by Talbot Mundy
So where a little cluster of mud huts ached in the heat of a right angle where the trunk road crossed a native road some seventy miles from Bholat, Bill Brown — swordsman and sergeant and strictest of martinets, as well as sentimentalist — had been set to watch and listen and report.
There were many cleverer men in the non-commissioned ranks of Baine’s command, many who knew more of the native languages, and who had more imagination. But there was none who knew better how to win the unqualified respect and the obedience of British and native alike, or who could be better counted on to obey an order, when it came, literally, promptly and in the teeth of anything.
Brown’s theories on religion were a thing to marvel at, and walk singularly wide of, for he was a preacher with a pair of fists when thoroughly aroused. And his devotion to a girl in England whom no one in his regiment had ever seen, and of whom he did not even possess a likeness, was next door to being pitiable. His voice was like a raven’s, with something rather less than a raven’s sense of melody; he was very prone to sing, and his songs were mournful ones. He was not a social acquisition in any generally accepted sense, although his language was completely free from blasphemy or coarseness. His ideas were too cut and dried to make conversation even interesting. But his loyalty and his sense of duty were as adamant.
He had changed the double guard at the crossroads; and had posted two fresh men by the mud-walled guardroom door. He had lit his pipe for the dozenth time, and had let it go out again while he hummed a verse of a Covenanters’ hymn. And he had just started up to wall over to the cell and make a cursory inspection of his prisoner, when his ears caught a distant sound that was different from any of the night sounds, though scarcely louder.
Prompt as a rifle in answer to the trigger, he threw himself down on all fours, and laid his ear to the ground. A second later, he was on his feet again.
“Guard!” he yelled. “Turn out!”
Cots squeaked and jumped, and there came a rush of hurrying feet. The eight men not on watch ran out in single file, still buttoning their uniforms, and lined up beside the two who watched the guardroom door.
“Stand easy!” commanded Brown. Then he marched off to the crossroads, finding his way in the blackness more by instinct and sense of direction than from any landmark, for even the road beneath his feet was barely visible.
“D’you mean to tell me that neither of you men can hear that sound?” he asked the sentries.
Both men listened intently, and presently one of them made out a very faint and distant noise, that did not seem to blend in with the other night-sounds.
“Might be a native drum?” he hazarded.
“No, ‘tain’t!” said the other. “I got it now. It’s a horse galloping. Tired horse, by the sound of him, and coming this way. All right, Sergeant.”
“One of you go two hundred yards along the road, and form an advance-post, so to speak. Challenge him the minute he’s within ear-shot, and shoot him if he won’t halt. If he halts, pass him along to Number Two. Number Two, pass him along to the guardroom, where I’ll deal with him! Which of you’s Number One? Number One, then — forward — quick — march!”
The sentry trudged off in one direction, and Bill Brown in another. The sentry concealed itself behind a rock that flanked the road, and Brown spent the next few minutes in making the guard “port arms,” and carefully inspecting their weapons with the aid of a lantern. He had already inspected there once since supper, but he knew the effect that another inspection would be likely to produce. Nothing goes further toward making men careful and ready at the word than incessant and unexpected but quite quietly performed inspection of minutest details.
He produced the effect of setting the men on the qui vive without alarming them.
Suddenly, the farthest advanced sentry’s challenge rang out.
“Frie-e-e-e-nd!” came the answer, in nasal, high-pitched wail, but the galloping continued.
“Halt, I tell you!” A breech-bolt clicked, and then another one. They were little sounds, but they were different, and the guard could hear them plainly. The galloping horse came on.
“Cra-a-a-a-ack!” went the sentry’s rifle, and the flash of it spurted for an instant across the road, like a sheet of lightning. And, just as lightning might, it showed an instantaneous vision of a tired gray horse, foam-flecked and furiously ridden, pounding down the road head-on. The vision was blotted by the night again before any one could see who rode the horse, or what his weapons were — if any — or form a theory as to why he rode.
