by Talbot Mundy
It was not his purpose to catch Ommony unawares. He never did that kind of thing. There was no need. Lal Rai, getting off the one seat on the station platform, followed him like a dog at heel unbidden, and defiled the dewy morn with reminiscences, in which the names of Ommony and Mahommed Babar occurred repeatedly. Prothero made no comment, absolutely none. He strode along with hands behind him and might not have been listening; but he knew as much of that subject as Lal Rai did by the time he reached the clearing and discovered Ommony descending from the veranda with a gun under his arm.
He walked straight up to Ommony, of course, threw his overcoat to Lal Rai, which sufficiently explained that individual presence, and shook hands. Ommony, who knew him, asked no questions, which threw the burden of conversation on the colonel.
“Nice little place you have here.”
Ommony knew that. Said nothing. Waited.
“Have I interrupted? You were off somewhere?”
“Merely a round of inspection.”
“Good. I’ll walk with you. Nice little place you have here,” he repeated. “Quiet. Lots of solitude. Time to think, eh? Hello! Chickens, eh? Imported?”
“Just a notion to cross-breed English poultry with jungle-fowl,” said Ommony, warming instantly.
He proceeded to explain all about jungle-fowl and their presumed descendants to Prothero, who only cared for any of them in a pot presided over by Louis Manoel, the finest cook in India. However, he followed Ommony about, asking questions as fast as he could think of them.
“And this? What’s this?” he asked. “Totem — fetish — prayer- pole — village priest been making you do pooja to the local god?”
He laid his hand on a fifty-foot pole, like a flagstaff, from the top of which an old cane chair-seat fluttered and dived in the morning wind.
“Just a scheme to keep hawks and crows away,” said Ommony. “I can’t sit here and pot them all day long. Novelty is the secret. They get used to one scare, so I change it frequently. Here goes.”
He put two fingers to his teeth and whistled. A servant came running, and he sent him in search of a pair of old boots. Meanwhile, he hauled down the chair-seat under Prothero’s unsuspicious-looking eyes.
In point of fact Prothero was not suspicious. He did not have to be. There was Lal Rai, only fifty paces off, who suspected everybody — everything — always.
Ommony bent the boots on to the line and hauled them up, where they swung one above the other kicking seven league style.
“That should be a sufficient hint to bird, beast, or man, to clear out!” grinned Prothero. “What’s that old kettle doing? Physic for the hens?”
“Goes aloft, too, on occasion.”
Prothero’s lobster eyes went through a gyration that Lal Rai noticed. He gave no answering sign, but his one eye rested on the kettle for a moment, whereat Prothero looked away.
Ommony whistled the dogs, which had been undergoing torture in the form of grooming in the stables. They came like the Gadarene swine with a rush, and had to be sternly forbidden to attack either Prothero or Lal Rai. Dogs detect the atmosphere of enmity at first sniff; but, as the boots on the high pole testified, Ommony needed no warning. He foresaw that all he needed was to keep an eye on Prothero; which is proof enough that not even Ommony foresees infallibly.
“Shall I lend you a gun?” he asked.
But Prothero was much too lazy to enjoy a gun, preferring to stroll beside Ommony and pay attention. He foresaw that all he needed was to keep an eye on Ommony, which is proof that he knew his business. What was more, he could afford to be agreeable. Ommony brought down a hawk that had been trespassing too much of late, and Prothero complimented him gracefully.
Next moment he paid an honest ungraceful compliment, wrung from him by emotion. For more quickly than the dogs could make up their minds, an almost naked, nearly coal-black jungli emerged from between the trees and caught the shot hawk before it reached earth. Prothero had never seen the man before, who had received no orders, but had followed among the trees — inaudible — and had surpassed the animals in guessing the hawk’s flight, Ommony’s aim, and the angle of descent. In his own way he was even more amazing than Lal Rai.
“I’ll give you five hundred for that fellow?” Prothero said instantly, and then gasped — another helpless compliment. Ommony spoke to the man in the jungle dialect, which not more than a dozen civilized men have ever learned. The jungli answered, and Ommony understood, which was even more remarkable.
