Terry Part 24

He pulled the Major over and they read:

This python, the largest but one measured since American occupation, was killed on the plantation of Mr. Eric Lindsey.

Length...................24 ft., 9 inches Diameter, thickest..............14 inches

"We didn't see him do it, but we knew he must have been the one who changed it. As that's the way he wanted it, we can't change it--now."

Grief shadowed his earnest countenance again as he faced the Major: "Don't you think that in view of my friendship for him--and for you--that I am ent.i.tled to go up with you?"

"No, that's all settled, Lindsey."

The Major pa.s.sed out, but pausing on the dark walk in front of the building to relight his cigar, he heard Lindsey outlining plans for the campaign the planters would undertake if the Major had not returned at the end of two weeks.

In the early morning he made a light pack of rations and the beads, matches and red calico he had secured to use as presents in case he won through to the Hill People. He dressed for the field in khaki, filled an extra canteen and after breakfast mounted Terry's big gray pony and rode off with Mercado, whom he took to guide him to the spot where Terry was last seen. The Macabebe took the lead and pressed by the urgent white man lathered his pony in the rapid pace he set through the winding trail. They dismounted at the ford shortly before sunset.

While the Major was transferring his pack from saddle to shoulders the Macabebe explored the pool with distrustful eyes. But Sears had done his work thoroughly: two cases of dynamite had blown in the banks and created a new channel through which the water flowed swiftly. The pool had been narrowed by half and shallowed to a depth of ten feet in the series of explosions Sears had detonated until the river gave up the rent carca.s.s of the monstrous reptile.

The Major adjusted the pack to his liking, waved farewell to the Macabebe and moved toward the fringe of woods with a swinging stride.

The soldier watched the receding figure with mingled admiration and awe. The Malay stood irresolute as the white man's head and shoulders pa.s.sed from view under the low hanging branches, watched the pendulous khaki legs swing rhythmically into the shadows of the forest and out of vision, then cast one long look up over the dense roof of the forest which swept far up to end at Apo's summit, and atremble with the appalling memories of the lonely spot he mounted the gray and led his own exhausted pony along the edge of the pool. Once he glanced back apprehensively as a small Bogobo agong sounded somewhere to the north and filled the woods with its deep and mournful tones, then hurried on homewards.

The Major had headed due west, straight toward the summit of the mountain. He walked on through the last hour of the afternoon and as the woods became denser and darker he used the slope of the forest floor as his point, always facing in the direction of the rising ascent. He made good time, as here the going was little obstructed by creepers or thorned "wait-a-minute." Alert, he studied every sound of the forest life, for though he had placed his life on the knees of the G.o.ds he valued it too highly to neglect any slightest precaution.

Inside his shirt there bulged a heavy 45 slung from a leather breast-holster. This lone attempt of the Hills was no sudden inspiration; he had planned it logically. There was no other way. Up there, somewhere, lay or lived his friend. Friendship was the call, friendship and ... The Service.

The sun, glinting fitfully through openings in the thatching of sparkling green leaves, dropped lower and sank from sight, and before the brief twilight faded he selected a spot beneath a great mango tree as his first camping place. Gathering some dry twigs and dead boughs he built a fire at the edge of a little stream and ate sparingly of his store of beans, chocolate and tinned sausages. In his collapsible pan he heated water and dissolved his coffee crystals, and the coffee finished, he boiled more water with which he filled his canteens and hung them on a branch after dipping the woolen jackets into the creek to secure the coolness of evaporation.

Night fell black in the forest. He threw more brush on the fire to enlarge the circle of light, and made himself a comfortable couch by patiently stripping the small branches of their most leafy twigs, and wrapped himself in his blanket, vainly hoping that sleep would come.

From time to time he rose to add fuel to the fire, as he wanted the light to be visible from the Gulf, where troubled friends would be searching the night hills with worried eyes. And he wished the flame to be seen in the Hills by those who lurked in the dark shadows so that they might know that no element of stealth entered into the approach of this white man who invaded a territory forbidden to strangers since the earliest dawn of Philippine history. This idea--the thorough advertis.e.m.e.nt of fearless confidence--was the basis of his plan. He knew wild men.