But the winging bullet did what the sentry’s voice had failed to do. There came a clatter of spasmodic hoof-beats, an erratic shower of sparks, a curse in clean-lipped decent Urdu; a grunt, a struggle, more sparks again, and then a thud, followed by a devoutly worded prayer that Allah, the all-wise provider of just penalties, might blast the universe.
“Stop talkin’!” said the sentry, and a black-bearded Rajput rolled free, and looked up to find a bayonet-point within three inches of his eye.
“Poggul!” snarled the Mohammedan.
“Poggul’s no password!” said the sentry. “Neither to my good-nature nor to nothing else. Put up your ‘ands, and get on your feet, and march! Look alive, now! Call me a fool, would yer? Wait till the sergeant’s through with yer, and see!”
The Rajput chose to consider a retort beneath his dignity. He rose, and took one quick look at the horse, which was still breathing.
“Your bayonet just there,” he said, “and press. So he will die quickly.”
The sentry placed his bayonet-point exactly where directed, and leaned his weight above it. The horse gave a little shudder, and lay still.
“Poggul!” said the Rajput once again. And this time the sentry looked and saw cold steel within three inches of his eye!
“Your rifle!” said the Rajput. “Hand it here!”
And, to save his eyesight, the sentry complied, while the Rajput’s ivory-white teeth grinned at him pleasantly.
“Now, hands to your sides! Attention! March!” the Rajput ordered, and with his own bayonet at his back the sentry had to march, whether he wanted to or not, by the route that the other chose, toward the guardroom. The Rajput seemed to know by instinct where the second sentry stood although the man’s shape was quite invisible against the night. He called out, “Friend!” again as he passed him, and the sentry hearing the first sentry’s footsteps, imagined that the real situation was reversed.
So, out of a pall of blackness, to the accompanying sound of rifles being brought up to the shoulder, a British sentry — feeling and looking precisely like a fool — marched up to his own guardroom, with a man who should have been his prisoner in charge of him.
“Halt!” commanded Brown. “Who or what have you got there, Stanley?”
“Stanley is my prisoner at present!” said a voice that Brown vaguely recognized.
He stepped up closer, to make sure.
“What, you? Juggut Khan!”
“Aye, Brown sahib! Juggut Khan — with tidings, and a dead gray horse on which to bear them! If this fool could only use his bayonet as he can shoot, I think I would be dead too. His brains, though, are all behind his right eye. Tie him up, where no little child can come and make him prisoner!”
“Arrest that man!” commanded Brown, and two men detached themselves from the end of the guard, and stood him between them, behind the line.
“Here’s his rifle!” smiled Juggut Khan, and Brown received it with an ill grace.
“How did you get past the other sentry?” he asked.
“Oh, easily! You English are only brave; you have no brains. Sometimes one part of the rule is broken, but the other never. You are not always brave!”
“I suppose you’re angry because he killed your horse?”
“I am angry, Brown sahib, for greater happenings than that! The man conceivably was right, since I did not halt for him, and I suppose he had his orders. I am angry because the standard of rebellion is raise
d, and because of what it means to me!”
“Are you drunk, Juggut Khan?”
“Your honor is pleased to be humorous? No, I am not drunk. Nor have I eaten opium. I have eaten of the bread of bitterness this day, and drunk of the cup of gall. I have seen British officers — good, brave fools, some of whom I knew and loved — killed by the men they were supposed to lead. I have seen a barracks burning, and a city given over to be looted. I have seen white women — nay, sahib, steady! — I have seen them run before a howling mob, and I have seen certain of them shot by their own husbands!”
“Quietly!” ordered Brown. “Don’t let the men hear!”
“One of them I slew myself, because her husband, who was wounded, sent me to her and bade me kill her. She died bravely. And certain others I have hidden where the mutineers are not likely to discover them at present. I ride now for succor — or, I rode, rather, until your expert marksman interfered with me! I now need another horse.”
