by Talbot Mundy
Narayan Singh objected strenuously. He begged me to come with him to the cavern, arguing that Kangra Khan might otherwise escape — a manifest absurdity. He said if I would consent to that, he would return with me and protect me while I searched for the sahiba’s body.
“For thou and I have campaigned together often. Thy honor and mine are one!” he argued.
At last I consented to stay where I was while he led Kangra Khan to the cavern and returned to join me in the search. It did not amuse me to meet King again without Joan Angela dead or alive. My mental processes are no man’s business but my own, and King’s opinion of me, though I value it, was not the issue. I am the man who must live with myself.
I waited an interminable time, listening to the scattered shots of some of King’s Waziris, who were peppering the enemy’s retreat and making it as difficult as possible to get away with the remaining baggage. Every minute seemed priceless, yet the Sikh did not come. I decided to go down alone, and had started, when I heard him come hurrying behind me. I put on speed then. To wait would only lose more time. He started to run, crying “Sahib! sahib!” So I ran, knowing he could overtake me; but I had nearly reached the bottom, and was by the rock where Kangra Khan had stood, when he laid a hand on my shoulder from behind.
“Come, sahib!” he said, and turned, and started running on his way back up the ramp.
Seeing I did not follow at once, he turned.
“Come, sahib! Quickly! King sahib’s request!” he shouted.
“What has happened?” I demanded; but the wind blew the words back in my face, and if he heard me he did not answer. He stood there beckoning in the moonlight within easy range of the Pathans, and I suspected by his gestures he was grinning. It looked very much like a trick of his to prevent me from taking a long chance among the rocks. There are always plenty of friends to dissuade a fellow from the proper course. I turned my back on him, and started forward.
In a second he was in pursuit of me again, jumping and sliding down the ramp in a little avalanche of loose stones.
“Come!” he insisted. “King sahib sends for you!” And before I could ask for an explanation he was gone again, scrambling up the slide on hands and knees. Far up above me I could see King standing in the moonlight on the ledge before the cavern, talking to about a dozen men, of whom one looked like Kangra Khan, our prisoner. There seemed nothing in the way of excitement going on up there. But Narayan Singh beckoned and shouted: “Come swiftly! King sahib waits!”
I stepped out into the moonlight from the shadow of the rock, and climbed up on another rock to get a view of the surroundings. I was not up there a second before King caught sight of me — blew his whistle — and began beckoning violently.
I jumped down into shadow, still intending to go forward, but saw King himself and half a dozen men come hurrying down the ramp, and that decided me to wait and hear what they might have to say. I crawled back to the bottom of the slide and stood there in total darkness — perfectly invisible; but I could see all the ramp and the men who came down it.
Half-way down the ramp King stopped and blew his whistle. Narayan Singh stood up and waved his arms again, yelling, “Sahib! sahib!” I could not pretend after that, nor could King pretend, that I had turned back of my own free will. I was satisfied to go and discover what King had to say before continuing the search, at all events.
But the moment I stepped into moonlight, and he saw me coming, King started back, beckoning to me once and taking it for granted that I would follow him. He never once looked back to see whether I was coming. Neither did Narayan Singh wait, but scrambled to overtake King. So I climbed up the ramp all alone, in no hurry, disgusted at the turn of events, and sore with King, whom I suspected of having cold feet after as good as ordering me out on a forlorn hope.
But it was all very matter-of-fact up there. Nobody seemed disturbed, or to expect an attack before morning. They were loafing about cleaning rifles, and I saw smoke issuing from the cavern-mouth, and two Waziris climbed over the edge of the ramp with water slopping out of half-filled kerosene cans. If they dared use the well in the ravine it meant that the Pathans had drawn off further than I thought. That was not reassuring. It might mean that King had definite news that Joan Angela was already miles away.
I came up with him at last, feeling pretty well exhausted, for a good deal of the heavy work that night had fallen to my share, and my head had not properly recovered from that blow I received the first night.
“What’s the news?” I demanded.
