As if it were a vision of the night, the whole landscape before Skag became dotted with specks; all moving. All moving in the same direction, almost toward him. As the numbers increased, he saw that they ran straight; there was no swerving. In spite of what Roderick Deal had told him, his mind demanded the reassurance of his own voice.

"Nels, is it real? Are we asleep?"

The dog was a stoic; he moved one ear, but he did not lift an eye.

Skag noticed that the hush in the air seemed to have laid a bond of silence on all these creatures. He had heard no calls, no cries. And these were the calling, crying animals of the world.

Here and there at some distance, he saw the ungainly, shambling gait of hyenas, in twos and fours and threes together, or alone. Once when four passed quite near, he felt Nels' shoulder against his thigh.

"Nels, old man, buck up. I tell you, get a grip. They may be the devil, but he isn't hard to kill. I'll show you. Do you get me, son?"

Nels looked up into the man's face, a long look. Then he pressed his head close, under Skag's hand.

Spotted deer ran in small groups; they came into sight and passed out quickly. More swift and more beautiful, were slender deer with single horns, twisted spirally; sometimes very long. Skag thrilled to their pride of action; but Nels seemed in no wise interested.

There was another kind of deer seen at some distance; the bucks were full-antlered and from where Skag stood, they looked light grey colour. Rabbits scuttled in and out of sight constantly, all over the landscape.

Between the parallel lines of seven spotted deer on one side and a small herd of grey deer on the other, he saw a great, low-leaping beast; plainly yellow with black stripes—one tiger the sportsmen had not bagged.

Evidently some mighty thing had transcended enmity and annihilated fear—for one day.

Little things held his eye one while. Creatures like monster rats—they were really mongooses—racing for their lives. Lizards from two to eighteen inches long; and he saw one with rainbow colours in his skin, mostly red. He learned afterward it was a great-chameleon; and angry. He saw one small scaled thing, rather like a crocodile in shape, but with a sharp-pointed nose; it waddled by, near enough to show two little black beads in its face.

When Skag lifted his eyes the earth seemed to have given up a score of packs of jackals. Their action was not like the wolf nor like the dog; it was a short, high leap—giving to a running pack the effect of bobbing. They were more perfect wolves than the American coyote, but smaller; and they looked to have much fuller coats. Searching the location of these groups of bobbing runners, his eye lifted toward the southeast.

. . . The grey knife-blade had cut away half the world. It lay straight across the earth, midway between his feet and where the horizon line should curve. Without any look of motion, without any shine or sheen, smooth as a wall of dull-polished granite, it rose to beyond sight in the sky—the utterly true line of its base upon the ground.

. . . So this was the wall of the waters.

No man dare interpret it to any other man; but Skag found perfect awe. Then he grew very quiet—his faculties alert as never before.

When he noticed the landscape again, the bobbing packs were gone. Slender spotted things in pairs and alone, were leopards—leaping long and low. A great dark creature, going like the wind, was a black panther.

Then he saw, right before him, the unthinkable. Majesty in miniature. A perfect East Indian musk buck—the most beautiful of living things. The wee fellow came on, leaping to the utmost of his strength; his nostrils wide, his lips apart, his eyes immense. He swayed a little, wavered and fell.

Skag ran and leaned over him—the little heart was driving out the little life. It seemed a pity out of all proportion. . . . He held the tiny breathless thing tenderly, as if it were a dead child. . . . So he laid it down reluctantly, at last; and straightened—to see a hunting cheetah coming toward him, not far away.

He glanced down, Nels was not there. He looked all about, Nels was not in sight. Then the reserves in Skag's nature came up. All his training flashed across his brain. Every nerve, every muscle in his body, was instantly adjusted to emergency. There was no failure in co-ordination.

He stood quietly watching the cheetah. It appeared not to have seen him. If it kept on, it would pass about seventy feet away. But Skag knew it would not keep on. With his mind he might think it would, but something in him knew it would not.

He remembered Carlin; no, he must not think of her now. He remembered that Nels was gone; no, he must not think of that either. All the weapons he had were in his heart, in his head. He set himself in order, ready. Recalling, while he waited, with what joy he had been ready to face the tiger that coughed near the monkey glen, to stand between Carlin and it—he was aware that now he faced a hunting cheetah as much for her.

