"Hot work to come. Gunner. But case shot should do it."
"I know me job, Cap'n. But lookee, I want none handlin' the guns but me and me crews. Fair angered I was, you firin' that piece."
All Ram's training rebelled against such insolence, and automatically he took Dick's old tone. "Gunner, the harness of that lead
pair's badly fouled. See to it!" As he turned away, the man in the watchtower shouted that hundreds on horse and foot were pouring from the west fort and heading town ward. Tlie ruse had worked.
"March!" Ram led back down the road, then swung west across millet fields to meet the oncoming foemen. Soon he halted, formed both troops in line, two deep, so that they hid the guns from sight of the enemy, one third of whom were lance men, the rest foot, carrying tulwaTS, shields and ancient matchlocks. Keep off those lances, he decided, and the rest are ours.
On their part, the rabble saw only a few score marauders who, having raided Ahmedpur, now invited suicide by coming into the open. Screaming taunts, they came on faster.
"Front rank, pick your marks!" Ram shouted. And, when the foremost lancers were only twenty paces off: "Give fire!"
The volley crashed and instantly each front-rank man pivoted his horse and withdrew rearward, where he dismounted and reloaded.
"Rear rank," Ram warned, peering through the smoke, "give fire!"
This volley delivered, the second rank withdrew behind the first, exposing the guns. Through the drifting pall came screams and the threshing of hoofs; but the sheer impetus of the onrush continued, though most of the lancers were down.
Jakes grinned thinly. "Here's Hell's welcome to the black bastards!" He put tow to the first gun's touchhole. As the gun fired, he ran to touch off its mate.
That was enough; the already wavering attack was shattered. Signaling for both troops to charge, Ram spurred Battle out ahead of Uzoor Singh's men. "Kill! Kill!" the Sikh kept chanting. "Let not one soor escape!"
Caught between both troops, the mass of footmen were helpless, and only Ram's constant intervention prevented a general massacre.
"Khan Sahib, cut off any trying to regain the fort!" he ordered. "Send men to occupy it until the rajah's followers relieve them!"
The Pathan started off, while the Sikh's excited men rounded up the prisoners. Again victory had been incredibly cheap; one trooper dead and two wounded.
Ram rode back slowly toward the road. In a few hours, with only loo men, his generalship had overrun a state, destroyed its army and captured its prince. He should be wildly excited; yet as elation drained, he was aware only that his leg ached damnably.
Across his front, moving townward, was a mass of men and beasts. Dadaji Rao was at last entering into his new domain.
"Bastardly coward!" Ram muttered and, somehow, felt better.
A welcoming party issued from the south gate. Ram gaped, for it was headed by Baja, a Baja he'd never before known. His turban sparkled with diamonds, his tunic was of silver cloth and his tight paejamas of crimson. He wore a jeweled sword and rode a fine stallion. And his scouts were no longer creatures of dirt and rags, but almost as dazzling as he. What amused Ram most was that Baja was wearing his glass eye. It was no twin to his real one and its unblinking stare was disconcerting; yet, somehow, it gave him a kind of dignity.
Ram saw him range alongside the rajah's great elephant, raise his sword in salute and call: "Arre, Highness, thy unworthy servants have exceeded beyond expectation. All Rakosawan is thine!"
The fat man in the gilt howdah nodded and bade his mahout increase the pace. "I yearn to come face to face with that stinking slave of a Mogul tyrant, may his white-colored blood erupt!"
With the guns rumbling behind him, Ram led the vanguard into Ahmedpur. Upon reaching the palace, Dadaji descended from his hathi and, followed by his dewan, personal bodyguard and the dragoons, entered the durbar, where his hapless enemy still huddled on the throne.
His thick lips protruding wetly, he waddled forward and put one foot on the dais, "O Trapped One, where is thy safety now?" he mocked. "I have waited long, but now all of thine is mine."
Something stirred in Pratap's eyes and he rose to tower above the taunter. "False friend, treacherous neighbor; many years have I protected you from aggressors, even to interceding for you with the Great Mogul himself. And now you will murder me!" His gaze swept upward. "O Siva the Destroyer, avenge me in thy good time and strike down Dadaji Rao here on this spot, as he has stricken me!" Then, very deliberately, he spat in the other's face.
