The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  “Oh, that will be like old times when I was a child in New England,” Miss Musson replied with unimpaired calm.

  “No, it will not be, not in the least! These mountains, my dear Miss Amanda, are not the Berkshires! The Weran Pass is fifteen thousand feet up.”

  “I am sure we shall manage very well.”

  At this moment the baby woke and began to cry; a thin, mewing, threadlike sound that caused Parvati, the elephant, to snort and spread out her large ears inquisitively.

  “Have no fear, royal lady,” the Therbah muttered to her in Pushtu. “It is only the memshahib’s little piece of foolishness.”

  Miss Musson produced from among her black draperies a large gourd full of milk and capably fed the baby, who went back to sleep again.

  As the sun rose, shining on their backs and right shoulders, it became plain that already they were entering more hilly country. Beyond them, to the north and west, great serrated ranges of the Hindu Kush sliced the sky, their snowy peaks flashing crimson and gold with the first rays. The party were crossing, at present, a wide, cultivated vale intersected with many streams and small rivers. Some of these Parvati waded; others she swam, while her riders maintained a vigilant lookout for crocodiles. “Plenty of the brutes in the Indus,” said Cameron, “and all these little tributaries flow into it, only fifty miles off; crocodiles can travel great distances when water is low, as it has been this summer.”

  “What a fortunate thing it is, Rob, that you are so familiar with this country,” Miss Musson said comfortably.

  “It will be by far the best course, ma’am, to leave that infant of yours at some monastery along the way,” Colonel Cameron remarked brusquely when the baby had to be given its noontide drink of milk. “How are we to procure milk for it all the way across Afghanistan—a most mountainous, rugged, and inhospitable region—”

  “Why not take a goat with us, as the Therbah suggested?”

  “—whereas in a monastery—I can think of several excellent and suitable ones—he would be reared to a harmless life of useful piety and fruitful activity. Why you should be so resolved on dragging him all the way to England—”

  “So that he can go to Eton. It was his late father’s wish.”

  “And what will be the outcome of that?” demanded the irate colonel. “When he is grown he will return to Ziatur—foment civil war if it is not already raging—probably get himself killed and all to what purpose?”

  “You know as well as I, Colonel Cameron, that if only more Western-educated rulers could be introduced into Indian states there might be some chance of inculcating a system of democracy and equality such as we have in America. As it is: look at the condition of this wretched land—Tippoo Sahib intriguing with the French in the south—the Maratha princes all at odds—three hundred and sixty-two independent, warring states in the Punjab alone—civil war and chaos everywhere.”

  “And you believe that dragging one puling infant all the way to England—”

  “How remarkably fast this elephant moves,” tranquilly put in Scylla at this point—she felt the argument would never be resolved and had much better be shelved. “What a very fortunate choice of yours she was, dear Colonel Cameron. At what pace would you imagine her to be proceeding?”

  Cameron’s mouth twitched in a reluctant grin under his red-gold mustaches.

  “I should think she may be capable of achieving so much as fifteen or even twenty miles an hour, Miss Paget—certainly faster than a man can run—so long as we are on level ground, that is. But very soon, unfortunately, we shall not be.”

  By now they had left the wide vale and were crossing a series of narrow tributary valleys on their way northward. The orchards, pomegranate and orange trees, and the banyans were giving way to deodar and rhododendron forest, through which Parvati crunched and crashed her way, displacing great drifts of aromatic scent, wonderfully refreshing to the travelers accustomed to the dry and fetid odors of their enclosed town.

  The sun, after its early morning promise, had retreated behind a bank of cloud, but the full rains had not yet begun; the air was moist, a little cooler here among the foothills, and thunder rolled occasionally in the distance. Miss Musson had prudently equipped herself with an ancient rusty-black umbrella, but as yet there was no occasion for its use.

