Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Old Ugly-face turned the flashlight on Tom and spoke English:

  “Now my blessing you a hundred million blessings — now your going home — my thanking you too much.”

  “Home?” said Andrew.

  Tom grinned. In the flashlight his face looked easy, almost instantly tolerant. But instead of answering Old Ugly-face he turned to Andrew: “Leave this to me. I’ll manage him. Go back to our cavern. Bring Elsa, and all the men, and two days’ rations. Quicker the better.”

  The storm was getting well under way. When Andrew climbed out of the cave he could hardly stand against the wind — could hardly see a foot ahead through the driving snow.

  Bring Elsa — along that ledge? — in such a storm as this one? He turned his flashlight on the cave, for a last look, to make sure of his bearings. Old Ugly-face was letting Tom help him through the gap. In an open, unoccupied cave higher up, was a shadow that caught his eye through the driving snow because it seemed to move and he could imagine no reason why it should move. But when he focused the flashlight on it there was only a heap of stones on the ledge. He turned away, facing the storm.

  “God damn!” he muttered. “That looked like Elsa.”

  CHAPTER 55

  That night’s storm had one redeeming feature-lightning. Hail, rain, snow alternated. The wind blew with hurricane force, sometimes from two directions at once because it roared along converging valleys. Sometimes it blew Andrew against the cliff with such force that he couldn’t move. At other times he clung to the cliff to keep from being blown off it — with one hand frozen; he had used his left glove to gag the giant monk. The lightning was like a barrage bursting in no-man’s land. It made a swaying, fantastic horror of the thousand-foot drop into the ravine. But it did reveal the ledge.

  There’s a limit to what a human being can take in the way of punishment and still retain will power. There’s a point at which quitting begins to look like common sense. Andrew came closer to quitting, that night, than he cared to confess, except to himself in secret. For one thing, he felt sure St. Malo’s men would be keeping a lookout near the mouth of their cave. They weren’t likely to trust Tom and Andrew’s Tibetans to keep cover. On the other hand, they might even have overcome their own fear of storm devils and have crept out to take the cavern by surprise, grab the booty and run.

  Barring human jacks-in-office, there is no worse bully in the world than a storm at high altitudes. A bullied man’s brain can suggest a hundred mad reasons for doing the wrong thing. Andrew even thought of entering St. Malo’s cave and trying to drive a bargain with his men. He could tell them St. Malo had been captured by Ram-pa Yap-shi’s monks and carried off to the monastery. But there would be seventeen men to deal with. And Andrew was numb with cold. He thought better of it — if it was thought.

  By the time he had struggled as far as the entrance to St. Malo’s cave, he was too exhausted for much else than instinctive action. It was habit that carried him on — the habit of finishing what he had said he would do. He crossed the entrance to St. Malo’s cave on hands and knees, waiting for the lightning to reveal the inside of the cave. The wind howled into it, and through the short tunnel beyond. Added to that tumult were terrific peals of thunder — one continuous din that echoed and reechoed. A man couldn’t have fought his way out of the tunnel against the hurricane force of the storm. At one moment a blast of hail swept into the cave so fiercely that it sounded like machine-gun bullets. Some of that hail was sharp enough to rip the leather of Andrew’s overcoat.

  Two more miles of ledge — a waking nightmare. The last half-mile was something like the last round of a fight, in which the bell may save the loser from a knockout if he can only hang on. Andrew hung on. He made it. And Bompo Tsering was keeping a lookout, in spite of storm and devils. Lightning lighted, in the whirling sleet, Andrew must have looked like a devil. Bompo Tsering fired at him. He fell, unhit but exhausted. Bompo Tsering and two others dragged him into the cavern, where they chafed his numbed legs and arms.

  It was warm in there. The barricade across the ledge served as a windbreak. The tent, stretched across the entrance, howled and thundered like a topsail at sea, but it made the place habitable.

  Andrew couldn’t speak for a while. His first words were: “Where’s the Lady Elsa?”

  They all shook their heads. Bompo Tsering suspected Andrew’s motive. The question must be a trick:

  “Your not knowing?” he demanded.

