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Title: By Allah who made tigers
Author: Talbot Mundy
Illustrator: Paul Stahr
Release date: November 2, 2026 [eBook #79906]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1929
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79906
Credits: Greg Weeks and Mary Meehan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY ALLAH WHO MADE TIGERS ***
By Allah Who Made Tigers
By TALBOT MUNDY
Author of "Asoka's Alibi," "Ho For London Town!" etc.
_Bold and crafty was mullah Mir Mahommed, leader of the
hillmen; and his mad plans for a holy war were well
advanced when secret agent Frank West happened along._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Argosy April 27, May 4, and May 11, 1929.]
CHAPTER I
HILLMEN IN THE NIGHT.
Thirty years have not blotted out that memory; the incidents stand out
like a cameo cut from the mass of all that happened before and since.
Peshawar, thirty years ago, was raw, and uglier than the inside of a
usurer's conscience, although at first glance no usurer's money ever
looked more alluring.
Nothing noble, or even nice, belonged there, so nobility stood out
and shamed you; beauty made you choke and do things that a sense of
self-preservation would otherwise have vetoed. Hot by day, with a wind
that grilled you until comfort and a cool drink were synonymous terms
and nothing else much mattered; cold by night because the wind reversed
itself and moaned from the northern snows, raising a mist that filled
all hollows and came creeping out of them toward the city.
It was in that mist that sentries had to stand, as lonely as honest
men on Judgment Day and just as uncertain of the outcome, seeking to
keep their souls within their bodies by alertness. There was also some
indoctrinated theory or other about duty to lie-abed merchants, who
must be saved alive to cheat each other in the morning; but nobody
who had had a few dealings in the bazaar would have been less than
delighted if the hillmen could have purged it without knifing you and
me and one or two other people.
The men who had to risk their lives on sentry-go and outpost duty
admired the hillmen far more than they did the citizenry they were
guarding with such grim blending of endurance and impatience. Except
for that little point of honor, with which Shakespeare so vexed _Jack
Falstaff_, the British--aye, and the native Indian army too, might long
ago have taken sides with the tribes beyond Peshawar and have helped
them once again to conquer India from the northwest.
There were some very lovely ladies in cantonment that year, of whom
the loveliest was Winifred Orloff, a guest, and, I think, some sort of
cousin of the Wingates. Colonel Wingate was in charge of the military
hospital, where he was too busy, just as his wife was too lazy, to pay
much attention to Winifred.
She, nevertheless, was better worth attention than anyone else at
that time on the northwest frontier. That was the one point on which
everybody was agreed, and everybody was exactly right. She was the
reason--and reason enough--why I was in Peshawar, suffering from ingrown
loathing of myself and all my ways. It needs a woman to produce that
state of consciousness, and even she can't do it, lovelier though she
be than blossoms in the sight of snow, without youth and ideals to work
on.
Never mind about ideals. They are usually secondhand, and by-and-by
we trade them in for something more snappy and up-to-date. Youth is
the point. I was young and painfully aware that I wore no uniform.
No long-jawed Scotchmen with muscular knees saluted me; nor was I one
of the "heaven-born" civilians with a handle in front of my name and
half of the alphabet after it, who used to govern India in those days
with a Roman gesture but without the Roman cynicism in the matter of
bribes--decent, exasperating men, who would have been a credit to
themselves and everybody else if only they had not been so sure they
were.
I had been sent to Peshawar on secret service with
instructions--considered too secret to be put in writing--to watch Miss
Winifred Orloff and to discover what connection, if any, she had with
the Czar's government. Strict orders to make love to her would have
been much more tasteful.
* * * * *
I remember I looked at my face in a mirror near the door of the
ballroom of Government House and thought I was better looking than
possibly half of the men in the room. Then, in the same mirror, I saw
her dancing with Ross of the Guides.
He had eleven medal ribbons, of which one was the Victoria Cross, and
he could dance with a rhythm suggesting the lilt of a squadron's lances
when the long line sweeps into disciplined motion. As for her, men
looked at her and left off talking. So I got my hat and coat and went
out to think the situation over.
It was not so good. If, in the course of duty, I should prove her
guilty of espionage--We were supposed to be very hard-boiled in the
secret service, but not only was I more than half in love with her
myself, but two of my friends, Ross and Grabowski, were in open and hot
competition for her affections. I was worse than out of the running,
yet I could not go away and leave them to it.
The hotel was a miserable place, so I changed--to the everlasting
credit of the lords of luck--into a dark green gabardine suit and
shooting boots, pulled on a heavy overcoat and went for a walk,
followed by my gray dog, Brandy--part sheepdog and part terrier,
with wise eyes and a way of keeping his distance while watching you
constantly for a hint of what you wanted him to do. Winifred Orloff
thought more of my dog than she did of me, so I had used him more than
once as an excuse for watching her.
I walked, of course, toward a cemetery. You can't leave Peshawar in
any direction without meeting a cemetery. They almost surround the
city, and in the moonlight and the mist they look more ghastly than
the engravings in Dante's "Inferno"; but the tombstones made wonderful
cover for Pathan outlaws, armed with jezail and tulwar, on the prowl
after modern rifles or whatever other loot might come their way.
However, first I passed Grabowski's shop in the bazaar.
Grabowski was a Scotchman--Polish ancestry, of course; there is a
surprising number of Polish families in Scotland, and their younger
sons are at odds with convention all over the earth.
This particular descendant of a line of Quixotic fighting men was an
artist of distinction and considerable private means, with a funny
flair for missionary work. He was a doctor, among other things. He had
a theory that art would tame the hillman, and it made no difference to
him that Moslem scripture and tradition utterly repudiated the use of
the human form in painting or sculpture.
Indispensable to the border cut-throats by reason of his skill with
wounds and the inviolable loyalty of his silence, he could talk
so persuasively when he chose that he had even prevailed upon the
mullah Mir Mahommed to pose for him for a statue. Some Moslem fanatic
smashed the clay model, but not before Grabowski had reproduced it in
papier-maché. He set that papier-maché thing outside his shop door,
painted to look so lifelike that it was almost impossible to go by
without being startled. Even dogs would snarl at it. It made hillmen
shudder, it was such an offense against their religious prejudices, but
Grabowski hoped to wear down that prejudice.
The statue would have been destroyed in no time if any one but
Grabowski had made it, but along that border a skillful surgeon who
charges nothing for extracting bullets, asks no impertinent questions,
and tells no tales to the police, can do with impunity what no
government would dream of risking.
To decoy Pathans and other savages into his back room, Grabowski sold
in the front room snuff and such other simple comforts as they craved
at prices which made the local merchants hate him. His papier-maché
Pathan in the doorway substituted for the old-fashioned tobacco shop
Scotchman. In the back room he kept beautiful illuminated copies of the
Koran, which it delighted him to read aloud to any cutthroat who would
listen.
On his walls were shields and tulwars--weapons with which he was
reputed invincible; he enjoyed no exercise as much as meeting all
comers in his back yard and having it out with them with naked blades.
They were men who, in a frenzy of excitement, might forget they were
only playing, but it was all one to Grabowski.
* * * * *
The mist let me walk out of the city without being challenged and
turned back--mist and perhaps the barracks beer some soldier had been
drinking. I was far outside the zone of comparative safety, walking
in the gray haze among flat-faced tombstones, wondering what sort of
pressure could have induced a girl like Winifred to choose the Russian
side of any argument, half Russian though she was. Abruptly a hoarse
voice brought me back to the comfortless present with a suddenness that
jarred. One sentry, at least, was awake.
"Ha-a-a-lt-t! Who comes there?"
The frontier rule was shoot, then challenge. Even if discipline and
habit, or a sense of decency should make a man challenge before he
fired the shot--if he were sane--should follow voice more swiftly than
an echo. I had no time to weigh arguments.
"Rounds!" I answered.
"What rounds?"
"Visiting rounds!"
"Advance, visiting r-roun's an' gie the password. Pit y'r han's
up--over-r y'r heid! Aye, nae doot ye're oot walkin'--ye're daft! Mon,
but f'r the fact ye'd that dog wi' ye I'd ha' shot ye dead-der-r than
beef!"
I faced six feet of indignation in a mist-wreathed overcoat. His nerves
were on edge, because he had shot a man that night. He held the empty
brass cartridge and kept tossing it. Speech was not in him, except as
announcing the limit of forbearance, emphasized by a smack of his fist
on his rifle butt.
"Ye'll stan' here until rounds come an' I han' ye over-r tae the
guar-rd!"
Not another word was spoken. Mist wreathed the two of us. I came a half
step nearer to him, meaning he should see my face and perhaps change
his mind about me, but he misinterpreted the movement. The butt of his
rifle struck me in the chest. A stone slipped from under my heel and I
lost balance.
As I fell a tulwar licked out of the mist--above my head by less than
half an inch. It struck off the Scotchman's head, so that it hung by a
shred of ligament before his knees gave way. I was actually on my feet
again before the headless body struck the ground. Brandy was worrying
somebody's heels.
I did not see, I _felt_ the tulwar come licking again out of
darkness--ducked--and I think Brandy set his teeth into the man's leg,
because the edge missed and the broad of the blade struck me on the
forehead.
Strangely, I was not stunned, but I lay still and heard a man laugh.
Brandy came and sniffed my hair, then my lips. I breathed on his nose,
since I did not dare to speak, and he slunk away to pursue his usual
tactics of watching from a distance.
Little by little I opened my eyes, and now the mist had drifted and the
moon was shining clear. A big man in a smelly sheepskin jacket, with
the fleece turned outward, was busily stripping the murdered sentry.
Two others watched him, their faces in profile--one a lightly built
man, but the other bigger than the first. They carried jezails and had
long knives as well as daggers stuck into their girdles.
The shorter man said something about me in a low voice, and his
accompanying gesture had unmistakable meaning; he drew his thumb
across his own throat, finishing the motion by pointing the thumb in
my direction. But the man who was doing the stripping looked up for a
second and cursed into his teeth.
It was more like a dream than reality. However, those three men were
plainly no deceptive dream; simply honest outlaws helping themselves to
weapons and boots and ammunition in the old familiar way.
* * * * *
The stripping did not take long. He who did it rolled the clothing
in a bundle, which he tied by pulling out the leather bootlaces and
knotting them together. Then the biggest of the three men seized me
by the shoulders. I wondered whether to sham dead or to show signs of
recovery, but the lightly built man, who had wanted to cut my throat,
solved that problem by sticking the point of his knife under my thumb
nail.
I don't think I have ever hit a man since then as hard as I hit that
one. I almost broke the heel of my right fist on his jawbone, and he
lay unconscious so long that the other two began to quarrel as to
which should have his weapons. Meanwhile, they searched my pockets and
were so annoyed at finding so little in them that they would probably
have killed me, but for a piece of almost ridiculous luck. A letter,
anywhere along that border, is a thing of mystery, involving unknown
quantities--and awe.
[Illustration: _The Pathan crashed to the ground._]
They found in my inner coat pocket a letter in a large square envelope.
It was an utterly unimportant letter written by a maiden aunt in
England; but the seal on the back of the envelope was so enormous, and
she had used so much golden wax, that it had called for triple postage,
the stamps thus making the face of the envelope also appear important.
Furthermore, she had impressed the seal with a die that she had bought
in some old curiosity shop; it was covered with Arabic characters, so
that it looked as if the Grand Mufti or some one equally distinguished
had been writing to me. The biggest man--the other called him
Ismail--demanded to know what was written in the letter and I refused
to tell him.
"Allah," I said, "has his own way of teaching fools the danger of other
people's business."
"Look thou. Canst thou read it, Suliman?"
He who answered to the name of Suliman opened the letter and tried
to examine it by moonlight, but he held it upside down, and by the
time he had made his puzzled face look owlish wise and had tucked the
two sheets back into the envelope, the man whom I had hit recovered
consciousness.
He looked so comical, with his jaw dropped and his eyes swiveling
around in the moonlight to discover what had happened, that the other
two laughed at him; and laughter is a moral insult on that grim
frontier. It was almost his duty to draw steel, so they loaded him with
ribald criticism that suppressed his ego for the moment. But it did not
cause him to admire me.
However, the notion of murdering me had vanished for the time being.
I had become the bearer of an important document, who might be worth
holding for ransom. And, as Ismail said:
"His clothes are good. They will be no worse if he wears them a few
hours longer."
* * * * *
The third man, Ali bin Adam, stroking his beard over the lump I had
raised on his jaw, began to think of ways of salvaging his injured
honor. Having eaten shame, he must inflict some. So he gathered up the
bundle of clothing stripped from the Scots sentry and commanded that I
carry it. I refused. He tapped his knife hilt.
"Draw your knife," I said, "and I will fight you with my bare hands."
He was howled down promptly by the other two, who shrieked so loud with
laughter that I hoped they would be heard at the distant guard house.
Ali bin Adam showed me the whites of his eyes, and I knew that he and I
were enemies beyond any mere settlement by murder or the theft of one
another's goods.
"Allah!" he remarked. "As you and I live, Ismail, it is true he struck
me. He can strike you also. Would it be a jest if he should strike all
three of us and run? Who has a thong to tie his hands?"
I knew what the torture of that would be, if Ali should do the tying of
my wrists, and I was wondering whether a bluff would hold, or whether
I could endure the torture without losing self-control, when Ismail's
black beard suddenly jerked sidewise as he cocked his ear to listen.
"Soldiers!" he said curtly.
Ali was ordered to carry the bundle. Suliman and Ismail seized me by
the elbows, hurrying me away between them. I filled my lungs to shout
for help, but Ismail divined my intention and clapped a huge filthy
hand over my mouth. I bit it and tripped him, shouting as we fell in a
heap, with him on top.
Ali jumped on both of us, and Suliman swung for my head with the butt
of the stolen rifle. He missed and hit Ali bin Adam, whose thick turban
broke the force of the blow. I heard Brandy barking. Then something did
strike the top of my head. It felt as if my head exploded. Flames, not
sparks, flames of all the colors in the spectrum flashed before my eyes.
I remember wondering what the next world would be like--what Brandy was
barking about, and whether he was coming with me. There was something
a bit vague, but not unpleasant, about Winifred. After that, nothing
except the sound in my ears of roaring water--and then absolute
unconsciousness.
CHAPTER II.
THE PROPHET OF A HOLY WAR.
I looked up at a blue sky without a cloud in it, and I thought a year
had passed, but Brandy was still barking. One eagle was circling, and
he was so near that I could see his feathers. It was probably heaven,
or hell, and not much matter which, since wishing would not change it
either way.
The sensation was of floating in space, in which light was too strong
for my eyes, and I was surprised that I could remember earth life--also
rather interested in remembering it. There was a very comfortable
feeling of detachment, and no pain whatever. But I remember I wished
Brandy would leave off barking.
I began to think of Winifred, and felt detached from her, too; not
indifferent, but rather curious as to whether spies went to heaven or
hell. I could not imagine myself in either of those realms, although
the sky was blue enough for anything--and then, I remember, I began
wondering whether it would be possible to look back into the world and
learn whether or not Winifred Orloff was a spy.
My next thought was one of amusement; I wondered what the folk who
don't believe in an after life would have to say when they, too, got
there. Then I began to wonder where the Scotchman was. I had seen him
killed, so he ought to be somewhere near me. Or had he gone to hell?
Perhaps Brandy was barking at him. I tried to look, and became aware
of a sharp crag on my right hand that pierced the sky. It was like a
painted crag; it seemed to have no back to it.
I tried to sit up, but something that felt like a rough hand forced my
head down again, and a moment or two after that I knew that my head was
bandaged, which was sickeningly disappointing. So I was not dead.
Then, since I was not allowed to sit up, I turned on my left side and
discovered that I was lying on an oxhide spread on dry grass, on a
ledge that overhung a gorge between two precipices. The bottom of the
gorge appeared to be at least a thousand feet below me. It made my head
reel, and I think I became unconscious for a while.
The next thing I remember, Brandy was still barking, but the feeling
had returned of being dead and in another world. I remembered my name
had been Frank West, and wondered what it was now; I don't know why,
but it seemed unlikely that a man would keep the same name after death.
Frank West seemed something like a character in a play I had been
witnessing. I remembered him as a rather futile person, not important.
Winifred, too, seemed like a character in a drama, but Grabowski,
strangely enough, was a real person, and when I thought of Grabowski
the feeling of being dead and in another world completely left me.
* * * * *
It became clear to me, vividly clear, that I liked Grabowski better
than I had ever realized. He was an absurd, quixotic, chivalrous ass
with all the instincts of a gentleman. But it also occurred to me
that his love-making might be a ruse, just as his absurd attempts to
civilize Pathans by means of art and their own religion might be a ruse
to cover up intrigue beyond the border.
Winifred and he might be playing that game together, he communicating
with the tribes and she providing the connecting link with the Russian
secret service. I wondered why I had not thought of that before--why
nobody had thought of it. No one, so far as I knew, had suspected
Grabowski.
In fact, all that anybody knew for certain was that the mullah Mir
Mahommed for a long time had been receiving money from an unknown
source, and had been talking war all through the savage hills through
which the Khyber Pass runs like hell's throat, roughly north and south.
The mullah Mir Mahommed's influence reached a hundred miles either way,
east and west of the Khyber.
