Terry Part 9

"To your arrival among us," he offered, pleasantly.

"To you all, sir," Terry responded.

"More hemp!" suggested Cochran.

Little Casey attested to his pa.s.sion: "To breeds and breeders and breeding!" he grinned: it was his never-failing toast at the Davao Club.

They waited a moment for Sears, but he had gulped his drink.

It was the enthusiastic Casey who first spoke: "Lieutenant, and when do you think you can come down to my place? I want you to see my Berkshire boar and my two American mares!"

Cochran smiled at him, affectionately: everybody liked Casey for his wild enthusiasms. His latest hobby was the importation of blooded animals to cross with native stock.

"Casey," said Cochran, "if you would pay half as much attention to your plantation as you do to your mares and that old grunter, you'd get somewhere!"

Casey snorted: "Sure, and in about three months I'll have a colt to show you--then you'll sing another tune! And wait till I get some half-breed pigs--instead of the hollow-backed scrawny things we've got now--then you'll admit that Casey was the boy!"

Casey was more or less of a character in the Gulf. His words flew so fast they overran each other in effort to keep abreast of his racing ideas. Thoroughly respected for his sterling character, he was made the target of much good-natured hilarity because of his constant hobby-riding and the rushing speech that made him almost incoherent.

His mares and boar had cost him money that could better have gone into plantation improvements.

The conversation, drifting fitfully, touched upon a new stripping machine which Lindsey had purchased in Manila: he was bringing it down in the hold of the _Francesca_.

"I watched them load it," he declared. "I took no chances in being shy a necessary bolt or belt. I'll have it set up in a couple of weeks and if it works as well in the field as it did in the agent's warehouse--no more labor troubles for me--no more hemp rotting in the ground for lack of strippers!"

Cochran was mildly pessimistic. He had seen too many other heralded inventions which worked well experimentally but failed in the hemp fields. Of course Casey was hopeful--it was his nature.

Sears broke his long silence: "Labor troubles, labor shortage!

h.e.l.l!--there's plenty of labor in the Gulf--if only the Government wasn't always hornin' in on us!"

Terry knew the remark was aimed at him but refrained from comment.

Sears mistook his silence.

"But no meddlin' government is goin' to interfere with me! I'm goin'

to run my own place from now on--and get my labor where I please--and how I please!"

As this elicited no response from the patient officer he continued despite Lindsey's distressed signals. Emboldened, he turned directly to Terry.

"I suppose," he snarled, "that you were sent down to be the little fairy G.o.d-father to the Bogobos--to protect the poor heathen from the awful planters who want to make them work. No?"

Terry stirred. "Mr. Sears, I am instructed to protect the Bogobos from any oppression--and to aid the planters in every legitimate way. I hope to do both."

Sears' pa.s.sion seemed fed by the conciliatory tone. Terry studied the convulsed face and through the thick veil of rage saw the lines of worry that had aged him prematurely: the black hair was streaked with gray and his hands were thickened and stained with toil. Moved by a quick sympathy Terry spoke again:

"Mr. Sears, this is no time to discuss the matter. In a week or so I will come to see you and--"

Sears interrupted in a voice hoa.r.s.e with anger: "Terry, if any government man comes--snoopin' round my place--I'll--I'll--he will never snoop again!"

In the tense silence that followed the challenge Lindsey bit clean through his cigar. Terry's answer was so long in coming that the trio of Americans who listened experienced something of the faint qualm which sickens a man when he witnesses another's backing-down. Finally he spoke, slowly, his measured words scarcely audible above the m.u.f.fled beat of the propeller.

"Sears, I am coming to your place first. I will come within a week."

Sears jumped to his feet, shaking with the hatred he had conceived for the young officer. Terry rose easily, looking frail in comparison with the burly figure opposing him, but he surveyed Sears steadily, unafraid, and not unfriendly.

Cochran coughed loudly, and again. Casey nervously undid a shoelace, retieing it with meticulous care. Lindsey rose with studied leisureliness and stood at the rail near Sears, ready.

But the ship's bell rang out the dinner hour, a waiting Visayan steward stepped out on the deck hammering a Chinese dinner gong, and in the strident din the crisis pa.s.sed. Lindsey lingered to speak with Terry after the others had pa.s.sed below.

"I'm very sorry, Lieutenant. Sears is a rough fellow, but he is half-crazed with worry. He's really not a bad _hombre_."

Terry nodded: "I can see that he is worried about something."

"It's his plantation. He has invested what little money he had in it, has worked hard for three years, and now that he has his first big crop he can't harvest it--the Bogobos won't work for him. He is pretty rough with them, I guess--but if he doesn't harvest this crop he's ruined. He's in debt--and pretty desperate."

He paused, a deeper concern crept into his face: "Lieutenant," he said earnestly, "can't you stay away from his place--a while--till he gets his hemp cut and stripped? He is really desperate--and always packs a gun."

Terry smiled his grat.i.tude. "Lindsey, I am much obliged to you. You need not worry about it."

Neither Sears nor Lindsey were of the group which a.s.sembled on deck after dinner to enjoy the brilliancy of the swift sunset. The ship had swung through Sarangani Channel and was paralleling the west coast due north toward Davao. The red glory of the dying sun tinted the waters of the Gulf to the line of palm-fringed beach which edged the distant sh.o.r.eline. From the sh.o.r.e the land sloped gently to the west and north, mile after mile of primeval jungle broken here and there where brush and thorn and creeper had yielded to man's demand for more and more hemp. Far inland the steady rise persisted, grew more abrupt and more heavily timbered, terminating in the far interior in a dim and mighty mountain whose dark-wooded slopes and misted crest dominated the Gulf: the red orb of the sun had dropped behind this towering summit.

Cochran pointed up at the distant mountain: "Mount Apo."

Terry nodded: "Where the Hill People live?"

"Yes,--where they are supposed to live: no one really knows ... you will hear all sorts of stories."

The shadows which lurked upon Mount Apo descended over the lower slopes, then enfolded the Gulf. The lights on the steamer shone murkily. The three lay back watching the stars brighten overhead. For a long time nothing was heard but the querulous mutterings of the old boat as she waddled on her way.

Terry broke the silence: "Where is Lindsey?"

Cochran answered quickly to head off the more explicit Casey: "Oh, he's busy--busy with Sears."

Terry understood. Cochran sparred for an opening in the silence his friendship for Sears made embarra.s.sing.

"Lieutenant, you are likely to have work for your soldiers pretty soon. There's a rough outfit gathering down here in the Gulf--though I imagine Bronner told you all about it."

"He told me something of it, but I would like to hear more."

"Well, I don't know much about it, excepting that a score or more of tough characters have come down in the past two months. They settled on a mangy plantation up the coast, north of Davao, but they aren't working: just loafing around all day. They seem to be waiting for something--or somebody. The natives are scared, and the whites don't feel any too good about it either! You know we are scattered all over the Gulf--everybody a mile or more away from his neighbors--and that means a mile of jungle."

Casey flared up: "We ought to run 'em out--they're no good, probably carabao thieves or worse--"

"How worse?" grinned Cochran. "Horse thieves--or pig thieves?"

Casey did not mind being ragged by his friends. He persisted: "Lieutenant, you ought to run 'em out as undesirables or under the vagabond law! They're no good--they won't work--and they're the toughest lookin' lot I ever did see! Sure and if I had my way I'd toss the lot into Sears' crocodile hole--the dirty, low-lived, shiftless lot of 'em!"

Terry was interested: "Sears' crocodile hole?" he asked.