The broad compliment was accompanied by an even broader smile. Muller was very much pleased with himself, and thought he was handling a delicate situation in a manner that Van Slyck himself could not have improved upon.
Peter Gross's gravity did not relax. "How are the natives? Do you have much difficulty?" he inquired.
Muller assumed a wobegone expression. "Ach, mynheer," he exclaimed dolorously, "those hill Dyaks are devils. It is one raid after another; they will not let us alone. The rice-fields are swept bare. What the Dyaks do not get, the floods and typhoons get, and the weevils eat the stubble. We have not had a crop in two years. The rice we gathered for taxes from those villages where there was a little blessing on the harvest we had to distribute among the villages where the crop failed to keep our people from starving. That is why we could not ship to Batavia. I wish his excellency would come here himself and see how things are; he would not be so critical about the taxes that are not paid."
"Do the coast Dyaks ever make trouble?" Peter Gross asked.
Muller glanced at him shrewdly.
"It is the hill Dyaks who begin it, mynheer. Sometimes my coast Dyaks lose their heads when their crops are burned and their wives and children are stolen, but that is not often. We can control them better than we can the hill people, for they are nearer us. Of course a man runs amuck occasionally, but that you find everywhere."
"I hear there is a half-white woman who wields a great influence over them," Peter Gross remarked. "Who is she?"
"You mean Koyala, mynheer. A wonderful woman with a great influence over her people; they would follow her to death. That was a wise act, mynheer, to persuade his excellency to cancel the offer he made for her person. Bulungan will not forget it. You could not have done anything that pleases the people more."
"She is very beautiful, I have heard," Peter Gross remarked pensively.
Muller glanced at him sharply, and a quick spasm of jealousy contracted his features. The resident might like a pretty face, too, was his instant thought; it was an angle he had not bargained for. This Mynheer Gross was strong and handsome, young—altogether a dangerous rival. His mellow good nature vanished.