  That night they camped in a belt of rhododendron forest at the head of a narrow valley by a deep rapid brook that came bounding down a rocky stairway from the hills above in clouds of spray. There was enough thick grass growing by the water, and young tree shoots around about, to satisfy the elephant’s hunger without beginning on the fodder they had brought for her. After browsing she enjoyably drank and sprayed herself with water from the brook. The Therbah lit a small fire and cooked millet porridge and chupattis for the party, but Miss Musson had come to the end of the milk in her gourd and declared that she must go down to a village which they had glimpsed through the trees some half a mile down the valley and purchase either more milk or a goat.

  This was a fresh cause of friction with the colonel.

  “Oh, confound it, Amanda! Cannot the infant eat porridge like the rest of us?”

  “No, it cannot!” testily replied Miss Musson.

  “I daresay strangers come hardly once in two years to such a little foothill corner as we are in. The news will be all over the province in a flash.”

  “By which time we shall be on our way. Come, come, Rob; you know we cannot let the baby starve.”

  “Then you had best let me go—or the Therbah,” he replied hastily. “A Feringi lady they will be sure to remember.”

  “Nonsense, Rob—you are quite as conspicuous yourself, with those red mustaches of yours—whereas I, if I speak Pahari dialect, might be any old hill woman from another region.”

  There was some truth in this and reluctantly, at last, Cameron let her go. But she was a very long time in returning, and he became extremely anxious about her, his anxiety bordering on exasperation. “If she is not up to some piece of folly!” he muttered.

  His fears seemed justified when at length she returned with a train of interested observers following: country people who all wanted to stare and wonder at the strangers.

  At last the visitors were politely shooed away, the baby was fed—“What a little angel!” remarked Miss Musson in a self-congratulatory way; “I only wish he were an angel,” bitterly replied Colonel Cameron—and the party were left to settle down to sleep, which they did underneath the elephant, who provided them with shelter from a light rain that had commenced to fall—she being shackled by the leg to a couple of trees. However she showed in any case no disposition to move and lived up to the character for docility and good nature that she had so far established.

  Dawn came late in their deep valley but they were up long before the sun, breakfasted hastily, and started off while the crows and the blue jays were still waking the forest with their morning screams. From down here the higher mountains were hidden, but the track lay steeply uphill, through dense green forest, and presently, in a dip between two acute hillsides, they could see distant peaks, indigo blue.

  Parvati was making slow work of the climb.

  “We shall have to dispose of her today,” Cameron said. “She will be no use to us in these hills.”

  However she had not yet outlasted her usefulness to the party. There were several more valleys to cross which were bisected by the shallow, shingly, fast-running rivers of the region. These Parvati gallantly forded, struggling sometimes in the deeper channels, slipping on the loose scrambling stones, and trumpeting with anxiety, while the Therbah gentled her and encouraged her with words of praise.

  At about the sixth of these rivers—which was, in fact, a confluence of two tributary mountain streams that came together in a flat-bottomed, steep-sided valley to make a quarter-mile stretch of shallow, turbid water studded with sandbanks—Parvati had hardly en
tered the current when the riders were startled by the sound of rifle shots from downstream.

  “Oh, heavens—look!” exclaimed Scylla.

  Parvati trumpeted excitedly, and at the same moment Miss Musson exclaimed. “Good gracious, what can be the matter with my umbrella?” staring at it in amazement. She had been left with hardly more than the handle—the upper portion had been torn away.

  Narrowing his eyes against the light from downstream, Colonel Cameron stared for no longer than five seconds before pronouncing:

  “I recognize the uniform of Mihal’s bodyguard. The wretches must have been hard on our trail all this time. Therbah—make the elephant go faster. Paget—is your weapon loaded?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then take aim and fire. Aim for the leader—the fellow on the black horse.”

  Staring downstream, Scylla perceived a small troop of men. Her vision was by no means so keen as that of Colonel Cameron who, she had discovered, had eyes like a hawk; she could just detect the movement of their horses, the white flash of their turbans, and the puffs of smoke as, having reloaded, they fired again. All their shots this time fell short or wide; she could see the splashes kicked up by their bullets on the water and the furrows carved on a shallow sandbank which Parvati was just approaching.

