Gripping Bronner's hand, Boynton left the room. Lindsey accompanied the Major to the door and into the reading room, pointing to the placard tacked up under the skin of the python.

"You remember the wording of the first sign? 'Major Bronner owes his life to the wonderful pistol marksmanship of his friend, Lieut. Richard Terry, P. C.' He was here the night that Malabanan broke loose—you will hear about that night of his in the Club—and the next day we found that he had changed the placard. Look."

He pulled the Major over and they read:

This python, the largest but one measured since American occupation, was killed on the plantation of Mr. Eric Lindsey.

Length...................24 ft., 9 inches Diameter, thickest..............14 inches

"We didn't see him do it, but we knew he must have been the one who changed it. As that's the way he wanted it, we can't change it—now."

Grief shadowed his earnest countenance again as he faced the Major: "Don't you think that in view of my friendship for him—and for you—that I am entitled to go up with you?"

"No, that's all settled, Lindsey."

The Major passed out, but pausing on the dark walk in front of the building to relight his cigar, he heard Lindsey outlining plans for the campaign the planters would undertake if the Major had not returned at the end of two weeks.

* * * * *

In the early morning he made a light pack of rations and the beads, matches and red calico he had secured to use as presents in case he won through to the Hill People. He dressed for the field in khaki, filled an extra canteen and after breakfast mounted Terry's big gray pony and rode off with Mercado, whom he took to guide him to the spot where Terry was last seen. The Macabebe took the lead and pressed by the urgent white man lathered his pony in the rapid pace he set through the winding trail. They dismounted at the ford shortly before sunset.

While the Major was transferring his pack from saddle to shoulders the Macabebe explored the pool with distrustful eyes. But Sears had done his work thoroughly: two cases of dynamite had blown in the banks and created a new channel through which the water flowed swiftly. The pool had been narrowed by half and shallowed to a depth of ten feet in the series of explosions Sears had detonated until the river gave up the rent carcass of the monstrous reptile.

The Major adjusted the pack to his liking, waved farewell to the Macabebe and moved toward the fringe of woods with a swinging stride. The soldier watched the receding figure with mingled admiration and awe. The Malay stood irresolute as the white man's head and shoulders passed from view under the low hanging branches, watched the pendulous khaki legs swing rhythmically into the shadows of the forest and out of vision, then cast one long look up over the dense roof of the forest which swept far up to end at Apo's summit, and atremble with the appalling memories of the lonely spot he mounted the gray and led his own exhausted pony along the edge of the pool. Once he glanced back apprehensively as a small Bogobo agong sounded somewhere to the north and filled the woods with its deep and mournful tones, then hurried on homewards.

The Major had headed due west, straight toward the summit of the mountain. He walked on through the last hour of the afternoon and as the woods became denser and darker he used the slope of the forest floor as his point, always facing in the direction of the rising ascent. He made good time, as here the going was little obstructed by creepers or thorned "wait-a-minute." Alert, he studied every sound of the forest life, for though he had placed his life on the knees of the gods he valued it too highly to neglect any slightest precaution. Inside his shirt there bulged a heavy 45 slung from a leather breast-holster. This lone attempt of the Hills was no sudden inspiration; he had planned it logically. There was no other way. Up there, somewhere, lay or lived his friend. Friendship was the call, friendship and ... The Service.

The sun, glinting fitfully through openings in the thatching of sparkling green leaves, dropped lower and sank from sight, and before the brief twilight faded he selected a spot beneath a great mango tree as his first camping place. Gathering some dry twigs and dead boughs he built a fire at the edge of a little stream and ate sparingly of his store of beans, chocolate and tinned sausages. In his collapsible pan he heated water and dissolved his coffee crystals, and the coffee finished, he boiled more water with which he filled his canteens and hung them on a branch after dipping the woolen jackets into the creek to secure the coolness of evaporation.

Night fell black in the forest. He threw more brush on the fire to enlarge the circle of light, and made himself a comfortable couch by patiently stripping the small branches of their most leafy twigs, and wrapped himself in his blanket, vainly hoping that sleep would come.

From time to time he rose to add fuel to the fire, as he wanted the light to be visible from the Gulf, where troubled friends would be searching the night hills with worried eyes. And he wished the flame to be seen in the Hills by those who lurked in the dark shadows so that they might know that no element of stealth entered into the approach of this white man who invaded a territory forbidden to strangers since the earliest dawn of Philippine history. This idea—the thorough advertisement of fearless confidence—was the basis of his plan. He knew wild men.

Desperately he fought off the forebodings which assailed him in the deep silence of the forest night, for hours he tossed in the distress of apprehension over the friend of whom he came in search. Toward dawn he fell asleep puzzling over the problem of Terry's reason for closing the door of his bedroom before going to bed and then opening it for ventilation. He waked from a dream in which he had slyly peered into the room in time to see Terry withdrawing a hypodermic needle from his arm, and lay worrying about the vivid nightmare until he noticed that the fire was dimming before the coming of dawn.

