Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “What then?”

  “You’ve disappointed her, and that was so stoopid it was almost genius! She thinks she understands you perfuct. She can see you riding through that gap tonight all ready to make a fine speech and steal her army from under her beautiful nose. Do you think she’ll let you do ut? Hell! Unless she’s ten times crazier than the Dover woman she’ll set a trap and catch you on your way in! And if I know a from izzard, she’ll send Rahman to the Amir to make a brand-new set o’ terms. You’ll end up in Kabul, a sort of he-concubine like a prince consort; and our Indian army will take a licking, for which I’ll be the first to blame you, Gup, and the last to forgive ut.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Go grab her — ostrich! Set a trap and catch her! Tell her where she gets off! When you ride into that gap to-night, she comes along obedient, not leading Gup Bahadur by the nose! You not only grab the army then, but you get you a fine woman that’ll know there’s only one man fit to look at. She won’t think ut, she’ll know ut! And listen to this, Gup. Listen careful. Gov’ments are no more romantuc than women. They listen to force and to nothing else. It’s either force o’ circumstance or votes or money, or else force o’ bayonets and bullets that makes ’em behave. You’ve one chance for the two of you to come out o’ this mess free and reputable. We might clear you, perhaps, but not her — unless you have an army in the field to bargain with. D’you get that? If you can offer quid pro quo, they’ll treat you handsome. If you can’t — well — you’ve heard of the six-foot argument? The hangman’s rope — black cap — the Lord have mercy on your soul — a six-foot drop — and nothing more to say — that’s over with.”

  “Not so simple, Tom, to take her in a trap. Suppose we set a trap and fail?”

  “You won’t fail if I talk to your body-guard.”

  “Talk to ’em then.”

  “I knew ut. I knew you’d do ut. I wrote ut. I sent a message to Peshawar yesterday. I said: Gup holds the joker. He’ll play ut. Now I’ll be in Copenhagen inside of a month!”

  A word then that was but a word before —

  A dead drop added to a sea of sound,

  Whose barren offspring was an echo and no more,

  Became more potent than the reeking round

  Of massed artillery. One word could swing

  Such forces into instant action as the sum

  Of man’s whole armament on foot and wheel and wing

  Could not prevent, nor treason overcome.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Huzoor, I am proud of your offer to fight me!”

  BUT even Tom O’Hara had not understood Gup perfectly. He had gained his point but he did not know how he had gained it. Gup had made his utmost sacrifice. He had thrown his self-respect into the scale against the Amir’s invading host. To him, with his chivalrous notions, there was nothing conceivable, less honorable than to set an ambush for the woman he loved and do by violence what he had hoped to do by force of character and rigid adherence to principle. To him, it was almost as if he had taken his proud soul and thrown it into hell for the sake of his own countrymen, who had outlawed him on false evidence. He would do what he could to save India — but at a cost that was beyond computing. It left him nothing — not a last shred of his treasured self-respect. But men don’t see much while they are on the testing-rack. Some women see much more clearly. Onlookers sometimes see, but almost never understand.

  That night, when the bivouac fires were glowing in the Valley of Doab, and before the moon had risen, Gup, with Tom O’Hara on a mule beside him, led the four-and-twenty stalwarts of his body-guard into a dark ravine that was nearly midway between the guarded entrance to the Ranee’s caverns and the great grim amphitheater where the lashkar waited. It was darker there than any visible darkness; Gup’s disgust was added to it. He was hoping that some accident would save the Ranee from his ambush, and yet knowing that he would use every faculty he possessed to foresee accident and to put her to that last indignity of being kidnaped. He could imagine her sense of hopelessness and crushed pride. He would have preferred that it should happen to himself.

