Chapter 23One evening, just as we were sitting down to a
dinner of bulalo (a beef bone marrow soup of cabbage, corn,
potatoes, and Baguio beans), fried tawillis fish, and
binarakong baka (beef simmered in caramelized Batangas
coffee), several armed men entered the house.
I immediately jumped up from the table and
reached for my Colt, but Manfred stopped me.
“It’s okay, William,” Manfred said, standing
up and putting his hand on my arm. “I know these men.”
There were eight of them, all dressed in
blue and white striped cotton rayadillo jackets and pants. All wore
yellow straw hats. Only three wore shoes. They carried a variety of
weapons—the two-foot-long native kris and bolo knives, a couple of
Spanish Remington rolling block rifles, an 1873 Springfield, and
what looked like
