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TERRY
A TALE OF THE HILL PEOPLE
BY
CHARLES GOFF THOMSON
Late Lieut.-Colonel, U. S. Army.
Formerly Assistant Director of Prisons
for Philippine Government
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1921
DEDICATED TO
MR. E. J. B.
WHO HAS GIVEN OF HIS
COUNSEL, SPIRIT AND SUBSTANCE
TO NEEDY YOUNG MEN
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The poem "Casey" used in Chapter IX was written by the late Arthur W.
Ferguson, formerly Executive Secretary for the Philippine Government.
It has been edited and amplified but is substantially as written by
him. A man of unusual facility, Mr. Ferguson composed the verses under
circumstances somewhat similar to those set down herein, and with like
spontaneity.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE FOX 1
II TERRY DECIDES 18
III MINDANAO 33
IV THE FANATIC 52
V NEW FRIENDS, AND AN ENEMY 66
VI THE LAND OF HEMP 80
VII THE PYTHON 98
VIII THE STRICKEN VILLAGE 111
IX MALABANAN STRIKES 126
X MALABANAN 141
XI INTO THE FORBIDDEN HILLS 157
XII THE MAJOR FOLLOWS 175
XIII THE HILL PEOPLE 198
XIV AHMA 211
XV THE SIGN 220
XVI CIVILIZATION DAWNS IN THE HILLS 239
XVII "SUS-MARIE-HOSEP!" 250
XVIII THE FOX SKIN 262
TERRY
CHAPTER I
THE FOX
The frosty silence of the snow-mantled hills was rent by the vicious
crack of a high-powered, small-calibered rifle. The hunter sprang from
the thicket in which he had lain concealed and crossed the gully to a
knoll where a black furry bundle had dropped to the snow after one
convulsive leap.
Exultant, Terry bent down to examine the silky black coat.
"Right through the ear. Well, Mister Fox, you're mine--though you did
lead me a merry chase for twelve days! You laughed at me till the snow
came--knew I wouldn't bring you out of your hole with formalin, that
it was a square game we played. But to-day everything broke against
you, boy,--sun and wind and snow. And perhaps hunger."
The twinge of pain that stabs every true sportsman as he realizes that
he has extinguished a spark of life shadowed Terry's thin, sensitive
face. It was a face of singular appeal, dominated by a queer twist of
upper lip that stamped his mouth with a permanent wistfulness. Even in
the bracing cold of the winter morning his skin was white, but the
clear pallor was belied by the swift energy with which he moved and
the eager sparkle of his dark gray eyes. He picked up the fluffy
bundle and stroked the sleek fur.
"Hard luck, old boy! But now you'll never be hungry again, or cold.
And I haven't hunted you all this time just for the sake of the
sport." His face lighted. "You're going to be a proud little fox. If
foxes have souls--and I don't see why we should deny you what we lay
selfish claims to for ourselves--yours will rejoice in the purpose of
your end. Every night and every morning you--"
He broke off as the distant pealing of church bells came to his ears,
carried faintly but clearly by the light wind that whispered over the
snowy stretches of rolling meadowlands. For a long time Terry stood
facing toward the invisible village, his face moody and inscrutable.
As the sound of the bells died away he shook off the spell with
conscious, humorous effort and picking up his rifle and the fox he
went into the thicket to secure and adjust his snowshoes.
Ignoring paths and sleighroads he made his way toward the town. The
crisp pine-laden air charged his muscles with exuberant excess of the
fine energy of youth and he made his way swiftly across the sparkling
snow that blanketed the gentle landscape, through the thickets of
evergreens and across the tiny, ice-edged creeks that flowed in swift
escape from winter's frozen grip.
Keen-eyed, he stopped a moment in study of a group of pheasants that
huddled in a clump of underbrush. They played possum till he passed
on. A rabbit, reared up in nervous-nosed inquiry, watched him
furtively as he approached the rock behind which it had vainly sought
concealment. Terry laughed at its ridiculous plight.
"You'd better improve your strategy, you young scamp, or you'll wind
up in the pot of some one who hunts rabbits!"
He watched its jumpy flight into a distant copse of young pines, then
went on swiftly. In an hour he paused at the top of a last steep
grade. Lake Champlain stretched her flat-frozen bosom to the north and
south of him. The more level timbered areas of the opposite shore were
broken here and there by clearings in which white farm houses and red
barns nestled like doll houses.
