by Talbot Mundy
“Sahib, peace follows in the wake of soldiers, as we know. Time and time again the peace of India has been ripped asunder at the whim of priests! These padre people, preaching new damnation everywhere, are the flint and steel for the tinder of the cartridge fat!”
“I never knew you to croak before, Mahommed Gunga.”
“Nor am I croaking. I am praising Allah, who has sent thee now to the place whence the wind will come to fan the hell flames that presently will burn. The wind will blow hot or cold — for or against the government — according as you and I and certain others act when opportunity arrives! See yonder!”
They had been seen, evidently, for horsemen — looking like black ants on the desert — seemed to have crawled from the bowels of the living rock and were galloping in their direction.
“Friends?” asked Cunningham.
“Friends, indeed! But they have yet to discover whether we are friends. They set me thinking, sahib. Alwa is well known on this country-side and none dare raid his place; few would waste time trying. Therefore, it is all one to him who passes along this road; and he takes no trouble, as a rule, to send his men out in skirmishing order when a party comes in view. Why, then, does he trouble now?”
“Couldn’t say. I don’t know Alwa.”
“I am thinking, sahib, that the cloud has burst at last! A blood-red cloud! Alwa is neither scare-monger nor robber; when he sends out armed men to inspect strangers on the sky-line, there is war! Sahib, I grow young again! Had people listened to me — had they called me anything but fool when I warned them — thou and I would have been cooped up now in Agra, or in Delhi, or Lucknow, or Peshawur! Now we are free of the plains of Rajputana — within a ride of fifty of my blood-relations, and they each within reach of others! Ho! I can hear the thunder of a squadron at my back again! I am young, sahib — young! My old joints loosen! Allah send the cloud has burst at last — I bring to two thousand Rangars a new Cunnigan-bahadur! Thy father’s son shall learn what Cunnigan-bahadur taught!”
He lapsed into silence, watching the advancing horsemen, who swooped down on them in an ever-closing fan formation. His tired horse sensed the thrill that tingled through its rider’s veins, and pranced again, curving his neck and straining at the bit until Mahommed Gunga steadied him. The five behind — even the mule-drivers too — detected excitement in the air, and the little column closed in on its leaders. All eyes watched the neck-and-neck approach of Alwa’s men, until Cunningham at last could see their turbans and make out that they were Rangars, not Hindoos. Then he and the Risaldar drew rein.
There were twenty who raced toward them, but no Alwa.
“It is as I thought!” declared Mahommed Gunga. “It is war, sahib! He has summoned men from his estates. As a rule, he can afford but ten men for that fort of his, and he would not send all his men to meet us — he has a garrison up yonder!”
Like blown dust-devils the twenty raced to them, and drew up thundering within a lance-length. A sword-armed Rangar with a little gold lace on his sleeve laughed loud as he saluted, greeting Mahommed Gunga first. The Risaldar accepted his salute with iron dignity.
“Forgive him, sahib!” he whispered to Cunningham. “The jungli knows no better! He will learn whom to salute first when Alwa has said his say!”
But Cunningham was in no mood just then to stand on military ceremony or right of precedence. He was too excited, too inquisitive, too occupied with the necessity for keeping calm in the face of what most surely looked like the beginning of big happenings. These horsemen of Alwa’s rode, and looked, and laughed like soldiers, new-stripped of the hobble ropes of peace, and their very seat in the untanned saddles — tight down, loose-swaying from the hips, and free — was confirmation of Mahommed Gunga’s words.
They wheeled in a cloud and led the way, opening a little in the centre to let the clouds of sand their horses kicked up blow to the right and left of Cunningham and his men. Not a word was spoken — not a question asked or a piece of news exchanged — until the whole party halted at the foot of Alwa’s fortress home — a great iron gate in front of them and garden land on either side — watered by the splashing streamlet from the heights above.
“Men of the house of Kachwaha have owned and held this place, sahib, since Allah made it!” whispered Mahommed Gunga. “Men say that Alwa has no right to it; they lie! His father’s father won the dower-right!”