He breakfasted, drowned the embers of his fire with water from the stream, then reslung his pack and started up the slope. The way grew steeper with the hours, the forest thicker. The green roof of foliage was now so thick that the sun seldom penetrated and where it did strike through the sunlit spots were dazzling in contrast with the somber shadow of the forest. The undergrowth grew denser, so that he climbed with greater toil through the maze of thorned bush and snaky creepers that twined in enormous lengths across the forest floor.

The never-ending gloom of the weird twilight grew on his nerves. He tried to whistle to cheer himself but forebore when the uncanny echoes rocketed in the dismal cathedral of towering trunks.

It was rough and cheerless going. There were no trails. Once, toward noon, while he was munching chocolate to appease his empty stomach, he suddenly came upon a sort of runway, a beaten trail. He stepped into this easier path but had taken but a few steps when he was startled by the vicious rush of a swift object that whizzed up through the air and tore through a fold of his loose riding breeches, then swung back before his eyes to vibrate into stillness. It was a bamboo dagger, sharpened to a keen edge and point, hardened by charring in a slow fire. Fastened to a young sapling, it had been bent down over the trail and secured by a trigger his foot had released in passing. Level with his thigh, it had been designed to pierce the abdomen of the Hillmen's natural foes. He bent to examine the glutinous material with which the dagger was poisoned, and paled as he considered his close escape. Such a death—in such a place....

After assuring himself that his skin had not been broken by the balatak, he stepped gingerly off the trail and made his way upward, carefully avoiding every inch of ground that appeared suspicious. With each mile of ascent the way grew steeper, the forest deeper and darker, the green ceiling reared higher on more massive trunks.

In mid afternoon he noticed that he was passing through a zone of utter forest silence. There were no relieving sounds of voice or wing or padded foot. It was appalling. Nothing in his vivid experiences had approached the menace of these silent trees.

Pausing to rest in an area where an unusual amount of indirect light filtered down through the lofty screen of leaves he looked about him, found no tree he could identify, and felt the hostility that strange growths radiate. His thoughts flew back to the security and friendliness of the elms and maples of his boyhood haunts. As he peered through the endless avenues of trunks that rose from the dark slope, he learned what fear is. But he went on, faster.

An hour later, clambering over the trunk of a huge windfall that blocked his path, he jumped down upon something that half pierced the heel of his heavy shoe. Leaning back upon the big log he tugged till the foot was released. He had landed upon a carpet of leaves which concealed a number of sharpened bamboo stakes bedded deep in the ground, point upward. Raking out the leaves with a stick, he uncovered a nest of sixteen spearheads smeared with the brown venom.

Forced to study his every footfall, he made slower progress. He was far up the great slope when he noticed that the tangled underbrush had given way to a smooth carpet of leaves. Night was near, so he halted when he came to an open spot, a place where volcanic rock precluded vegetable growth. Water, steaming hot, poured from a fissure.

It was the first time he had sighted the sky since morning, and here he saw the only sign of life the day had afforded. Two gray pigeons flew side by side across the opening in the trees, winging toward the crest of the mountain.

Sleep did not come to him. All through the night he sat by the fire, staring out into the ruddy circle of vision illumined by the blaze, peering into the shadows cast by the great trunks. Once a dead limb fell from a towering tree that stood just at the edge of the circle of light: he started violently, his hand darting into his shirt front to his gun. He relaxed, slowly. Big drops of moisture dripped from the invisible treetops. Thinking it nearly dawn he consulted his watch. It was eleven o'clock.

Suddenly he sensed that he was no longer alone, felt the presence of stealthy forms in the surrounding darkness, heard a twig snap in the still forest behind him. He waited, tense, the hair at the back of his neck stiffening as he thought of blowpipes and of darts poisoned by steeping in the putrid entrails of wild hogs.

He felt the scrutiny of hostile eyes. Certain that he detected the movement of an indistinct figure on the rim of the firelight, he threw on a handful of dry twigs hoping to uncover the prowlers, but the flareup revealed only an enlarged circle of great trees and emphasized their shadows. He sat motionless, his eyes focussed sharply upon the spot, and as the fire died down he saw the flicker of a dark form as it darted from the shadow of the tree and dissolved into the bordering gloom.

He gritted his teeth in an agony of suspense and enforced inaction. As the long minutes crawled by he writhed inwardly in the horror of waiting for the stinging impact of the feathered messengers of death, marshalled every resource of his will in his effort to appear casual, unafraid, confident of friendly reception.

Suddenly the silence of the night hills was broken by a weird sound that rolled down from the heights. He listened, rigid, and realized that some one was striking a small agong. It came from the crest. Three times the faint resonance was carried down, the last note humming long in the tunnel of forest and fading out in slow-dying vibrations.

Listening, he noted a change in the forest about him. Minutes passed, and at last he realized that he was alone, the lurking figures had been recalled. In the reaction fatigue came, and he wrapped himself in the blanket and fell asleep.

