Caybigan

by James Hopper

THE CAPTURE OF PAPA GATO

This is to explain how young Theodore Pinney, after his meteoric début in the P. I. constabulary—consisting in nothing less than the capture of Papa Gato, fierce bandelero, who for years had terrorised the region of the Taal—squatted into a fat civilian job and forsook all dreams of glory. And it's not at all about young Pinney, but mostly about his mother, the widow.

"The widow;"—by that short, somewhat ominous and not too respectful cognomen she was known by all the bureau—the educational, of course—from superintendent to lowest clerk; and throughout the archipelago by men departmental and non-departmental. This name, based on fact, like most things based on fact, was a lying thing. Close your eyes and say "widow"; the vision is of something subtle, arch and tantalising—lustrous eyes, comely form (somewhat pudgy), kittenish ways. But she was long and lean and angular; her bosom was arid and her tongue triple-forked. "Old-maid" would have expressed her infinitely better; but there was the fact, the stubborn fact, which manifested itself with slight provocation by a grim tightening of the thin lips, and the phrase—proverbial now throughout the P. I.'s—"Mr. Pinney, well, the less said about him the better. He was a handsome man, but he was a wicked man"—the "handsome" being pronounced with a rising inflection, and the antithetic adjective with a drop into tenebrous basso-profundo.

Of Pinney père this is all we ever knew, although in departmental circles he was a subject fertile of delicious speculation. That to be wicked he had had ample temptation, knowing the widow, we cheerfully granted; but what chance he ever had had to succumb, knowing the widow, we could not imagine. Of Pinney fils we knew still less, nothing at all, in fact, what little there was being the property of the postal authorities and consisting of records of money orders sent monthly by the widow to a well known western college town. But of the widow herself, good Lord, we knew only too much.

For she was a terror and a pest. From the day she placed her number tens upon Philippine soil the islands knew no peace. The educational department became a nightmare, and clamour filled all the others. She had a passion for "little trips"—and her will was adamant and her tongue a visitation. They all knew her. Her appearance at the Civil Hospital heralded the disappearance of the resident chief. "Give her what she wants, anything she wants," he yelled at his clerk, as he exited. And when she sallied out for fresh conquest she held under her arm a certificate of ill-health. At the educational bureau the superintendent saw her coming. Out he sprang, through door or window. "Give her what she wants," his parting wail floated to the clerk. And so, with a glance at the medical certificate, and a few timid questions as a matter of form, he made out Document No. II—sick-leave on full pay. A few minutes later the major of the army transport service found the outer world urgently calling, and as he dodged the widow on the stairway, "My clerk, madam, has orders to give you what you wish," he murmured, tense with an immense hurry. And the clerk provided; and a few days later the widow wandered aboard some inter-island transport, made law to the quartermaster, terrorised the steward, possessed herself of the best cabin, anchored her chair in the most desirable deck space—and off she sailed on one of her adorable little voyages. From Aparri to Bohol, through Vigan, Ilo-Ilo, Cebu, Dumaguete, and Zamboangua, she was known, her clamour had resounded, for transportation, for commissary privileges, for bull-carts, cargadores, and military escorts.

One day, though, she decided to settle down.

She caught the superintendent at his desk and asked him for a provincial post. The superintendent saw his main chance staring him in the face. He was an intelligent and discreet man, so he did not decide hastily. For a whole afternoon he pored diligently over a map of the archipelago. Finally he settled on Taal, in the volcanic region of Luzon. It was just at the end of the dry season; he calculated that she could just get there. Then the rains would begin—and the roads were without bottom. Besides, there was Papa Gato ambuscaded somewhere upon the flanks of the great volcano surmounting the pueblo. Many things can happen in six months. The superintendent was not an imaginative man; but that day he certainly smiled to visions.

So, with a last array of reclamas—transportation, carts, provisions, military escorts—the widow, her worldly goods upon a carabao-drawn carro, herself in a shaky quilesa, set out toward her Palestine. And the rains began and shut her off behind their impenetrable curtain.