"Take him!" Dadaji screamed, clawing at his jowls as if the spittle were burning into his flesh. "Chain him to Hathi Sahib, but do not let the Great One move till I give the word!" At once the captive was dragged away.
Ram, lightheaded from pain, had watched all as from a great distance, but now turned to Baja. "What's to be done with him?"
"Come." The Maratha hurried after Dadaji and his swarm. Ram followed, limping. Outside, the courtyard was jammed with humans, except in the center. There, Dadaji's elephant towered, its ears wide and flapping, its mahout's ankus poised. But it was the beast's off hind foot that riveted all eyes, for chained around it like a roll of leather was Pratap.
"God, no—it's fiendish!" Understanding now. Ram fumbled for a pistol. At least a merciful ball!
"Are you crazed?" Baja's fingers clamped on his wrist. "It is the right of the victor to kill as he pleases."
Numbly, Ram nodded and looked again at the elephant's human fetter.
"O mahout, drive deep the ankus!" Dadaji screeched, and the driver stabbed the iron goad behind the hathi's right ear.
Trumpeting protest, the beast swayed back and forward without, however, moving its feet; well aware that to do so would stamp out the life of a human. The mahout sank in the ankus again and again, but the animal, trumpeting its pain, still refused to move.
"The curse of Siva on you!" Pratap's muffled cry was defiant.
"Spears! Wound the Stupid One with them!" Dadaji yelled. A dozen henchmen rushed to obey.
Tortured beyond endurance, the beast lurched forward; its off hind rose, went down, rose, went down, dragging and stamping its victim. Terrible red footprints appeared in its wake as, raging, it charged into the dense crowd, knocking people down in swathes in its efforts to shake off the pulpy mass that had once been a man.
How the mahout regained control, or how many the hathi killed, Ram never knew, since, for the first time in his life, he had fainted.
"Lord, he is a burra bagh," Havildar Nur Mohammed said. "As I was relieving myself outside, I heard him close and had to run for my hfe."
Ram checked Chota. Phew, it was blistering! Thank God Chirawali was just ahead. Half-irritably, he asked the sergeant: "Why didn't you use your men and the villagers to hunt him down?"
"Lord, who am I to risk your servants' lives without orders?" the young Moslem smiled, "Also, the miserable village men believe the spirit of an old hermit inhabits this tiger and exacts vengeance be-
cause they didn't take food to his cave. These Hindus! Men of my faith have no such superstitions."
Ram laughed. He hked Nur Mohammed, who had done well at the capture of Ahmedpur. "Could you and I kill this man-eater?"
"We could, lord," the sergeant agreed, "but not our own Hindus, who'd rather be eaten than slay the Holy One who inhabits the animal." He reined in. "Aie, sahib, alight and rest."
A dragoon hurried from the bungalow to lead Chota away. Ram followed the havildar into the cool interior, where he rested.
Dadaji, he had to admit, had fully kept his bargain: He had shared the treasure equally—which Baja in turn had divided according to rank—and had given a jaghir of six villages to feed and quarter the men until after the rains. Therefore, Baja and his cronies were ranging far to offer the squadron's services to the highest bidder among several warring rajahs. So, with many of the men gone to their homes with their loot, Ram had but to visit each village and maintain discipline among those who remained.
Soon
he ordered the havildar to fall in with his six men, then he inspected them, the whole village watching. Afterward Nur Mohammed brought the headman forward.
Graying Pershad Patel salaamed: "Lord, the worthy havildar has told you of the terrible bagh who preys on us because, in our selfishness, we failed to feed the holy gossein who lived in yonder hills. Three—a woman and two babes—has he eaten in a month."
"What would you have me do, worthy patel? I see many stouthearted men among you who could track him down and kill him."
"Raj," the patel said hopefully, "his curse could not fall on you, a foreigner. Should you or any other who is not a Hindu kill the tiger, no harm would come to you."
So, if a Christian or a Moslem got killed in the hunting, it wouldn't count! Ram stared at the surrounding jungle. If the villagers wouldn't help, it might take weeks to track down the brute. Of course, he could bring in Moslems from his dragoons elsewhere.
