by Talbot Mundy
Beyond the Rump Rock the scene was wonderland, for the elephants had cleared away all growth between rock and temple, exposing more than an acre of the ancient granite blocks with which the courtyard had been paved. Some had been piled on others by the pressure of roots from beneath, and none remained on the ancient level, so that to reach the temple one had to walk along a zigzag causeway, which was practicable none the less for beast as well as man.
Some of the holes between the paving-blocks made reasonably spacious caves and had been covered over with awnings improvised from looted odds and ends to make a bivouac. A dozen fires cast a crimson light on the weird scene, and legs, arms, heads appeared out of the holes like dead men answering the Trumpet Call. Only they looked once and retired, as if satisfied that Gabriel was only practicing.
Over in a corner, where a fire glowed brightest, rose the ding-ding-dong of a smithy in action and a number of tortured gnomes gesticulated in hell- flame, repeating the motions interminably.
Light glowed and danced all up and down the broken temple wall, which had been cleared of creepers and the disemboweling roots of trees that force their way into the masonry, overturning millimeter-wise. The great, wide temple door remained and was as clear and clean as on the day when worshipers brought the first offerings of flowers to strew the portico. Only, against the carved wall on either hand were set three stones — one on the left hand, two on the right — and three men were using them as chairs. The man on the left was smoking an ordinary English briar pipe. Those on the right sat with knees on a level with their chins.
Ali Khan dragged Ommony off the horse, for his hands were still tied, and gruffly ordered him to call the dogs back; they had rushed at the man who was smoking in the temple door, as if be were a well-known ancient enemy. Diana persisted longest, and he had to summon her by name, whereat the man with the pipe, who had retreated into the building, came out again and, staring with his head bent forward in the puzzling light, called:
“Oh, hullo, Ommony!”
The two men on guard — Sikhs by their turbans — who had also retreated in front of the dogs, came out and cautioned him, whereat he sat down obediently on his stone and laughed.
“Go forward, sahib!” said Mahommed Babar from the far side of the pony he had ridden.
Ommony approached the temple, picking his way carefully over the up-ended blocks, with his hands still tied, not greeting the man with the pipe until close enough to see his eyes, although well knowing who he was. Then:
“Hullo, Prothero,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll answer when I’ve seen your hands,” said Prothero.
Ommony turned his back to let him see, and Prothero whistled.
“I’m the same as you, Ommony, a prisoner. The rascals ditched my train and rubbed my nose in the dirt beside the track, but — by gad, sir! By the wrath of India’s gods! Your wrists’ll mortify if those thongs aren’t cut! Here — someone come and free this man!”
Mahommed Babar strode up, drew his saber, which was razor-sharp, and severed the thongs in an instant.
“You chafe his wrists. You have nothing else to do,” he said, looking in Prothero’s eyes.
Then he gave an order to the guard and strode into the temple, where his footsteps echoed cavernously, and a few dim lights at far intervals made periods in the gloom.
“Sit down,” said Prothero, not offering his own seat.
One of the guards rolled his stone across the doorway, and Ommony accepted that, Prothero sitting beside him and chafing at the numb wrists rather leisurely.
“You see what comes of befriending the wrong crowd,” he said. “Now, if you’d done what I suggested, we’d have both scored heavily. Instead, we haven’t a cook who can boil eggs without burning water. We haven’t a change of linen. Possibly we haven’t an hour to live. I detest the thought of death on an empty stomach.”
“They brought my cook,” Ommony answered.
“Then I forgive you! But Government won’t! You’re damned, my boy, irrevocably damned! You can’t tell me that a man who can talk the jungle-bat and whistle up junglis from the undergrowth didn’t know all about this encampment. You’re done for — ab-so-lutely cooked!”
“I can tell you,” said Ommony. “Getting you to believe the truth may be another thing. I ordered the junglis not to report to me any of Mahommed Babar’s doings. That’s fact. It was none of my business to keep an eye on him.”
“Fact? Hmmm!” Prothero half-closed his lobster eyes and hummed a tune. “Tell that to the horse-marines.”
