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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Law of the
Bolo
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: The Law of the Bolo

Author: Stanley Portal Hyatt

Release date: September 11, 2017 [eBook #55526]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW OF THE

BOLO ***
THE LAW OF THE BOLO

BY
STANLEY PORTAL HYATT

DANA ESTES & COMPANY

BOSTON
 CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. HOW FELIZARDO TOOK TO THE HILLS 1
II. HOW THE CORPORAL WENT BACK TO SPAIN 22
III. HOW CAPTAIN BASIL HAYLE WENT TO THE
MOUNTAINS 42
IV. HOW MRS BUSH HEARD OF THE LAW OF THE
BOLO 68
V. HOW MR COMMISSIONER GUMPERTZ AND MR
JOSEPH GOBBITT TALKED OF HIGH FINANCE 96
VI. CONCERNING MR JOSEPH GOBBITT, CAPTAIN
BASIL HAYLE, AND THE HEAD OF ALBERT DUNK 114
VII. HOW THEY REBUILT THE GALLOWS AT CALOCAN 138
VIII. HOW MR COMMISSIONER FURBER MET
FELIZARDO 180
IX. HOW MR COMMISSIONER GUMPERTZ OFFERED A
REWARD 208
X. HOW FELIZARDO WENT BACK TO SAN
POLYCARPIO 221
XI. HOW THE BOLO OF FELIZARDO CUT A KNOT 238
XII. HOW FELIZARDO MADE PEACE 264
 FOREWORD

The Law of the Bolo, which runs throughout the Philippine Islands, has the
crowning merit of simplicity. Unlike the codes of other countries, with their
folios of verbiage, their precedents, decisions, and interpretations, their
hair-splitting subtleties and refinements of phrase, their hidden dangers for
the unwary and unfortunate, the Law of the Bolo, of the terrible two-foot-
long knife, with which a Filipino can cleave his enemy from collar-bone to
the waist, has but one clause—that the spoil shall go to the man with the
longest reach. Possibly the process is crude, but, at least, it is speedy and
final. Judge, jury, counsel, the Bolo takes the place of all these; and there is
no appeal, at any rate in this life.

The Law of the Bolo has also the merit of antiquity. It was in force when
the Spaniards annexed the Archipelago; it is in force there to-day, under the
American successors of the Spaniards; and probably it will still be in force
when, not only this generation, but half a dozen of its successors as well,
have passed away—not because it is perfect, no law is, but because it is so
admirably suited to local conditions.

Half the troubles in the Islands during the last century or so—a great many
more than half, probably—have been due to the fact that white men would
not recognise this elemental code. Mr Commissioner Furber, the head of the
department of Constabulary and Trade in Manila, regarded it as scandalous,
as did also Mr Dwight P. Sharler, the Chief Collector of Customs, and Mr
Joseph Gobbitt, of the British firm of Gobbitt & Dunk, Eastern merchants;
but both old Felizardo, the ladrone leader, and Captain Basil Hayle of the
Philippines Constabulary, understood it, and acted on that knowledge,
thereby avoiding many mistakes, as this story will show ….
THE LAW OF THE BOLO
CHAPTER I
 HOW FELIZARDO TOOK TO THE HILLS
Felizardo was sixty years of age, a wizened little man, quiet of voice,
emphatic of gesture, when the Americans displaced the Spaniards, and
began to preach the doctrines of Law and Order, coupled with those of
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, as defined by the Declaration of
Independence. In appearance, Felizardo was not unlike a Japanese, being
purely Asiatic by descent; but, so far as essential characteristics, were
concerned, he was a son of the Tropics, with the qualities of his kind.

For all practical purposes, Felizardo’s history begins thirty-five years before
the coming of the Americans. Up till that point in his career, he had been an
ordinary tao, one of the peasantry of a village some ten miles from Manila,
outwardly apathetic and inoffensive, respecting, or at least fearing, the Law
as represented by the Presidente and the Guardia Civil, and earning such
money as he needed—which was not much—by an occasional day’s work
in his hemp-patch up on the mountain-side. For the rest, he fished when he
had sufficient energy, or was sufficiently hungry so to do, or gathered
cocoa-nuts in the grove which stretched for a couple of miles along the sea-
shore. Then, suddenly, Dolores Lasara came into his life, and his character
developed.

