Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

“That would pay for quite a nice campaign,” he answered. “You hillmen are like children when money is mentioned.”

  “India is rich. Let her pay for peace!”

  “You won’t get a crore. You won’t get as much as a lakh. You won’t get anything, unless you give proof in advance of good intentions,” King assured him. “You must call this raid off, and tell the Punjabis you won’t give them any assistance. If you do that first, and give me your word of honour, then I’ll promise to get you as much money from the Government as they can be induced to part with in return for your service in the matter. I don’t know how much. You’ll have to trust me to do my best. I’ll keep faith with you.” [ 100,000 rupees]

  “Aye, King sahib. None doubts your izzat; but what of mine? The fat Punjabi is a pig, but I will not betray him. By Allah, if he comes to talk with me the troops might pounce on him, and what then?” [ honour]

  “He shall have safe conduct.”

  “Aye, but after, you will know who he is, and—”

  “I know already!”

  “If thou art not a liar, name him!”

  “He is no Punjabi. His name is Ali Babul,” King answered promptly. “Isn’t that so?”

  Kangra Khan said nothing. In the ensuing silence Grim leaned sideways, better to study the hillman’s face. It was Narayan Singh who took up the argument, opening and shutting his right hand so that the knuckles cracked almost like a pistol-shot.

  “I, too, know Ali Babul. As thou sayest, he is fat. Better caution him, hillman! For if I make a feud with a man he will die. By my Guru’s honour, he shall not live; his fat shall feed crows...unless thy wisdom forewarns him! I have made the Prince’s life my personal affair.” [ Religious teacher]

  “I have heard words. They are principally wind, smelling of onions,” said the hillman.

  He was well aware that we would not sit there talking to him, offering him terms, if there had been any easier or less expensive course open to the Government just then; nothing but business acumen prevented him from attacking the Sikh that minute, and even that element of self-control was weakening, as the Sikh had foreseen. He prodded it further.

  “The truth is, you are afraid to refuse Ali Babul,” he asserted, with an air of absolute conviction.

  “At least I am not afraid of thee, thou—”

  “Shame that such a hairy man should fear a shaven, swag-bellied bunnia!”

  “Allah!”

  “See him then, and warn him, if you aren’t afraid to,” King suggested intervening. There could hardly have been bloodshed there before our fire, but the border laws of guest and host do not preclude commencement of hostilities the minute the threshold is left behind. Sikh and hillman love each other as dog and jackal do...not much.

  “There have first to be promises.”

  The hillman looked in King’s eyes reading there good faith, but not much else; for there was little King might promise without referring to headquarters.

  “I will do my best about the money for you,” King said.

  “I, too, then, about Ali Babul. And how much is that? Bring the brute here. Give us both safe conduct. I will talk with him tomorrow night, at this hour, before this fire in the Huzoor’s presence. But if the Government were not afraid for its skin it would have scoughed up Ali Babul long ago,” the hillman added.

  There were elements of truth in that suggestion, and the only plausible retort would have been a boast, which in turn might have cut short negotiations.

  “Would Ali Babul come?” Grim asked.

  “Aye! For I will bring him!” said Narayan Singh.

  King nodded. Whatever Narayan Singh might undertake to do would be carried out unless he died in the attempt, and not even Kangra Khan questioned that outcome. But I was watching the hillman’s face and questioning that, and I noticed Grim did the same thing. There was deep, unspoken thought there, and his eyes were too bright to mean anything but mischief.

  “Hadn’t we better define things more exactly?” I proposed in English.

  So we tried, but the uselessness was fairly evident at once. It was like bargaining with a tricky lawyer; we could not possibly foresee all the quirks and sidesteps that would certainly occur to him, and our apparent doubt of his good faith only served to increase his trickiness. It would have been better if I had held my tongue.

  “Enough!” King said finally, with a gesture that wiped out the last five minutes at a stroke. “This is between thee and me, Kangra Khan. The undertaking stands thus: here, by this fire, tomorrow night, thou and Ali Babul are to meet and talk before us. Both to have safe conduct. Nothing that shall be said tomorrow night by this fire shall be held against thee or him, unless we all reach agreement.”

