CHAPTER XIII

THE HILL PEOPLE

Occasionally one pa.s.ses a stranger on the street whose face bears the unmistakable imprint of recent pain, a patient line of mouth and haunting glow of eyes that have looked close into the eternal shadows.

Terry bore this look.

He unbuckled the Major's pack straps and relieving him of the load led him into the shack he occupied. It was a small hut, roofed and sided with gra.s.s woven into a bamboo lattice work; stilted six feet above the ground it trembled under the Major's heavy tread. A woven bamboo part.i.tion divided it into two small halves, and each room was bare save for a slatted cot that served as chair by day and couch by night.

The breeze blew up through the strips of bamboo flooring.

Exhausted the Major sank down upon the hard cot but rose to sitting posture to study Terry with bloodshot eyes.

"Terry," he said, "you're looking a little--what the folks back home call 'peaked'."

Terry's face was a little haggard, his body a little slimmer, the steady gray eyes were deeper set.

"Oh, I'm all right." He seated himself on the ledge of the window near the Major. "You had a tight go of it last night. Did you hear the little agong ring?"

"Yes."

"The young Hillmen wanted to wipe you out. I had to work pretty hard with Ohto--the old chief--to persuade him to let you come in unharmed." His face clouded. "I have been worried ever since you started into the Hills."

"How did you know that I was coming?"

"Major, that's why I have been so worried about not being able to start back--I knew that you would come as soon as you heard."

The Major flushed in quick pleasure at the unconscious tribute to his friendship and his courage. He filled his pipe and smoked contentedly.

It was the biggest hour that he had ever known. Terry unharmed, well; his own hazards surmounted; and the Hill Country penetrated at last--the impossible again achieved by the Constabulary. He settled back comfortably, using his pack as a pillow.

"Tell me all about it," he said.

"There is not much to tell, Major. You must already know all about the way in which the Macabebes finished what Malabanan started, and of Sakay's leap into the pool--did Sears dynamite that pool?"

Horror shadowed the steady eyes till the Major a.s.sured him that the pool and its dweller were of the past.

"Major, that Sakay affair was pretty--bad: I keep wondering if I missed him--I would hate to think that.... Well, I had not felt well all day. I must have been exposed to that fever at Dalag and--"

"Yes, I guess you had! Merchant told me about that!"

Terry flushed and went on. "I started through the brush to get to the doctor, but I must have been sicker than I thought, for I don't remember anything after entering the woods. It's all a dream to me.

Something pulled me up this way--I've always hoped to be the one to open up the Hills--and I kept coming. I remember lying down at dusk and being picked up and carried through the night. I must have been delirious for about ten days, but had conscious periods every day.

Every time I had a clear spell I swallowed several tablets of the quinine Sears gave me. I guess that quinine saved me--I would like to have Sears know about it.

"Those ten days are rather confused, of course, but I remember the care the women gave me and some of their rough remedies. I came out of the delirium two weeks ago but was pretty weak, so did not try to get up, but lay there listening to their talk. Their dialect is quite like the Bogobo--I think they're just a tribe of Bogobos separated from the others by those infernal woods. I soon learned that they had spared me and cared for me because they thought that I was daft. You know that these primitive tribes never molest lunatics--they think that they are possessed of devils which, if disturbed, will enter the heads of whoever harms their present host. Probably I raved a good bit on the way up, when they were following me.

"When they realized that I was sane the tribe split into two factions--one wanted to finish me but the other insisted that my coming was a good augury. It was rather queer to lie here and listen to the arguments pro and con--I pulled pretty hard for the negative contenders! The question was finally decided by the old chief, Ohto, who announced that my fate would be determined when next the limocons sang. That settled the immediate question.

"The limocon is a big species of pigeon that nests in the Hills. It seldom sings, and then only at nightfall. It is reverenced by these people, who believe that it sings prophecies of good or evil, the character of the omen being determined by the point of the compa.s.s in which it lights to offer its rare evening song. Direction is gauged from where the Tribal Agong hangs--I will show you that after supper.

It is a queer superst.i.tion, Major: they think that a song in the west means greatest harm--death by famine or disease or intra-tribal wars, from the north the omen is ill but to a lesser degree, south is good, but a song from the east augurs greatest happiness to their people."

The Major was pulling on a dead pipe, absorbed in Terry's story but building into it all of the suffering and loneliness and suspense which the lad ignored in the telling.