At the foot of the slope directly beneath him a village lay primly
along the lake shore. It was a square-built town, its limits almost
rectangular, its breadth and width checkered into exact squares by
wide, straight streets. It was an old town: a score of its flat-roofed
structures had been built while the Mohawks still guarded the Western
Gate of the Long House, and many of the great, old-fashioned homes had
stood when Ethan Allen strutted through its streets.
It was not a snug little town, there was no air of hospitality to
encourage strangers to tarry within its gates, but seemed to promise
"value received" for any who came, paid their way and attended
strictly to their own affairs.
Thus Terry saw the town in which he had been born and had spent all
of his twenty-six years except the four at Princeton. He tarried, his
eyes fixed upon the cemetery which limited the eastern edge of the
town, to which his father and mother had been carried when he was a
boy of eleven.
He faced about in lingering appreciation of the blue-vaulted expanse,
then descended toward the village. Whipping off his snowshoes at the
border of the village he entered the main street, which ran straight
through town to the lake front. No one was in sight on the broad
thoroughfare and he found a measure of relief in its emptiness, for
though he did not adhere to the rigid New England doctrine that
governed his neighbors, he found no pleasure in wanton violation of
their stiff code. Realizing that with snowshoes, gun and fox he jarred
heavily upon the atmosphere of the quiet Sunday morning, he hurried
down the street.
He encountered no one, but as he passed by the ice-incrusted watering
trough at the central square and approached the block made up by
Crampville's three churches, the big doors of his own church were
flung open and the congregation emerged. As the decorous crowd filed
out Terry hesitated a moment, then kept on his way.
The progress of the lone figure along the opposite side of the street
was the topic of conversation at nearly every dinner table in
Crampville that Sunday. It became a sort of small-town epic, so that
they still tell how stern the elders looked, and how white Terry's
face against the background of black fur which he had thrown across
his shoulder in order to free his right hand that he might gravely
raise his crimson hunting cap in respectful salutation of families he
had known from childhood. And they still tell, too, how Deane Hunter,
flushed with mortification at her father's frigid refusal to recognize
Terry's greeting, checked the nudges and whisperings by calling out a
cheerful "Good Morning, Dick." Her courageous voice still rang in his
ears as he entered the iron-fenced yard that surrounded the home of
his fathers.
Inside the great, high-ceilinged house Terry stood a while in somber
reflection, then shrugged his trim shoulders and passed through the
shadowy rooms out into the barn. In five minutes he had cleaned and
oiled his rifle, but an hour passed while he carefully removed the
pelt and tacked it taut upon a stretching board.
He was in the library, reading, when his sister and brother-in-law
came downstairs in response to the dinner bell. Susan and her husband,
Ellis Crofts, had lived in the old mansion since their marriage two
years previously, rather against Ellis' desires. He had wished to set
up an establishment of his own, but had yielded to Susan's pleadings
and Terry's sincere letter from college asking him not to be
instrumental in closing up a house that had been lived in continuously
by the Terrys of four generations.
They had been among the last to emerge from church, but had come out
in time to see Terry as he opened the gate, and had heard enough of
the murmured comment to understand its significance. It had been
difficult for them to control their emotions as they kept slow step
with the throng down the broad sidewalk. Susan, mortified but loyal to
the core, had set her face in defiant smile lest she burst into tears:
Ellis, devoted to Terry but tickled by the situation, had smothered
his snickers in protracted fits of coughing.
Terry threw aside a handbook on the curing of pelts and rose at their
entrance, smiling:
"Well, do you good folks think you are safe in sitting at the same
table with an unrepentant sinner?"
Susan had been crying. "Oh, Dick! Why did you do it? How do you do
such things?"
He waved his hand in humorous deprecation. "Easy. It's the simplest
thing I do. It isn't difficult if you have a knack for it."
"But, Dick, it's no joke. I saw the three elders of our
church--Ballard, Remington and Van Slyke--talking about it, and they
were very bitter. And you know they can expel any church member."
Terry made no answer save to put his arm around each and lead them
into the dining room. But Susan was not content.
"Dick, I wish you would explain it to Ballard or Van Slyke. They are
influential men and both are very religious."
Ellis took a hand: "Their religion is all right, so far as it
goes--but they mix it up with their dyspepsia too much to suit me!"
As his wife turned rebuking eyes upon him he pursued doggedly: "Not
that their dyspepsia and religion are always mixed; they have their
dyspepsia seven days in the week!"
She joined in their laughter over Ellis' exaggerated defense, then
turned again to her brother.
