by Talbot Mundy
They were told that a subaltern was lucky who could mount one step of the promotion ladder in his first ten years; that a major at fifty, a colonel at sixty, and a general at seventy were quite the usual thing. And they realized that the pay they would receive would be a mere beggar’s pittance in a neighborhood so expensive as Calcutta, and that their little private means would be eaten up by the mere, necessities of life. They showed their chagrin and it was not very easy for young Cunningham, watching Mahommed Gunga’s lordly preparations for the long up-country journey, to strike just the right attitude of pleasure at the prospect without seeming to flaunt his better fortune.
Mahommed Gunga interlarded his hoarse orders to the mule-drivers with descriptions in stateliest English, thrown out at random to the world at large, of the glories of the manlier north — of the plains, where a man might gallop while a horse could last, and of the mountains up beyond the plains. He sniffed at the fetid Bombay reek, and spoke of the clean air sweeping from the snow-topped Himalayas, that put life and courage into the lungs of men who rode like centaurs! And the other subalterns looked wistful, eying the bullock-carts that would take their baggage by another route.
Fully the half of what Mahommed Gunga said was due to pride of race and country. But the rest was all deliberately calculated to rouse the wicked envy of those who listened. He meant to make the son of “Pukka” Cunnigan feel, before he reached his heritage, that he was going up to something worth his while. To quote his own north-country metaphor, he meant to “make the colt come up the bit.” He meant that “Chota” Cunnigan should have a proper sense of his own importance, and should chafe at restraint, to the end that when his chance did come to prove himself he would jump at it. Envy, he calculated — the unrighteous envy of men less fortunately placed — would make a good beginning. And it did, though hardly in the way he calculated.
Young Cunningham, tight-lipped to keep himself from grinning like a child, determined to prove himself worthy of the better fortune; and Mahommed Gunga would have cursed into his black beard in disgust had he known of the private resolutions being formed to obey orders to the letter and obtain the good will of his seniors. The one thing that the grim old Rajput wished for his protege was jealousy! He wanted him so well hated by the “nabobs” who had grown crusty and incompetent in high command that life for him in any northern garrison would be impossible.
Throughout the two months’ journey to the north Mahommed Gunga never left a stone unturned to make Cunningham believe himself much more than ordinary clay. All along the trunk road, that trails by many thousand towns and listens to a hundred languages, whatever good there was was Cunningham’s. Whichever room was best in each dak-bungalow, whichever chicken the kansamah least desired to kill, whoever were the stoutest dhoolee-bearers in the village, whichever horse had the easiest paces — all were Cunningham’s. Respect were his, and homage and obeisance, for the Rajput saw to it.
Of evenings, while they rested, but before the sun went down, the old risaldar would come with his naked sabre and defy “Chota” Cunnigan to try to touch him. For five long weeks he tried each evening, the Rajput never doing anything but parry, — changing his sabre often to the other hand and grinning at the schoolboy swordsmanship — until one evening, at the end of a more than usually hard-fought bout, the youngster pricked him, lunged, and missed slitting his jugular by the merest fraction of an inch.
“Ho!” laughed Mahommed Gunga later, as he sluiced out the cut while his own adherents stood near by and chaffed him. “The cub cuts his teeth, then! Soon it will be time to try his pluck.”
“Be gentle with him, risaldar-sahib; a good cub dies as easily as a poor one, until he knows the way.”
“Leave him to me! I will show him the way, and we will see what we will see. If he is to disgrace his father’s memory and us, he shall do it where there are few to see and none to talk of it. When Alwa and the others ask me, as they will ask, ‘Is he a man?’ I will give them a true answer! I think he is a man, but I need to test him in all ways possible before I pledge my word on it.”
But after that little accident the old risaldar had sword-sticks fashioned at a village near the road, and ran no more risks of being killed by the stripling he would teach; and before many more days of the road had ribboned out, young Cunningham — bareback or from the saddle — could beat him to the ground, and could hold his own on foot afterward with either hand.
