THE SIGN
The sun striking on his face through the open window waked the Major
to the cool clear morning. Sitting up, he saw Terry sunning himself on
the threshold, wrapped in a scant blanket such as Ohto had worn, his
hair wet from his bath in the creek which emptied the big spring at
the foot of the crag. Even in the stupor in which he woke from his
heavy sleep the Major noted the ruddy glow of the skin which covered
Terry's bare arm and leg, was surprised at the development of the
muscles which played into being at each slight movement. His face was
as evenly pallid as ever.
The Major stopped yawning. "Terry, I always thought of you as
being--sort of skinny, but you're as hard as nails."
He wrapped closer in the cotton cloth. "I've always taken good care of
myself, Major. From the time when I was a boy I have thought a good
deal about--all sorts of things--and I realized early that one thing
was certain--that this is the only body I'm ever going to have."
Learning from Terry where he could wash up, the Major made his way to
the creek and after disrobing waded into the deepest spot and soaped
himself liberally. For a moment he enjoyed the bath, but as the
spring was the source of water supply for the village and as the young
women were allotted the task of carrying it, his exhilaration was
short lived. The water came but to his knees, so most of the half hour
he spent in the pool he lay submerged to his chin, his agonized
bachelor face exposed to the maidens who observed him from the spring
three rods away. He would have taken no comfort from the thought--if
it had come to him--that to them comparative nakedness was the normal
state.
Mountain springs are usually clear and chill, and this was no
exception. He was numb with cold when, hearing a snort of
irrepressible joy behind him, he twisted his head about to discover
Terry enjoying his discomfiture. After Terry drove the girls away the
Major jumped out of the creek and hurried into his clothes, blue
lipped, shivering.
"T-Terry, you'd better q-q-quit laughing! M-Millions have been
m-m-murdered on less p-p-provocation!"
After breakfast Terry, intent upon discovery of some way out of their
predicament, left for a long walk. Alone in the little house, the
Major brooded half the morning over the plight in which the old
chief's dictum had placed them, then dismissed the profitless
forebodings and went out to the village to study the natives.
The clearing was empty of men. A score of the older women were
fetching wood to the fires, another group were washing camotes and
threshing rice with hand flails. Upward of a hundred naked children,
pot-bellied, straightbacked, stared at the big white stranger as he
passed, then ceased their pathetically futile efforts at play and
trooped along behind him, their eyes as old as Ohto's. He looked in at
the young women weaving kapok thread into cloth for blankets and the
garments the women wore, but recognizing in the third house he entered
three of the girls who had watched him in the creek, he fled in
confusion.
He ate dinner alone, as Terry had not returned. In the afternoon he
continued his study of tribal customs. He had known the Luzon head
hunters intimately, so had a basis of comparison. He went among the
older women freely and sat with them about the fires, practicing his
Bogobo, questioning, enlarging his vocabulary, winning their
friendliness.
As the afternoon waned he left the clearing, feeling in need of
exercise. He strode rapidly about the circumference of the plateau and
as he threaded the fringe of woods that separated the main clearing
from Ohto's reservation, he halted suddenly as he saw Ahma tripping
toward him on her way to Ohto's house.
His first wild impulse was to dodge among the trees and avoid her, but
as she had seen him he stood still until she should pass. But she
swerved toward him and approaching with light, swift tread of free
limbs she stopped a few feet before him, smiling.
Embarrassed by the creamy curves of shoulder and limbs, he sought
diversion in the treetops. She spoke, and at the sound of the clear
little voice he looked at her, and in looking forgot the eccentricity
of her frank costume. Her dark eyes held him: he knew that he was
gazing at the only wholly ingenuous being he had ever seen. He
swallowed convulsively.
"Hello," he said.
Bronner was subtle to a fault!
Puzzled at the word, she wrinkled her nose in delicious groping for
understanding, then laughed up at him. And with the laugh something
popped within his sturdy chest.
