Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/116



ETECTION of crime by American officers in the Philippine Islands depends largely upon their knowledge of native customs and beliefs and their ability to interpret correctly the pagan rites and ceremonies commonly practised in peasant society.

Alaad is a ceremony to lay a ghost. It is frequently practised by criminals along the Cagayan River of northern Luzon to propitiate the spirits of their dead victims.

Two little boys had been cruelly murdered without any apparent motive. The murderer had not left the slightest clue to aid the police. The American captain, knowing the customs of the locality, suspended all fruitless search except to watch for announcements of forthcoming alaads. His wait was rewarded by the capture and conviction of the guilty man.

the nervous pony espied the two little boys playing in the ford, he stopped stock-still to pitch his rider over his head into the water. The little fellows laughed with childish glee while the superstitious hunter held his rearing mount with one hand to recover his fallen lance with the other.

The childish laughter was an ill omen. The enraged hunter swung into his saddle, with long lance poised, and started in pursuit of the frightened, fleeing boys already out of the river in the open meadow. Before his companion could divine his purpose, the infuriated man had swept up the smaller boy on his lance. Without reining in his mount, he shook off the bleeding body to impale the second, a boy of eight, who, in the meantime, seeing escape impossible, had stopped so as to be better able to parry the thrusts.

The pony galloped past, and the point of the lance missed by a foot. At a signal from his rider, he circled so that the man might not lose control of his long weapon. Anticipating the second attack, the boy ran toward his assailant, but he was no match for his skill. As the hunter swept past, he released the shaft, and the blade found its victim's breast. The trained animal turned and trotted back to stop beside the kill.

The rider dismounted, withdrew his lance, then returned to the ford to wash its crimson blade.

His frightened companion waited for him to speak.

"Thou, Carlos, hast seen. Tell at thy peril."

"I saw nothing, master."

They mounted. The hunter Domingo led the way, avoiding the little brown bodies under the circling vultures. An hour later they stopped; the hunter had reached home. He dismounted, threw the rein to his companion, to greet his little daughter Maria waiting at the door. He took her in his arms gently and, with his nose pressed into her soft cheek, in-