  “Damn your eyes! If I did know, would I ask? Come on now! Answer! What happened?”

  Then, cleaning his Mauser carefully, pausing every few words for confirmation from the other men, Bompo Tsering told how Elsa had gone with His Holiness Lobsang Pun.

  “Did she say nothing?”

  “No, Gunnigun.”

  “Didn’t she write a message?”

  “No, Gunnigun.”

  Andrew believed and refused to believe it. He grabbed a lantern and climbed the ramp. It was all dark in the upper cavern. All was in order. He opened the brief-case — examined the straps of the bedding rolls — every place he could think of where Elsa might have left a scrap of writing to explain her movements. There were the remains of the food he had carried up for her. He sat down where she had sat, and ate what she had left — thinking — thinking — while the flickering lantern cast ghoulish shadows on the walls and the wind in the opening where Ugly-face had sat howled like lost souls in torment.

  Presently he felt the not yet familiar glide of consciousness into other dimensions. He saw Elsa. Very distinctly. Looking straight at him. It was one of those dream-like visions, much more intensely vivid than the sight called real. Like other visions that he had seen since he knew Elsa, it was composite, timeless, spaceless. In one and the same moment, she was as he had first seen her in this same cavern, with Tom; simultaneously he saw again all that long journey to Darjeeling. He saw himself, objectively as through a camera lens, delivering her child, in a storm, by the light of a burning packing case. Darjeeling. The monastery. Nancy Strong’s house and Morgan Lewis. The incident at Gombaria’s, and then the trail again — the return to the cavern — the completed circle — all that had been said and done until now — this moment. And this moment looked like farewell. It looked like a glimpse of another life. Was Elsa dead?

  Or was she doing what she had said Old Ugly-face habitually did — thinking with such power that her image entered the imagination of the one she thought of? It might be. He had been thinking of her. And he remembered she had said something else. He had joked about it at the time. Elsa’s face began to recede into nowhere, until only melancholy eyes remained. Then they, too, vanished.

  He felt nervously disturbed, all the more so because there was no one with whom he could share the experience. Even to himself he couldn’t describe it in words. Had it been a signal? If Elsa were dead, could she possibly project a vision of herself into his consciousness? He had heard of it being done. He had even read of it. But he didn’t believe it. No. No. No. In Shanghai he had seen a Chinese necromancer produce one after another accurate visions of men and women dead numbers of years. But Andrew had proved that was a trick, by substituting, in his own mind, one memory for another. He had found he could control the necromancer.

  But he couldn’t control this vision of Elsa. He couldn’t restrain, or reduce, or suppress the pain it gave him — the heart stab — the nostalgic yearning.

  Was that her yearning? Or his? Was it farewell?

  Was that Elsa whom he had seen through the whirling snow, above the dead hermit’s cave, when he left Old Ugly-face and Tom?

  Snatching up the lantern he looked around once more for a written message. He found none. Then he shook himself — flexed his muscles — threw off a mood, and started for the lower cavern. He felt better. He supposed he had been so exhausted that emotion got the better of him. Elsa was Tom’s wife. Hell damn it, he could go Tom Grayne one better if it came to a tug of Stoicism. Self-control, discipline, self-respect-dignity, decency
— those are the substance of things hoped for. The hell with theft. The hell with ends unjustified by means.

  He laughed at his own sententiousness as he descended the ramp. He was feeling much better. He had thrown off a perilous mood that came near losing him his will to do Tom Grayne no treachery in thought, or word, or deed. He had not even let treachery enter his mind, although he had felt its pressure.

  He helped himself to tea from the Tibetans’ urn — swallowed two cupfuls of the nauseating bilge, spat out half of a third cupful, and then tackled the problem of getting the Tibetans out of the cavern. It had to be done quickly. At the first mention of what he intended, Bompo Tsering refused pointblank. He mutinied. He quoted Tibetan sacred scripture, to confound Andrew and to strengthen his own obstinacy:

  “Nobly born, the lesser of two evils always being the greater good. Sin and folly being sister harlots. Having commerce with them causing too much evil. Nay, my not going.”