His was not authority, it was influence over about half a million
savages. It was easy enough to understand why the Russian government
should have him in its pay. Properly subsidized and encouraged, he
could start a holy war that would keep the British-Indian army busy
while the Czar's men slowly encroached through Bokhara and Samarkand.
But Winifred and Grabowski--
Brandy was still barking. Some one shoved a spoon between my teeth
and I tasted hot soup. Opening my eyes, I felt sure I was dead this
time--dead and in hell! A negress with her head in a yellow bandanna
and a bright blue shawl over her shoulder kneeled behind me, smiling,
shoveling the soup into my mouth and watching me with a strange mixture
of calculation and amusement.
"There, honey--how's that? Feeling better?"
"Where am I, and who are you?" I asked her.
"You're a two-day journey from Peshawar," she answered, speaking like
an educated woman. "Is that your dog? I thought so. I tied him up. I
fed him."
"Who are you?" I repeated.
She laughed, showing wonderful teeth and the whites of her eyes. I
judged her about twenty-four years old. "I'm the mullah's wife, honey.
I am Mrs. Mir Mahommed. Come, now, good goat soup with onions in it."
She raised me by the shoulders, pillowed my head against her knees and
shoveled in soup until I gasped. Then suddenly she laid me down again
and vanished. I heard her arguing in Pushtu with a man whose voice
was as harsh as a file on metal, but I could not catch the words; the
voices seemed to come from fifty feet below where I was lying.
Presently I heard a man's footsteps; then I felt his shadow and looked
up into the eyes of the mullah Mir Mahommed. He was so exactly like
the papier-maché image outside Grabowski's shop that for a second or
two the woozy impression returned of being dead and in another world.
However, I discovered that I could sit up, and he had the decency to
drag up a bundle of hides for me to lean against.
* * * * *
He was a magnificent specimen, tall, broad-shouldered, active, clad in
an embroidered smock and a sheepskin jacket. His turban was wrapped
around a green cone, indicating he had been to Mecca and was therefore
a Hajji. He leaned on a British military rifle. There was a curved
knife like a Goorkha kukri at his waist.
He was wearing a necklace of amber beads as big as hens' eggs, and in
his right hand was a rosary made of dried seeds strung on catgut. He
kept flicking the beads with his thumb while his fiery yellowish brown
eyes watched me as if he expected me to change into somebody else under
his gaze. His great hooked nose was like an eagle's beak, and he had
the bushiest black beard I have ever seen on any one--coal black with
one streak of snow-white where a sword had once bitten his jaw.
He made me remember a picture of Peter the Hermit, only this man was
less fanatical, more cunning and personally ambitious. He looked
considerably more than six feet tall, but that may have been due to the
shape of his turban.
"Name?" he asked.
I told him, and he repeated it, pronouncing it "Feranquesat." He
appeared to think the name important, and I understood why after a
moment when he produced my aunt's letter and looked at the seal. He
tapped the letter with his finger. Then he laid his finger on his nose.
"It is the seal," he said, in Pushtu, "of the Sharif of the Mosque of
El-Kalil. The words on the seal are the true words of God's prophet.
But what is the writing within the letter?"
"He who asks," said I, "when he has eyes to see with, is a begetter of
lies inviting others to deceive him."
"Allah who made tigers! What dam of all impudence brought thee forth?"
he retorted. Then suddenly, his finger on his nose again: "Who read the
letter?"
I pretended not to understand him. He waited almost a minute for my
answer and then repeated the question in another form:
"Three men made you prisoner. Did they ask what is in the letter?"
"They asked," I said, "but am I a bell that rings for any one who pulls
the rope?"
He appeared pleased. But it seemed to me that if the New York negress
was his wife, it was more than likely she had read and translated the
letter to him.
"You have eaten my salt," he said after awhile.
"Lacking other," I retorted. "Allah repays such debts as that. It
is written that no obligation is binding on him who has had no
alternative."
"You have the tongue of a _wakil_," he said, curling his lip with the
scorn that one sort of special pleader normally exhibits for another.
"God's ways," I retorted, "are wonderful, but surely this is the
strangest of all: that one with such eyes as yours should be so blind
as to see in me a lawyer."
"Allah! Do you wish to live?" he asked me.
"Not by your leave," I assured him. Then I took a long shot, at a
venture, being almost sure from his manner that he had a scheme in
mind for making use of me. "I am one whose services have value. He who
desires something of value without paying for it is a thief. If that
shoe fits your foot you have my leave to wear it."
"_Atcha_," he said, "_atcha_. I will pay you. I perceive you are a
person of merit." But his eyes looked crafty. "It is ever the way with
those who are made prisoners, that they wish their friends to know they
live--in order, doubtless, that the ransom money may be swiftly paid.
Name me your nearest friend, that I may send the message."
* * * * *
The last thing I wanted was to be sent back to Peshawar. I wanted
to remain his prisoner and learn his secrets, so I did not answer.
He began to argue, as a man might who has nothing to gain by hiding
anything.
"If I send the message, and captivity is thereby shortened, then,
having done you a favor, I may seek one in return!"
Voice and face were reassuring, but there lay trickery behind his
eyes--trickery and speculation. I decided to discover whether he really
wanted money.
"Not one rupee of ransom!" I said. "Let the troops come. Meanwhile I
claim your protection, since it was not you who took me prisoner and
therefore I have no quarrel with you."
The Moslem law is very definite on that point, it is deadly sin to
refuse protection, even to an enemy, who claims it--aye, in the very
heat of battle. A mullah, who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, could
hardly ignore the Koran's teaching.
His eyes changed; there was half masked satisfaction in them and he
was about to answer, but Brandy began barking furiously at approaching
footsteps and he turned from me to face the three Pathans--Ismail,
Suliman and Ali bin Adam--who had given themselves the trouble of
capturing and carrying me all that distance. My back was toward them
as they climbed the narrow path to the ledge where I lay, but I could
watch the mullah's face.
He and my three captors faced one another as animals do before a fight
begins. I might have been the "kill" between them. It was Ali bin Adam
who broke silence first.
"You mullahs assume rights that don't belong to you," he said hoarsely.
He sounded asthmatic. "You pretend Allah talks to you alone. There is
one law for you and another for us. Since when? Who ordered that?"
Mullah Mir Mahommed answered loftily: "_Bismillah!_ Is your ignorance
my law?"
Then Suliman spoke up: "I took him prisoner. I slew the Scotchman. It
is true, we left him by the way because he seemed to us dead. It is
also true that we did not take his garments. But that was because we
were in great haste."
"And why the haste?" asked mullah Mir Mahommed. "_Mashallah!_ They be
guilty men who run because a man's voice calls to them. It was I who
called. And what said I? I spoke only of God and His mercy. Lo, I look
down from the cliff and behold, there are three men carrying another
who might be dying, but was not yet dead, since who should carry a dead
man in such unseemly haste? Was it wonderful then that I spoke of Allah
and his mercy?"
"It may be," Ismail answered.
"And the letter that you let fall?" Mir Mahommed asked.
"Nay, we hid it," said Suliman "not being agreed as to who should keep
it. We divided the loot by agreement, and the prisoner, but not his
clothing, fell to Ali bin Adam's share. There was dispute about the
letter."
* * * * *
"So you laid it away where any fool could find it, being fearful of
what might be written beneath such a seal. And well that ye were
afraid! It was God's will that it should fall into my hands. Allah, who
imposes folly on fools, sent that stupidity into your heads. And so ye
laid it at the tomb of Holy Ali the Lousy, beneath a stone that would
never have held it in a wind made by a bird's wings. But a strong wind
came. And the letter was blown whither Allah intended. Nevertheless, ye
come to me, and in your impudence ye ask me for the letter?"
"Nay," whined Ali bin Adam, "we have not asked for it. But the prisoner
is mine. It is true, your she-black found him, but he is mine, and his
shirt also is mine. So strip him of his other clothes and I will take
him."
"And as for the letter," said Suliman, "we will discuss that. We will
yield or assert our claim when we know what is in it. The overcoat and
the suit of clothes belong to Ismail, and the boots to me. Deliver
them."
"I will deliver the vengeance of Allah and his burning curses on your
thieving souls," said Mir Mahommed. "Nay, touch no hilt at me and tap
no rifle-butt. Have ye lifted your stone from the field? Ye have not.
Neither have I. Nor yet has any man. Not until seven more days and the
seeding are past may the each-other-shooting season begin. Thereafter,
if ye choose to pick a feud with me, may Allah be the judge between us,
praise be to his prophet. The kites and the jackals shall feed then if
Allah wills it."
"We spoke not of a feud," said Ismail. "As for me, you may have the
prisoner. But you shall answer for him if the troops come, or if the
headmen listen to the border talk and agree to return him. If they name
an indemnity, you shall pay it."
"He is worth to me three thousand rupees of ransom money!" exclaimed
Ali bin Adam. "And you give him away without even demanding the price
of his shirt?"
"I will give you his shirt. You shall have it," said Mir Mahommed.
"In the name of the Almighty you shall have it. The women and
the children and the very goats shall know you henceforth as
Ali-who-sighed-for-the-shirt. It shall be carried to you on a camel,
with all the honor that is due to such a fine Pathan as you are, Ali of
the bold heart who sighed for the shirt!"
Ali swore, making use of the liver and lights and entrails of
obscenity, then strode away and leaned his back against the cliff.
Nobody laughed. Ali-who-sighed-for-the-shirt was too likely to go mad
with anger and shoot me, who might prove valuable even yet.
"But the letter. What is in it?" Suliman demanded.
For a moment Mir Mahommed caught my eye and I admired the splendid
savage. He dared me to give him the lie, and he dared to fling his lie
into the faces of three men who easily--so far as he knew--might have
tortured or otherwise persuaded me to tell the truth about the letter.
I watched him narrowly, but he made no sign of an appeal to me--no
bargain--no flicker of eyelid to suggest that we should play his game
together. He lied as he would have used his tulwar or the stolen rifle
on which he leaned--cold steel, hot lead, and take the consequences.
And his lie was so beyond belief that none thought of disbelieving it.
* * * * *
"The letter concerns me only," he announced portentously. "It is a
letter from the very holy Sharif of the Mosque of Ibraim at El-Kalil,
where as a Hajji I had lodging on my return journey from Mecca. May God
bless the prophet of God. The letter is addressed to this one, whom you
mistreated. It desires him to find me and tell me of a dream the Sharif
had, wherein I appeared to him as having died. The letter says that in
the dream I told him of this, that the prophet of God--be blessings on
him!--told to me in paradise: that if, when I am dead, my people the
Pathans shall reckon me a saint and keep my burial place sacred, then
I will appear to them after death from time to time and will make them
conquerors of all these hills and of all the Punjab and the rich lands
watered by the rivers. Also he informs me of my approaching death and
bids me to make my peace with Allah--may his prophet be praised."
Ismail and Suliman came closer to him, so I saw their faces. They were
jealous. They believed him, since who could invent such a lie? They
were glad he should die so soon; his "she-black" and his goods and
chattels would be lawful plunder to be intrigued and fought for. But
they resented the odor of sanctity. A dead saint, yes. No living saint
is tolerable within crow-flight of the Khyber.
"You!" said Ismail. "You preach a holy war, yet let a Christian make
an image of you! Does the shameless thing not stand in a shop door,
dishonoring the prophet and defying God's commandment?"
"That is also written in the letter," Mir Mahommed answered. "Shall the
all-merciful not forgive sin when the heart repents? He who readeth all
hearts knoweth mine. I let the image be made to deceive unbelievers,
who should thus believe me unfaithful to Islam, and should trust me the
more because of that, to their own undoing. It is his will that the
image shall not vanish and be burned by devils in the pits of Eblis,
in order that my soul may escape condemnation and be caught up into
paradise."
"Allah!"
Suliman turned and eyed me fiercely. "Is that written in the letter?"
he demanded.
I wanted to know more about the holy war, so there was nothing to be
gained by taking any side except the mullah's, at the moment. The grand
old savage did not bat an eyelid. He had invented and told his lie, and
now he stood there, like the image outside Grabowski's shop, and calmly
awaited the outcome.
"Who are you," I asked, "who challenge the writing of the Sharif of the
Mosque of Ibraim at El-Kalil? You saw the seal."
Ismail eyed Mir Mahommed's rifle--eyed it with hunger and longing.
Also he eyed the double bandolier well filled with stolen cartridges.
"So," he exclaimed, "then name me, Ismail, to be the owner of that
rifle when you die and I will be first of the men of my valley to call
you a saint."
"We will speak about that," said Mir Mahommed tartly, "at the proper
time and in the proper place." He appeared not quite to relish such a
premature division of his goods.
"And what shall happen to this prisoner?" asked Suliman.
"_Insh'allah_, I will answer for him, and ye have my leave to go," said
Mir Mahommed.
That phrase is final. Either leave, or break the law of hospitality
and fight. All three went, taking great care to betray no sense of the
importance of their host and by that very care betraying it. A living
mullah in that democratic country is a restless political influence, a
hardly tolerable nuisance, and a menace to plain men's dignity. It is
only dead ones who receive much praise; the living ones are to likely
to demand some kind of holy war at inconvenient moments.
Ismail and Suliman ignored me as if I had not been there, but
Ali-who-sighed-for-the-shirt surveyed me with a hatred that seemed to
burn him like a torch. He was livid with it. It was producing jaundice;
the whites of his eyes were turning yellow, and he loved the mullah
hardly more than he did me.
"You preach a holy war," he sneered. "You pay money to this and that
man, hoping to hire fools to slay themselves on British bayonets for
your advantage! Allah?"
I supposed that Mir Mahommed would remain on the ledge and explain away
that accusation when the others were out of ear-shot, but apparently
there was nothing further from his intention. He followed them to the
top of the track, stood watching, with his rifle resting in the crook
of his arm, until their footsteps echoed far away below in the ravine,
then strode out of sight without glancing in my direction.
CHAPTER III.
THE MULLAH'S WILES.
I was awakened again by the negress. "Nice hot tea, honey, with brown
sugar in it and goat's milk."
"How long have I been here?" I demanded.
"Two nights, and I've covered you each night with a linen sheet
stretched on wickerwork, so's you'd not get moonstruck."
"How badly is my head hurt?" I demanded.
"Honey, it's a marvel you're living. And it's lucky for you I've had to
nurse folks, and mind babies, and do what-not else for a living. You'd
a lump on your head as big as my two fists, and you'd have been veal if
you'd lost any more blood. I'd have had you in the house, only fresh
air was what you needed, and there's too many folks come in here. It
was easier to keep you quiet up here on this ledge."
It was clear enough that she was not telling all of the truth. It
followed that the way to learn the truth, supposing that were possible,
would certainly not be to ask too many questions. Brandy had resumed
his barking the moment he heard my voice, and there was a plan in my
mind already half formed. The dog's barking gave me the excuse to ask
about him.
"Sure, honey, he's been well fed. My man--I mean the mullah, doesn't
like a dog around. Moslems are mean about dogs. But I told him the
dog was worth a heap o' money, so he let me tie him up, behind the
house where other folks can't see him. The house is fifty feet below
this ledge. My name? They call me Khadija. I used to be Louise--Louise
Emmet. Drink your tea now; come on, drink it."
She watched me finish the tea. Then:
"What's in that letter, honey?" she asked casually. "He won't let me
read it." But that was a rather too obvious trap.
"You'll have to wait, Louise, until my head doesn't ache so badly," I
answered.
More tea, and a long pause.
"Honey, who is that girl you rave about when you are out of your head?
Winifred? Is that it? Is she anybody in Peshawar? Is she any one that
knows Mr. Grabowski?"
It was a lame way of dragging in Winifred's name and probing me to find
out how much I knew about her. I don't rave in delirium. Drunk, sober,
asleep or out of my head, I can be trusted to name no names and tell no
secrets.
It was my first real clew connecting Winifred with Mir Mahommed, and I
judged her guilty instantly. A sort of craving to protect her from the
consequences, however, was equally instantaneous.
"Yes, I dare say she knows Grabowski. Why?" I answered.
"Oh, just because. My man, I mean the mullah, knows Grabowski."
"I know he does."
* * * * *
"But the mullah can't cross the border just now. The English say he
killed a soldier for his rifle. It isn't true, but they say it's true,
and you might as well argue with that mountain as try to make them
believe different. Honey, if my man--I mean the mullah Mir Mahommed--if
he should help you to the border after you get well, and see you safe
across, could he count on you for something? I mean something that
wasn't money, and wasn't easy, but that 'ud mean a heap to him?"
"I'll buy," I said, "if I can pay the price. I keep promises."
"You look it, honey. But you can't move for days and days yet. Could
you write a letter from the mullah to Mr. Grabowski?"
"Grabowski can read Pushtu and Urdu," I answered. "Why doesn't the
mullah write his own letter?"
"Because it's something important that Mr. Grabowski might not do
unless you ask him. If Mir Mahommed wrote it, who should know it
weren't a forgery?"
"I don't know whether I can write," I said. "Get me a pencil and
paper--or pen and ink."
She picked up the teacup and for awhile she tapped it with the spoon,
as if considering that idea. I sheared across her line of thought,
since it seemed to be leading nowhere.
"Loose the dog, too. Let him come and see me."