CHAPTER 5. “Hah! He is Perr-r-other-o-o-oh!”
It was characteristic of Colonel Arthur Prothero that he said nothing about what had happened to the train-crew and his servants when Mahommed Babar’s followers “ditched” the train. His silence was comprehensible. If shame was not in him, at least he was mortified not to have known that Mahommed Babar still had men under his command with sufficient morale to go raiding. The train had gone dawdling without an escort, without pilot engine, without any means of protection, for the staff imposed confidence in Prothero’s assurance that there wasn’t a “rebel left with guts enough to grin with.”
So the ditching had not had to be very serious. A misplaced rail caused the engine to plow up fifty yards of track before the engineer came out of a day-dream and things stood still, just naturally, of their own accord. Whereat Prothero ceased from eating a ragout fin provided by his priceless cook, and shoved his inquiring head out of the window. The rest of him followed promptly, pulled out by Mahommed Babar and two Sikhs, who took away his pistols. He swivelled his lobster eyes about inquisitively until they drew a gunny-sack down over his shoulders, pitched him into a hammock, and started off through the jungle with him for the Lord knew where.
Being a philosopher after his own fashion, the ragout having been more than usually excellent, and the hammock being comfortable, he slept, the gunny-bag serving splendidly to keep off flies. Nor did he wake up until they reached Peria Vur, where they set him more or less at liberty, and he observed that Mahommed Babar was not present. He spent the rest of the day using his trained faculty for observation, seated in the doorway of the temple, until Ommony’s arrival close on midnight — asking questions which were not answered, drawing deductions that were not entirely accurate, and “wishing like the devil that he had Lal Rai.” When you have built your reputation on the genius of an underling there comes a feeling said to resemble homesickness if you have to get along without him in a crisis.
Now that Ommony had come he could think of nothing more appropriate than to go to sleep again. It was too bad about Ommony — a decent fellow but an awful fool to have antagonized himself, and to have got mixed up with this Mahommed Babar business. In fact, if it hadn’t been against his strict principles he would have been inclined to overlook the personal aspect, and to make friends with Ommony. He never had forgiven anybody yet, but he might try, and the experience might be amusing. Church, for instance, baptisms, weddings, and all that kind of thing were decidedly amusing on the rare occasions when be attended.
But no gentleman could treat Ommony as an equal — sit and talk with him — compare notes — share confidences (as if Prothero ever shared confidences!) — knowing what the outcome must be. Why, even in self-defense, to prevent Ommony from making capital out of the accidental shooting of that jungli, he would be obliged to make out as black a case against him as possible. Prothero admitted to himself he was not squeamish, except in so far as cooking was concerned, but he hardly felt equal to sitting up with Ommony and being friendly in the circumstances.
Ommony was a such a confoundedly friendly fellow, hang it! You caught yourself liking him against your will if you weren’t careful, and accepting little favors that might make subsequent relations extremely awkward. He wished he hadn’t ridden the fellow’s damned horse to the station.
So he said a gruff good night and asked the Sikh guard to tell him where to sleep. The man led him in
to the temple, to a dark hole already cleaned out and appointed. The other man remained in the portico with Ommony, decidedly thawing in manner as well as method the moment that Prothero had gone, for he merely requested Ommony to sit still where he was and, receiving the assurance, disappeared in turn into the temple interior.
Within two minutes of that Mahommed Babar came striding out, jangling his inseparable saber, and there was none to overhear when he sat down on the stone beside Ommony.
“Ommony sahib, for those cut wrists you may take whatever price you will! But what else could I do? How else could I have satisfied that devil Prothero that you are honestly a prisoner? I know that son of an evil mother. Well I know him! I will hold you as hostage for the safety of my friends — but him I will kill unless he serves my purpose obediently!”
He produced torn linen and some of the aromatic oils that India still relies on rather than the antiseptics of the West, dressing Ommony’s cut wrists with the care of a trained nurse.
“You shall have no more ill-treatment, sahib. I would rather hurt my mother’s son. It is on Prothero that reprisals shall fall if the British make those necessary. Prothero shall clear you of complicity in my rebellion.”