From her isolation, after a while, news began to filter, vague, insufficient, broken, like the irritating snatches of a telegraph line out of order; first the regular official reports, secondly popular rumour. She had evidently taken hold. The monthly reports showed the school attendance of Taal rising by leaps and bounds to astonishing totals. Rumour, however, corrected in some degree the superintendent's satisfaction. It appeared that this remarkable increase was largely due to her personal herding of batas with the aid of a big baston. Once, it seemed, she made a regrettable slip, took one of the leading citizens of the pueblo for a little boy, and, he proving recalcitrant, cracked his crown with her persuader ere she had discovered her mistake. This caused some trouble to the central office, but, as the superintendent remarked to the Secretary of Education, "One cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, and he (the leading citizen, evidently) was a bad one, anyway." Pompously couched recriminations, also, came from the Taal municipality. It was claimed that she had taken upon herself the collection of taxes, that she levied thereon five per cent. for school purposes, that she had deposed the treasurer and had appointed one of her own, who happened to be her muchacho, so that the books and funds were securely locked up in her stout camphor-wood chest. But as the town officials were suspected of sundry peculations, the new system was regarded as somewhat of an improvement. Besides, at that time she was absolutely invaluable with a contribution to The Philippine Teacher (the superintendent's special hobby) upon the "Model Nipa Home," an article embellished with diagrams and elevations and cross-sections. A few weeks later, it is true, there came from Mr. Rued, a constabulary second-class inspector, stationed in Taal, a most virulent protest about the burning of some two hundred shacks that happened to conform only too distantly with the ideal "Model Nipa Home." Mr. Rued, being a mild man, thought this method of civic improvement too strenuous. With this, his chief in Manila thoroughly agreed, and, leaving him full discretion as to methods, ordered him to take all necessary measures—which command, mysteriously enough, remained forever without answer.

It was just about this time that Papa Gato, living in idyllic ease in his impenetrable bosques up the sides of the Taal, began to feel that vague but imperious self-dissatisfaction which is the peculiar appanage of us unfortunate humans—the inward command to work. The Mexican pesos of his last raid were becoming deplorably few, his store of palay was low, and the contributions of the villagers spoke of failing memories. It was time for another raid.

But this time, with his more earthy preoccupations there mingled blue-hazed dreams. Gato, in spite of a real practical genius, often proven by the ingenuity of his methods of extracting from recalcitrants information as to the whereabouts of their hidden wealth, Papa Gato was sentimental. Even before the revolution, whose impassioned call had led him into a mode of life from which he had never been able to free himself, even when a humble cochero in Manila, he had been a dreamer. And now, Pope spiritually—this for the benefit of the rural population, but treated by his own camp followers with large, American-imported winks—king administratively, Marescal de Campo militarily, this deplorable trait was still with him. The life of an outlaw, even in the Philippines, has its disadvantages. Gato's particular disadvantage, which he now set himself to nullify, was this: he had never seen an American woman. He had never seen one of those golden-haired maestras, which the American nation (with that inconsistency which prompts them to shoot—alternately and with equal firmness, precision, and dispatch—lead and book learning into his people) sends to far pueblos like angelic visitations. But there was one in Taal. He had heard that she was wonderful (it speaks eloquently of his sentimentalism that he had never sought to find out in what she was wonderful; his imagination immediately made her so in the mode that he would have her so—stately, golden-haired and seraphic). So it was that Taal was chosen as the field of his next exploit.

With his usual courteous foresight, he sent into the town an announcement of his intention to capture the treasury and the maestra. This was his regular mode of procedure, and not so fatuous as it may appear. It had the double effect of warning his friends—he had many in all places—and of paralysing his enemies. This time, however, he was surprised with an official answer from the municipal council, sitting in executive session. This answer was three varas long and redundant with rhetoric; but reduced to plain and precise English it might well be set down thus:

"For God's sake, take her away, and you can have the money, too."

This alacrity seemed to him highly suspicious, so, with strategic cunning, he decided to hold camp with his main force, and to send off his brigadier-general, Gomez, with a force of two lieutenant-generals, five colonels, ten majors, twenty captains, and a few lieutenants for the more facile work in Taal.