n his mission, eager, joyful.
This was the life!

Terry ran upstairs, turned up the light, ripped off his white clothes
and slipped into riding clothes and flannel shirt. As he buckled on
his belt and hooked in canteen and holster, he heard the Sergeant
galloping down the street with his led horse. A swift inspection of
the mechanism of his big automatic, four extra clips added to the
belt, and he ran downstairs as the Macabebe drew up.

Reaching the beach they turned south, riding fast through the chill
darkness, Mercado keeping his pony a length behind Terry's nervous
gray. They had covered several miles before the sun rose from behind
Samal, gray-pinked sky and sea for a brief bewitching moment, then
swept the low hanging mists from gulf and mountain, and smote,
full-powered, upon the sandy shore down which they rode. The tireless
ponies--crooked of leg but splendid of head and eye in true
indications of their heritage of coarse Chinese and fine Arabian
bloods--toiled steadily over the high-tide beach, sinking coronet deep
in the soaked sand, their footprints disappearing almost as they
lifted hoofs. Courageous, the little animals scrambled over the coral
formations that blocked their path, picked their way, delicately,
through sour mangrove swamps: once, unsaddled, they swam a wide
tide-deepened creek that the riders crossed, bridle reins in hand, in
a small dugout which they found on the bank.

Their sharp shadows had shortened a third when they swung up from the
beach and trotted down the unkempt street of Sabaga. A chorus of
howls, set up by bony, slinking curs of the type that infest all
native villages, announced their presence but there was no sign of
life in any of the shambling bamboo houses. The village seemed
deserted.

They pulled up, the Sergeant pointing significantly at the carabaos
tied up under the high perched huts. Terry understood: fear of the
ladrones had paralyzed the natives. As he studied the closed windows
and doors, sensed the terror of these defenseless, harmless people, a
cold hatred of the spoilers narrowed his steel-gray eyes. They were
about to press on when the quiet of the town was suddenly broken by a
cry sounded from a house behind them:

"_El Soltario! El Constabulario!_"

The exultant shout was taken up by other voices as windows were
cautiously raised: in a moment the doors were thrown wide and a crowd
of natives swarmed about the two riders. The men shrill-voiced, women