“Felizardo thanks the American captain for returning to him his daughter, and the other women, and also the wounded men. That is how brave men make war; and if at any time Felizardo has the opportunity of doing a similar service, assuredly it will be performed. On the other hand, in the mountains, which belong to Felizardo, there is only one law, the Law of the Bolo, and those who come as enemies will be met with the bolo. This was the word Felizardo sent to the insurrectos, and he sends the same message to the Americanos. Though, perhaps, some day he may be able to show the captain of the Samar men that he can be an enemy and a friend at the same time.”
Captain Basil Hayle folded the letter carefully, and thrust it into an inner pocket. “H’m!” he muttered, “Felizardo’s own daughter—the well-dressed, pretty mestiza, I suppose. I don’t think I shall mention this to Furber—or to any one else, for that matter, as they wouldn’t understand.”
CHAPTER IV
HOW MRS BUSH HEARD OF THE LAW OF THE BOLO
After he received the letter from Felizardo, thanking him for returning his daughter, promising to repay the service when an opportunity occurred, and threatening him with the Law of the Bolo if he dared to come, as an American officer, on to his mountains, Captain Basil Hayle spent three days in Katubig, resting his men, and preparing to do the very thing which Felizardo had forbidden. His duty was to destroy the community of outlaws in the mountains; yet, though at the first encounter he had scored an easy victory, he was by no means sure that he could repeat the process. It is one thing for troops armed with carbines to surprise bolomen in the open, quite another thing when the bolomen jump out on the troops in the dense jungle, where you hardly have time to bring your carbine to your shoulder once, much less have time to reload, before they are right on you, slashing and jabbing with their hateful knives, under cover of the smoke.
So far, Basil Hayle had had practically no experience of jungle fighting, but he had a very shrewd notion of what it would be like; and, whilst his little Constabulary soldiers were full of confidence and ardour, as a result of their first victory, he looked forward with a certain amount of misgiving, not because he was afraid—he was physically incapable of fear—but because, having started the hunting of Felizardo, he was anxious to see the job through to the end.
He heard a good deal of Felizardo during those three days; for on the night of his return a curious little tramp steamer wheezed into the bay, and put ashore an equally curious old Spaniard, a hemp-buyer; and from him Basil Hayle learned many things; for the newcomer had known Don José Ramirez and the corporal of the Guardia Civil, and could remember the building of what was then the new gallows at Calocan, on which they had hanged Cinicio Dagujob the ladrone thirty-five years before. Consequently, he was able to tell Basil, who was only too ready to hear, all about how Felizardo had slain Pablo the priest, and had run off with Dolores Lasara, and had taken to the mountains, of which he was now the ruler.
Basil Hayle asked many questions, and with each answer he grew to have more respect for the power of the wizened little man whom he was to hunt down—if he could. Of Dolores Lasara the Spaniard could tell him little. “I saw her once, and—I was very young then, younger than you are now—I thought her the most beautiful mestiza in the Islands. Perhaps she was; at any rate, many men have died because Felizardo loved her so well. She is still alive, they say; and I hear there is a daughter.” Basil coloured involuntarily. “How do I hear all these things? Oh, now that they no longer have reason to fear us, we Spaniards can go anywhere, just as the English have always done. The Law of the Bolo is for other Filipinos, and for you Americanos”—he laughed gently—“you will learn that law by and by. So far, you have hardly begun to know it. If we had taken those insurrectos, those generals and colonels and majors, we should have hanged them, and finished all the foolishness. You create them judges and governors, and make it worse. This same Felizardo knows better than that, even though he may have been born a tao and have killed a priest.”
Just as the Constabulary were starting out on the fourth morning, the old Spaniard gave their officer one last word of advice. “I say you are mad to go on Felizardo’s mountains at all—what harm does the old man do to your American politicians in Manila?—but you will be more than mad if you go round on the northern slopes.”