He hastily substituted the Hillmen's word of greeting, which he had
learned during the morning, and joined loudly in her merriment. Elated
with this success, he marshalled his resources of dialect to further
impress her but with a last bewildering glance from her dark eyes she
flitted homeward.
He watched the white figure out of sight in the woods, vaguely aware
that some new emotion had come to him. He stood among the trees some
minutes after she had disappeared, then turned toward the village.
"Sus-marie-hosep!" he exploded.
* * * * *
At supper time the clearing was again crowded with the entire
population of the village, the men having returned from their pursuits
of hunting, gardening and patrolling the great slope. Terry and
Bronner talked little, each taking his usual seat at window and door
to idly watch the crowd outside.
Most of the Hillmen ignored their presence, but one, a squat, powerful
fellow, swaggered by the door where Terry sat. Twice he passed, and
each time he leered derisively at the white man.
"Who's your friend, Terry?" queried the Major.
"Oh, that's Pud-Pud. He's the town bully--and never has liked me. He
led the crowd that opposed my--staying. He has bothered Ahma a good
deal, too: wants to marry her. She laughs at him, of course. What have
you been doing all day, Major?"
The Major told him of everything but the meeting with Ahma, spoke
enthusiastically of the tribe.
"They're straight Malay, Terry," he wound up. "A pure strain,
something you seldom see in the lowlands where the Spanish and Chinese
have addled the blood. They ought to develop rapidly under proper
guidance--they are a single-minded, sincere, fearless people."
Terry nodded agreement: "Nor are they the terrible people that the
Bogobos think them. Their fear of them must have been based on dread
of that sinister belt of forest. A good road will end all that."
They waited till Pud-Pud made a third mocking trip past their hut, gay
in a G-string contrived of a length of the cloth the Major had brought
up: it flamed against the naked brownness of back and legs.
"He's a lady-killer all right!" Terry said. "Ahma told me that he had
coaxed the calico away from one of the girls."
The Major stirred. "You saw Ahma to-day?"
But he had hesitated so long over the question that Terry, sunk in
deep thought, did not hear him, and somehow he did not feel like
repeating. He turned in on the hard bed with new things on his mind.
Measles is not the only affection that "takes harder" near maturity.
Several days passed without incident. Each morning the clearing
emptied after breakfast as all but the cooks left for the day's work.
Usually Terry wandered out alone, returning at evening to sit in the
doorway, lost in study.
Daily the Major loitered about the village till late afternoon, then
took up his stand in the woods near Ohto's domicile, waiting: and Ahma
never failed him. Bashfully distressed at first in the close proximity
to the wealth of charm revealed by her scant costume, he soon became
unconscious of it, her garb was so entirely congruous to her free,
unschooled nature. He practiced his sketchy dialect upon her,
delighted in each successful transmission of thought, more delighted
in the naïve bewilderment that many of his linguistic efforts wrought
in her frank features.
The fifth day she failed to appear. He waited long, restless, till
certain that she would not come and then set off through the woods,
his big heart yearning for an unattainable something he could not
define or classify.
Regardless of where he went the Major crossed the tableland and
started down the incline of the slope. A mile, and he came across some
young hunters beating deer into a fenced runway that converged to a
narrow opening where two warriors stood ready, armed with great
spears. He turned to the left, crossing a little burnt clearing which
still bore the stubble of the season's harvest. Another half-mile and
he suddenly came upon a grass lean-to behind which two old Hillmen
grimly stirred a simmering pot from which arose an overpowering
stench: he fled the spot, knowing the sinister character of the
venomous brew.
The sun was low when he returned to the hut, still unhappy over
Ahma's failure to appear. In a few minutes Terry entered the shack. He
had come from the direction of Ohto's house, and his face was cleared
of the perplexity of the last few days.