Desperately he fought off the forebodings which a.s.sailed him in the deep silence of the forest night, for hours he tossed in the distress of apprehension over the friend of whom he came in search. Toward dawn he fell asleep puzzling over the problem of Terry's reason for closing the door of his bedroom before going to bed and then opening it for ventilation. He waked from a dream in which he had slyly peered into the room in time to see Terry withdrawing a hypodermic needle from his arm, and lay worrying about the vivid nightmare until he noticed that the fire was dimming before the coming of dawn.

He breakfasted, drowned the embers of his fire with water from the stream, then reslung his pack and started up the slope. The way grew steeper with the hours, the forest thicker. The green roof of foliage was now so thick that the sun seldom penetrated and where it did strike through the sunlit spots were dazzling in contrast with the somber shadow of the forest. The undergrowth grew denser, so that he climbed with greater toil through the maze of thorned bush and snaky creepers that twined in enormous lengths across the forest floor.

The never-ending gloom of the weird twilight grew on his nerves. He tried to whistle to cheer himself but forebore when the uncanny echoes rocketed in the dismal cathedral of towering trunks.

It was rough and cheerless going. There were no trails. Once, toward noon, while he was munching chocolate to appease his empty stomach, he suddenly came upon a sort of runway, a beaten trail. He stepped into this easier path but had taken but a few steps when he was startled by the vicious rush of a swift object that whizzed up through the air and tore through a fold of his loose riding breeches, then swung back before his eyes to vibrate into stillness. It was a bamboo dagger, sharpened to a keen edge and point, hardened by charring in a slow fire. Fastened to a young sapling, it had been bent down over the trail and secured by a trigger his foot had released in pa.s.sing. Level with his thigh, it had been designed to pierce the abdomen of the Hillmen's natural foes. He bent to examine the glutinous material with which the dagger was poisoned, and paled as he considered his close escape. Such a death--in such a place....

After a.s.suring himself that his skin had not been broken by the _balatak_, he stepped gingerly off the trail and made his way upward, carefully avoiding every inch of ground that appeared suspicious. With each mile of ascent the way grew steeper, the forest deeper and darker, the green ceiling reared higher on more ma.s.sive trunks.

In mid afternoon he noticed that he was pa.s.sing through a zone of utter forest silence. There were no relieving sounds of voice or wing or padded foot. It was appalling. Nothing in his vivid experiences had approached the menace of these silent trees.

Pausing to rest in an area where an unusual amount of indirect light filtered down through the lofty screen of leaves he looked about him, found no tree he could identify, and felt the hostility that strange growths radiate. His thoughts flew back to the security and friendliness of the elms and maples of his boyhood haunts. As he peered through the endless avenues of trunks that rose from the dark slope, he learned what fear is. But he went on, faster.

An hour later, clambering over the trunk of a huge windfall that blocked his path, he jumped down upon something that half pierced the heel of his heavy shoe. Leaning back upon the big log he tugged till the foot was released. He had landed upon a carpet of leaves which concealed a number of sharpened bamboo stakes bedded deep in the ground, point upward. Raking out the leaves with a stick, he uncovered a nest of sixteen spearheads smeared with the brown venom.

Forced to study his every footfall, he made slower progress. He was far up the great slope when he noticed that the tangled underbrush had given way to a smooth carpet of leaves. Night was near, so he halted when he came to an open spot, a place where volcanic rock precluded vegetable growth. Water, steaming hot, poured from a fissure.

It was the first time he had sighted the sky since morning, and here he saw the only sign of life the day had afforded. Two gray pigeons flew side by side across the opening in the trees, winging toward the crest of the mountain.

Sleep did not come to him. All through the night he sat by the fire, staring out into the ruddy circle of vision illumined by the blaze, peering into the shadows cast by the great trunks. Once a dead limb fell from a towering tree that stood just at the edge of the circle of light: he started violently, his hand darting into his shirt front to his gun. He relaxed, slowly. Big drops of moisture dripped from the invisible treetops. Thinking it nearly dawn he consulted his watch. It was eleven o'clock.

Suddenly he sensed that he was no longer alone, felt the presence of stealthy forms in the surrounding darkness, heard a twig snap in the still forest behind him. He waited, tense, the hair at the back of his neck stiffening as he thought of blowpipes and of darts poisoned by steeping in the putrid entrails of wild hogs.