At sunrise he was off again, climbing the mountain side, confident that the recall of his midnight visitors had ended all dangers. The night would see him at the summit.... APO!

But with the sense of personal security there came a deep apprehension of what he would find at the end of his strange quest. His worry over the fate of the friend for whom he had made this venture increased with every hour. As the day wore on he fell into a panic of foreboding, scarce noting that the forest had lost its sinister aspects, had opened into a lovely wood of sun-splashed vistas broken here and there by great rugs of thick grass which tempered the beat of the afternoon sun striking through the openings above the frequent clearings.

Suddenly he stopped, sniffing to identify the odor that had rapped at his heedless nostrils for an hour. Disbelieving the testimony of his sense of smell he scanned the woods for visual evidence, for the first time taking in the quiet beauty of the scene. Finding the objects for which he searched he exclaimed aloud in his wonder.

"Pines! Pines! Sus-marie-hosep!"

He drank in the bracing spice of the rare atmosphere, glorying in the clear coolness of the altitude after the months of oppressive heat in the lowlands.

"Real, honest-to-heaven pines—that puts me a clean mile above sea level!"

Worry came again, and he turned to continue his ascent, but halted in midstride as he discovered a form that stood, motionless, upon a grassy plot a few rods above him. A Hillman confronted him!

Evidently a young fighting man, of small stature but wonderfully developed of shoulder and limb, full chested and round of barrel, his brown skin covered only with a red G-string, spear in hand, he returned the Major's stare with a steady gaze of appraisal. For a long minute he remained poised, then beckoned to the Major to follow him and whirling with a flirt of his long black hair he led the way up the acclivity, bearing to the right of the course the Major had taken.

The Major turned his back to the savage while he reached into his shirt to put his pistol at full cock and safe, then followed him. The ascent stiffened abruptly, then ended, so that they came out on a wooded plateau a half-mile square in the center of which the crest of the mountain reared in a last upheave of perfect cone several hundred feet high. Skirting the edge of the cone they emerged from the woods and came to the border of a village.

The Major paused at the edge of the clearing, congratulating himself upon the wonderful good fortune that had brought him safely among the Hill People, and studying the village. A large number of crude thatched huts had been erected scatteringly at the bases of the trees surrounding the level clearing. Not a soul was in sight except the young warrior who had acted as his guide, who stood in front of a shack somewhat larger and better built than its neighbors.

As the Major stepped into the clearing he saw a figure appear at the door, and his sturdy heart lodged in his throat as he leaped forward.

It was Terry.

They met in the center of the clearing near the smoldering cooking fire, their hands gripping hard. Their eyes were moist with the relief each found in the other's safety. Both struggled for apt expression of their pentup emotions.

The Major found his tongue first.

"Well, it's fine air up here," he offered.

"Ayeh." Terry's grin was uncertain. "And there's so much of it!"

And they shook hands on it, complacently.



CHAPTER XIII

THE HILL PEOPLE

Occasionally one passes 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 grass woven into a bamboo lattice work; stilted six feet above the ground it trembled under the Major's heavy tread. A woven bamboo partition 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 assured 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 compass 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 superstition, 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 passed 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 reassured 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 entitled 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.

"He loves Ahma with all of the wild love of a savage for the young he has cared for since infancy. He seems to consider her happiness even above the wishes and welfare of the tribe."

"Terry, you said this girl is 'different.' How different?"

Terry shrugged his shoulders, rose and secured their hats before answering.

"You will probably see her to-night, Major. Come, I want to show you the Tribal Agong."

Leaving the shack they threaded through the tiers of huts and crossed through the fringe of trees that surrounded the village, coming out at the foot of the cone. The huge monolith rose some eight hundred feet above the tableland on which the village was built. Its symmetrical slopes were smooth and steep. A goat could not have found footing anywhere upon its precipitous sides.

A winding shelf had been cut out of the rock to serve as a trail. It wound round the cone a dozen times in an ascent of several hundred feet where it terminated, high above where they stood, in a niche twenty feet square. Niche and trail had been chipped out of solid rock and were worn smooth by the rains of many years. Here and there the smooth surface was checkered with fissures, marks of erosion and earthquake.

The Major, head bent far back, breathed deeply:

"Sus-marie-hosep!" he exclaimed.

High above the spot where they stood a granite arm had been carved over the rock platform in which the winding trail ended, and from this arm a mammoth bronze agong hung suspended over them.

"Why, I always thought those stories of the Giant Agong were just—why, how in thunder did they get it up there? And how did they cast it? Why—Sus-marie-hosep!"

The Major gazed up till the muscles at the back of his neck ached: "Why, it must be fifteen feet in diameter—that striking knob is—why, the thing must weigh six or seven tons!"

With this last thought the Major moved uneasily to one side. Terry grinned at him.

