MANUK DEL MONTE By Rowland Thomas Early one morning, just before the dawn, three of us were riding wearily down the slope of one of the great grassy hills—some people call them mountains—which lie between the provinces of Isabella and Nueva Vizcaya. We had been travelling all night by moonlight, and now as the east was growing rosy we were winding down to a little wood in the valley, where we hoped to find a mountain stream to give us water for our breakfast, and a thing of far more importance, grazing for the horses, for it was the dry season, and the grass on the hills was parched and dead. The breakfast swung with mocking lightness behind Justin’s saddle, merely a few handfuls of cold rice rolled in the butt of a banana leaf. It was also tiffin and dinner, for we were travelling light and fast, and carried not even chocolate, nothing but the rice. I was watching the gyrations of the breakfast moodily, for I was sleepy and hungry and sore, when suddenly from the wood below us the crow of a cock rang out, shrill and triumphant. I was surprised, for few people live along a trail used mostly by bandits and head-hunters. Suddenly from the slope of a farther hill the call rang out again, and then the whole wood echoed with the sounds of the farmyard. “What town is this?” I asked the boys, although we were at least a day’s journey from any settlement which I knew. Justin laughed, and even Tranquid smiled stiffly. “It is no town, señor,” said Justin. “It is the manuk del monte—the wild chicken—which you hear.” After saddles were off and the horses’ backs were washed, the animals rolled and grazed luxuriously by the swift, clear stream, and Tranquid, prince of servants, dexterously unrolled the breakfast. He laid stones on the corners of the leaf, and patted the snowy mass of rice out smoothly, and filled a bamboo drinking-cup from the brook, while I pretended not to see. At meal-times Tranquid has a solemn and important air worthy of the most autocratic of London butlers, and I am a babe in his hands. “Breakfast is served, señor,” said Tranquid, gravely. “I come,” I replied, with equal gravity, and rolled over twice and came up on my knees, Japanese fashion, beside my lowly table. Just as I was going to plunge my fingers into the rice, a cock crowed loud and clear among the trees close at hand. A great ferocity of meat hunger swept over me. “Give me the boom-boom, Justin!” I commanded. “We will have manuk del monte for breakfast.” The cock crowed often while I stole through the undergrowth, as softly as the ferns and bristly creepers would let me. As I drew near, the crowing ceased, and I was peering about the brush and shrub for a sight of the cock when—whir! From the lower branches of a tree, fifty feet above my head, a splendid bird shot out with a boom like a partridge and sailed away between the tree trunks, a dazzling vision of white and green and gold. I was too startled to shoot, for I had never before seen chickens that roost like eagles and flew like pheasants and were as brilliant as humming-birds. In a moment I heard his strong wings beating on the other side of the valley, and I went back and ate my rice quietly. That incident began my acquaintance with the wild chickens, and they soon grew to be a very dear part of the forest life, bringing me an odd mixture of pleasant memory and homesickness as I listened to them. We heard them always when we made and left our one-night homes along the trail. The cocks proved to be just as exacting husbands as their domesticated cousins, crowing their families home and abroad with fussy punctuality. If a gay young cockerel or a giddy pullet lingered too long afield, the lord of the flock grew noisy with anxiety as the sunset faded. With the dawn he woke, brisk and important, and woe betide the sleepyhead of the family. There was no “Rouse up, sweet slugabed” for him, but an ear-splitting call, and we often chuckled at thought of the sheepish haste of the laggard when that sound penetrated to his sleepy brain. A tropical forest is a thing of awe and mystery, with its eternal dim twilight and tangled creepers, and innumerable dark vistas which hide inhabitants one seldom hears and never sees. Most of the creatures seem to feel the silent immensity and vagueness as a man does, and seek safety in unobtrusiveness. These brave, cheery birds alone were unaffected by it, and they crowed and cackled and clucked about their business of living as carelessly as if there were no such thing as fear in the world. Yet with all their independence they showed a baffling shyness, and many weeks went by before I caught more than a distant glimpse of one. Tranquid hunted them with painful devotion. But he was a child of the cities, lost in the mountains as a puppy would have been. When a cock crowed near a camping-place, his face would brighten hopefully, and he would go creeping off with the noiselessness of a young elephant. Back and forth he crashed in the brush, pulling branches aside with excessive caution and peeping behind them. At last the bird would flush from a tree and shoot away in a blur of colored light. Then Tranquid would straighten up with a nervous jerk, and cry triumphantly: “There, señor, I have found him! There he goes. Look! Look!” pointing up to the tree where he had been. On these occasions Justin always lay on the grass and laughed. Justin was a woodland philosopher, and had discovered that town-bred folk and wild chickens had been sent into the world for his amusement. He never deigned to take any further part in the pursuit. When it came to stalking a deer or running down a pig he was all eagerness and skill, and would lead me for hours without a thought of rest, but chickens were beneath him. Occasionally, however, as we rode along, a crow would caw somewhere above us. Then Justin was full of excitement. “Look, señor!” he would shout, pointing up to the empty sky. “I have found him. There! There!” In spite of Justin’s jesting, my desire to see a wild cock face to face only increased with repeated failure. I never tried to shoot one after that first experience. I would as soon have thought of shooting at a monkey. But I wanted to have one for my own, to look at, and draw pictures of, and show to my poor friends who lived down in the plains through the hot season, and complained of prickly heat. I even dreamed of presenting one to my friend, the captain, and letting him create a new and lusty race of fowls, a breed which would meet the hawk in his own element, and laugh at woven-wire fences. At last, up in a little mountain village, my opportunity came. Tranquid announced, with the respectful elation he sometimes permitted himself, that a man had a