Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Everybody knew that pest Lal Rai, either by sight or hearsay. Tregurtha recognized him instantly and knew, too, that news of the rascal’s master was a key that would surely unlock speech. So he explained at once, and with sympathy, that Colonel Prothero was safe, comparatively speaking well, and already on his way to headquarters. Thereafter Lal Rai was provided with that lubricant of tongues that comes in a dented bottle, and given a seat in the shade on a camp-stool over against Tregurtha. Decidedly a seat of honor.

  Lal Rai knew enough to dislike talking before witnesses, so as time was short Tregurtha conceded the point and there was none to overhear. Accordingly, Lal Rai was not afraid of being taxed with unlawful statements; and there was only one person to whom he ever told the truth in any event. There was fact in his account, but not much of it.

  He had not seen Ommony thrash Prothero and drive him forth, so he was no more limited as to details than by his passion for revenge. Having been sent against Ommony in the first instance, he hated him as a good dog hates his master’s enemy, and for no other reason. While he had lain under a displaced paving-stone in irons at Peria Vur his guards, who had had no orders to the contrary, described to him in joyous detail what was taking place, adding exasperating extras for their own amusement. Nevertheless, something of judicial hesitation had crept into Lal Rai’s make-up, from constant association with officialdom, and he asked one question first. A lonely atom of the element of fair play lurked in him somewhere.

  “Dekta sahib look-um like hell? Beatum bad?”

  Tregurtha nodded. He saw no use in disguising that truth. And that settled it, naturally. Lal Rai was convinced and promptly turned imagination loose.

  Luridly, with syncopated art, he pictured an attack by Ommony on Prothero. Ommony was the dragon of his story, Prothero Saint George, defeated, and the battle took place in a cave, as was picturesque, fitting and right. There were hot irons in it, and Ommony’s dogs, and cold steel — blows rained with a bludgeon — horrible, dragony curses by Ommony. Piteous cries from the saintly Prothero — valor pitted against frenzy — and a final touch of perfect fiction reinforced by circumstantial evidence.

  “You saw all this?” asked Tregurtha, with both gray eyebrows raised.

  Lal Rai exhibited the broken fetter, still dangling from his wrists by rings.

  “Me in it! Me beatum good! Killum too many men!”

  He showed blood on the ends of the iron, and hairs sticking to the blood, which he swore were human hair. That gave Tregurtha, who knew what a leopard’s hair looked like, his first real inkling of how much of the story to believe.

  “Who began the fight?”

  “Ommon-ee!”

  “Did he simply attack Colonel Prothero?”

  “Curse-um. ‘Tack-um. Kick-um out!”

  “Why?”

  “Dunno!”

  The mental picture of how Prothero had looked when he first came convinced Tregurtha that there was something in Lal Rai’s account. Prothero had almost certainly been thrashed. However, he knew both men. He felt sure that Ommony had never thrashed anybody without utterly unpardonable provocation. He also realized that Lal Rai’s account was colored by desire to avenge his master. But he did not realize the extent to which Lal Rai would dare go, for he had the usual senior officer’s conviction that subordinates should not, and therefore do not, presume to instigate military movements.

  But Lal Rai was made of atoms every one of which was disrespect. His soul was impudence. His god was Prothero. He knew where Ommony was, and, knowing less of military matters than a dog-like devotion to his master’s feud, hoped, which in his case was the same thing as supposed, that Ommony could be taken red-handed in the rebel camp if Tregurtha and his hundred would only start at once and move swiftly. For himself, he was almost all in, but no more ready to quit than a wolf would be in the like predicament. A little more whisky — just a tumblerful — and he would guide them.

  So he answered Tregurtha’s succeeding questions with only one object in mind — to convince him how easy it would be to surprise and capture the rebels. He had no love for Mahommed Babar or for any of the men who had bound him and obliged him to make that desperate escape. He proposed to himself to enjoy their last predicament when Tregurtha should bring them to bay. But that was a side-dish — butter on the bread, you might say. The meal that should really satisfy was Ommony.