"I felt that same way when I first stood under it, but I've been up there. That flimsy-looking arm on which it hangs is two feet thick and chiseled out of solid granite to form a bracket. I think you are right about its size—the striking knob in the center is about six inches wide."

The Major shook his head, still bewildered: "Terry, I feel as if this is all a dream—being up here on Apo, this cold air, the smell of the pines, and now this thing here—Sus-marie-hosep!"

"The old Bogobo woman who told me of hearing the Agong insisted that she would live to hear it rung again. It is never rung except at the marriage of a chieftain or the birth of his heir. These Hillmen fairly worship it. They have the most absurd legends as to how it was cast and hung up there, and of the reasons for the wonderful tone they say it sounds. They believe that the souls of all the dead limocons live on in it forever and that when it is sounded they all burst forth in song."

The sun exhausted its last white rays and sank below the low hills beneath them. Terry moved forward into the narrow trail and indicated to the Major that he should follow. They ascended slowly, the shelf narrowing so that by the time they had mounted twice about the base of the crag they were forced to advance by careful side steps, their backs against the cliff. Terry stopped at the fourth spiral, his hands gripping the jagged projections, his back tight against the cliff, and when the Major reached his side he nodded significantly toward the horizon.

The Major slowly withdrew his eyes from the dizzying abruptness of the fall beneath them, and followed Terry's rapt gaze. The great panorama of the Gulf lay unfolded beneath their aerie.

The sun, glowing pink against the crag, cast its huge shadow over the now tiny huts beneath them. Dusk was already falling over the great sloping forest that stretched from beneath their feet far into the Mindanao fastnesses and ended in a dim horizon where pink-blue of sky melted into the misted billows of distant hills. Far southward the Celebes was faintly outlined, a frosted mirror framed by primeval verdure, and to the east the slopes extended down mile upon mile, flattened, then leveled to edge the great sweep of the gulf.

They stood tight against the clear crest while the swift shadows gathered the Gulf into its fold. The little valleys faded, and blackened, and the lower hills disappeared. The gulf narrowed, shortened, and dissolved into the night. The dark crept swiftly up the slopes as if envious of the ruby crown set on Apo's forehead by the abdicating sun.

A steady wind, cool and fragrant with the odorous pines, streamed against them, forced their bodies hard against the crag. The Major, enraptured of the vast grandeur, voiced his exaltation.

"Jiminy!" he said. "The top of the world! An empire!—an empire of hemp! And our flag covers it all!"

Receiving no answer, he carefully pivoted his head so as to face Terry, and was humbled by what he saw. Terry's face, white in the fast fading light, was exalted, glowed like that of an esthetic of the Middle Ages, his eyes shone with a vision wider than that disclosed from the mountain top.

"Terry, what do you see—in all this?" the Major asked.

The wind whipped his words into space. He repeated, louder.

Terry stirred slightly, answered vaguely, his gaze still fixed upon the tremendous shadowed expanse below them: "I was thinking of a ... dozen words ... spoken upon another mountain, words that seem very real ... and make one feel very small ... in such a place as this."

The Major puzzled, gave it up. He was on the point of asking explanation when Terry spoke.

"We had best get down from here, Major. It is getting darker."

It took them but a few minutes to work their way down, but the crag reared black against ten thousand stars when they reached the base. In the regions near the equator the sun courses in hot hurry.

Returned to the hut, the Major sat on the window ledge and Terry at the threshold. The night was chill with the clear crispness of altitude. The Major sniffed the pine-laden breeze gratefully.

"We have found a new Baguio," he said.

Terry assented, absentmindedly.

The Major nursed his empty pipe, studying the savages who grouped around the fires to warm their almost naked bodies. Occasionally one or two would detach themselves from the groups and approach near where the two white men sat illumined by the flames, staring at these strangers in frank curiosity, silent, inscrutable, unafraid. Noticing the glint of fire upon a nearby row of long-shafted spears which reared their vicious barbs eight feet above the ground into which they had been thrust, the Major spoke to Terry.

"Your pistol?"

Terry motioned toward his room; "In there. They never bothered me about it—probably don't know what a pistol is."

The Major, thinking of the sensation the opening of the Hill Country would create, of the Governor's joy when he should hear the news, of the added prestige for his Service, turned to Terry to express something of his thoughts. But he desisted when he saw by Terry's flame-illumined countenance that he had forgotten his presence, for there was something about the lean wistful face that made his detachment inviolable.

Soon the moon rose above the level of the plateau and flooded the village with a filtered glow. Terry rose.

"Ohto ordered me to bring you at moonrise." He waited until the Major had secured the gifts he had packed up, then led the way through the lane into the smaller clearing.



CHAPTER XIV

AHMA

In the center of the moonlit clearing there stood a larger house than any in the village. The soft beams of light reflected from the bamboo sides of the structure and the heavy dew on the thatched roof glistened like a myriad of fireflies. A wide path led to the porch, and near this there was set a tripod, fashioned of saplings, from which was suspended the little agong the Major had heard during the night.