  The body-guard had been rehearsed all afternoon by Tom O’Hara, who had told them a marvelous story. They were to save the Ranee from the treachery of her own supposedly loyal protectors. Agents of the Amir, according to this owl-eyed mullah who appeared to know so much, had persuaded the Ranee’s bodyguard to run away with her and surrender her, alive and lovely, to the Amir. He even named the exact amounts of money that the culprits would receive. Gup’s body-guard, accordingly, was primed with zeal, its edge whetted by indignation. It was understood there should be no waste of gentleness that night. But it was also understood that there should be no noise.

  The pass was narrow where that dark ravine loomed into it. The Ranee’s regulars, with Rahman leading on a big brown mare, went streaming by like shadows, making scarcely more sound, because there was a sense of drama and of vast events impending. Gup’s black stallion Iskander had to be thrown, and his head smothered under blankets, to prevent him from screaming a challenge. The Ranee’s men had not brought the machine-guns and there were no impedimenta except their rifles and bandoliers. But almost at the last there came a gift of a hundred oxen from the Ranee, wild-eyed and crowding together in fear of the darkness that echoed their pattering feet. Thereafter, silence and a long wait. The Ranee’s sense of drama was too acute to permit her to appear before the stage was set and the full moon rising.

  It was certain she would not come unprotected, and not on foot. Gup had sent two men to watch for her coming and to bring specific information. One came back panting with word that fifty horsemen waited for her outside the gorge near the entrance. Presently the other came and said she rode, surrounded by her women, and that another fifty horsemen followed. Gup had four-and-twenty men, himself and Tom O’Hara.

  She was coming slowly; four of her women were very indifferent riders, so the horses were held back to a walking pace; besides, the moon was only just appearing over the rim of the world; its light had not yet reached into the gorge, although the sky was aswim with liquid gold that made half of the colored stars look pale. Nothing was more certain than that her body-guard would fight like demons to protect her; that was a point of personal izzat, on which no picked Hillman would have two opinions; they would die to a man rather than let a hair of her head be touched.

  But four of Tom O’Hara’s hand-picked liars had been summoned and carefully drilled. They, and some unattached villagers, found wandering and bribed with unheard-of munificence, were stationed on a ledge that overhung the route by which the Ranee had to come. Between them they had one old service pistol and ten cartridges from which the bullets had been drawn. They also had sticks and cans and a can with pebbles in it. They were capable of sounding like a hundred men; and they were half a mile from where Gup waited, thus permitting him plenty of scope for action.

  The gorge where Gup was hidden was defensible by ten men against ten times their number. There was a back way out of it that led by winding tracks and over a ragged range to a valley that opened southward, but in front there was only an opening ten feet wide, that was flanked by unclimbable rock, and defenders would have the advantage of darkness, whereas an attacking force would have to deploy in moonlight that was growing stronger every minute.

  Gup had to spare four of his men to create a diversion in front of the Ranee’s advance-guard. Instead of being stationed on a ledge they were concealed amid boulders that no horse could possibly negotiate, at a point where they could sweep the pass with rifle-fire. They were middle-aged men deliberately flattered for the self-restraint that it was hoped they had. Their orders were to make no sound until the men on the ledge, lower down the pass, should set up an alarm. Then they were to wait while they counted two hundred slowly. After that they were to fire one shot apiece at nothing. If, as and when they were attacked they might defend themselves, but until that happened, they were on no account to kill anything but h
orses, and not horses unless the Ranee’s guard should gallop past them to take higher ground; then they might kill horses to prevent the guard from galloping back again. They asked why they should not kill men.

  “Because,” said Gup, “it will be hard to tell friend from enemy.”

  It was one of those plans that might go wrong if a flea bit somebody. It was a hair-trigger plan, of the sort that Tom O’Hara loved and Gup detested, but Gup was in no mood to enjoy anything just then. The details of the plan seemed burned into his brain and he could see a hundred flaws in it. To him, as the moon rose slowly and began to flood the narrow pass with silver light, leaving his own side of it in even deeper shadow, it seemed like probably his own last effort, and a shameful one at that. He would have laid odds, had anybody cared to ask him, of a hundred to one that the Ranee would escape. There would be some decent fellows shot, good horses killed, and nothing more accomplished than to arouse indignation. He himself would be left at large without friend or following, since failure is the unforgivable offense in love and war. Thereafter his only hope would be to ask Tom O’Hara to plead his cause with the Anglo-Indian authorities, and that was not hope, it was a vision of hell.

