Caybigan Part 21

X

THE CAPTURE OF PAPA GATO

This is to explain how young Theodore Pinney, after his meteoric debut in the P. I. constabulary--consisting in nothing less than the capture of Papa Gato, fierce _bandelero_, who for years had terrorised the region of the Taal--squatted into a fat civilian job and forsook all dreams of glory. And it's not at all about young Pinney, but mostly about his mother, the widow.

"The widow;"--by that short, somewhat ominous and not too respectful cognomen she was known by all the bureau--the educational, of course--from superintendent to lowest clerk; and throughout the archipelago by men departmental and non-departmental. This name, based on fact, like most things based on fact, was a lying thing. Close your eyes and say "widow"; the vision is of something subtle, arch and tantalising--l.u.s.trous eyes, comely form (somewhat pudgy), kittenish ways. But she was long and lean and angular; her bosom was arid and her tongue triple-forked. "Old-maid" would have expressed her infinitely better; but there was the fact, the stubborn fact, which manifested itself with slight provocation by a grim tightening of the thin lips, and the phrase--proverbial now throughout the P. I.'s--"Mr. Pinney, well, the less said about him the better. He was a _handsome_ man, but he was a _wicked_ man"--the "handsome" being p.r.o.nounced with a rising inflection, and the ant.i.thetic adjective with a drop into tenebrous ba.s.so-profundo.

Of Pinney _pere_ this is all we ever knew, although in departmental circles he was a subject fertile of delicious speculation. That to be wicked he had had ample temptation, knowing the widow, we cheerfully granted; but what chance he ever had had to succ.u.mb, knowing the widow, we could not imagine. Of Pinney _fils_ we knew still less, nothing at all, in fact, what little there was being the property of the postal authorities and consisting of records of money orders sent monthly by the widow to a well known western college town. But of the widow herself, good Lord, we knew only too much.

For she was a terror and a pest. From the day she placed her number tens upon Philippine soil the islands knew no peace. The educational department became a nightmare, and clamour filled all the others. She had a pa.s.sion for "little trips"--and her will was adamant and her tongue a visitation. They all knew her. Her appearance at the Civil Hospital heralded the disappearance of the resident chief. "Give her what she wants, anything she wants," he yelled at his clerk, as he exited. And when she sallied out for fresh conquest she held under her arm a certificate of ill-health. At the educational bureau the superintendent saw her coming. Out he sprang, through door or window.

"Give her what she wants," his parting wail floated to the clerk. And so, with a glance at the medical certificate, and a few timid questions as a matter of form, he made out Doc.u.ment No. II--sick-leave on full pay. A few minutes later the major of the army transport service found the outer world urgently calling, and as he dodged the widow on the stairway, "My clerk, madam, has orders to give you what you wish," he murmured, tense with an immense hurry. And the clerk provided; and a few days later the widow wandered aboard some inter-island transport, made law to the quartermaster, terrorised the steward, possessed herself of the best cabin, anch.o.r.ed her chair in the most desirable deck s.p.a.ce--and off she sailed on one of her adorable little voyages. From Aparri to Bohol, through Vigan, Ilo-Ilo, Cebu, Dumaguete, and Zamboangua, she was known, her clamour had resounded, for transportation, for commissary privileges, for bull-carts, cargadores, and military escorts.

One day, though, she decided to settle down.

She caught the superintendent at his desk and asked him for a provincial post. The superintendent saw his main chance staring him in the face. He was an intelligent and discreet man, so he did not decide hastily. For a whole afternoon he pored diligently over a map of the archipelago.

Finally he settled on Taal, in the volcanic region of Luzon. It was just at the end of the dry season; he calculated that she could just get there. Then the rains would begin--and the roads were without bottom.

Besides, there was Papa Gato ambuscaded somewhere upon the flanks of the great volcano surmounting the pueblo. Many things can happen in six months. The superintendent was not an imaginative man; but that day he certainly smiled to visions.

So, with a last array of _reclamas_--transportation, carts, provisions, military escorts--the widow, her worldly goods upon a carabao-drawn carro, herself in a shaky quilesa, set out toward her Palestine. And the rains began and shut her off behind their impenetrable curtain.