As they neared the foot of the ladder that served as stairway the Major started violently as two brown forms appeared at their elbows; at a word from Terry they stepped aside to let the two white men pass, one calling softly to a guard stationed at the top of the ladder. The door was thrown open and they mounted the bamboo rungs and entered the house of Ohto.

Pine torches illuminated the room, which was some twenty feet square, roughly sided and floored with bamboo slats; there was no ceiling, so that a quarter of the high-pitched thatching of the house showed overhead. A dozen middle-aged Hillmen stood along the wall, evidently the influential men of the village. Across from them an aged Hillman sat in a rough-hewed, high-backed chair.

Terry advanced and addressed the old man, his whole manner bespeaking a sincere regard and respect; then he beckoned to the Major.

"This is Ohto," he said. "I will interpret for you if he does not understand your dialect."

The Major faced the fine, austere old patriarch. The brown face had been wrinkled bewilderingly by the heavy-handed years, but his eyes still glowed with something of the pride and spirit of his youth. Wrapped in a thick blanket of hand woven kapok, he confronted them with that air of dignity and distinction common to those who from early life have dominated the councils of a community.

The Major silently tendered his gifts. Ohto motioned to one of his retainers and in a few monosyllables ordered their distribution among the people, the red cloth to the women, the beads to the children and the matches to be divided among the young men. As he retained nothing for himself the Major produced a new pocket knife he carried, and bade Terry make Ohto understand that it was for himself. The savage bent his hoary locks over the treasure, examining the mysterious blades that opened and closed at his will, and accepted it as his own.

The Major attempted to address the chief in his scanty Bogobo, stumbled, and turned to Terry beseechingly.

"You tell him, Terry. You know what we've got to say better than I do!"

So Terry spoke, and though the Major did not know it, he continually referred to him as his chief, put all of the fine phrases in his name. The warriors along the wall weighed every word.

Terry told Ohto of their great pleasure in having entered the Hills, and of their appreciation of their reception. He extended the greetings of the White Chief across the waters at Zamboanga, tried to impress him with the interest the White Chief took in the Hill People and of his good will toward them: told of the advantages that would follow intercourse with the lowlands, of the good that would come to his people from contact with others. Finally he dwelt upon the folly of isolation, of the benefits of commerce and schools and other elements of civilization.

The flare of the pitch torches brought out the sincerity of his face. The old chief listened, inscrutably, his unwavering gaze fixed upon the earnest speaker. Before the aged infirmity of Ohto Terry stood in apt symbol of lithe youth.

It was apparent that Ohto did not grasp much of what Terry strove to impart, for the primitive imagination was powerless to understand institutions he could not conceive. He listened gravely but gave no inkling of what went on behind the mask of his wise old eyes.

Terry finished, awaited expression of his decision. For a long time the patriarch remained silent, idly opening and closing the blades of his knife. The Hillmen ranged along the wall, who had listened attentively to Terry's arguments for opening up their country to the outlanders, waited their chief's pronouncement with set faces and gleaming eyes, their brown bodies still as bronze figures.

At last the patriarch raised his head high, so that the snow white hair fell back across his blanketed shoulders. He spoke so slowly that Terry was able to follow him with whispered interpretations into the anxious Major's ear.

"Many rainy seasons have washed my hair white. I live to see strange things—I never thought to see a white man's face within my walls—except, perhaps, upon a spear, grinning.

"When I was born—and no other man or woman of my tribe lives who saw the sun of that far day—they said, the wise men, that much good would come to my people before I died.

"They read it in the stars, they said. No great ill has come, except to my own blood. All gone—wife, sons, grandsons. Never again will the Agong ring for one of Ohto's blood!"

They felt the greater pity because the proud old chieftain demanded no sympathy, but merely stated the pathetic fact with a simple dignity.

He was silent for a time, lost in an old man's memories. Then he turned to one of the four retainers who flanked his chair.

"I am lonely," he said. "I would that Ahma would sit by me."

As the swart Hillman crossed the springy floor and rapped gently upon a closed door, the Major saw that every black eye focussed upon it with eager expectancy. For a moment the room was palpitant with suspense. He looked to Terry for explanation, but turned back at the grinding crunch of the hingeless door which opened to frame a fairer vision than the Major had ever dreamed, asleep or awake.

A white girl had stepped out of the other room and paused a moment against the dark background of the door to sweep the room with big black eyes.

A single piece of white cloth, fringed with bat fur, was draped about her waist and fell below her knee, the ends passing up in front and back of her round body to fasten loosely at the right shoulder. This, with a little sleeveless garment fashioned, bolero-like, out of the delicate bat skins, and a pair of sandals contrived in such a way as to bring the hair of the deer skin against the little feet, was all she wore.

Bronner scarcely realized the symmetry of the slender form, so lost was he in the spell of the dark eyes that plumbed his for one long second, leaving him tingling with a curious conviction that his soul had been bared. Vivid of white skin, of jet eyes, of a mass of midnight hair that hung loose to her waist, she radiated the fire and spirit of vibrant youth.

