Ifugao Country
There was only one difficulty, but it was a major one. Rick didn't know whether or not the district road commissioner could be believed. Santos was Lazada's man.
The boys finished their cokes before Rick decided on a course of action. If Santos was lying, they would find out soon enough. So, for the present, they would assume that he was telling the truth, and that he could be trusted.
"Is the province peaceful up this way?" Rick asked.
"Oh, yes." Santos replied. "It is usually very peaceful. Sometimes on the road south there is a holdup, but the Igorots in Bontoc and the Ifugaos at Banaue cause no trouble."
"Glad to hear it," Scotty said. "When we start digging, some of the Ifugaos may get upset. I'm glad to hear that they're not often riled up."
"What are your plans?" Santos asked.
Rick shrugged. "It is hard to know where to begin. Before we plan our campaign to locate the place where we dig, we must survey the terraces. Is there any sort of field where I could land at Banaue?"
"No," Santos replied with great positiveness. "Once you see the terraces you will see for yourself that there is no place."
Rick stood up and Scotty followed suit. "I think perhaps we had better fly over to Banaue and see the terraces. Then we will have a better understanding of our problems. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. De los Santos."
"It is nothing. But tell me. Isn't there another in your party? Another American?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
"Oh, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior phoned personally. He described all of you, and said to do everything possible to make your visit interesting and successful."
"That was very good of him," Rick said. "We will be back again, perhaps tomorrow. Will you be here?"
"I believe so. If I am not, it will be because I am inspecting a road section. Never am I gone long."
Santos lingered to give instructions in the native language to one of his men, and Rick took advantage of the few seconds to whisper to Scotty:
"I'll stall him. Get back to the plane. Have Angel make a deal with those Igorot boys to keep an eye on the road. I want another spy in Bontoc besides someone we know is Lazada's man. You know what's needed."
Scotty did. He hurried off to do what was necessary. Rick waited for Santos, then asked the commissioner to point out the road to Banaue. "I plan to follow the road in my plane. Do you think that is all right?"
Santos did. "You may lose the road in the clouds as you cross the top of the mountain range that divides the Igorot tribe from the Ifugaos, but you should then be able to see Banaue. Will you come back here after you have seen the terraces?"
"Not today. We probably will be back tomorrow in a jeep. The plane is handy, but we can't land at Banaue, you say."
"You will see. And I will see you tomorrow. Then you can tell me how the terraces look from the air."
"Better still," Rick promised. "Next time I have the plane here, I'll take you to see for yourself."
Scotty winked as Santos and Rick approached the plane, and Rick knew that Scotty and Angel had been able to make a deal with Pilipil, the Igorot boy, and his friend. The party shook hands with Santos, then climbed into the plane. The crowd of natives moved away from the road as Rick started the engine, then turned the plane and taxied down the road to the take-off point he had selected. He was a little nervous, for fear a child might dart into the road while he was picking up flying speed, but the crowd was well-disciplined and held steady as the Sky Wagon roared past and climbed.
"We now have Pilipil and his pal working for us," Scotty said when they were air-borne.
"They're smart boys," Angel added. "They'll be able to report on every car and every person passing through Bontoc from now until we get back."
Rick nodded. "Good. But I'm still worried. We've done everything we could think of, but there's no pay-off. We still haven't found Tony. We were sure whoever kidnaped him would head for the Ifugao country, but there were no sedans on the road today. How do we know Tony isn't hidden somewhere near Baguio? How do we know he's still alive?"
Scotty put a hand on his shoulder. "Why wouldn't he be alive? Who would gain anything by his death? We have to remember that the gimmick in this whole business is a golden skull. Nast wants it, Nangolat wants it, Lazada wants it, and we want it. No one has it."
Rick gained altitude steadily, keeping an eye on the twisting road below. "All right. I'll go along with your reasoning. Whoever wants the golden skull has to go to Banaue to find it. It can't be found—unless by a lucky accident—without the earth scanner. And who has the scanner?"
"Nangolat."
"Can he use it?"
"No."
Rick shrugged. "Tony can use the scanner, though. We suspect that Nast has Tony. The question is what is the relationship between Nangolat and Nast?"
Below the Sky Wagon the high green mountains marched in a series of ridges from horizon to horizon. This was the divide between Igorot and Ifugao country. Rick let the conversation lag as he searched below and ahead for a landmark. There was a little cloud cover around him, as Santos had predicted.
Then the cloud was past and the three looked down into the great valley of Banaue.
Rick and Scotty gasped. It was incredible! As far as they could see, the mountains on either side of the valley were sculptured into irregular green steps, or terraces. The smallest terrace was perhaps only a few feet square, while the larger ones were the size of a football field. They rose in an irregular triangle right to the base of the clouds. There was no particular pattern. The Ifugao farmers had simply used every possible inch of space to make terraces for the growing of rice. In some places the step from one terrace to the next was only a foot or two. In other places the step up to the terrace above was forty feet.
The retaining walls of the terraces were native stone, irregular pieces laid together by expert Ifugao masons without benefit of mortar or concrete. The same method had been used to make the great wall of China.
Rick found his voice. "I've seen pictures, but they didn't tell even part of the story. This is fantastic!"
"It's the most wonderful job of engineering I've ever seen," Scotty agreed. "And when you think that the engineers are primitive people, with only hand tools, that makes it even more wonderful."
Angel Manotok had seen the terraces before, he said, but added, "I'm glad to see them from the air. You can understand now why Santos said there was no place to land."
Rick certainly could understand. The only level places in the entire valley were the flat surfaces of the terraces, and no terrace was large enough to land on. In fact, most terraces were too small even for a carabao, the native water buffalo, to drag a plow across them. The Ifugao rice planters had to farm their terraces by hand.
There was no use looking for a landing place in the immediate vicinity of Banaue.
"We'd better take a swing down the valley, just to get a good look, then head back for Baguio," Rick said.
"Good idea," Scotty agreed. "We need to lay some plans and then get busy. Can you fly fairly low?"
"Yes. There's room enough in the valley to make turns, so we won't get trapped. Let's go down and look."
The town of Banaue was easy to find. A double row of stores was situated on a single unpaved street atop a slight plateau in the valley bottom. The Sky Wagon sped over it, bringing the storekeepers and their few customers running out to look.
"The Ifugaos live in villages around the valley," Angel said. He pointed to one or two of them, clinging to the mountainside between terraces. The huts were of straw bundles, discolored by smoke and dust. "The stores have kerosene, thread, matches, tobacco, salt, oil, perhaps a little cloth. The Ifugaos do not need much—or, if they need it, they do not know that they do."
Rick thought that one over as he climbed out of the valley and set a compass course south to Baguio. The course would intersect the Bontoc Road, which he would then follow into town.
"What's our next step?" he asked.
"We've got to find Tony, of course. I have a hunch that we weren't thorough enough in looking over the Bontoc Road. Nangolat had to be on it. Where else could he go? Or where else would he go?"
"That lumber could have been camouflage," Angel offered.
Rick's first reaction was to ask what lumber, then he remembered that an Army truck like theirs, but loaded with lumber, had been on the Bontoc Road.
"Of course! Who would suspect a load of lumber, especially since this is lumber country?"
Scotty nodded. "It's possible. Tomorrow we'll go back to Bontoc, and if Nangolat was driving that lumber truck, Pilipil and company will know it. Tonight we'll cover Baguio again to make sure our enemies aren't still around. Perhaps we can find Chahda."
"If we haven't found Dr. Briotti by tomorrow night," Angel said, "we should go to the police."
"There's someone else we'll visit first," Rick said grimly. "And that's Mr. Irineo Lazada!"