“We’re all safe for tonight,” he said simply, reaching out his hand for my blood-stained rifle. He examined it casually and tossed it over the cliff. “Why not go in and rest?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the cavern. Not answering, I stuck my hands into my pockets and accepted his advice.
There was a good fire in there. They had gathered what fuel the Pathans had left scattered about, and a brilliant flame was lighting up a great hole in the cliff that would have held a thousand men. Some wounded Waziris were sitting and sprawling around the fire, and towards the rear there were two people bandaging the rest, who were sitting with their backs against the wall, waiting their turn. One of the two was Grim. He turned his head as I passed the fire, and nodded a curt greeting.
“I saw Joan Angela,” I said, “but they carried her off almost under my eyes. It was my fault. Can I help here?”
“Sure! Lend a hand,” said a voice that made me nearly jump out of my skin; and Joan Angela looked up from tearing turbans into bandages to laugh at me. “It was Jim here who carried me off. Come over here and get busy.”
CHAPTER 10. “Thou wilt have the blessed Prophet’s tooth, so who can harm thee!”
MEN differ, as the pigs that perish, and all of us are brutes to some extent. We have a lower nature that obstructs the higher and persists in spite of all our boasted civilization.
Joan Angela, whose nature compared to mine is as a diamond to a hunk of coal, was her normal, natural, brave self again, no longer enjoying adventure, but making her absolute best of it; and I think she had utterly forgotten that incident down in the well. She looked at me, and spoke to me as to an old friend; and if she had never been more than an acquaintance, that might have passed muster.
But the devil of it was that she and I had been old friends. I value friendship more than anything on earth. It rankled in me — it had made of me that night a Berserker — that she should have dared think I would take advantage of her in any sort of circumstances. I did not answer her when she spoke. Her mere proximity filled me with a burning rage. For a minute or two I held a Waziri while Grim pushed his finger into a wound to feel for splintered bone; and when that job was done I turned my back on both Grim and her, and walked out. There was not the least excuse for it. I did it.
Outside, I met King come from posting his watchmen. “Where’s Akbar bin Mahommed?” I asked, chiefly for something to say.
“Gone over to the enemy!” he answered. “By the way, he has your pistol...snatched it, I suppose, while the fighting was on.”
I remembered then that Akbar bin Mahommed had passed me during the first rush down the ramp. But I found it hard to reconcile desertion with his earlier faithfulness, and said so.
“You’re right,” King answered, “he’s no deserter. He’s after that tooth, and Grim sent him to earn it. He’s a spy for us. He’ll let us know before morning what the enemy intend.”
He was looking at me curiously where the firelight streamed on both our faces.
“Why don’t you go and lie down?” he said presently. “You need a rest.”
He said nothing of rest for himself, and I laughed at him. I told him it was his turn. I said I would stay there on the ledge and keep watch, while he turned in by the fire; and I think it was more to humour me than for any other reason that he went in and left me standing there. I bore a grudge against him too, because of his curtness when he came on me alive without Joan Angela. The mere fact that he had
been justified meant as much to me as that Joan Angela had been unjustified. I would have quarreled with my own mother just then.
Narayan Singh came and sat down in the shadow of the cliff beside me. I resented it. He had had no right to play that trick on me, calling me back up the ramp without explanation, thus causing me to burst in like a fool on Joan Angela. I said nothing, savagely, for several minutes, but he undoubtedly divined my mood.
“Where’s your prisoner?” I asked at last, compressing into one short sentence all the discourtesy I could command.
“At the back of the cavern, sahib. He is well guarded,” he answered. Then, after a pause, during which I tried to think of some suitable rebuke: “Our Guru saith: ‘To fight for the oppressed is excellent; but let not wrath consume the spirit that has led thee!’”
I told him to go to the devil with his preaching, and he got up and walked away, too wise to argue.
There I sat, hour after hour, watching the moon change the shadows down in the ravine, listening to jackals and the lowering voice of the wind, that whined as if all the Pathan wounded were crying for help. But there were no discoverable wounded down there. Our Waziri women had pounced on quite a number of them before King could prevent, and their own women had found and carried off the rest.
