Caybigan Part 23

"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.

"_Do_ we; 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 s.h.i.+ning up there. I loof de name of Wash-ing-ton, I loof my c.o.o.n-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."

V

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 slip knot 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 pa.s.sed 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.

Papa Gato sauntered up close, "And now, will you tell us how many men there are in Bagum-Bagum?" he asked suavely.

The inspector did not answer. His face was very red and his jaws were very salient. A few dry twigs were placed upon the fire, which sprang up, crackling. There was a faint smell of burning hair.

Something like a beskirted cyclone whirred into the circle. Biff--bang; two kicks scattered the little fire to the four winds. Zip--the liana was cut with a big jackknife, and the widow, gurgling and choking, was bending over the luckless Mr. Rued. "You poor dear," she gulped; "you poor baby"--and she pressed him to her arid bosom. "Here, water, you heathen, water!"

But the inspector, very much alive, was struggling to get loose; and her glance, falling upon Papa Gato, watching the strange performance with wonder-dilated eyes, suddenly changed the nature of her emotion. "You devil!" she shrieked, and she sprang to her feet; "You fiend!"--and she started toward him.

To Papa Gato's eternal credit be it said that he held his ground for several distinct seconds. But the vision of vengeance bearing down upon him was more than mortal man could bear. He broke one step, hesitated, then all his courage oozing out of him suddenly, he turned deliberately and ran. Once around the clearing he loped, the sound of flapping skirts ominous in his ears; then a second time, for the widow had picked up a stick, and with mechanical precision it was rising and falling only a few inches behind his head; a third lap he began, and by that time all the dogs of the camp had joined the chase in tumultuous glee. And it was a strange sight, up in that lonely clearing, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable and poisonous vegetation, beneath the shadow of Taal, brooding and sinister with its black banner of vapours, in the hollow silence of high alt.i.tudes, that man running in sober earnest, with an immense concentration of his simple purpose, and behind him that incredible woman, flas.h.i.+ng-eyed, hook-nosed, her garments to the wind, seemingly gliding over the high gra.s.s, a gigantic and fearful witch, riding a broomstick. In the centre, from a few dying embers, a little smoke rose, and about that were grouped the tulisanes, in frozen att.i.tudes, like a bronze bas-relief, and they looked at their running chief, at the pursuing woman, without a gesture, without a cry, without the single flapping of an eyelid. And behind the nightmare couple ran the dogs, the curs of the camp, snarling and laughing and gurgling like a pack of hyenas.

To this preoccupation of man and dog may be ascribed the ensuing catastrophe. For suddenly, close, so close that the vibration of it could be felt, but m.u.f.fled in the impenetrability of the jungle, a shot rang out. This was followed by a crepitating volley; a buzz of lead pa.s.sed overhead. Silently, with a minimum of movement, the ladrones, as if at a preconceived signal, slid across the clearing and into the wilderness beyond. Just at that psychological moment, the widow caught up with Gato. Calmly, dexterously, as one spanks a child, she upset him, face down, and resolutely sat upon him. Then, readjusting her skirts about her limbs and her spectacles upon her nose, she grimly waited.

Shouts came to her ears, a hewing and hacking of bushes, a crackling of bamboo. Vague brown spots appeared against the metallic green foliage; they ma.s.sed, detached themselves and burst into the clearing--a detachment of constabulary. At their head, charging furiously, was a lieutenant, slender and boyish, in accoutrement ridiculously new. He was enjoying himself immensely. A fine ardour was in his face; his cap was off, his hair streaming in the wind; he held a naked sword extended up and forward in statuesque gesture. Across the clearing he came, straight as a bee; his eyes flas.h.i.+ng, his nostrils distended, all a-thrill with military glory.

And suddenly he was nose to nose with the widow, who had slowly risen and now confronted him majestically, her foot upon the luckless Papa Gato. An extraordinary change came over the young warrior. His martial excitement, his keen zest, his bravado collapsed; his sword dropped till its point touched the ground; his flaming uniform took on cringing folds.