Terry Part 33

Terry shook his head, a little sorrowfully: "No, Pud-Pud will never talk to anybody about anything again. I got to Ohto too late: they had already executed sentence."

"What did they do with him?"

"Shot him full of darts and turned him loose in the Dark Forest. So I confessed to Ohto that I contrived the 'sign.' Of course I made him understand that you had nothing to do with the--trickery."

"What did he say--what is he going to do about it?" The Major was anxious.

"He had known about it all the time--his men have trailed every step we have taken, watched everything we have done."

A slow blush mounted the Major's rugged features as he thought of the possibility that secret onlookers had witnessed his meeting with Ahma just before the wedding ceremony when he had sought to teach her the White Man's customs of caress. The flush persisted as he turned to Terry.

"There's one thing I forgot to ask you to buy for me. I want a good talking machine, with plenty of records." He paused, then continued abstractedly: "She can keep it in her house."

Terry looked up in astonishment. "In _her_ house? Aren't you both going to live in the same house?"

"No. Not till you send a missionary up here to marry us. I don't figure that two days of savage rites const.i.tutes a marriage--but I'm going to have a deuce of a time trying to explain it to Ahma!"

Terry nodded sympathetically and walked the springy floor a dozen times, nonplussed by the Major's dilemma. Pausing in his preoccupation before the open window he noted vaguely that the nuptial fires were yellowing before the approach of dawn: a moment and he started violently as the solution struck him and he whirled upon the dejected groom with beaming countenance.

"Say!" he shouted, "I'm certainly not going down with you two only half-married--she a bride and you not a groom! You forget that as Senior Inspector of Constabulary I am an ex-officio Justice of the Peace! Come on!"

He lifted the Major by the arm and shot him through the doorway with an exuberant shove that left him no alternative save a jarring leap to the ground. Terry landed beside him as light as a cat, and catching him by the elbow he hurried him on through the woods and into the fading light of the big fires that burned before Ohto's house.

Terry, his eyes dancing joyously, broke up the dance with which a hundred Hill People were keeping the ceremonial pot boiling, and despatched two women to fetch the bride, who had sought a brief respite from the interminable ritual. Shortly Ahma appeared before them, her dark eyes shadowed with fatigue, but radiant with exaltation.

Understanding from Terry's few words that the Major desired that they be united also in accordance with the rites of his own people, she stepped quietly before Terry and took the Major's outstretched hand.

The crowd of natives, who had crowded about them, waited the alien ritual curiously.

Ahma was clad in the white costume in which the Major had first seen her. A scarlet hibiscus blossom, the Hillmen's nuptial flower, was thrust in her black hair, but there was no other addition to her scant covering.

Possessed of a sudden spirit of banter Terry turned to the Major: "Before I begin, Major, I wish to congratulate you upon having won to the bliss of matrimony without violating that bachelor formula which you so often boasted."

"What formula?"

Terry's voice deepened in mimicry: "'No petticoats for mine!'"

A moment he enjoyed the Major's embarra.s.sment, then composed himself to the business in hand, happy, confident.

But--the competent Terry fumbled. Swept away in the exuberance of having found a way out for the Major, he had forgotten that, never having exercised his legal privilege of joining in marriage in a province where all of the natives were either Catholic or Mohammedan, he was wanting in the phraseology the ceremony demanded.

Vainly he sought inspiration in a sky chill with the pale lights of daybreak. He shuffled his feet nervously, scowled at the ring of brown-skinned spectators, looked at his watch. As the sweat of worry appeared upon his white forehead he drew his handkerchief and wiped his face vigorously, then blew his nose resoundingly. This last device seemed to serve.

He turned to the serene couple who waited patiently: "Do you, John Bronner, take this woman, Ahma--Ahma of the Hills, to be your lawful wedded wife, to love and cherish and to--er--provide for?"

"I do," said the Major. He was proud of Terry--trust the Constabulary to see a thing through!

Terry was triumphant in his success. He unconsciously drew up his slim, muscular figure as he turned to the bride, focussing his gaze upon the blossom in the waves of jet locks that tumbled smoothly about the downcast head.

"And do you, Ahma of the Hills, take this man, John Bronner, to be your wedded lawful husband, to love and to--er--care for when he--er--is sick?"