During supper Terry studied the moody face of his friend, but forebore
comment. At the hour of sunset--the hour when the superstitious
Hillmen looked for their "signs"--the savages thronged the clearing in
mute expectancy. It was apparent that Ohto's injunction had been
communicated throughout the Hills, as each night the crowd who waited
the sign was augmented by contingents from other villages. The
hundreds stood, silent, as the sun sank slowly into a horizon of white
clouds which flushed pink, brightened into shades of rose and crimson.
For a brief moment the upturned faces of the brown host were ruddied;
they stood motionless, mute, while dusk settled. Then night fell
almost at a stroke.
Again there had been no revelation. As the heaped fires illuminated
the clearing, five mature Hillmen stalked past the white men's hut and
into the forest. Terry identified them to the Major as the sub-chiefs
who ruled the five adjacent villages.
The Major sat in the window a while, watching the Hillmen, who
squatted around the fires smoking their ridiculously tiny pipes and
conversing in low gutturals. He fidgeted, then left Terry
unceremoniously and skirting the village through the woods unseen by
the crowd, he waited an hour near Ohto's house in the hope of seeing
Ahma. Disappointed, he returned and threw himself on the cot.
Terry sat in his accustomed place in the doorway, watching the fleecy
clouds that a high wind drove across the sky, vast sliding shutters
which opened and closed over the cool glow of the moon. The cold
breeze chilled the Major, and he drew his blanket tight about him.
Terry's voice roused him from his dejected reverie.
"Major, I notice that you didn't carry your gun to-day. Don't go
without it again."
The Major half rose: "Why--you don't think--I haven't seen any
indication of--"
"I guess you've forgotten that we are in the Hill Country. If they
find a 'sign' that is unfavorable to us--there won't be any delay. And
we don't want to sell out cheaply."
The grave judicial tones startled the Major. In his absorption in the
white girl he had lost sight of their precarious situation.
Terry went on: "The tide of sentiment is turning against us. They seem
more antagonistic, more sullen. So please be careful."
Terry lapsed silent and sat in the door, chin in hand. Soon the
increasing wind drove the Major under his blanket again, and overcome
by a curious feeling of comfort and security in the mere presence of
the slight figure huddled at the door, he soon fell asleep.
Terry, unmindful of the chill breeze, remained in the doorway, deep in
thought. Suddenly he brought his hand to his knee in quick decision,
and after tip-toeing over to the Major to be sure that he slept, he
silently departed the hut and skirting the edge of the moonlit
clearing, disappeared into the lane that led to the house where Ahma
lived.
* * * * *
Toward morning the Major woke with a start, bewildered by an unearthly
sound that smote his ears. The wind had risen to a gale, tearing the
fleece from the sky, so that the moon peered down upon a sea of
treetops turbulent with the buffets of rushing air.
He sat up straight to relieve the thunderous humming in his head, then
comprehending that the amazing sound was a reality, he strove to solve
the source of the bewildering tones. A deep, low murmuring filled the
air, swelling in volume with each heavier gust which drove over the
mountain: the sound deepened and strengthened, mounting to a sustained
musical rumble that almost stupefied him.
"Ooooommmmmm-ah-oooommmmmmmm-ah-oooooo-ommmmmmm." The muffled volume
diminished, increased again with fresh burst of fleeting wind, and as
the wind subsided suddenly, the vibrant note fluttered, died away.
The Major had lived too long and too much to believe in the
supernatural but in the dark he found relief in the sound of his own
voice.
"Sus-marie-hosep!" he breathed. "Some ghost! No wonder they believe in
signs up here!"
He saw that the wind had blown shut the door into Terry's room.
Knowing his habit of ventilation he rose to open it, and as it swung
ajar he saw that Terry was not there.
He stood in the dim room a moment, staring out of the window at the
triple rows of huts which the moonlight had transformed into elfin
playhouses. Perplexity as to Terry's whereabouts gave way to deep
anxiety. Then his eyes caught the flicker of something white in the
shadowy grove that fronted Ohto's house. Looking closely, he watched
it flutter away among the trees, then a darker figure emerged from the
spot.
