by Talbot Mundy
“Lo, water! Had we not tea? Was the stuff not excellent? There are no wells hereabouts — none nearer than the great cave, whither it may be they have taken the sahiba; though there is a good one there in a ravine between the great cave and the next one. But observe, sahibs, in the direction of my finger, northward, that way, lies a village so evil — so black with shame — that Allah cursed it and the wells ran dry three months ago. And I bethought me how the women rise before dawn, and walk many miles for the water, with a man or two guarding them. Allah guided me. I found their path. And an old hag had a sore foot. Lo, she sat in a hollow place with the water-crock still balanced on her head because it was full, and too heavy to raise in case she set it down. So I gave her a new pain to offset the other, and filled the kettle from her crock, she weeping anew because now after she reached home she must make a second journey; for they swill water in that village like pigs on the plains of Hind. Women are women, sahibs. None may understand them. The hag was not at all pleased to have slaked the dry throats of honourable men. So I smote her and ran, for I heard others coming, and the men who guarded them with rifles were of a certainty not far away. So, tea, praise be to Allah!
“Then ye sahibs came. And here we sit in Allah’s sight, Who seeth all. We have eaten and drank, and have a hen to cook — scant fare, indeed, for three men, yet better than emptiness. Inshallah, there is good luck awaiting us. I am thy friend, Ramm-is-den. May God forget me if I lie! And as for this man — he is a Sikh, yet I will befriend him for thy sake, Ramm-is-den. I love thee. Great is Allah!”
Akbar bin Mahommed sat still, eyeing me with that burning gaze of the Northerner, that by intensity and concentration can detect the very thought behind guarded speech. And he smiled; for he saw I was in no mood to find fault with him. He believed Joan Angela was my wife, and he had failed to protect her; moreover, he had failed to keep his promise to bring the “shaveling” alive to me. Maybe he had acted unwisely in a dozen ways; and he was certainly a rogue — a murderer — a conscienceless thief. Yet I wish I might be half as faithful in my obligations to a friend. The only claim I had on him was that I had loosed his hands. His promise to me had been made under duress. He would certainly be killed, and doubtless cruelly, if Kangra Khan should ever learn the truth and happen to lay hands on him.
“We must take the trail at once,” said I. But Narayan Singh said nothing, and Akbar bin Mahommed took snuff from a box made of two brass cartridge-cases, offering me first helping.
“Nay, nay!” he said presently. “In the name of Allah, sleep! These hills be full of hunted men. I know the hills! Pathan and Waziri are at one another’s throats. The sides men took mean nothing now. Each one for himself, and the shortest road home! Loot...that is all that matters! By day, the men whom we are seeking hide, and none save Allah knoweth where; yet we would be a mark against a skyline. When the night comes they will fare forth; and we likewise. In the dark all men are equal, and numbers nothing against cunning. Sleep, sahib. Wait for the night.”
I met Narayan Singh’s eyes. He and I had the same thought.
“Turn about!” he said gruffly.
“Then ye two take the first spell,” said the hillman, snatching the sheepskin from off our shoulders and rolling it up for a pillow. “Sleep there together, while I watch.”
“I will keep the first watch,” said Narayan Singh.
“Nay, it is better that I do,” the other answered with growing impatience.
“I will sit in the cave-mouth and watch what may happen on the countryside. So when night falls I shall know better what to advise.”
“Thou and I together, then,” said Narayan Singh.
The Sikh’s hereditary, ingrained distrust of the hillman, reinforced no doubt by long experience, was not to be offset by a tale of a night’s adventure. Whether he believed or disbelieved Akbar bin Mahommed’s story, he did not propose to trust him.
But it seemed to me we had small choice. If we should offend him, he might turn against us as swiftly and as savagely as he had hitherto tried to serve. Should we two prove too many for him, he could easily slip away and bring friends to his aid by promising them a share of the loot. Without him we were helpless. We must keep his friendship at all costs — take all chances. I drew out my pistol and passed it to him, butt first.