"What are you going to do with that nasty thing you shot, Dick?"
"Nasty?" broke in Ellis in quick alarm. "You didn't shoot a skunk, did
you?"
She ignored her husband and persisted: "Tell me why you shot that fox,
Dick. You have been out hunting nearly every day for two weeks and
have shot nothing else, so I know you have a reason."
"I'm not going to help eat it!" Ellis broke in. "I've heard they are
stringy--and a bit smelly."
"Ellis, will you stop being ridiculous? Dick, why have you hunted that
fox so long?"
Ellis had seen that Terry was not to be pumped, that this was another
of his queer quests. He tried again to shunt Susan away.
"Maybe it was a personal matter between him and the fox, Sue."
She turned on him a look she endeavored to make disdainful, but only
succeeded in raising another laugh from both. But she was not to be
deterred. Her eyes lit with sudden inspiration.
"I'll bet--I'll bet anything--" she began.
"Susan Terry Crofts! Even Dick would not bet on Sunday!"
"I will bet anything," she insisted, "that it is something for
Deane--for Christmas!"
In the slight flush that rose in her brother's face Susan learned
that she had hit the mark. But she was instantly sorry that she had
pressed the issue, as she had learned long before to respect what was
to her his queer reticence.
Ellis hurried into the breach: "Wonder what Bruce will give Deane this
Christmas? He is about due to present her with something really worth
while--like a patent mop!"
Even Terry laughed. The struggle for Deane's favor between Bruce
Ballard and Terry had been in progress nearly ten years and had become
one of the town's institutions. The first formal offerings tendered by
the two boys on the occasion of her graduation from high school
typified the contrasting characters of the rivals: Terry, idealistic,
impressionable, reserved, had sent her a beautiful copy of the "Love
Letters of a Musician," while Bruce, sincere, obvious and practical,
had given her a hat-pin.
On her succeeding birthday Terry, after a six-hour climb, had won for
her a box of trailing arbutus from Mount Defiance's cool top; Bruce
had sent her candy. From his medical college at Baltimore Bruce had
sent, as succeeding Christmas gifts, an ivory toilet set, a thermos
bottle, a reading lamp and a chafing dish.
Terry's offerings on those occasions had been a Japanese kimono
embroidered with her favorite flower--a wondrous thing secured by
correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese
kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of
India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish
eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter joy of the
world.
The rivalry had divided the town into two camps. The pro-Bruce
faction, composed largely of men folk, claimed for their protégé a
splendid common sense in selection of his gifts: but the women and
girls, who made up the other group, envied Deane not only the gifts
Terry gave her, but also--and more so--the rarefied romantic spirit of
the youth who conceived and offered them.
Deane realized that both Bruce and Terry stayed on in the dull old
town principally to be near her. This was true of Bruce particularly,
as he was a young surgeon of such promise that he had twice been
invited into junior association with Albany's greatest specialist. She
had strongly urged him to embrace the increased opportunity for
service and profit which the city afforded.
But Terry was only six months out of college, a six months spent in
futile effort to adjust himself to the theme of the village, to find
appropriate outlet for that urgent desire to be of use in the world
which dominated his character. As the Terrys were of those families
termed "comfortable" in Crampville, he felt no need of devoting
himself to adding to an already ample estate. At his sister's request,
he had undertaken to manage a shoe store that represented one of their
holdings but at the end of a couple of months had given it up--also in
accord with her wishes. Higgins, their old clerk, had come to her with
tearful warnings that Terry's unwillingness to refuse credit to any
one who came in with a tale of hard-luck was ruining the business:
and Terry had lost the custom of several good families by declining to
humor their crotchety unreasonableness.
But Higgins did not know how they came to lose the trade of the Hunter
family. At the end of a trying day of insistent demand for smaller
shoes than feminine feet could accommodate, of viewing bunions and
flat arches and wry-jointed toes, he had written Deane:
DEANE DEAR:--
I used to think that the true glory of Trilby rested in the
wondrous mesmeric voice--but after a month in the shoe
business I know better. Between perfect vocal cords and
perfect feet, give me the feet.
The word "shoe" used to bring to my mind thoughts of
calfskin, kid, patent leather. But no more! Now I think
of--well, many things.
I am glad that your family is not among those who favor this
establishment with its patronage. I am very happy in this,
as it is good to think that your dear shoes are but a part
of you, are incidental to your being, and not a consequence
of drear barter and "fitting."