It was Terry.
The Major's big hands closed hard upon the bamboo sill. Ahma! Terry!
For the first time in his passionless life he felt the fangs of the
green-eyed monster.
An impulse to deceive, unusual with him, hurried the Major into the
folds of his blanket before Terry entered, but by the time Terry had
thrown himself upon his couch the Major was ashamed of the duplicity
and spoke to uncover the deceit.
"Terry, what was that infernal sound that waked me up a while ago?"
"The gale playing on the Agong, Major."
The Major said no more but tossed on the hard couch until daylight
shot through the trees. He rose at once and in a few minutes Terry
joined him, a little hollow-eyed with fatigue. The Major pointed at
his soiled shirt and breeches, then at the soaked leggings and shoes.
"Man, you're a sight! Fall in the creek?"
Terry grinned contentedly. "No. This waiting was getting
monotonous--so I fixed up a sign for them!"
"That infernal noise, you mean?"
"No. The wind always does that."
"Well, what did you do?"
Terry's grin broadened. "I'm not going to spoil it for you by telling,
but if you stick around you'll see a sizeable 'natural' phenomenon
within a day or so. In the east, too, the most favorable quarter!"
The Major could extract nothing further from him, so desisted after an
irate: "Well, you let me in on these stunts after this. You're all
in--and here I lay sleeping all night!"
Terry sobered. "Major, we did not need you--we got along all right."
"We?" Heartsick, the Major sought to plunge the iron deeper. But Terry
had slipped out to clean up at the creek before the girls should come.
That morning they noted that for the first time a number of warriors
hung around the village, watching the hut where the white men lived
with a studied insolence that proved their hostility. Pud-Pud was of
them, and loudest in his talk. At noon a large crowd had gathered,
composed of those most inimical to the strangers.
While the two stood near the entrance to their shack watching the
eddying currents of almost naked humanity they saw Pud-Pud detach
himself from his companions and swagger toward them, spear in hand.
The crowd watched him eagerly as he advanced to test the mettle of the
pale outlanders: Pud-Pud had boasted that he would end this suspense.
The insolent savage advanced, stopped ten feet from them and
brandished his weapon, his attitude one of utter contempt. He spat at
them.
Rage suffused the Major's face and his hand crept into his shirt
front, but before he could withdraw the gun Terry whispered a
restraining caution.
"I know him, Major,--a grandstander."
Terry stepped in front of the Major and returned the savage's stare. A
moment they battled, then the Hillman saw something in the white face
that disconcerted him, so that his offensive black eyes lost their
hint of insult, wavered, fell. As Terry moved toward him slowly,
Pud-Pud hesitated, then gave way before the stern visage of the
approaching American.
Terry, boring him with cold gray eyes, came faster: retreating rapidly
to maintain his distance from the white man, Pud-Pud hurried his
backward pace toward the ring of silent Hillmen who watched them.
Heedless of his steps, conscious only of an overwhelming desire to
maintain a safe distance from this purposeful white man whom he had
affronted, Pud-Pud backed away, eyes fastened upon the pale avenger.
Moving suddenly to the right, Terry forced him to alter the direction
of his hurrying footsteps. The rapid heels hit a bowlder and Pud-Pud
fell backward into one of the cooking places, his spear flying
aimlessly into the air as the sitting portions of his anatomy came
into contact with the red hot stones.
One howl and one swift contortion of outraged flesh lifted him from
the spot and he escaped through the crowd, followed by the mocking
laughter of the Hillmen. Terry picked up the spear and crossed the
circle of savages to hand it to the largest and loudest savage in the
group to which the braggart had belonged. He looked him full in the
eye with a significance fully understood by the onlookers, then
turned his back upon him and returned to the Major.
The Major was convulsed: "I saw what you--had in mind--when you
circled him toward it," he laughed. "It must have been hot with
nothing but a red G-string between his rump and those coals!"