Narayan Singh strode past me once or twice on a sentry-go of his own election. The third time he stopped as if to speak, but thought better of it and passed along. Five minutes later he saluted, military style.
“Sahib,” he said, “sleep. For I need sleep. And sleep I will not until you have slept first.”
That was the thin end of the wedge that entered my abominable mood and forced me back to a reasonable frame of mind. I began to argue with him, but made no headway, he assuring me that a Sikh can go without sleep for twice as long as a white man with less than half the ill effect. He was adamant — as gentle and firm and respectful as a well-trained nurse; and wise in the bargain.
“You are stronger than I. We may all need your strength before morning. You should sleep first, for that if no other reason,” he insisted.
So I yielded, and lay down where I was. I suppose it was he who threw a sheepskin over me, but I was fast asleep before that happened...so deep in slumber that I never heard a sound of Akbar bin Mahommed’s coming. It was Grim, about an hour before dawn, who shook me awake.
“Conference!” he said. “You’re wanted. Give me Mahommed’s Tooth.”
So I gave him the old tooth in its crumpled scrap of paper, and followed him into the cavern where Joan Angela, King, Narayan Singh, and Akbar bin Mahommed were already seated around the dying embers of the fire. Akbar looked mighty well pleased with himself, as if he had brought good news. I sat down between him and Narayan Singh, sideways to Joan Angela, so as not to have to look directly at her; and Grim took his seat facing me. King wasted no time on preliminaries. He called for Kangra Khan, who came from a dark corner of the cavern followed by four Waziris, and, at King’s invitation, sat down beside him, watched intently by the guards. Then King spoke up, dealing only with essentials, as his way is.
“Akbar bin Mahommed got in touch with Kangra Khan’s men, who have bivouacked an hour’s march away at the north end of the ravine. They expect the Orakzai Pathans, for whom we were luckily mistaken, to join them soon after dawn. After that, they expect to return and attack us. They believe we must be short of ammunition. They count on cutting us off from water. They are sure we have very little food. They say our only way of escape is down into the ravine, where they can cut us up at leisure. On the whole, they’re about right.
“However, Akbar bin Mahommed is a diplomatist. It seems that our Hajji Jimgrim promised him Mahommed’s Tooth, and he sees the way, when he possesses that, to make himself a man of great influence. He has told the Pathans about the tooth; so their purpose now is to capture the Hajji and Miss Leich alive if possible, and to kill all the rest of us. But they are anxious about Kangra Khan too. They’re afraid we might kill him. They feel their honor is entailed in saving his life if possible. But most of all they want the tooth. They believe its possession will make them prosperous and powerful, besides protecting them from other tribes on their way home.
“Akbar bin Mahommed now makes this offer: If we will give him the tooth, he will be responsible for leading the Pathans away and letting us and the Waziris escape unattacked to the border. We are here to discuss the proposal.”
“The shameless dog would be a chief in my place!” Kangra Khan growled, glaring at Akbar bin Mahommed, who met the gaze without flinching. “Promises are wind that any rogue may belch forth! Give me the tooth, and I will take the promise on myself. Aye, I will fulfil it!”
King’s eyes met Grim’s and mine and Narayan Singh’s in turn. We all shook our heads. It was Grim who made the next proposal, speaking Arabic, which neither Kangra Khan, Akbar bin Mahommed nor Joan Angela understood.
“Suppose I take the tooth and go with Akbar bin Mahommed. Then if he keeps his word, and you reach the border safely, I’ll give him the tooth, and you can exchange Kangra Khan against me.”
But we voted that down instantly. Hajjis are respected in the hills, but murder is sport and art, and a murderer would argue that possession of the Prophet’s Tooth would cleanse all sin from his soul. They would kill Grim and then, with the tooth by way of absolution, would attack, and wipe us out. It looked like an impasse. There seemed no solution either way. We might have trusted Kangra Khan, perhaps; but Grim had promised the tooth to Akbar bin Mahommed, and we were not a treaty-making government to cancel promises at our own convenience.
Akbar bin Mahommed, suspicious of the Arabic, began to doubt our good faith.