"God! Such a girl—up here—all these years!" he breathed.

She left the doorway and crossing the room with the light grace of slender, untrammeled limbs, sank down on a bench drawn up at Ohto's side. He set his withered hand contentedly upon the mass of her hair, and in a moment he spoke again.

"If the prophecies of the wise men are to be fulfilled, it must be soon. The good fortune of which they spoke has not come to my people—and Ohto cannot tarry long in wait.... Death calls an old man.

"It may be that the prophecy had to do with the coming of these white men. It may be that it would be better to no longer guard the Hills with balatak and stake and spear and poisoned dart. It may be that our people would be stronger—happier."

Again he halted his slow monosyllables, searching the faces of the Hillmen who waited upon his words: utter devotion and loyalty were apparent in every brown face. Proudly conscious of their fidelity, he regarded them kindly, then his thoughts reverted to the girl at his side, and he gently stroked the lustrous black hair. She sat quiet under the caress, her head bent down in an attitude that revealed the white line from shoulder to throat, her eyes sheltered behind long lashes. At last Ohto raised his head again and when he spoke he gazed straight at Terry.

"Ever since we ... found ... her, this lovely flower has flourished. She now blooms in full blossom in my house—a white orchid on a gnarled old root.

"Before Ohto leaves the Hills he would like to see Ahma safe,—guarded and cherished by one who loves ... and knows. Though not of Ohto's blood, she is of Ohto's heart. I will that when she finds a stronger tree upon which to fasten—the Tribal Agong shall be rung for her."

Astonished out of their racial imperturbability, the Hillmen eyed each other at this departure from the ancient custom of ringing the Giant Agong only for those of chieftain blood. The girl's wide eyes raised to Terry, shifted momentarily to the Major, and lowered.

The old man concluded: "You both speak fair, but I do not know what is best for my people. I do not know.

"We must await a sign to guide us. The Spirit will speak to us through limocon or nature, will solve the problem that you have brought to us ... and will decide your fate.

"Until the Spirit speaks, you are safe with us, white men.

"I am weary now."

* * * * *

The venerable savage gathered the blanket more closely about his thin shoulders and closed his eyes as if exhausted. One of the four who stood behind him pointed to the door to indicate that their audience was at an end. As they passed out, the Major turned for a last look at Ahma, who was leading the old man into his room.

In the middle of the clearing he stopped short.

"Say, you forgot to translate what Ohto said after she came into the room!"

Terry smiled whimsically up into the chagrined face: "That's right, I did! But you seemed to lose interest in his words!"

As they made their way through the village Terry explained Ohto's decision, concluding with: "And so he awaits one of their 'signs,' the appearance of the limocons, or some freak of weather or natural phenomenon like an earthquake—they read prophecies in everything."

The Major sat down heavily upon the bench. He was genuinely disturbed at this new phase, as he had thought their hazards passed.

"Why," he exclaimed, "that puts us square in the Lap o' Luck! Think of just waiting around for an earthquake or something—or for some darned bird to sing! With the opening up of this country as the stake—yes and our own hides. Sus-marie-hosep!"

Terry had taken his usual seat on the threshold, chin in hand, his face bathed in the light of the moon that now hung high overhead and flooded the mountain top with a friendly glow. The cool night breezes came in strong gusts which rustled the foliage about them.

Calmed by Terry's attitude of quiet confidence and strength, the Major faced their problem coolly, sought a way out. For a while his mind raced with plans, but each died in the minute of inception. He could not influence winds, or induce wild birds to sing in given quarters of the compass, or devise earthquakes. He fell to thinking of Ahma.

Later, observing Terry closely, he asked: "And what are you dreaming about now?"

Terry stirred as though awakened: "Oh, home—mostly."

The Major wanted to talk, but the patient distress in the voice deterred him from what seemed intrusion.

Later he suggested sleep. Terry lighted a torch and stuck it into the doorway, so that while lighting both rooms its fumes carried into the open. The Major discarded shoes and leggings, and wrapping himself in his blanket lay down with his pack as pillow. Terry waited till the Major had disposed himself as comfortably as possible, then extinguished the torch and went into his own room, closing the door behind him.

The Major stared through the dark at the closed door, wondering, as usual, what was going on behind it. Then as a gust of cold wind blew in through the window he snugged down into his blanket.

Another and stronger gust, and he heard the door into Terry's room creak as it swung to the breeze. Looking up, he learned at last.

In the rectangular patch of moonlight which entered Terry's room through a raised window he saw him by the side of the rough slatted cot, kneeling in that most ancient of attitudes, in which the children of all the ages have bowed to supplicate and render homage to the Keeper of the Great Secret.

The Major's eyes moistened. As the last clear phrase reached him he again stood flattened against the wind swept crag—"on the top of the world," and he now understood the "dozen words spoken on another mountain." They came from Terry's lips low, simple, majestic:

"—is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory.... Forever...."