She nodded and went away. I heard her loose the dog, and after that
I caught a few words in a man's voice, but I could not hear what was
said, or even be sure that I recognized the voice as Mir Mahommed's,
because Brandy came galloping up the track, and I had hard work to
protect my head from his enthusiastic greeting. It was several minutes
before I could get him to lie down quietly behind me.
Luckily he had on his collar, and I had worked the nameplate loose
before Louise came back with a blue copying ink pencil and about a
dozen sheets of cheap ruled paper, but no envelopes.
"There you are, honey."
I pretended to be unable to control my fingers. When I had made about a
dozen efforts she left me, saying I should try again after awhile; but
I noticed that she stood at the head of the track for several minutes,
watching me, but pretending to watch something down in the ravine.
However friendly she might feel, she was the mullah's woman.
Even after she had gone she came back once very quietly to watch what I
was doing, and I wondered whether she had counted the sheets of paper.
I decided to take no chance on that. She had seen me crunch up and
throw away the top sheet, on which I had scrawled a dozen efforts to
write my name. I could not reach it, but Brandy found it for me in a
minute, so I straightened it out and wrote on that--no more than a long
telegram, the problem being to let the authorities know where I was
without betraying myself as a secret service man if the dog should be
caught and the letter read before it crossed the border.
Whoever finds this, please deliver to Provincial Commissioner
Peshawar. I am a prisoner somewhere in the hills, apparently in a
valley parallel to the Khyber Pass. Head hurt, but recovering. Look
after Brandy for me and don't pay ransom money because if my wits
hold out I think I can escape. FRANK WEST.
I folded the paper and tucked it under the brass nameplate of Brandy's
collar. Then I examined Brandy's feet, which were in good shape.
"Go home," I commanded.
I had to repeat the command three times before he left me, but when
he did go he went in a hurry. There were only two places where he was
likely to go--the hotel, where the manager would recognize him, or
the Wingates' bungalow in the Peshawar cantonment; and the Wingates'
bungalow was the more likely place because Winifred was fond of
spoiling him with too much food. He would be hungry, and he would
probably think of food first. That might be the means of warning
Winifred to cover her tracks. I hoped so. If I had dared, I would have
warned her in the note to escape from India.
* * * * *
Brandy had been gone about half an hour when Louise returned.
Naturally, the first question she asked was where the dog had gone.
"Whistle him," I suggested. "He's somewhere near, I've been asleep."
She whistled and called for several minutes. Then she counted the
notepaper and found the number of sheets correct, so I felt fairly sure
she did not guess what had happened.
"He sure has run away," she said. "I was a fool to loose him. Honey,
you mustn't try to play any tricks with me, because I'm your friend and
friends are skeerce in these hills. Can you write now? Write a letter
to Mr. Grabowski."
Twenty minutes, I suppose, she spent in telling me what I should write,
repeating the gist of it over and over, developing new angles with each
repetition, so that by the time she had finished I thought I understood
who was the brains of that partnership between a magnificent Moslem
savage and a New York negress.
It was also obvious that she would give me no chance to play tricks
with written words that should cause Grabowski to read between the
lines some message from myself. Louise could have written a better
letter than I could; it was my handwriting and my signature that she
needed, and she reenforced persuasion with just enough diplomatic
pressure to reveal how entirely I lay at her mercy.
"I've been good to you, honey. If it weren't for me there'd be some
bloated vultures, and there'd be jackals cracking your bones to get the
marrow out of them. If I should say you'd lied about that letter they
found in your pocket, how long do you think it would be before Ali bin
Adam took charge of you? And how would you like that? And if the ransom
money didn't come, what do you think he would do to you? So you take
that pencil and write to Mr. Grabowski in Peshawar. You oblige me, and
I'll take care of you."
"Dear Grabowski," I wrote, "our mutual acquaintance, Mir Mahommed,
is distressed on account of his papier-maché portrait, so
remarkably well executed by yourself. It appears that its public
exhibition outside your shop door has created such a scandal in
those hills that Mir Mahommed, being a Hajji and a mullah, is not
only embarrassed, but is possibly in danger of his life. In the
circumstances, he considers that his own broad-mindedness in posing
for the portrait should be met by equal broad-mindedness on your
part and he has asked me, his guest, to state his case. He does not
regret the friendship that he has felt toward you from the first,
but he does deeply regret the religious indiscretion into which you
led him; and since political reasons not unconnected with certain
rather recent blood-shed prevent him at this time from paying you
a personal visit, he hopes you will pay to this request of his as
swift attention as he feels sure you would if he could meet you
face to face.
"Rumors, circumstantially based, have come to Mir Mahommed's ears
to the effect that a group of his personal enemies intend to carry
off that papier-maché statue and, before burning it, to subject it
to indignities, accounts of which, deliberately spread throughout
the hills, would make his position unbearable. He is anxious,
however, that you should not destroy it, because then the mullah's
enemies would make cunning use of legend and superstition. People
would be reminded that the magical means of killing any one is to
make his portrait and then to destroy the portrait, after which he
becomes the victim of the first misfortune that presents itself.
There would be considerable competition to be the first to enact
that misfortune, and the mullah would be sniped from behind every
bowlder whenever he should dare to show himself.
"Mir Mahommed dreads the danger to yourself if you should hide
the statue, since fanatically minded men might then invade your
premises and possibly subject you to indignities, or even violence,
thus beginning a feud, the end of which it is impossible to
foresee. An indignity to you, on his account, would obligate the
mullah Mir Mahommed, to wreak vengeance on the perpetrators to the
second generation--a contingency that neither you nor he can look
forward to with any degree of pleasure.
"Much thought has brought the mullah Mir Mahommed to this ultimate
decision: to confess to the assembled tribes that it was contrary
to the prophet's teaching and therefore sinful to permit the statue
to be made. He will display the statue and will himself destroy
it with his own hands, thus, he believes, not only wiping out a
sin, but possibly even increasing his own standing in the public
estimation--something eminently desirable, because the mullah, as
you know, is a man of importance, who, nevertheless, can carry out
no plans unless well regarded.
"That the statue may reach the mullah without the knowledge of
abominable men, whose ill will probably would cause them to waylay
it, he requests that you inclose it in a coffin or, better yet,
wrap it in a shroud such as is used for Moslem funerals; then lay
it on a stretcher and let Feisal and Abdul beni Rahman have it,
they being trustworthy men who will carry it over the border by
night to a certain place where others will be in waiting to protect
them on their journey up the valley. Feisal and Abdul beni Rahman,
both of whom are known to you, will be the bearers of this letter.
"I am requested by the Hajji Mir Mahommed to convey to you a strong
expression of his personal good will.
"Assuring you that the mullah's hospitality is unique, and with
kindest personal regards, I remain,
"Yours sincerely,
"FRANK WEST."
* * * * *
Louise took the letter away and for a long time after that I heard
the distant droning of her voice as she translated it to the mullah,
who interrupted her at frequent intervals and made her repeat whole
sentences. When she had finished they argued, but I could not hear what
they said, only the contralto and bass--the liquid coaxing and the
gruff decision of their voices. Later Louise returned with an envelope.
She made me address the envelope. She sealed it and made me impress my
thumb-print on the wax.
"There, honey," she said. "You've made a friend for yourself."
She took the letter away and returned with hot soup. Uncertain how to
deal with her, but trying to catch her off guard and at least to start
a conversation that might lead somewhere I asked why she did not make
her own escape across the border and return to the United States.
"The authorities would pay your fare home," I suggested. "If not, it
would be easy enough to raise the money by subscription."
"Might have to do that some time," she answered. "But could I find
another mullah in the States? He isn't bad. He isn't half bad. And
I've had my fill of minding white folks' babies and nursing what they
call neurotics. I used to get twenty-five a week because I could
wrastle 'em--and, bu-lieve me, it wasn't easy money. I came to India
in charge of a pair of twins that 'ud drive an angel crazy. They were
kidnaped--maybe it was in the papers--and I went with them jes' to
earn my money. I wasn't going to have it said I'd run and left 'em.
They were ransomed and they went back over the border with their noses
wiped and clean ears. Ransom money was sent for me, too. But the
mullah's wife--he was always a one-wife man--had got caught cheating,
so she'd had a funeral--and the mullah made me offers. I figured all
the chances, honey, best way I knew how. It wasn't always too good, but
there's trouble wherever you go. I'm not sorry I stayed."
Until dark, because there was nothing else to do, I lay and wondered
about Louise and what effect that letter would have on Grabowski, who
was a genius and therefore unpredictable.
* * * * *
It was just growing dark when Louise came back again, and she was
followed this time by the mullah, who carried a cheap imported lantern.
It may give some idea of how weak I was from the injury to my head
when I admit that I had not noticed until then that I was dressed in a
hillman's smock and covered by a yak-hair blanket.
What made me realize it now was that Louise had brought my home-spun
overcoat, as well as an enormous sheepskin one of local make, of the
sort that Pathans wear in winter. Besides holding the lantern, the
mullah was dragging a goat by the forefeet, and he was followed by
a wiry old Afridi, who dragged another goat and carried a pick and
shovel--good ones, bearing army marks and obviously stolen.
Not a word was said to me. The mullah set the lantern down and held
both bleating goats while the old Afridi looked me over and proceeded
to dig what looked remarkably like a grave, in a place where the
weathering face of the cliff had deposited tons of soft dirt. I
observed then that the mullah was wearing his tulwar in its sheath hung
from his girdle, and that he also had an automatic pistol, army model,
loaded, which he examined from time to time, alternately setting and
releasing the safety catch.
I thought the silence ominous. It might have occurred to him that,
having written that letter to Grabowski, I had exhausted my possible
usefulness. But I was puzzled by the goats until the dreadful thought
suggested itself to a fevered imagination that Louise might have
another reason for remaining with the mullah, and another hold on him,
than the one she had mentioned to me.
I had heard of voodoo, but knew nothing about it at first, or even at
secondhand. About all I could remember was that black goats figured in
the voodoo sacrifice, and that some one had told me that human murder
formed part of the secret ritual. Those goats were black.
Supposing that the mullah had decided to remove me from the scene
as an unprofitable encumbrance, the proceeding might not be exactly
ethical as judged by altruistic standards, but there would be nothing
surprising about it, in a land of warlike savages, except for one
important fact: I had eaten the mullah's salt. Therefore, by a custom
of hills that is more sacred and more rigidly observed than any law of
property or tenet of religion, my life was on his head and he was even
obligated to protect me at the risk of his own life.
But who else in the hills had a negress wife? And why had she remained
in such a comfortless and cruel land, when, according to her own
admission, ransom money had been offered to her? History is full of
tales of women from a strange land who have seduced and perverted their
captors.
I knew I was running a temperature, but, nevertheless, I did not think,
and I do not now think it was delirium that suggested to me how the
mullah Mir Mahommed's conscience might have been corrupted by Louise's
voodoo teaching. I could imagine her having persuaded him that murder,
if performed with the proper ritual, was no sin.
* * * * *
The digging of the grave was easy, especially as it was made quite
shallow. Then the mullah glanced at me and drew his tulwar. Louise
looked away, and the old Afridi seized the bleating goats, which he
held by the horns.
The mullah stepped behind me, where I could not see him, and I thought
that was possibly meant to be a considerate act, although I would have
preferred to look him in the eyes.
I held my breath then. I could feel him raising himself on tiptoe. It
was as if I had eyes in the back of my head that saw him raise the
tulwar and poise it a moment, measuring the distance with his eye; and
I remember wondering whether he meant to split my head in halves, since
he obviously could not sever my neck at that angle. I heard him draw
his breath with a sharp, hissing intake, and I involuntarily shut my
eyes.
* * * * *
When I had opened my eyes again, his tulwar had slain the goats, not me.
Louise dragged up the tentlike wickerwork affair that she had used to
keep a sheet spread over me each night. But the sheet, which was of
unbleached cotton, she spread on the ground, and on the sheet the old
Afridi laid the goats' headless carcasses. Louise picked up the heads
and laid them on my overcoat, rolling them in it until the lining was
filthy with blood. Then she tossed the heads on to the sheet, which the
mullah and the old Afridi gathered by the four corners and dumped in
the shallow trench.
Both of them knelt by the trench then and went to a great deal of
trouble to arrange the carcasses, Louise looking on and criticizing,
bringing them stones from time to time to add to the arrangement.
She was very difficult to please and very cross with the old Afridi,
making him do his work over and over again; but I got no hint of what
she was seeking to accomplish until at last she said to him in Pushtu:
"Allah! Suppose they dig to make sure? Who but an idiot would suppose
that was a dead man's body? Get out of the way and let me do it."
She was swift. I could not judge her handiwork because from where I
lay I could not see over the edge of the grave, but she looked pleased
with herself and the mullah nodded approval. The old Afridi chuckled.
"It will deceive the spirits," he said, "who come after dead men's
souls! _Mashallah_, what a corpse! And lo, the life blood on the
winding-sheet!"
"Cover it up!" Louise commanded, and the old Afridi shoveled in the
earth, singing a song to himself, perhaps to keep the spirits of the
dead from coming too soon to be disillusioned.
Then Louise set the wickerwork tent beside me, but not over me, and
spread my good overcoat on it, so that it hung down facing the ravine.
"If the fools should shoot some holes in it, so much the better," she
said to the mullah, who nodded gravely.
When the grave was filled and loosely packed, Louise set down the
lighted lantern near the head of the wickerwork tent. The old Afridi
brought a rough but rather comfortable stretcher, on which he and the
mullah laid me, covering me carefully with Afghan shawls, on top of
which Louise spread the big sheepskin overcoat.
They covered me head and all, so I could see nothing, but I felt myself
being carried feet first down the track that led to the ledge below,
where I supposed the mullah's house stood. It was almost pitch dark by
that time.
At the foot of the track they set the stretcher on the ground, and I
managed to raise the shawls to make a hole to breathe and look through,
but I could only vaguely see the outlines of a stone wall that looked
as if it might be the side of a typical hillman's dwelling, loopholed
and built like a fortress, with a flat roof and a breast-high bulwark.
But I could see three lanterns and about a dozen men, who were
conversing in low tones. Behind the men I could make out the shadowy
shapes of loaded mules, with the British government broad-arrow brand
displayed clearly by the lantern light on the rump of one of them in
proof that it was stolen.
I heard two or three men go into the house and noisily bar the door
from the inside. Then Louise came and raised a corner of my coverings:
"Are you all right, honey? Lie still."
* * * * *
There was silence after that for I dare say half an hour--silence and
utter darkness, broken only by the restless stamping of the mules. When
I peered out there was no more lantern light, and I could hardly hear
the breathing of the men who sat like vultures all around me.
At the end of half an hour or so somebody spoke--only two words in
a low voice, but it was as startling as a whip-crack because of the
long silence. Then, exactly like the whip-crack, came the report of
a modern rifle, echoes of it rattling like a ragged volley from crag
to crag. The echoes were so loud and sharply defined that it was next
to impossible to tell them from actual rifle shots, until three more
shots were fired, and for a minute the whole ravine became crowded with
deafening noise as if a pitched battle were raging.
Then three shots spat from Mir Mahommed's roof. For awhile after that
there was silence. Somebody climbed the track to the ledge where I had
lain. I heard him return and say the lighted lantern left there had
been smashed by a bullet.
"Good shooting!" That was Mir Mahommed's voice. "Praise Allah, there is
no moon. Let us go now."
Four men raised my stretcher on their shoulders. Four others--two ahead
and two following--attended to lend a hand and to spell the first four.
I heard Louise complaining that a mule's saddle was not tightly enough
girthed. There was a little kicking and a lot of heavy breathing, but
no confusion; some one with a will and a definite objective was in
charge of things. We started up-hill just as two more rifle shots rang
out of the ravine--shots that were not answered from the mullah's roof.
I had no sense of direction, and no notion what the fight meant--for
it was a fight, undoubtedly. I strained my ears to listen for pursuit,
but all I heard was the voice of Mir Mahommed answering some one's
remonstrance:
"By Allah who made tigers! Did God give men audacity in order that they
should sit on their hunkers and beg bread? I know the way I take!"
CHAPTER IV.
THE MOUNTAIN CAVERN.
It was probably after midnight when we halted, after climbing like
wild goats along tracks where the men who carried me were often forced
to stand on each other's shoulders in order to reach a higher level
without spilling their burden.
There was an enormous amount of swearing, but no comment aimed at me,
which was puzzling, since I could imagine no reason why they should not
resent having to go to all that trouble.
How the mules contrived to scramble along that track I don't know,
unless mules have unseen wings; but I thought I heard them being lifted
now and then, and one man was rather badly hurt by a mule's hoof
reaching for a foothold.
Beyond question, for three or more hours the track led upward, although
there were times when we made precipitous descents to reach the flank
of some other mountain on the far side of a ravine.
We halted up among the stars--or that was the sensation--and Mir
Mahommed ordered the mules off-loaded to give them a chance to roll and
rest themselves. One mule rolled himself over the edge of the cliff,
and, judging by the length of time that passed before I heard him thump
in the valley below, he must have fallen two or three thousand feet.
After that Mir Mahommed posted a man with a stick to make the other
mules stay on their feet, and there was some rather noisy argument as
to who should carry the lost mule's burden.
Louise came and gave me water from a British army flask.
"Where are we going?" I asked her.
"Never you mind."