  “That is the promise,” the hillman answered, and he rose with his right hand on the hilt of his knife to give the oath solemnity. When he had met the eyes of each of us in turn King shook hands with him, and he turned and strode out of the camp with more assurance in his gait than I was altogether glad to see. There is nothing finer than the sight of independence with its face against the world; but there are times, and seasons.

  “Somehow, before tomorrow night, he means to put one over on us,” I said, and Grim nodded assent. But King and Narayan Singh were both of opinion that the hillman would keep the peace strictly until after the next conference, at any rate. They had the right to know best.

  There was peace next morning sure enough...kites wheeling lazily, the smoke of breakfast fires rising spirally from the camps to either hand, and a subaltern with two mounted troopers riding an errand, who laughed as he tossed us the news:

  “No shootin’ last night! First time for a month! We’re wonderin’ what Allah’s cookin’! You fellows notice anythin’ worth mentionin’?”

  We reported all well, and no shots fired.

  “Hell presently, I’ll bet you!” he said, laughing, and rode on.

  It was a reasonably safe bet that he offered. Quiet along that border usually presages coming bloodshed. But we had reason to believe there would be at least one more quiet night, and wished we had betted, just to dampen down his cockiness. Then, two hours after breakfast, there came a mounted messenger with a white envelope tucked in his turban. He halted as if it were mounted baseball and he sliding for the home plate. But that was merely swagger; he had trotted until he came within a hundred yards of us. King held his hand out, but the fellow jumped to the ground and stood examining us each in turn.

  “Ram-mis-den sahib?” he asked, staring at me.

  So I took the envelope and broke the seal, aware of mixed emotions, for I knew the handwriting...as strong and downright as a man’s, but flowing, with large spaces between the words.

  “Joan Angela!” I said, not understanding why I was not pleased; for I would rather see her than a sunrise. Intuition sums up the near future in a flash, giving you the total and no details; but so does Joan Angela’s correspondence.

  Hello there, Jeff! she had written. Don’t pretend this isn’t a surprise. I’m with the Farquharsons, but they’re off on leave today, and I’ve a date for dinner with the Somethingorother Bengal Lancers. Might see you sooner. Having lots of fun. So long. J.A.L.

  The “Somethingorother” Bengal Lancers were presumably the outfit camped over on our left hand. The Farquharsons, I think, belong to the Civil Service; but whoever they are, they ought to have been hanged for turning Joan Angela loose on that countryside. I passed the note in turn to King and Grim, and they waited for the explanation.

  “One of my countrywomen. Youth, brains, ability, good looks, heaps of money, and a sense of humour,” I said, and King looked at me steadily, reading on my face what I daresay was alarm. I did not try to diagnose it.

  “She’ll be safe enough with the Lancers, but I’m surprised they should ask her to dinner out here. I suppose there’s nothing about that in the regulations, but there’s such a thing as common sense,” he answered after a long pause.

  “She’s pretty sure to get them to ask
us to dinner too, tonight,” I said.

  “Well, we can’t go. At least, you can, of course, but Grim and I must stay here.”

  That was true. Narayan Singh had ridden off on his quest of Ali Babul, and even if it had been likely that the Sikh would return before night, it would have been out of the question to leave him there alone to manage the conference.

  “Where is she now?” I asked the messenger.

  The man did not know. He said he was the son of a thalukdar, and had been asked as a favour to carry the message by Farquharson sahib, whom he had met on his way to the railway station. He had not even seen Joan Angela. Did not know who she was, or pretended not to, and dropped a rather strong hint that, as someone on that countryside, he set a good example by minding his own business. He said he had come simply to oblige Farquharson sahib, and would ride back home as soon as his horse was rested. [ Land-holder]

  So I offered to ride part of the way with him, and he agreed. He seemed rather glad to have company. Even in broad daylight that is no safe border for a solitary horseman, whose equipment is worth powder and shot; belated prowlers lie up until the next night affords opportunity to sneak back with their plunder to the hills, and in their eyes it is sin and shame to overlook a chance that Allah sends.