“You mean that the native troops have mutinied?” “I mean rather more than that, sahib. Mohammedans and Hindus are as one, and the crowd is with them. This is probably the end of the powder-train, for, from what I heard shouted by the mutineers, almost the whole of India is in revolt already!”
“Why?”
“God knows, sahib! The reason given is that the cartridges supplied are greased with the blended fat of pigs and cows, thus defiling both Hindu and Mohammedan alike. But, if you ask me, the cause lies deeper. In the meantime, the rebels have looted Jailpore and burned their barracks, and within an hour or two they will start along this road for Bholat, which they have a mind to loot likewise. My advice to you is retire at once. Get me another horse from somewhere, that I may carry warning. Then follow me as fast as you and your men can move.”
“Bah!” said Brown. “They’ll find General Baines to deal with them at Bholat.”
“Who knows yet how many in Bholat have not risen? Are you positive that the garrison there has not already been surrounded by rebels? I am not! I would not be at all surprised to learn that General Baines is so busy defending himself that he can not move in any direction. And — does your honor mean to hold this guardroom here against five thousand?”
“I mean to obey my orders!” answered Brown.
“And your orders are?”
“My orders!”
“Would they preclude the provision of another horse for me?”
“There’s a village about a mile away, down over yonder, where I think you’ll find a decent horse — along that road there.”
“And your honor’s orders would possibly permit a certain payment for the horse?”
“Positively not!” said Brown.
“Then—’
“To seize a horse, for military use, under the spur of necessity, and after giving a receipt for it, would be in order.”
“So I am to spend the night wandering around the countryside, in a vain endeavor to—”
But Brown was doing mathematics in his head. Two men to guard prisoners, two on guard at the crossroads, two at the guardroom door — six from twelve left six, and six were not enough to rape a countryside.
“Guard!” he ordered. “Release that prisoner. Now, you Stanley, let this be a lesson to you, and remember that I only set you free because I’d have been short-handed otherwise. Number One! Stand guard between the clink and the guardroom door. Keep an eye on both. The remainder — form two-deep. Right turn! By the left, quick-march! Left wheel!... Now,” he said, turning to Juggut Khan, “if you’ll come along I’ll soon get a horse for you!”
The Rajput strode along beside him, and gave him some additional information as they went, Brown taking very good care all the time to keep out of earshot of the men and to speak to Juggut Khan in low tones. He learned, among other things, that Juggut Khan had lost every anna that he owned, and had only escaped with his life by dint of luck and swordship and most terrific riding.
“Are all of you Rajputs loyal?” asked Brown.
“I know not. I know that I myself shall stay loyal until the end!”
“Well — the end is not in doubt. There can only be one end!” commented Brown.
“Of a truth, sahib, I believe that you are right. There can only be one end. This night is not more black, this horizon is no shorter, than the outlook!”
“Then, you mean—”
“I mean, sahib, that this uprising is more serious than you — or any other Englishman — is likely to believe. I believe that the side I fight for will be the losing side.”
“And yet, you stay loyal?”
“Why not?”
“All the same, Juggut Khan — I’m not emotional, or a man of many words. I don’t trust Indians as a rule! I — but — here — will you shake hands?”
“Certainly, sahib!” said the Rajput. “We be two men, you and I! Why should the one be loyal and the other not?”
“When this is over,” said Brown, “if it ends the way we want, and we’re both alive, I’d like to call myself your friend!”
“I have always been your friend, sahib, and you mine, since the day when you bandaged up a boy and gave him your own drinking-water and carried him in to Bholat on your shoulder, twenty miles or more.”
“Oh, as for that — any other man would have done the same thing. That was nothing!”
“Strange that when a white man does an honorable deed he lies about it!” said Juggut Khan. “That was not nothing, sahib, and you know it was not nothing! You know that from the heat and the exertion you were ill for more than a month afterward. And you know that there were others there, of my own people, who might have done what you did, and did not!”