She left me abruptly. But she seemed not to mind my listening, and
when, after a long wait, a breathless messenger overtook us, she and
Mir Mahommed received him within a yard of where I lay. The rest of the
party, who appeared to be almost all Pathans, watched them like a row
of vultures perched on a ridge of rock out of ear-shot.
"Come? By the Prophet's beard, they came!" exclaimed the messenger. I
peered out from under my blankets and recognized the old Afridi who had
dug the grave. "Ismail, Suliman and Ali bin Adam came, and with them
three others, clambering up the face of the cliff to avoid being shot
from the roof. For, as your honor knows, the roof of the house commands
the pathway leading upward from the valley. _Wallah_, that was a hard
climb, and I say, by God, they grunted like pigs.
"I lay in the cleft of the rock above the ledge, where I could see them
as their heads came rising one after another. _Wallah!_ One shove and I
could have sent all six of them down headlong. Why not?"
"Because I ordered not," said Mir Mahommed. "There would have been
none to tell the tale. It is the tale we need. How shall I save this
prisoner alive unless men learn he is already dead? Speak on."
"They had a lantern. Knowing they could not be seen from the roof of
the house, they made a light. And they were noisy because they knew
they could defend the narrow pathway that leads from the house to that
ledge. Offspring of evil mothers! Filth-eating dogs! They spoke of
their opinion of their betters! Nevertheless, I drew no trigger and my
steel stayed in the sheath. _Mashallah!_ They were fooled as are the
cuckolds! They behold the overcoat--stick their fingers through two
bullet holes--feel and consider it. 'Much blood!' they utter. 'Could a
man bleed thus and live?' And then one of them, Ali it was, he of the
jackal's manner of walking--sniffing for loot, I doubt not, looking for
a beggar's pickings in the place where men have been--Ali stumbles on
the fresh-filled grave. '_Wallah!_ says he. 'They were swift! They have
buried him!' La, la, la! I nearly fell from the ledge, such laughter
struggled in me."
* * * * *
"Did they open the grave?" asked Mir Mahommed eagerly.
"Verily they did, like jackals! _Khek-khek!_ It was hard work digging
with fingers! Ali began with his knife, but the others were chary of
breaking blades. They worked all in a row until Ali struck his knife
into a man's hand--Suliman's it was. Suliman smote him in the mouth,
and there was a good squabble.
"I hoped for a fight to the death, but Ali bin Adam agreed to pay
Suliman three ewes and their lambs. Then the others dug, Ali and
Suliman watching, and Suliman demanding half of Ali's turban to bind up
the wound; but Ali would only yield a quarter of it.
"Presently their hands touched the shroud and what lay under it, and
one of them drew forth the good green jacket that was laid over the
shroud. They put the jacket back, whereat Ali objected, calling them
fools; but Suliman said: 'Nay, nay! We will rob no graves. By sun, moon
and stars, we are neither worms nor women.' Therefore they mocked Ali,
and they made him put all the earth back in the grave, stamping it flat
with his feet. Whereat Suliman said to him: 'Stamp well, Ali! Make a
manlike stamping! Was it not he in the grave who smote thee on the
jaw?' Heh-heh! Ali took in vain the name of God and all His angels."
"Then what?" demanded Mir Mahommed.
"Suliman spoke. 'It is good,' said Suliman. 'It was doubtless my bullet
that slew this foreigner. None other could have done such shooting in a
bad light.' He cut a new notch in his rifle butt.
"'It is good,' Suliman said. 'It is Allah's doing. Truly it is Allah's
doing. Now that mullah has no witness, who might otherwise have sworn
to what is written in the letter. Now if the mullah should boast we
can call him a liar without fear of being gain-said except by the
she-black--and what fool would believe a woman?
"'It is a real seal, doubtless, but the writing within is a lie.
Moreover, it was we who made the dead man prisoner, and we can say
we forced him to read that letter to us, and there was no word in it
concerning the mullah Mir Mahommed. It will be our three words against
his; and all men know he is a liar, Hajji though he is a mouther
though he is of the words of the Prophet of God.
"'But if, on the other hand, by chance he did tell truth and the letter
foretold his death, we can give him the lie nevertheless. He shall not
be a saint, and there will be no rising that shall bring an army out of
India to burn our villages and make us surrender all the loot we have
stolen.'"
Mir Mahommed was impassive as the Afridi went on:
"Whereat Ali spoke up, saying: '_Wallah!_ But he has the letter. One
might find it who can read. What then?' To which Ismail made answer:
'He who works the will of God earns Paradise, and the soul of a Hajji
comes out through a hole in the heart as readily as any man's. If we
slay him we can steal the letter and destroy it. Then let dogs defile
his grave.'"
Mir Mahommed muttered in his beard. Louise began to speak to him,
but he shut her up savagely, much as an old wolf snarls and snaps at
an interfering young one. It was clear that he had not grown used to
a Western woman's way of taking the initiative in public, however
much he might privately depend on her. It seemed also clear that he
had actually planned a rising, and that he was worried by Ismail's
opposition.
"Allah! Dogs shall eat Ismail's heart!" he said after awhile. "He
shall have no grave. His body shall be the dung of dogs! But tell what
happened."
* * * * *
"There was much talk," said the old Afridi. "They spied and they spoke
with the men on the roof. Thus they learned that your honor had gone,
although none told whither. But Ismail said, since there were mules it
must be easy to follow that trail, to which all assented, and presently
they agreed to follow and to shoot your honor, whichever one should see
you first.
"But there was much argument as to the spoil, and above all as to who
should have this woman, they finally agreeing that the shooter of
the shot should have the first choice, whereafter the others should
choose in turn by lot. But as to the letter, it was agreed it shall be
burned, no matter who shall find it. Then they were afraid to pass the
house because it was known to them that there are men on the roof with
rifles; so they agreed to descend by the face of the cliff and to make
a circuit. And it is true that the dogs may eat Ismail's heart."
"How so?" demanded Mir Mahommed.
"Because, as they descended by the cliff face, clinging with their
hands, your servant rolled a rock--a good rock, bigger than the heads
of three men. By the will of God it struck Ismail's fingers, so that he
let go; and as he fell he clutched another--nay, I know not the other's
name, but it was neither Suliman nor Ali. They two fell, clinging to
each other. _Khek-khek!_ There was only starlight. They were like a
shadow falling. So go such men's souls into the pit to burn forever."
"Praise be to the Prophet. It is God's will," said Mir Mahommed.
"Then I made haste hither to bring warning, because those sons of evil
mothers are in hot pursuit."
Again Louise began to volunteer advice. Again the mullah cursed her
into silence. It was not so certain to me now as it had been that
Louise was all the brains of that uncommon partnership. The mullah
showed decision; he summoned his men around him, commanded silence.
He selected four and flattered them in the name of salt that they had
eaten and the nine-and-ninety names of God. He named them rear-guard
and he took possession of their ammunition.
"It is written that ye shall not be tempted more than ye can bear,"
he told them, "and ye will be sorely tempted to shoot those fools who
follow, but it is Allah's will that they shall live awhile yet, to be
yet more foolish. And it is my will that for each two cartridges that
ye leave in my keeping ye shall have three when daylight comes and
ye have drawn those fools into the trap that I shall set. So keep ye
between them and me. _Insh'allah_, your great-grandsons shall be proud
of this night's work."
Then he ordered the mules reloaded and the dead mule's load distributed
among so many men that it was not much burden for them. I had counted
twenty men, but there were others close ahead of us.
Soon we were off again, up in the wind and the starlight where the
ragged shoulders of the hills were like a phantom sea, storm-tortured,
frozen in the act of plunging. Great white areas of quartz suggested
frozen foam. The utter blackness of the caverns and deep ravines was
noisy with the hollow moaning of the wind, and when a mule's foot
struck a loose stone there were seconds that seemed like minutes before
the exploding, lonely echoes told of its arrival in the depths. I was
well covered, but the wind went through the sheepskin coat and wool
shawls like a knife. It was like hot-house comfort to descend into the
lee of a long-hacked ridge.
* * * * *
I could see the Dipper and the North Star, so I knew we were heading
roughly southward toward the border line, but we were a long way from
the border, judging by the height and conformation of the hills, and
I knew it would be hopeless to try to escape, even supposing I should
wish to.
Naturally, I would not leave before learning everything that possibly
could be discovered about the mullah's plans. I knew by the way my wits
were functioning that I was recovering very swiftly from the injury
to my head, which ached now without that feeling of congestion that
prohibits thought. It seemed to be the wisest strategy, for the present
at all events, not to let Louise or any one else know that.
I imagined Brandy running down the pass, foot weary, hiding from men,
avoiding beasts of prey, very likely lame from sharp stones, thirsty,
but obsessed by the driving impulse to obey the command to go home.
I wondered who would recognize him first and be the first to read my
message.
Much might depend on the hour of his arrival in Peshawar. If he should
arrive after dark when there were not many people about, he might go
hunting from house to house in search of some one who would feed him.
In that case he might go to the Wingates' first, where Winifred had
often over-fed him.
She had what was almost an obsession for feeding animals--a failing
that irritated Colonel Wingate, who disliked having crows and stray
dogs haunting the place. If Winifred should be the first to read my
letter, what would she do about it? Say nothing? Bolt away from India?
I hoped so. More than all else I hoped I might not chance on written
proof that she was a Russian spy.
She was a girl who strangely stirred emotion. Convict her of
plotting to stir savage hillmen, and what would happen to her? And
Grabowski--what would he do when he received that longer letter? There
was plenty of food for speculation.
Shortly before daylight, at that raw hour when the stars are paling
and even the wind seems lonely, we descended by a perilous, winding
path of loose rock to a ledge that overhung a deep ravine, in which a
watercourse wound amid rounded bowlders.
There was firewood heaped in a cave, whose narrow mouth was blocked
with stones, and within a hundred feet of that cave, around a spur of
the cliff, we reached a cavern, narrow-mouthed, but widening as we
entered until it opened, beyond a gap in a granite dyke, into a place
of echoes, whose dimensions I could not guess even after Mir Mahommed's
men had lighted torches and Louise had set light to a great stack of
dry wood that blazed with gold and crimson mystery amid a wilderness of
shadow.
Though the sparks leaped upward I could see no roof. I heard the mules
go walking off in search of comfort and they seemed to walk until the
sound of their hoofs on rock was lost in an echoing distance.
Louise ordered one of the men to bring a mule pack. He did not have far
to go for it; there was a gap in a wall through which the mules had
vanished, thus producing the effect of sound dissolving into endless
distance. From the pack Louise produced pots, pans, coffee, of all
wonders, sugar and evaporated milk. It might have been the Taj Mahal
Hotel! She cooked cakes at a smaller fire that one of the men lit and
tended for her, and the coffee that she made smelled better than the
incense that salutes the noses of the saints in Paradise. I wish them
no less. Hell is probably a place where coffee and tobacco are not.
Lord, how I craved a cigarette!
* * * * *
Then business began--swift, resolute, and masterfully managed. I sat up
to watch, setting my back against one of the loads without assistance,
while Louise began to change the bandage on my head.
Mir Mahommed stripped himself of all his outer clothing, seized a sack
of flour, punched it into shape, demanded hay, which one of the men
brought from where the mules were stabled, and in a very short time
had constructed a dummy, clothed in his own turban and sheepskin coat,
that from the rear resembled him well enough. For a moment he stood
admiring his handiwork with firelight crimsoning the naked skin of his
magnificent arms and legs. He was pleased. He was proud. Grabowski was
not the only artist. However, he grew conscious of the prejudices of
his men.
"By the teeth of the Prophet of God," he remarked, "whoever should say
that _that_ was the likeness of a man would be a blasphemer with sin
in his own eye--is it not so? Is there a face? Nay. Is a beard hay? It
is written we shall not make images in human likeness. As Allah is our
witness, have we? I say no! But I say also, God's ways are wonderful!
If any blasphemer should say to himself that this thing is an image of
me, is sin not in him? Shall he not die? Shall not he who slays that
man do Allah's will and earn everlasting life?"
He took the dummy in his arms and set it outside the cavern just
as dawn was creeping down the valley walls and the fleeing shadows
were leaving the weathered limestone colored with all the hues in
the universe. He tied a string to it. He made the dummy sit, facing
eastward, with its back toward the track by which we came, exactly as
he himself would have sat in meditation after finishing his morning
prayer.
[Illustration: _He set up the dummy, facing eastward in the mouth of
the cave._]
Then he returned into the cavern with the string in his hand, and he
and all his men washed themselves from a gourd that they passed from
one to another before kneeling toward Mecca. I watched Louise, who
knelt apart from them, being a woman and not qualified to pray with
men. She went through all the motions they did, but I noticed her eyes
were open and all the while watching the dummy outside the cavern.
Prayer had hardly ceased when one of Mir Mahommed's scouts came running
at top speed with his rifle in his right hand and the end of his turban
over his mouth.
"Allah! I lay long signaling--I threw three pebbles--I swore it was Mir
Mahommed on the ledge! _Huzoor_, they come. They are less than a long
shot distance!"
"Let them draw near," Mir Mahommed ordered. "Let them think they
slay me. Thereafter, one of them must reach home to tell his tale.
_Insh'allah_, that one should be Ali bin Adam, because he has no rifle.
Ye may draw lots for the others' rifles. Here are cartridges, but
remember: if Ali bin Adam, or one other, is not left living to reach
home and to swear he saw me shot, ye shall answer to me for it. Make
haste." But in spite of the haste he counted the cartridges carefully,
three for each man, selecting those that had the points filed off the
bullets to make them cause mortal wounds.
The man ran, and for awhile after that there was breathless silence,
every minute causing the dummy to seem less human as the sunlight in
the valley grew stronger. However, we were looking at it sidewise; it
was possible that from the rear it looked as lifelike as ever, although
its total lack of movement was likely to undeceive any one drawing a
sight on it long enough to make sure of his aim from a distance.
* * * * *
I grew as excited as if the mullah's plans were mine; it was like
watching a decoy and waiting for the ducks at daylight. The Pathans sat
like statues, breathing invisibly. Louise was the only one who appeared
unconcerned, smiling a little and crooning a song to herself while she
dumped the coffee grounds into the fire and cleaned the pot with ashes.
Suddenly three rifle shots spat from a crag about two hundred yards
away and the whole ravine became alive with stuttering echoes. Mir
Mahommed jerked the string, and the dummy tumbled on its side toward
the cavern entrance.
Five shots at intervals answered the three and a yell of triumph burst
among the echoes announcing that Mir Mahommed's men had got their
quarry. Somebody shouted a stream of words in Pushtu, but the echoes
made it unintelligible.
Mir Mahommed took no chances; he controlled his men as ably as a
seasoned stage director, and there was a very well-acted pantomime
of rushing out and being overwhelmed with consternation, anger,
indecision, and all the wild emotions a Pathan can feel. Then they
picked up the dummy and carried it into the cavern, where they stripped
it so that Mir Mahommed could resume his clothing.
Then came Mir Mahommed's four scouts. They bore three rifles and the
greater part of the clothing of three men.
"_Wallah!_ Suliman died thus, kicking the back of his head with his
heels! I broke his backbone with the first shot!"
"How many got away?" demanded Mir Mahommed.
"Only Ali, and he was shot to hurry him! He ran. I winged him in the
arm--a good shot, that will give him agony and cause men to believe him
when he says there was a fight. Who would believe Ali bin Adam unless
he had proof?"
"And the bodies of the others?"
"Into the ravine! The kites went down after them. Allah! When I looked
all three were black with birds already, and I could see three jackals
scampering to the feast."
CHAPTER V.
AMBUSH.
I was left all alone with Louise after that. I suppose Mir Mahommed
thought me too seriously ill to be a possible correspondent in one
of those rifle divorce suits that so often awake the echoes of the
Northwest ravines.
He gave her his automatic pistol, but without word, glance or gesture
that might indicate uneasiness regarding me. Then he strode out with
his whole gang following and for awhile I could hear their laughter as
they dropped to the floor of the ravine, by a track that would have
made goats hesitate, and clambered less swiftly up the farther side. It
was an hour before their voices vanished in the distance.
All that Louise had to do was to water the mules and feed them, but
that was not exactly a sinecure because she had to carry water in a
bucket from a spring three hundred yards away. She told me she had
to swing herself down to the spring by a rope and that it was very
difficult to swing up again without spilling all the water.
By the time she had made six trips and watered the last mule she was
tired out and glad to come and sit beside the fire, where she produced
a needle and thread and began sewing. She was as full of curiosity as I
was, but we were both on our guard and it was a long time before either
of us dared to try to sound the other's confidence.
"You engaged to marry that girl in Peshawar, honey?" she asked after
a long silence, and it seemed to me the easiest way to reach her
confidence would be to pretend to yield mine and to follow the line of
least resistance to suspicion by posing as Winifred Orloff's lover,
enthusiastic, but so far unsuccessful. Enthusiasm always arouses
sympathy, and sympathy is very seldom quite on guard. So I wove a
rather woebegone romance and painted Winifred in glowing colors.
"I dare say," I said at last, "she'd be a fool to marry me. She has too
many better chances."
"It pays sometimes to be a fool, honey," Louise answered. "Once I
called myself a fool to stay up here with Mir Mahommed. But I keep on
staying."
"Do you love him?" I asked.
