Terry Part 21

"I know, Sears. Thanks. Good-by."

"_Adios_," Sears called. Then he stood watching the little band trot through the gate and into the woods. His eyes moistened, he raised his big fist against an invisible foe.

"If they get him--" he muttered through lips that trembled unashamed, "if they get that boy--that sick boy, I'll--I'll--we'll ... and I didn't have any medicine for him--the only thing he ever asked me for--or ever asked anybody for!"

For the first time Terry urged the gray. Matak over two hours ahead of him and mounted on the next best pony in the Gulf ... Malabanan hours ahead of Matak, riding toward the Ledesma girl held for him in one of the three shacks.... He pushed the pony hard across the open clearings, recklessly forced him through the underbrush that in frequent areas obliterated the trail. They were now well inland and mounting a perceptible grade toward the foothills: the sluggish stream they had paralleled all day ran swift here. Once, where the trail twisted near the bank, they heard the rush of rapids, and a mile farther on they came in sight of a curiously soundless waterfull. They had reached the Bogobo country but the afternoon quiet was unbroken by the sound of agongs. Fear had reached the foothills.

His pony was too much for the courageous but smaller mounts of the Macabebes and Terry gradually drew ahead. He must overtake Malabanan before nightfall.... Ledesma had not put his confidence into words, but he had looked it--had trusted him ... the pony's head and neck dripped, a welt of lather fringed the saddle blanket over the withers and down both shoulders. The Sergeant, seeing his men fall behind, galloped up into the lead and cursed them on with graphic phrases culled from the English, Spanish and Malay tongues. But it was useless: the gray pony carried its desperately anxious rider faster than their jaded mounts could travel. Terry drew out of sight, but they rode on.

All through the afternoon Terry had been dimly conscious that the headache had returned, that his face was flushed and hot, but the fast pumping blood seemed to energize his faculties. Never had he felt so keyed-up, so sinewy of nerve.

The hours flew with the miles. At five o'clock he crashed out of the woods into an open spot where the trail bent down toward the river to skirt a deep black pool--the Bogobos' Crocodile Hole, which none of them would ever approach. It was a roughly circular depression extending from bank to bank, a hundred feet in diameter; it lay just below the ledge of rock that made a low-water ford but which, at high water, was the brink of a falls which had worn a deep hole in the soft river bottom.

Terry slowed his steaming pony as he rounded the pool. Stories that he had overheard flashed across his mind, ghastly stories whispered by tremulous native lips into credulous brown ears, of the size of the Thing which dwelt here, of its age, its incredible scaly length and girth, its patient devilish cunning; of the toll it had taken of three generations, tales you would not care to hear--like that of the old blind Bogobo who lost his way, and groping for the trail with naked hands--no, you would not care to hear such appalling tales.

Riding the river ledge above the pool he glanced down into the deep, quiet waters but his thoughts snapped back to the present as his pony balked at the edge of the ford. The gray had never balked at water, and attributing the display of vice to fatigue, he tried to gentle him into the shallow water, then touched him with spur--minutes were precious now. Driven by the steel, the gray stepped gingerly into the stream, took several steps, then snorted as he wheeled back to the bank. Terry swung him back sharply and sent the spur deep into the flanks of the trembling beast: half wild with the unaccustomed punishment he dashed into the water and splashed across in frightened bounds that took him up the opposite bank into the brush.

Terry brought the pony round and stroked its neck soothingly to calm the unaccountable terror apparent in the nervous tossing of head and distension of red nostrils. As he guided him along the bank a sound of disturbed water brought Terry's head up sharply: heavy ripples circled away from a spot near the opposite sh.o.r.e just under the ford. As he peered keenly he discerned the indistinct outline of something that looked like a heavy log sink slowly into the dark depths. The pony fretted until they left the river-bank to follow an old trail that led into the woods.

Here Terry held him to a walk, riding cautiously, pausing at each turn of the trail to scrutinize every inch of brush intently, ears alert to faintest sound. He knew he was nearing the deserted huts. He advanced several hundred yards thus, searching for the clearing, listening.

Discerning well ahead a s.p.a.ce where the sky was open above a cleared area he dismounted, hurriedly knotted the reins to a sapling, s.n.a.t.c.hed his extra pistol from the saddle holster, then crept forward through the early forest twilight, wary, both pistols at full c.o.c.k.