  However, a man can suffer pessimism and still steel himself. The first sound of the hoof-beats of the Ranee’s guard found him keyed and alert, and his voice, as he talked in low tones to his men, was calm and reassuring, so that they took their cue from him and were no more excited than leopards lying up in ambush. When he ceased speaking there was no sound other than the mysterious, slow drum-beat of the oncoming hoofs of the Ranee’s guard — until their leader drew almost abreast of where Gup waited. Then a shot spat from a ledge half a mile lower down. The advance-guard wheeled and clattered back to surround the Ranee and her women. She was easy to see; the moonlight touched the jewels in her turban.

  There was another shot from the ledge, followed by a noise that might mean anything — clattering, startling — possibly a hundred men, perhaps more. There was a leather-lunged shout from the commander of the Ranee’s guard and the rear-guard galloped back to investigate. Another shot spat from the ledge and they answered it with ragged rifle-fire from horseback, making the whole ravine alive with echoes.

  The commander of the Ranee’s guard decided to advance, there being small sense in waiting to be fired at in a narrow pass, and he still had fifty men. He spared one more — he sent a galloper to tell the rearguard what he intended doing, and what they should do. Then he resumed the march, his face in moonlight showing irritation rather than anxiety. He had not ridden fifty paces, and the Ranee was almost abreast of Gup’s dark lurking place, when four shots spat forth from the boulders higher up the pass; their echoes went like whip-cracks cannoning from crag to crag.

  The commander of the guard was swift. He made sure there were thirty of his men surrounding the Ranee and her women; then he led the remaining nineteen up the pass to investigate. They were met by deliberate fire from four well-hidden rifles. They answered it with vicious volleys. Gup heard the Ranee’s voice but it was drowned in the din of echoes, and amid that din he let the stallion Iskander to his feet. He gave no order. It was the stallion who neighed. Gup and his men went bursting two abreast out of the dark mouth of the gorge, Gup leading. They divided right and left. They sent the Ranee’s horsemen reeling. There were shots fired — there was saber-slashing, but it was all over in thirty seconds. Gup’s great stallion Iskander came up sliding on his heels beside the Ranee’s mare; she found herself seized in Gup’s right arm, wrenched from the saddle and borne away into engulfing night. Gup shouted and his men wheeled, shepherding the rear. They were all of them back in the pitch-dark gorge before the Ranee’s men could form again around the women amid riderless horses, wondering what had happened. Within a minute, a dozen shots fired from the top of the rocks that overhung the entrance of Gup’s hiding-place informed them and sent them scattering for cover.

  Gup set the Ranee on her feet and sprang to the earth beside her. He could hardly see her, but he seized her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth.

  “Do you understand what has happened to you?” he demanded. “I have taken you, Lottie. You’re mine, do you understand me?” He could feel her heart surge against his.

  His men were keeping up a steady fire against the Ranee’s guard, who had dismounted, shepherding the women behind boulders. They were answering the fire excitedly from behind any scrap of cover they could find. The captain of her guard had come galloping back and there was a stuttering din in the pass that almost drowned the Ranee’s answer.

  “Clever indeed, Gup! However, my men will rescue me.

  Then Tom O’Hara stepped out of the darkness, leading Gup’s great stallion that had strayed.

  “He’s done ut, your Highnuss! I knew ut! I knew Gup ‘ud save the day. Now it’s your turn and you save ut. Give you sixty seconds — sixty times enough for a woman to make up her mind! Yes or no? Is Gup your man or isn’t he?”