“Rot!” answered Ommony cheerlessly. “How did you catch him?”
The sirdar explained how the train had been ambushed.
“That beast Lal Rai will get back to headquarters and give his version of it,” Ommony grumbled. “Lal Rai has orders to make out a case against me, and—”
“You think so?”
Mahommed Babar whistled. A man answered out of darkness. The sirdar gave an order in the Pashtu tongue, and after a minute two Afridis appeared, dragging Lal Rai between them. He looked beaten, but unconquerable. His one eye gleamed in the firelight and he carried himself malignantly between his captors, powerless for the moment but convinced of his own ultimate resourcefulness.
“You know where your master is?” Mahommed Babar asked. He nodded. The nod was a challenge as much as an answer.
“You want to lose your master?”
The question was asked in Hindustanee, the lingua franca by which a hundred Indian nations interchange occasional ideas. The answer came in a gibberish of a dozen tongues mixed with a thieves’ palaver — threat — all threat — unqualified by anything except abuse — the long and short of it, that he would come back from the grave, if necessary, to avenge the “Dekta sahib,” which was apparently his own pet name for Prothero.
“Kill me — kill him — devils kill you!” he shouted, spitting. He evidently loved in his own fashion, which was more than his beloved master could confess.
“You can save your master,” said Mahommed Babar.
“Only give chance, an’ I ‘member not plung-um hot iron in your belly!”
That was the limit of his gratitude — his utmost offer. He was all fight, unconquered, unconquerable, unafraid.
“You may take a letter written by Ommon-ee.”
Lal Rai nodded. The gesture included utter contempt for Ommony, whose fate he considered he foreknew.
“You will say that if it is desired to save the life of Colonel Prothero the British will send a white flag party of not more than two officers, unarmed, to treat with me. Can you remember that?”
The one eye flashed scornfully. He could remember anything.
“The white flag party shall have safe conduct. They will be met at the place where the train left the rails, and escorted thence through the jungle. And you will say, furthermore, that if an armed force should be sent, it will not fare well with Colonel Prothero!”
At Mahommed Babar’s instigation Ommony wrote, setting forth the situation. It was a short note, on a scrap of paper. Lal Rai stuck it in a fold of his loin-cloth.
“You may wait until dawn,” said the sirdar.
“I go now!”
“Are you not afraid of the jungle beasts?”
“‘Fraid nothing, and not you! Give a thing make noise with; I go.”
“Did you see Ommon-ee arrive here?”
He nodded.
“Look at his wrists?”
He nodded again.
“Say at headquarters that Ommon-ee sahib was injured by the man who tied him. You understand?”
To Ommony it looked as if he understood too well. The one eye gleamed with a malignancy as full of intelligence as a cobra’s. However, Mahommed Babar seemed confident, and dismissed him with an order to his guards to provide him with some noisy instrument and see him out of camp.
They gave him a tin pan with a hole in it, and saw him as far as the outer range of leaping shadows where the elephants rocked at their pickets and the mahouts slept between. There they warned him to make both noise and haste, and shoved him away with a devil’s blessing.
Noise he did make; haste not. The scandal of his beaten tin pan died away into the dark, and ceased — ceased where he laid the tin pan down behind a tree and began to retrace his steps. Nobody saw him slip between the elephants, nor what he did; but a scream of rage suddenly ripped the night apart and in a moment the mahouts were yelling for assistance, crying that their charges had gone mad. They were fighting, as humans will, each believing the other had done stealthy injury, and there was so much confusion that even Mahommed Babar came out of the temple to lend a hand, and Ommony followed him.
All seven elephants broke loose. There was hue-and-cry to round them up, for panic-stricken elephants might go twenty miles before morning. Ommony’s dogs joined in that fun naturally, and during the confusion Lal Rai reached the temple door unseen, crept in, and discovered without much difficulty the dark hole where his master lay.
