under. Again his fist lashed out and connected. He drew it back for
another punch.

Brilliant light illuminated the scene. Rick blinked in the glare and saw
Scotty's grim face above him. Scotty had his fist cocked back for a
punch that would have knocked him colder than a raspberry popsickle.

"Hold it," Rick grunted. Scotty was forcing the air out of him by sheer
weight.

Running feet pounded the earth and hands jerked both of them to their
feet. Scotty held the sniper's rifle, but the sniper was gone.

A Filipino policeman looked at them over the sights of a .45 caliber
Colt automatic. Even in the reflected lights of the prowl car's head
lamps, the muzzle looked only slightly smaller than the entrance to
Mammoth Cave.

Rick's hair lifted. "Put that thing down!" he gulped.

"Officer," Tony said crisply, "these are the two boys from my party.
They were chasing the burglar." He added, "Apparently they succeeded
only in catching each other. What in the name of an Igorot icebox were
you two trying to do?"

The boys looked embarrassed. "We had the sniper," Rick explained. "But
we must have got tangled up. I thought the man with the rifle was the
burglar, but it was Scotty."

"He threw the rifle at me," Scotty said. "I reached for him, swung on
him and connected, then the rifle knocked me down."

The policeman's running mate came back from a search of the darkness. He
spoke to his companion in Tagalog.

"No use," the first policeman said. "He is gone. We would need help to
find him, since the walled city is big and has many hiding places. Can
you give a description? By the time help came he could be miles from
here. Perhaps we can get him later."

Rick knew how hopeless that was.

"Unless the boys got a better look," Tony Briotti said, "the only thing
I can say is that he was either an Igorot or an Ifugao. Short and
muscular. I saw his haircut--couldn't very well miss it. But not his
face."

Rick and Scotty hadn't even seen that much. An Igorot or Ifugao?
Probably the latter, since their expedition was connected with the
Ifugaos and not the Igorots. Rick remembered the incident on the
freighter. There was a pattern to this....

"I will be the one to take the rifle," the policeman said.

Rick wondered at the strange flavor of the phrase. But he was to hear it
many times while in the Philippines. "I will be the one...." It was a
literal translation from the Spanish.

"I will be the one to take the names,"