mpatience.

"Matak, this chicken is only half cooked: I've warned the cook several
times--tell him to eat it."

Matak, silent and grim as ever, bore the offending dish out, while
Terry turned to the Major to discuss the morrow's sport. In a moment
their voices were drowned by the crash of dishes falling in the
kitchen, then a fearsome shriek reached the startled pair, a moaning
cry terminating abruptly in a choking gurgle. They sprang up and into
the kitchen.

Matak was astride the prostrate Visayan in the midst of the broken
crockery and bent tinware spilled from the upset table. He had the
cook's mouth pried open in determined endeavor to ram what looked like
half a chicken down the Visayan's gullet. Half-strangled and crazed
with fear the cook rolled his eyes beseechingly.

Bronner raised Matak bodily and Terry helped the trembling Filipino to
his feet. He turned to Matak sternly.

"What does this mean?"

"He would not eat it, master."

The cook broke in, almost hysterical: "Matak say I must eat cheecken,
that you say so. I say 'all right, eat to-morrow.' He say 'eat now.' I
say 'no, to-morrow.' Then he fight. I no eat to-day--notheeng--to-day
church fast day!"

As recollection came of his joking instructions to the ever serious
Matak, Terry turned to the Major but he had run from the kitchen,
choking. Having patched up a truce between them, Terry followed the
Major into the sala.

At sight of his rueful face the Major burst into fresh laughter. "His
fast day!" he chuckled. "These Moros are sure literal-minded--they
follow your words exactly. I've had some queer examples in the past
year."

They sat through the cool evening talking of their multi-phased
service, Bronner earnest and unwittingly eloquent in his summing up of
its ideals, its hopes for the future, Terry silent and thoughtful as
the big man talked about plans for Mindanao, for the Gulf.

"And some day, Terry," he concluded, after a stirring account of what
two officers, Case and Gallman, had done among the Luzon headhunters,
"some day we will get to the Hill People: the right man will come
along, and the right combination of circumstances. It is an unusual
combination--the right man plus the right place plus the right time.
Carnegie would probably have been just a tight-fisted Scot had he
lived in Napoleon's time, and Napoleon if born in this generation
might never get a headline.

"I would like to be the man who first wins to the Hills.