  Bompo Tsering’s smile suggested that Andrew was one against many. He placed a roll of bedding for him with his own hands, offered more tea, and remarked:

  “Tum-Glain being boss now. Your not being boss no longer.”

  He couldn’t have done Andrew a more signal favor; all he needed was opposition. It aroused his fighting humor, and there are more ways than one of fighting. He used genius, if leadership is that. If it isn’t, he used some other intangible quality that has never failed him who counts on it, by land or sea.

  “You Tibetans aren’t murderous people,” he said. “Your religion forbids. You poison your friends and rob your enemies. But you’ve a conscience. When you get hysterical you’re like any other mob, with fifty thousand superstitious impulses added. But on the whole you’re swell people. You can laugh at yourselves.”

  “My not understanding,” said Bompo Tsering.

  “You will. You’ll catch on in a minute.”

  “Our not going out in storm,” said Bompo Tsering, buttering his obstinacy with a smile. He had changed from “my” to “our.” He felt the need of support. Andrew noticed that.

  “You’ve come a long march with me,” said Andrew, “in winter and spring. A long, hard march, at great risk. We were hunted by brigands and soldiers. We worked like the devil. We didn’t always have enough to eat; and frequently we nearly died of cold. You and I were almost drowned three times — once when a ferry upset; twice in ice-bound rivers, when the ice broke. We escaped from pursuit. We rescued His Holy Eminence the Ringding Gelong Lama Lobsang Pun, and—”

  “Thus acquiring too much merit,” Bompo Tsering interrupted. “Nobly born Gunnigan, your needing much merit in lives to come. Such excellent merit as this perhaps saving you from many hells that your otherwise enduring after this death soon.”

  Andrew took up where he left off: “You’ve come all this way, and endured all that hardship, and acquired all that merit, only to chuck it away tonight — merit and money and—”

  Bompo Tsering glanced around the cavern. Trade goods. Provisions. Clothing. Blankets. Yaks. Ponies. Sheep. And no doubt money in one of the loads. His thought was quite clear. Andrew didn’t wait for him to voice it.

  “Unless you obey me,” he said, “I’m going to shoot all these animals. You and the men couldn’t carry the loads very far. You’d soon be overtaken by the monastery monks. You know what they’d do to you: they’d turn you loose naked to cherish your sins in the snow. That ‘ud be a fine reward for months of hardship such as you have borne so bravely. Don’t you think you’re a fool?”

  Bompo Tsering answered smiling: “Gunnigun, we blessed Tibetans obeying higher law.” But his grin, in the quivering lantern light, looked vaguely less confident. He spun his prayer wheel.

  “I’m going now,” said Andrew, “to help Tum-Glain and His Reverend Eminence Lobsang Pun. First, I will shoot the animals and take your money. You may do as you please and take the consequences. Your wife won’t miss you; she has six other husbands, you adulterous dog. As for those hells you speak of, I shall mention your conduct to Lobsang Pun. He can bless—”

  Bompo Tsering interrupted: “His Holiness having blessed us all, especially me!”

  “And he can curse! How many of the curses of Lobsang Pun are needed to obliterate his blessings that a fool sees fit to throw away?”

  “Nobly born, this is terrible talk,” said Bompo Tsering.

  “I have been told,” said Andrew, “there are seven hells, and the worst is reserved for fools, who sold their store of merit for the sake of momentary comfort.”

  He made that up, that moment, on the spur of necessity. There are volumes of books about Tibetan hells, written by men who believe they remember them. But Andrew had never read those books. Bompo Tsering hadn’t either, so the breaks were even.

  “Maybe there being something in what your saying,” Bompo Tsering admitted. “Life short time. Hell long time. Yes.” He began hunting for justification. “Those men—” he pointed to the phony lama and the other culprits— “being hungry, no can do. Tum-Glain for punishment saying no tea, no food.”

  “Feed ’em,” Andrew retorted.

  But that gave another excuse. Bompo Tsering pounced on it: “Your not being Tum-Glain. Tum-Glain saying no, not feeding them.”