She caught the groom's whispered instructions and grasped the wonderful import of the unknown words that Terry had spoken. Twice her silent lips formed the two words of response in soundless practice, then she looked up squarely into Terry's eyes and p.r.o.nounced them.

"I do."

Either the clear voice was too rich with gladness, or else she should not have turned the starry eyes so suddenly upon him. Lost for a long moment in the splendor of the vision opened up to him, he forced himself back to the duty of the minute. But he was off the track again.

He floundered for an opening. Bits of biblical and legal phrases raced through his tortured brain, but none seemed appropriate to this situation. The haunt of the dark eyes obscured his vision, the limpid "I do," filled his ears. "I do." The significance of the words brought him back to the point of interruption, and he turned to them, desperate, vague.

"You do? You do, eh--you both do ... well, ... join hands! I do say and declare this twenty-third day of January that you are man and wife in accord with the law of this land, and now--"

He glared at the grinning beneficiary of the service, and finished: "And now--and now what I--what G.o.d and I have joined let no man put asunder ... till death do us part ... so help me G.o.d, Amen!"

In an agony of torment he ripped through the crowd and raced to the shack, where the Major joined him after taking Ahma into Ohto's house.

It was now broad daylight, and the huts were emptying of the crowd waking to take up the burden of fiesta.

Terry buckled up his pack, joining in the Major's mirth.

"But you are married all right. I will send you up a certificate as soon as I reach Zamboanga, all signed and sealed and everything."

They became serious in thought of imminent separation. Now that the time had come Terry dreaded leaving his friend alone in the Hills.

"I will relieve you in three months, Major," he said.

"You needn't hurry--don't forget I'm on a honeymoon, too!"

Terry hesitated, then risked the question that had been bothering him: "After we come--what are you going to do? Will Ahma be ready to go below?"

"No, she will not. I am figuring on leaving her here a few months--your wife can teach her to--to dress, and all that. And I can't take her away so long as Ohto lives. After that, I want to take her to the States. She learns fast, Terry,--and I want her to see Europe--she will learn a lot there, too!"

The old woman brought them their breakfast. The Major hurried through the meal and left to secure a guide to take Terry down, explaining that he would join him in the woods. Terry ate under the sorrowing eyes of the faithful woman, and when he finished he presented her with the only gaud that remained to him, the gold medallion from his fob.

She scurried out to display it, the proudest woman, save one, in all the Hills.

Slinging the pack across his shoulders he turned for a last look at the little hut that had sheltered him. Within its cramped walls he had suffered, had known grave peril, and great joy. A hint of the old wistfulness flickered about the corner of his mouth, then he left the hut and strode through the clearing into the woods, halting to wave cheerfully at the Hillmen who somberly watched the departure of their future chief.

He dipped over the edge of the plateau and found the Major awaiting him with Ahma and the young warrior who was to guide him down. From where they stood at the edge of a wide glade they could see far down over the tops of the trees that matted the slope. In the clear morning air the mists which gleamed over the distant Gulf shone white as billowed snow. There lay Davao! Davao, then Zamboanga, then--! A fiercely glad light blazed in Terry's gray eyes, then darkened in antic.i.p.ation of leaving the Major alone and with that melancholy with which all men face the knowledge that even as Life turns the pages of existence into its happiest chapter, she closes each finished page forever.

The Major spoke first. "This guide knows the shortest route. He will take you safe past all the man traps--you should sleep but one night on the trail. Give my regards to Lindsey, Sears,--everybody."

Ahma looked from one to the other, not quite understanding what they said, but understanding fully what they did not say. That showed in the face of each.

"Major, I have never said anything about your--how I feel about your risking the Hills to search for me, when it meant almost certain death."

Death!... For an instant the Major again stood helpless in the dark woods behind Lindsey's plantation embraced in coils of steel that quivered, and heard the crash of delivering shots.... He searched the white face, in which the lines of suffering from a chivalrously contracted fever still lingered. An extraordinary warm cataract suddenly obscured his vision.

"Sus-marie-hosep!" he spluttered. "Good-by."

Their hands gripped hard in an abiding friendship, then Terry turned to Ahma doubtfully, at a loss as to how to bid adieu to this creature of the Hills who knew so few of the white man's words or usages. He found, too, a source of embarra.s.sment in her new capacity of wife. As she gazed up at him he looked away in boyish confusion.