He was interrupted by the rising of the iron gate. It seemed solid, without even an eyehole in it. It was wide enough to let four horses under side by side, and for all its weight it rose as suddenly and evenly as though a giant’s hand had lifted it. Immediately behind it, like an actor waiting for the stage-curtain to rise, Alwa bestrode his war-horse in the middle of a roadway. He saluted with drawn sabre, and this time Cunningham replied.
Almost instantly the man who had led the gallopers and had saluted Mahommed Gunga spurred his horse up close to Cunningham and whispered:
“Pardon, sahib! I did not know! Am I forgiven?”
“Yes,” said Cunningham, remembering then that a Rajput, and a Rangar more particularly, thinks about points of etiquette before considering what to eat. Alwa growled out a welcome, rammed his sabre home, and wheeled without another word, showing the way at a walk — which was all a wild goat could have accomplished — up a winding road, hewn out of the solid mountain, that corkscrewed round and round upon itself until it gave onto the battlemented summit. There he dismounted, ordered his men to their quarters, and for the first time took notice of his cousin.
“I have thy missionary and his daughter, three horses for thee, and thy man,” he smiled.
“Did Ali Partab bring them?”
“Nay. It was I brought Ali Partab and the rest! My promise is redeemed!”
Mahommed Gunga thrust his sword-hilt out and smiled back at him. “I present Raff-Cunnigan-sahib — son of Pukka-Cunnigan-bahadur!” he announced.
Alwa drew himself up to his full height and eyed young Cunningham as a buyer eyes a war-horse, inch by inch. The youngster, who had long since learned to actually revel in the weird sensation of a hundred pairs of eyes all fixed on him at once, felt this one man’s gaze go over him as though he were being probed. He thanked his God he had no fat to be detected, and that his legs were straight, and that his tunic fitted him!
“Salaam, bahadur,” said Alwa slowly. “I knew thy father. So — thou — art — his — son. Welcome. There is room here always for a guest. I have other guests with whom you might care to speak. I will have a room made ready. Have I leave to ask questions of my cousin here?”
Cunningham bowed in recognition of his courtesy, and walked away to a point whence he could look from the beetling parapet away and away across desert that shone hot and hazy-rimmed on every side. If this were a man on whom he must depend for following — if any of all the more than hints dropped by the risaldar were true — it seemed to him that his reception was a little too chilly to be hopeful.
After a minute or two he turned his eyes away from the dazzling plain below and faced about to inspect the paved courtyard. Round it, on three sides of a parallelogram, there ran a beautifully designed and wonderfully worked-out veranda-fronted building, broken here and there by cobbled passages that evidently led to other buildings on the far edge of the rock. In the centre, covered by a roof like a temple-dome in miniature, was the ice-cold spring, whose existence made the fort tenable. Under the veranda, on a long, low lounge, was a sight that arrested his attention — held him spell-bound — drew him, tingling in a way he could not have explained — drew him — drew him, slow-footed, awkward, red — across the courtyard.
He heard Mahommed Gunga swear aloud; he recognized the wording of the belly-growled Rangar oath; but it did not occur to him that what he saw — what was drawing him — could be connected with it. He looked straight ahead and walked ahead — reached the edge of the veranda — took his helmet off — and stood still, feeling like an idiot, with the sun full on his head.
; “I’d advise you to step into the shade,” said a voice that laughed more sweetly than the chuckling spring. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m more glad to see you than I ever was in my life to see anybody. I can’t get up, because I’m too stiff; the ride to here from Howrah City all but killed me, and I’m only here still because I couldn’t ride another yard. My father will be out in a moment. He’s half-dead too.”
“My name is Cunningham.”
“I’m Miss McClean. My father was a missionary in Howrah.”
She nodded to a chair beside her, and Cunningham took it, feeling awkward, as men of his type usually do when they meet a woman in a strange place.
