THE STRICKEN VILLAGE
A week later, Terry stood at the window looking down over the
blistering plaza. Davao was torpid under the noonday heat. Three
carabaos grazed undisturbed on the forbidden square: another of the
awkward powerful brutes dawdled up the dusty road, hauling a decrepit
two-wheeled cart on which a naked-backed, red-pantalooned native
dozed: Padre Velasco, the aged Spanish priest, waved a weary hand at
Terry from his window in the old adobe convento. As he watched he saw
the soldierly figure of Sergeant Mercado emerge from the _cuartel_ and
hurry toward him.
Entering the room the soldier saluted stiffly and reported that a
patrol had just come in from the foothills with the information that a
mysterious fever had attacked the Bogobos in the barrio of Dalag, that
a score were stricken and four already dead.
Terry hastened to the quarters of the Health Officer to apprise him of
the facts. He found him cursing the heat, sweating profusely, though
wearing nothing but a thin kimono. A very fat man, Doctor Merchant,
inclined to be fussy about little things but magnificent in big
things, and thoroughly imbued with the idea that his work of
protecting the natives against their own sloth and filth was the only
interesting problem in the universe. Alarmed at Terry's report, he
ordered his horse saddled and rose heavily to don his field clothes.
Terry expostulated. "Doctor, you ought to wait till it cools off."
"Lieutenant, disease spreads all the time--it takes no time off
duty--so why should I?"
He came out fuming over a missing button: "Confound it all! I never
have--how do you keep so immaculate, Terry? You always look as if you
were on your way to a dinner or dance!" Wiping the perspiration from
heavy jowl and neck he lumbered about the room collecting medicine
cases, saddle bags, two big canteens, finally answering Terry's
question.
"No, you can't go with me--if I need you I'll send for you."
Terry followed him downstairs and helped him mount the ridiculously
small pony, then watched the sweating, cussing, bighearted doctor ride
out into the sun on his errand of mercy. As the tough little pony bore
his heavy burden into the trail and out of sight in the brush, Terry
decided humorously that Casey was right--bigger ponies were needed.
During the afternoon the _Francesca_ had limped in and out of port.
Among his official mail Terry received a confidential memorandum from
Major Bronner that erased the softer lines about his mouth:
Zamboanga, 12/18/191-.
Memo for Lieut. Terry.
Last night a notorious criminal, Ignacio Sakay, passed
through Zamboanga enroute to Davao.
Sakay was identified with Malabanan in some of the latter's
most vicious undertakings, was convicted of brigandage and
has been but recently released from Bilibid Prison.
Sakay is not a leader but is bold and absolutely relentless.
Among the natives he was known as "Malabanan's stiletto,"
and was supposed to do all of the killing.
You may look for immediate action from these men: Malabanan
has doubtless been awaiting his arrival.
Destroy this memorandum.
BRONNER.
Terry read the terse communication twice before lighting it with a
match and scattering the charred remnants over the polished mahogany
floor. He passed 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 nobody, 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 ashore, two miles, to Lassak. 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
Japanese 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.
"Lieutenant, did you bring your mosquito net?" At Terry's affirmative
nod he continued: "It's a good thing you did--the village is swarming
with nightflyers, and every one of them is loaded to the hilt with
plasmodiae!"
The village, a mere scattering of crudest huts along the river front,
seemed deserted, but from nearly every hut came the low wailings of
the sick and the frightened. Noting that the lamentations had ceased a
few minutes after Terry went out, the doctor stepped to the door and
watched his progress from shack to shack, saw how the picturesque
little savages grouped about him. They knew him and listened to him
confidently, so that the parboiled doctor was as much disgusted as
pleased with the ease with which Terry secured the cooperation for
which he had begged and stormed in vain.
Under his direction they cut down all of the plant life whose upturned
leaves or fronds held stagnant, mosquito-breeding water, climbed tall
palms to brush out the rain water accumulated in the concave
depressions where frond joins trunk, even twisted off the cuplike
scarlet blossoms from hibiscus shrubs. They carried green brush to a
series of smudges he lit to cordon the village against the vicious
singing horde of germ carriers. Best of all, they ceased their
incantations over the sick, unwound the tight cords they had knotted
around the abdomens of the stricken to prevent the fever from "going
further down," opened the grass windows that gasping lungs might
obtain decent air, and swallowed the doctor's hitherto neglected
medicines.
There were no chickens in the village, no eggs. The doctor bemoaned
the lack of nourishment for his sick. So Terry summoned four of the
ablest hunters and disappeared into the woods for an hour, returning
with a young buck speared through the lungs and shot mercifully
through the head. In an hour a big pot was boiling in the middle of
the street that throughout the night the sufferers might receive hot
soup made up of venison, yams, eggplant and rice, all that the village
afforded.
Doctor Merchant, watching the transformation, marveled at the method
of persuasion. There was no attempt at exercise of authority, no
raising of voice, no gestures, only patient explanation, an assumption
of mutual friendliness, a sincere and ample sympathy.
Shortly after sundown the doctor, exhausted with the worry and stress
of the hours before Terry came, distributed his bulk as comfortably as
possible on the bamboo floor, tucked in his mosquito net very
carefully, and fell into a heavy sleep, too exhausted to await Terry's
return.
