Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  He only fired once. The lion passed straight over him, landing plump among the frantic cattle, stone-dead from a bullet through the heart. The cattle were nearly all loose by that time (some of them running back to the chain and trying to hide between the fast ones), and I suppose it was an hour before we had dragged the trampled carcass free and set four boys to skinning it. By that time four of my team and two of his were lost forever, killed and dragged off by the other lions waiting beyond in the dark. We could hear the feast being held — flesh tearing, and the jackals and hyenas whimpering for leavings — now and then a roar and a yell, as a lion turned to drive a jackal off, but we could see nothing to shoot at.

  There was not much risk of another raid, for the lions had plenty, but we kept watch, talking in spasms as you might say, sometimes silent for half an hour on end and then suddenly speaking both at once. Being angry with myself for having missed twice, and depressed by the loss of valuable oxen, I dare say I was sour company. Dan Ivan on the other hand was cordiality itself.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said at last, as the false dawn flickered under a narrow cloud bank and there came on us that chill drowiness that heralds day, “I’m doing nothing in particular in this country — nothing I mean that ties me — merely shooting — prospecting — looking for trouble I suppose you’d call it. I might as well take one direction as another. Would my wagon be safe if I left it here?”

  “Safe as a house,” I told him. “No native would care to touch it, and if a white man dared we’d soon catch him.”

  “All right,” he answered, “Then suppose we travel together for a spell — share up the oxen and leave my wagon?”

  I pressed down tobacco with my thumb and eyed him sideways, for in Africa one’s ideas about Americans are usually colored by Nick Carter. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes° is as true today with most of us as it was two thousand years ago.

  “You said you’re looking for trouble,” I answered. “I’m not.”

  He laughed, and frankly as a woman, proceeded to disarm suspicion.

  “Not that kind of trouble. I’m looking for life. Trouble seems to stand between me and it, that’s all.”

  “How d’ye mean?” I asked, for he looked more alive than anyone I had seen for months. Healthy complexion, firm muscles, abundant, straight-dark hair, no sign of malaria, or symptom of the whiskey appetite that haunts that part of Africa; money enough (for he had already told me so) to travel wherever he wished; it seemed to me that if anyone already knew what life might mean he ought to be the man.

  “Yes,” he said, laughing, I suppose at my expression. “Life! I’m looking for it!”

  “You mean excitement,” said I.

  “Yes and no,” he answered. “Excitement’s a by-product. I may recognise the real thing at last by the excitement it will bring. But perhaps I shall feel solemn. Who can tell who hasn’t seen it? I’m seeking a breath of life that wasn’t tasted first by someone else — unselfishness that isn’t negative, yet won’t turn to ashes — life without a lie in it, love without a hint of lust—”

  “And you’re searching Africa for that?” said I, fearing he might go off into a rhapsody unless checked. (I wanted breakfast.)

  “Searching the world for it!” he answered, and then flushed as if angry with himself. I judged he would like to recall nine-tenths of all he had said, and took that for a very healthy sign.

  “O, very well,” I said, “I’ll go you. Leave your wagon here until there is a chance to send for it. When you’ve found what you’re looking for, introduce a chap, that’s all.”

  “I certainly will,” he answered.

  “Let’s eat,” said I.

  I felt sure he was either in love or else looking to fall in love, and that part of the prospect was a bore; on the other hand he was equally sure I took him literally (I was to learn subsequently the amazing depth of his conviction that he only needed speak to be believed).But promises made at random have uncanny tricks of self-fulfilment. No doubt he forgot the promise, yet long after I, too, had forgotten it he did introduce me to what fed the cravings of his soul. Meanwhile a deal of water (some of it muddy) flowed beneath the bridge. Now and then we found ourselves on either side the stream, but there always proved to be a bridge to cross by.