"That depends on what you mean by love him. He's wonderful. He don't
make up for folks and things I miss. Sometimes I've cried right out
loud for some one I could gossip with, if it was only poor white trash.
Hill-women talk about nothing but theft and adultery. They live like
pigs, and I was used to comfort. But Mir Mahommed has something that no
other man has who ever came my way. He's ruthless, and he has power;
and he isn't ignorant. There wasn't a great deal that I could teach
him, although he doesn't always know the names of things. He knows
psychology. I thought once I could dominate him and have my own way,
but I can't. And you can't help admiring a man who can make you do the
way he says and make you like it."
"How do you suppose it's going to pay you in the end?" I asked her.
For awhile she went on sewing, pondering whether to tell me or not. At
last she spoke up.
* * * * *
"No harm in telling you, honey. You won't be let get away from here
until the 'possum's cooked. If you was to try to escape you'd just be
pitched over a precipice. Besides, I reckon you've seen enough already
to realize that Mir Mahommed means to start a holy war. He means to
close this border tight against all foreigners and unite the tribes so
they'll become powerful. Then he'll make the British pay him a yearly
subsidy to keep the border quiet; and maybe he'll draw another subsidy
from the Amir of Afghanistan; and perhaps another from the Russians, to
teach communism. He don't care what he teaches so long as he has power.
He says: 'No man who hasn't power may look God in the face.' But you
can't have power, honey, while you're living--not nowadays. Too many
people interfering and wanting a slice of the pie. It's dead men that
can't be answered back. If you deny the sayings of a saint you're an
outlaw, and that's all about it. Look at the Prophet. Anybody answer
_him_ back? Not hereabouts. So Mir Mahommed means to have a funeral and
be a dead saint."
"Fine," I said, "but where do you come in?"
"Fifty-fifty," she answered. "I'll be his mouthpiece. He'll appear to
me and tell me what to say--and I'll say it--and if they say no, he'll
do a miracle, and show himself, and vanish and make voices cry out
down the valleys in the night. By and by he'll shave his beard and be
somebody else--a warrior commissioned by the Prophet; and he'll come
and marry me and we'll rule the country--rule it good. And if any one
claims to recognize him, they can open his grave, can't they? and see
that image lying there that Mr. Grabowski made. And a man can't be dead
and living at the same time, so they'll know he must be some one else.
Oh, he's far-seeing; when he took me he named me Khadija and that's the
name of the Prophet's mother; it'll help when it comes to being the
mouthpiece of a dead saint. These folks don't believe in reincarnation,
but they believe in miracles and they're crazy about dead saints. Do
you know why you're not dead, honey? Mir Mahommed will need some one
later on whom he can send to Peshawar to make terms with the British."
Louise sewed away steadily, and I pondered the mullah's plan--no worse
a plan and no more mad than those of Napoleon and Alexander the Great.
Abdurrahman of Afghanistan was another who had started from nothing
and won an empire. It was only a question of whether or not the mullah
had genius in him to overcome the elements of failure that the plan
contained.
"What fault do you find with the scheme?" I asked Louise after awhile.
"Honey, I'm lonely. I do miss talking with my equals."
"Intellectual equals?"
"Yes. One reason why I've stayed on here was that I'm colored and
nobody raises eyebrows when I talk high hat. Colored nursemaids aren't
supposed to know much more than how to blow a baby's nose. The Pathan
women think I'm wonderful. They love me, and I like them as if they
were apes and parrots, only not so clean. I don't know what I wouldn't
give for just one woman who thought herself better than me, so I could
prove she wasn't. The more I hated her and fought her, the better I'd
love her."
* * * * *
Was she hoping to trap Winifred and to force her to fly to the hills
for safety? A wild thought, but it was possible. However, it is never
wise to seem too interested in what you really want to know.
"Don't too many people know that the mullah intends to bury that image
instead of himself?" I asked her. "Suppose one or two men turn disloyal
and tell the tribesmen what a trick has been played on them?"
"Honey, nothing like that matters in a land where nobody tells the
truth and nobody believes what anybody says. All a plan needs to do is
pay dividends. People believe what they want to believe, and they want
to believe what's profitable, especially if it's awkward for somebody
else. All Mir Mahommed needs is to be successful at the start. One
quick victory and in ten days he'll have enough men at his heels to
take Peshawar."
"You don't mind the idea of massacre?"
"Who does, honey? Only the ones who get their throats slit and their
bellies ripped. They, and the ones who lose money by it."
We talked until I fell asleep, and I slept until she awoke me, hungry
for the soup she had been cooking. Judging by the sunlight in the mouth
of the cavern it was late afternoon. Not long after that a runner came
from Mir Mahommed, very tired and angry at having been sent.
He flung himself down on a pile of blankets and demanded food as
savagely as if Louise had been his own wife, and he ate greedily and
cleaned his beard before giving her any information. When he did speak
he was careful not to let me overhear him, and after delivering his
message he strode outside to the ledge and sat there, rifle on knees,
chanting to himself long passages from the Koran that he had by heart.
His message produced a surprising effect on Louise, who was not so dark
but that color could come to her face. Her eyes brightened and she put
away her sewing. She appeared thoroughly excited and half frightened,
but she controlled herself, although for several minutes she walked
about the cavern, picking up things and setting them down again, as if
she could not make up her mind whether to do anything or nothing. At
last she stood in front of me with a smile on her handsome lips.
"Honey, what did you say was the name of that girl who doesn't love
you?"
"Winifred Orloff."
She nodded. "Did it ever occur to you, honey, that the way to make a
woman love you is to have her by the short hair?"
With that she walked away and left me wondering. It needs very little
to start imagination conjuring improbabilities when one is a prisoner
and has no notion what his friends are doing. Louise began sweeping
around the fire with a broom made of some kind of stiff grass, and I
watched for an opportunity to walk outside, where I might be able to
persuade that surly messenger to tell so many lies that I could guess
some portion of the truth.
Louise, however, seemed to guess my intention. She asked me to try to
stand, coming behind and taking me by the shoulders. I pretended to
be more weak than I was. She put her arm around me and, gathering my
blankets and the overcoat, led me to the rear of the cavern, where a
ragged gap loomed in the wall and I could smell the mules in darkness
on the far side.
Leaning on her heavily and stumbling as we walked, I contrived to steal
her automatic pistol, although I half doubted the wisdom of doing it.
If she should miss the pistol, or if the mullah should return and ask
her for it, the situation might become suddenly desperate.
The life of a secret service man is less important than his news, but
it is worthless unless he can get through with his news. The pistol
might help or prevent, there was no telling which.
Louise led through the gap into Cimmerian darkness, where she spread my
blankets on the mules' hay. I lay on the blankets, and she covered me.
"Lie there, honey. Shout and I'll come, but don't you try to move. I'll
bring tea by and by."
* * * * *
Her mood had completely changed. I had to change mine, too. Questions
might have stirred suspicion and have made her watch me too carefully.
For awhile after she left me I entertained the odd notion that perhaps
she was having a love affair with that surly Pathan messenger, but the
thought was too silly to remain long even in an injured head. Besides,
I could hear the great ruffian saying his prayers, and I could hear her
walking about the cavern rearranging loads and piles of blankets.
But I could see absolutely nothing except a vague zone of light on
a wall facing the gap that led into the other cavern, my bed being
against the dividing wall, apparently about twenty feet away from the
nearest mule.
However, now that I could rest again, and, so to speak, feel myself
over, I realized that that last effort had done more to restore my
strength than almost anything else could have done. It had started
things going again; nerves that had lain numb reacted, and I discovered
that every muscle obeyed orders.
I got out of bed and tested the reactions. There was no doubt of it,
I was recovering swiftly and this time my head did not reel as it had
done; probably by morning I would be able to walk and take care of
myself, provided in the meanwhile I kept thought concentrated on the
business of getting well. But that was a secret that I did not propose
to reveal to Louise, so I crawled back again under the blankets.
She heard me and came to see what I was doing. I said I was in pain and
feeling miserably weak. She brought tea and a lantern, but she took the
lantern out with her when the tea was finished, leaving me in deeper
darkness than ever as the sun went down. However, she was satisfied
that there was no risk of my escaping that night.
After awhile she lit a very large fire in the cavern, and I heard the
Pathan messenger complaining blasphemously as he dumped load after load
of firewood on the floor. He appeared obedient and yet he swore at her
as if she were his slave, she taking not the slightest notice of his
remarks.
The fire cast a faint glow on the rock wall facing me and now and then
I could see her shadow as she busied herself with pots and pans. It
occurred to me that there were too many pans and too much cooking for
supper for just us three. I crept out of bed again to look, but just at
that moment she sent the Pathan to feed the mules, so I had to scramble
back again.
The Pathan made many trips, since he had to bring water also, cursing
the religion and the mother of the bucket as he groped in darkness,
then cursing the livers and lights of the whimpering mules, whom Allah
had made so feckless that they could not hang by their tails from the
ledge and suck their pap like devils at the breast of earth. He was a
poet after his own fashion, mixing metaphor a little, but emphatically
pouring out gorgeous emotion and delighting in words strung artfully on
strings of vehemence.
"May Allah give you a long life in which to enjoy your humor," I
remarked as he prophesied that thirty thousand she-dogs should be born
in the bucket he carried--she-dogs that should guzzle unspeakable filth
and then defile the grave of the man who invented buckets and of all
infidels who bred mules. He set the bucket down. My voice in the dark
had startled him.
"A she-black and a he-white!" he remarked after a moment. "Hey-yah,
such an omen! If God wills, we shall soon see crows--kites--vultures
unable to fly for the weight of the livers of unbelievers! Hey-yah, but
the ways of God are wonderful!"
He groped his way to water the last mule. When he had thrown down some
hay for the animal he walked out, saying not another word to me.
* * * * *
Louise had heard me talking, and before many minutes passed she peered
through the gap in the wall, and I could see her head and shoulders
against the leaping firelight. I pretended to be asleep. Not quite
satisfied, she tiptoed to the bedside.
When she had gone again I put on the overcoat and sat leaning against
the wall so close to the gap that I could hear whatever happened and
could even see, if I was careful, my end of the cavern being in deep
black shadow.
I remember I had a number of crazy notions while I sat there; one
was that I might gallop away on a mule; I had a constantly repeated
mental picture of myself careering on a bareback mule across that
fantastically beautiful cavern, in which the crimson fire kept splendid
shadows leaping on the walls. But the cavern entrance, on the far side
of the fire, was coal-black and imagination refused to look beyond it.
It was probably three hours after sunset when Mir Mahommed strode into
the cavern, looking spectral because his black beard blended with the
night behind him, but the firelight gleamed on his eyes and nose. There
were six men with him, of whom two appeared to be prisoners, judging
by the way they were herded by the others into a corner where a spur
of rock projected between them and me. I only caught a glimpse of them
before they were shut off by the spur from my line of vision, and even
that glimpse was confused by the firelight and flickering shadow and by
the movement of the other men between them and the fire.
Louise took very little notice of them, busying herself with cooking
while Mir Mahommed sat beside her and talked in such low tones that all
I could hear was the other men's voices. They were quarreling as to who
should carry more wood from the small cave farther along the ledge, and
they almost came to blows about it before Mir Mahommed rose and slapped
his rifle-butt.
In the name of Allah, who made tigers, he ordered all of them to fetch
wood. They did not hesitate. They went for wood as if it were pure
gold, free for the asking. Something had happened. Failure on Mir
Mahommed's part would not have produced that state of mind. Defeat, in
lands where discipline has become traditional, may sometimes strengthen
loyalty, particularly if a captain has been splendid in retreat. But
defeat breeds insolence in the hills of the Northwest frontier, where
he may keep--and only he may keep--who can. Mir Mahommed had returned
from victory of some kind.
Louise went over to the prisoners. I saw her carry tea to them, and
then food, after she had waited on Mir Mahommed; something in her
manner suggested that the prisoners were not hillmen, and not persons
of low rank in her estimation. I felt excitement that made the blood
surge to my aching head and the pain was almost intolerable by the time
when Louise took away the prisoners' plates to clean them in the ashes.
Mir Mahommed leaned forward and spoke to the prisoners in a loud voice
that was prevented from reaching me distinctly by the noise of the
falling wood that his four men carried in and tossed in a heap on the
floor. Gruffly he commanded them to bring more wood, and they departed.
I held my breath, afraid that the singing of blood in my ears would
prevent me from hearing something important--afraid that the swimming
blood behind my eyes would prevent me from seeing. What I did see, I
did not believe for a moment. From behind the spur of rock strode forth
none other than Grabowski! He was perfectly calm. He turned and spoke
in low tones to his fellow-prisoner, whom I still could not see because
of the spur between us.
* * * * *
He appeared to be unharmed. The firelight made him even better-looking
than he is. He was wearing a tweed shooting jacket that exaggerated the
athletic lines of his shoulders and loins. His mustache, almost golden
and very faintly suggestive of a tomcat's whiskers, bristled with the
usual indifference to anything except his own interpretation of events.
His heavy eyebrows threw the dark eyes in shadow, making them appear
more mystically knowing and amused than usual. He was wearing a
Scotchman's tam-o'-shanter that gave him an air of recklessness,
modified, however, by the carriage of neck and shoulders, which were
nothing if not determined and deliberate. He had his fists in his
pockets and a grin on his aristocratic lips.
Mir Mahommed signed to him to share his mat. They sat facing each
other, outlined against the fire in profile. Louise went to talk to
the other prisoner. The four men brought in wood; two of them and my
friend who had watered the mules lay down to sleep, and the other two
went out to the ledge to keep a lookout. Then I caught a few words of
Grabowski's:
"By the breath of the Almighty, Mir Mahommed, I admire your daring; but
how long do you suppose it will be before the troops come? You and I
had better settle this between ourselves and save who knows how many
people's lives."
"It is written that he shall live, and he shall die, whom Allah wills
to live or die." Mir Mahommed answered. "None knoweth that but Allah."
His voice came booming down the cavern in one of those strange acoustic
accidents that sound as if unseen realms were intervening in the
affairs of men.
Grabowski emitted one of his surprising laughs. He looks like a man
who would cackle on a high-pitched note; something about his mustache
suggests that. But his laugh is a thunderous ho-ho-ho; that breaks down
mental barriers that men have raised against him.
"Kill us then and have done with it!" he suggested. "Bring everything
to a head. Defy the British empire!"
"You and I are friends," said Mir Mahommed. "I captured you because you
set a trap for me. By God, do you think it right you should have set
that trap?"
"No," said Grabowski, "I did not set a trap for you. Why should I?
Haven't we always helped each other?"
I knew then how much I liked Grabowski by the horror I felt at having
to spy on him. Those few words were enough to arouse suspicion,
however, and I crawled on all-fours through the gap to lie in deep
shadow within thirty feet of them, at a place where a break in the
cavern floor made it impossible for any one to see me without almost
treading where I lay.
"What happened was this," said Grabowski. "I received a letter written
by Frank West. I laughed. A blind man could have read in it that
there was something cooking. However, it happened that the British
authorities had asked me to remove that papier-maché portrait of you
from in front of my shop because it was arousing too much prejudice. So
it seemed a reasonable thing to let you have it. Meanwhile, hardly half
an hour before your men came, Frank West's dog had reached Peshawar,
with a note from him tucked in its collar--no date on the note, but
explaining he was a prisoner about two days' march away and had hope of
escaping. As soon as I saw the dog I knew he had guessed the distance
wrong or somebody had misinformed him; the dog wasn't badly tired. The
dog reached the cantonment at an hour when there was no one in the
bungalow where he went except Miss Orloff. She saddled her pony and
galloped to my place."
"Why?" demanded Mir Mahommed.
* * * * *
I risked being seen in order to watch Grabowski's face. I was as
puzzled as Mir Mahommed was suspicious to know why Winifred should have
gone to him so promptly.
"Because," said Grabowski, "she knew me to be a person who can send
messages over the border. She arrived while I was reading the letter
brought by your men. And she implored me to procure the immediate
release of Frank West."
"Why you?" the mullah countered. "And what interest has she in him? Or
in you? And you in her? And how came soldiers into all this?"
"Was I right or was I wrong," Grabowski asked him, "to believe that I
can go by day or night unharmed and unmolested where I will along this
border?"
"_Insh'allah_--and unless the sentries shoot you. As to that, you have
the pledge of every headman in the hills. That is all the more reason
why you should have laid no ambush against me," said the mullah.
"Ambush!" said Grabowski, and he laughed again. "A man's love for a
woman is ambush enough! She, Miss Orloff, was so excited about Frank
West that--I wonder, can I make you understand this? Supposing her to
be in love with him, I felt obliged to prove to myself that my feelings
for her had nothing to do with the case. I must rescue him instantly.
It seemed the simplest plan to find you, Mir Mahommed, and to demand
from you in the name of friendship the safe return of Frank West, who
had done you no harm that I knew of. So Miss Orloff helped me to wrap
that statue as you had asked, and I delivered it to your two men,
intending to follow them, supposing they would lead me to you.
"Unfortunately, your men were seen by one of our patrols, who gave
chase, although the mist made pursuit difficult. Miss Orloff was in
agonies lest the patrol should overtake and kill or capture your men
before they could lead me to you. I understood her to agree to remain
at my place, for the purpose of feeding the dog. I made haste then
after your men, who went swiftly and were already lost from sight in
the mist. Miss Orloff followed me, on foot, but I did not know that
until we were far beyond the lines and had lost our way, as the patrol,
I think, had also."