“By Gad, sir, you have talent!”
The jungli showed the hawk to Ommony, stuck a wing-feather in his tangled hair, and disappeared again.
“Five hundred, did you hear me? I’ll give five hundred dibs for him! All right, a thousand then!”
“You may have him for nothing if you can catch and keep him,” Ommony answered, and they walked three miles in silence down a fire-lane to a great crag that rose above the trees and afforded a view of square leagues. They climbed by what looked like a goat-path, that really had been made by Buddhist hermits centuries before, and had been used since by none save the animals and Ommony.
It wound corkscrew fashion around and around the crag, mostly hidden by low bushes that yielded and sprang back into place, shaking the air full of powdery smells.
Prothero followed, breathing heavily, resenting the strenuous exercise, but interested beyond measure in this man who could speak the jungle-bat.
“This is the Outlook Rock,” Ommony announced. “You could see a fire from here within a radius of twenty miles—”
The words died on his lips as he turned slowly to sweep the horizon and presently face his own bungalow. Nothing of the house was visible except the thin column of smoke from the kitchen chimney. But straight down the fire-lane, through a gap between the trees and a notch between two hummocks, he could see the pole on which hung “foolishness” to scare the hawks — foolishness which should consist just then of two old boots.
He pulled out his field-glasses. Indubitably the kettle was now hoisted where the boots had been. It was blown out nearly at right angles by the wind entering the lidless hole and crowding out slowly through the spout. A big, chipped, once enameled, iron kettle — no mistaking it.
He turned and stared at Prothero, who had given no orders to anyone regarding any kettle, and could afford to look innocent, and in any event could not have seen such a small object with his naked eye at that long range. Prothero blew his nose and wiped the sweatband of his helmet, as if no such thing as a kettle existed. Possibly a shade too innocent.
“Got a cigar with you?” he asked, and Ommony produced one. Then the dogs came, brushing the undergrowth aside, led by Diana the wolf-hound, with the tail that never made mistakes. She thrust her great muzzle into Ommony’s hand, and the long tail said things that are not in the dictionary. He twisted her ear by way of recognition, and stood thinking, thinking — motionless in one place, with the gun under his arm and both hands behind him — legs apart. Finally he glanced again at Prothero and whistled three short, peculiar, rising notes, that might have been heard a hundred yards away. The dogs took no notice; it wasn’t their language. He did not speak for several minutes, and Prothero enjoyed himself, grateful for the company of a man who could be silent.
Then the jungli came in answer to the whistle and stood on the edge of a rock with a golden line of sunshine drawn down one side of his naked body, most astonishingly beautiful to see.
“You offered a thousand rupees for him I think,” Ommony said at last.
“For the Service. We can use him.”
“Like my steward instead?”
“What the hell would I do with your steward?”
“I don’t know. Do you want him?”
“Why?”
“He’ll be in need of a job presently,” Ommony answered, and, without moving his head, spoke to the jungli in what sounded like a morse code made of grunts and consonants.
The jungli vanished.
“That is
the end of the steward as far as I’m concerned. He’ll be gone when we get back, bag and baggage. Now I suppose you want to see Mahommed Babar. Why couldn’t you ask me decently?”
Prothero snorted. That was the first time he had been caught off guard in months and he was hardly ready with an answer. He hesitated, using his lobster eyes on Ommony in a swift effort at snatched, last-minute judgment. Finally he lied.
“Truth is, Ommony, you’re being accused of treason. I came here to disprove it if possible. I hope you understand that anything you say to me is—”
“Is said in the presence of Allah and the wilderness,” retorted Ommony. “Thereafter, my word against yours.”
“Let’s be friends!” said Prothero suddenly, holding out his hand.
He had judged his man. How could Ommony refuse him? Slowly he advanced his hand. Prothero seized it, leaped from judgment to unmerited conclusion, and threw away what he had gained, abasing himself in Ommony’s opinion to the level of the worms.