He felt the scrutiny of hostile eyes. Certain that he detected the movement of an indistinct figure on the rim of the firelight, he threw on a handful of dry twigs hoping to uncover the prowlers, but the flareup revealed only an enlarged circle of great trees and emphasized their shadows. He sat motionless, his eyes focussed sharply upon the spot, and as the fire died down he saw the flicker of a dark form as it darted from the shadow of the tree and dissolved into the bordering gloom.

He gritted his teeth in an agony of suspense and enforced inaction. As the long minutes crawled by he writhed inwardly in the horror of waiting for the stinging impact of the feathered messengers of death, marshalled every resource of his will in his effort to appear casual, unafraid, confident of friendly reception.

Suddenly the silence of the night hills was broken by a weird sound that rolled down from the heights. He listened, rigid, and realized that some one was striking a small agong. It came from the crest.

Three times the faint resonance was carried down, the last note humming long in the tunnel of forest and fading out in slow-dying vibrations.

Listening, he noted a change in the forest about him. Minutes pa.s.sed, and at last he realized that he was alone, the lurking figures had been recalled. In the reaction fatigue came, and he wrapped himself in the blanket and fell asleep.

At sunrise he was off again, climbing the mountain side, confident that the recall of his midnight visitors had ended all dangers. The night would see him at the summit.... APO!

But with the sense of personal security there came a deep apprehension of what he would find at the end of his strange quest. His worry over the fate of the friend for whom he had made this venture increased with every hour. As the day wore on he fell into a panic of foreboding, scarce noting that the forest had lost its sinister aspects, had opened into a lovely wood of sun-splashed vistas broken here and there by great rugs of thick gra.s.s which tempered the beat of the afternoon sun striking through the openings above the frequent clearings.

Suddenly he stopped, sniffing to identify the odor that had rapped at his heedless nostrils for an hour. Disbelieving the testimony of his sense of smell he scanned the woods for visual evidence, for the first time taking in the quiet beauty of the scene. Finding the objects for which he searched he exclaimed aloud in his wonder.

"Pines! Pines! Sus-marie-hosep!"

He drank in the bracing spice of the rare atmosphere, glorying in the clear coolness of the alt.i.tude after the months of oppressive heat in the lowlands.

"Real, honest-to-heaven pines--that puts me a clean mile above sea level!"

Worry came again, and he turned to continue his ascent, but halted in midstride as he discovered a form that stood, motionless, upon a gra.s.sy plot a few rods above him. A Hillman confronted him!

Evidently a young fighting man, of small stature but wonderfully developed of shoulder and limb, full chested and round of barrel, his brown skin covered only with a red G-string, spear in hand, he returned the Major's stare with a steady gaze of appraisal. For a long minute he remained poised, then beckoned to the Major to follow him and whirling with a flirt of his long black hair he led the way up the acclivity, bearing to the right of the course the Major had taken.

The Major turned his back to the savage while he reached into his shirt to put his pistol at full c.o.c.k and safe, then followed him. The ascent stiffened abruptly, then ended, so that they came out on a wooded plateau a half-mile square in the center of which the crest of the mountain reared in a last upheave of perfect cone several hundred feet high. Skirting the edge of the cone they emerged from the woods and came to the border of a village.

The Major paused at the edge of the clearing, congratulating himself upon the wonderful good fortune that had brought him safely among the Hill People, and studying the village. A large number of crude thatched huts had been erected scatteringly at the bases of the trees surrounding the level clearing. Not a soul was in sight except the young warrior who had acted as his guide, who stood in front of a shack somewhat larger and better built than its neighbors.

As the Major stepped into the clearing he saw a figure appear at the door, and his st.u.r.dy heart lodged in his throat as he leaped forward.

It was Terry.

They met in the center of the clearing near the smoldering cooking fire, their hands gripping hard. Their eyes were moist with the relief each found in the other's safety. Both struggled for apt expression of their pentup emotions.

The Major found his tongue first.

"Well, it's fine air up here," he offered.

"Ayeh." Terry's grin was uncertain. "And there's so much of it!"

And they shook hands on it, complacently.