  My purpose was to turn Joan Angela back from the border, even at the risk of a quarrel. As King said, she would be quite safe with the Lancers; but neither he, nor I, nor they, nor she, nor anyone could guess how long she would remain with them. She acts on the spur of any moment, with assurance that would make an oil-stock salesman green with envy, and the fact that her astounding luck had never yet deserted her was no proof there would be no end to it.

  I rode away presently in search of her, turning over in mind a hundred arguments I might use, well aware that she would flout them all and laugh at me. I would have to make a personal appeal to her; I knew that, and I hated it. For friendship she will often do what no argument of safety or convention will induce her to consider; but I dislike dealing on those terms. Friendship is nothing to bargain with, but a thing apart, like a man’s religion or his nationality, to be held unaffected by circumstances. Nevertheless, I was willing to sacrifice that friendship, if by doing so I might steer her out of danger.

  Nevertheless, whatever her luck might be, mine was out that morning. I drew the Farquharson’s bungalow blank; nobody home, not even a caretaker; not as much as a hanger-on to answer questions. The European quarter there was a straggling line of beastly official bungalows, and I rode to every one of them, without result. Nobody had heard of Joan Angela. I gathered, without being told so, that the Farquharsons had made themselves disliked and had applied for leave in consequence.

  But I stuck to it, and the thalukdar stayed by to help. Failing all trace of Joan Angela herself, we begged a change of horses and galloped all the way to Dera Ghazi Khan, where I saw the Commandant and warned him. He was indignant, and swore he would twist the Lancers’ tails for daring to ask a woman to dinner so close to the border. I overheard his instructions. Joan Angela Leich was to be found and taken to Peshawar, where the authorities might deal with her as they should see fit.

  That suited me. It was after four o’clock then, and I calculated I had just about time to reach the Lancers’ camp before dark. That was the last card up my sleeve, and a trump of sorts. I meant to tell them what the Commandant had said, after which it was fairly safe to wager they would keep Joan Angela at least well guarded until definite orders came.

  So the thalukdar’s son and I parted company, and I begged still another change of mounts, for my weight is no joke even for an Army remount used to carrying all the paraphernalia a soldier lugs around with him. That last horse was a good one, and I made him prove it, galloping hell-bent-for- supper-time until we reached the Jhelum, and then following the bank, with only a short pause to let him breathe, until I could see the lights of the Lancers’ camp beginning to blink in the distance in descending dusk.

  They were still several miles away, but it was not time yet for the border-thieves to take chances, so I reined in to a walk for the horse’s sake, conscious for the first time that I had no weapon, but not especially nervous on that account. I was very likely safer at slow speed than if I hurried, since a lurking enemy would judge that if I did not seem afraid there was probably good reason for it. On the whole, I was well enough contented, deeming my effort in Joan Angela’s behalf well made and her as good as shipped away to safety.

  It was pitch dark before I grew aware of voices somewhere on ahead. One voice was a woman’s...golden...not raised, and yet not undisturbed. I could not hear what she said, for my horse put his forefoot in a hole and nearly fell as I spurred him forward. I heard a man order her in English to be silent, and then I caught the answer, as distinctly as if it had been given ten yards away instead of possibly a hundred.

  “You’ll have to ask in a different tone of voice if you expect me to oblige you?”

  “Then you die!” someone snarled — in English again.

  “All right. My funeral. Nobody else need worry!”

  Then I recognized her voice beyond the shadow of a doubt, but did doubt what to do. All I could see were the camp-fires and lanterns blinking in the distance; between them and me were quite immeasurable miles of black night, with the Jhelum River swirling and sucking on my left hand. The horse sensed danger, shied toward the river, and reared as he found himself too close to the rotten bank. Someone fired from fifty yards ahead of me. The horse shuddered and collapsed; a ton or two of earth gave way; earth, horse and I went plump into the river all together.