I will not be over to-night. But I will be thinking of you.
DICK.
A bit puzzled, she had shown the note to her father. Irate, he had
issued a mandate that produced the effect Terry had asked. Mr. Hunter
was acutely sensitive about twin corns which had been a part of his
toes so long that he honestly thought them congenital.
After quitting the store Terry had turned his attention to their farm
properties but, as a careful investigation covering three months had
demonstrated them to be in capable hands, he had returned them to the
full management of the old tenants at the end of the harvest. He had
then studied the possibilities of enlarging their only other business,
a small pulp plant, but after satisfying himself that the meager water
power was being fully utilized and that the location of the mill at
Crampville precluded competition with those more favorably located
that were operated with steam power, he had abandoned the project. For
a month he had been seeking outlet for his restless energy.
Deane, anxiously watching his endeavor to fit himself into one of
Crampville's narrow grooves and vaguely understanding his unvoiced
craving for wider horizons, dreaded the break she knew would take him
away. Susan, studying him with the uneasy solicitude of an older
sister, saw in Deane an anchor which would hold him to the town. Ellis
had been less concerned, as he had recognized that Terry's intolerance
of the village was but the outcropping of a sane young spirit that
gauged the peaks and sought real service. He had been trying lately to
prepare his wife for Terry's departure to other fields, as he thought
it inevitable. It was a word to this effect that had precipitated the
tears with which she had greeted her brother before dinner.
Ellis plagued Susan throughout the leisurely meal, Terry adding an
occasional word whenever the flow of affectionate badgering lagged.
Fanny, who had served them since they were children, bustled in and
out, redfaced, wholesome, fruitlessly trying to press upon Terry an
excess of the over-ample dinner. It was a sort of unwritten law in
Crampville that the Sunday dinner should be sufficiently heavy to
drive the menfolk to a long digestive nap.
Ellis lingered at the table after Terry had excused himself and gone
out into the barn again. Susan helped Fanny clear the old mahogany
table, then sank into a chair beside her abstracted husband.
"Sue," he said finally, "Dick hasn't said anything lately about
accepting that position in the Philippines, has he?"
A worried look crept into her smooth face: "No. I supposed he had
decided against it."
He patted her hand consolingly: "Don't be too confident about his
staying home, Sue. He wants to see things--do things! There isn't much
in this town to hold one of his nature."
"There's--Deane," she said, hopefully.
"Sue, don't be so sure of that, either. You know that you and I hold
different theories about that. Don't bank too heavily on yours." He
drummed the polished table a moment before continuing: "He received
another telegram from Washington yesterday--I thought he might have
mentioned it to you."
"No," she quavered.
"Nor to me. Guess he doesn't want to worry you."
She was close to tears again: "I wish he had never met that young
Bronner in college--he gave Dick all these crazy ideas about going to
those horrid islands where his brother is!"
"Well, Sue, he made me feel the same way--and I'm a fat married man! I
enjoyed his stories of his brother's experiences with the wild people
over there. It must be an interesting life."
"You don't talk like that to Dick, do you?" she implored.
"Of course not. But I think you've been too sure that he would stay on
here indefinitely--I think it will take very little to tip the scales
the other way."
He yawned prodigiously, rousing Susan to an ire that stemmed the flow
of tears which had threatened to overflow her blue eyes. Then, content
with his tactics, he went upstairs for his traditional nap.
* * * * *
Later, Terry came into the big living room and stood in front of the
fireplace a long time, his lean face grave and thoughtful. Decision
made, he wrote a note of sincere apology to Doctor Mather, his pastor.
He also wrote Deane that he would not be over in the evening but would
see her during the week, and made the delivery of the notes an excuse
to get the faithful Fanny out into the crisp December afternoon.
The light in the Terry library burned long after Crampville's other
lights had winked out. He had been picked up by Stevenson and carried
by that pathetic master into the far places of the earth.
* * * * *
The next morning he was in the barn, his gay mood revealed by the
running talk addressed to the pelt on which he worked.
"Well, old boy, only four days to get you into shape for your
dedication, but the book says it can be done. So you might as well
soften up now--"he vigorously rubbed the dried bare side with some
oily preparation--"as later."
"What a destiny, old chap! Surely no other fox ever born to lady-fox
can be as happy as you're going to be!" He rubbed industriously.