Prothero was asleep, and affected no surprise on being awakened. He was used to having situations saved for him by his graceless factotum. Moreover, he never bestowed much praise, never admitted obligation, never let the other party grow too self-important.
“Where have you been all this time?” he demanded.
Lal Rai, in his own assorted gutter-speech, explained. He had the gift of laconism.
“Scoot. Caught. Knock-out. Gag-an’ bind-um. Kick, shove, pull, drag along behind, and by-um-by me come easy. Kep’ a dekko lifting. Fetch here — chuck um in dark hole. By-um-by Ommony write letter. Mahommed Babar orderum fetch me. Take letter. Me going. Coming back. Look for you. Now you savvy whole goddam bisnis.”
“Show me the letter,” growled Prothero.
“No can see.”
“Strike a match, damn you.”
“You see — ev’rybody can see. Never min’ letter. Me eatum. You say what shall say — me say it, savvy?”
Prothero did “savvy” instantly and wasted no time on wordy gratitude.
“Give me that letter. Give it here! Now cut back to Headquarters and say this: ‘My compliments to the General Commanding. Mr. Ommony caused my train to be wrecked and me to be taken prisoner.’ You get that?”
Lal Rai repeated it word for word.
“‘Mr. Ommony is here, at liberty to come and go among the rebels, with his dogs, his horses, his cook, and several guns.’ Repeat that.”
Lal Rai repeated it.
“Say, ‘With Mr. Ommony’s assistance, Mahommed Babar is raising a new force from the Punjab and all over the North.’ Have you got that? Say the whole message over from the beginning. Good. Now add: ‘Two hundred men resolutely led and moving swiftly could surround this party and finish the business.’ Say the whole thing over once more. Excellent. Now go! Take care of yourself. Remember, my life depends on your getting through.”
Small need to urge Lal Rai to take care. He was adept at that. Small need to urge him now to make haste; he had a shrewd idea what his fate might be if he were caught in camp after being ordered out of it. He dodged and ducked from shadow to shadow and ran for the spot where he had cached his tin can, for even he hardly dared travel the jungle at night without some means of scaring the beasts of prey.
Once escaped from the zone of firelight he said Prothero’s message over and
over again to himself — said it perfectly — even pronounced the words correctly, since the speech was another man’s and not his own. They say that every criminal always forgets at least one important thing. He had forgotten nothing — except Ommony’s dogs, which had out-distanced the elephants and turned them. Headed back by the dogs, the already sobering seven were met by their mahouts and stopped. Having ascertained that they were to be coaxed and petted, not punished, they surrendered accordingly. Diana, who could not count, proceeded to range the jungle tracks in search of stragglers, not quite uninfluenced by the delicious discovery that five tons of elephant would run from a hundred and twenty pounds of dog.
Being a wolf-hound, Diana had no nose worth speaking of, but eyes and ears that were miracles — eyes for the daylight and ears for the dark — ears that could catch the cadence of Lal Rai’s stealthily retreating feet. And she had a tongue like the Inchcape Bell, which summoned the other two.
Luckily Mahommed Babar had not ordered Lal Rai’s knife returned to him. He had nothing but his tin pan, and the stick he beat it with, to use in the dark on Diana. Even her milky fangs were invisible. She used the fangs on him, making no sound now, never relaxing her jaws except to seize a firmer hold, downing him — reaching for his throat — possessed of one sole purpose, for she knew him for her master’s enemy — a thing to be destroyed.
It was the other dogs belling and yapping in pursuit who gave Ommony notice. He shouted Diana’s name half a dozen times, and she let go her victim long enough to throw up her head and bell acknowledgment. He shouted again and she shut her jaws reluctantly. Lal Rai, who was under her, seized her by the forelegs; and he might have done an injury, for she was too well taught to disobey that call of Ommony’s. She would not bury her teeth again in the creature he had ordered her to watch. But the other two dogs caught up, closed in; they knew much less discipline but more desire to make up for lost time. So Lal Rai was bitten and torn, while Diana looked on and Ommony hurried, arriving ahead of Mahommed Babar and about a dozen of his followers, all breathless from pursuit of elephants.