By Rowland Thomas
Early one morning, just before the dawn, three of us were riding wearily down the slope of one of the great grassy hills—some people call them mountains—which lie between the provinces of Isabella and Nueva Vizcaya.
We had been travelling all night by moonlight, and now as the east was growing rosy we were winding down to a little wood in the valley, where we hoped to find a mountain stream to give us water for our breakfast, and a thing of far more importance, grazing for the horses, for it was the dry season, and the grass on the hills was parched and dead. The breakfast swung with mocking lightness behind Justin’s saddle, merely a few handfuls of cold rice rolled in the butt of a banana leaf. It was also tiffin and dinner, for we were travelling light and fast, and carried not even chocolate, nothing but the rice.
I was watching the gyrations of the breakfast moodily, for I was sleepy and hungry and sore, when suddenly from the wood below us the crow of a cock rang out, shrill and triumphant. I was surprised, for few people live along a trail used mostly by bandits and head-hunters.
Suddenly from the slope of a farther hill the call rang out again, and then the whole wood echoed with the sounds of the farmyard.
“What town is this?” I asked the boys, although we were at least a day’s journey from any settlement which I knew.
Justin laughed, and even Tranquid smiled stiffly.
“It is no town, señor,” said Justin. “It is the manuk del monte—the wild chicken—which you hear.”
After saddles were off and the horses’ backs were washed, the animals rolled and grazed luxuriously by the swift, clear stream, and Tranquid, prince of servants, dexterously unrolled the breakfast.
He laid stones on the corners of the leaf, and patted the snowy mass of rice out smoothly, and filled a bamboo drinking-cup from the brook, while I pretended not to see. At meal-times Tranquid has a solemn and important air worthy of the most autocratic of London butlers, and I am a babe in his hands.