“The hand and eye are good!” said Mahommed Gunga. “It is time now for another test.”
So he made a plausible excuse about the horses, and they halted for four days at a roadside dak-bungalow about a mile from where a foul-mouthed fakir sat and took tribute at a crossroads. It was a strangely chosen place to rest at.
Deep down in a hollow, where the trunk road took advantage of a winding gorge between the hills — screened on nearly all sides by green jungle whose brown edges wilted in the heat which the inner steam defied — stuffy, smelly, comfortless, it stood like a last left rear-guard of a white-man’s city, swamped by the deathless, ceaselessly advancing tide of green. It was tucked between mammoth trees that had been left there when the space for it was cleared a hundred years before, and that now stood like grim giant guardians with arms out-stretched to hold the verdure back.
The little tribe of camp-followers chased at least a dozen snakes out of corners, and slew them in the open, as a preliminary to further investigation. There were kas-kas mats on the foursquare floors, and each of these, when lifted, disclosed a swarm of scorpions that had to be exterminated before a man dared move his possessions in. The once white calico ceilings moved suggestively where rats and snakes chased one another, or else hunted some third species of vermin; and there was a smell and a many-voiced weird whispering that hinted at corruption and war to the death behind skirting boards and underneath the floor.
It had evidently not been occupied for many years; the kansamah looked like a gray-bearded skeleton compressed within a tightened shroud of parchment skin that shone where a coffin or a tomb had touched it. He seemed to have forgotten what the bungalow was for, or that a sahib needed things to eat, until the ex-risaldar enlightened him, and then he complained wheezily.
The stables — rather the patch-and-hole-covered desolation that once had been stables — were altogether too snake-defiled and smelly to be worth repairing; the string of horses was quartered cleanly and snugly under tents, and Mahommed Gunga went to enormous trouble in arranging a ring of watch-fires at even distances.
“Are there thieves here, then?” asked Cunningham, and the Rajput nodded but said nothing. He seemed satisfied, though, that the man he had brought safely thus far at so much trouble would be well enough housed in the creaky wreck of the bungalow, and he took no precautions of any kind as to guarding its approaches.
Cunningham watched the preparations for his supper with ill-concealed disgust — saw the customary chase of a rubber-muscled chicken, heard its death gurgles, saw the guts removed, to make sure that the kansamah did not cook it with that part of its anatomy intact, as he surely would do unless watched — and then strolled ahead a little way along the road.
The fakir was squatting in the distance, on a big white stone, and in the quiet of the gloaming Cunningham could hear his coarse, lewd voice tossing crumbs of abuse and mockery to the seven or eight villagers who squatted near him — half-amused, half-frightened, and altogether credulous.
Even as he drew nearer Cunningham could not understand a word of what the fakir said, but the pantomime was obvious. His was the voice and the manner of the professional beggar who has no more need to whine but still would ingratiate. It was the bullying, brazen swagger and the voice that traffics in filth and impudence instead of wit; and, in payment for his evening bellyful he was pouring out abuse of Cunningham that grew viler and yet viler as Cunningham came nearer and the fakir realized that his subject could not understand a word of it.
The villagers looked leery and eyed Cunningham sideways at e
ach fresh sally. The fakir grew bolder, until one of his listeners smothered an open laugh in both hands and rolled over sideways. Cunningham came closer yet, half-enamoured of the weird scene, half-curious to discover what the stone could be on which the fakir sat.
The fakir grew nervous. Perhaps, after all, this was one of those hatefully clever sahibs who know enough to pretend they do not know! The abuse and vile innuendo changed to more obsequious, less obviously filthy references to other things than Cunningham’s religion, likes, and pedigree, and the little crowd of men who had tacitly encouraged him before got ready now to stand at a distance and take sides against him should the white man turn out to have understood.
But Cunningham happened to catch sight of a cloud of paroquets that swept in a screaming ellipse for a better branch to nest in and added the one touch of gorgeous color needed to make the whole scene utterly unearthly and unlike anything he had ever dreamed of, or had seen in pictures, or had had described to him. He stood at gaze — forgetful of the stone that had attracted him and of the fakir — spellbound by the wonder-blend of hues branch-backed, and framed in gloom as the birds’ scream was framed in silence.
