Terry Part 11

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 anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e to discharge cargo into a lighter, drop a pa.s.senger or two, and send ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 owners.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude: 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 brus.h.!.+

"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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+p 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.

"h.e.l.lo, Major! How's everything? I pa.s.sed 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!"