Terry Part 22

When the wave of fever subsided he rose weakly, took his bearings by the low sun and crossing the ford struck straight into the woods in the direction he knew Dalag to lie. Entrance into the deep woods brought instant twilight. He had covered a mile when a resurgent tide of fever brought him down on the thick carpet of dead leaves that covered the darkening forest floor, and for several minutes he lay gripped in the sickening spasm that rioted through his veins and robbed him of all reason. When it pa.s.sed he rose dizzily to stumble on under the trees, which reached up toward a sky glorious with the flaming reds and deep pinks that mark the pa.s.sing of a hot day over the Celebes Sea.

He staggered on, conscious only of the necessity of getting to the doctor and of the agonizing explosions in his head which threatened to rend his skull asunder at each jarring footfall. The sky grayed, darkened. Dusk found him a short quarter-mile further on, where another surge of raging temperature brought him low. Another followed swiftly. When he rose at last, night had wrapped the thick woods in its black mantle, and he was no longer conscious of direction, or of purpose, or of self. He stumbled along dazedly, trying to recall the purpose that had taken him into the woods.

The paroxysms pa.s.sed. The fever had reached a consistent high level, lending him a singular buoyancy of body and of spirit, but his reason was gone. He walked faster and faster, his vision keen under the dark canopy, his mind racing with disordered ideas, a kaleidoscope of long displaced memories. Often he stopped short, puzzled, vainly striving to stem the fugitive currents of conceits in his efforts to remember what purpose had brought him here. His head throbbed. He kept step with each pulsing ache--it seemed to help. He hurried on through the night.

The way grew steeper, always he traveled up the ascent. Flooded with the hot energy that swept through his arteries, each pa.s.sing hour seemed to add to the fires that fed his strength.

The gray beams of early dawn, filtering through a now taller vault of forest, found him far up the slope and mounting still steeper grades.

He could not quite remember what his mission was ... something that the Governor wanted, he thought, something he, too, wanted to do ...

or was it a Christmas present for Deane....

He climbed higher, laughing, singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying over the nature of his forgotten mission and hysterically impressed with its importance.

The sun rose high overhead but it was twilight in the deep forest through which he clambered, over decayed logs, through rank overgrowth, past little streams of filthy water flowing in sullen silence through channels overgrown with moss. No sounds of forest life challenged the vast silence of the damp and cheerless vault of green, no song of bird or shrill thrumming of insects that makes the tropical forest a palpitant discordance during the hot hours of the day.

His laughter rang mockingly through the shadowed silence, the loud vagaries of his delirium carried far tinder the overhang of tunneled foliage.

"It's all right, Sears ... poor little fox, you won't ... you need not worry about me, Doctor ... on Sunday, too--snowshoes and all.... LOOK OUT MAJOR!... and we need you here, d.i.c.k,--Ellis and Susan, Father Jennings, the foreigners--all of us...."

Always he kept his face turned toward the heights, and climbed. The afternoon, waning, found him groping slowly upward, the furious energy of his fever wearing off. His voice was weaker but he babbled unceasingly, through dry lips parted in set fever-grin.

"I hope I did not miss, Sakay. I hope I did not miss.... 'Imagine bristly Berks.h.i.+re swine upon the throne of Coeur de Lion!'--and if they make a break, SMASH 'EM!... Don't wait, Deane, don't wait."

Unaware of the ill omened forms which, surrounding him while still the sun was high overhead, had kept apace all afternoon with his slackening gait, he halted under a huge tree, leaning against the trunk in sudden weariness. His voice, weak, tremulous, carried to an audience he could not see:

Just to know that years so fair might come again, Awhile ...

Oh! To thrill again to your dear voice-- Your smile....

At the end of the song his hoa.r.s.e laughter rasped through, the woods.

He sank down, tried to rise, then lay where he had fallen beneath the great tree. He lay still while the last white rays of the dying sun faded from the topmost leaves far overhead, heedless of the narrowing circle of eyes which flashed in the dusk.

Then, as he weakly pressed a hot hand against his scalding eyes in a gesture of pain that was infinitely pathetic, the Hill People closed in.

CHAPTER XII

THE MAJOR FOLLOWS

The big wall fan, a new symbol of the progress of the American undertaking, oscillated in jumpy turns that rustled the papers on the polished desk. Major Bronner sat staring at the maps which covered the walls of his office. His heavily tanned face bore new lines, worry and grief and there was a new set to the heavy jaw.

Rising with sudden determination he hurried down the corridor into the Governor's office and faced Governor Mason with the strained aspect of a strong man sorely beset. The Governor gravely studied the eyes that bored beseechingly into his own, then reached into one of his desk baskets and lifted a stiff paper.

"Major," he said slowly, "here is Lieutenant Terry's promotion. They forwarded it immediately after receipt of my telegraphed report of his prompt action against Malabanan's brigands." As the Major did not take it but continued to regard him steadily out of brooding eyes, the Governor returned the commission to the basket and fell to drumming his desk.

He broke the long silence: "Major, you really think you should go?" It was hardly a question.

"Governor, I must go!"