* * * * *
"_Mashallah_, that makes a good story," said Mir Mahommed, "and it is
no new thing that a woman should follow the man she loves. Whether she
loves you or him, no matter. There are women enough in the world for
both of you. But by the beard of him whom Allah loved, a dozen soldiers
and their officer lie dead and my men have their clothing and rifles,
as is indeed just and pleasing to the Most High."
"Those unfortunate soldiers were lost in the mist and stalking us,"
said Grabowski. "We did not know who they were, nor they who we were.
They may have thought we were your two men. We walked into your ambush
and they followed us into it. The next I knew, I was tied and gagged,
which was not a proof of friendship, Mr. Mahommed."
"Allah! Would an enemy not have cut your throat--yours and the woman's
also? For awhile we were too busy at close quarters with the soldiers,
to be troubled about perfect manners. However Allah in his justice
willed that we should slay them all, on our side losing none. Then I
with my own hand undid the bonds, and slew not, nor was I guilty of a
harsh word--not though Allah knew my thoughts--until there could be
private speech between me and thee."
"I have spoken," said Grabowski. "I have said my say."
"And I have heard. And I say this: As Allah is my witness, I believe
you. Nevertheless, what was done is not thereby undone. The soldiers
are slain and there will come a reckoning."
"Soon," said Grabowski. "Soon, swift and drastic."
"Too soon for my plan," said Mir Mahommed, and his beard fell on
his chest as he turned away from Grabowski to stare at the fire in
meditation.
Louise broke the silence: "Come, honey. Come over by the fire, where
it's warmer."
She offered a hand to some one behind the spur of rock--and out strode
Winifred!
I stood up then, not thinking how like a ghost I must look in that
sheepskin overcoat, bloodless, with my head in bandages and with the
flickering firelight showing me against the tomblike shadow. I was
unshaved. I must have looked as if I had been dead for nearly a week.
Winifred saw me and stifled a scream. Grabowski glanced from her to me.
"Oh, hello," he remarked as casually as if nothing at all had happened.
"You look seedy. Better come and squat here. Need help?" He was beside
me in a moment. Mir Mahommed looked up, glanced from Winifred to me and
resumed his staring at the fire. Louise stared from one to the other of
us, looking sly, I thought.
"Hello," I said to Winifred.
"I'd like to see those bandages," she answered.
She came and examined them. I knew she was only making an excuse to
speak to me, but Grabowski insisted on helping her to undo the bandages
and examine the wound, so there was nothing said.
But I suspected her more than ever. If she had nothing to conceal, why
should she not speak before Grabowski? But it also looked to me as if
Grabowski might be innocent of her intrigue, supposing she were guilty.
If he were involved with her, why should she be afraid to speak to me
in his hearing?
And while they rebound my bandages, Louise watched us as if she, at any
rate, were afraid that some word of ours might bring the mountains down
on her and Mir Mahommed and us all. But Mir Mahommed stared into the
fire as if he had forgotten us.
CHAPTER VI.
DEATH STALKS IN THE MULLAH'S CAVE.
May Heaven forbid that I should wander off into the realms of
psychology, which I don't understand any more than any one else does;
but it is necessary to explain a little in order to make clear what
followed. We three--Winifred, Grabowski and I--were prisoners in the
hands of a man who had shot down twelve British soldiers and their
officer ruthlessly, if that word is not too mild. Mir Mahommed was a
public enemy, a danger to all that border, a desperate rogue, and a
man whom every educated instinct in us should have urged us to hold in
horror. Actually we admired him.
But that was not all. Grabowski, although in love with Winifred,
was furiously indignant with her and doing his courteous damnedest
to be polite. There were moments, I think, when he suspected her,
although his suspicion was probably vague and he may have merely been
exasperated by her having followed him. Or perhaps he was jealous of me.
But I knew that it was no regard for me that had brought Winifred
Orloff out of bounds on the wildest frontier in the world. And she knew
I was aware of that. She knew I suspected her of being a spy. Louise
was suspicious of all of us, and hovered near enough to prevent us from
holding anything like intimate conversation; and the more I observed
and reflected, the more I believed Louise to be the real key to the
mystery.
Somebody--that much was definitely known--had supplied Mir Mahommed
with money in the form of English bank notes, which had reached him in
spite of the vigilance of almost countless spies. If Winifred was the
agent through whom the money passed, there was still a bare chance that
she had not known what she was doing. Possibly Louise had tricked her
into it. But how?
It was impossible to imagine that Mir Mahommed could have lured that
girl into acting as his secret agent. He was not even thinking about
her. He appeared to have forgotten she was there. The only word he
spoke for an hour was when he threw a firebrand at one of his sleeping
men and curtly ordered him to pile on fuel. Mir Mahommed, I guessed,
was himself the victim of far deeper schemers than himself--a puppet
whose strings were pulled by agents of the Czar.
Besides, Winifred paid no attention to him, whereas she watched Louise
continuously. Winifred was dressed in a tweed coat and skirt, wool
stockings, a blouse opened at the neck, and a man's soiled Terai hat
that she probably snatched from a peg as she ran from the bungalow.
It made her look boyish and a little younger than she was. It suited
her sunburned hands and general air of having lived in the open all
her life. But her good looks lay in character, not regularity of line,
which made it easier to guess the nature of her thought than if she had
been merely plastically pretty.
She did not appear to me to be in the least degree cowed by the
savagery of her surroundings. I could detect in her no physical fear
whatever; but judged her to be horribly afraid of an intangible--of
something she did not understand--of something that perhaps she did not
wish to understand, and that she wished by hook or crook to prevent
Grabowski from discovering. It seemed to me that she loved Grabowski
and feared what he might find out about her.
Louise hovered around us in the shadowy background, watching, until at
last she built a small fire near us and set coffee on to boil. That
awoke Mir Mahommed out of his brown study.
* * * * *
"_Allah!_" he exclaimed. "God's ways are wonderful and hard to
understand. Nevertheless, it is given to me in part to understand them."
"It is easier to understand the British," said Grabowski. "They will
send troops. When they find the bodies of those men you slew they will
waste no time theorizing."
Suddenly the mullah stood up, setting the fire between us and himself;
thus his back was toward the cavern entrance and the light shone on his
fierce face, gleaming on his eyes and on his teeth that flashed amid
the blackness of his beard like the fangs of a great animal at bay.
"If it is his will, let the troops come! It will also be his will that
I shall defeat them. This earth is but an anvil of the Most High,
whereon a man's soul is forged until it is fit for Paradise. How often,
and how often is it Allah's will that a man's mercy shall be as a
snare for his own feet! His generosity a pitfall! If I had slain that
man"--he pointed at me; I felt almost guilty--"this had not happened.
But for you"--he stared at Grabowski--"that cursed image never would
have been made, compelling me to act, as it now appears, too soon.
It has been a poisonous barbed weapon in the hands of my accusers.
Nevertheless, it shall be they who are undone. It shall be I who
triumph, lest it be said that his servant was forgotten by Allah--on
whose Prophet's head be blessings through all eternity, and on whose
loyal sons let wisdom fall like dew on the ripening grain!"
The fire spat applause as the coffee boiled over. Louise made magic
until the affluent aroma of her caldron filled our part of the cavern
and thought thrummed on another vibration. She served the wondrous
stuff in tin mugs. Mir Mahommed gulped his. It burned his mouth. He
squirted it into the fire and demanded more with an oath that suggested
earthquakes.
"How soon will you let us go?" asked Winifred, in English. "You have
killed quite a number of innocent men--"
"_Wallah!_ Would they not have slain me?"
She glanced at Grabowski, who was known in all that countryside as Mir
Mahommed's friend. But that glance was intended to deceive me, and I
knew it; it was intended to hide from me the personal meaning of her
next words.
"Is it thus, Mir Mahommed, that you repay favors? Have you received
nothing, that you feel you owe us nothing?"
"Tooth for a tooth--gift for a gift," said Mir Mahommed scornfully. "Do
you want more coffee?"
He strode away and stood glowering out at the night with his hands
behind him. Louise gathered up the coffee mugs and was about to speak,
but Winifred, with no more than a gesture to Grabowski and me, got up
and stood beside the mullah in the cavern entrance. Grabowski went
and sat near them on a lump of rock, to keep her, so to speak, in
countenance; no Moslem ever entirely understands the frankly equal,
unsex-conscious challenge of the modern woman.
Mir Mahommed glanced at Grabowski and seemed to be glad he was close
at hand. But it was obvious enough to me that Grabowski's nearness
prevented Winifred from saying to the mullah what she had intended.
Louise came and sat beside me, sharing the same mat beside the fire.
"Honey," she said, "you don't know how to manage that girl." She took
it for granted that I was hopelessly in love--I suppose because I had
been watching Winifred's face so intently. "You should treat her the
way Mir Mahommed treats a woman."
It is a good rule not to correct your Opponent's errors, since one
error begets the next, so I said I was interested at the moment in
getting Winifred safely back to Peshawar--that and nothing else.
* * * * *
"And in Peshawar, what? Honey, she'll give you the go-by in Peshawar.
You're not ruthless. Listen: you can have her. Mir Mahommed goes his
own way, and if I can't follow he wouldn't wait to bury me; but if I
should ask him not to let that girl go--if I should say I'm lonely and
I want her to be friends and to quarrel with, he'd give her to me just
as quick and ruthless as he'd cut your throat if I told him you'd done
me an insult. I'll keep her up here in the hills for awhile, and these
old hills will tame her mighty quick. But you and I have to understand
each other, honey."
Craving to understand--but not at all to be understood--I encouraged
her to talk on.
"Mir Mahommed," she said, "knows a thousand shifts, and if the troops
come before he's ready he'll soon put a range of mountains between us
and them. I know him, honey. We are as likely as not to be fifty miles
from here this time to-morrow; he and I know caverns in the mountains
where an eagle couldn't find us. You and she shall come--I'll see to
it. Grabowski is in the way. I can tell Mir Mahommed to let Grabowski
go back to Peshawar. He can take a letter saying what will happen
to you two if the troops aren't called off. But you must persuade
Grabowski to go with the letter; he'll need powerful argument."
"Why not let Winifred go?" I suggested. "That way, you'll make friends
for yourself--friends you may need later on. You can hold Grabowski and
me for ransom and no particular harm done."
I was on the edge of learning something. Louise was about to answer,
and her eyes foreboded revelation; but Mir Mahommed turned in the
entrance and gruffly commanded her to heap fuel on the fire. He ordered
me against the wall where Winifred had sat with Grabowski when they
were first brought in.
Winifred and Grabowski joined me just in time to get out of the way
of fifty hard-breathing Pathans who came swarming into the cavern,
treading on each other's heels. They were armed to the teeth, the
greater part of them with stolen army rifles, but some with jezails and
a few with only iron-studded shields and tulwars--the latter men being
the most dangerous, because they would risk anything to be armed as the
others were.
They were smelly with sweat and with the damp night air on
their sheepskin jackets; they were fierce-eyed--hungry with
imagination--silent with expectancy.
They eyed the mullah as the wolves look at a strong wolf who can lead
them to the kill, with no more loyalty than wolves have and no hint
of mercy for the man who fails. The mullah returned insolence for
insolence, in double measure:
"Laggards! Were you afraid to leave your women? Are they such loose
wantons that ye could not trust them out of sight?"
The newcomers crowded around the fire, some sprawling, others sitting
upright and a few men muttering to each other as if afraid of the
leaping shadows that might conceal evil spirits summoned by the mullah
to undo their faith in God. Their glances confirmed the common rumor
that Mir Mahommed had a reputation for black magic. Some of them
dreaded the magic more than him. Some grinned with grudging admiration.
Winifred whispered to me: "I want to talk to you--alone--where we can't
be overheard. The mullah might let me go, but I'm afraid to go. I want
to tell you why."
Grabowski laughed--one of his deep ones that sound like something
popping at the bottom of a well.
"This is a nice, tough nut for the _burra sahib_![1] Can't you hear him
cursing while he writes a minute in his journal in red ink! I'll bet
the pen goes through the paper. If he doesn't send troops to rescue us,
every hillman south of Kabul will laugh and go immediately into the
hostage-bagging business. If he does send troops, it probably means the
lives of fifty or a hundred men. No matter which way he decides he'll
get a wigging from the Viceroy in Council. And, ho for the ha'penny
papers! 'Niece of English Officer Ravished by Savage Hillmen on
Northwest Frontier While Authorities Look Idly On!' And then questions
in Parliament: 'Is the Secretary of State for India aware that the
Indian government's policy of blockade and brutality on the Northwest
frontier is likely to cause the sacrifice of hundreds of innocent lives
and prodigious sums of money?' Hell or high commissioner--you pay your
excellent intention and you take your choice!"
[Footnote 1: High commissioner.]
* * * * *
It was one of those so-called psychological moments--Winifred on the
verge of tears and Grabowski trying to be cynical to hide emotion. I
struck swiftly and hard--and hooked my fish!
"Are you guilty?" I asked Winifred. "Or did you blunder?"
"I made a fool of myself--and got in deeper and deeper. Now I'm done
for."
"Is it Louise?" I asked.
She nodded. Grabowski was talking away, listening to his own voice,
sneering at his own lame jokes; he did not even suspect that she and I
were whispering. But I saw Louise watching us.
"Do you love Grabowski?" I asked. "Do you want him?"
She nodded again. "But I've lost him."
"Do you want him?"
"Yes."
"Is he innocent?"
"He knows nothing. He isn't even suspicious. But when he finds out--"
"If you'll promise to come clean--tell me everything--I will do what I
can."
"I told you: I want to talk to you alone."
"Will you tell everything?"
"Yes."
"Whatever happens? Here or in Peshawar?"
"Yes, I promise."
It appeared to me that there was something I could do that minute.
I made my way over to Mir Mahommed, where he stood staring through
the cavern mouth at Jupiter blazing brightly over banks of mist that
wreathed the summits of the hills.
"_Hajji_," I said, considering it wiser to address him by his honorable
title, "should a man shoot three times if one bullet is enough?"
"Nay, once," he answered.
"And in the matter of a loan: should a man demand three times its value
for security?"
"Nay, nay," he said, "that would be as bad as usury, which is a foul
sin for which men's souls pay bitterly and forever."
"Then one hostage is ample," I told him. "Keep me. I have precedence,
having been the first to fall into your hands. Act reasonably in the
sight of Allah and all honorable men by releasing those others. Let
them go back to Peshawar."
He nodded, stroking at his beard, but there was mocking laughter in his
eyes, which I thought to change, nevertheless, by argument.
"It is enough for you to threaten to slay one prisoner. The troops
would make terms."
"You and he may go then. I will keep the woman," he said curtly.
I had presence of mind enough to turn away. He had not sworn by any of
the nine-and-ninety names of God, so he might reverse that decision
without loss of self-respect; and there had been laughter in his eyes.
I made haste before laughter should turn into anger. But as I turned I
noticed that Louise was lurking in the shadow. She had heard. It might
be that the mullah's eyes had answered her unspoken thought.
"God pity me," I said when I returned to Winifred, "I've cooked our
goose. I mean, I've cooked yours." I related what had happened.
Grabowski let a laugh come rumbling up from somewhere near his heels.
"Excellent!" he said. "When fortune comes rotten end foremost, it can't
grow worse, and it may grow better. Watch Mir Mahommed." He threw an
arm around Winifred, suddenly sure of himself again and full of love
for her.
* * * * *
Mir Mahommed stiffened himself like a wolf with its scruff raised. In
the shadowy entrance the firelight touched a rifle barrel and the hilt
of some one's tulwar. Once or twice I saw a man's eyes glittering, but
Louise stood close beside Mir Mahommed and the owner of the eyes was
screened from view. He spoke in very low tones.
Presently another fifty or sixty men came trooping in, most of them
less well armed than the first contingent, but more smelly, presumably
having come a greater distance. They were hungry and, though they
carried goat-skin bags and stolen British army haversacks full of
provisions for perhaps a week, they grumbled noisily because no banquet
was spread ready for them.
Mir Mahommed dismissed the man with whom he was speaking; the fellow
went away into the darkness coughing like a sick sheep, but moving
rapidly, if one could judge by sound with all those tricky echoes. Mir
Mahommed studied the hundred men who crowded around the fire, then
suddenly filled his lungs and let them know their captain's name.
"Ye know me. By the nine-and-ninety names of God, I know you! In the
name of the Prophet, on whose head be blessings, I have summoned you
to earn eternal life. And by Allah who made tigers, it is I who lead
you. Deny my leadership and learn whose sword I wield!--the sword of
the avenger!--of the Prophet of the God of life and death! Deny me and
I will curse your souls into the stinking pits of torment--in the name
of the Most High and his Prophet, on whose head be praise! But he who
follows me shall go the way that I take, to eternal life--and doubly,
aye, tenfold is he blessed who dieth in the battle against unbelievers!
I have spoken."
Suddenly Grabowski spoke up--astonishment seizing a hundred men so
sharply that their breath came like the sound that hail makes when it
cuts into the standing corn.
"Lend me a tulwar, Mir Mahommed. I deny your leadership. Stand forth
and fight me before these witnesses. Let Allah judge between us."