Dolores was the daughter of Juan Lasara, the Teniente of San Polycarpio,
the next village to that in which Felizardo had been born and bred. Rumour
in the village, which possibly spoke the truth, declared that Juan was
connected with the local band of ladrones, and, as that body enjoyed a
degree of immunity unusual even in the Philippines, there may have been
grounds for the suspicion.

Juan Lasara was a mestizo, a half-caste, and Dolores herself showed strong
traces of her white ancestry. Felizardo, on the other hand, was a native pure
and simple, and, unlike most of his kind, prided himself on the fact.
Dolores and Felizardo first met after a fiesta, the feast of the patron saint of
San Polycarpio. The girl, clad all in white, was walking in the procession
round the plaza, following closely in the wake of the stout priest and the
gaudily-painted image, when the man, lounging against the timbers of the
crude belfry, smoking the eternal cigarette, suddenly awakened to the fact
that there were other things in life besides tobacco and native spirits and
game-cocks. He did not follow Dolores into the church—that would have
involved abstention from several cigarettes, and would, to his mind, have
served no useful purpose—but he waited outside patiently, and, when she
emerged, followed her home, where he made the acquaintance of her father,
whom he knew well by sight.

Juan Lasara, the Teniente of San Polycarpio, was a very able man, as his
hidden store of greasy Bank of Spain notes would have told you, if you had
been able to unearth them from the hiding-place up on the mountain-side;
and, being able, he realised that there were latent possibilities in the rather
shy young tao who was so obviously taken with Dolores; consequently, he
was perfectly ready to let the girl accompany Felizardo down to the cockpit
to see the fights, which, as every Filipino knows, are the most important
part of a religious festival.

The Teniente saw the young people off from the veranda of his house, the
only stone-built one in San Polycarpio; then he went back to his office,
where presently there came to him Father Pablo, the parish priest, also a
mestizo, and Cinicio Dagujob, a fierce little man, with two bolos strapped
on his waist. The last-named had come in, unostentatiously, from the jungle
behind the house, after the two Guardia Civil, who had been sent to attend
the fiesta, had gone off to keep order at the cockpit; and even now he did
not seem quite at ease, knowing that those dreaded Spanish gens d’armes
were still in the village. “There might be trouble at the cockpit, and they
might bring their prisoners here,” he muttered.

Juan Lasara laughed. “If there were trouble, they would only beat the
causes of it with the flat of their sabres. That is their way—with the tao. It is
only you and your kind that they take as prisoners, or kill.”
Cinicio’s beady eyes flashed. “And how about you and the reverend
father?” he snarled.

Once more Lasara laughed. “He is the priest of San Polycarpio, and I am
the Teniente. If they came—which they would not do without warning—
you would be Dagujob, the ladrone chief, whom we had lured here, in order
that he might be taken and hanged on the new gallows at Calocan. You
understand, Cinicio?”

A sudden movement of his hand to his side showed that the robber did
comprehend; then the half-drawn bolo was thrust back into its wooden
sheath, contemptuously. “Bah!” its owner growled, “you dare not. I should
talk, and there is room on that gallows for three of us, even when one is a
fat priest. And now—what is the business we are to discuss?”

Father Pablo blew out a cloud of smoke and watched it curling upwards.
“Don José Ramirez will be receiving three thousand pesos next month to
pay for the new hemp land he is buying from the Friars,” he said.

Cinicio Dagujob leaned forward. “Don José, the Spanish merchant at

Calocan?” he asked.

The priest nodded, whilst the Teniente added with a grin: “His place is
opposite the new gallows, which they have put up for you and your kind,
Cinicio.”

The ladrone ignored the last remark; this was now a purely professional
matter.

“How are we to get in?” he demanded. “The house is of stone, well

shuttered; and, if we tried force, the noise would bring down the Guardia
Civil, who are only a quarter of a mile away.”

Father Pablo had gone to the window, and was staring out. He preferred not
to listen to such discussions, which accorded ill with his calling; but the
Teniente had no such scruples. “You must have some one inside, to open the
door, then when Don José comes down——” He finished with a suggestive
motion.