“That’s in proof I trust you,” I said. “Keep it for me while I sleep. Narayan Singh, give him your rifle!”
The Sikh obeyed. He did not like it, but he is the bravest fellow in the world when it comes to obeying orders against his inclination. Akbar bin Mahommed grinned, understanding the mental conflict perfectly.
“May I eat dirt,” he said to me, “if I break faith, as Allah is my witness, Ramm-is-den! And as for thee” (he smiled a trifle thinly at Narayan Singh)— “I am thy friend for his sake!”
“Of which the proof will be the outcome!” Narayan Singh answered none too tactfully; and then came and lay beside me. So we slept with our heads on one rolled sheepskin, and our lives were for a number of hours in the hands of Akbar bin Mahommed, thief by religion and murderer by habit!
CHAPTER 7. “I know a thousand gods superior to Allah.”
I DON’T dream much as a general rule. Not having dabbled in things psychic, nor professing to understand as much as the general terms of that weird science, I offer now no explanations. What I set down here is fact. I know I was in sound health, but the blow I received on the head the night of my capture by Kangra Khan’s men may have had something to do with my dreaming. And there may be something in environment. Sleeping on the hard floor of a draughty cave, side by side with a Sikh, with your head on a sheepskin and a professional murderer keeping guard, after a night of prodigious fighting and a meal of hard-boiled eggs and cold chupatties, is conceivably disturbing to the normal mental processes.
I dreamt that Joan Angela walked straight into the cave, and sat down beside Narayan Singh and me to talk with us. She was dressed as usual in riding kit, and without the turban and accessories belonging to the “shaveling.” She seemed her normal self in most respects. She was apparently uninjured, and not exactly unhappy; but her delight in adventure for its own sake seemed to have entirely disappeared, and she was pale-calm-serious.
“This fighting has got to be stopped, Jeff!” she said as soon as she had sat down. “I refuse to be responsible for any more of it.”
I forget what my dream-answer was; perhaps I made none. But Narayan Singh, who in the dream was squatting cross-legged beside me, leaned forward tracing figures with his finger in the dust of the cave floor, and after a pause spoke sententiously, as his way not seldom is.
“The truth,” said he, “is true. It is one; and there is no alternative.”
Explain that how you like. I can’t make head or tail of it, but in the dream it seemed apt and enlightening. Joan Angela nodded.
“Attempts to rescue me,” she said, “can only lead to more fighting, of which there has already been too much. Yet if I agree to pay the ransom, that will only lead to more kidnaping; and I do not choose to be responsible for that either.”
All this while, in the dream, someone — Akbar bin Mahommed, I suppose — was sitting in the cave-mouth keeping watch but making no comment, as if the whole proceedings were entirely in order. Narayan Singh appeared particularly undisturbed, but even more than usually thoughtful.
“Yet if you were to be killed,” he said, “that would be the cause of more fighting than ever, since the British would feel themselves obliged to punish the tribesmen, and they, disliking to be punished, resist.”
“Very true,” said Joan Angela. “So I must live, although life among these people is unpleasant to contemplate. They eat so disgustingly; and I don’t know their language. However, I can learn it; and when I get hungry enough I shall eat without distress. But you must not try to rescue me. I will go with them; and you must go the other way, and tell people I am very likely dead, so that the British won’t send an expedition.”
“That
is wisest,” said Narayan Singh.
I heard those three words “that is wisest” as distinctly as I can now hear the clock ticking on the wall of this lime-washed hospital. Then I awoke, full of indignation, and stretched out my hand to prevent Joan Angela from going; for in the dream she had started in great haste to leave the cave. My hand struck against Narayan Singh, as fast asleep beside me as a hibernating bear. The blow awoke him and he sat up. Blinking, we both stared at Grim in the cave-mouth, sitting on guard with two rifles and a pistol in his lap! Akbar bin Mahommed was not there!
Narayan Singh looked into my eyes and nudged me. I nudged him. We were both awake.
“Is it you, Jim, or your ghost?” I asked.
“It’s me,” said Grim, and went on watching something down below the cave.