wild rooster. Would the señor like to come to see it? The señor was willing, so we went down the narrow grass-grown street together, stepping carefully over the babies and pigs that were basking in the sun. In the yard of a little tumble-down shack we found a rusty brown bird tied to a post by a bit of twine about his leg. The old man, his owner, scattered a few kernels of corn, and the poor dingy thing pecked at them in a half-hearted way. A hen came bustling up and he pecked peevishly at her once or twice, and then hopped back to his post and stood there, dull and round-shouldered, like a sulky boy who had decided that the corn was not of much importance, anyway, and had put his hands in his pockets. I was slow to believe that this could be a brother of the swift, bright bird which had boomed out of a treetop that first morning, but I presently discovered that it was. The long, slender body, the powerful wings, the sharp, heavy bill, were the product of generations of wild life. And under the dust and rustiness of the feathers there were still traces of the green and gold of the forest. The changes were due only to a changed mode of life. “The man says,” explained Tranquid, “that he has had this rooster for a long time, and it is dirty. He says he will catch a clean one for the señor, if he pleases.” Of course the señor pleased; and one bright morning we set out. The old man, our guide, marched in front, most importantly, for it is not every day that one has a chance to show a señor what a clever man one is at catching wild chickens, and the old man knew that his grandchildren would tell their children about this expedition. Under his arm he carried a red fighting cock. It struck me as a bit odd to carry such an animal on a hunting trip, but I asked no questions. One feels no surprise in the Philippines in meeting people with roosters under their arms; it is quite the usual thing. Tranquid followed the old man, respectfully hopeful. Then came Justin, smiling, and I brought up the rear. A mile or so from the village the wall of the forest rose, dark and impenetrable. But at one point a stream came down from the hills, and there the field extended into the woods for a little way, making a sort of room, cool and shadowy, and carpeted with short, thick turf. Here the old man halted, and waited till we all stood about him. Then he drew from the pocket of his blouse a bundle of twine, wound on four pointed sticks. Justin stopped smiling. Anything in the nature of a trap, anything which matched man’s wits against the instinct of the wild creatures, interested Justin. The old man chose a spot of level ground and set to work. He drove one of the little stakes into the ground, uncoiled the twine, drove another, and so on, until he had marked out a square, about a yard on a side. On three sides the twine was carried on the stakes a few inches above the ground, and from this fence, every hand’s breadth or so, hung a little noose of fiber. The fourth side of the square was a wall of brush, and at the center of this the old man now drove a fifth stake, and tied his fighting cock to it by a very short tether. Then he opened all the little nooses and spread them carefully on the ground within the square. Justin inspected the work. “It is very good,” he announced at last. “One would not believe that this old man could be so wise. The wild rooster hears this one. He wishes to fight. All roosters wish to fight always. He comes from the wood, dancing, so! This one crows and fluffs out his feathers, so! The wild rooster comes to the little fence and they look at each other, so!” said Justin, using Tranquid for illustration. “He cannot pass under the little fence; it is too low. He cannot step over it; it is too high. He hops, so! His foot falls in the noose, and—so!” said Justin, dancing on one foot and cackling shrilly. “Abáa. It is very good. The old man is much wiser than one would think to look at him.” The old man listened to this monologue with disgust. “Now we shall go and be very quiet. The manuk del monte does not like noisy ones,” he said, glancing at Justin. So we went and sat down where some bushes screened us and yet left us a view of the trap. After half an hour Justin curled up and went to sleep. The breeze was cool and the grass was soft, and soon I followed his example. I was awakened by a bell-like call from the forest. The captive rooster was dancing at his stake. Presently he flapped his wings and stood on tiptoe and answered scornfully. They challenged back and forth till at last, with a boom of wings, the wild cock, the very one I had been dreaming of, dropped on the grass. As he caught sight of the traitor he spread all his splendid plumage and crowed again. And the red bird answered bravely. After all, it was not his fault that he was a traitor. The wild bird ran forward with a swift, steady gait very unlike the awkward stride of his tame cousins, and lowered his head, and spread his ruff. Then he stood up straight and scratched sticks and grass into the air with a sturdy leg and crowed. The traitor kicked furiously at his tether, but it held, and the wild cock advanced to the fence. For a moment the two looked at each other with lowered heads, and then they sprang. The traitor, of course, collapsed in an ignominious heap. As the wild cock landed inside the fence, his foot barely touched the ground. But the touch was enough. One of the little nooses tightened about his legs, and as he sprang again he, too, came down with a jerk. The birds were rising to face each other when we ran forward, and he turned toward us at the noise. I expected to see him struggle madly to escape. But the brave little fellow faced us, and flapped his wings and stretched his neck, challenging us fearlessly. In a moment the old man had tossed a handkerchief over his head and loosened the noose, and I held him between my hands. I could feel the little muscles taut as steel wires beneath my fingers, and the heart beating furiously, but he made no sound and did not struggle. I looked at the lustrous markings of his back and wings, and the long, drooping tail-feathers, and then all at once came a picture of the draggled, spiritless captive back in the old man’s yard. I plucked away the handkerchief and tossed him into the air. His wings beat very loud in the stillness, and we all started. Then I looked round sheepishly. Tranquid was staring up stupidly, with his mouth in a big, round O. Justin was laughing, but suddenly he pointed excitedly to Tranquid’s mouth and shouted: “Look, señor! I have found him. There he goes. Look! Look!” And it would be hard to say whether the old man gazed at Justin or at me with the deeper disgust.