“That is easy to say,” growled the ladrone—“very easy to say; but whom
can you get? Our own men are”—he shrugged his shoulders expressively
—“suspected; and they might not like to be so near your gallows; whilst
your people here are fools, every one—just common tao. Then a man from
Manila would get in one of his own hands. It is rubbish. I know Don José
Ramirez of old. He will keep his pesos safe until he hands them over to the
Friars; and then, of course, one cannot rob the Church.”

Father Pablo, standing with his back to them, seemed to have missed
everything else, but he heard those last words, and nodded his head,
apparently in approval of the sentiment; though possibly, could the others
have seen it, the smile on his face might have explained various things to
them.

The Teniente of San Polycarpio did not answer at once, but lighted a fresh
cigar very carefully, and got it drawing well; then, “I have the man,” he said
quietly. “He came to me to-day, by chance, following my daughter,
Dolores.” Father Pablo started slightly. “He is a tao, with brains. I know
Don José wants a man to live in the house. If I send this young Felizardo to
him, he will take him; and if I promise Felizardo that he shall marry
Dolores, the door will be opened to you. I only met him to-day, but”—he
laughed pleasantly—“I know men and women; and I saw how it was with
those two, at once.”

There was no smile on Father Pablo’s face now, and one of his hands was
gripping the window frame more tightly than a casual observer might have
thought necessary; but the two other men were not watching him, being
interested in the details of their plan.

It was sundown when Felizardo and Dolores came back, chattering gaily.
On the road they passed the two Guardia Civil, in their gorgeous uniforms,
with their clattering sabres and horse pistols in vast leather holsters.
Felizardo received a friendly nod from them, being known as a decent
young tao; but Father Pablo, whom they met a little further on, had no
blessing to bestow, only a scowl.

“I do not like him,” the man said abruptly.

The girl shivered slightly. “Nor I. He is a priest, I know; but still——” She
broke off significantly, and, for the first time in his life, Felizardo felt the
instinct to kill awaken in him. Unconsciously, he became a convert to the
Law of the Bolo; consciously, he decided that Father Pablo must be
watched.

The Teniente of San Polycarpio was alone when the couple returned, and
received Felizardo very graciously. He was interested in the young man,
and asked him many questions, whilst Dolores was preparing some supper,
a far more elaborate supper than usual.

“You ought to do better,” Lasara said kindly. “I see you are not like the
majority; and there are careers for those who are ready to work. Look at
myself”—he was a hemp-buyer—“I started to learn in a Spaniard’s store,
and made all this myself. I should be a very happy man, if only I had a son.
As it is, there is Dolores alone; and my ambition now is to see her married
to an honourable man, a man of the people like myself, not a frothy agitator
from Manila.”

Felizardo fumbled badly with the cigarette he was rolling; but before he
could make any reply, his host had got up abruptly. “Come and see me
again soon—the day after to-morrow, if you like. I believe I know of a post
which might suit you.”

They make love quickly in the Tropics; consequently, it was not out of the
natural order of things that, as he walked home through the cocoa-nut
groves that night, Felizardo should feel sure both of his own feelings and of
those of Dolores. Somehow, the world seemed to have grown a very
different place. He had never noticed the moon quite so bright before, never
realised how wonderfully beautiful was the effect of the light dancing on
the waters. Then, suddenly, with a sense of shame, he remembered how he
had wasted his life. He had eaten, smoked, and gambled on fighting-cocks
—that was his whole record so far; but it should be different for the future.
He turned into his little nipa-thatched house full of this good resolution, and
awakened in the morning still of the same mind. There was a fiesta on in his
own village that day, and he had saved five pesos in order to have an
unusually large bet on his own favourite fighting-cock, hitherto the
champion of the place; but, instead of doing so, he donned his working
clothes, took his working bolo, and started off towards his hemp-patch, two
miles away, up the hillside. One or two women he passed—the men rose
late on fiesta-days—stared after him in astonishment; whilst a youth, who
was taking a game-cock for its morning airing, hugging the over-fed bird
closely in his arms, endeavoured to call him back; but Felizardo knew his
own mind. That evening, just as the cock-fighting was over, he staggered
down with the biggest load of hemp a man had ever brought into the village
—one or two complained afterwards that he had cleaned up some of their
hemp in addition to his own—took it into the Spanish hemp-buyers’
warehouse, and presently emerged with the best suit of white linen he could
buy.