“Where’s King?” I asked.
“God knows. Licking the Waziris into shape, I hope,” he answered.
“Any news of Joan Angela?”
“No more than you have. I’ve been listening to Mahommed bin Akbar.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone to look for her. Just went. We talked over various plans, including one that he should scout for news of her whereabouts, and I concluded that was wisest.”
“What time is it?”
“High noon, or a little after.”
“Have you slept?”
“No.”
“Eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Better sleep now, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, I think so, if you’re through.”
He looked so deathly tired that I had not the heart to question him further until sleep should have restored him to his normal taciturnity. Then he would be sure to tell us all that was essential, if no more. So when he had given the Sikh his rifle, and handed the pistol to me, he went and lay down where we had lain, and fell asleep that instant. Narayan Singh and I sat in the cave-mouth, saying nothing for a long while, watching as much of the landscape as we could see in either direction, with especial attention to the kites, whose movements as a rule betray the whereabouts of any considerable parties of men.
“Did you dream a while back?” I asked him at last.
“Aye, sahib.”
“Tell me of it.”
“The sahiba came. She spoke. She said to you and me — in the dream, sahib, we were squatting down beside her— ‘I go,’ said she, ‘to the village belonging to these people; and there I think you will find me alive, if you should travel fast enough.’ And I said in my dream, ‘We come at once, sahiba.’ And she said, ‘When?’ I answered, ‘Tonight.’ And she said to me, ‘That is wisest.’ Then the sahib woke me with a blow across the jaw that tingles yet; and lo, Jimgrim was sitting there!”
So much for dreams! I hove a great sigh of relief. Not both dreams could be right. My old nurse used to say dreams go by contraries, but, even so, both dreams reversed would still remain opposites. We were to go, and we were not to go. We were to rescue her, and we were not to rescue her.
“Stewed tea and hard-boiled eggs!” said I.
“Chupatties! They were like leather, sahib — indigestible — cooked by a hillwoman — phaugh!”
Yet neither of us quite dismissed our dream from mind. We sat there on the qui vive, listening to Grim’s snores, and peering in turns around the rock that blocked two-thirds of the cave-mouth; and when we conversed at rare intervals it was more of the dreams than of how Grim came to be there. Narayan Singh you might say is a specialist in such matters, accepting as obvious facts what to the West would seem crazy theories.
“The dreams mean this, sahib,” he said after a while. “We shall rescue her. Nevertheless, whatever plan we make will be a bad one, leading only to more bloodshed; whereas the true plan will be unfolded by the gods. Being blind, we are unable to do right. Yet, going forward, we cannot set one foot wrong. We are but agents in these matters.”
I would like to believe him. It would take the worry out of nine-tenths of existence. But I notice that he, too, worries on occasion, in spite of his convictions; and I wonder just how much of his philosophy he honestly believes and how much is habit.
He worried more than I did as the sun wore down towards the west, and there began to be signs of movement here and there among the ugly crags. The wind began blowing half a hurricane, whistling into our cave and drowning out most other noises; but once in a while we heard sniping, and twice a yell reached us that told someone had hit the living mark, or missed.
Grim slept on. He can worry, too, but seldom when he has faced a situation and made up his mind on a course; so I judged by the calmness of his sleep that he had fully decided what to do and was characteristically storing up strength for the effort.
After a while Narayan Singh crept out and climbed a crag, from which to get a better view of the locality. To make the most of that he had to stand upright on the top, and was clearly silhouetted against the sky. Someone three hundred yards away began shooting at him. The first shot missed altogether, but announced the sniper’s general whereabouts. The second chipped a piece of rock from close beside the Sikh’s feet. The third chipped the rock again, a little to the left. The fourth shot was mine. I used Grim’s rifle, and it proved to be a very good one.
Narayan Singh returned and squatted once more in the cave-mouth.
“There is smoke a mile away,” he announced, “but the wind blows and spreads it. It is hard to tell exactly whence it comes. It is the smoke of many men.”