The cheetah stopped, and turning toward him direct, laid itself along the ground so tight he could see only a line of colour among the grasses. There it seemed to stay.

When a man deals with a cat, to allay fear or to establish any common ground of sympathy, he ought to see its eyes. While realising this fact, Skag heard a piercing cat-scream, some distance back of him. He had not heard sounds from any of the animals before. . . . He found himself calculating whether the monsoon or night or the cheetah, would reach him first.

Changing sun-rays had laid a sheen resembling silver upon the wall; not dazzling, but softly bright. After a while the cheetah showed, nearer than when it settled into the grass. The wall was moving forward surely—as surely as time—but the cheetah would reach him first.

At last he saw two yellow discs. Then he worked with his power—his supreme confidence. He had never been more quiet, never more fearless in his life.

The hunting cheetah moved toward him without pause, till he could see the whole body along the ground; the broad, short head; the wide, sun-lit eyes. And while he sent his steady force of human-kindly thought into those eyes, they narrowed into slits. In that instant Skag knew that the beast had no fear to allay; no quality of nature he could touch. It was a murderer, pure and simple.

Then he thought of Carlin. . . . Of her brother. . . . Of Nels. He opened his lips to speak, but the name did not pass his throat.

Carlin, Carlin! It was only a question of time; and Skag folded his arms.

And high against the wall of the waters rolled the clarion challenge-call of Nels, the Great Dane dog. The cheetah leaped and settled back. Skag turned to look the way it faced. A grey line flashed along the ground. Skag did not know it, but he was racing toward their meeting.

The cheetah lifted and met Nels, body against body, in mid-air—Skag heard the impact. Nels had risen full stretch, his head low between his shoulders; the cheetah's wide-spread arms went round him, but his entire length closed upon the cheetah's entire length—like a jack-knife—folding it backward. Skag heard a dull sound, the same instant with a keen cat-scream—cut short as the two bodies struck the earth. When he reached them, Nels was still doubled tight over the cheetah's backward-bent body; his grey iron-jaws locked deep in the tawny throat.

"Sahib! Sanford Han—tee Sahib!"

"Hi, Bhanah; this way!"

Bhanah came with a rain-coat in his hand. Stooping to examine Nels a moment and rising to glance at the wall, he spoke rapidly:

"The Sahib has seen his Great Dane Nels kill a second cheetah in one day. There are two cuts on each leg. Also because Nels must not lose his strength on a fast journey to his master's place—I, Bhanah, will uncover mine honour in the presence of a man."

And quickly casting his turban from his head, he proceeded to tear it down the middle. While he worked, he talked—as if to himself—in half chanting tones:

"Men in my country do not—this thing; but I do it. Of a certainty Nels has accomplished that I could not, though I would. This night two cheetahs remain not—the gods witness—to destroy little tender children of men. And when the so-insignificant cuts of Nels shall be presently wrapped with the covering of mine own honour, I shall be exalted not less! The gods witness. Then we return swiftly into a safe place."

This was no ordinary exultation. Skag's ears were wide open; and he heard grief—and hate.

"How did you know where I was?" he asked quietly.

"I heard the first cheetah's death cry; and I knew he was not far from you, Sahib."

"I thought he was pretty far, one little while."

Skag had spoken, thinking of Nels. Bhanah searched his face while the look of a frightened child grew in his own. Again he stooped quickly and touched the man's feet. He had done it once before—to Skag's acute discomfort.

"What's the meaning of that?"

"That a man's life is in thy breath, my Master."

"Bhanah, I'll find out—how to answer you."

Then Bhanah laughed a low exultant chuckle, while he finished binding Nels' legs with a part of his own turban.

"It is well, Sahib; the fortune which never fails is thine. And now, if we are wise, we will run."

Nels led, all the way; and they were barely under cover, when the earth indeed shook. The stone walls of the building rocked; the dull thunder of a solid, continuous impact of dense water upon its roof, filled their ears. The light of the sun was cut off.