  It got so after a time that my dog would sleep on his cot and his dog on mine. Our boys took orders from either of us and mixed up our belongings inextricably. We shared everything except money, of which he seemed to have inexhaustible supplies; and after two years of living together in tent and wagon, quarreling (for he was a radical to his very roots), and making up (because affection seemed half his life), I thought I could guess pretty accurately what he would say on most subjects. The book of Lamentations was written by a complete and silly optimist, for instance, compared to him in one mood; compared to Dan Ivan when he smiled the writer or the Ninety-first Psalm might almost be dubbed misanthrope. I knew what he thought of kings and queens and pawns, and learned of glory because being pawn earned me only his wrath, not hate. He knew what I thought on the native question, and I. D. B. We were such friends that we could even sit together and not talk for hours on end. Yet he held a bewildering surprise in store.

  News reached us by runner one evening of Paul Kruger’s declaration of war on England, and of the beginning of the Boer raid on Cape Colony. Never doubting, I read the message aloud to him.

  “It looks like a call for us two,” I said.

  He pricked his ears and eyed me swiftly. “It’s more,” he answered, “it’s judgment day!”

  “We’d better trek to the nearest British post and join the first force we get in touch with,” said I, thinking aloud.

  “British post?” he asked, as if the words puzzled him.

  “They’ll never guess you’re American. Promotion ought to come quickly to you and me. Don’t let’s waste time waiting for commissions, let’s enlist,” I urged.

  “Enlist on the British side?” he spoke sadly, as if grieved by thoughtlessness.

  “What else?” I asked, beginning to feel bewildered.

  He shook his head reproachfully. “I shall fight for the Boers of course.” Then he filled his pipe as if he had made the most natural statement in the world.

  “Are you joking, Dan?” I could think of nothing else to say and he did not trouble to answer. When he looked up from the pipe I could see his eyes burning as if his heart were on fire, and his breath came slow and evenly as when he sighted on a mark.

  “Come with me and fight on the right side!” he said suddenly — yet without that earnestness with which he would have urged medicine if I were sick, so that I smelt a rat. It was my turn not to answer. I had a boy who spoke Chironga, a dialect Dan did not know, and I gave some orders in a low voice. Then, full of his own idea, he leaned forward to lay his hand on mine.

  “We’re friends, aren’t we,” he said: “Were ever two men better friends than we? Then shake hands!”

  I shook hands, although I did not see use of it.

  “This is good,” he said. “This is as it ought to be. You go your way and I mine. Let us hope we meet in battle!”

  I lay back and laughed, but he took no notice.

  “Understand,” he said. “If we meet on the field I shall do my best to kill you. Do you do the same by me.”

  “I sat up and struck his hand away, awake to the tact at last.

  “You Quixotic ass!” I jeered. “D’you think I’ll be sacrificial lamb to ease your silly soul? War be it! — if we’re on opposite sides, we are now! You’re prisoner! I’ve ordered your rifle taken to my wagon! You’ll be handed over to the first British officer I meet. Go to your wagon and behave like a prisoner — stay there until further orders!”

  He obeyed at once, with no look of reproach that might have made me angrier, no argument that might have helped me justify myself, so that I felt the full brunt of it. I struck camp like a man in a dream and headed southward, with an outfit showing like a Noah’s Ark in sil
houette for all the Dutch to see. Dan Ivan with his weird ideals and hot intolerance had crept into my heart more than I knew, and I suppose my fool heart mourned for him.

  The rest of that night I rode ahead in a state of increasing nervous agony, thinking mostly of how to reach a British post uncaptured. And when after dawn I did bring up in a friendly laager Dan’s wagon was empty, and he gone. Some of his boys had vanished with him, and although I punished the remnant for not warning me I was secretly glad; for to have handed Dan over to authority would have gone against the grain. The word “spy” was on everybody’s lips, and there were more men dealt with by a firing party in those early weeks of war than I care to tell about.

  With my experience they made me transport officer almost at once, and presently I grew contented at the size of Africa that made it more and more unlikely Dan could get a shot at me. Usually there was an army and anything from twenty to a hundred miles between us.