In after years they used to talk of the look which was on Felizardo’s face
that last evening he spent in the village. They chaffed him, of course—who
but a fool would clean up hemp on a fiesta-day?—but he walked past them
all without appearing to notice them. He was not angry—there was no
question of that; it was only that he seemed to have urgent, and very
pleasant, business of his own on hand. He had become a man apart from
them; and, though none could have foreseen it, he was to remain a man
apart, in a very different sense.

By noon the following day, Felizardo was sitting on the broad, cool veranda
of Juan Lasara’s house, talking to Dolores. There was no hurry about
business, the Teniente said cheerfully. He himself was likely to be fully
occupied until evening. Let the visitor stay the night, and on the morrow
they would go over and interview Don José Ramirez, to whom he had
already written—a proposal which suited both Dolores and Felizardo.

They talked all that afternoon and all that evening—the Teniente was
wonderfully discreet in keeping out of the way—and when, on the
following day, Felizardo took a reluctant farewell, they were perfectly sure
they understood one another. Other people of their ages have made up their
minds, temporarily at least, just as quickly, even under colder skies than
those of the Philippines.

As the two men were going down to the beach—Calocan lay round a
headland, a long stretch of mangrove swamp, and you had to reach it by
canoe—they met Father Pablo, apparently going to the Teniente’s. The
Teniente stopped a minute and spoke to the priest in a low voice, then
rejoined Felizardo, whilst the Father continued on his way.

Felizardo thought of Dolores, alone in the house, with only a couple of

servants working in the courtyard, thought of the fat, sensual face, the self-
assertive swagger, and once more that instinct to kill, which is one of the
elemental corollaries of love, came back to him, stronger than ever. For a
moment he hesitated, half inclined to go back; but he had not yet felt the
full strength of that instinct; and so in the end he went on, reluctantly. Juan
Lasara, thinking deeply over the priest’s words—“It will be five thousand
pesos now. Don José has bought a second hemp-patch from the Friars”—
did not notice his hesitation, and might not have understood it in any case,
having got over his days of love, or at least of the love of woman. He
worshipped the peso only.

Don José, white-haired and courtly, was gravely polite to the Teniente, as a
white gentleman must be to a half-caste; but he was almost cordial to
Felizardo.

“I have already asked the Guardia Civil, and they speak well of you,” he
said; then, as if fearing his words might seem slighting to Juan Lasara, he
hastened to add: “Of course, in any case, the recommendation of Senor
Lasara would suffice. Still, in these days there are so many ladrones—you
see my shutters and bars? You can read and write? Yes, the good Friars
taught you? Well, then it is arranged. Good!”

So Felizardo became warehouseman, and, in a humble way, junior clerk, to

Don José Ramirez, to live in the house, and, if need arose, to fire at ladrones
with a musket through one of the loopholes of those same shutters, an
arrangement satisfactory to himself, to the Spaniard, and perhaps most of all
to his patron, the Teniente of San Polycarpio. There was no mistaking the
cordiality of the latter’s farewell. “Come and see us the first holiday,” he
said; “I shall be pleased, and”—he smiled meaningfully—“so will
Dolores.”

If there had been no woman in the case, Felizardo would not have stayed
two days in the warehouse. True, on the rare occasions when he did see Don
José, the old man was kindness personified; but the merchant spent his time
in his private office, whilst the other clerks, all mestizos, looked on what
they called “a wild tao” as a fitting subject for jests and practical jokes. But
Felizardo thought of Dolores, who could only be won by his success in that
warehouse; moreover, he was wiry and strong as a leopard, as the practical
jokers soon learned; consequently, at the end of the first week he had not
only decided to stay, but had also made a definite position for himself.

“A good boy, a very good boy,” Don José remarked to the corporal of the
Guardia Civil.

The latter nodded. “Yes, but watch him. They all want watching, these
Filipinos. I say it with all respect—but what has the Holy Church done for
them, save teach them our secrets and make them more dangerous than
ever.” He sighed heavily, and twirled his huge, dyed moustache. “Thirty
years I have been out here, Don José, thirty years, and only home to Spain
once, and I still look on them as savages, who will get my head in the end. I
shall never see Spain again.”