And, seeing him at gaze, the fakir recovered confidence and jeered new ribaldry, until some one suddenly shot out from behind Cunningham, and before he had recovered from his surprise he saw the fakir sprawling on his back, howling for mercy, while Mahommed Gunga beat the blood out of him with a whalebone riding-whip.
The sun went down with Indian suddenness and shut off the scene of upraised lash and squirming, naked, ash-smeared devil, as a magic-lantern picture; disappears. Only the creature’s screams reverberated through the jungle, like a belated echo to the restless paroquets.
“He will sleep less easily for a week or two!” hazarded Mahommed Gunga, stepping back toward Cunningham. In the sudden darkness the white breeches showed and the whites of his eyes, but little else; his voice growled like a rumble from the underworld.
“Why did you do it, risaldar? What did he say?”
“It was enough, bahadur, that he sat on that stone; for that alone he had been beaten! What he said was but the babbling of priests. All priests are alike. They have a common jargon — a common disrespect for what they dare not openly defy. These temple rats of fakirs mimic them. That is all, sahib. A whipping meets the case.”
“But the stone? Why shouldn’t he sit on it?”
“Wait one minute, sahib, and then see.” He formed his hands into a trumpet and bellowed through them in a high-pitched, nasal, ululating order to somebody behind:
“Oh-h-h — Battee-lao!”
The black, dark roadside echoed it and a dot of light leapt up as a man came running with what gradually grew into a lamp.
Mahommed Gunga seized the lamp, bent for a few seconds over the still sprawling fakir, whipped him again twice, cursed him and kicked him, until he got up and ran like a spectre for the gloom beyond the trees. Then, with a rather stately sweep of the lamp, and a tremble in his voice that was probably intentional — designed to make Cunningham at least aware of the existence of emotion before he looked — he let the light fall on the slab on which the fakir had been squatting.
“Look, Cunningham-sahib!”
The youngster bent down above the slab and tried, in the fitful light, to make out what the markings were that ran almost from side to side, in curves, across the stone; but it was too dark — the light was too fitful; the marks themselves were too faint from the constant squatting of roadside wanderers.
Mahommed Gunga set the lamp down on the stone, and he and the attendant took little sticks, sharp-pointed, with which they began to dig hurriedly, scratching and scraping at what presently showed, even in that rising and falling light, as Roman lettering. Soon Cunningham himself began to lend a hand. He made out a date first, and he could feel it with his fingers before his eyes deciphered it. Gradually, letter by letter — word by word — he read it off, feeling a strange new thrill run through him, as each line followed, like a voice from the haunted past.
A.D. 1823. A.D.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF GENERAL ROBERT FRANCIS CUNNINGHAM
WHO DIED ON THIS SPOT
AETAT 81
FROM
WOUNDS INFLICTED BY A
TIGER
There was no sound audible except the purring of the lamp flame and the heavy breathing of the three as Cunningham gazed down at the very crudely carved, stained, often-desecrated slab below which lay the first of the Anglo-Indian Cunninghams.
This man — these crumbled bones that lay under a forgotten piece of rock — had made all of their share of history. They had begotten “Pukka” Cunningham, who had hacked the name deeper yet in the crisscrossed annals of a land of war. It was strange — it was queer — uncanny — for the third of the Cunninghams to be sitting on the stone. It was unexpected, yet it seemed to have a place in the scheme of things, for he caught himself searching his memory backward.
He received an impression that something was expected of him. He knew, by instinct and reasoning he could not have explained, that neither Mahommed Gunga nor the other men would say a word until he spoke. They were waiting — he knew they were — for a word, or a sign, or an order (he did not know which), on which would hang the future of all three of them.
Yet there was no hurry — no earthly hurry. He felt sure of it. In the silence and the blackness — in the tense, steamy atmosphere of expectancy — he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that there was superstition to be reckoned with — and that is something which a white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, as a rule.