"Bhanah, you and Nels will camp with me to-night. This has been the hunting cheetah-day of my life; and—Nels is responsible that he didn't get me."

"My master is the heart of kindness."

While Bhanah was busy, later, Skag laughed:

"I'm remembering that you said Nels did it soon. How did he do it?"

"By the drive of his weight against the cheetah's body; and the strength of his limbs, in the action my master saw."

They had eaten and Nels was properly cared for, when Bhanah spoke softly:

"Shall we have tales, Sahib?"

Skag roused from a moment's abstraction to answer:

"Bhanah, I don't remember anything I could talk about to-night, but the hunting cheetah—Nels got."

"The hunting cheetah is one, Sahib; there are many. Telling is in knowledge and in speech; finding is in the man. I will tell, if the Sahib pleases; but he shall find."

So they had tales that night.



CHAPTER VIII

The Monster Kabuli

Skag had learned, in finding Carlin, that it wasn't like a man in America finding the one particular and inimitable girl, not even if she were the laurus nobilis and he the eagle of the same coin. In India, where people have pride of race, and time to keep it shining, there are formalities. . . . The two had arranged to meet in the jungle—not deep in the glen where the tiger had coughed, but at the edge toward Hurda, when Skag returned from Poona. He was to go straight into the jungle from the railway station. Carlin would be watching and follow there. . . .

Sanford Hantee of the Natural Research Department, after much opportunity to wrestle with the subtle and gritty and hard-testing demon of delay, came at last to Hurda again, and stepped out of the coach with a throb in his chest and a knot in his throat which only the best and bravest soldiers have brought in from the field. As the moments of waiting at the edge of the jungle passed, it dawned upon him that something had happened, or Carlin already would be with him, at least crossing the big sun-shot area from the walled city. . . . What had happened is this story of the monster Kabuli, which is an animal story even without the entrance of the racing elephant, Gunpat Rao.

Many months before, five merchants came in from far Kabul and sat down in the market-place at Hurda, day by day unfolding more of their packs. They brought nuts from High Himalaya, foot-hill raisins and the long white Kabuli grapes themselves, packed in cotton, a dozen to fifteen in the box. Then there were dried figs and dates, pomegranates picked up far this side of the Hills, Kabuli weaves of cloth, and silks inwoven with gold thread. They were small packs, but worth a great price; which is important to relate in any company.

Now these five Kabulies were usually together (not too far from the kadamba tree where Ratna Ram sat); and their turbans were of different colours, but their hearts were mainly of one kind of hell. Sometimes they stood and sometimes they moved one by one among the bazaars; but Hurda thought of them as one alien presence, and signified that the hugest of them, the monster himself, was also the most hateful and dangerous, which he was.

If I should tell how tall he was exactly, and this in the midst of Sikhs and other of the tallest people of the world, you would think it one of the high lights of a writer-man, and if I should tell you of the face of this monster; the soft folds of fury resting there in the main; the bulk of loose greyish lids over the whites of eyes flecked with brown pigments; of the sunken upper lip and the nose drooping against it, you would say long before I had finished, "Let up on the poor beast—"

And this was a rich man, this Kabuli; richer than any of these brothers, and deeper-minded; so that he could think with keener power to make his thought come true. Also, life was more full to him than to the others, so that he could look over the world of his packs; and when he slept in the midst of his packs, all his treasure was not there. You really should have seen him smile as the head-missionary, Mr. Maurice, approached, and you should have seen the smile change to a sneer, without a flick of difference in the expression of the eyes. And perhaps it is just as well that you missed the look that came into the eyes of the monster Kabuli when the beautiful English missionary, Margaret Annesley, passed.

Miss Annesley was Carlin's closest friend in Hurda. They worked together among the women and children, among the sick and hungry, and found much to do, without entering the deeper concerns of soul-wellbeing which Mr. Maurice attended. These last were rather reticent concerns of Carlin, especially. Mr. Maurice protested against their moving through certain parts of the city, against entering Mohammedan households, or the quarters of the bazaar women—all of which talk was well-listened to. Miss Annesley had no fear, because she was essentially clean. She was effective and tireless, a thrilling sort of saint; but she could see no evil, not even in the monster Kabuli. Carlin had no fear because she was Carlin; but she had a clear eye for jungle shadows—for beasts, saints, and men. As for the Kabuli, she quietly remarked:

"Why, Margaret, can't you see he's a mad dog?"

