Malabanan's coming had been broadcasted across the
land, and an uneasiness had settled over the Gulf, a vague fear Terry
sought to allay. But Malabanan's record, a dark and dismal history of
hideous crime for which he had been but half punished, was known
throughout the country, and was the nightly subject of fearful
conversation in every hut on every isolated plantation.

Terry had ridden, alone, to the neglected settlement up the coast
where the gang of roughs had rendezvous, but Malabanan was away. A
dozen hard-looking natives had sullenly responded to his curt
questions. None were working, though he had arrived during the cool of
the afternoon and the fields cried for attention.

In Davao, the town, he found consuming interest. Sleepy six days in
the week it woke each Wednesday during the couple of hours the weekly
steamer anchored offshore to discharge cargo into a lighter, drop a
passenger or two, and send ashore the exiles' greatest balm--home
mail. He came to know everybody: first the other government
people--Lieutenant-Governor; Scout officers; Dr. Merchant, the
district health officer; school teachers, native postmaster. Seldom a
week passed that he failed to saunter into each of the Chinese
tiendas, making the purchase of matches or other small articles the
excuse for a half-hour's visit. Oftenest he went into Lan Yek's smelly
little shop, for there the Bogobos brought their mountain hemp to
trade for small agongs: tired from their heavy packing, they would
squat down on the floor along the wall, one of them occasionally
stepping to an agong to test it with deft contact of finger, all
joining him in rapt study of its tone, measuring the duration of the
lingering waves of sound. Terry learned, in time, that they found
greatest merit in those agongs which rang longest to lightest stroke.

Even those timid Bogobos who never left the wooded foothills knew him.
He went among them, studying their language, learning their customs
and hopes and fears, listening to their picturesque traditions.
Always, when he met a file of the beaded, braceleted folk upon the
trail, he dismounted to exchange a few words with them. Unbelievably
shy at first, in time they came to know him as word passed through the
foothills of the young white man who understood: so they brought their
problems to him, some pathetic, some ridiculous--recently he had
ridden twenty miles to settle a dispute regarding the ownership of
some yet unborn p