Winifred clutched Grabowski's arm, but I checked her--not that I wanted
to see Grabowski take that chance. I knew the mullah would refuse
to fight him. He was under no obligation to take up a prisoner's
challenge. He would have been a fool to do it: Grabowski's skill with a
tulwar was notorious.
Mir Mahommed's eyes glowed, facing a new perplexity with anger,
but indomitable courage. Rather than not he would have taken up
that challenge; he even leaned his rifle against the wall and his
fingers gripped at the hilt of his tulwar so fiercely that Winifred
unconsciously seized my hand and dug her nails into it.
But he understood Grabowski's motive; let him refuse to fight, and his
men might call him a coward. Let him fight and lose--his force would
scatter. Let him fight and win--even so, his men might accuse him of
lacking dignity. That was a bold bid of Grabowski's--generous and
rash. The mullah's simplest answer would be to shoot all three of us,
and he could have forced his men to share that guilt as onlookers and
consequently parties to it. He could hold it over them, to make them
fight more desperately if British troops should come.
"Ye have eaten my salt," he said after a moment. "Though ye three are
prisoners, ye are also guests."
There was silence for about three minutes--then the sound of hurrying
footsteps on the ledge outside the cavern. Cursing and hard breathing.
A challenge. In came fourteen of the mullah's men, including Feisal and
Abdul beni Rahman, who had carried the letter I wrote to Grabowski.
They were surly and dog-weary. They dumped at Mir Mahommed's feet a
thing so like a corpse in its burial shroud that a murmur arose in the
cavern. Mir Mahommed glared across it at Grabowski.
"Fight me that!" he said tartly. "You raised it out of hell to mock my
unwise tolerance of western ways." Spittle of scorn was on his lips,
but his eyes looked grateful for the chance to set aside Grabowski's
challenge without relying too much on that rather specious excuse
of hospitality. He turned on Feisal and the other thirteen, lashing
himself now into a fury that was too convenient to be altogether
genuine.
"Allah! Is this obedience? Ye were to have buried that up-valley in the
grave made ready for it. Death of a hundred thousand dogs! What now?"
* * * * *
"We have done our best," said Feisal. "That thing is accursed. Devils
follow it and mock us! Lo, we bore it up the valley and the grave was
ready. There were many who came to observe, and to them we said, with
proper respect for the valiant dead, that this is the body of Mir
Mahommed killed by a bullet after he had slain ten Highlanders. It was
well. There were some who grieved and some who sighed good riddance,
and there was none to deny your honor's sainthood--until Ali bin Adam
came clambering down a hillside hugging an arm that hurt him as if
red-hot iron was bedded in it. A blasphemously angry man was Ali,
filled to the teeth with bitter speech."
"Shall a wet cat such as Ali change the will of God?" demanded Mir
Mahommed. "Ran ye from Ali-who-sighed-for-a-shirt?"
"By Allah, not we! But he told of this cavern, and of a dummy dressed
up to resemble your honor, shot at by himself and others because of a
feud between you. And he said, so devilishly was the dummy fashioned
that even he believed it was your honor's self until it fell and he saw
the string attached to it. Then he told how his friends were slain by
your honor's men laying in wait, and how he ran, and was shot in the
arm, and that he was now on his way to Peshawar to beg treatment from
the British _dakitari_ in the _harsipittal_. Then Ali made haste on his
way because the hurt was paining him as if a thousand devils gnawed
to reach the marrow of his arm. But before he went he swore he had
followed Mir Mahommed all night long, and had seen him alive, not dead,
so that this is sorcery of some kind."
"Who would believe Ali bin Adam?" asked Mir Mahommed.
"No man, surely, without writings and a thousand witnesses--and even so
with grave doubt. But there were more than a hundred men who came to
watch that burying. And they said: 'Are we blind or do our eyes know
Mir Mahommed's face? So let us look and our eyes shall answer whether
Ali tells truth or otherwise.' And could we fourteen have prevented
them? By Allah--how? Is my throat hoarse? It is from arguing that none
should defile with his unwashed hands the shroud of such a saint as
Mir Mahommed. Lo, they sent their women to bring water, making their
hands clean. _Wallah!_ What could I do? I could call them jackals and
grave robbers. I could curse them by the nine-and-ninety names. I could
say--and lo, I did say--what Allah put into my mind concerning their
wives and their mothers and their sons' grandsons. But it all availed
nothing. They commanded me to stand aside and they would look. So I got
thence, and these others also, bringing the thing with us. At our backs
was laughter, some shouting one thing and some another; but most of
them shouted that Mir Mahommed must be up to his tricks again."
"God's ways are wonderful," said Mir Mahommed. "Lo, a man's sin mocks
him though he run from it to Kandahar! Am I doomed to live forever with
that cursed image that I foolishly let a man make?"
Winifred whispered to me: "Can't you say something to make those
hillmen burn that thing?"
"Eh, what's that?" Grabowski asked her. "Don't you know that to burn
it would be, according to their superstition, the same thing as
condemning him to hell?"
All eyes were on Mir Mahommed. I was probably the only one who saw
Louise, behind him in shadow, whispering none knew what counsel in his
ear. But I could guess.
"What came through this time?" I asked as soon as I was sure Grabowski
was not listening. "Money?"
"I don't know."
"Instructions? Advice? Promises?
"I don't know."
"Don't you ever know?"
"Only the first time--money for Louise. Ever since then he--they--have
kept threatening exposure--denunciation unless I would keep on
forwarding messages."
"How?"
* * * * *
The fire in the midst of the cavern was dying down and deepening
shadow, shot with crimson when the falling embers made a flame leap
suddenly, cast a phantomlike appearance on every face. Bodies became
almost invisible. The eyes of Mir Mahommed began to resemble a
disembodied tiger's; nothing suggested that they belonged to a human
being, except that the hand that held his rifle showed and now and
then the firelight shone on the metal barrel and on the hilt of his
tulwar. The wait, nigh breathless, for his words seemed endless.
Winifred whispered her answer to me so low that I could not hear it,
but Grabowski did.
"That image?" He let out one of his deep belly laughs, "_Mea maxima
culpa!_ All my own doing, and the damned thing has jinxed us all.
I made it for a spiritual purpose--art--heart--same words if you
understand 'em. But it was the devil who understood and used my image
to send Mir Mahommed's plans down wind. Mir Mahommed's remedy won't be
milk and water. There's blood in his eye."
There came another challenge on the ledge outside the cavern. It was
answered by a long-drawn wail and there was shouting to and fro. A
man ran in to get a fire brand to wave from the ledge and show the
direction to somebody. More shouting. Winifred kept silence; all eyes
were again on Mir Mahommed.
Suddenly the mullal's voice came booming like a sound from a sepulcher,
hollow and startling: "I speak of God. There is no god but God. I swear
there is no god but God, whose prophet is Mahommed!"
It broke the tension. The whole cavern full of ruffians began to chant
in unison the magic phrases that make Islam one emotional entity that
becomes a weapon of steel and fire and frenzy in the hands of him who
understands it. There had been purpose in that long pause of his. He
had them by the heartstrings now. They would excite themselves until no
lesser sacrifice than unbelievers' blood would still them--blood and
plunder! Our blood probably.
Grabowski leaned past Winifred, pitching his voice in a key that made
it audible against the thunder of the Moslem chant:
"He expects bad news! There's some one coming. He knows it can't be
good news. By God, he's desperate. He's afraid that statue will turn
'em against him unless he fills 'em full of anger against some one
else. He'll throw us to the wolves, I expect. Me, anyhow. Why not? I
made the statue."
He threw his left arm around Winifred again. I cursed him for it, and
he let go, wondering; but I had no time to explain then that Louise was
watching. I could not tell him how I was deceiving Louise about our
relationships. I put my own arm around her, and Grabowski grinned like
some one being photographed by the police.
Two men came into the cavern and the hundred-throated din of Allah's
greatness ceased as suddenly as when the frogs cease croaking in a
moonlit pond. The gloom within the cavern became one vast ear that
listened. Aware of drama, the two messengers stood staring at the
mullah and at each other.
"Praise Allah, speak!" commanded Mir Mahommed, his own iron nerves so
strained that he was hard put to it at last to behave with dignity.
But those two men were strangers to each other, come from different
directions, sore-footed, sweating rival heralds of emergency. Both
burst into speech at once.
"Devils of hell! What ears can listen to the clamor of two fools?"
roared Mir Mahommed, "Silence, you! Speak, _you_!"
The man he indicated burst into his story: a shadow, a voice in
darkness:
* * * * *
"Hajji--they come two hundred strong to throw you and your graven image
from the cliffs! Making haste by all three trails, lest you escape
them! On his way down-valley Ali bin Adam fell in with three of your
honor's enemies. To them he told his story, saying you are in this
cavern consulting spirits from hell with the aid of the woman they call
the black she-devil! Your honor's enemies awoke the countryside. Run,
Hajji! Escape below the border! Hide where no man knows you! There is
no escape save southward; they are coming along all three trails to
hurl you and your image from the cliff and burn your body before kites
and vultures can tear it and become possessed in turn by devils! In the
name of the Almighty, run while there is time!"
The echo of his voice had not ceased
ringing in the cavern when the other
man burst into speech.
"Run?" he exclaimed. "Run whither? In the name of God, what devil's
work? _Hajji!_ The troops come! Ali bin Adam fell in with a half-troop
of the British Guides, and to them he told his story. God knows what
tale he told! I know this: that he told them where this cavern lies
amid the hills, and he showed them the hut of a border-thief who knows
the way to it. They caught that thief and burned his hand with matches
while their officers were not looking--burned him until he agreed
to lead them hither. The Guides made much signalling, and now the
Scotchmen come! Scotchmen, _Hajji_! Scotchmen! The Guides hold every
pass that a goat could clamber by. Two companies of Scotchmen come like
witches of Eblis! Allah, but they swung their rumps up-valley! Now they
climb and crawl, cursing every rock that hinders them from vengeance
for the dozen men you slew. They come! At sunrise you shall see their
bayonets!"
"By Allah! Heard ye that?" roared Mir Mahommed. He drew his tulwar.
Some one threw dry wood on the fire and flame leaped to reveal him. He
was splendid.
"By the word of the Prophet of God, who runs? Who fights behind me?
_Allaho--Allaho--Akhbar!_ He swung his tulwar high; it thrummed with
the heft he gave it. Then he began again that ritual that fuses Moslems
into one hot hatred of opposition, no matter whence it comes. I swear
there is no god but God, whose prophet is Mahommed!"
[Illustration: "_Who fights behind me? Allaho--Allaho--Akhbar!_"]
Winifred tried to say something to me, but her words were engulfed in
the uproar. I made signs to her that I would try to read her lips, but
Mir Mahommed strode toward us. As he came the din rose in a wave of
frenzy, hillmen leaping to their feet to howl at us the names of God
and strike into us terror of the wrath to come. But Mir Mahommed knew
the trick of making himself heard in any tumult, pitching his voice
harshly off-key, speaking to Grabowski not much louder than was normal.
"It was you," he said in English, "you, who swore you are my friend,
you who sent word for a troop of the Guides to follow you! _Wallah!_
What friendship!"
Grabowski faced him, Winifred clutching his arm again, her young face
etched with agony, while frantic men heaped fuel on the fire and
the cavern seemed to sway and tremble with the vibrance of passion.
Nevertheless, in all that din Grabowski's voice was perfectly distinct
because it was passionless and disconnected from the uproar--almost
like a dream-voice:
"Mir Mahommed, you need no lies. You have a ground for quarrel, if you
seek one. I made that image. It was I who claimed that favor after I
saved your life--so _you_ said--and you begged me to let you repay me
in some way lest you should feel under too great obligation. Therefore
it was I who caused much of this trouble. But as God is my witness, I
had nothing to do with the coming of troops."
The mullah glared at Winifred. "_You_ sent for them! My woman heard
you say that Feranquesat here sent a message by his dog. You gave that
message to an officer--"
* * * * *
I thought of Louise's pistol, but there was no sense in using that yet.
If I shot the mullah that would only loose from restraint a hundred
savages, who would be egged on by the vengeful Louise. I did the only
thing I could think of--thrusting Winifred aside and facing him,
telling a bold lie bluntly:
"It was I who sent for troops. In the dog's collar there were two
messages. One was to her, but the other was addressed to the General
_bahadur_ in Peshawar."
He stepped a full pace backward, hand on tulwar-hilt. Winifred tried
to drag me away, but I resisted and Grabowski, with his eyes on Mir
Mahommed's face, stepped in front of both of us. Mir Mahommed drew his
tulwar halfway from the scabbard.
"Allah--"
But yet again the mystery of Allah's will prevented Mir Mahommed's
purpose almost in mid-action. If his purpose was to kill me--as I
think--that might have served him--might have whetted the edge of his
men's savagety; they might have felt blood guilty along with him and so
have been the more determined to fight with the last cartridge to prove
guilt was godliness. But dawn was creeping down the walls of the ravine
and there was dim gray light and raw cold in the cavern entrance.
Harsh--sudden--convincing came the cry of one of Mir Mahommed's
watchmen on the ledge:
"In the name of Allah, make ready! Scotchmen come!"
CHAPTER VII.
"FORWARD, HIGHLANDERS!"
Then Mir Mahommed showed his leadership, although his generalship may
be called in question. His ruffians surged to the entrance; probably
they meant to run. He drove them back. They turned and clamored for our
lives, for having brought the makings of disaster down on them.
A hairy, handsome brute with yellow teeth, proposing to make short work
of it, swung for my throat with a tulwar--a swipe that would have cut
my head off as neatly as John the Baptist's. Mir Mahommed struck up
his tulwar and sent it spinning against the cavern wall; the offender
followed it, struck with a hilt that broke his teeth.
"My prisoners are mine!" roared Mir Mahommed. "By my blood, they live
or die as I say!"
"A life for a life!" I said. "I owe you a life for that, Mir Mahommed."
But he ignored me. With a gesture behind his back he brought Louise to
us, she passing through the crowd with studied insolence, enjoying the
hot savagery that lusted but dared not touch her. She was beautiful in
their eyes and she knew it; there was a seductive suppleness about her
movement that made those ruffians crave to have their hands on her and
fight for her like hellions--a lust like fulminate that touched off
equally dangerous stuff in her. Her eyes looked hungrily at Winifred.
She would be no more lonely.
"Come," she commanded, with a nod of her head toward the darkness where
the mules were stabled. But Mir Mahommed would have no haste: he chose
to show his strength: he damned that spate and held it until every man
in the cavern knew who was master.
"Fold!" he commanded. "Take that with you!" He pointed to Grabowski's
papier-maché statue lying like a cold corpse in its cotton shroud.
We had to pass down a lane between his men to reach it, and their foul
breath was hot on our faces, but none laid a finger on us. Grabowski
and I picked up the statue and carried it feet first as if it were clay
that had come honestly by such imposing calm.
Its weight was not much, but my strength in proportion was less, so I
carried my end of it with some expenditure of effort, and not many in
that cavern understood yet what the thing was. They who bear away the
dead go unmolested even in border warfare. Men shrank away from us; and
they who did understand it was a statue held their tongues.
We laid it down within the opening of the inner cavern, where the
mules, that could smell the dawn, were whimpering for breakfast; and
Louise commanded us to go in out of sight and stay there. Some of that
mood of insolence remained in her, blood surging in her arteries at
thought of all that passion she had passed through, unscathed, but not
unmoved.
She might as well have given orders to Grabowski's statue. We three
turned in the gap to watch Mir Mahommed disciplining men to whom the
very name of discipline was something unknown and incomprehensible.
He imposed his iron will. They knew they were obeying, and they grew
less sullen as that dawned on them, obedience being comfortable when
rebellion has burned off and there is something desperate to be done.
The more men resemble wolves, the more like sheep they are.
Mir Mahommed stood in the cavern mouth and as they passed him one by
one and two by two he blessed them in the name of the prophet who
took Medina from the enemies of God. He went out, last of a group of
headmen, ordering them how to deploy and maneuver their units. There
appeared to be about one headman for every ten; he gave definite orders
to each headman, as if he had long ago memorized every bowlder of that
grim valley with some such contingency as this in view.
* * * * *
He did not glance at us. He left nobody to stand guard over us, perhaps
because he did not trust his men to watch two women. He knew there was
small risk of our escaping, as we discovered presently. But his leaving
us there unguarded scared Louise. It was the one egregious mistake
that he had made, unless that other one of letting me see him give the
automatic pistol to Louise should be counted against him. I thrust the
muzzle of it into her ear.
"Louise," I said, "I never killed a woman. I would rather not. Sit
there. Sit down and answer me."
I told Grabowski to take Winifred out to the cavern entrance. Then I
began to tear the wrappings off the statue.
"Louise," I said, "you may save yourself trouble if you save me time.
Tell me where to look."
But she did not have to tell me. I wrenched at the cloth and the
top part of the head of the image came loose; the turban was made
separately, like a lid fitting down on the skull. There was a package
inside the head. I pouched it.