In other words, Carlin used the optic nerve as well as the vision said to be of the soul.

"But, my dear, he seemed really stirred," Miss Annesley protested.

"I do not doubt he was stirred," Carlin replied. Her mind was the mind of India, with Western contrasts; also it was familiar from both angles with the various attractive attributes of her friend. . . . But Margaret Annesley continued to greet the monster Kabuli from time to time. Having great means and worldly goods and riotous health, he had nothing to discuss but his soul—which few beside Margaret would have found ostensible.

"I tell you he has rabies," Carlin once repeated.

This did no good; so she went to Deenah who was Miss Annesley's servant, a Hindu of the Hindus and priceless. Deenah declared that he was already aware of the danger; that he missed nothing; also that he was watchful as one who feared the worst.

Deenah was a small man, swift and noiseless. He had an invincible equilibrium and authority in his own world, which was a considerable establishment back of the dining-room, including a most delectable little creature even smaller than Deenah, but quite as important, and sharing all light and shadow by his side. Deenah had a look of forked lightning and a mellow voice. The more angry he became, the more caressing his tones.

One day while he was down in the bazaars buying provisions, the monster Kabuli beckoned Deenah to come closer. They stood together—terrier and blood-hound—and Deenah listened while the form and colour of better conditions was outlined for his sake. . . . The Kabuli had heard that Deenah was a great servant; he had heard it from many sources, even that Deenah was favourably compared with the chief commissioner's favourite servant—who was a picked man of ten thousand.

Deenah inclined his head, hearkening for the tone within the tone, but gravely acknowledged that he had heard much in this life harder to listen to.

The Kabuli continued that Deenah was no doubt appreciated on a small scale in the house of Annesley Sahiba; but the establishment itself, as well as the people, was inadequate to offer scope for the talents of such a man as Deenah; also that Deenah was remiss in making no better provision for the future of his own household; also, the gifts should be considered—and now the Kabuli was opening his packs.

Deenah granted that life was not all sumptuous as he might wish, but he had been given to understand no man's life was so in this world; he would be glad now, to hear the plan by which all that he lacked could appear and all that he hoped for, come to pass.

The Kabuli opened wider his treasures. Deenah's narrow-lidded eyes feasted upon the wealths and crafts of many men. . . . And the plan had to do, not with this night nor with the next, but with the night after these two nights were passed, and Deenah's Sahiba and the Hakima (literally, the physician, which meant Carlin) were to be brought for the evening to the house of the Kabuli's friend, one Mirza Khan, a Mohammedan, whose soul also was in great need.

Deenah's voice was gentle as he enquired how he was to be used—why riches accrued to him, since it was the life of the life of his mistress to serve those ill or in need, body or soul. The Kabuli replied that he was not sure that the Sahiba would go to a Mohammedan house, even with her friend the Hakima, unless Deenah could assure his mistress that the Mohammedan was well known to him and honourable, his house an abode of fellowship and peace.

Deenah considered well, in soft tones saying presently that he could not accomplish this thing alone, but must advise with his fellow-servants who were trustworthy. In fact, if the Kabuli could come this afternoon—when the Sahiba and the Hakima would be away—and tell his story once more, in the presence of the utterly reliable among the servants—all might be brought to pass.

The Kabuli did not care for the plan, but Deenah repeated that he could not do this thing alone; his voice admirably gentle, as he reiterated his own helplessness. . . . Still he granted with hesitation that the Sahiba deigned to trust him to a degree. . . . At this moment the Kabuli saw Deenah's eyes forking at the treasure-pack. There was longing in them that was pain. The face of Deenah was the face of one struck and crippled with his own needs, which point helped the Kabuli to decision.

