The Law of the Bolo

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.