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 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 naive 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.



CHAPTER XVI

CIVILIZATION DAWNS IN THE HILLS

When the tumult had subsided, the amazed Major wheeled to face Terry's quizzical grin.

"Well, Major," he said, "there is their merry little 'sign'! The darn thing worked!"

The Major pulled him toward the door. "Come on," he exclaimed. "Let's see what happened."

He hurried down the short ladder ahead of Terry and raced through the strip of woods to where the mob was packed about the base of the cone. The Major smashed an unceremonious pathway through the brown jam and in a moment they stood at the foot of the crest.

A large segment of the huge pillar of rock had broken off and in falling had carried thousands of tons of shale and eroded stone. The immense rock, whose fracture and fall had precipitated the slide, lay directly under the Tribal Agong, at which the Hillmen were staring up, dumfounded.

Following their upward gaze the Major saw that the fallen stone had formed the platform beneath the Agong, which now pivoted on its granite bracket over a cliff which fell sheer for hundreds of feet before curving into the stiff slope where crag fused into tableland. The great black gong hung directly over them. Looking closely, Bronner saw that it swung slowly in the evening breeze, and moved by the same impulse that had impelled him the first time he stood beneath it, he shouldered their way through the crowd to a safer position.

"You need not worry about its falling, Major. It will hang there for a thousand years."

"I know it, but it gets me just the—what's that they're yelling?" he exclaimed, as a swelling chorus of guttural shouts rose from the excited throng.

"They are saying that the Tribal Agong can never be sounded again—without the platform they can't reach it." As a new phrase was caught up and repeated by hundreds of voices he added: "And now they are calling for Ohto to interpret the sign!"

Several of the older savages tore out of the densely packed throng and sped toward Ohto's house. In a few moments one of them returned and announced that the chieftain would arrive shortly. The two white men, absorbed in the drama, did not notice that four of the warriors who had summoned Ohto had returned by another path and taken up their position behind the captives, spears in hand, grim.

Ohto advanced slowly through the trees and emerged into the open space about the crag. The Hillmen gave way respectfully and he walked to the base of the cone through a wide lane opened up for his passage. Age slowed his steps but he walked erect, his head held high in simple dignity and gratitude for the silent homage his people offered.

Pausing near the base he surveyed the evidences of cleavage of the ancient rock, the tribe's historic rallying point. Then he raised his eyes to the Agong.

The dense circle of Hillmen bated their breath while the beloved patriarch communed with the spirits of the long line who had heard the happy song of the bronze-lipped gong. A deep hush pervaded the plateau, now lighted with the last white rays of the dipping sun.

The sage turned to his people, his furrowed face burdened with an added melancholy. His voice came low and weak, so that the assemblage bent forward in strained silence to hear his fateful words. Terry gripped the Major's arm, whispering the translation.

* * * * *

"Listen, my children. We asked for guidance, and a sign is sent to the east of Ohto's lodge—a happy omen.

"The breaking of this age-old stone betokens the breaking of our ancient custom ... no longer will we bar the stranger from the Hills ... and those who are with us now may go in peace, or stay in peace."

He paused, and a great sigh of relieved suspense rose from the throng. The four armed men left their position behind the two white men and melted into the dense circle.

Terry gave the Major's arm a last ecstatic squeeze. "It's working out just as we planned! I'll be back soon."

He raced through the trees toward Ohto's house, returning in a couple of minutes to find Ohto still standing with bowed head before his people.

A rustle of whispers roused him, and he raised his silvered head to behold the loveliness of his stolen foster-child. Summoned by Terry, Ahma had come out of the shadows of the trees and stood at the forest end of the lane made for Ohto's passage through the crowd.

The old man extended his hand toward her in compelling gesture and she went to him with the agile swiftness of a half-wild thing. A moment he lightly stroked the rippling mass of hair, then he turned to his people again.

"Ohto said that the Tribal Agong would ring for the marriage of this white daughter of our tribe—but now—"

They followed his sadly expressive gaze to where the gong hung far out over the cliff, inaccessible to human touch.

"Daughter, it will be rung for you ... somehow.... Ohto has said it. I hope to live to hear it rung ... when you have found him who is to share your house—and after that, I do not care."

He paused again—lost in a patriarch's vague memories of other years. Retrieving his vagrant thoughts, he caught the frank message of the upturned face, a message which startled as it pleased him.

"Ah! You have found him, then? Let him step forth."

Ohto searched every brown face in the hushed circle, but none stepped forward.

Ahma slowly turned her head toward where the two white men stood apart, her eyes fastened upon Major Bronner. Terry gently pushed him forward. Trembling, his tanned face bloodless, the Major advanced and took her outstretched hand.

Ohto studied the Major, then turned to Terry. For a long moment he searched the lad's strong face, a deep disappointment in his own, before he again faced the two before him.