Don José took him by the arm; it was Sunday, and they were standing on
the veranda. “Come inside,” he said; “I have some choice wine which came
in the other day, wine of Spain; and some cigars such as you could not get
elsewhere, even in Spain. Come inside, corporal, and drink to the day when
we both return to Spain.”

Meanwhile, Felizardo had borrowed a dug-out canoe, and paddled round

the long headland to San Polycarpio. Dolores was waiting for him. “I knew
you would come,” she said simply, “because Don José always closes his
warehouse on Sunday.”

The implied assurance in her words made him the happiest man in the
Islands; and as he sat talking to the Teniente that afternoon, he was very full
of the possibilities of a commercial career, and very severe on the subject of
ladrones and the injury they did to trade, which was perhaps not very
pleasant hearing to his host, for after the guest had gone—this time Dolores
accompanied him down to the beach—Lasara remarked to the priest: “He
will not open the door of the warehouse, even if I ask him. He is a fool,
after all.”

The priest shook his head. “He will open it, because he is a special fool on
one point.”

“What is that?” demanded the other.

Father Pablo smiled grimly. “You will see. Leave it to me.” And with that
promise the Teniente of San Polycarpio had to be content, though, knowing
the priest well, he was not really uneasy in his own mind. Certainly, they
would eventually share those five thousand pesos of Don José’s, and if, as
was probable, Don José himself were eliminated during the process of
removal, so much the better. The disappearance of a rival is never felt very
keenly by a good business man.

The pesos for the purchase of the Friars’ hemp lands came on the appointed
day, and Felizardo helped to carry them into the warehouse, wondering
greatly at the amount, and envying the man who possessed so much wealth.
He was still thinking over the matter at closing time, when a strange youth
hurried up, thrust a note into his hand, and disappeared as suddenly as he
had come. Felizardo read the letter slowly, and forthwith forgot all about the
pesos; for Dolores was in trouble; Dolores had fled from her father’s house,
fearing a forced marriage with a wealthy cousin, who had unexpectedly re-
appeared after years of absence; and, what was most important of all,
Dolores was coming to him for shelter and protection. At eleven o’clock
that very night, she would be outside the small door at the back of the
warehouse, where he must join her, and take her somewhere for safety.

Felizardo sat down on a pile of cases in the corner of the warehouse, where
he smoked innumerable cigarettes, and tried to think out the situation. For a
moment, he was inclined to consult Don José, then dismissed the idea as
impossible. It seemed like treason to Dolores. Above everything, no one
must know that she had come to him secretly, in the dead of night—no one,
that is, except the person who actually gave her shelter until he could marry
her openly, in the light of day. Yet who would give her shelter? Who would
not talk? He racked his brains for an answer, and then it came to him—the
good Sisters at the little convent on the far-side of the plaza. It was only a
few moments’ walk, and when he took Dolores there, and she knocked, and
told her story, and showed the letter she had written him—the first line he
had ever received from her—there would be no question of her welcome or
her safety. All the Tenientes in the Islands would be powerless to wrest her
from the Sisters.

Felizardo waited with almost savage impatience for eleven o’clock. If she
missed her way, if by any chance she were overtaken, if some one should be
watching outside to see if she were coming to him! Full of the latter
thought, he slipped into the warehouse again and searched for a bolo, a
particularly fine and keen weapon, which, only that afternoon, one of his
fellow-clerks had bought from a hill-man. Felizardo found it, strapped it
round his waist, saw that it was loose in its sheath, crept cautiously to the
little back door, unlocked it, taking the key so as to be able to lock it again
from the outside, took down the heavy bars, opened the door cautiously—
and saw a dozen figures crouching on the ground, ready to spring at him.

Then he understood. Like a flash his bolo was out, and, with his back to the
door, he was facing them, shouting, “The ladrones, the ladrones!” whilst
unconsciously he crumpled up, and dropped, that forged letter.

It was his first fight. An old man, telling Captain Basil Hayle of it thirty-
five years later, declared that it was his greatest fight; and Felizardo had
then been in hundreds. Be that as it may, the fact remains that he had killed
two ladrones, and mortally wounded two more, himself receiving only a
gash across the forehead, before help came, in the form of the Guardia Civil
from without, and Don José and his five men from within.

