Rick Brant - The Golden Skull Part 22

CHAPTER XIII

The Peaceful Profession

The Spindrift campfire blazed high, and its warmth was welcome in the cold mountain night. Balaban and Dog Meat were out on patrol, although it was unlikely that any Ifugao had followed the invaders over the mountain.

Camp had been pitched in a grove of trees on the Igorot side of the divide. The boys and Tony had taken suitable clothing from their supplies and were now equipped with st.u.r.dy trail clothes and warm leather jackets. Chahda, similarly dressed in spare clothes, now resembled an Igorot only because of his haircut.

Tony sipped steaming coffee from a battered mug. He grinned at the faces around the fire: Rick, Scotty, Angel Manotok, Chahda, and Pilipil, whose wounded leg had been treated with supplies from the first-aid kit.

"Archaeologist at work," Tony commented. "Digs in musty old tombs all day, and now and then gets excited about a clay jug or something else he uncovers. The archaeologist has nothing but old jugs or beetles or stuff like that to get excited about. It's a peaceful profession, boys. That's why I like it. Calm, quiet, orderly."

Pilipil didn't get the irony in Tony's voice, but the others laughed.

Scotty nodded agreement. "That's the popular idea of an archaeologist, all right! Sounds like a recruiting ad, doesn't it? Be peaceful and quiet. Live to a ripe old age. Be an archaeologist. Reminds me of the recruiting poster that hooked me once. Join the Marines, it said. See the world. Learn a trade. I joined. Saw the world while snaking on my belly through the South Pacific. Learned a trade, too. How to fire a rifle. Very few peacetime riflemen needed, however."

"We'll combine our trades," Tony said. "You might say we did, earlier tonight."

As Rick put more wood on the fire he said, "We're together, for the first time. Before, either Tony or Chahda was missing. Now what do we do?"

Tony considered. "I must admit I was not giving much thought to the purpose of the expedition when you came after me. I spent most of my time imagining how my skull would look on the knick-knack shelf in the hut."

"What knick-knack shelf?" Chahda asked.

"You wouldn't have noticed," Tony told them. "It was high in the rear of the hut, above the opening you made. A shelf full of skulls. I kept trying to flatter myself that surely my head would be prettier than those. But I didn't really believe it."

"Do you really believe the Ifugaos would have taken your head?" Rick asked.

"You bet I do! You should have seen Nangolat. He shed civilization with his clothes. He got down to a breechcloth and he was all primitive. He's got a bad case of bats in the belfry, believe me. I'd say he was a true fanatic."

"Yes," Angel Manotok said positively. "You remember I tell you about those eyes of his? The doctor is right. Nangolat is crazy. He is a killer."

Rick remembered the crazed, distorted face of Nangolat rushing for the jeep with spear extended. "I vote Nangolat for nuts, too. Insane and dangerous."

"This being Mountain Province, Philippines, I don't think it would do much good to call the men in white coats to bring a strait jacket,"

Scotty observed. "So, what do we do? We can ignore him, avoid him, or shoot him. The first is hard, since he carries a sharp spear. The second may be possible. The third I reject as being un-scientific and unkind, not to mention illegal."

"One more possibility," Chahda offered. "Catch him, tie him up, have Scotty talk him into stupor."

Rick chuckled. "You may have an idea there, Chahda. Seriously, Nangolat is guilty of kidnaping. That makes him a criminal. Surely it isn't wrong to catch an escaped criminal and turn him over to justice."

"Not wrong," Tony said, "but maybe just a little bit impractical."

Rick pressed the point. "Why? If we thought faster, we could have picked him up tonight. You knocked him colder than a penguin's pocketbook. We could have tossed him into the back of the jeep like a sack of bones."

"Yes, Rick. But chances like that don't come twice. Catching him now would mean making a definite attempt. It would mean an expedition. I doubt that he'd stay around to be caught."

"Guess you're right," Rick admitted. "Then, to get back to Scotty's question, what do we do now? Apparently Nangolat has his people up in arms against us. There's no law enforcement worthy of the name up here, so we can't call for help. So what next?"