  So whereas Prothero had tried to get Tregurtha to invade the jungle for one reason, and a mean one, Lal Rai persuaded to the same end from a different motive, after all not quite so mean, because it was based on loyalty to Prothero, whereas Prothero’s malice was wholly selfish. Neither of them, of course, gave a moment’s thought to the privates of the line who would be slaughtered inevitably if the rebels should ambush them and get the upper hand.

  That, however, was the one remaining consideration that gave Tregurtha pause. He considered it, but experience had shown him what can be done by skating over thin ice, moving so swiftly that the enemy has no time to make plans and execute them. And he devoted the next five minutes to extremely careful cross-examination of Lal Rai intended to uncover what the risk might be, as that astute individual was quick to appreciate.

  So Lal Rai’s answers were framed to persuade him that advance was reasonably safe and the distance short. Within three quarters of an hour of Lal Rai’s arrival on the scene he was limping back again, meditating exquisite amusement, guiding Nemesis in the shape of a British colonel, two captains, four lieutenants, and a hundred fighting men. Tregurtha for about the twentieth time in his life had crossed the Rubicon.

  So the junglis, who had acted angels of the night to Prothero, and were asleep in the enormous hollow of a tree, awoke and fled before a column that came along the fire-lane noisily, four abreast, believing itself jungle-wise; whereas all the knowledge that it really knew was bravery — a good thing, but not all-inclusive. They fled before the frightening thump of feet, through a screen of Mahommed Babar’s scouts composed of men who had crept oiled and naked through raw Peshawar mists at dawn to steal the rifles of wide-awake outposts, and whose only weapons had been won that way.

  The junglis disappeared behind the screen of scouts, but the scouts remained, and intelligible word went back, exchanged from lip to lip, until it reached a plundered telephone restrung along the monkey-lanes, and Mahommed Babar learned the whole of what was happening, but not the whole of Tregurtha’s intentions. And because there is never any knowing just how rash, ill-advised, and so occasionally brilliant a British colonel with a hundred men will be, it seemed wise to the sirdar to engage, and draw the column forward, until Ommony, no longer a prisoner but a free man burdened with a promise, could meet it and do the rest.

  So the prettiest little fight took place that ever set the jungle leaves afire and scared awake the lovers of the dark. None better than Tregurtha could deploy a column in a tight place and advance — keep edging forward — ever alert like a man in the ring to punch with right or left as instant opportunity might offer. And none knew better than those wind-weaned Northerners how to fight a rear-guard action, neither yielding a yard too much nor standing a minute too long at any time. It was a nice, blind, bloody little mix-up, helped by the burning undergrowth and stinging smoke, costing a baker’s dozen of men on either side and whetting the edge of the ardor of all concerned. It convinced Tregurtha that Prothero’s and Lal Rai’s information was correct about the nearness of Peria Vur and the rebels’ stronghold. He proposed to keep advancing and to “sic ’em,” so his men picked up their dead and were of one mind — his.

  The reputations of great captains are built on their enemies’ mistakes. Tregurtha, of course, knew that. He believed that once again by greatly daring he was upsetting all the enemies’ calculations. In fact, the calculations of Mahommed Babar now were precisely made, and Tregurtha was kept advancing at the speed most convenient. The redoubtable sirdar took the field himself. Tregurtha’s men were allowed no rest, given no glimpse of their antagonists,
tempted, lured, enticed, retreated from, and once — when Tregurtha proposed to fall back on rising ground by water, for roll call and a breathing spell — informed by effectual means that retreat was impossible. They could not fall back on the railway if they wanted to. There was nothing for it after that but to continue the advance and strike at the heart of the rebels’ stronghold.

  Naturally, by that time every man in the column understood the predicament, and only the superstition of Tregurtha’s invincibility prevented the men’s morale from vanishing. The gloom of the jungle, penetrated by the irritating shafts of light that confuse eyesight and that caused the panther to invent those puzzling spots of his, the heat, almost insufferable, and the need to carry their dead as well as food and ammunition, were progressively effective — cumulative. Even Tregurtha was feeling the depression that foretells impending anti-climax, when the perfectly impossible occurred.

  War — womb of melodrama — never staged anything more neatly, obviously, utterly theatrically turned.