The sweat ran down his face in little streams a the prickly heat began to move across his skin, like a fiery-footed centiped beneath his undershirt, but he noticed, neither. He began to be unconscious anything except the knowledge that the bones of his grandsire lay underneath him and that Mahommed Gunga waited for the word that would fit into the scheme and solve a problem.
“Are there any tigers here now?” he asked presently, in a perfectly normal voice. He spoke as he had done when his servant asked him which suit he would wear.
“Ha, sahib! Many.”
“Man-eaters, by any chance?”
Mahommed Gunga and the other man exchanged quick glances, but Cunningham did not look up. He did not see the quick-flashed whites as their eyes met and looked down again.
“There is one, sahib — so say the kansamah and the head man — a full-grown tiger, in his prime.”
“I will shoot him.” Four words, said quietly — not “Do you think,” or “I would like to,” or “Perhaps.” They were perfectly definite and without a trace of excitement; yet this man had never seen a tiger.
“Very good, sahib.” That, too, was spoken in a level voice, but Mahommed Gunga’s eyes and the other man’s met once again above his head.
“We will stay here four days; by the third day there will be time enough to have brought an elephant and—”
“I will go on foot,” said Cunningham, quite quietly. “Tomorrow, at dawn, risaldar-sahib. Will you be good enough to make arrangements? All we need to know is where he is and how to get there — will you attend to that?”
“Ha, sahib.”
“Thanks. I wonder if my supper’s ready.”
He turned and walked away, with a little salute-like movement of his hand that was reminiscent of his father. The two Rajputs watched him in heavy-breathing silence until the little group of lights, where the horse-tents faced the old dak-bungalow, swallowed him. Then:
“He is good. He will do!” said the black-beard who had brought the lamp.
“He is good. But many sahibs would have acted coolly, thus. There must be a greater test. There must be no doubt — no littlest doubt. Alwa and the others will ask me on my honor, and I will answer on my honor, yes or no.”
It was an hour before the two of them returned, and looked the horses over and strolled up to bid Cunningham good night; and in the meanwhile they had seen about the
morrow’s tiger, and another matter.
CHAPTER VII
What found ye, then? Why heated ye the pot?
What useful metal down the channels ran?
Gold? Steel for making weapons? Iron? What?
Nay. Out from the fire we kindled strode a man!
THEY set the legs of Cunningham’s string-woven bed into pans of water, to keep the scorpions and ants and snakes at bay, and then left him in pitch darkness to his own devices, with a parting admonition to keep his slippers on for the floor, in the dark, would be the prowling-place of venomed death.
It was he who set the lamp on the little table by his bedside, for his servant — for the first time on that journey — was not at hand to execute his thoughts almost before he had spoken them. Mahommed Gunga had explained that the man was sick; and that seemed strange, for he had been well enough, and more than usually efficient, but an hour before.
But there were stranger things and far more irritating ones to interfere with the peaceful passage of the night. There were sounds that were unaccountable; there was the memory of the wayside tombstone and the train of thought that it engendered. Added to the hell-hot, baking stuffiness that radiated from the walls, there came the squeaking of a punka rope pulled out of time — the piece of piping in the mud-brick wall through which the rope passed had become clogged and rusted, and the villager pressed into service had forgotten how to pull; he jerked at the cord between nods as the heat of the veranda and the unaccustomed night duty combined to make him sleepy.
Soon the squeaking became intolerable, and Cunningham swore at him — in English, because he spoke little of any native language yet, and had not the least idea in any case what the punka-wallah’s tongue might be. For a while after that the pulling was more even; he lay on one elbow, letting the swinging mat fan just miss his ear, and examining his rifle and pistols for lack of anything better to keep him from going mad. Then, suddenly, the pulling ceased altogether. Silence and hell heat shut down on him like a coffin lid. Even the lamp flame close beside him seemed to grow dim; the weight of black night that was suffocating him seemed to crush light out of the flame as well.