After administering summary justice to these villains, Terry had started back, only to be caught himself in a bamboo trap laid in a nipa hut, into which he had stepped after reading a placard on the outside addressed to the Americans and promising that information of value could be obtained inside. Terry had fallen through the false floor which had been laid over sharpened bamboo poles planted below.
The priest refused to allow Adams’s body even temporary sepulture in the cemetery of Guindulman, declaring that, since he was not a catholic, Adams could not be admitted to consecrated ground. The Major refused to take the priest’s objections seriously, and pointed out the fact that, in default of sepulture tax, the bones of those interred were unceremoniously thrown out of the graveyard. However over-crowded the cemetery might be, room for the present, the Major declared, must be made for the remains of the dead officer. It was a note-worthy fact that in Nahal there had never been sufficient accommodation for either the living or the dead.
The quarrel ended in the annexation to the cemetery of a bit of outside territory. So it was in unconsecrated ground, in a lonely corner of alien forests, that Adams was put to rest.
The sun beat down on the open grave, and on the rude box. A strange hush lay over the tropical atmosphere. Adams’s horse, with his master’s boots reversed against the saddle, stood arching his neck with sad pride.
The Major read the burial service. His harsh voice broke as he spoke of the good soldier Adams had been, and a tear stole down his stern cheek. The men pulled their hats down over their eyes, while Julie stole forward weeping and sprinkled flowers over the friend who had stepped out forever from the problem of the East.
CHAPTER X
A desperate situation now confronted Julie. For two weeks she had been exhausting her ingenuity trying to keep her household going. The wages of Gregorio, the cook, were unpaid, and trifling with the pocket of a desperado is never wise—for it was patent from his physiognomy that Gregorio was an insurrecto, or about to become one. All of Julie’s affairs had been in suspense pending the arrival of her month’s salary. Then word had come that the boat carrying mail between Manila and Solano had been wrecked and the teachers’ checks lost. Cablegrams sent to the chaotic Department in Manila evoked no response. Miss Hope, the itinerant Crœsus, did not seem embarrassed by the catastrophe; duplicates would undoubtedly be sent in time. But Julie could not wait another minute.
James brought hope into Julie’s despair, however, by informing her that Miss Hope had told him that the Treasurer was prepared to advance officially temporary loans to straitened teachers. This was salvation through the gate of purgatory; for Julie desperately hated to approach Purcell in a capacity that would permit him to assume the aspect of bestowing a favor upon her.
But her affairs had come to such a pass that there was no alternative to be considered. She owed pressing debts around the town, to say nothing of those in Solano; and they all hurt her prestige as a teacher. She knew that she would have to go to him.