"I had not thought of this. But it will do. It is as it should be—white will be happier with white. But ... will she stay until Ohto joins his fathers?"

The Major hesitated, then answered the sadly anxious question with a nod. He had no voice.

"Then she is yours ... after you have found a way to ring the Tribal Agong for her marriage. Ohto never spoke in vain. Ring the Agong first."

The Major's glance swept from Ahma to the lofty gong. His triumphant joy gave way to deepest dejection. He saw no way to fulfil the chief's requirement, and he turned despairingly to Terry, who had shouldered through the crowd and stood beside him.

The Hillmen had accepted Ohto's interpretation unquestioningly. Their chief had spoken. The unexpectedness of the new phase, the avowal of love by the tribe's adopted daughter for one of the outlanders, had appealed to the keen sense of the dramatic that is shared by all primitive peoples. Their brown skins coppered by the rosy glow of the setting sun, they stood in strained suspense awaiting the climax.

All but Pud-Pud. He jostled an avenue through the innermost ring of Hillmen and leaped out in front of Terry, brandishing a short blow tube he carried and laughing in shrill derision.

"Ya, white men! Now ring the Agong! Ring the Agong and get your woman! I saw! I watched! And I laughed because I knew the Agong would never ring again! Yeah! Now ring it!"

The Major was in no mood for finesse: with a vicious shove he sent the vindictive Pud-Pud sprawling, then turned to Terry, worriedly.

"What are we going to do?"

Terry shook his head, at a loss. This was a contingency he had not foreseen. He glanced penitently at the melancholy girl, at the old man who waited, swept the circle of tense faces, then resumed his hopeless contemplation of the gong overhead.

Swiftly Ahma broke the tableau. Dropping the Major's hand she darted forward to where Pud-Pud had risen to his knees, her white foot flashing up to dash from his lips the blow tube he leveled at Terry. The venomous dart sped aimlessly into the air and fell outside the ring of Hillmen.

Pud-Pud's violation of the sanctity of council roused Ohto to a wrath terrible to see. All of the savagery, all of the unbridled fury of a primitive, passionate nature mounted to his wrinkled face as he pointed to the culprit with a majestic gesture that summoned the four armed men. At a word they hustled the terror-stricken savage away to await Ohto's judgment.

Ahma calmly returned to the Major's side and together they resumed their hopeless contemplation of the Agong. He peered up till his neck ached.

"Terry," he whispered, "to ring it you have to strike that little knob in the center, don't you?"

"Yes."

Then inspiration shone in the Major's face. He eyed Terry covertly.

"Wish we had a rifle," he suggested.

Terry caught his meaning. He fingered his holster but shook his head. "It can't be done, Major."

"Sure it can—sure you can! I've seen you shoot!"

Terry shook his head but the excited Major insisted: "Try it. Rest your gun on my head. Sure you can do it—and think what it will mean—the Hills opened up for all time—think what it will mean to the Governor—and to the Service!"

The hushed crowd stiffened as they saw the two white men draw back a hundred feet, wondered as to the character of the strange black thing the smaller drew from his leather pocket. They watched intently, thinking to see sorcery wrought before their eyes.

Terry cocked the weapon and resting his wrist upon the tall Major's head, sighted carefully. A thousand pairs of eyes focussed upon him. Could the slim white man ring the gong by pointing a magic finger?

The Major, braced for the shock of explosion, felt the iron wrist tremble, grow limp and lift away. He wheeled around to find Terry shaking his head, uncertain, faltering. He slowly holstered the gun.

"Major, I keep thinking how I have deceived—this fine old man," he said.

The Major stared at him, then exploded: "By making this 'sign' that saved your life—and mine? Sus-marie-hosep! I've heard of those New England consciences but—Sus-marie-hosep!"

Disgust, dismay, affection swept in succession across the Major's countenance: affection held. He laid his hand upon Terry's shoulder as he played his ace:

"Terry, I thought you had a date in Zamboanga on the twenty-sixth!"

The crowd then saw the white youth stiffen with swift decision, saw him whirl to face the crag. For a moment he stood with eyes riveted upon the Agong till the little knob swung toward him, then he bent slightly at the knees and his hand swept back with a swiftness that seemed to bring the pistol leaping to meet the extended arm. It raised to the darkening sky, and the Hills awoke to the resounding crash of white man's weapons. Six times Terry shot, but only the first two reports were heard, for the others were swallowed in the booming of the Agong.

The sound beat down deafeningly, seemed to enfold them bodily in its mighty volume, blotting out all else. From the sounding board of cliff it smote upon their ears in thunderous, sustained, musical tone. Slowly, the note lessened in volume, deepened, and tumbled down in vibrant waves that rolled on and on. The sonorous reverberations died out, then surged again and again in ever fainter, ever deeper tones.

At last the air quieted, and nothing but the roaring in his ears remained to convince the Major that the vast sound had been reality. "Jimmy!" he exploded. "What a noise—and what shooting!"