Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Luncheon over, Bruce took him to his quarters and they lolled in long-armed chairs, Joe asking nothing better than escape from the hotel and from his mother’s neighborhood. True, she had probably gone to the caverns ten or fifteen miles away, but even that was too near, and she might return at any minute. When Bruce invited him to spend the night he leaped at the suggestion.

  “We’ve a bit of a tent-club near here — nothing to boast about, of course, but not bad. I thought of riding out there this evening and turning in early, so as to be ready for pig soon after daybreak. Did you ever stick pig? I can promise you something worth your trouble. Take your pick of my spears; they’ve all been sharpened. I’ll lend you a Kathiawari mare that stands right up to ’em — she’s savage — all you have to watch is that she doesn’t spin around and try to use her heels. You have to give her lots of spur; she spun me off once — if she hadn’t stayed there savaging the boar I’d have been a dead man.”

  Joe sent a note to the hotel informing his mother and warning her not to expect him until the following afternoon. The invitation made him thoroughly cheerful; it enabled him to avoid her until after keeping his appointment at the mission, and gave him meanwhile something wholesomely barbarous to do and to think and talk about. It was characteristic of him that he was not even tempted to discuss his personal affairs with Bruce, although Bruce became more and more intimate as they rode together toward the tent-club in the cool of the afternoon. Bruce even talked of his mother, but Joe was silent about his.

  Perhaps Joe in that mood was a companionable audience; he was sympathetic, making no demands on the other’s patience, inviting confidence by simply not inviting it. At any rate, Bruce soon began to verge on telling secrets, and then finally to tell them — nothing serious, of course, but regimental intimacies normally not discussed with strangers, such as the Colonel’s wife’s flirtations and the sinful rate of interest charged by the local moneylender. Then, within sight of the tents, peeped forth the fundamental worry that had made the mess a sort of morgue at lunch-time. Joe’s shrewd guess had been right after all.

  “India would be all right if it weren’t for rajahs. Thank God, we’ve got this tent-club to ourselves — Poonch-Terai won’t spoil things for us this time.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s a cad, for one thing. Sends out shikaris to hamstring the best boars, so that he can ride ’em down easier. Can you beat that?”

  “Can’t you interfere?”

  “We did. But we’re supposed to keep on decent terms with him. He’s the principal landlord hereabouts and he has extraordinary influence. He even has some kind of subtle authority over the temple. He’s said to have the right, among other things to choose a concubine a year from among the nautch-girls. It’s a right, like the European droit du seigneur, that has lapsed from disuse, but they say he’s trying to revive it, having set his cap at some young woman. The trouble is, that some of our troopers and non-corns got wind of it and took steps to protect the girl — no one knows why — they won’t talk, except to one another and, I suppose, to the priests. We got called down for snubbing Poonch-Terai not long ago; they sent an officer from H. Q. to give us hell about it — something about his influence in the House of Princes that the Government happens to need at the moment. So we’re forced to be civil, and Poonch-Terai takes full advantage of it — riding for a fall, of course, but meanwhile we’re in difficulties.”

  “The military usually are,” said Joe, “when they run into politics.”

  “And religion. Don’t forget religion. Some one — and we’re pretty sure it’s Poonch-Terai — has got at a lot of our troopers — set them by the ears against the others. Some of our men are Hindus, some Mohammedans; they’re snarling, and the Colonel has the wind up, which makes it ghastly for the rest of us. We can’t put the temple entirely out of bounds because of the religious edge to things. We can’t picket the temple for protection unless the priests request that; we can’t even offer to do it until they ask, and they won’t ask. If they did ask, they jolly well know that Poonch-Terai would put the screws on — politics and one thing and another; I’ve been told he could cut off more than half their revenues at one stroke of a pen. I wish they’d let him have the girl; she’d probably prefer even that to a life of belly-shaking in the moonlight.”