  Later I was put in charge of a prison camp, because it developed I knew Dutch and could discipline Boer prisoners without breaking their heart. I forgot all about Dan in that environment, being rather too busy to eat or sleep except between times, until one afternoon they led him amid the captured ragged end of a commando to the camp gate and pushed him through.

  He was not on terms with the other prisoners. It seemed he had not wanted to surrender and their leader, being hungry and irritable, used a sjambok as the simplest means of making him see reason. There was a great red welt across his face. I noticed that the Boer commandant kept him at a careful distance, eyeing him restlessly, so that even if he had not been a prodigal son, as it were, fetched home in spite of himself, I would have berthed him alone for his life’s sake. But I gave him to understand that at the first attempt to escape he would be chained up like a dog.

  “You look like a dog that’s been robbing garbage cans,” I told him. “Have you come home to be washed?”

  He groaned aloud. He and I had both been physically dirtier than that many a time without worse than human longing for a bath; but now I left him knowing that no hell of my invention could be half as ghastly as his own, and being a brute I laughed as soon as I was out of sight. Then, remembering holy charity I sent him towels, and relays of hot water, and my own soap. Three days afterwards, judging from more than two years knowledge of him that reaction should be nearly due, I invited him to dinner in my tent.

  “What’s in store for me?” he asked at once, and I stared in amazement. Whenever Dan felt normal the future was always a mountain range to be reached in three leaps and a stride, and he was intolerant as the prophet Elisha of such mere obstacles as rivers in between. But he had no right to feel normal yet, that I could see.

  “That rather depends,” I anawered, “On which side wins this war.”

  “No it doesn’t!” he snorted. “If you English can’t win it I shan’t be set free by Boers! I’m through with them! I went to fight for liberty — for the right of little nations against big ones — for decency and truth and sweetness, against lies and lust!”

  “And didn’t you find ’em, Dan?” said I, in no mood to spare him altogether. Offering the other cheek is well enough, and I was raised on that Prodigal Son story until I can say it backwards word for word, but heaven seemed a long way off just then and Dan was near. “Didn’t you find unselfishness,” said I, “that wasn’t negative yet didn’t turn to ashes?”

  “Ashes and dust!” he thundered, bringing down his fist so hard on the table that a sentry looked in through the tent flap. “Tyranny, corruption, vice, selfishness, dirt, ignorance, arrogance of ignorance—”

  “You didn’t scrape deep enough, Dan,” I interrupted. “Under the tyranny and dirt there might be–”

  “Damn you, shut up!” he growled. “The dirt’s mental, you know that. The worst of ’em wash oftenest. It was glamour drew me — dross — pyrites! I’ve been trying to perpetuate a crime — trying to make the world go backwards! On the face of it there was never such patriotism, and there are a few good men at the top — a very few. At the bottom— ‘way down under, with the dust of ages in their eyes, there are good poor fools. But I’ve grown familiar with all that lies between and I tell you — oh, hurry up and win this war! Win it, I say! What’s in store for me? Am I prisoner until peace?”

  “It looks like it, Dan. Take my advice and don’t look for too much purity and sweetness in our army jails!”

  “Can’t my consul do anything?”

  Every American in trouble in foreign parts demands that his consul shall override law, custom and commonsense — in the name of liberty, of all things. It is a nation of incorrigible humorists.

  “He can call attention to the full circumstances of your case,” said I.

  “Um-mm! said Dan. “Ah! Um-m-m! You mean — ?”

  “It ‘ud be wrong to advise my country’s enemy.”

  “Enemy? Me?” His eyes grew round like a child’s, and his indignation was not in the least affected. That was Dan’s simplest charm, that when he changed anchorage, so to speak, he did it completely, leaving no kedge to windward.

  “And how about my life, Dan? I see this thing selfishly.”

  “Old man — I thank God I didn’t kill you!”