Ragged firing had already filled the valley full of din, so I hurried
outside to the ledge then letting Louise follow or not as she chose. To
the right, where the ledge curved around a buttress of the unscalable
cliff, Mir Mahommed had left a strong contingent in command of his
own man Feisal. Evidently they had orders not to waste a round of
ammunition; they had built a low stone rampart and crouched behind
it, observing the fight in the valley below. They appeared to serve
three purposes--as a reserve that could be summoned instantly to any
section of the firing line; as rear-guard, to defend the approach to
the cavern, also the track leading down to the valley, against the two
or three hundred hillmen reported to be hurrying to punish Mir Mahommed
for his sins against creed and prejudice; and lastly, as a guard to
prevent our escape.
Mir Mahommed was at war with time, between two enemies. His one
imaginable chance of safety lay in beating off the Highlanders, then
routing them. Then he must turn, if he could rally his men from the
looting of dead and wounded, to defeat a greater number in his rear who
would have the advantage of higher ground, although the pass through
which the hillmen would have to come at him was narrow and well flanked
with rocks that offered cover for defenders. It had a mean, unsheltered
slope that could be bullet-swept against a too rash adversary. It was
no place to defend against artillery, or even against a slow assault,
but for Mir Mahommed's present purpose it was not ill-chosen.
Beneath us, thunderous with exploding echoes and already faintly hazy
with the burried gas of smokeless powder, the valley lay spread in
panorama.
Mir Mahommed held a naked ramp that had been formed by the fall of a
side of a mountain into the ravine. It was the only possible means of
access to the ledge, to the cavern and to the pass higher up. It was
clear that the Highlanders meant to take that ramp by storm, perhaps
because they had scant reserves of ammunition and were in no mood to
retreat or wait for reenforcements.
From where we lay their helmets looked like an irregular string of
oblong buttons, drawn in spasmodic movement toward the ramp by unseen
violence at either end. They had no machine gun, nor any force at the
rear to cover their line of retreat, so probably the Guides held all
the passes to the southward. They had made a receiving station for
casualties among rocks on an island in the dried-up watercourse that
wound along the valley bottom, marked by the red cross on the chests of
medical supplies.
They appeared to be two full companies strong and to have brought two
pipers to a company--not a man too many for the desperate work ahead.
* * * * *
Said Grabowski in my ear: "They hope to pull this off so quickly that
it can be described in dispatches as an ordinary border skirmish.
They're probably commanded by a captain or a brevet-major hungry for
promotion. And the men are hell-bent after revenge for all the sentries
that have been cut up lately in the night, and for that dozen that Mir
Mahommed slew when he captured Winifred and me. On top of that, their
more or less civilized and thoroughly splendid Scotch imaginations are
on fire at the thought of an officer's lady in the hands of hillmen.
Virtue being at stake, there's going to be a most amazing vicious
fight. All the same, by God, if we could get to them--who knows? They
might call that a day's work, and we'd save fifty or sixty--maybe a
hundred lives. Worth trying, anyhow."
His voice reached me between the crashing of the echoes that multiplied
and repeated every rifle-shot, exaggerating the yells of Mir Mahommed's
men until the winding valley was a sea of stuttering sound that broke
against the cliff behind us and set up a moaning in the cavern mouth.
Winifred heard no word of it. She laid a hand on my shoulder and spoke
into my ear:
"Do you know how? Can you save me?"
"Dammit!" Grabowski shouted, at my right hand. "Signal to them! No use
simply waving--like a red rag to a bull, that. God! They'd wade in all
the harder. Make a flag, man--two flags--get me two sticks--I know
the Morse stuff. Signal 'em to draw off and parley. Mir Mahommed has
sense--he'll hand us over." He tore his shirt off--ripped it in two
pieces. I brought two sticks from the cave where they kept the fuel.
Grabowski tied his linen to the sticks and stood up.
"Zip!" A rifle bullet missed him by a hand's breadth, "Allah!" A stream
of profanity reached us downwind. Feisal jerked his breech-block back
and snapped another cartridge home, his right hand automatically then
reaching for the empty shell. "Put those flags down! Death of a hundred
thousand dogs! Get back into the cavern!"
We had to go. There was no sense in being shot for disobedience, at
that stage of the game. Moreover, out of sight was out of mind; it gave
us opportunity to plan some subtler move, although it was maddening to
sit inside the cavern mouth where the noise flowed like a galloping
mill-race and came echoing out again.
Louise was going calmly about her business making coffee. She had fed
the mules and she asked Grabowski to carry water for them. He told
her, with all the courtesy that he commands, to go to any sort of
hell dictated by her erratic fancy. Then he fetched four coffee-mugs
and made her fill them. As we drank, gasping between the hot gulps, I
remembered.
"All right," I said to Louise. "Bring the bucket and we'll fetch water."
The bucket was back in the cave where the mules were tethered. Sending
her to bring it gave me time to explain:
"There's a goat-track to the spring on the face of the cliff. I think
the track continues downward. I think that's the way Mir Mahommed went
on his way to get that statue. You take the bucket and bring back word.
If yes, we'll all three try it. We can only die once."
So Grabowski made some gruff excuse about my injured head and went out
with the bucket, shielding himself against the wall for a minute or
two while he explained at the top of his lungs to Feisal that he only
wanted to bring water for Louise. Feisal apparently gave permission,
although in order to reach the spring Grabowski would need to pass out
of Feisal's sight. True, Feisal could have watched him if he leaned
over the ledge, but it was hardly likely that Feisal would take his
eyes off the fighting for more than seconds at a time.
* * * * *
Louise walked over to where her own belongings lay in disorder and
began thoughtfully to stuff them into a goat-skin bag. She appeared to
consider the game was up, at least for the time being; she was making
ready for retreat.
I did not doubt there was a bolt-hole somewhere, known perhaps only to
her and Mir Mahommed; but that was their business, and I only hoped it
was true, since I owed Mir Mahommed his life. I proposed to be careful
not to learn too much. However, I opened the package that I had taken
from the statue's head. Louise watched me.
"You may have that, honey. Keep it."
"That" was a thousand pounds in Bank of England five-pound notes
negotiable almost anywhere on earth. I pushed them back into the
envelope and drew out what I wanted--all I wanted--all that the Indian
government needed--one half-sheet of paper signed with three initials
underneath one type-written sentence:
No more money unless the overdue rising takes place, but plenty
more if you keep your promises.
The initials were those of a Bombay merchant long under suspicion, but
hitherto too wary to be trapped.
"Do you know who he is?" I asked Winifred.
"Yes."
"If I'm to protect you, look sharp and tell me all you know."
"I borrowed money from that man in Bombay. I had to, to reach Peshawar.
The Wingates did not know how hard up I was. Nobody knew--except that
man; he knew because I could not repay the money. Then he loaned me
more. He said it would be all right, I could pay back later--after I
married--any time. Then he came to Peshawar. He sat out a dance with
me at Government House. He told me about a New York colored woman up
here in the mountains--said he wished to get a letter to her without
anybody knowing--said at first it was legal business, something about
a legacy that she might lose if anybody learned what was going on. He
said nobody would examine my mail. Would I act as go-between? How could
I refuse? It was easy. I used to take the letters to the hospital along
with comforts for any friendless hillmen who might be in there. Some of
them were in with only trifling injuries. It was always one of those
who took the letters to Louise."
"Then what?"
"He returned to Peshawar. He told me there was money for Louise and
that I must deliver it. He said 'must.' I objected. So he told me
the fact--that I had been delivering seditious messages to and fro.
He pointed out that I had a Russian-sounding name, which would make
it very difficult for me. No one would believe me innocent if I were
denounced. He also demanded the money I owed him. I couldn't pay.
Then he said there was no real harm--no destructive harm in what I
was doing. He said I was only helping to gather information. So I
kept on because I was afraid not to. I made use of Ralph Grabowski,
although he never knew it. I would pose to him for my portrait, in his
studio, and leave a letter where Mir Mahommed could find it when he
came to pose for his. Long before that image was finished we used it
as a letter-box. Then came this letter and I was at my wit's end how
to deliver it, because Mir Mahommed could no longer cross the border.
Then the dog brought that message from you. I took it at once to Ralph
Grabowski and he told me about sending the statue to the mullah. I
helped him wrap it, slipping the letter inside the head when he wasn't
looking. Then I grew deadly afraid--afraid the troops might capture the
statue and find the letter. If they did, how could Ralph possibly have
proved it was not he who was acting as go-between? So I followed. I
followed him in order to be there to take the blame if the worst should
happen. There, that's all."
* * * * *
A great gruff belly-laugh exploded just behind us. Ralph Grabowski had
been listening! He had a full bucket and had been to no pains to come
quietly, but the cavern was full of the echoing din of rifle fire and
ten men might have entered without our knowing it.
"That's all?" he said. He picked her up and took her in his arms. I
thought she would cry, but she didn't. "Come on, there's a path sure
enough below the spring; it's difficult, but we can manage. Come on,
Louise--you'd better come with us. Your mullah is due for the dump. If
he survives this scrap, they'll get him sooner or later--it's only a
matter of time."
"No," she answered, "I'll stay, honey. My man's my man. I'll stay where
I belong."
Grabowski led Winifred out to the ledge, but I lingered a moment.
Louise had saved my life once; Mir Mahommed had saved it a second time.
I paid that debt then. Louise was quick to see the point of the advice
I gave her.
As I left the cavern I could see the Highlanders keeping up a terrific
fire, taking advantage of every scrap of cover, but fast closing in
on the tip of the tongue of the naked ramp for the final assault. The
hillmen on the ledge had eyes for nothing else: fifty people could have
crept unseen out of the cavern. Nothing delayed us but our own eyes and
the fascination of the Highlanders' steady advance. Their pipes were
skirling, but that stirred the blood of the hillmen, too; it was going
to be no pink tea when steel met steel in the open.
The track below the spring would have puzzled goats, but Winifred
managed it, leaping from rock to rock behind Grabowski. My head played
tricks, becoming woozy at the jumps across gaps where a fall would have
meant crashing on rocks a hundred feet below.
However, by the grace of Mir Mahommed's Allah I had a letter in my
pocket that so raised my spirits that I could have flown if I had
needed to; and the track grew almost easy by the time we passed from
under the over-hanging ledge into the open in full sight of Feisal's
men. By then the range was at least three hundred yards, with plenty
of jagged rocks for us to duck behind. We were seen and fired at
intermittently, but the fight going on below was too exciting for the
hillmen on the ledge to waste more than passing attention on us.
The Highlanders' bugles sounded. The challenge of the charge came
clamoring up-wind. The Highlanders were coming! The skirl of their
pipes would have raised the fighting dander of a woolly baa-lamb.
Scrambling, slipping, stumbling, leaping, pausing in turn to drag each
other over slippery bowlders, we reached a group of rocks beside the
ramp, but they were not what they had looked like from above. We had
seen them foreshortened. They were a pulpit, cup-shaped at the summit,
bullet-swept by the volleys of both sides and affording not a scrap
of cover--not a crack between them large enough to crawl in--useless
unless we could climb them and reach that concave top. There we could
overlook the ramp and possibly might signal to the Highlanders.
I don't know how we made it. My head swam and I don't remember. I know
I slid back half a dozen times from halfway up, and the bullets rattled
around us like spattering hail. I believe Winifred was up first.
I have a vague memory of Grabowski jamming his foot into a crevice and
of my climbing over him. Then he could not kick his foot free, and I
had to cling to a crack with my fingers while he held on by my leg and
jerked at it for what seemed endless minutes. But we lay on the summit
at last, as safe as three birds in a granite nest, and peered over the
edge, Grabowski tugging at my shirt to tear it for signaling purposes.
* * * * *
But it was no use signaling. That tide had got beyond all
stemming--both sides with their blood up, bagpipes skirling and the
hillmen yelling "_Din! Din!_" as they got out of hand, broke cover and
came headlong down the ramp to meet those Scotchmen steel to steel. They
came like a galloping avalanche, in frenzy, yelling God's name; and the
Highlanders met them with fixed bayonets beneath us.
The sheer speed and weight and frenzy of the charge defeated its own
purpose. Ranks locked, Highlanders and hillmen sweating, swearing in
each other's faces--rear ranks forcing their way upward, shouting,
shoving at the men in front--hillmen in groups of dozens charging
downhill, leaping on the shoulders of the men in front, kicking at
heads and faces to make a hole for themselves near the fighting
line--more than a dozen hillmen even leaping in among the Highlanders
and dying on the bayonets of the rear ranks.
We yelled ourselves hoarse. Grabowski waved my shirt, but nobody could
hear us in that tumult and none had time or inclination to look upward
with all that cold steel flashing in his eyes. There was an officer
beneath us, jammed between Highlanders and hillmen so that he could not
use his arms; I pulled out Louise's pistol and shot room for him to
move in. Then he half turned and yelled at the men behind him:
"Shove, you slackers!" His voice broke in almost a scream. "Pipes!
Bugles! God! Can't you fight?"
The pipers were jammed in the crowd, but struggled free, and suddenly
the drones set up a waspish undergrowl. Then, yet more suddenly, the
skirling, swaggering lilting war tune of the Campbell Highlanders split
through the din of the mêlée and the rhythm of it wrought its magic.
They were coming again--the Campbells were coming. Oho! Oho!
"Shove, you blighters!"
From behind, a sergeant-major worried the heels of his men like a
half-back nursing a Rugby scrimmage. He began to use his fists. He
bucked their rumps with head and shoulders, as a ram goes into battle.
A foot--a foot and a half--a yard of the hillmen's front line bent
inward, yielded, and the mob behind them, crushed until it had no
breath to yell, could neither turn nor reach over the heads of the men
in front to slash at the heads of the Highlanders.
I looked for Mir Mahommed in the mêlée, but could not see him. Then I
spared one second to glance at the ledge where Feisal's men had built
their loose stone rampart. They appeared to have vanished, but I saw
Mir Mahommed standing alone and motionless on a projection of the
ledge. He had a rifle in his hand, butt to the ground. I thought I knew
why he was standing there.
Then the din and the skirling--"The Campbells are coming, Oho!
Oho!"--and the charge blown on two bursting bugles forced me to look
down again. The hillmen yielded ten feet at one grudging break and
there was room for slaughter--bullet and cold steel.
"Forward, Highlanders! Vibration does it! Damn--I said vibration does
it! Forward, Highlanders!"
I could not see that officer's rank or recognize him, but he was drunk
with the vibration that he praised. He scrambled upward--split a
hillman's throat on his sword-point, and went down cleft to the chin
by a tulwar, that its owner could not drag free soon enough to turn a
bayonet thrust.
That began the retreat and the rout, the hillmen giving ground at first
with the notion of gaining the advantage of the hill to come charging
down again; but the Highlanders swarmed too doggedly against their
yielding line, storming the steep ramp two by two, a front man using
the bayonet, a man behind him firing over his comrade's shoulder.
* * * * *
I looked again for Mir Mahommed. He still stood there motionless. A
sergeant-major saw him and took pot-shots at him with a rifle, but the
angle was difficult and the target was toward the sun with a background
of glittering cliff. He missed repeatedly. He made six men rest their
rifles on rocks and try it, but either they had the range wrong or else
they, too, were baffled by the angle and the glare off limestone.
Suddenly the hillmen took to their heels and scrambled up-hill, not
more than a dozen of them pausing to use their rifles. The Highlanders
took things easier, using all the cover they could find and sniping as
they climbed in pursuit. I saw then what had happened; there was tumult
in the pass beyond the ledge, hillman against hillman.
The mullah's men in retreat had met the sons of righteousness arriving
to throw the sinful mullah from the cliff and burn him before his
obsessing devils could escape into jackal's bodies. There was fighting
up there as fierce, for a few moments, as the Highlanders had had to
face; and the steadily advancing Highlanders took vengeance for their
dead and wounded, who were strewn all the length of that naked ramp, by
kneeling to fire murderous, low-aimed, ricochetting volleys into the
human driftwood-jam that choked the pass. But Mir Mahommed still gazed
down at us. It looked as if he meditated on God's mercy and on man's
inhumanity to man.
There were wounded in need of anything one could do for them. We three
slid down from our pulpit-rock behind the Highlanders' advance and lent
a hand, but a wounded sergeant with his nerves gone ordered us down
into the valley and began shouting for some one to make us go. So we
climbed instead; there were plenty of wounded up the hill who needed
first aid.
Looking up, we saw the first of the Highlanders who reached the ledge.
The hillmen in the pass who had fled by that time and the Highlanders
turned along the ledge to deal with Mir Mahommed. We could hear their
challenge--a gruff command to put his hands up. Mir Mahommed stood
still, motionless. He took utterly no notice of them.
An officer joined the Highlanders. He led them cautiously along the
ledge toward the mullah, approached him, touched the rifle on which he
leaned--and the thing he had thought was Mir Mahommed toppled forward
to fall in graceful somersaults and flatten on the rocks below, a mass
of shapeless paper pulp. Grabowski's artistic sin, that brought the
mullah's plans to ruin, had served him a good turn finally. Louise had
taken my advice.
We scrambled on behind the Highlanders and turned along the ledge into
the cavern. But there was no Louise, no Mir Mahommed. The Highlanders
searched, but drew the cavern blank except for half a dozen mules and a
few filthy blankets. It was Grabowski who found the dark hole, at the
back of the place where the mules were stabled, that led into another,
smaller cavern, from which there was a natural passage opening at last
into a fissure between two hills and a track leading northward over
none knew what wild ranges.
THE END.
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