Terry thrust the vial of capsules into his shirt pocket and after thanking Sears hastened outside to where his men were tightening girths under the watchful Sergeant's eye. Sears hovered over Terry, offering advice, expostulating, as Terry mounted and gathered rein.
"Lieutenant," he said, "you know the ford is just above the pool they call the 'Crocodile Hole.' Cross the ford, come back along the bank, and you'll find a trail leadin' to the three shacks in the woods."
"I know, Sears. Thanks. Good-by."
"Adios," Sears called. Then he stood watching the little band trot through the gate and into the woods. His eyes moistened, he raised his big fist against an invisible foe.
"If they get him—" he muttered through lips that trembled unashamed, "if they get that boy—that sick boy, I'll—I'll—we'll ... and I didn't have any medicine for him—the only thing he ever asked me for—or ever asked anybody for!"
For the first time Terry urged the gray. Matak over two hours ahead of him and mounted on the next best pony in the Gulf ... Malabanan hours ahead of Matak, riding toward the Ledesma girl held for him in one of the three shacks.... He pushed the pony hard across the open clearings, recklessly forced him through the underbrush that in frequent areas obliterated the trail. They were now well inland and mounting a perceptible grade toward the foothills: the sluggish stream they had paralleled all day ran swift here. Once, where the trail twisted near the bank, they heard the rush of rapids, and a mile farther on they came in sight of a curiously soundless waterfull. They had reached the Bogobo country but the afternoon quiet was unbroken by the sound of agongs. Fear had reached the foothills.
His pony was too much for the courageous but smaller mounts of the Macabebes and Terry gradually drew ahead. He must overtake Malabanan before nightfall.... Ledesma had not put his confidence into words, but he had looked it—had trusted him ... the pony's head and neck dripped, a welt of lather fringed the saddle blanket over the withers and down both shoulders. The Sergeant, seeing his men fall behind, galloped up into the lead and cursed them on with graphic phrases culled from the English, Spanish and Malay tongues. But it was useless: the gray pony carried its desperately anxious rider faster than their jaded mounts could travel. Terry drew out of sight, but they rode on.
All through the afternoon Terry had been dimly conscious that the headache had returned, that his face was flushed and hot, but the fast pumping blood seemed to energize his faculties. Never had he felt so keyed-up, so sinewy of nerve.
The hours flew with the miles. At five o'clock he crashed out of the woods into an open spot where the trail bent down toward the river to skirt a deep black pool—the Bogobos' Crocodile Hole, which none of them would ever approach. It was a roughly circular depression extending from bank to bank, a hundred feet in diameter; it lay just below the ledge of rock that made a low-water ford but which, at high water, was the brink of a falls which had worn a deep hole in the soft river bottom.