I took a turn at scouting, selecting another crag, while Narayan Singh covered me. But there were no more gentry sniping thereabouts; or if there were they took to heart the first one’s fate. I stood up unmolested, and a fluke in the wind gave me a clear view down a gorge to the side of a ravine that the gorge entered at a right-angle. The smoke was issuing from the mouth of a cavern, and there was lots of it. I judged they had a fire in there that would have roasted an ox; and that meant the presence of women, for the men-folk prefer discomfort to the infra digbusiness of gathering and bringing fuel. Before the wind fluked again and the smoke blotted out the view, I saw about twenty men sitting on a ledge outside the cavern; and that looked as if they were not in the least afraid of being seen. But I could not tell whether they were Waziris or Pathans. When I returned to the cave Grim was awake. He had raked the fragments of our scattered fire together, spitted Mahommed bin Akbar’s hen on a stick, and was toasting it. We ate the bird, and it was beastly, but sufficed.
“What next?” I asked him; and he was about to answer when Akbar bin Mahommed came in, munching dry corn that he had stolen somewhere.
“May Allah bless you!” he said handsomely. “May Allah make that hen enough for you! I found a fool with a bag full of this good food, who thought to knife me from behind a rock. But, by Allah, as he followed me I followed him, and took him by the heel (it was a little rock). I pulled him back towards me, thus; and as he turned on his back to fight me, I drove my knife into his belly, thus; and he has no more hunger, whereas I would have been starving presently! Moreover, I did Allah a great service, ridding the earth of a pig who cumbered it! He was a—”
“News! What news have you brought?” demanded Grim.
“Oh, as for that, I did not discover much. I watched the mouth of that cavern from this side of the ravine. There is Kangra Khan with nearly a hundred men. I did not see the sahiba, but I know they have her with them, because those outside the cavern keep peering within curiously. The wives of some of Kangra Khan’s men are there; they brought fuel, and much food; from time to time they carry water, and there is a great cooking going on. I think they have determined on a long march. I think they will go home.”
“How many days’ march?” Grim demanded.
“Eleven days, if there is no fighting on the way. But it is slower by night; and if there is fighting, who knows?”
“Are you from Kangra Khan’s village?”
“Praise be to Allah, no! I come from a decent place, a half-day’s march from his dung-hill.
Lo, my home is in the shadow of the graves of holy ones, whom Allah bless! Mine is a town of fair women — a city of delights — a paradise! His stinks! I would not live there. I came southward looking for a profit after all the big talk Kangra Khan made, but that dung- hill of his is the mother of buzzing flies and naught else — words without a doing at the end of them!”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“They call it Kangra Khan’s. It deserves no better name.”
“And the name of yours?”
He would not tell. The more he was questioned the more he fell back on evasion. Whether it was superstition or mere caution it was difficult to guess, but he was resolute; he would not name the place he came from.
“Allah knows its name!” he answered. “It is a city of trees and splendid buildings. There is a mosque a dozen times more lovely than the Taj Mahal!”
“Have you seen the Taj Mahal?” Grim asked him.
“Nay. Why take the trouble? Have I not seen the mosque in my city? There is nothing fairer.”
“Well,” said Grim, “to get to your home, must we go by Kangra Khan’s?”
“Aye, if Allah wills. Between here and there it might be there would happen fighting!”
“And the Waziris? Where do they live?”
“Over beyond. Forever to the northward. They are not true Waziris, but a cross-bred spawn of hell who fell heirs to three villages because the Afridi, who used to live thereabouts, were too weak to withstand them. They will never get home. There are too many tribes on the watch, and no friends anywhere! And if they did reach home they would find the Afridis waiting. Show me that Tooth of the Prophet, sahib. Bless me with it! I have in mind to loot a few Waziris before too many Pathans get the first pick!”
Grim thought a minute, then produced the “Prophet’s tooth.” It looked as if it had been in a rain-washed skull for centuries. He had it folded in a piece of paper, on which was some writing in Persian characters, and he held it carefully, giving Akbar bin Mahommed no more than a glimpse of it.