But the incident was significant of the attitude of many of the
Hillmen. Inside the hut they examined their pistols carefully, Terry
insisting that the Major take two of his extra magazines.
The Major, in grim mood, left for a long walk. In crossing the
clearing he purposely cut straight toward a group of warriors who at
the last moment stepped sullenly aside to let him pass. Surlily
pleased with his little victory, he crossed the broad plateau and
struck down the slope, unconscious of his direction in the worried
fumbling of his problems and his hurt. He started down the first great
incline, distrait, sorely troubled. He crossed a green expanse where
grass had sprung up over the site of an abandoned clearing, and as he
reached the trees which marked its edge he was startled by the sudden
appearance of two Hillmen who stepped out to confront him, pointing
their spears toward the village in unmistakable gesture.
As he angrily struck another course he realized for the first time how
complete his absorption in Ahma had become. He had forgotten that he
and Terry were prisoners, had lost sight of the mission that had
brought him into the Hills.
Chastened, he slowly retraced his way to the edge of the woods and sat
down upon a windfall to think it all out. He blamed only himself. Her
interest in him, he thought dully, had been but a friendship natural
toward the friend of the one for whom she cared. Little things came
back to him: her expression when she watched Terry approach, the
sympathy that existed between them, little understandings which he had
attributed to nothing more than longer acquaintance. It suddenly
occurred to him that she had helped nurse him when he was ill. And it
came to him that he had given little thought to the days when Terry
had fought off death, had been heedless of what those days must have
been when Terry looked from the mountain deep into the valley of the
shadow, he groaned aloud.
He shook his head, miserably: "Here I've been, mooning around like
a--like a--and left him to do all the worrying--all the planning! Last
night I slept while he--" He cursed himself for a fatuous fool.
When he rose, the bitterness of spirit had left him, and his sacrifice
had been made, but his lips were white with suffering.
As he neared the village his course took him about the base of the
crag, and as he rounded the western side he heard the murmur of
subdued voices. He slowed and approached cautiously. A jutting
buttress of rock masked the talkers until he was almost upon them, and
as he turned this corner he halted in a wretched pang of the jealousy
he thought he had subdued.
Terry and Ahma sat on a bench of rock, their backs to him, unaware of
his presence. Terry's trim head was bent forward as if he studied the
western horizon; she leaned against him in gentle contact of firm
white shoulder.
For a moment the Major's heart thumped painfully, then the confusion
of the unwitting eavesdropper compelled him to make his presence
known. He did so with that fine discrimination and artful delicacy he
summoned in times of emotional stress.
"Hello," he said.
Both turned, and rose, unembarrassed. Terry's welcome shone in his
face, and Ahma was radiant with a quick emotion which, true to the
traditions of those among whom she had been reared, she made no effort
to dissemble or restrain. The Major dropped his eyes before the gaze,
noting, dully, how wind and sun had faintly tanned the neck and
shoulders and limbs. Sun and wind were patent, too, in the vigor and
elasticity of the slim, loose clad form.
"I'm teaching her English, Major," Terry said.
For a moment she maintained her searching of the Major's averted eyes,
then spoke a word to Terry and turned to go. A few steps took her to
the buttress, where she stopped and turned her eyes full upon the
Major, and spoke in English, teasingly:
"Hello, sir."
The Major answered in a voice that sounded harsh in his own ears and
watched her disappear around the corner. Then he spoke to Terry
without facing him.
"She does speak English!"
"Not much, yet. She really meant 'good-by.'"
They started toward the village slowly, each wrapped in his own
meditations. Passing round the eastern side of the cone, Terry halted
to gaze searchingly at the Great Agong hung over the stone platform
far overhead. Anxiety was evident in his manner as he hastened to
catch up with the Major, who had walked on.
The throng had gathered earlier than usual, the clearing was packed
more densely than upon any previous afternoon. The two Americans
avoided the clearing, passing to their shack directly through the
woods.