  “What sort of girl is she?” Jo. asked, wondering why the goose-flesh rose all over him. He told himself there was absolutely no reason why he should be disturbed on Amrita’s account, even supposing he knew for certain that Amrita was the girl in question. And, wondering what the color of her eyes was, he felt more disturbed than ever. He could imagine his mother as a fat spider; never having seen the Maharajah of Poonch-Terai it was easy to imagine him as something much worse — a sort of combination hornet-scorpion, with whiskers like the mogul on a ketchup bottle.

  “Damned if I know. All those women look alike to me,” Bruce answered. “I’ve been told that they’re beastly immoral and inhumanly mischievous. Let’s hope we have better than goat for supper. I told the cook I’d kill him if he serves me goat again. The fat rogue knows I won t, he’s too important. Time before last he tried to fool me by calling it Viceroy Stew.”

  However, it was “curried venison” this time, and though the goat was more than usually tough it was so embalmed in curry powder that the benefit of reasonable doubt was on the cook’s side, so his life was saved, but not Joe’s digestion; when they turned in, early, he wooed sleep in vain; and when at last he did sleep he had nightmare. A monster came out of a temple pursuing Amrita; and another monster came out of a cavern pursuing himself. He struggled to overtake Amrita. But Hawkes, who seemed in no hurry at all, kept demanding his thousand pounds and saying: “Then you’ll see the color of her eyes, and what about it?” Every now and then Hawkes changed into the Yogi with a pipe in his mouth, but even so he said the same thing. One of the monsters, when he dared to look at it, had bristling black whiskers and was male; but the other was female. Both of them looked like spiders, and that futile ass Cummings wanted him to catch flies for them. At last one monster pounced on him and he began to fight desperately; but it turned out to be Captain Bruce waking him for the tea and toast that are the bread and wine of Englishmen’s religion.

  CHAPTER XI. “Are you drunk, Joe?”

  Joe’s horsemanship was good enough but nothing wonderful. The Kathiawari mare lived up to the reputation Bruce had given her; she had to be blindfolded before Joe could mount her, and when the blindfold was removed she wished with all her savage heart to kill the unoffending sais, who ran for cover. Joe was enjoying himself; he liked that kind of fight; it brought his dogged patience uppermost, and the mare learned presently that she had some one on her back who owned a stronger will than hers. However, she tried all ways of testing him and she was going backward toward the rising sun, and Joe was consequently facing Bruce when he heard Bruce swear and saw his face set like flint before it thawed again into the deliberate smile that the English imagine makes them pleasant to approach. Joe did not understand what was happening until he veered the mare around. Then he knew without Bruce telling.

  Gone was the glory of Indian morning. None save Joshua has ever made the sun stand still, but there are men whose uninvited presence can rob sunlight of its charm; and of such men Poonch-Terai was chief, at any rate that morning. He exuded a dry diabolism; each of his handsome features seemed an accent of the underlying guile; his suavity was insolence, his seat on horseback arrogant, and the horse had cost him fifteen thousand rupees. Well aware that his presence was unwelcome he rode forward showing his white teeth in a smile that set every fiber of Joe’s being tingling with resentment. It was a case of instant hatred as unreasoned and sudden as the war between fire and water. Even Bruce detected it, and Bruce had malice of his own to keep him busy.

  The Maharajah drew rein fifteen paces from them, spinning his spear before he let it lie across his saddle-bow. He was a sartorial dream; from crimson turban t
o the spurs on his beautiful boots he was the last exquisite word of elegance. His black mustache was waxed, his black beard oiled and curled, his dark eyes underlined with pigment like a woman’s. His lithe body, only a little coarsened by debauch, sat like a centaur’s. He was a challenge; Joe itched to couch a spear at him and actually eyed the point between his ribs where he would drive the blade home, smiling at his own absurdity — a smile that Poonch-Terai interpreted as a salute to his rank. Bruce introduced them. Joe nodded. The Maharajah displayed his teeth in another radiant smile, his dark-ivory skin so slightly changing color that Bruce did not notice it, but Joe did.

  “I have heard of you,” said Poonch-Terai. “Are you not the man from Jupiter?”

