Terry Part 15

Terry read the terse communication twice before lighting it with a match and scattering the charred remnants over the polished mahogany floor. He pa.s.sed a grim afternoon with the Macabebes on the target range, where the scorers wagged bull's eye after bull's eye, for twenty-seven of the Macabebes were expert riflemen, forty-three were marksmen.

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

"Matak," he said.

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

"Matak, you know that I have never asked you anything about your past life. I am not going to ask you now, unless there is something in which 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 Terry understood his purpose, the tight muscles of his face relaxed and he slid forward to kneel on one knee and raise Terry's hand to his lips in 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 small boy--twelve years old--my family live east coast Basilan. Very happy family, master: father, mother, sister, me; three carabaos we have, a little house, chickens, a little _vinta_ in which to fish--everything Moro family want. We hurt n.o.body, just work.

"One night, very late," his face darkened, "men come. They steal carabaos, everything. My father wake up, go out to see, and they laugh--and kill him. I--a little boy--see them do it: see them kill my father--with bolos. Then they kill my mother--the same man--the same bolo. I see that, too: they say she too old, and they laugh." He spoke slowly, hesitating before each short sentence, his black eyes dulled with 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 she pretty 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. She hurt him, so he draw knife, kill her, and throw her in sea: then other Filipino holding me hit me with bolo and throw me in too."

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

"I swim ash.o.r.e, two miles, to La.s.sak. Next morning I take boat, find sister, 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 with left eye all white. I know him any time, any place. That nine years ago. 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 big Filipino with left white eye. Nine years I no tell anybody, just listen, 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, placed his hand upon the Moro's shoulder--the scarred shoulder--and looked down into his now emotionless face:

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

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

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

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

He was awakened before daylight by the arrival of a spent Bogobo runner 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 a mile he overtook Lindsey, who had spent the night in town. They rode together several miles to where the trail, soaked with the night's rain, forked toward Lindsey's plantation: the sun shone white hot, the earth steamed through its mat of decayed vegetation.

They drew rein at the fork, dismounted. Lindsey broke the silence in which they had ridden following Terry's brief explanation of his mission.

"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, the queer 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 nibbling at his arm. Lindsey waited, hoping he would continue, but Terry looked away, idly studying the thickly planted hemp fields that extended from the fork to Lindsey's house, a mile distant. The still wet leaves flaunted on great stalks fifteen feet above the wonderfully fertile soil.

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

He pointed to the huge plant nearest them; "The fibers in those stalks--I can see them, woven into a rope that may warp a steamer to dock in Tripoli or Hoboken or Archangel: or fashioned by happy j.a.panese fingers into braided hats to cover lovely heads in Picadilly or Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kite for some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin on the banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped into ugliest knot by a grim figure standing on a scaffold--though I hope not!"

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

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

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

"About what you said a moment back--that I was 'different.' All my friends have always been like that--wanted to look after me, somehow, though I can look after myself, pretty well. I never quite understood why 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 watching the slender rider thread through the maze of the trail out of sight.

Mounting, he started homeward along the edge of the field trying to interpret the strange appeal this young officer had exerted over him, this quiet lad whose very competence and cheerfulness he somehow found pathetic. He involuntarily halted his pony as solution came to him.

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

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

Terry took command, so quietly that the doctor did not realize it. A few brief questions elicited the measures the doctor wished put into effect, simple curative methods and preventive precautions.

Understanding, Terry started out, but was recalled by the doctor.