  Into the opal twilight of an opening caused by the enormous spread of twenty trees, in and out between the whiffs of dust and pools of light, nervous and yet persistent, dodging back a time or two but again urged on by the impulse of obedience, there emerged a wolf-hound, and was missed repeatedly by twenty men, who were in no mood for natural history. They swore, each time she dodged out of view, that they had shot a wolf, hyena, panther, leopard, jackal, antelope — practically everything except an elephant. It was Tregurtha himself who recognized the dog and blew his whistle for “cease fire.”

  As if she knew what the whistle meant, and as if she knew that he who blew the whistle must be officer commanding, Diana leaped out of the shadows, taking fallen tree-trunks in her stride, and thrust her great moist muzzle into Tregurtha’s hand. He felt rather than saw the edge of folded paper, closed his fingers, and she was gone again, too swiftly to be patted, thanked, praised — gone with her haunches under her, shoulders and feet and sinews all one prodigious impulse, more beautiful and swift than a shadow of the tree-tops vanishing.

  Tregurtha unfolded a slobbery half-sheet, pierced by Diana’s eye-teeth, warm with her breath, and made out a message in a level, square caligraphy with which he was more or less familiar from constant study of a certain map.

  To O.C. Troops marching on Peria Vur. If you will cease fire long enough to make the proceeding possible I will join you and bring information.

  — Cotswold Ommony

  The enemy’s intermittent, scattered firing had all ceased several minutes before. Tregurtha shepherded his men into a safe formation, ringing the opening under the roof of golden-green with men who were gradually picking up the art of harmony with their surroundings. A man from the city streets might have strolled through the circle without seeing one of them. But the jungle undoubtedly smiled, as a city man smiles when a “hick” takes the sun on the sidewalk.

  And Ommony smiled, as he came walking into the ring with a rifle at rest on his arm and three dogs at his heels. A jungli, as naked as black, bearing cartridges, flitted and trotted behind with that spring in his gait that a led Arab stallion uses when nervous. He shied like a horse when a man blew his nose, and was not reassured until he saw that the dogs were unsuspicious.

  Lal Rai crouched by Tregurtha’s feet and watched, his one eye looking less alarmed than mischievously curious — nevertheless aware of a certain tenseness in the situation. All three dogs raised their scruffs and growled at him. Ommony silenced them with a gesture, and they lay down, watching Lal Rai as if expecting to be told to tear him in pieces presently, Diana baring her teeth each time he moved even to flick a fly off. The jungli lay down beside the dogs on his stomach, chin on both hands. He watched Ommony, the only human being from all the outside world whom he could understand.

  Ommony spoke first:

  “I’m glad it’s you, Tregurtha!”

  The colonel unstiffened. Nothing in Ommony’s words nor in his expression turned that trick. It was something in the air. If Ommony had sought to justify himself Tregurtha would have drawn on guard and might have missed the note, or the wave, or whatever it is that assured him Ommony was telling truth and totally reliable. Men are just like animals in that respect. They sniff-translate vibrations into smell — and either fight or make friends; but there are very few who understand the process that affects us all.

  “You have information?”

  Ommony nodded, and handed his rifle to the jungli, who sat up and nursed it in raptures of responsibility.

  “You’re all right,” he said. “The rebels are retiring in front of you. Mahommed Babar wants to quit. The others won’t let him surrender until they’ve had time to remove their belongings from Peria Vur. The elephants are forcing a line of retreat through the jungle. When they’ve cached their ammunition and supplies they mean to abandon the elephants and scatter. If you don’t advance too swiftly you’ll find Mahommed Babar, with possibly a handful, at Peria Vur, and he’ll surrender at discretion. But if you attack too swiftly you’ll force their hands. How many men have you — a hundred? Well, they have more than two hundred. They’re desperate. Mahommed Babar wishes me to say that he is thoroughly tired of fighting and that he would appreciate it if he weren’t obliged to surround you and cut you up!”

  “Said that, did he? How far is Peria Vur?”