"Who among you will seek out the Evil One for me?" he demanded.
The crowd drew back uneasily, but one elderly man called: "Lord, I am a shikari who has killed many a tiger. No mere bagh has terror for me, but this one carries the spirit of revenge, and him I dare not
hunt. Yet, noble stranger, I will lend my skill to track him for your killing. I, Rowati Shikari, swear it."
A young farmer called: "Lord, I offer a goat to bait the trap!"
Hope had won over superstition!
Two nights later, Ram and Nur Mohammed were perched on a tree platform above a jungle clearing, praying the Evil One might condescend to the scrawny goat staked out twenty yards away. For Rowati had found a trail running from the rock ridge westward to a spring in the lower foothills. So this trap was sited midway. But would His Majesty eat goat after having feasted so long on humans? Rowati believed so, for he would scent the hunters in the tree-machan.
"Think you he's near?" Ram whispered restlessly.
"No, lord. The monkeys' chatter will still when he comes."
The moon was waning and Ram dozing when the sergeant pressed his wrist warningly. At once he became aware of an eerie stillness, broken only by the nervous bleating of the goat.
"There, in the shadow." Nur Mohammed breathed.
There came a blur of movement across the clearing and an almost human scream from the goat. The Moslem fired; Ram followed suit.
"Again!" He took up his second gun.
Nur Mohammed aimed, but only a hollow click resulted, "The flint fell out!" he groaned.
"Here!" Ram thrust his own piece at him and took the useless one. "Give fire!"
Instead, the other leaped to ground, waving the weapon and shouting. As he fumbled for a new flint, Ram yelled for him to come back, but the havildar ran toward the beast, which snarled and spat over the dead goat. Halting at close range, he fired.
A soul-shaking roar answered, and Ram expected the tiger to leap. Instead, it turned and ran.
"Swiftly, raj, I struck him hard!" Leaping and yelling, Nur Mohammed bolted across the clearing in pursuit.
The new flint now in place, Ram followed. The eastern sky was brightening as he entered a treacherously dim pathway, guided only by the Moslem's crashing ahead. He cursed his encumbering European clothes and boots. Vines whipped his face, tall grass tangled his feet. A shot sounded. He ran on, but as the path wound sharply around a tree he tripped and fell, his gun discharging.
Though half stunned, he knew he had fallen over something yielding and warmly wet. The tiger? Nerves crawling, he leaped up and saw—Nur Mohammed! The havildars face was gone and his chest ripped open. Ram looked about wildly for his musket. There were two; his own intact, the other with its barrel bent and the stock snapped off. Shakily he drew his pistols. They could kill men, but could they serve against a tiger?
He listened tautly for sounds of the man-eater. There were none, but along the path ahead the growing light showed dark splashes, as if something bleeding had been dragged off. He looked down at the dead man again, half expecting to find a limb gone. No. What then was the brute carrying—the goat?
Shivering, he reloaded his gun and began following the bloody trail. Here it had been smeared over a stone, there it had left a red runnel in the dust. By the time the sun was up, the path curved upward and the vegetation thinned out to coarse grass, thorn and cacti. Then the red trail ended. Ram halted warily. Ah! The bagh had left the path, there, where the grass flattened. Heart thumping, he followed, a pace at a time. The ground kept rising and showed out-croppings of eroded rock.
He froze. Twenty paces ahead, at the base of a sheer rock face, was the tiger! He wanted to run, but his legs refused him. In desperation he aimed at the great striped form, behind the left shoulder. He fired, threw down the flintlock and drew his pistols. But why was the beast lying turned away from him? It should be facing him, ready to spring.
He swore. He'd shot a thing already dead! The bagh's intestines were half out of its belly and dragging behind. Nur Mohammed had done that. When the tiger had turned on him, the havildar must have hit it point-blank before it had crushed him and his gun.
Ram measured it from nose to tail tip. Over twelve feet! The broken, rotted teeth showed its great age. He also noticed that its head was in the opening of a cave in the rock face. Startled, he moved backward. What if its mate and cubs were within?