The older man studied his inkwell: "Major, it was over three weeks ago that Sergeant Mercado sent you his report: it seems rather--rather--"

he was loath, to say it--"rather hopeless."

He remained in contemplation of his uninspiring inkwell for a long minute then delved into his basket for a letter received that morning from the Lieutenant Governor of Davao, a letter he had read many times. He scanned it again.

"Major, Terry has been missing over three weeks, was ill when he was last seen. It seems certain that he either succ.u.mbed to fever or else--you know he entered the woods right at the edge of the Hill Country, and if he strayed off his course he is almost certainly--"

Bronner broke in upon him, frantically unwilling to hear the word spoken. He was furious in his grief.

"Yes, they wait three weeks before reporting his disappearance--the best officer in the Service--sick--alone in the woods!--no rations, no--nothing, except a canteen and a pistol! If I were governor I'd fire the whole d.a.m.ned crew down there!"

The Governor regarded him with wise patience till he choked into silence. "No, Major. There was no fault. The Sergeant reported in Davao that Terry had gone to Dalag to see the doctor, so it was not until Merchant finished his work there that they learned from him that Terry had not reached him. It was no fault of any one, Major; just hard, hard luck. Now, I have been thinking over your request to go in search of Terry's--in search of Terry, and I have decided. The despatch boat is now at the wharf subject to your orders. She makes something over twenty knots."

"Governor, I'm--I appreciate your--Governor, it means a good deal to me!"

"I will not detain you, Major. You do as you find best when you reach Davao. Pacify the planters first--this report says that they are wild with grief and rage. Of course you will take temporary command of Terry's Macabebes. The entire company is there now and with them you could doubtless smash your way up into the Hills. I had other hopes, hopes of winning them peaceably--hopes in which Terry figured....

Well, I know you are anxious--so run along."

He rose and came around the big desk to take the Major's hand in a fatherly farewell. After the Major had torn out of the room the Governor closed the door and stood at the window looking out over the busy Straits, his face older, stripped of the optimism with which he invariably confronted all of these young men who were a.s.sociated with him in the Moro task. Sometimes it all seemed so hopeless, so futile.

For a long time the Governor stood at the window. He was facing westward toward India, that mystic ever-ever land that had been the goal of all the nations since before Columbus and was finally won by the steady strength and genius of a meager island people. But its cost--its cost in fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked youth! As in other matters of government we had learned colonization at Mother England's knee, had sought to apply her precepts, to avoid her mistakes: but there was no avoiding that penalty, that expenditure of young men.

Quotations from the interpreter of the white man's burden came to his lips: "'_The deaths ye have died I have watched beside._'" He whispered the line over and over again.

He was still gazing somberly over the wide waters when Bronner rushed down the pier below him and leaped into the c.o.c.kpit of the power boat.

An orderly followed on the run and dumped the Major's luggage into the boat. A Moro cast off the restraining hauser and the snowy hull leaped forward, nose high in the air. When it reached a point opposite where the Governor stood its stern was buried deep by the terrific thrash of the screw, and borne on the swift ebb tide it streaked out of sight into the west, like a thing alive. The Major was off--the Constabulary guards its own. When one falls, others search, and bury, and avenge.

The Major settled on the stern seat for the long ride. He had his thoughts, thoughts that set his jaws till they ached. The motors roared as they coursed through a s.h.i.+fting panorama of islands, little heavens of cool verdure as seen from the power boat which rode low, rising and falling gently in the smooth swells which ribbed the Celebes from horizon to horizon. From the low seaboard they looked back upon a thin trail of white dashes which marked the wake their speed had traced upon the tops of the oily undulations. Adams, the mechanician, a slim, clean-cut young fellow, scarce glanced at Bronner through the pa.s.sing hours but hovered over his engines, absorbed in their operation.

The night pa.s.sed, and the day was nearly done as they shot up to the little wooden dock at Davao with a grinding of gears in reverse.

Adams silenced the motors, then turned in stiff fatigue to the Major with an expression that transfigured his greasy features.

"Major, I've broken the record for this run by four hours. Now it's up to you!"

"You know, then, why I'm--"

"Yes, I know. And I knew Terry--in Sorsogon Province. I was down and out, a beachcomber,--booze. And he was kind to me, when I needed kindness.... It's up to you, Bronner."

The Major stepped up on the dock, unsteady of limb after the night and day, his ears roaring from the long punishment. Stamping the length of the dock to regain his land legs, he returned to meet Doctor Merchant, who had hastened down to the dock. His heavy hurry had glittered him with a profuse perspiration that coursed down over his exposed skin areas, and he wiped his hands and wrists with a big bandana before shaking hands with the Major. His entire mien bespoke anxiety.

"We expected you, Major--though not so soon. You know all about--about it?"

The Major nodded: "The Governor showed me Whipple's letter."

"Well, that's about all we know here. Terry was sick when he went after Malabanan's outfit--he never should have gone. And after doing that job--and it was SOME job, believe me!--he started cross country to see me--knew he was sick. It was over two weeks later that I finished and came in--and when I arrived without him there was a regular riot!"