Of the twelve ladrones, only four escaped, crawling away wounded. Four
they killed out of hand, and four more, including Cinicio Dagujob himself,
they hanged on that new gallows opposite Don José’s warehouse, as a
warning to all men.

Felizardo staggered back against the wall, half-blinded by the blood from
his forehead, trembling, as a man does after his first fight; then, without the
slightest premeditation, he made the mistake of his life. He slipped away in
the darkness, down to the beach, launched a canoe, and began frenziedly to
paddle towards San Polycarpio. He had remembered Dolores and her
possible peril, and forgotten all else—Don José, the Guardia Civil, the
questions he would be expected to answer.

The corporal asked one of those same questions of Don José half an hour
later, after the prisoners had been safely locked in the cells.

“Who gave the alarm?” he demanded.

“Felizardo,” the merchant answered. “He was fighting in the doorway when
we rushed down, fighting like a dozen devils.”

The corporal frowned. “Then he must have opened the door himself. Why?
Where is he now?”

Don José poured himself out another glass of wine with a rather shaky
hand. He was an old man, and his nerves were upset. “Felizardo is gone,
they tell me. They have searched, thinking he might be lying wounded, but
they cannot find a trace anywhere.”

Once more the corporal frowned, and drummed on the table with his
fingers. He was not very brilliant, and he was trying to construct a theory.
At last, “Let them search again,” he said severely.
A few minutes later, one of the clerks came back with a crumpled slip of
paper in his hand. “We have found this, Senor,” he said.

The corporal handed it to Don José—despite that huge, dyed moustache and
his straight back, his eyes were growing old, and one does not take
spectacles when one is on service. “Will you read it, Don José, read it aloud
slowly?” he asked with dignity, then turned a fierce gaze on the knot of
clerks gathered in the doorway, who fled hurriedly.

When the merchant had finished, the corporal brought his hand down on the
table with a thump which made all the wine-glasses dance. “A love affair, as
I think I said, or rather a false assignation. He has got frightened at his
mistake, and gone to the hills.”

Don José sighed. “I liked him. He is a good, sensible boy, and I hope he
will come back.”

The corporal shook his head. “He will never come back. Thirty years I have
been here, in this service, only going home to Spain once, and I should
know that they are only savages, after all. I think I have said before that the
Holy Church makes a mistake in trying to tame them. Let them be brought
to hear Mass every Sunday—that would be only fitting, and would
doubtless save their souls, if they have any—but books and learning are not
for them. When I get back to Spain I shall make a journey to Rome to tell
his Holiness these things. Doubtless, he will listen to an old soldier of
Spain …. No, Don José, your Felizardo will never come back here. Yet”—
he sighed regretfully—“he is a fine fighter. He was the only one on our side
with a bolo, and two have been killed with the bolo, and two wounded so
badly that we must hurry on the hanging of them. A fine fighter—but what
will you——? They are all savages at heart, as I hope to tell his Holiness
one day.” He stood up abruptly, saluted, and stalked out with his hand on
the hilt of his great sabre.

There was only one light showing in San Polycarpio when Felizardo
beached his canoe on the shingle by the palm grove; and only one mangy
dog, which relapsed into silence after the first stone, noted his arrival. On
the other hand, the light was in the Teniente’s house, which made things
easier for the newcomer.

Felizardo had bandaged his forehead with a strip torn off his shirt, and as
soon as he came to the stream of fresh water which ran down the one long
street, he bathed the blood from his face carefully. He did not want to alarm
Dolores—about himself. Then, bolo in hand, he made his way to the house,
clambered cautiously on to the veranda, and peered in through a tiny hole in
the matting blind. He could see very little—only Dolores standing, pale and
trembling, against the further wall, and the heads of Lasara and Father
Pablo, who were seated at the table. But he could hear, and that was almost
better than seeing.

The voices were a little thick—it had been a weary task waiting for the
return of the messenger Cinicio Dagujob was to send, and the native spirit
had been very strong—but the priest, at least, knew what he wanted.