“Friends! That’s it! Scratch my back and you’ll find me useful to you. Set a net for this Mahommed Babar, and there isn’t a thing in my power that I won’t do to oblige you. Alive if we can take him. Dead will do. It ‘ud mean a feather in my cap, and promotion in your pocket.”
Diana, the wolf-hound, returned from another wild gallop up and down the jungle lanes that radiated from the Outlook Rock, and once more her tail beat rhythmically as she thrust her wet nose into Ommony’s fist.
“Sorry we can’t be friends,” said Ommony. “Have you a pistol?”
“Why? What d’you mean?”
“You must hand me your pistol if you wish to meet Mahommed Babar.”
“Not friends, eh?” said Prothero. “I like you. You’re a damned fool to oppose me, but — here you are!”
He held his automatic muzzle-end. Ommony took it.
“Now the other one.”
Prothero laughed and pulled a small Webley from under the skirts of his tunic.
“I’m curious to meet the man, but I’ll make you pay for this, you know—”
“As long as I live I will pay my own debts!” said a quiet voice in English, and Mahommed Babar stood before them — in Ommony’s old hunting-jacket, wearing a shirt of Ommony’s, but looking no more like an Englishman than a wolf looks like a bear. He had come across the ledge on which the jungli had stood fifteen minutes earlier, and waited with his back against the sun for Ommony to invite him nearer.
His black beard and an air of having been through prodigious hardships made him look older than he was. He stood like a god. The sinews outlined under the dark skin looked as if cast in copper. Only the ancient saber slung from a Sam Browne belt suggested that he might be dangerous. The dark eyes were dignified, almost mild.
“I came — to see the view,” he said simply, glancing, however, in the direction of the pole on which blew foolishness to frighten hawks.
Prothero sat down on a lump of rock with his legs stretched out in front of him and proceeded to make the most of a predicament.
“My name is Jones,” he said pointedly.
“I have no name,” said the Northerner, and his eyes met Ommony’s, who was in plenty of time to remove two pistols out of harm’s way; which was the same thing as Prothero’s reach.
“Sit down and let’s talk this over,” suggested Prothero. “There are no witnesses. We may arrive at something.”
Ommony’s head bowed an almost invisible affirmative, so Mahommed Babar took his seat on a rock facing Prothero, with the saber laid in its scabbard across his knees, in an attitude much too beautifully managed to appear alert, although it was that or nothing.
“You say your name is not Mahommed Babar?”
“I said, for the present I have no name.”
“You could take a message to Mahommed Babar?” Prothero suggested, with his lobster eyes on Ommony’s shot-gun. Ommony laid the gun down and beckoned the wolf-hound, who came and lay with her paws across the barrel. She was big enough and strong enough to tear a man like Prothero to pieces.
“I could if I would,” said the man with the saber, showing his teeth in a milk-white smile.
Prothero took time. He was judging his man again. Not one element of honesty or fairness entered into Prothero’s calculations, except in so far as they might govern the other fellow. He could not have existed in such elements, but he could observe them — study them — and did, as a fisherman observes the weather.
“He ought to know at whose expense he’s enjoying liberty,” he said at last, and noticed that the eyes of the man with the saber contracted just sufficiently to record a “touch.” “He ought to be told what price others will have to pay for his freedom,” he went on.
The flashing white teeth appeared again, but not exactly in a smile. It was more the way a wolf exchanges compliments.
“If you wish me to deliver such a message you must enter into details,” he answered, raising the saber an inch or two and laying it down on his knees again in a gesture of nervousness.
Prothero was only too delighted to give details.
“Tell him that the last lot who surrendered, who held out with him until the end, will be denied the status of rebels and charged with treason in that they upheld him after the final proclamation. Some will be hanged, and the rest will be sent to the Andamans. The only way to prevent that would be for Mahommed Babar himself to surrender and eat his gruel like a man.”
“You mean that the British will murder surrendered prisoners because they refuse to tell of Mahommed Babar’s hiding-place? I don’t believe you,” he retorted. “I will take no such message as that. It would be a lie.”
