The Law of the Bolo

by Stanley Portal Hyatt

On the fourth morning, they reported to Mr Furber that they must have driven the outlaws down on to the seaward slope, and that it was now only a case of closing in and capturing, or slaying, the whole band. The message had hardly been delivered when another came in, this time from one of those two traitors in Felizardo’s own camp. The band had broken up suddenly the previous night. The outlaws, feeling the game was hopeless, had gone, each his own way, slipping through the cordon of troops in the darkness, singly, and leaving old Felizardo alone with the two traitors. The three were now hiding in a small patch of jungle, almost on the same spot where Basil had his fight, and, if the troops closed in quickly, they would be certain to get the old chief.

Mr Furber’s heart rejoiced, whilst a load of anxiety seemed to slip from the shoulders of the Presidente.

“Let them close in at once,” Mr Furber said. “They must lose no time, and when they have him, let them bring him down here, to Katubig. I have had a set of irons brought. As for the two—the two men who have been aiding us”—traitor is an ugly word—“see that they are not injured in the excitement.”

The troops moved quickly. They were utterly weary of their task, believing in their own minds that it must prove futile, but the unexpected news passed out by the traitors put fresh heart into them. They were going to capture the great Felizardo, after all; and each man would be able to declare to the girls in his village that it was he who had done the deed. They surrounded that stretch of jungle on every side, and they drew in the cordon until the men were almost touching one another, hand to hand; and yet there was never a sign of life from inside the ring.

A queer nervousness ran through them all, white officers and natives alike. Was he still there, the terrible little old man? Was he really going to be captured at last, after nearly thirty-six years? What was he doing now? What would he do? What—— And then Felizardo himself answered all the questions.

A grey horse seemed to spring from nowhere, and the look on the face of his rider was like nothing else any of them had ever seen. It was before that look that they cowered, rather than before the revolver in the outstretched hand. The horse went through the line as if no one were there, though one of its hoofs cracked the skull of a serjeant of Constabulary, who was standing, open-mouthed, in its course.

From first to last, it was a matter of seconds, twenty yards of open jungle at the outside, and both the grey and its rider were out of sight before the belated volley rattled harmlessly after them. They passed the word round the cordon, and the white officers sat down and mopped their foreheads, and wondered what Commissioner Furber would say. Then a thought struck one of them. “Where are those two spies of Furber’s? I wonder whether——” He did not finish the sentence, but took half a company and went to investigate for himself. After a while, he found them both, hanging from the branch of a tree, with the torn fragments of the banknotes which had been the price of their treason scattered over the ground beneath them.

The officer exchanged glances with his serjeant. “He has done it, single-handed,” he said in an awestruck voice.

The serjeant drew a deep breath. “It is ill work to betray Felizardo, Senor.”

Mr Commissioner Furber and the Presidente of Igut were sitting in the cool, nipa-thatched shack which served them as headquarters, waiting for news of the capture of Felizardo, when one of the half-dozen members of the Igut police, who were serving as escort, suddenly tumbled up the little ladder into the shack, and tried to hide himself in a corner. “There are bolomen,” he gasped. “They have taken the others prisoners.”