  That brought the Yogi to Joe’s mind, and the temple — the nautch-girls — the man whose jaw Hawkes punched so unexpectedly — the story that the Maharajah sought new fuel for his harem fires. Was this the man who desired Amrita? Joe had never felt so venomously jealous in his life; it almost frightened him; from force of habit he tried to smother the emotion and answer civilly.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I was told you were named that by a man who makes very few mistakes.”

  “You mean the Yogi at the temple? I think he had probably heard the name of a business corporation in which I have some interest.”

  It was an unfortunate answer; it opened the way for a sneer of the sort that Americans abroad are learning to expect but not to suffer gladly.

  “Wise old Yogi. But I wonder, don’t you, how he realized that an American and his business can’t be separated, even on a temple threshold?”

  “He’s the sole one of your countrymen I’ve met who wasn’t hungrier for dollars than for decency,” Joe answered.

  Poonch-Terai subsided for the moment, half-pretending not to have caught the meaning of that counterthrust, but he threw Joe one glance sideways that meant war as surely as the shot at Sarajevo did. He began to talk to Bruce about the wild boars. He had spoiled all Bruce’s quietly made arrangements.

  “I’m camped five miles away. My men reported your men beating in this direction, so I ordered mine to join yours. We’ll get pig, don’t doubt it. Can your friend ride?”

  “We only want one apiece,” Bruce answered. “Have to be back at mess in time for tiffin.”

  “I’ll bet you my men will show you fifteen boars worth killing.”

  “Any of ’em lame?” Bruce asked him, but Poonch-Terai affected not to hear that; he stood up in the stirrups, shielding his eyes with his hand.

  “That’s my head man signaling. They’ve a sounder of pig in the scrub beyond that clump of trees. Shall we ride on?”

  He began to canter, Bruce and Joe following three horses’ lengths behind him, Bruce trying to signal to Joe his disappointment and apologies for the unwelcome intrusion; his lips moved, but he said no word aloud because Poonch-Terai’s perfectly modeled ears with the little gold earrings in their lobes were notoriously keen.

  They took cover beside the clump of trees and Poonch-Terai gave orders to his head man, who directed scores of almost naked beaters. Armed with tin cans, tomtoms and dissonant trumpets, they had surrounded a sounder of pig in a maze of waist-high undergrowth some acres in extent. It was a perfect place for pig — impossible for horses and by no means easy for the beaters. At a nod from the Maharajah the head man maneuvered the beaters all to one side of the copse, and then the tin can chorus started as the scythe-shaped mob of beaters invaded the cover to drive the pig into the open. It occurred then to Poonch-Terai that he was possibly usurping precedence. He turned to Bruce:

  “You’d better give the word.”

  Bruce nodded, his quiet eyes watching the billowing undergrowth, his rein-hand restraining an excited horse. There was more than one sounder within that small area; the Maharajah’s men had swept down in a huge semicircle like a drag-net; there were pigs of all ages in there milling, grunting, squealing and the surface of the undergrowth suggested a section of sea in which huge shoals of fish have been surrounded. There were collisions in there — fights — until suddenly one whole sounder more than a hundred strong turned and charged back through a gap in the line of beaters. Poonch-Terai swore excitedly:

  “That’s your men’s fault! You ought to thrash your head man — I believe he left that gap on purpose. He’ll try to blame it on my man—” But there was no time for an argument. The other sounder, following a huge gray boar, broke cover in the opposite direction, the gray boar well in the lead of his tremendous family and turning between spurts for a glimpse of what the danger might be.

  “Ride!” said Bruce.

  The target was that gray grandfather-boar. He saw them, and he knew it. Never a gray boar breathed that was not more than willing to take on fifty times his weight in any kind of enemy whatever. No need to explain the situation to him. He grunted and the obedient sounder turned back into cover, leaving him free of responsibility and unimpeded to choose his own battle-ground.

