“He has probably got on the wrong trail,” the Major reassured her, “and will turn up in Dao yet.”
“And you will do nothing awful to him?” she pleaded.
“We will do the best we can within the scope of the regulations, of course. He’s had a tough time of it, and the fact of your being here just swept him out of his senses, probably.”
Julie walked dazedly to the door. There she paused, and asked almost fiercely: “May I ask, Major, who your informant in this matter was?”
“I am sorry”—the Major appeared troubled—“but I promised not to say.”
Adams’s danger swept Julie’s mind of every other thought. She was aware, nevertheless, of how fearfully, on the spur of the moment, she had complicated, the situation that she had attempted to save.
She knew very little about military trials, but she was sure that in a time like this, actually one of war, an officer who had deliberately left his post in violation of orders, or in wilful misconstruction of permission, to travel through a hostile country, was in for a bad time of it, and possibly for disgrace. Any extenuating circumstances that she could advance it seemed her duty to offer, at whatever personal cost. But what of their future relations—of a bond cemented like this? In casting herself away, characteristically, on the instant, to save Adams, she had never given a thought to the issue.
Terry with his detachment of men was sent out from Tarlac in search of Adams. The Major also dispatched a force from his own garrison over the route that Adams had probably taken on his return. The country was wild and inaccessible, and it was hoped that he had merely gotten lost. For several days nothing was heard from the searching parties. The Major’s suspense, together with that of the whole garrison, grew painful. It was about the time of the atrocities in Negros and Samar, and the Americans knew not what each dark day might bring forth.
Several days later both parties came into Guindulman bringing Terry, dangerously wounded, and the body of Adams. He had been murdered in the hills—had lost his life in the new country that he had served.
After turning the country upside down, Terry had discovered Adams’s horse in one of the dark little villages, and had forced the populace to disclose what had become of Adams. He found that Adams had come through the village very tired and hungry, and had asked for some food and a place to sleep for a few hours. He had a fine horse, a good pistol, and obviously some money; so the presidente had proffered him a dinner of hot chicken and had led him to a room. While he slept the presidente and his accomplices had strangled him with a rope, and thrown his body in a hole on the river bank.