Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/690

 CIRCUIT RIDING IN THE PHILIPPINES narrow trail — a cliff wall on one side and a ravine on the other — apparently bound for Ilagan, his place of residence. Brower went back after him, and I by agreement pressed on, to try and overtake our alleged "escort." After an hour vainly spent in such endeavor, I concluded to stop and wait for my companion. If the head hunters rush a lone traveller, one of their number can strike from behind while he is pumping lead into those in front. But two well-armed men, back to back, have some showing to drive them off. At last Brower came up, on foot, having despaired of the recapture of his absconding steed. He climbed up be hind me in the gloomy, boggy depths of a forest-shrouded swamp — a jungle, Kipling would call it — and we proceeded as briskly as a tired horse, carrying double, can be urged to go, mentally, indeed even audibly, denouncing the mutton-headedness of our "escort," in leaving their charges to a tragic and sanguinary fate. At last on one hilltop we sighted them far ahead on another, and made them hear. They halted and waited, and the tension was over. That night we crossed our last swollen river, without mis hap, notwithstanding the stream was swift

and it was already dark — inky dark. Upon this occasion I beheld for the first time the wonderful skill of these ex-cowpunching packers in manipulating an aparejo and its load. They unloaded each animal in the dark, ferried the things and led the mules across, and reloaded in the dark, on the far side of the river; and every girth was cinched properly, and each aparejo so loaded that the mule could trot without loosening either the saddle or cargo. Having crossed the last river we came in a few moments to a town, where the Presidente (Mayor) who had been advised in advance of our coming, dried, and fed us and housed us comfortably for the night. Next morn ing he drove us in carriages, under a series of "triumphal" arches — they weren't exactly arcs de triotnphe, but they were small bamboo suggestions of the one on the ChampsElyse^s, or that at the entrance to Prospect Park, Brooklyn — over the few remaining miles that lay between us and our destina tion. Just about high noon we entered in state the limits of the fourth and last of the Provincial Capitals of the First Judicial District, the pueblo of Bayombong. New York, N. Y., August, 1907.