“But, hang it all! Why drag up a little thing like this?”
“Because, sahib, I might have no other opportunity, and—”
“Well? And what?”
“And the Rajput boy whom you carried was my son!”
III.
The finding of a remount for Juggut Khan was not so troublesome as might have been supposed. The rumors and plans and whispered orders for the coming struggle had been passed around the countryside for months past, and every man who owned a horse had it stalled safely near him, for use when the hour should come.
There were country-ponies and Arabs and Kathiawaris and Khaubulis among which to pick, and though the average run of them was worse than merely bad, and though both best and worst were hidden away whenever possible, good horses were discoverable. Within an hour, Bill Brown; with the aid of his men, had routed out a Khaubuji stallion for Juggut Khan, one fit to carry him against time the whole of the way to Bholat.
The Rajput mounted him where Brown unearthed him, and watched the signing of a scribbled-out receipt with a cynical smile.
“If he comes to claim his money for the horse,” said Juggut Khan, “I — even I, who am penniless — will pay him. Good-by, Brown sahib!” He leaned over and grasped the sergeant by the hand. “Take my advice, now. I know what is happening and what has happened. Fall back on Bholat at once. Hurry! Seize horses or even asses for your men, and ride in hotfoot. Salaam!”
He drove his right spur in, wheeled the horse and started across country in the direction of Bholat at a hand-gallop, guiding himself solely by the soldier’s sixth sense of direction, and leaving the problem of possible pitfalls to the horse.
“If what he says is true,” said Brown, as the clattering hoof-beats died away, “and I’m game to take my oath he wouldn’t lie to me, I’d give more than a little to have him with me for the next few hours!”
The men came clustering round him now, anxious for an explanation. They had held their tongues while Juggut Khan was there, because they happened to know Brown too well to do otherwise. He would have snubbed any man who dared to question him before the Indian. But, now that the Indian was gone, curiosity could stay no longer within bounds.
“What is it, Sergeant? Anything been happening? What’s the news? What’s that I heard him say about rebellion? They’re a
rum lot, them Rajputs. D’you think he’s square? Tell us, Sergeant!”
“Listen, then. Rebellion has broken out. The native barracks at Jailpore have been burned, and all the English officers are killed — or so says Juggut Khan. He’s riding on, to carry the news to General Baines. He says that the mutineers are planning to come along this way some time within the next few hours!”
“What are we going to do, then?”
“That’s my business! I’m in command here!”
“Yes, but, Sergeant — aren’t you going back to Bholat? Aren’t you going to follow him? Are you going to stay here and get cut up? We’ll get caught here like rats in a trap!”
“Are you giving orders here?” asked Brown acidly. “Fall in! Come on, now! Hurry! ‘Tshun — eyes right — ri’ — dress. Eyes — front. Ri’ — turn. By the left — quick — march! Silence, now! Left! Left! Left!”
He marched them back toward the crossroads without giving them any further opportunity to remonstrate or ask for information.
It was not until he reached the crossroads, without being challenged, that he showed any sign of being in any way disturbed.
“Sentry!” he shouted. “Sentry!”
But there was no answer.
“Halt!” he ordered, and he himself went forward to investigate. The blackness swallowed him, but the men could hear him move, and they heard him fall. They heard him muttering, too, within ten paces of them. Then they heard his order.
“Bring a light here, some one.”
One man produced a piece of candle, struck a match and lit it. A moment later they had all broken order, and were standing huddled up together like a frightened flock of sheep, peering through dancing, candle-lit shadows at something horrible that Brown was handling.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“What in hell’s happened?”
“Who was that swearing?” inquired Brown, with a sudden look up across his shoulder. “You, Taylor? You again? Swearing in the presence of death? Talking of hell, with your two comrades lying dead at the crossroads, and you like to follow both o’ them at any minute?”