Creeping round the first bend in the trail he searched the near thickets with penetrating keenness: he knew Malay treachery. His eyes, flas.h.i.+ng from side to side, focussed upon a dim, motionless figure outlined in the shadow beneath the trunk of a large tree that stood on the edge of the clearing. His back was to Terry and he seemed engrossed in some silent drama that was being enacted in the clearing out of Terry's field of vision.

Terry crept toward him soundlessly and when he had covered half of the distance that separated them he was overjoyed to recognize him as Matak. As Terry's lips parted in a low call, Matak glided from the tree like a swift shadow just as a shriek of pain and terror rent the silence of the woods, followed by a vowelled curse and the sound of a heavy hand on naked flesh.

As Terry sprang forward to the edge of the clearing he heard behind him the distant sound of ponies driven recklessly through the underbrush, and knew that the Macabebes were coming up!

He halted at the edge of the clearing, un.o.bserved by the crowd of bandits who had sprung out of the three disused huts when Matak leaped into the open: with ready rifles and bolos they awaited the command of their white-eyed leader, who stood in front of them, startled, but coolly confronting the Moro. Ledesma's daughter, who had fallen under Malabanan's heavy blow, staggered to her feet and ran blindly into the arms of a laughing rough whom Terry recognized as Malabanan's companion at the dock--the sardonic Sakay.

For a moment the tableau held. Terry could not see Matak's face but he heard the tense fury of the voice:

"Malabanan, you speak English?"

Malabanan looked him over insolently before answering: "Yes."

Moro met Tagalog in the Bogobo's country on the common ground of the American-brought English tongue!

"Malabanan, you know me?"

"No."

"You remember one night--nine years now--on Basilan? You remember kill old man, old woman, then girl on boat? You remember kill little boy, too, and throw in sea?"

The Moro's voice dripped with the released pa.s.sions of nine years of brooding over terrible wrongs. As he saw the light of recollection appear in the desperado's dark face, he struggled to speak the words that had been dammed up so long:

"Malabanan, I am that boy.... Now you die!"

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the long knife from the scarf knotted about his waist in Moro fas.h.i.+on, his knees bending under him in a tigerish crouch as he slowly circled toward his powerful enemy. Malabanan drew his great bolo with a contemptuous sneer at the little Moro and before Terry could have interfered had he wished, they leaped at each other. Matak dodged down under the first awful sweep of the gleaming bolo and as he came up he struck at Malabanan, not with the cla.s.sic downward stroke, but UP!

As the glittering blade went home, deep, Malabanan threw the Moro from him with a convulsive heave that crashed him senseless against the stump of a charred tree. His colorless left eye, l.u.s.terless in strange contrast to the baleful fire that glowed in the right, Malabanan gathered his fast ebbing strength in a last effort and staggered toward the unconscious Moro, his glittering weapon upraised, heedless of the pale American who stepped out with a rasping: "Halt!"

But he sank limp as Terry's heavy pistol roared a message he did heed--though never heard--sagging down to sprawl across the Moro's legs.

Terry leaped full into the clearing and covered the ladrones, who stood paralyzed by the swiftness of the tragedy, stunned by the dramatic appearance of the young American whose pistols were famed throughout the Gulf, and as they hesitated the Macabebes smashed out of the fringe of timber, threw themselves off their reeking ponies and moved to surround the band.

Sakay, supporting the girl as a screen, drew back toward the nearest of the huts and opened fire at Terry with a rifle. The ladrones scattered for cover and in a minute the woods rang with their fusillade and with the deadly volleys sent in answer by the Macabebes.

It was a brief combat. Though outnumbered nearly two to one the soldiers were disciplined and highly trained marksmen. In a moment six of the bandits were on the ground, nine threw up their hands in surrender and the balance fled through the woods. The Sergeant, who had been slugging away with his rifle with a calculating attention to the details of marksmans.h.i.+p belied by the fierce joy in his brilliant black eyes, ceased firing at Terry's shouted command and detached eight of his man, who caught up some frightened ponies and raced through the woods to head off the fleeing brigands.

Sakay, using the fear-crazed girl as a s.h.i.+eld from behind which to shoot at Terry, found his aim thwarted by her struggles. Seeing Terry advancing straight upon him and fearful of exposing himself to the fire of the two black pistols, he dropped his rifle and holding the girl directly in front of him, called out in English:

"I surrender! I surrender! I surrender, Lieutenant!"