"They say that the limocon has sung in the east but once since it heralded the birth of Ohto, who is the greatest chief they ever had.

But it has sung in the west eight times--and each time it was followed by the death of one of Ohto's family. Now the old man is the last of his line. These things may have been mere coincidences but you can see why they believe implicitly in their feathered oracles.

"A week ago, while I was still kept prisoned in this hut, the bird sang in the south, an omen of sufficient favor to cause my release.

Since then I have been free to wander about--and if it had not sung, my influence would have amounted to nothing when I pled for you. And I might not have been here to plead.

"That's about all, Major, except as to what manner of folk these Hillmen are, and that you will learn better for yourself."

The Major rose and stepped to the door where they could survey the village, unseen by the brown people who now swarmed the hard-packed clearing. They were a squat race. The men, G-stringed, displayed the same powerful physique that had marked the warrior who had conducted the Major, the women were clad in a single width of homespun cotton which draped from waist to knee and pa.s.sed up over breast and back to knot at the right shoulder. Men, women and children were all long haired, and marked alike with broad, high cheek-boned faces flattened across the bridge of the nose. Their slightly thickened lips and widened nostrils were offset by large, intelligent eyes. They were grouped about the fires which burned in the center of the village, the women tending the pots which steamed over the coals. The fresh hide of a buck lay in the center of the ring of fires amid heaps of yams and unthreshed rice.

"Community cooking," explained Terry. "The young men hunt, the older ones farm, the girls weave and the old women cook. The scheme works out well in such a simple manner of living. Such government as they have is a blending of a little democracy with strong patriarchism. The old chief, Ohto, lets them have their own way about the little things, but when he speaks it is the law."

"How numerous are they?"

"Six or eight thousand. This is the largest of nine villages scattered around the crown of the mountain. Ohto rules them all."

He pointed to a wide lane leading through the fringe of woods into another and smaller clearing a few hundred feet south.

"That is where Ohto lives. No one approaches his house unless sent for. You--we--are to have an audience with him to-night. He set the time at moonrise."

"A husky lot," commented the Major. "They're bigger than the Bogobos, and lighter skinned--but they sure don't get much chance to tan in these woods!"

"They're a wild lot, Major, but you'll like them."

They saw a woman leave the circle of fires and approach their hut bearing two crude dishes. She hesitated near the door, nervously searching the newcomer with timid black eyes, but rea.s.sured by Terry's low word she climbed the bamboo steps and laid before them a supper of venison, yams and boiled rice, then scampered out with a twinkle of brown legs.

While they ate the Major outlined the news of Davao. Terry, tired of the monotonous fare, finished quickly and sat on the threshold, looking out upon the savages who squatted at supper about the fires.

"Major," he said, "we arrived here at a strange time. These people are all worked up over the question as to who shall succeed Ohto as chief of the tribe. You remember I told you that he has no relatives, that they have all died off. His last grandson died three years ago. He was to have married--"

He broke off and turned to face the Major. "You may remember my reporting a Bogobo tale to the effect that a Spanish baby had been abducted?"

"Yes, we looked it up, Terry. It was true."

"It's true all right. She is here! A wonderful girl, Major, beautiful, wildly reared but--well, you may see her to-night for yourself. She was stolen by these people when she was an infant and Ohto's grandson was three years old, stolen to become his bride when both came of age.

That is the way they keep their chieftain strain fresh--by stealing children from outside tribes and mating them when they grow up.

Ahma--that is her name--is the only white child they ever abducted.

"But Ohto's grandson died a year before the marrying age. She has grown up in Ohto's household, has been taught their beliefs, dresses like them except that as his adopted daughter she is ent.i.tled to finer things. She is one of them except for the whiteness of her skin. One of them, yet ... different."

His voice trailed off into a silence in which the subdued murmurings of the Hill People sounded loud.

The Major stirred where he lay stretched on the hard couch: "Who will succeed this Ohto, then?"

Terry roused himself. "The tribe is wrought up over this problem, as well as the problem of our presence here. They gather every night and discuss the matter. Some want to select a new chief among the young men and train him so that he will be ready when Ohto dies, others insist that Ahma--this girl--shall select a husband from among them and thus raise him automatically to chieftainship. But she laughs at them all, though there are plenty of aspirants for the honor. The old chief has said nothing--he just sits and thinks.