From her isolation, after a while, news began to filter, vague, insufficient, broken, like the irritating s.n.a.t.c.hes of a telegraph line out of order; first the regular official reports, secondly popular rumour. She had evidently taken hold. The monthly reports showed the school attendance of Taal rising by leaps and bounds to astonis.h.i.+ng totals. Rumour, however, corrected in some degree the superintendent's satisfaction. It appeared that this remarkable increase was largely due to her personal herding of _batas_ with the aid of a big _baston_. Once, it seemed, she made a regrettable slip, took one of the leading citizens of the pueblo for a little boy, and, he proving recalcitrant, cracked his crown with her persuader ere she had discovered her mistake. This caused some trouble to the central office, but, as the superintendent remarked to the Secretary of Education, "One cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, and he (the leading citizen, evidently) was a bad one, anyway." Pompously couched recriminations, also, came from the Taal munic.i.p.ality. It was claimed that she had taken upon herself the collection of taxes, that she levied thereon five per cent. for school purposes, that she had deposed the treasurer and had appointed one of her own, who happened to be her muchacho, so that the books and funds were securely locked up in her stout camphor-wood chest. But as the town officials were suspected of sundry peculations, the new system was regarded as somewhat of an improvement. Besides, at that time she was absolutely invaluable with a contribution to _The Philippine Teacher_ (the superintendent's special hobby) upon the "Model Nipa Home," an article embellished with diagrams and elevations and cross-sections. A few weeks later, it is true, there came from Mr. Rued, a constabulary second-cla.s.s inspector, stationed in Taal, a most virulent protest about the burning of some two hundred shacks that happened to conform only too distantly with the ideal "Model Nipa Home." Mr. Rued, being a mild man, thought this method of civic improvement too strenuous. With this, his chief in Manila thoroughly agreed, and, leaving him full discretion as to methods, ordered him to take all necessary measures--which command, mysteriously enough, remained forever without answer.

It was just about this time that Papa Gato, living in idyllic ease in his impenetrable bosques up the sides of the Taal, began to feel that vague but imperious self-dissatisfaction which is the peculiar appanage of us unfortunate humans--the inward command to work. The Mexican pesos of his last raid were becoming deplorably few, his store of palay was low, and the contributions of the villagers spoke of failing memories.

It was time for another raid.

But this time, with his more earthy preoccupations there mingled blue-hazed dreams. Gato, in spite of a real practical genius, often proven by the ingenuity of his methods of extracting from recalcitrants information as to the whereabouts of their hidden wealth, Papa Gato was sentimental. Even before the revolution, whose impa.s.sioned call had led him into a mode of life from which he had never been able to free himself, even when a humble cochero in Manila, he had been a dreamer.

And now, Pope spiritually--this for the benefit of the rural population, but treated by his own camp followers with large, American-imported winks--king administratively, Marescal de Campo militarily, this deplorable trait was still with him. The life of an outlaw, even in the Philippines, has its disadvantages. Gato's particular disadvantage, which he now set himself to nullify, was this: he had never seen an American woman. He had never seen one of those golden-haired _maestras_, which the American nation (with that inconsistency which prompts them to shoot--alternately and with equal firmness, precision, and dispatch--lead and book learning into his people) sends to far pueblos like angelic visitations. But there was one in Taal. He had heard that she was wonderful (it speaks eloquently of his sentimentalism that he had never sought to find out in what she was wonderful; his imagination immediately made her so in the mode that he would have her so--stately, golden-haired and seraphic). So it was that Taal was chosen as the field of his next exploit.

With his usual courteous foresight, he sent into the town an announcement of his intention to capture the treasury and the _maestra_.

This was his regular mode of procedure, and not so fatuous as it may appear. It had the double effect of warning his friends--he had many in all places--and of paralysing his enemies. This time, however, he was surprised with an official answer from the munic.i.p.al council, sitting in executive session. This answer was three varas long and redundant with rhetoric; but reduced to plain and precise English it might well be set down thus:

"For G.o.d's sake, take her away, and you can have the money, too."

This alacrity seemed to him highly suspicious, so, with strategic cunning, he decided to hold camp with his main force, and to send off his brigadier-general, Gomez, with a force of two lieutenant-generals, five colonels, ten majors, twenty captains, and a few lieutenants for the more facile work in Taal.

II

Thus it was that, soon after, the good people of Taal were aroused at sun-up by a ragged burst of musketry, a hullaballoo of yells and beating tom-toms, and the crackling of burning nipa. They were prepared for such a contingency, however; and when, after this little preliminary demonstration, Gomez's disreputables burst along the main street, they met a reception that halted them in uneasy distrust.

For out of all the houses, humble _balay_ or grand _casa_, the populace was pouring holiday-decked, faces s.h.i.+ning with welcome--man, woman, and child, tao and distinguido, all ranks, all s.e.xes, all ages. White linen, s.h.i.+mmering jusis, diaphanous pinas united in fiesta colouring. Peace and rejoicing, a mild, ecstatic expectation, reigned upon all the faces; the ninos and ninas especially were full of a goatlike hilarity and tumbled on the green amid the tulisanes, upsetting majors and colonels indiscriminately. And--could it be--was he blind?--no, it was true, indubitably true; before Gomez's eyes, in front of the Casa Popular and spanning the main street, a graceful bamboo arch of triumph rose against the pink dawn. And across the top, in six-foot letters of bejuca, was the following inscription:

TO THE LIBERATOR OF THE PUEBLO--THE INHABITANTS OF GRATEFUL TAAL.

But out of the Casa Popular the munic.i.p.al band was emerging in joyful blare, and Gomez had just time to compose himself into the pose of his new role before he was greeted by the presidente, dressed in church-day black, his head covered with the derby of ceremony. After a short exchange of courtesies, the band wheeled, the presidente placed himself at its head, Gomez at the head of his own troops, and presidente, band, tulisanes, and populace started down the street. "To the maestra!"

shouted the presidente, with a heroic gesture. "To the maestra!" echoed Gomez. "To the maestra!" roared the tulisanes. "To the maestra!" yelled the populace, squeaked the women, piped the ninos and ninas. And pell-mell they flowed beneath the arch.