He twisted dry grass into a rough torch, lighted it with his rinder-box, then warily thrust its flaming end within the opening. When there were no growls, he felt sure only the dead male had laired there. But the torch did reveal a broken earthenware pot. The tale of the
neglected hermit who had entered into the tiger came to his mind. His spine turned to ice.
Yet curiosity sent him stooping through the low entrance. Inside, surprisingly, he could stand upright, but at once he was overcome by a nauseating stench. His foot touched a gnawed human head, with some hair still adhering. Gagging, he saw bones everywhere, some obviously animal, but here was a human pelvis, there a crushed forearm and hand. But the walls, they were hewn. The hermit's cave!
He was about to back out from the ghastly smell, when an unusual angle on the far wall made him look closer—a stone door, standing ajar. He peered through the crack and gave a yell. Two baleful eyes glittered at him—the tiger's mate! In panic, he fired; but when the smoke cleared, the eyes still glared. He fired his second pistol, then raced back into the daylight.
When his nerves steadied, he remembered that animals fear fire. Making and lighting two more torches, he went back in and tugged at the door. It opened, the ease of its swing showing it was well counterbalanced, and there was revealed an inner room. He laughed weakly. The eyes belonged to Ganesha, the Elephant god! He had seen many facsimiles of it, though they had been in clay, whereas this one was of metal, with eyes and a necklace of glass.
His nerves jumped again. Beside the door jamb squatted a man with thick, matted hair, pipestem arms and legs. He must have been the hermit, dead so long that his leathery skin alone held his bones together. Doubtless he had been trapped inside by the tiger and had left the door open just a little for air; but then had died, probably from starvation.
The Ganesha stood on a rock ledge. About thirty inches high, one of the pistol balls had gouged a bright furrow, revealing it had been cast in brass. Ram grinned at its dust-encrusted shape. Only Hindus could have designed anything so bizarre as a god with a chubby baby-boy body, four arms, an elephant's high-domed head and trunk and mocking little glass eyes. But could mere glass sparkle so, throwing off countless faceted glints?
He remembered the gems in the rajah's treasury and his blood raced. The necklace? He snapped the thin metal chain that linked the clamped stones, each fiery in the torchlight. In size some
ranged as large as his thumbnail. Pocketing them, he worked his knife point under one eye. Ecod, it was a diamond!
The metal of the socket was strangely soft. His hand shook as he worked deeper. The eye dropped to the ground. Scooping it up, he turned it in his fingers,
admiring its beauty, its great size. Now for its fellow! This, too, came free, and however deeply his knife gouged the metal's color remained the same. He tried to lift the idol from the ledge, but it was too heavy. His brain reeled and he was soaked with sweat. Could it be gold?
But, now the tiger was dead, suppose the villagers came to the cave and found the gold? Backing out, he swung the door closed. It fitted so well it was hard to tell it was there at all.
Outside, he sank down weakly, realizing that if the stones were real and the idol of solid gold, he could go home, buy a dozen more Dales views and a colonelcy as well. "No more agues! No more monsoons!" he cried aloud at the burning noon sun.
He worked back along his own tracks to the path. As he struck out along it, he was too excited to worry about other jungle beasts. But why should a golden Ganesha with diamond eyes be hidden in an obscure cave? Fool! It was only brass and its eyes glass! Still, Baja would know. If the eyes were gems, he'd give him one. Chanda must, of course, have the necklace. Comforted, he hurried on.
At last he saw men ahead, standing over Nur Mohammed's corpse; Rowati Shikari and three dragoons. Good, they would bury the body decently. Suddenly weary, he hoped the men had brought Chota with them. Seeing him in turn, they shouted and waved.
"Wah, Lord, we feared the Evil One had carried you off, after he had killed the Moslem!" Rowati hailed.
"The bagh is slain." Ram hoped to discourage questions, but in their joy the men demanded to know how the Evil One had died.
"Did I not say the hermit's spirit was in it?" the shikari boasted, when Ram had told them. "Arre, we must give generous donations lest it enter into the body of another bagh."
Ram suggested they go and skin the tiger at once, so that he could divert their attention from the door. But Rowati shuddered at such desecration, and even the three dragoons looked uneasy.
Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. Page 20