It was as well that the doctor did not await him, for Terry spent half
of the night by a fire kindled at the base of a big tree in front of
the chief's abode. Seated on a stump near the blaze, surrounded by a
ring of half-nude Bogobos whose timid eyes seldom wandered from his
face, he answered their questions and erased the last vestiges of the
panic into which the epidemic had precipitated the villagers.
Interrogation at an end, he still stayed on with them. The flickering
blaze lighted the circle of little brown folk, each flare gleaming on
an eye here, glinting there on beaded jacket or brass trinkets with
which both men and women were adorned. The first mad panic had abated,
but Death had stalked through the settlement six times in as many
days, and they listened superstitiously for the stark Tread through
the woods which hemmed them in. Each whispering wind that stirred the
leaves overhead brought a deeper silence, each wail from delirious
sufferers in nearby huts tightened the little circle.
The quavering gutturals of a half-blind old woman, wrinkled and
shrivelled with a number of years no man could estimate, jarred the
dumb circle.
"My years are as the scales of a fish. Each year has brought wisdom.
Listen."
It was the invariable preface of a Bogobo legend. Terry stirred: it
was the old woman who had told him of the Giant Agong.
"This sickness takes not many more of our people. The white men will
stop it. Trust them. These white men are Bogobo friends. These white
men are strong, wise, honest. White is better blood than brown blood.
Yes. The Hill People knew this."
At the mention of the dread folk the group of tribesmen moved
uneasily. A young hunter nervously stirred the flagging fire into
brighter blaze as the old woman went on:
"Yes. The Hill People knew. Have you forgotten how the Giant Agong
rang the night the Spaniards lost their girl-child?
"No. You have not forgotten. The Hill People took her--they wanted
white blood in the veins of future chiefs. They knew what white blood
means--the Hill People know!"
Curiously thrilled by the simple legend, Terry moved nearer to the old
woman.
"Grandmother, how many years ago was this?"
"Years? Years? I know naught of your white man's years, but this I
know--it happened during the rains before the dark-eyed white men
gave way to the blue-eyed white men."
Interpreting this as referring to the departure of the Spanish troops,
he gently pressed her for further details. But she was finished.
It was dawn when the doctor rose. Groaning in the agony of the fat man
who wakes stiff from the discomfort of an unaccustomed hard bed, he
sat up, then forgot his miseries in a new worry as he saw Terry asleep
under the open window, wrapped in his saddle blanket but without the
protection of a mosquito net. He cursed, stopping midway in his
vehement outburst to cock his head at the absurd angle in which men
think their ears function best. As he heard the ominous drone of the
insects his experience had taught him to fear more than wild beasts,
he scrambled to his feet with amazing celerity.
A light sleeper, Terry awakened and lay regarding him quizzically,
enthusiastically dissecting the stream of invective the doctor poured
upon him for sleeping without his net. Suddenly sensing the
responsibility the doctor felt in having summoned him to the village,
Terry explained his lack of a net.
"Doctor, I gave my net to the chief's wife: she--she is about to
become a mother, and she had none."
"Hell's bells! What Bogobo woman isn't about to become a mother?" he
stormed, refusing to concede the justice of the act. "'She had
none'--and probably didn't use yours!"
He was facing the window, past which the chief, arrayed in all his
half-naked splendor of beads and brass, sauntered with an air of
confidence quite different from his terror of the past week.
"There goes the chief, Terry, all fancied up like a bathroom on a
German liner! But he has no pants--why don't you give him yours? He
'has none'! You make me--"
He stormed on and on. Terry, still wrapped in his blanket, sat before
him looking up with an absurdly rapt air as of a student at his
master's feet. Merchant stopped to swab the thick perspiration from
his face, laughed at Terry's humbugging pose, and desisted. Terry
slipped on his shoes, buckled on the leather leggings he had used as a
pillow and picking up his saddlebags went out to clean up at the
river.
Finding on his return that the doctor was again genuinely disturbed
over his exposure to the disease, he sought to divert him. He sneezed
violently, and as the doctor listened with professional interest he
followed it with a series which mounted in volume and vigor. Merchant
eyed him solicitously.
"You've caught a bad cold, Lieutenant."
"Yes." Terry snuffled and drew his handkerchief. "It was awfully damp
in here last night."
"Damp? How could it be damp in an open shack this time of year?"
"Well, it was. A regular mist!" He sneezed explosively, then took a
few short turns about the little hut in search of the cause of his
malady.
The doctor watched him, interested. Bending suddenly, Terry held aloft
the perspiration-soaked nightshirt which the doctor affected.
"Eureka!" he exclaimed, dramatically, then dodged the shoe the hoaxed
doctor let drive at his head.
After an hour's investigation of conditions in the village the doctor
was convinced that he could now handle the situation alone and
insisted upon Terry's returning home. His parting injunctions were
worried.
"Now Lieutenant, you watch yourself closely for several days and if
you display fever symptoms, you send for me."
After Terry had ridden down the river bank and into the long homeward
trail, the doctor's overworked conscience smote him hard:
"Hell's bells! I never thanked him for coming!"