lopes, then enfolded the Gulf. The lights on the steamer shone
murkily. The three lay back watching the stars brighten overhead. For
a long time nothing was heard but the querulous mutterings of the old
boat as she waddled on her way.

Terry broke the silence: "Where is Lindsey?"

Cochran answered quickly to head off the more explicit Casey: "Oh,
he's busy--busy with Sears."

Terry understood. Cochran sparred for an opening in the silence his
friendship for Sears made embarrassing.

"Lieutenant, you are likely to have work for your soldiers pretty
soon. There's a rough outfit gathering down here in the Gulf--though
I imagine Bronner told you all about it."

"He told me something of it, but I would like to hear more."

"Well, I don't know much about it, excepting that a score or more of
tough characters have come down in the past two months. They settled
on a mangy plantation up the coast, north of Davao, but they aren't
working: just loafing around all day. They seem to be waiting for
something--or somebody. The natives are scared, and the whites don't
feel any too good about it either! You know we are scattered all over
the Gulf--everybody a mile or more away from his neighbors--and that
means a mile of jungle."

Casey flared up: "We ought to run 'em out--they're no good, probably
carabao thieves or worse--"

"How worse?" grinned Cochran. "Horse thieves--or pig thieves?"

Casey did not mind being ragged by his friends. He persisted:
"Lieutenant, you ought to run 'em out as undesirables or under the
vagabond law! They're no good--they won't work--and they're the
toughest lookin' lot I ever did see! Sure and if I had my way I'd toss
the lot into Sears' crocodile hole--the dirty, low-lived, shiftless
lot of 'em!"

Terry was interested: "Sears' crocodile hole?" he asked.

Cochran laughingly explained: "It's more or less of a joke between
Sears and Lindsey: each has a hoodoo on his place that makes it harder
to get laborers. The Bogobos fear a great snake they swear haunts
Lindsey's woods, and none of them wants to go near a pool on Sears'
places just below the ford--they claim it is the home of a monstrous
crocodile, thirty feet long. No white man has ever seen either; it's a
big joke in a way--but a costly one for them as it makes the wild men
give their places a wide berth."

"What have they done about it?"

"Everything. Got up hunting parties--stalked the places for hours and
days, tried to convince the