  I ought to have drowned along with the wounded horse, for the Jhelum sweeps in a hurry around a curve at that point, with shallows in mid-stream that send the force of water sluicing against the bank. But there was a boat tied by the nose to a tree-stump and pressed close against the bank by the weight of the river rushing by, and my hand caught that as I struck out blindly. In about a minute I was up on the bank again fumbling at the rope that held the boat. But it was tangled, and my wet fingers made hard work of it in the dark; so I found my clasp knife and, opening that with my teeth, cut the rope and let the boat go. It was better than nothing at all to cut off the enemy’s retreat.

  Then I heard Joan Angela’s voice again:

  “Let go! I’d rather be killed than handled by a brute like you!”

  I heard a slap, as if she had struck someone with her open hand, followed by an oath that ripped the very bowels of the night apart. But she did not scream, and there was no answering blow, nor any sound of struggle. Footsteps began approaching, and I crouched behind a clump of high grass.

  I had been in that position about twenty seconds when a new sound warned me I was being stalked. The enemy presumably had sent a scout to make sure that bullet had done its work thoroughly, and I heard the fellow crawl up to the other side of the clump, within two yards of me. I heard, too, the clink of some kind of weapon that he dragged along the ground. I needed a weapon more than anything else on earth that minute.

  The fellow lay still, listening and trying to peer through the dark along the river bank. He held his breath, and let it out silently, but I could smell him, and knew he wore a sweaty sheepskin jacket. Then I heard what sounded like a knife-blade striking against stone, and judged he had two weapons, of which the knife in the dark was the more dangerous.

  There was nothing after that to hesitate about. When you know the worst, and know there is no alternative, the thing to do is to have it over with. I jumped, and landed with both heels on the small of the fellow’s back, and maybe it was that that killed him, but I used the butt-end of his rifle to make sure, not being minded to have an enemy at my back as well as several in front.

  I could hear them coming fast now, and had no time to reach for the long knife. It was impossible to see, but I was trying to count the footfalls. Joan Angela’s were easily distinguishable, and there seemed to be five or six men hurrying her along. I crouched beside the c
lump of grass in readiness to do my utmost at close quarters. However, they stopped again. Maybe they had heard me land on the fellow’s back, although he had not cried out.

  “Suliman!” called someone, twenty yards away.

  I fired, and hit him, but not fatally, for he shouted to the others. Two or three of them came charging toward me, and I stopped the first one with the butt-end. Another one fired, and missed.

  “Joan Angela!” I shouted.

  “Who’s that? Jeff! Is that you?”

  I started for her; but I’m too slow on my feet to pull off any of those tip-and-run stunts. I shouldn’t have tried. Before I could reach her I was knocked on the head by a blow from behind, and after that there was darkness and a very bad dream for a long time.

  CHAPTER 2. “Those fools will prod a hornet’s nest.”

  I CAME to with a splitting headache, and lay wondering in a kind of twilight, caused, as I discovered presently, by a guttering candle stuck in a knothole in a board on a stamped earth floor. Overhead there were beams made of all sorts of odds and ends, including two telegraph poles stamped with the British Government’s broad arrow, and a length of standard railway metal.

  My fingers informed me that I was lying on sheepskins or something of the sort; and in among the singing in my ears I could distinguish occasional sounds obviously made by someone rather close to me; but I did not move my head for several minutes, because it hurt too much for one reason, and for another it seemed wise to get some information before betraying any.

  It was night; that much was obvious. But I could not guess how many nights I might have lain unconscious, and it felt like aeons since that blow from behind had knocked me sprawling. There seemed to be two people in the room, or hut, or whatever it was, and one of them was crooning to herself in a language that if I ever understood I could not then remember. It was decidedly cold, and at last I shivered, whereat I felt agreeably soft fingers feeling the back of my hand.

  “Shall I throw a sheepskin over you?” a voice asked. So I turned my head and saw Joan Angela in riding breeches on the ground beside me. She looked tired, but not otherwise distressed.