“You must let her come to me as housekeeper,” he was saying. “You would
like that, wouldn’t you, girl”—he turned towards Dolores—“to keep house
for your parish priest? I would get rid of the other. Answer me, Juan Lasara.
Will you agree, or shall I denounce you as Cinicio’s partner?” There was a
snarl in his voice. “After to-night’s work there will be a hue-and-cry; and
you remember the new gallows at Calocan. Answer me, you ladrone
Teniente of San Polycarpio.”

But the reply did not come from Juan Lasara. With one cut of his bolo
Felizardo cleared away the matting, and was in the room. Dolores gave a
scream and fainted; Lasara fumbled drunkenly for his knife, and, failing to
find it, seized a bottle; but the priest stood back unarmed—trembling,
perhaps, but still apparently secure in the protection of his cloth.

“You dare not touch me,” he said. And for answer Felizardo slew him with
a single slash of that terrible bolo. Then he dealt with Lasara, whom he
maimed for life; and after that he gathered together the remains of the food
and the wine—he was looking ahead even then—put out the lamp, took the
insensible girl in his arms, and made his way to the jungle.
So in the one night Felizardo killed two ladrones and a priest who was
worse than a ladrone, secured the hanging of two others, and then, possibly
because, as the corporal said, he was a savage at heart, took Dolores Lasara
with him to the hills, and became a ladrone himself.
CHAPTER II
 HOW THE CORPORAL WENT BACK TO SPAIN
For six months the tao of the district talked of Felizardo, the man who had
slain a priest; then, as nothing more had been heard of the outlaw, and a
new band of ladrones had been formed in the neighbourhood of Calocan,
the centre of interest shifted, and the crime at San Polycarpio, if not
forgotten, at least ceased to be discussed.

The tao knew nothing about Father Pablo’s connection with the band of the
late Cinicio Dagujob—the Church had seen to that fact being suppressed—
but the corporal knew, in fact he had been the first to suspect it, and he took
the information across to Don José Ramirez.

“This Pablo was a mestizo,” he said. “You knew him, I suppose. No? A big
scoundrel, gross and burly. I wonder why the Church will allow natives to
be priests. I am sure the Holy Father cannot know. Some day, perhaps, I
may have the chance of telling him, if I get back to Spain. A villain, that
Pablo; but still your Felizardo was wrong to kill him. Nothing can save him
now. I told you that night, even after we found how splendidly he had
boloed those ladrones, that he would not come back. I was right, of course.
Have I not been thirty years in these accursed Islands, and if I do not know
the Filipinos, who should know them, Senor? A fine fighter, that Felizardo.
Had he been in our native troops, he would have risen high. And now,
because he is a savage at heart, he has become a ladrone.”

Don José sighed—there had been a romance and a tragedy in his own life,
many years before, in Spain. “No, corporal. He went because he loved one
woman too well to leave her to some one else.”

The corporal twisted his moustache. “Therein he was a savage, as I said

before. He got one idea in his mind, and he could not forget it, not having
room for two. I have loved women, Senor, and women have loved me,
many of them; but as for turning highwayman, or at least outlaw, for the
sake of one—pouf!” He shook his head with a great assumption of scorn.
“I see.” Don José smiled. They had been friends for many years, these two,
and he knew the story of the girl in Spain whom the other had gone back to
marry—and found dead; therefore, he always listened patiently to those
stories of subsequent love affairs, none of which ever had the slightest
foundation in fact. “I see,” he repeated. “Then you think a man should have
as many wives as he can get, like a Moor or a Chino?”

“No, no”—the corporal frowned—“the Church would not allow that, only
—well,” he got up rather hastily. “I was forgetting the time. I must be off.
After thirty years’ service in these accursed Islands, one must not begin to
neglect one’s duty, Senor.” At the door he stopped and looked back. “Think
no more of your Felizardo, Don José. He will never return; and, if he did,
we should have to hang him. A fine fighter, certainly—but, to kill a priest!”

“But you say the priest was also a ladrone,” the merchant objected.

The corporal shook his head. “A priest is a priest, and the Church will not
forgive, or admit excuses. How can she, when she has the souls of all these
savages to save? Still, if I ever get the chance of seeing the Holy Father, and
explaining——” and he went out, still frowning and shaking his head.

