II
Thus it was that, soon after, the good people of Taal were aroused at sun-up by a ragged burst of musketry, a hullaballoo of yells and beating tom-toms, and the crackling of burning nipa. They were prepared for such a contingency, however; and when, after this little preliminary demonstration, Gomez's disreputables burst along the main street, they met a reception that halted them in uneasy distrust.
For out of all the houses, humble balay or grand casa, the populace was pouring holiday-decked, faces shining with welcome—man, woman, and child, tao and distinguido, all ranks, all sexes, all ages. White linen, shimmering jusis, diaphanous piñas united in fiesta colouring. Peace and rejoicing, a mild, ecstatic expectation, reigned upon all the faces; the niños and niñas especially were full of a goatlike hilarity and tumbled on the green amid the tulisanes, upsetting majors and colonels indiscriminately. And—could it be—was he blind?—no, it was true, indubitably true; before Gomez's eyes, in front of the Casa Popular and spanning the main street, a graceful bamboo arch of triumph rose against the pink dawn. And across the top, in six-foot letters of bejuca, was the following inscription:
To the Liberator of the Pueblo—the Inhabitants of Grateful Taal.
But out of the Casa Popular the municipal band was emerging in joyful blare, and Gomez had just time to compose himself into the pose of his new rôle before he was greeted by the presidente, dressed in church-day black, his head covered with the derby of ceremony. After a short exchange of courtesies, the band wheeled, the presidente placed himself at its head, Gomez at the head of his own troops, and presidente, band, tulisanes, and populace started down the street. "To the maestra!" shouted the presidente, with a heroic gesture. "To the maestra!" echoed Gomez. "To the maestra!" roared the tulisanes. "To the maestra!" yelled the populace, squeaked the women, piped the niños and niñas. And pell-mell they flowed beneath the arch.
Before the original Model Nipa Home the band halted and with an ominous snort came to silence. A hush fell over the assembled multitude. One of the shutters of the Model Home slid back; a lean, yellow arm, at the end of which dangled a steaming coffeepot, pushed out of the opening. Suddenly the coffeepot parabolaed through the air and landed upon the presidente's ceremonial derby.
"Caramba!" roared that official, suffocated and scalded; and he beat a hasty retreat into the hoi-polloi. The mysterious arm mysteriously disappeared. Forming a cordon of lieutenants about the Model Home, Gomez and three of his colonels mounted the stairs and beat down the light bamboo door.
But behind the door stood the formidable widow. Long and gaunt, in her morning wrapper, her be-frilled nightcap askew upon her head, her horn spectacles trembling with indignation at the end of her aquiline nose, she confronted them, a figure of righteous fury. Behind her was a well-constructed pyramid of utensils, from which she drew with promptness and discernment. In a jiffy the nearest colonel was helmeted down to the chin with a big iron kettle, the second was sneezing to death under a stream of tabasco sauce, while Gomez himself was retreating beneath the tom-tom din of an empty coal-oil can, plied with vigorous repetition upon his cranium.
Right here, however, the widow was led off into a common enough strategic mistake. Instead of turning her victorious energy upon the vacillating troop outside, she allowed herself to be hypnotised by the already thoroughly conquered. At the head of the stairs, pirouetting madly and roaring like a bull, was the be-kettled colonel, and upon him she turned her batteries. It was a wonderful exhibition. Things culinary flew through the air—three saucepans, a rolling-pin, a grill, a teapot, a pile of tin plates. Then came canned goods: tomatoes, pears, peaches; beef, roast and corned; mutton, chicken, hare, pork, peas, maize, string beans; jellies: apple, currant, lemon, cherry; jams: apricot, peach, grape, plum, lychee. Two hams and a small sack of flour came as an interregnum. Blind, deaf, helpless, the poor colonel swayed, doubled up, whirred, thrashed his arms beneath the avalanche. Resonant whang-angs of his headgear announced particularly brilliant shots; dull thuds more vital ones. At last, with a parting shower of little potted cheeses, the widow's ammunition ran out. She folded her arms, drew herself up to her full height, and, her eyes shining humorously beneath her shaggy brows, "Well, boys," she asked, "what is it you want?"
Gomez was coming up the stairs again, under safe escort.
"We are ladrones, madam," he explained, politely. "We want—we want——" he stammered, uneasy, before that great dominating figure. "We want—ah—the dinero, the money——" he stopped, then with a vague apologetic shrug of his shoulders: "the dinero, and you."
"Ah?" sang the widow, sardonically, "you want me, do you?"
Gomez hesitated. He was not at all sure about that. But his orders were imperative.
"Papa Gato wants you," he said, with more precision.
"Ah—it's your papa wants me, is it? Very well——" her lips tightened into a line ominously straight—"he shall have me; oh, yes, indeed!"
Thus it was that an hour later the widow, erect and tense in a carro drawn by a pacific carabao, surrounded by an escort of tulisanes with the grave and preoccupied air of people bearing a case of dynamite, followed by the holiday-decked populace and the delirious blare and roar of the band, passed along the main street, by the Casa Popular, beneath the triumphal arch, to the outskirts of the pueblo, and on into the open country.
The band, marking time with the populace on the edge of the town, which they were not to leave, was playing "Hail the Deliverer, Hail!"