The Major dropped down on his bench and pillowed his head on what
remained of his pack, staring up at the grass roofing. Shortly the
serving woman appeared with their suppers, but neither moved, so she
placed the two bowls on the floor mat near where Terry sat and
withdrew noiselessly.
As the sun sank below the trees, the Major stirred out of his
melancholy and twisting over on the hard cot sought the reason for
Terry's long silence. Terry sat, as always, at the top of the crude
steps, gazing over the trees. The Major was shocked at the utter
dejection of the slumped figure, the pain that showed in the set
muscles of the thin face.
The Major sat up. "What is the matter, Terry? You aren't sick?"
"No, Major. I'm all right." His tone was weary.
"What is the matter! Is this suspense--"
Terry shook his head. "No, Major. It's something else--something home.
I expected--I hoped for some news before I came up--news I did not
receive."
A flash of memory, and the Major asked: "A cable?"
At the bare nod of head he jumped upright and reaching into his hip
pocket brought out his purse to extract the cablegram he had brought
up but forgotten. Crossing the little room, he dropped it on Terry's
knees.
Terry ripped open the envelope, hesitated, then unfolded the message.
And as the Major looked on, every vestige of care and patient
suffering left the white face, the wistful line was ironed from the
corner of his mouth and Terry stood up a joyous, vibrant youth.
He had read:
Lieut. Richard Terry, P.C.
Davao, Mindanao, P. I.
At last the perfect Christmas gift. Am sailing immediately
to claim it. Arriving Zamboanga January twenty-sixth with
Susan and Ellis.
DEANE.
He carefully refolded the sheet and placed it in his shirt pocket,
then turned to the Major, his eyes darkened with such a joy as the
Major had never seen.
"This message will cost you a wedding present, Major!"
"What now?" asked the Major. Things were moving too fast since he
reached the Hills.
"It is from ... a girl. I left home--oh, foolishly. But she is on her
way over here, with my sister and brother-in-law. That's where the
present comes in!"
"But--but--what about Ahma?"
"Ahma?" Terry asked, in his turn astounded. In Terry's bewilderment
the Major understood that his own unhappiness had been unfounded. At
his shout of delight the Hillmen all turned toward the white men's
hut, wondering at the joyous antics of the strange pair.
In a few minutes the Major had calmed sufficiently to discuss their
affairs.
"But, Major," Terry asked him, "why did you think that we--Ahma and
I--that we--you know?"
"Why, everything. I saw you leave her early this morning over there in
the woods. Then, this afternoon--the way you sat together, and--and
everything!"
"Last night--why, she helped me fix up that 'sign' I told you about:
and to-day we were talking about you--she has asked me a million
questions about you--and about white girls. She has a jealous streak
in her--as you will learn!"
More explanations, and Terry suddenly reverted to their plight.
"Now everything depends upon that sign I fabricated. If it fails--or
if an unfavorable natural sign comes first.... You know I must be in
Zamboanga on the twenty-sixth, some way."
He lapsed into reverie. The Major fidgeted, reached for his hat and
stepped to the door, a bit shamefaced.
"Terry," he said, awkwardly, "if you don't mind I think I'll run over
toward Ahma's house. There is a lot to talk over with her now and I
guess I--"
His words were drowned in a resounding crash that blotted out all
other sounds. The village shook with the jarring impact of some vast
missile striking near, the air filled with the roar of shattering
rock and heavy rumble of sliding earth.
The Hillmen bounded upright at the first terrific crash and stood
transfixed, witless, superstitious fear written upon every brown face.
A dead silence followed the dying out of the last thunderous echoes,
then a child whimpered, another, and the women took up the whining
note. A warrior, one of the sub-chiefs from a neighboring village,
raised a braceleted arm in astounded gesture toward the crag.
"The SIGN! The SIGN!" he shouted.
The thousand heads raised as one, and taking up the cry, surged toward
the great cone, sifting through the timber like brown seeds through a
screen.