  Ommony told him. There was more than half the way yet to go. Tregurtha glanced at Lal Rai, who looked in the other direction. He recalled to mind Prothero’s nodded five-mile estimate. Swiftly, in the sudden way in which he saw the answers to algebraic equations at school, he grasped the fact that Prothero for one, at any rate, had lied intentionally. It often used to take him longer than anybody else to see a thing; but that was like Tregurtha. When he did see, he knew.

  “Is it true you thrashed Prothero?” he asked.

  “I did my best,” said Ommony, opening his cigar-case, offering neither explanation nor excuse. Tregurtha watched him pull out a cigar, bite off the end and light it — eyed him thoughtfully with dawning appreciation for about a minute — then, “sic ’em” fashion, made his mind up.

  “I’ll have one with you,” he said, shutting lips and teeth as if he had bitten off the end of doubt. “Give me a light from yours. Now sit down here and tell me your version of this.”

  “I’ve told it,” said Ommony. “I was a prisoner until after dawn this morning. I was released, and then requested to bring you the message I’ve just delivered.”

  “Do you guarantee the truth of it?”

  “No. I repeated it exactly. I believe it. It seems to correspond with what I’ve observed.”

  “Did Mahommed Babar make no stipulations?”

  “Yes. He asked me to promise that news of his surrender and of his execution, if that takes place, shall be heralded broadcast in the interest of peace. He thinks the news will do more than anything to take the fight out of men who would otherwise keep flocking here from the North, to find him and fight under him. His only fear is that his capture may be kept secret.”

  “I say, he sounds like a sportsman, doesn’t he?” said Tregurtha, blowing cigar smoke through his nose.

  Ommony nodded.

  “He has two hundred men?”

  “More than two hundred,” said Ommony. “He’s commanding the rear-guard himself. He says, and I think he’s right, he could have surrounded you and destroyed you half a dozen times this morning. You see that rock against the sky between the treetops? That’s where he was ten minutes ago — gone now, of course.”

  Tregurtha gulped and swallowed smoke, which made him cough. Probably no man would like to be told that he has held the lives of his whole command in jeopardy all morning.

  “This is an incredible business! You say if I advance slowly he won’t attack, but will surrender at Peria Vur? You believe that? It isn’t a trick to draw us into ambush?”

  “You’re at his mercy now, if he should care to attack,” Ommony answered. “He gave me his word of honor ther
e should be no ambush. I believe him so fully that I’m willing to return with you. Can’t say more.”

  “All right, we’ll take him at his word!”

  Tregurtha was Tregurtha — unchangeable — half-school-boy with his itch for action and delight in other men’s strong qualities. Ommony’s first words. “I’m glad it’s you, Tregurtha!” summed the whole situation up. There were half a dozen men available, of equal rank, any one of whom would probably have been incredulous on general principles, and might have retired to the edge of the jungle to await reinforcements. And a British retreat at that minute very likely would have tempted Mahommed Babar’s rebels out of hand. It would have been like pulling lambs away before the eyes of wolves.

  And Tregurtha’s men were hero-worshipers. They idolized him as Lal Rai did Prothero, but with much more innocence. Realizing devotedly that he had snatched another victory by daring and great skill, which Ommony had come to announce, they went forward with a new enthusiasm, no longer needing impulse from the rear but Captain Cautions in advance of them to hold control.

  There were stray shots now and then, but nobody was hit. There were shouts in the jungle at intervals, just beyond range, that suggested the presence of danger sufficiently to cause delay. But the shots and the shouts became fewer as hours and the miles sweated by and the crimson sun bore down below the higher tree-tops.

  Then one prodigious bugle, winded by a man with leather lungs, clarioned a long laugh down the echoing fire-lane, and a feu-de-joie, or it might be a feu-de-congee, rattled through the trees like summer fireworks. Tregurtha’s men answered it nervously, blazing at nothing; and theirs — the last echo of their useless volley — was the end. It was the blot, in place of period, that closed the so-called Moplah Uprising in Malabar. But that was all it closed, for incidents repeat themselves.

  Tregurtha led on. And when the sun died down behind them, and the Rump loomed up enormous in the gloom at last, they saw a lone man seated there, in a sort of uniform, bowed, and with a saber of ‘57 across his knees. He made no sign. Tregurtha called to him: