Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1910-02-10

gasp as certain possibilities were visu-
allied with startling clearness.
As electrician at the LuZon power
plant Tubby was the only white man
that side Of Vegan, twenty miles away,
the force under him consisting wholly
of Ilocanos. OF course he could tele-
phone to Captain Aiken for a detach-
ment of constabulary to come up and
protect him, but the thought Of the
way the boys would guy him when he
went back to Manila rendered such an
alternative impossible.
The following morning Tubby made
glad the heart of the cook-recently
saddened by the large amount of care
fully prepared wood that had disap-
peared from the kitchen during the
nightly giving him and the mucha-
cho holiday, as he was going into the
hills to hunt deer, he declared. That
the fat senior ever hunted deer was
news to them, but they kept their per-
plexities to themselves and FASTENED
to the cockpit in the village, which the
lazy presidente permitted to be kept
open on week days in violation Of the
new law of the loco Americanos"
against the heavenly sport at any time
except on Sundays and feast days.
The servants gone, Tubby slipped
the heavy wooden bar across the door,
closed the sliding bamboo windows
| and in the subdued twilight Of the
! shack brought out the skull and set to
! work. With a pillow under his knees
/ to protect them from the hard bamboo
Stats of which the floor was construct
! ed, he labored over the skull of that
obscure and departed Hocano with as
much thought and care as he would
| have bestowed upon the. installation
of a new dynamo. Chisels. mallets.
wires big and little, solder and q
soldering pot, white paper. a can of
kerosene oil. n gimlet, to say nothing of
heaps of clothing, Uttered the floor till
/ noon. when. with a satisfied chuclIle,
the steaming electrician replaced the
/ skull In the trunk, stood a bulky
something in the dark interior of the
"aparador." or big movable closet.
and then opened the windows to the
blessed breeze that CHANGED to be
blowing down from the hills.
When he had taken a shower bath
from the cask that he had rugged up
over the porch he drew up a bottle
4 kept a supply ION ice." as he phrased
it in loving Renaissance, lunched on
crackers and mangoes and then start
ed for the plant. With him he took
his fieldglasses and carefully studied
the distant hills as be proceeded
"Humph-they're filing through the
pass there from Bontoc now" he com
mented after a long look through the
glasses at a cash in the distant noun
tains. "Well. hope they enjoy their
reception" he concluded with a fat
rhuckle, swinging the glasses over his
thick shoulder and waddling on.
When Tubby threw the stub of his
seventh Dos HermanOs cigar out of
the window that night and put aside
a back number Of the Argosy it was
only 10 o'clock. nearly two hours ear
lier than it was his custom to retire
Although it was n hot night. he closed
the windows carefully. switched or all
but one of the electric lights that he
had installed on a wire from the pow
sr house and then brought forth from
the capacious closet bulky dummy
dressed In a suit of his own pink pa
jamas and placed 1t in a sitting pos
ture in the middle of the bed. Open
ing the trunk. he brought out the
skull and after fifteen minutes tink-
ering had it secure upon the Shout
ders of the efigy.
With a wry face he then made down
a bed in the farther corner behind the
closet. where the floor CHANGED TO be
made of boards and not Of openwork
Stats through which spear could cas-
ur be thrust Then he opened wide