  “Very well. Shall we leave them behind us to plunder the loads?”

  “That being too sinful. No, no!”

  “And the sin,” Andrew observed profoundly, “would be on your head. You would be the hell-bound fool who let them do it! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  Bompo Tsering smiled. There was no shame in him; only guts, superstition, good humor, liking for Andrew, and natural dislike of danger.

  “Nobly born, your knowing too much,” he answered. “My choosing lesser of two evils. My obeying you, then what happening being your fault.” He chuckled. Then he added: “But let us take the animals. Being better letting beasts struggle against storm, leaving us strong at end of journey.”

  Only a Tibetan could have suggested that, with that storm raging. He knew what the ledge was like. The ponies were utterly out of the question; the poor scarecrow brutes couldn’t have kept their foothold for a minute. The sheep could have balanced themselves, but what use would they be, except as food later on? In a bad storm, a sheep lies down and quits; they would have had to be carried. A Tibetan will carry a tired sheep until he has to lie down and die beside it. But Andrew had no use that night for dead sheep or dead Tibetans. The yaks might have carried them. But you have to blindfold a yak and mount him by vaulting on over his rump. After that, when you remove the blindfold he goes where he pleases. If they could have got the yaks past the barricade and started along the ledge, they could have kept their foothold. But a yak, especially when in single file, has a neat little trick of going crazy in a storm. And Tibetans have strange ideas about animals. They will jump on top of the loads and ride an already over-burdened beast up a steep hill. If anything goes wrong they will call it the animal’s karma. At the top of the hill they will get off, to “double the easiness going down hill.” No, the yaks, too, were out of the question. It broke Bompo Tsering’s honest heart to leave those animals in comfort in the cavern with plenty of food and water, where, as he objected, brigands or St. Malo’s men might come and steal them. Every Tibetan is almost as superstitious about brigands as he is about dugpas and devils. But Andrew couldn’t be persuaded.

  He won the argument finally by telling Bompo Tsering to choose his yak and try to drive it outside into the storm. The yak chased him all over the cavern. That put everyone into a good temper and after that there was not much trouble. They loaded themselves with two days’ rations of canned food, in addition to a small bag of dry barley for each man, and the inevitable tea urn. They were full of virtue — eager to acquire more merit, now that Bompo Tsering had made up their minds for them. They roughhoused the phony lama and his fellow culprits out into the open. Bompo Tsering flatly refused to disobey Tom’s order not to feed them. He declared they had been let off too
lightly: they should have been shot or thrown over the cliff. However, he compromised by bringing them along some extra barley, so that if Tom should choose to let them off part of their punishment they could feed them without depriving themselves. Then the real battle began. Bompo Tsering warned Andrew not to lead the way along the ledge.

  “Nobly born, come last! Bring up the rear!”

  He said it wasn’t safe to trust some of the men — not safe to have them behind him. They might turn back. They might make other kinds of trouble.

  “True. Then that’s your job,” said Andrew. “You bring up the rear.”

  He gave Bompo Tsering a full load for his Mauser, not for use, but for his spiritual comfort. All Tibetans believe Mauser pistols are the one infallible weapon. Even when the darned things jam, they still believe it. Mauser pistols are white man’s magic.

  Then Andrew led stubbornly, not too fast, although it was a race between life and death — against time and the elements. The storm increased in violence. Hail, rain and snow in alternate blasts iced up the ledge. It sloped out in places. The force of the wind doubled. One man was blown into the ravine, but Andrew didn’t know about that until afterwards. He couldn’t see a yard. He couldn’t hear the man next behind him, though he shouted the news at the top of his lungs. Anyhow, it was one of the phony lama’s men, so he didn’t much matter. He wasn’t carrying a load. His loss made the phony lama easier to manage later on.

  Although he had covered the distance twice before during the night, Andrew couldn’t recall landmarks. He couldn’t judge time by distance, or distance by time, because he had to slow down wherever the ice was bad. He had to lead blindly, trusting faculties that all men have but only few can use. He was raging within, damning the guts of Old Ugly-face for having dared to mislead Elsa.