  Cameron discharged his own musket, and one of the pursuers toppled off his horse.

  “Ha!” grunted the colonel. “That’s made ’em ponder; and now they’ve got to reload again; they still have no notion of staggering fire, in spite of all I have taught them. Hurry up your beast, Therbah! Once we gain that bluff on the far shore we shall have the upper hand on them.”

  The Therbah, however, was troubled. “Parvati not moving well, sahib.”

  “Why, what is the matter? Can she have been hit? She did not cry out.”

  The elephant did cry out now, though: a long, strange shrill trumpeting shriek of fright and dismay.

  “Oh, what can it be?” exclaimed Scylla, and then, in horror, “Why, look, Colonel Cameron—she is sinking into the sand!”

  “The devil! So she is! Poor beast—no wonder she was not able to go any faster. A quicksand, by God! Therbah! Can you not urge her out of it? Discharge your pistol behind her ear—that may help to startle her forward. If not—I fear we must prepare to abandon her forthwith. Miss Musson—Miss Paget—make ready to jump for it!”

  “Into the quicksand?” exclaimed Miss Musson. “My dear Rob!”

  “Devil take it, ma’am, what else is there to do? What an elephant may sink, a human may, with luck, venture safely—that is, if he looks sharp about it and don’t dawdle—leap as far forward as you may, into the sand, then run fast, for your life, into the deeper water where you may swim.”

  The Therbah discharged his pistol behind Parvati’s ear, but to no avail. Indeed the wretched beast’s floundering start of terror at the sound only served to sink her deeper into the quicksand.

  “Jump!” roared Cameron, and his fellow travelers launched themselves out of the howdah while he, hastily reloading, fired two more shots at the pursuing troop. Another man fell, and a horse staggered. A hail of fire came back in return, but the elephant was now interposed as a barrier between pursuers and fugitives; many of the shots, in any case, fell wide or short.

  Scylla, leaping into shallow water, felt the horrible suck of treacherous sand beneath her feet; she struggled hastily forward until she was waist deep in water and could swim, then turned to see how her companions were faring. Cal, with a pack on his back, was assisting Miss Musson into deep water and had taken the baby from her; the Therbah, holding his musket above his head with one hand, swimming strongly in a deep narrow channel, had the elephant’s lead rope in his teeth and was endeavoring to drag and persuade her forward.

  “It is useless, Therbah!” Cameron called from the howdah. “One of those villains’ shots has taken her in the neck; one way or another, I fear she is done for, poor beast. Here—be ready to catch these—”

  He was hurling out of the howdah the rest of the scanty bundles that constituted their luggage. Fortunately the sandbank that had proved so treacherous to them was rather beyond the middle of the river, and many of the articles that he flung out reached the far bank or fell into shallows where they might be rescued.

  “Rob! Do not be lingering there but come quickly!” called Miss Musson in agitation.

  “Don’t put yourself in a pucker, ma’am! Here I come,” replied Cameron, and, holding his weapon muzzle down, he sprang into the water from the slowly subsiding elephant, who was still trumpeting in despair and terror. In a few rapid strokes he had caught up with the rest of the party.

  “Now—quick, before they have time to reload—make a dash for the shelter of those rocks and so up the bluff. Each for himself—who has the baby? All—very well. Run!”

  Scylla, in shallow water, dared not look behind her. One thing, she thought, there has been no time to worry about crocodiles. She gained the reedy bank, scrambled up it, turned to assist Miss Musson, who was close behind, and half led, half dragged the older woman up to the ridge of red rocks that outlined the shore to their left. In the shelter of this they sank down gasping. As they did so a prolonged, mournful bellow from the doomed elephant ended abruptly. Either she had been hit again or she had finally sunk under water. Stealing a glance above the rock, Scylla perceived that the surface of the river was empty: the poor beast had been completely submerged.

  “Keep down, Miss Paget!” furiously roared the voice of Colonel Cameron. A shot smacked the sandy ground not twelve feet from Scylla.

  The colonel was lying on his stomach nearby, reloading his weapon. “Aha!” he muttered. “Now their flank is thoroughly exposed,” and he fired through a crack between the rocks. “Paget! Why the devil are you not firing?”

  “Well done, sir!” shouted Cal, ignoring this. “You got the fellow on the black.” Next moment he discharged his own weapon.

  “That’s given the villains something to think about, anyway,” grunted Cameron, lowering his musket to study the attackers through the crevice. “Yes; just as I thought; they haven’t the pluck to attempt that river without their leader.”

  The horsemen were conferring together at the spot where Parvati had entered the water, they were looking up and down the banks irresolutely. Evidently the elephant’s fate had discouraged them. Cameron fired again and succeeded in picking another rider off his horse. Without more ado the rest of the troop turned and made off in the direction from which they had come.

  “Dismal curs!” remarked Cameron. “If I were Mihal I’d behead the lot of them—as he probably will! Didn’t even stop to hinder us from collecting our baggage. They might at least have waited until dark.”

  As it was—after allowing a prudent interval to elapse—the survivors of the quicksand were able to go down to the water’s edge and retrieve their scattered belongings—wet, certainly, but intact.

  “All the flour is sodden!” lamented Miss Musson.

  “Let that be a lesson to you, ma’am! Wrap up your supplies better in future. All the weapons, you will observe, are heavily greased, and the ammunition is encased in so many layers of oiled leather and silk that Neptune himself couldn’t get at it.”

  “Don’t brag, Rob,” said Miss Musson sharply. “You, after all, are used to these sorts of alarums—it is your profession—but we are not accustomed to scampering off into the wild at short notice and being shot at.”

  “Miss Musson is very kind,” here coldly put in Scylla, “but the fault regarding the flour was mine. I had charge of the stores and shall undertake next time—if there is a next time—to wrap the flour in as many layers of oiled silk as you please to direct, Colonel Cameron.”

  All of a sudden she felt exceedingly angry with the colonel—if she had been asked why, she could hardly have said. Partly it was because he had shouted at her so loudly and rudel
y to put her head down when she was still shaking with fright and effort. Partly because he had seemed so callous regarding the fate of their poor elephant And partly just because she was cold and wet and exhausted and could not imagine what they were to do now.

  As if to aggravate her indignation, Colonel Cameron now addressed Cal.

  “Paget, why in heaven were you not quicker of the mark with your covering fire? By thunder! I wouldn’t have you in a troop of mine, not if you couldn’t get down and begin firing faster than that!”

  “Sir,” very composedly replied Cal, “I was holding the baby; which I had taken from Miss Musson while we went through the water.”

  “Holding the baby! — — the baby! Why couldn’t you set it down, man?”

  “Enough of this!” interposed Miss Musson. “We are all very much obliged to you, Colonel Cameron, but the main requirement at the moment—I fancy—is to put some distance between ourselves and the scene of this unfortunate occurrence. And then we had best light a fire and dry our possessions.”

  “You are in the right of it, ma’am,” rather curtly replied the colonel.

  Ruffled, wet, and not best pleased with one another, the party retired up the hillside into the gathering dusk. Still shaken by the recent adventure, they were inclined to straggle, but Cameron, visibly impatient, waited until they all came up with him and then harangued them.

  “Listen to me if you please!” he said. “Heaven knows, I had no particular wish to become involved in this business; but since I am involved and, owing to my experience, am the most capable to take charge of the expedition, I must request that you all follow my directions and, particularly at moments of crisis, give me instant obedience. You, Paget! Did you hear me, sir?”

  “What was that you said, Colonel?” absently replied Cal, whose thoughts evidently had been miles away—he had probably been, his sister suspected, composing an elegy on the drowning of the elephant. “Oh yes, instant obedience in times of crisis—certainly.”