“How in the world did you get in?” she asked him. “It’s two days now since the Alwa-sahib told us that the whole country is in rebellion. How is it that you managed to reach here? According to Alwa, no white man’s life is safe in the open, and he only told me today that he wouldn’t let me go away even if I were well enough to ride.”
“First I’ve heard of rebellion!” said Cunningham aghast at the notion of hearing news like that a second hand, and from a woman.
“Hasn’t Alwa told you?”
“He hasn’t had time to, yet.”
“Then, you’d better ask him. If what he say is true — and I think he tells the truth — the natives mean to kill us all, or drive us out of India. Of course they can’t do it, but they mean to try. He has been more than kind — more than hospitable — more than chivalrous. Just because he gave his word to another Rangar, he risked his life about a dozen times to get my father and me and Ali Partab out of Howrah. But, I don’t think he quite liked doing it — and — this is in confidence — if I were asked — and speaking just from intuition — I should say he is in sympathy with the rebellion!”
“How long have you been here?” asked Cunningham.
“Several days — ten, I think. It seemed strange at first and rather awful to be lodged on a rock like this in a section of a Rangar’s harem! Yes, there are several women here behind the scenes, but I only see the waiting-women. I’ve forgotten time; the news about rebellion seems too awful to leave room for any other thought.”
“Who was the Rangar to whom Aliva gave his word? Not Mahommed Gunga, by any chance?”
“Yes, Mahommed Gunga.”
“Well, I’m — !” Cunningham clipped off the participle just in time. “There is something, then, in the talk about rebellion! That man’s been talking in riddles to me ever since I came to India, and it looks as though he knew long in advance.”
He was about to cross-examine Miss McClean rigorously, even at the risk of seeming either rude or else frightened; but before his lips could frame another question he caught sight of Mahommed Gunga making signals to him. He affected to ignore the signals. He objected to being kept in the dark so utterly, and wished to find out a little for himself before listening to what the Rangars had to say. But Mahommed Gunga started over to him.
He could not hear the remark Mahommed Gunga made to Alwa over his shoulder as he came.
“Had I remembered there was a woman of his own race here, I would have plunged him straight into the fighting! Now there will be the devil first to pay!”
“He has decision in at least one thing!” grinned Alwa.
“Something that I think thou lackest, cousin!” came the hot retort.
Alwa turned his back with a shake of his head and a thin-lipped smile — then disappeared through a green door in the side of what seemed like solid rock. A moment later Mahommed Gunga stood near Cunningham, saluting.
“We ask the favor of a consultation, sahib.”
Cunningham rose, a shade regretfully, and followed into the rock-walled cavern into which Alwa had preceded them. It was nearly square — a hollow bubble in the age-old lava — axe-trimmed many hundred years ago. What light there was came in through three long slits that gave an archer’s view of the plain and of the zigzag roadway from the iron gate below. It was cool, for the rock roof was fifty or more feet thick, and the silence of it seemed like the nestling-place of peace.
They sat down on wooden benches round the walls, with their soldier legs stretched out in front of them. Alwa broke silence first, and it was of anything but peace he spoke.
“Now — now, let us see whose throats we are to slit!” he started cheerfully.
CHAPTER XXIV
Achilles had a tender spot
That even guarding gods forgot,
When clothing him in armor;
And I have proved this charge o’ mine
For fear, and sloth, and vice, and wine,
But clear forgot the charmer!
THE Alwa-sahib knew more English than he was willing to admit. In the first place, he had the perfectly natural dislike of committing his thoughts to any language other than his own when anything serious was the subject of discussion; in the second place, he had little of Mahommed Gunga’s last-ditch loyalty. Not that Alwa could be disloyal; he had not got it in him; but as yet he had seen no good reason for pledging himself and his to the British cause.
So for more than ten minutes he chose to sit in apparent dudgeon, his hands folded in front of him on the hilt of his tremendous sabre, growling out a monologue in his own language for Mahommed Gunga’s benefit. Then Mahommed Gunga silenced him with an uplifted hand, and turned to translate to Cunningham.
“It would seem, sahib, that even while we rode to Abu the rebellion was already raging! It burst suddenly. They have mutinied at Berhampur, and slain their officers. Likewise at Meerut, and at all the places in between. At Kohat, in this province they have slain every white man, woman, and child, and also at Arjpur and Sohlat. The rebels are hurrying to Delhi, where they have proclaimed new rule, under the descendants of the old-time kings. Word of all this came before dawn today, by a messenger from Maharajah Howrah to my cousin here. My cousin stands pledged to uphold Howrah on his throne; Howrah is against the British; Jaimihr, his brother, is in arms against Howrah.”
“Why did the Alwa-sahib pledge himself to Howrah’s cause?”
Mahommed Gunga — who knew quite well — saw fit to translate the question. With a little sign of irritation Alwa growled his answer.
“He says, sahib, that for the safety of two Christian missionaries, for whom he has no esteem at all, he was forced to swear allegiance to a Hindoo whom he esteems even less. He says that his word is given!”
“Does he mean that he would like me and the missionaries to leave his home at once — do we embarrass him?”
Again Mahommed Gunga — this time with a grin — saw fit to ask before he answered.
“He says, ‘God forbid,’ sahib; ‘a guest is guest!’”
Cunningham reflected for a moment, then leaned forward.
“Tell him this!” he said slowly. “I am glad to be his guest, but, if this story of rebellion is true—”
“It is true, sahib! More than true! There is much more to be told!”
“Then, I can only accept his hospitality as the representative of my government! I stay here officially, or not at all. It is for him to answer!”
“Now, Allah be praised!” swore Mahommed Gunga. “I knew we had a man! That is well said, sahib!”
“The son of Cunnigan-bahadur is welcome here on any terms at all!” growled Alwa when Mahommed Gunga had translated. “All the rebels in all India, all trying at once, would fail to take this fort of mine, had I a larger garrison. But what Rangar on this countryside will risk his life and estates on behalf of a cause that is already lost? If they come to hold my fort for me, the rebels will burn their houses. The British Raj is doomed. We Rangars have to play for our own stake!”
Then Mahommed Gunga rose and paced the floor like a man in armor, tugging at his beard and kicking at his scabbard each time that he turned at either end.
“What Rangar in this province would have had one yard of land to his name but for this man’s father?” he demanded. “In his day we fought, all of us, for what was right! We threw
our weight behind him when he led, letting everything except obedience go where the devil wanted it! What came of that? Good tithes, good report, good feeling, peace!”
“And then, the zemindary laws!” growled Alwa. “Then the laws that took away from us full two-thirds of our revenue!”
“We had had no revenue, except for Cunnigan-bahadur!”
It dawned on Cunningham exactly why and how he came to be there! He understood now that Mahommed Gunga had told nothing less than truth when he declared it had been through his scheming, and no other man’s, that he — Cunningham — whose sole thought was to be a soldier, had been relegated to oblivion and politics! He understood why Byng had signed the transfer, and he knew — knew — knew — deep down inside him that his chance had come!
“It seems that another Cunningham is to have the honor of preserving Rangars’ titles for them,” he smiled. “How many horsemen could the Alwa-sahib raise?”
“That would depend!” Alwa was in no mood to commit himself.
“At the most — at a pinch — in case of direst need, and for a cause that all agreed on?”
“Two thousand.”
“Horsed and armed?”
“And ready!”
“And you, Alwa-sahib — are you pledged to fight against the British?”
“Not in so many words. I swore to uphold Howrah on his throne. He is against the British.”
“You swore to help smash his brother, Jaimihr?”
“If I were needed.”
“And Jaimihr too is against the British?”
“Jaimihr is for Jaimihr, and has a personal affair with me!”
“I must think,” said Cunningham, getting up. “I can think better alone. D’you mind if I go outside for a while, and come back later to tell you what I think?”
Alwa arose and held the door open for him — stood and watched him cross the courtyard — then turned and laughed at Mahommed Gunga.
“Straight over to the woman!” he grinned. “This leader of thine seems in leading-strings himself already!”