CHAPTER XV

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 pa.s.sed, 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 circ.u.mference 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 pa.s.s. But she swerved toward him and approaching with light, swift tread of free limbs she stopped a few feet before him, smiling.

Embarra.s.sed 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.

"h.e.l.lo," 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 st.u.r.dy chest.

He hastily subst.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 nave 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 cla.s.sify.

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 gra.s.s 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 superst.i.tious 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."