Before the original Model Nipa Home the band halted and with an ominous snort came to silence. A hush fell over the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. One of the shutters of the Model Home slid back; a lean, yellow arm, at the end of which dangled a steaming coffeepot, pushed out of the opening.

Suddenly the coffeepot parabolaed through the air and landed upon the presidente's ceremonial derby.

"Caramba!" roared that official, suffocated and scalded; and he beat a hasty retreat into the hoi-polloi. The mysterious arm mysteriously disappeared. Forming a cordon of lieutenants about the Model Home, Gomez and three of his colonels mounted the stairs and beat down the light bamboo door.

But behind the door stood the formidable widow. Long and gaunt, in her morning wrapper, her be-frilled nightcap askew upon her head, her horn spectacles trembling with indignation at the end of her aquiline nose, she confronted them, a figure of righteous fury. Behind her was a well-constructed pyramid of utensils, from which she drew with promptness and discernment. In a jiffy the nearest colonel was helmeted down to the chin with a big iron kettle, the second was sneezing to death under a stream of tabasco sauce, while Gomez himself was retreating beneath the tom-tom din of an empty coal-oil can, plied with vigorous repet.i.tion upon his cranium.

Right here, however, the widow was led off into a common enough strategic mistake. Instead of turning her victorious energy upon the vacillating troop outside, she allowed herself to be hypnotised by the already thoroughly conquered. At the head of the stairs, pirouetting madly and roaring like a bull, was the be-kettled colonel, and upon him she turned her batteries. It was a wonderful exhibition. Things culinary flew through the air--three saucepans, a rolling-pin, a grill, a teapot, a pile of tin plates. Then came canned goods: tomatoes, pears, peaches; beef, roast and corned; mutton, chicken, hare, pork, peas, maize, string beans; jellies: apple, currant, lemon, cherry; jams: apricot, peach, grape, plum, lychee. Two hams and a small sack of flour came as an interregnum. Blind, deaf, helpless, the poor colonel swayed, doubled up, whirred, thrashed his arms beneath the avalanche. Resonant whang-angs of his headgear announced particularly brilliant shots; dull thuds more vital ones. At last, with a parting shower of little potted cheeses, the widow's ammunition ran out. She folded her arms, drew herself up to her full height, and, her eyes s.h.i.+ning humorously beneath her s.h.a.ggy brows, "Well, boys," she asked, "what is it you want?"

Gomez was coming up the stairs again, under safe escort.

"We are ladrones, madam," he explained, politely. "We want--we want----"

he stammered, uneasy, before that great dominating figure. "We want--ah--the dinero, the money----" he stopped, then with a vague apologetic shrug of his shoulders: "the dinero, and you."

"Ah?" sang the widow, sardonically, "you want me, do you?"

Gomez hesitated. He was not at all sure about that. But his orders were imperative.

"Papa Gato wants you," he said, with more precision.

"Ah--it's your papa wants me, is it? Very well----" her lips tightened into a line ominously straight--"he shall have me; oh, yes, indeed!"

Thus it was that an hour later the widow, erect and tense in a carro drawn by a pacific carabao, surrounded by an escort of tulisanes with the grave and preoccupied air of people bearing a case of dynamite, followed by the holiday-decked populace and the delirious blare and roar of the band, pa.s.sed along the main street, by the Casa Popular, beneath the triumphal arch, to the outskirts of the pueblo, and on into the open country.

The band, marking time with the populace on the edge of the town, which they were not to leave, was playing "Hail the Deliverer, Hail!"

III

Long and in detail will Major General Gomez remember (he has now ample leisure for such exercises of memory between the four walls of a place called Bilibid) that march back to camp. And his bringing it to a successful termination will always stand as his most serious claim to military glory.

It was not that the train was c.u.mbersome. It consisted, in fact, only of three carros, the first one containing the widow, the second the camphor-wood chest, inside of which was the town treasury, and the third, Mr. Rued, second-cla.s.s inspector Philippine constabulary--a roaring mad inspector, it might be added, and tied up like a sausage. He had been surprised in bed; the ignominy of his taking was deep in his soul, and found vent in a stream of expressions Biblical and strenuous and not at all complimentary to his captors.

No, the widow was the matter.

It was that curious performance of Mr. Rued which caused the first outbreak. After listening meditatively for some ten minutes, the widow suddenly realised that here was something highly improper.

"Colonel," she cried, rising in her cart like a jack-in-the-box, "you will please place more distance between me and that blasphemous person yonder."

There was a pause in the procession. New intervals were tried. But the widow's carabao was slow, and the inspector's, possibly impressed by the fervent soliloquy going on behind him, persisted in coming up within earshot.

"Captain, I refuse to continue under the present conditions,"

ultimatumed the widow. And, springing out of her cart, she squatted resolutely in the centre of the road and refused to budge.

A happy inspiration came to Gomez. He appealed to the inspector's chivalry.

The inspector was cooling a bit by this time, and he was a man of some intelligence.