gleaming onan eye here, glinting there on beaded jacket or brass trinkets withwhich both men and women were adorned. The first mad panic had abated,but Death had stalked through the settlement six times in as manydays, and they listened superstitiously for the stark Tread throughthe woods which hemmed them in. Each whispering wind that stirred theleaves overhead brought a deeper silence, each wail from delirioussufferers in nearby huts tightened the little circle.

  The quavering gutturals of a half-blind old woman, wrinkled andshrivelled with a number of years no man could estimate, jarred thedumb 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: itwas the old woman who had told him of the Giant Agong.

  "This sickness takes not many more of our people. The wh
ite men willstop it. Trust them. These white men are Bogobo friends. These whitemen 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 moveduneasily. A young hunter nervously stirred the flagging fire intobrighter blaze as the old woman went on:

  "Yes. The Hill People knew. Have you forgotten how the Giant Agongrang the night the Spaniards lost their girl-child?

  "No. You have not forgotten. The Hill People took her--they wantedwhite blood in the veins of future chiefs. They knew what white bloodmeans--the Hill People know!"

  Curiously thrilled by the simple legend, Terry moved nearer to the oldwoman.

  "Grandmother, how many years ago was this?"

  "Years? Years? I know naught of your white man's years, but this Iknow--it happened during the rains before the dark-eyed white mengave 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 manwho wakes stiff from the discomfort of an unaccustomed hard bed, hesat up, then forgot his miseries in a new worry as he saw Terry asleepunder the open window, wrapped in his saddle blanket but without theprotection of a mosquito net. He cursed, stopping midway in hisvehement outburst to cock his head at the absurd angle in which menthink their ears function best. As he heard the ominous drone of theinsects 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 pouredupon him for sleeping without his net. Suddenly sensing theresponsibility 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 tobecome a mother, and she had none."

  "Hell's bells! What Bogobo woman isn't about to become a mother?" hestormed, refusing to concede the justice of the act. "'She hadnone'--and probably didn't use yours!"

  He was facing the window, past which the chief, arrayed in all hishalf-naked splendor of beads and brass, sauntered with an air ofconfidence quite different from his terror of the past week.

  "There goes the chief, Terry, all fancied up like a bathroom on aGerman 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 beforehim looking up with an absurdly rapt air as of a student at hismaster's feet. Merchant stopped to swab the thick perspiration fromhis face, laughed at Terry's humbugging pose, and desisted. Terryslipped on his shoes, buckled on the leather leggings he had used as apillow and picking up his saddlebags went out to clean up at theriver.

  Finding on his return that the doctor was again genuinely disturbedover his exposure to the disease, he sought to divert him. He sneezedviolently, and as the doctor listened with professional interest hefollowed it with a series which mounted in volume and vigor. Merchanteyed him solicitously.

  "You've caught a bad cold, Lieutenant."

  "Yes." Terry snuffled and drew his handkerchief. "It was awfully dampin 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 afew short turns about the little hut in search of the cause of hismalady.

  The doctor watched him, interested. Bending suddenly, Terry held aloftthe perspiration-soaked nightshirt which the doctor affected.

  "Eureka!" he exclaimed, dramatically, then dodged the shoe the hoaxeddoctor let drive at his head.

  After an hour's investigation of conditions in the village the doctorwas convinced that he could now handle the situation alone andinsisted upon Terry's returning home. His parting injunctions wereworried.

  "Now Lieutenant, you watch yourself closely for several days and ifyou display fever symptoms, you send for me."

  After Terry had ridden down the river bank and into the long homewardtrail, the doctor's overworked conscience smote him hard:

  "Hell's bells! I never thanked him for coming!"