  “Well,” I said. “I’d advise silence. If you call too much attention to yourself they’re certain to jail you in Cape Town. The jail is crowded and the grub’s monotonous.”

  “What’s the alternative?” he urged. As a matter of fact I was groping mentally for ways and means that seemed yet without form and void. His thought was swifter than mine, and read mine.

  “Men who can talk the Taal and manage Boer prisoners, and who have also had experience in India, are scarce,” I said.

  “That’s you,” he nodded. “Go on.”

  “I’ve been calling attention to my rare and signal virtues. Somebody’s got to personally conduct a ship-load of prisoners to India soon.”

  “And supposing you’re told off to do it, what then?”

  “If you kept quiet you might get included in the number.”

  “Good! I’ll be still!”

  “If you could get to India — I heard you urge us to hurry and win the war; didn’t I? and made no secret of your changed sentiments; and behaved yourself sensibly (supposing that’s possible), they might be induced to accept your parole — over there. It might be managed.”

  “Of course it can be!” He reached for my tobacco, and leaned back to roll himself a cigarette.

  “I shall have to pull strings — and strings,” I reminded him, resentful of the ease with which he could forgive himself. He had tossed the past behind him as a man throws orange peels.

  “Hurry up and pull ’em, then!” he laughed. “Do you think I doubt you? D’you expect me to fear you won’t arrange it?” He reached his hand across the table. “You’re my friend,” he said simply. “It is I who was mistaken, not you. I shall never make that mistake again.”

  “Not even for love without lust?” I sneered.

  “Never!” he answered, smiling bright-eyed like a woman; “Next time the road forks and we differ I’ll let you go, that’s all. Won’t you shake hands?”

  So I shook his hand, although I admit I intended to refuse, and from that minute he felt toward me as if we had never parted and no water had come down beneath the bridge. For my part it was not so easy to let the past obliterate itself, and it was weeks before I could look at him without resentment; but that was because his willingness to try new ways and be a rebel, and admit himself mistaken and throw his heart once more over the biggest fence in sight, had put to shame my own contentment with the ruts. In my heart I knew that for all his defeat his spirit had been going forward while mine stood still.

  During those following weeks, in which resentment died in the light of his utter disregard of it, we moved to another continent and he was too seasick, and too interested, and much too far flung into the future to dream of writing home, even supposing he could have won permission;
so the United States newspapers did not get wind of his whereabouts, and oblivion shut him in.

  Then, on the edge of the Apollo Bunder in Bombay he greeted India — stood and sniffed a dozen times — laughed at the feast of color and eternal novelty of things that never change — breathed deeply — fell in love — and India swallowed him.

  When a man such as he loves at first sight he is not to be chained by anything so rigid as the Government. He was free of all the land from Peshawur to Comorin within three months, and I, who got the credit for it, was but his implement.

  And love finds strange accomplices. If Dan had only adored some girl no doubt he would have pressed into his service her resentful parents as the most unlikely agency in sight. But he had dared fall in love with a continent of three hundred million people, and, needing freedom for his courtship, he used the very hatred of his jailer to obtain his release — hatred, fear, and me incidentally.

  I contracted fever, said to be due to overwork, so instead of being hurried back to bring more prisoners I missed a trip or two and saw Dan nearly every day. Within a week he had filled my head with the thought of quitting military service; within ten days he had convinced me how it might be done; and within three months by telegram and letter I had turned the trick. I was appointed to study the whole subject of indented labor from the point of Crown Colonies, practically at my leisure, wherever the unindented coolie loved and lived.

  It was after my appointment that Dan’s jailer’s hatred of him entered into the scheme. He disliked Dan as intensely as only a materialist can dislike a man with vision, and feeling like a lost dog in sight of the maze of Dan’s ideals he snarled and showed bewilderment in mean ways. Dan, with unbelievable good humor, goaded him to greater lengths and then, on Dan’s suggestion, it was I who pointed out to a personage the danger of Dan’s smuggling out an account of his ill treatment that might finally reach the United States newspapers.