“What manner of men are ye, to make a bargain with me and then break it?” he demanded in Pushtu; and at that comprehension dawned on Kangra Khan.
“Oho!” he exclaimed. “By Allah! That way blows the wind! Ye have bargained to give the Prophet’s Tooth to this worrier of dung-heaps? Give it to him, if he is fit for it, but let him prove his fitness first! Let him fight me — here — now — for the chieftainship! Clear a space and give us weapons!”
At that, Akbar bin Mahommed drew my pistol. I knocked it from his hand, but only in the nick of time. The blow nearly broke his wrist.
“Allah reward thee, Ramm-is-den!” said Kangra Khan graciously. But Akbar bin Mahommed hugged his wrist, and eyed me from another aspect.
“That man is a liar and a traitor!” Kangra Khan said, pointing his finger at Akbar bin Mahommed. “I am a man of my word, and ye know it! Lo, give him the tooth, and send him forth with me. Ye and the Waziris shall go safe to the border, Allah is my witness.”
That was a handsome enough offer. Of all the long chances we might choose from, the prospect that Kangra Khan might literally keep his word contained the least improbability. But Akbar bin Mahommed had risked his life on our behalf more than once, and we would have been curs if we had accepted the proposal as it stood.
Joan Angela piped up, sitting with her arms round her knees, and staring with great tired eyes across the embers at Kangra Khan.
“I think Kangra Khan is a man,” she said. “I believe he would keep a promise.”
Kangra Khan bowed his head ever so slightly in acknowledgment. He was not too pleased to be championed by a woman; yet his situation was nearly as desperate as ours, and he welcomed any hint of an approaching solution. He eyed Joan Angela intently as she continued.
“Why not ask him to promise to do his best to find a way out of this difficulty, and then let him go. He’d be an ingrate if he failed us, and I don’t think he has that in him.”
There was silence. It was a daring suggestion, but it rang true. If we let him go, and he deceived us, gone was our only hostage. He and his men could get possession of the tooth by cutting us off from food and water and attacking in their own good time. Yet, if he were a man of his word...
“By Allah!” he broke in, “the woman has the right of it! Keep ye your promise, and lo,
I keep mine! Give ye the tooth to Akbar bin Mahommed. Let me go. I promise ye shall reach the border unmolested...ye and the Waziri!”
There was a fly in that amber somewhere. Akbar bin Mahommed detected it instantly.
“That is for them. As for me?” he asked pointedly.
“Dog! Thou wilt have the blessed Prophet’s Tooth, so who can harm thee?”
From a hillman’s viewpoint that was unanswerable. It placed us in the horrible dilemma of having to stand up for the tooth’s authenticity or else, by admitting it would not protect Akbar bin Mahommed, to throw away our lone chance. We simply did not dare to drop a hint that the tooth’s power was not miraculous, and Kangra Khan, continuing, rubbed that fact home.
“Hah! It has saved the sahiba! Hah! Were it not for the tooth, would a handful of dogs of Waziris have beaten off me and my men? By the Prophet, whom may Allah bless, who art thou, thou dog, to have no faith in it?”
Time was precious. Dawn would bring about the meeting of Pathans and a view of the ramp and the cavern — our predicament and our small numbers. We had to agree on something swiftly.
“We will take you at your word,” said King, and stood up, holding out his hand to Kangra Khan. They shook hands across the dying embers of the fire, but Kangra Khan waited, and there was awkward silence for a moment, until King detected what the matter was. He went and picked up my pistol (which was really Grim’s) that I had knocked out of Akbar bin Mahommed’s hand, and offered it to Kangra Khan butt-first. The Pathan accepted it, but waited yet.
King looked about him. He could hardly take a knife from a Waziri, and Kangra Khan’s own had vanished in the dark when we had captured him. But one of our fellows had died of his wounds at the back of the cavern; Grim went and looked for his tulwar, found it, and brought it back to King, who offered it to the Pathan hilt-first. It was a brute of a weapon, weighing twenty pounds at a guess, with a rather curved blade, and beautifully worked with silver wire to keep the hand from slipping. Kangra Khan seized the hilt, and King laid his hand on the blade.