Malabanan looked him over insolently before answering: "Yes."
Moro met Tagalog in the Bogobo's country on the common ground of the American-brought English tongue!
"Malabanan, you know me?"
"No."
"You remember one night—nine years now—on Basilan? You remember kill old man, old woman, then girl on boat? You remember kill little boy, too, and throw in sea?"
The Moro's voice dripped with the released passions of nine years of brooding over terrible wrongs. As he saw the light of recollection appear in the desperado's dark face, he struggled to speak the words that had been dammed up so long:
"Malabanan, I am that boy.... Now you die!"
He snatched the long knife from the scarf knotted about his waist in Moro fashion, his knees bending under him in a tigerish crouch as he slowly circled toward his powerful enemy. Malabanan drew his great bolo with a contemptuous sneer at the little Moro and before Terry could have interfered had he wished, they leaped at each other. Matak dodged down under the first awful sweep of the gleaming bolo and as he came up he struck at Malabanan, not with the classic downward stroke, but UP!
As the glittering blade went home, deep, Malabanan threw the Moro from him with a convulsive heave that crashed him senseless against the stump of a charred tree. His colorless left eye, lusterless in strange contrast to the baleful fire that glowed in the right, Malabanan gathered his fast ebbing strength in a last effort and staggered toward the unconscious Moro, his glittering weapon upraised, heedless of the pale American who stepped out with a rasping: "Halt!"
But he sank limp as Terry's heavy pistol roared a message he did heed—though never heard—sagging down to sprawl across the Moro's legs.