Don José helped himself slowly to another glass of wine, and sighed. “We
shall never go back to Spain, he and I. It is getting too late now, and so”—
he smiled sadly—“the Holy Father will lose much useful information.”

When Felizardo slew Pablo the priest, and took to the bush, carrying
Dolores Lasara in his arms, he had no definite aim, save that of gaining a
temporary hiding-place; but the moment he had found this, and even whilst
he was bringing the girl round with some of the wine he had taken from her
father’s table—the bottle itself was sticky with her father’s blood—his mind
became busy with the problem of the future.

He was an outlaw for life. He had killed a priest—had offended far beyond
the offence of the ordinary ladrone, who only kills ordinary men, and
tortures women and children. True, the priest was a ladrone, even worse
than a ladrone, but it was the cloth, and not the man beneath it, which
mattered. Felizardo faced the issue squarely. Somehow, it seemed as though
he had learned many things during that night. He had taken up the bolo, and
thenceforth the Law of the Bolo must be his only code. A few hours before,
no one had less desire to be an outlaw than he; now, he had become an
outlaw, despite himself; but he did not rail against Fate, because he was an
Asiatic, and also because, after all, he had got Dolores.

Still, there was one trouble, which would be greater for her than for him. He
put it to her very gently after he had told her of the end of Father Pablo.

“We cannot be married now, dear one,” he said. “No priest would do it,
even though I captured him, and threatened him with death.”

She looked at him with shining eyes. “What matter? I shall have you, all the
same.”

He turned away. “It is not too late for you to go back, even now. The good
Sisters at the convent would take you.”

For answer, she kissed him, the first kiss she had ever given him, and they
said no more of that matter.

From Felizardo’s own village, from every village for miles round in fact,
you can see a great range of mountains, rugged and forbidding, beginning
practically at the shore of a huge bay and running inland for many miles.
The lower slopes of the range are covered with dense jungle; but when you
have climbed a thousand feet or so, you leave all this behind, and find bald
rock, and lava-beds, and ashes, for there are half a dozen active volcanoes
there, as well as many which are merely quiescent, and hot springs, and
geysers, and other dangers to life and peace of mind.

Felizardo had often looked at those mountains, especially when he had been
fishing in the bay, waiting lazily for a bite. Then, they had always seemed to
suggest harshness and danger, the very antithesis to the dreamy life amongst
the cocoa-nut groves and the hemp-patches; now, however, he thought of
them in a very different light, as offering an ideal refuge; and even if, as
was rumoured, they were the home of many bad men—well, was he,
himself, not a bad man too?

He made up his mind quickly. It was no use thinking of remaining in the

jungle by the coast. He was not greatly afraid of the authorities finding him,
although the Church might insist on a hue-and-cry of an unusually vigorous
nature; but he was afraid of coming across some of the local ladrones, who
would assuredly take vengeance on him for what he had done to their
friends. So, at the first streak of dawn he and Dolores set out for the
mountains, where the rest of their lives were to be spent.

It was a long and slow journey, for Dolores was not used to the bush, and
they had to avoid all footpaths and villages. Time after time, Felizardo had
to carry her through those steep-banked, narrow little streams, which on the
paths you cross by shaky pole-bridges; and twice he had to cut down hemp-
palms, and make rafts on which to get to the other bank of larger streams.
The second night out it rained, a veritable deluge; but he had foreseen it,
and had made a little shelter of palm-leaves, which kept them perfectly dry,
greatly to the surprise of Dolores.

“You seem to know everything, and to be prepared for everything,” she

said; and he felt prouder than he had ever felt in his life.

Early next morning, whilst she still slept, he went out to a neighbouring
village, where they were also asleep, and when she awakened he was
plucking a newly-killed fowl, whilst there was a basket of sweet potatoes
beside him. It was his first definite act of ladronism, and he shifted uneasily
under her gaze, until she, understanding, laid a soft hand on his arm and
said: “They drove you to it, dearest, and you have done it for me;” so
Felizardo enjoyed his meal after all.

That night, Felizardo went much further. He found a water-buffalo

belonging to the priest of the village they were skirting; and from that point
onwards, until they were well up the lower slopes of the range, there was
plenty of meat, whilst, of course, if you are a Filipino, you can always find
sweet potatoes, and beans, and cocoa-nuts.
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