  “For God’s sake, mind your own affairs, Tom!” Gup exploded. “Listen to me, Lottie.” She struggled but he refused to let her escape out of his arms. She had her hands against his shoulders, pushing him, and even in that darkness they could see each other’s eyes. “Either you yield to me now, this minute, on your honor or you come with me to India and leave that army to its own devices!”

  “You — you do this treachery — and speak to me of honor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate you!”

  “No you don’t. You only hate your disappointment. You’ll recover from that. I’ll show you how.”

  “You expect me to yield to threats?”

  “Yes. They’re more than threats. I will do what I say.” He began to let go of her — loosened the weight of his arm.

  “You demand to be loved?”

  “Yes, or start for India this minute.”

  “Well — Gup — then I suppose you’ll have to be! I didn’t believe you were this kind of man. I had given up hope of you. Do you mind not hugging me in front of that person? Who is he? And besides, you hurt my ribs.”

  It was Gup who had to leap up on a shelf of a tall crag in moonlight and send his voice bellowing down the gorge to stop the firing. Even so, a dozen bullets splashed against the rocks around him before they ceased shooting in order to hear what he said. But it was Tom O’Hara, self-appointed liar to the Lords of Destiny, who clambered up beside him and explained, appealing to the Prophet of Allah to be his witness:

  “Nobles, there has been an error! Word came that the Amir’s men had ridden south to seize your Ranee. Word came they had seized her. Gup Bahadur heard it. Gup Bahadur rode with four-and-twenty men to rape her loose again! And lo, in darkness he mistook you nobles for the Amir’s misbegotten dogs! But Allah, what a leader! What a Rustum, who can smash such ranks as yours and pluck a prize forth! Akbar! Akbar!”

  “Akbar!” they answered, but it was not exultant shouting. They were ashamed of having let their Ranee be snatched away from them. Their izzat was involved, and Gup’s men were more than inclined, they were next thing to impossible to keep from glorifying their own izzat at the Ranee’s men’s expense. The commander of the Ranee’s body-guard was furious when he found he had been outwitted and beaten by such a handful. There were eleven of his best men wounded and three good horses slain; he swore he would have revenge for it. There was no calming him until Gup stood out in front of him alone and told him bluntly he might either touch hilt, go away and join the Amir, or fight with any weapon that he chose.

  He touched hilt — laid three fingers of his right hand on the hilt of Gup’s jeweled scimitar.

  “Huzoor,” he said, “I am proud of your offer to fight me.”

  That, though, was not the end of it. It only increased the high spirits of Gup’s men, who were delighted, too, by the double deceit that had been practised. They were as pleased with the trick played on themselves by Tom O’Hara as with the grossly untrue explanation that had stopped the fighting. Lo, the
se were men of a double and mirthful cunning, this Gup Bahadur and this mullah with the owl’s eyes! Allah! Moreover, they themselves were crafty fellows — good bold horsemen, who had made eleven picked Afridis bite the dirt! If the Ranee had chosen, she might have set them there and then at one another’s throats, and with the rear-guard clattering up there could be no doubt what the end of that would be.

  But the Ranee saved that moment. She rode forward, beckoning her women. That gave Gup excuse for thundering indignation. Were they rats or a loyal escort? Would they let their Ranee ride alone and unprotected while they played at who could talk the loudest of his own shame? He rode on and they followed, not without some scuffling to see who should ride first. Finally Gup sent his own men in advance and massed the Ranee’s men behind him, riding alone beside her, followed by the women.

  “What were you planning to do, Lottie?” he asked her. “Would you have set a trap for me?”

  “Yes, Gup, I was desperate. What have you done with Harriet Dover?”

  “I sent her and her friend and Jonesey to the Amir. Why?”

  “Because I have found out what Harriet Dover was doing. She had several hundred men prepared to seize me and carry me off to the Amir. For all that I know, she and Jonesey may have corrupted more than half the men. They had the Russians working at it.”