  First blood is the objective. Whoever can first show crimson on his spear-point is the winner of the race. The fight with the boar, as a rule does not begin until the race for his tushes is over. Poonch-Terai on his expensive thoroughbred got away with a lead of a length, Bruce following and Joe last. The boar took a straight line away from the sun, to put plenty of distance between himself and his family before giving battle. He went like the wind. With a judgment worthy of a fox he chose a line of country that would strain the horses to the utmost but without overtaxing his own strength. Boulders, sheet-rock, dry watercourses, scrambled undergrowth, he took them all; and not until he judged the horses were well winded and the foam was frothing on his own jaws did he turn in a wide semicircle with his savage little red eye studying his pursuers to discover which could be taken at worst advantage.

  That “jink,” as they call it, cost Poonch-Terai the lead. It left him far out on the left flank, fifty yards from Bruce, who lost sight of the boar for the moment and checked to save his horse unnecessary labor in a wrong direction. Joe was alone on the right, with the gray boar waiting for him in a narrow pass between two boulders; and the Kathiawari mare as eager as the boar to get to business. No spur needed. Joe couched his spear and charged. The Kathiawari slipped on a loose stone, stumbled and recovered, giving Poonch-Terai the fraction of a moment’s opportunity; he came on, passing Bruce and spurring to overtake Joe, who saw him through the corner of an eye and accepted an unspoken challenge.

  It was all over in thirty seconds, and Joe the winner. But a man can be reborn in thirty seconds. His whole life’s history can review itself, with the essentials selected and the unimportant, so-called major crises faded into the background. All his acquired characteristics can slough off in less than that time and the underlying man, the unknown man who has been learning from experience behind the baffling mask, can break through — never again entirely to return to hiding.

  Joe had never suspected himself of chivalry. As he rode at that boar, with Poonch-Terai spurring to overtake him, he was conscious of another set of values than had ever dawned on his imagination. The excitement, the reckless speed, the delirious sense of danger, were all relative to an idea, and the idea was within him. Poonch-Terai was the devil. Paradoxically, too, the boar was Poonch-Terai. A woman’s eyes, whose color he could not see, were watching him; he was not fighting to protect her but for approval, on which he knew perfectly well that his own opinion of himself must depend henceforward. Should he fail, she would suffer; he knew that, but he knew, too, that she would ignore the suffering; nothing at all could grieve her but a lack of grace within himself, and grace was wordless — something to be lived, not argued. He would know within a brace of seconds whether or not he had it. He rode like a plumed adventurer, to find out.

  The boar turned tail suddenly, but that was a ruse to throw his adversary off guard and to get room to build impetus. He faced about again as suddenly and charged down-hill with every concentrated ounce of speed and courage there was
in him, timing his effort perfectly to meet his enemy on the narrow ground between two hillocks, where only one at a time could meet him and there was no avoiding his froth-wet tushes or the shock of his furious onslaught. It was death for him or for his adversary, and long odds on the boar, but Joe’s spear took him straight and strong between the shoulder-blades as he rose to slash at the mare with his murderous little ivory daggers. Speed, weight, strength of horse and boar and man combined to skewer him dead to the earth as the spear-haft snapped in Joe’s hand. He was Joe’s boar — first and last blood.

  It was neither the boar nor the Kathiawari mare’s attempt to turn and use her heels on a fallen foe that sent Joe sprawling on the hard earth. Poonch-Terai came crashing into him, whirling his spear, indignant to have missed by half a dozen strides and hurling into the collision every ounce of venom he could muster. His thoroughbred’s shoulder caught the mare in flank, as she turned with one hoof on the ground, and sent her rolling. Luckily she threw Joe three times his length as she fell, and though be skinned his face and forearms on the rock-hard earth and he was rather badly bruised, he was not stunned and no bones were broken.

  He was rather less badly hurt than Poonch-Terai. The thoroughbred tripped on the Kathiawari’s scrambling legs and fell in a heap a yard or two beyond her, spraining both the Maharajah’s wrists as he extended his hands to protect his head. It was Joe who raised the Maharajah to his feet; Bruce drew rein beside them and, seeing there was no great harm done, began edging his horse toward the other two in order to catch them before they could bolt home.