Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/267

Rh pressed him to her arid bosom. "Here, water, you heathen, water!"

But the inspector, very much alive, was struggling to get loose; and her glance, falling upon Papa Gato, watching the strange performance with wonder-dilated eyes, suddenly changed the nature of her emotion. "You devil!" she shrieked, and she sprang to her feet; "You fiend!"—and she started toward him.

To Papa Gato's eternal credit be it said that he held his ground for several distinct seconds. But the vision of vengeance bearing down upon him was more than mortal man could bear. He broke one step, hesitated, then all his courage oozing out of him suddenly, he turned deliberately and ran. Once around the clearing he loped, the sound of flapping skirts ominous in his ears; then a second time, for the widow had picked up a stick, and with mechanical precision it was rising and falling only a few inches behind his head; a third lap he began, and by that time all the dogs of the camp had joined the chase in tumultuous glee. And it was a strange sight, up in that lonely clearing, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable and poisonous vegetation, beneath the shadow of Taal, brooding and sinister with its black banner of vapours, in the hollow silence of high altitudes, that man running in sober earnest, with