“You might tell him two were shot yesterday,” said Prothero, blundering — not for the first time that morning. They had been shot by sentries while endeavoring to escape, and he would have been wiser to admit that, if obliged to mention the incident at all.
The man with the saber rose to his feet with perfect dignity, rested both hands on the saber hilt, and bowed.
“Then there is no need for discussion, for I know what Mahommed Babar’s answer will be. He will say no bargain is possible; the men who slew those prisoners have no honor,” he retorted.
His indignation was icy cold. Prothero had touched him on the virgin center of his heart, and what to almost any other man would have been admirable drew a chuckle from the Colonel of Intelligence. He had him! He had him now like a fish on a barbed hook, foul. No chance for him.
“He may not mind about his men, but how about his friend?” he asked.
“You mean, sahib?”
“I mean Mr. Ommony. Tell him — Hell! Let’s stop this foolishness. Mahommed Babar, I am Colonel Arthur Prothero of the Intelligence. Unless you surrender at discretion — and to me, now — your friend Mr. Ommony will be arrested and charged with treason. It will be your fault, and the least he will get will be disgrace and imprisonment!”
That was another blunder.
“I think no judge would take your word against Ommon-ee’s, and there are no other witnesses,” Mahommed Babar answered.
“Several others,” said Prothero. “His steward, my man Lal Rai, Moplahs — every single one of that last lot of prisoners, who all say Mr. Ommony bound them over not to betray you—”
Ommony’s face was a picture. So was Mahommed Babar’s. Emotions chased each other as the shadows of the clouds do on a mountain-side.
“Why not kill him, sahib?” said the Northerner, but Ommony shook his head. His whole career in that forest, which was all the life he cared about, seemed to be slipping away from him, and the end was smoke.
“Give him back a weapon, sahib, and fight him to the death! — or let me!”
Mahommed Babar drew the saber and sliced the air with it so savagely that the whistle and hum set all three dogs to barking; but Prothero did not flinch. He might blunder on occasion, but he was no such fool as to believe that Ommony would consent to his being killed.
“You’ll have to su
rrender if you want to save him,” he said, smiling like a man who holds all the remaining trumps.
Mahommed Babar glanced at Ommony, who shook his head, and at that the Northerner made his mind up.
“I judge you to be a liar; but answer this to whoever gives you orders — for every hair of Ommon-ee’s that is offended I will slay an Englishman! I will teach you what rebellion means!”
He returned the saber to its scabbard with violence, and strode back to stand on the rock against the sky, where he looked like a bronze effigy of vengeance. Then with a wave of the hand he disappeared over the crest of the crag.
Ommony gave Prothero his pistols back — too soon, for he seized them and sprang for the ridge — but just too late; whereat he laughed, and clicked his teeth with his thumbnail for about a minute.
“I wonder what you have to say to all this,” he said presently.
“Nothing. If I thought you would understand I could say a great deal,” Ommony answered.
“Suppose we get back then in time for tiffin.”
Ommony led the way, and at the bottom walked straight on down the fire- lane without waiting for Prothero, who heard a rustling among the undergrowth and stopped to listen. It was not the dogs, for they were in front, ahead of Ommony. He became sure there was someone lurking in a clump of dense thicket between two boulders and, there being no law for the outlaw, fired three shots running with his automatic, which naturally brought Ommony and the dogs back on the run.
“What frightened you?” asked Ommony. “There isn’t a tiger or leopard within a mile of us.”
“There’s a man in there — hit — dead — your friend Mahommed Babar!”
The dogs were investigating.
“There’s nobody dead, someone’s hit,” said Ommony, listening. “You wait here.”
He made a circuit, following the line the dogs had shown him, and came on one of his junglis writhing in dumb misery with a broken knee and a hole shot through his lung, stabbing at the dogs, who he feared would obey the jungle rule and make an end of him. In his own opinion it was right, but to be resisted nevertheless. He was past recovery.