The Law of the Bolo

by Stanley Portal Hyatt

The Constabulary died game. They were from Samar, Visayans by race, and the outlaws were natives of Luzon, Tagalogs; and between Visayan and Tagalog there is a never-dying blood-feud. Those who had bolos dropped their carbines, and set to work in their national fashion; those who had no bolos clubbed their carbines, and did their best that way. All died standing up, and almost every Visayan killed or wounded a Tagalog before he himself went down. They upheld the honour of Samar that day on the slopes of Felizardo’s mountains, when the Tagalog outlaws were three to one, and had the additional advantage of surprising a winded column.

Basil found himself with a little group of some fifteen men. The bolomen were in between him and the rest of his party, and so thick was the smoke—for, despite his orders, those round him continued to blaze away wildly—that he could see nothing of what was occurring below. Only, knowing that the outlaws were in overwhelming force, and hearing no more shots from the rest of his column, he could guess with a fair degree of certainty.

There were no bolomen above him now, so far as he could make out, and when at last the smoke cleared away, he could see none on the slope below. Nor could he see any of his other men, at least until he went down to look for them. Then he found them, and every one he saw was dead, usually with a dead outlaw somewhere near him.

He did not stay to count the bodies; he did not even go through what would have been the perfectly useless formality of ascertaining if any were still alive. For some inexplicable reason the outlaws had disappeared—they had not even made an attempt against him and his own little group—but they might be back at any moment, and his first duty was to get his pitiful handful of survivors into a place of safety.

As they hurried down the hillside, Basil blamed himself savagely for his folly. He had gone on blindly, in face of the warning of the alarm-horn, in face of Felizardo’s warning, taking his brave little fellows to certain death; and then, in the end, he had escaped without even one single boloman having attempted his life. Moreover, he had remained where he was, whilst his men were being cut to pieces below him. At first, this latter thought was the most bitter of all; then suddenly he understood, with a great sense of relief—Felizardo had ordered his life to be spared, and if he had led those last fifteen through the smoke they, too, would have been sacrificed uselessly. Still, it was galling to feel you owed your life to the clemency of an old outlaw, whom you had been sent out to catch.

He wondered what they would say in Manila. They would get his first message, telling how he had surprised the outpost on the slope of the volcano; and now he would have to send a second message—a message of a very different character—reporting that he had lost fifty men and fifty carbines, that the outlaws had scored a victory, the news of which would carry hope and encouragement to the hearts of all the criminal and all the disloyal elements in the Islands.

He wondered too what his men would think of him. They were keeping very close at his heels, expecting another attack any moment. He glanced back over his shoulder, half-fearing to meet with scornful or reproachful looks; but they were loyal little fellows, being simple tao, and, in their half-savage way, they were very sorry for him. The serjeant, a grizzled veteran who had received his first training at Calocan, under the successor of the old corporal of the Guardia Civil, tried to comfort him. “It is Fate, Senor. Why worry? Last time we had the luck; to-day the luck is with those accursed ladrones. Doubtless, next time we shall have our chance again. We could not help it. If we had charged, instead of keeping where we were, they would have had us too, and there would have been none to avenge our comrades. They were three to one all the time; and they were fresh, whilst we were exhausted with the climbing and the mud. It was their day to-day, Senor; to-morrow, it will be ours!”

The little men following behind grunted approval, which eased Basil’s mind considerably, knowing, as he did, that they were reliable judges.

They saw no trace of the outlaws as they made their way down to the beach, though three of the men whom they had reckoned dead, scrambled through the jungle to rejoin them. Basil breathed more freely when he found himself back in the cocoa-nut grove, off Felizardo’s ground, where, at least, one had a chance to shoot.

“We will get to Katubig as quickly as possible,” he said to the serjeant. “I don’t think they will follow us there; but, even if they do, we can put up a fight in one of the houses.”