His deep anxiety subsiding when he realized that he would suffer no immediate harm, Sakay threw the girl from him with a brutal force that sent her prostrate and was promptly rewarded by the husky Mercado, who had been under American tutelage long enough to understand the virtue and the technique of what is vulgarly known as "a good swift kick."

The Sergeant escorted Sakay into the group of prisoners rounded up by the four soldiers and set them to digging a grave for the six, who, with Malabanan, would "never appear before the court." In a few minutes the pursuit party rode into the clearing herding all but three of the criminals who had fled: those three were carried in and placed alongside the grave.

Terry worked over Matak, who had been merely stunned. In a few minutes the Moro recovered fully and went back to secure Terry's pony, which he had abandoned near the ford.

While the Sergeant attended to the duties of identification and burial of the dead Terry led the girl into one of the huts and quietly comforted her. She told him of the ordeal of her forced journey through the greater part of a day and a night, of the captors who leered at her but remained aloof because of fear of Malabanan, of being waked from sleep at Malabanan's arrival just before Matak appeared. Malabanan and Sakay, worn with the night's ride, had stopped during the noon hours to rest in the woods.

When it came time to go, Terry placed the girl on his pony, declining another mount, as his head now ached too fiercely to withstand jolting in the saddle. He set off in the lead, afoot, followed by the prisoners under escort, Mercado bringing up the rear with the girl.

As they neared the ford Terry heard a sharp out-cry from one of the guards, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Whirling, he saw the brush on his right agitated by the movements of a figure that crashed unseen through the tangle of vegetation. Two soldiers flung themselves off their ponies and leaped in pursuit, pausing fruitlessly for sight of the fleeing form and das.h.i.+ng on with trailed rifles. The aggressive Mercado galloped up, shouting an explanatory "Sakay!" as he charged straight into the brush.

Terry sped down the trail toward the river, emerging on the bank just as the lithe Sakay burst from the brush. Laughing derisively at Terry Sakay leaped toward the stream, reached the bank in four great bounds and leaped far out from the low edge. As the bandit's powerful body curved in the air Terry's pistol barked twice before the supple form straightened to strike the pool in a perfect dive.

Terry leaped down the bank to cover Sakay when he should rise. Leaning over the ledge he distinguished the white-clad figure sliding gracefully through the dark depths with the momentum of the dive: ten feet, twenty, thirty, then it slowed, started to rise.

But as he watched, tense ... there was a rush of a ma.s.sive armored body through the shadowed depths, a great scaly thing swirled the limpid pool, a flash of hideous teeth--and the white form was gone.

Spellbound with the unutterable horror of what he had seen, Terry watched the waters become quiet again, but turned away, aghast, when bubbles rose like tiny silver globes against the jet depths. When he turned back there were no more bubbles.

He sank down on the bank, sickened. The Macabebes had come up with their meek prisoners and waited at the ford, restless, their eyes fixed on the oily pool. Even Mercado was anxious to be gone.

Unaffected by the terrible fate of the bandit he had hunted, he viewed the approach of sunset with vague concern, for this was the nearest that he had ever been to the edge of the Hill Country.

Terry strove to rise, and at last realized that he was ill. He sank back, dazed with the sudden force of a fever that coursed through his body achingly, that throbbed in his head with a tumultuous roar. He tried again, but fell back, dizzy. He rested till his head cleared, then sat up and called Mercado to him. His voice came weak.

"Sergeant," he explained, "I do not feel--like going in to-night. You push on--rest at Sears' to-night. Keep the prisoners in his corral under guard. He will look after Senorita Ledesma and the men. Tell him that I request that he come here and dynamite this pool--thoroughly.

Push on to Davao next morning and send for Ledesma to get his daughter; and if I am not there by that time, you send a brief report of this affair to Zamboanga. Understand?"

"Yes, sir, but you look sick, sir!" A quick concern flooded the Macabebe's heavy face.

"Yes--I do not feel--very well. I am going to cut across country to get to Doctor Merchant tonight. It is only six miles straight through the woods."

The Macabebe led his charges across the ford, then, worried, returned to Terry's side. Rea.s.sured somewhat by the brave smile, he mounted after receiving a final injunction to take Matak in with him if they overtook him. As the Macabebes herded their cowed prisoners into the woods across from where he lay, Terry lay p.r.o.ne in another of the intermittent surges of mounting fever that robbed him of his strength and faculties.