Tony poured himself another mug of coffee from the steaming pot. "We continue after the cache of artifacts."

The boys stared. Chahda shook hands with the scientist. "Now I see why Rick and Scotty call you Tony. Number One regular guy. Why let little thing like whole nation of head-hunters scare you off?"

"Archaeology is certainly a peaceful profession," Rick said admiringly.

"Scotty and I don't scare easily, but it didn't occur to me that we should proceed as though nothing had happened."

"You're getting the wrong impression," Tony said mildly. "Let's consider the situation. There's Nangolat, the princ.i.p.al troublemaker. What is his reason for behaving as he does?"

"Well," Scotty began, "he certainly was the one who tried to kill you on the boat."

"I think he was. He would have known all about the expedition from Okola. He would have known what ship we were on, and a phone call to the agent of the line would have told him our arrival time, from which he could easily have figured what time we would enter Manila Bay. He would also have known that I was the archaeologist for the expedition. After all, I signed the correspondence we had with Okola, and he was Okola's a.s.sistant."

"But why would he want to kill you?" Rick asked.

"For religious reasons. Nangolat is a religious fanatic. I saw that quite clearly during the time I was his captive. He does not want the artifacts dug up--or he didn't. Remember the legend? If they're dug up, drought and earthquakes will follow. By killing me aboard ship, the expedition would never take place. That must have been how he reasoned."

Rick was beginning to see light. "Angel, was Nangolat supposed to be a Christian?"

Angel shook his head. "No. He was a pagan. Once he went to church with me, but that was only to see how Christians worship. He worshiped the Ifugao G.o.ds which were in the museum at the university."

Rick commented, "I imagine his studies with Okola, and especially the work he did tracking down the legends of the golden skull, made him even more religious. I won't say superst.i.tious."

"You're right," Tony said approvingly. "This is not superst.i.tion.

Nangolat is as firmly convinced of the correctness of his religious beliefs as any Christian martyr. I'm sure he considered the object of our expedition as pure sacrilege."

"I'm with you up to a point," Scotty remarked. "But why didn't he kill the lot of us as soon as we landed? He could have gotten Rick and me the night we met you for dinner. We walked in a lot of dark places, and we weren't particularly on guard."

"He tried," Tony reminded them. "We surprised him in my room at the Manila Hotel. Probably he was examining my effects to see if I had maps or charts. Then he waited in the walled city and tried to pick you two off with rifle fire."

Chahda spoke up. "Not so easy to find chances to kill, even in city like Manila. With gang, yes. Alone, no."

"He's right," Tony agreed. "Then, somewhere along the line, Nangolat had a change of heart. I don't know why. Perhaps his research told him that the drought and earthquakes would follow the digging up of the golden skull only if it should be done by unbelievers like us. Perhaps if the faithful do the uncovering, the Ifugao G.o.ds will smile. I don't know.

But Nangolat decided he wanted the expedition to help _him_ find the artifacts."

"The old compet.i.tive spirit got him," Scotty murmured. "Wanted his side to win."

"Maybe," Tony said with a grin. "Anyway, he got away with the earth scanner; he had it when Nast turned me over to him. Of course he couldn't use it. So he must have planned to capture one or all of us. He could have waited until the expedition got here, but things would then be complicated by our hiring diggers and camp helpers, which he knew we intended to do. Also, we intended to contact the road commissioner at Bontoc, a man who represents law and order--such as it is. So Nangolat, apparently, decided to stake everything on capturing us, forcing us to find the cache, then removing our heads. By the time the law got around to looking for us, the artifacts would be well hidden by the Ifugaos, and so would our bodies. Our skulls would be aging gracefully in some hidden place. And no Ifugao would know a single thing about it when questioned. It was a good scheme."

"Except for one thing," Rick corrected. "The terraces cover miles. We could spend weeks searching."

"There's one bit of evidence you don't have, boys. Remember that there is a major clue to the whereabouts of the cache? A dragon. Well, Nangolat knows--and has always known without knowing its significance until now--where the dragon is located."

Tony smiled at the interested faces around him. "And that's not all. I know where it is, too!"

CHAPTER XIV