"You're not for me, you know. No, sir! I wouldn't bring you out of the
hills into this burg--where they kill ambition by preaching content
with your lot, where the hoarders of pennies are venerated and the
pluggers canonized--I wouldn't bring you here just for me. For I'm not
worthy of you. No, sir-ree! Don't you know I'm no good--didn't you see
that yesterday? Why, Old Samuel Terwilliger said I'm an atheist
because I quoted Ingersoll's graveside oration--said no Christian
would repeat anything that man ever said, even if his watch is a
bargain at a dollar!... Samuel likes bargains."
Working rapidly, with no lost motions, he rambled on, congratulatory,
reproachful, whimsical. Having carried the curing to a point where a
twenty-four-hour time process was the next essential factor, he
carefully pegged the skin to the barn door.
* * * * *
That evening Susan came running home excitedly, having learned that
one of the elders had asked that a meeting be called to consider
Dick's case, and that the young pastor had very promptly and very
emphatically vetoed the proceeding. It seemed that Bruce had heard of
the move and persuaded his father not to support it, after a stormy
scene in which he had threatened to resign his own membership if they
moved against Terry.
Ellis looked long at Terry: "Nothing small about Bruce, Dick. Some
fellows, under the circumstances--all the circumstances--might have
let you have it to the hilt."
Terry smiled gravely. "Good old Bruce," he said.
He left the room, slowly, and sat alone in the library. It had struck
deep, that even one God-fearing but not God-loving old man should
think him unfit to sit in the church in which his father and mother
had been married, from which they had been carried side by side for
their long rest. It was midnight when he went up the broad staircase
to his room.
The following afternoon he dropped in to see Father Jennings, the
gentle little priest who had been beloved by two generations of all
denominations--and those of none. Terry loved the old study, which in
forty years had taken on something of the priest's character. It was a
comfortable room; cheerful in its wide windows, warm with a bright
hearthfire, and well worn with long years of service.
Terry had found friendship and counsel here since his boyhood, had
been one of the procession that passed through the door in search of
wisdom and cheer. All the gossip of the town came to the priest: he
knew of Terry's hunting trip and of the climax which had scandalized
the sterner factions of the community. He was of those who knew Terry
best, and entertained no misgivings about the state of his immortal
soul.
They talked fitfully, as intimate friends do. The old man knew that it
was worry over the town's harsh reaction to the Sunday fox hunt that
had brought Terry to him. He broached the subject.
"Dick, I have wanted to see you since Sunday morning. I had a question
to ask you nobody else could answer."
As Terry turned to him with somber mien he concluded, his eyes
twinkling: "I wanted to know if it was the best fox ever!"
And that was all, though Terry stayed to sup with him. Till nine
o'clock they sat before the fire, the priest in a worn rocker drawn up
close to the hearth: the single log burning glorified his fine old
face as he placidly rocked and pondered.
He had spent the morning among his foreign parishioners, who lived in
the squalid section of the town, across the river. A frugal,
law-abiding lot, they furnished the brawn needed in the three pulp
factories and lived a life apart from the balance of the towns-people,
bitterly but voicelessly resenting the villagers' careless ostracism
of all who came under the easy classification of the term "wop." There
existed a tacit agreement among property owners that no house north of
the river should be sold or leased to a foreigner, and that no garlic
might taint the atmosphere their children breathed in school, they had
erected a small schoolhouse upon the southside. So, sequestered six
days in the week in a settlement that was entirely foreign,
communicating their thoughts in the tongues of the Mediterranean and
the Balkans, the southsiders mingled with Americans only during the
brief hours of Sunday worship.
In his morning visit Father Jennings had again met with several
evidences of Terry's curious influence over the foreigners. Terry
understood them instinctively, grasped their viewpoints and ideals,
and was the only layman on the northside in whom they confided, called
in to settle knotty problems and to partake of the hospitality they
lavished upon appropriate occasions of weddings, christenings and the
neverending procession of days of patron saints. Subtle, romantic,
circumscribed by alien environment, they recognized in him a kindred
spirit and opened their hearts wide to him. Terry, his ardent young
pastor--Dr. Mather--and Father Jennings were the only northsiders whom
they called friends. None of the three had been named on the town's
"Committee on Americanization." ...
The priest roused from his revery and for a long time contemplated the
quiet, thoughtful lad who sat beside him. Gradually a deep concern
spread across his comfortably aged features, a presentiment of
impending loss shadowed his pleasant eyes. He reached out to lay his
hand on Terry's forearm.
"Dick," he said, "there is plenty for you to do right here in
Crampville--what is this I hear about your going to the Philippines?"