The terms of the agreement were made straight and fixed. Deenah went back to his house where he made the monster's plan known to the servants. In the afternoon, when the house was empty, the monster Kabuli called and opened a small pack in the quiet shade of the compound, before the eyes of six men and one woman, as much Deenah as himself. . . . When the time in the story came that Deenah was to use his influence upon the mind of his mistress, there seemed a slowness of understanding among the other servants; so that the Kabuli had to speak again and very clearly.

Just now the head of Deenah bent low over the open pack, the movement of his hand instantly drawing and filling the eye of the trader from Kabul; and then it was that the Sahiba's syce, who was a huge man, materialised a lakri from under his long cotton tunic—the lakri being a stick of olive-wood from High Himalaya and very hard. This he brought down with great force upon the hugest and ugliest head in all Central Provinces at that time.

Merely a beginning. Six other lakris were drawn from five other tunics—the extra one for Deenah.

The great body was dragged farther back toward the servants' quarters. Here Deenah officiated. With each blow he enunciated in caressing tones, some term of the agreement . . . until he heard the protest of the mother of his little son:

"Shall you, Deenah, who are only her man-servant, have all the privilege of defending the Sahiba—to whom I, Shanti, am as her own child?"

And Deenah, not missing a count, cried:

"Come and defend!"

So Deenah's wife and the other women came, bringing the smooth hand stones with which they ground the spices into curry powder. . . . And when the beating was over, they carefully tied up the pack of the Kabuli and sealed it without a single article missing. Then they carried the body out of the compound, across the main highway, beyond the parallel bridle-road, and let it slide softly down into the little khud beyond, deeper and deeper each year from erosion.

A little afterward, that same afternoon, Margaret Annesley and Carlin Deal were walking along the bridle-path. Hearing a moan they looked over into the khud, where the monster Kabuli was coming to. He managed to raise one hand, but the movement of the fingers somehow struck the pity from Carlin's heart. It was not a clean gesture of a chastened man. Even though his body was terribly bruised and broken, the face was that of Ravage in person. Carlin pulled her companion on. They hastened to the bungalow where the tied pack was in evidence and strange sounds reached them from the servants' compound.

It was the picture of a tranced group that they saw—Deenah sitting upon the ground, uttering frightful low curses securely coupled together—in the language of all languages for this ancient art. The others were around him, even two or three of the women.

"Deenah!" Miss Annesley called.

The concentration was not to be broken.

"Deenah—is a madness come to this place?"

The head of her priceless servant was bowing close to the ground, but his mind was still away; and in high concord to his tones, were the tones of the small delectable one, whose eyes, dark and vivid, were the eyes of Jael singing her song after slaying Sisera. Margaret turned to her syce. There were tears and sweat in his eyes, but no answering human gleam.

"Carlin—" she said. "Help me carry the daik-ji—"

It was a huge vessel containing several gallons of cool water; and this was lifted by four hands and poured upon Deenah, whose eyes met them at once with the light of reason.

"Bear witness, I am cursing softly," he said.

"Are you my head servant?"

"I am thy servant."

"And you permit this bazaar-tamasha in your compound?"

Deenah observed that this was not an affair upon which he could speak to the Sahiba, his mistress. Meanwhile Carlin watched Deenah's eyes fill with the keen reds of bloody memory.

"Go away, Margaret," Carlin said. "He will talk to me. Please go now. In six breaths he will be back in his trance again—"

So it happened. Deenah watched his mistress depart, then he raised his eyes to Carlin, saying:

"The Hakima will understand. These things are not for the Sahiba—"

"Speak—"

Deenah arose, saying: "It is not good for you to set foot in my house, but come to the threshold; then neither my voice nor the voices of these shall enter her understanding—"

Deenah pointed to the rest of the servants who gathered around.

The tale of the monster Kabuli was unfolded to Carlin without a single interruption for several moments; in fact, until Margaret Annesley came running forth, crying:

"Are you never going to cease talk and carry help to the Kabuli—who is hurt?"

Carlin beckoned her back. "Not hurt, dear. He is ill. He has hydrophobia."

"Our protection depends upon you," Deenah concluded, to Carlin. "We commit ourselves to you; we render our lives and honour into your care. You alone, Hakima-ji, can present the story of these doings to the chief commissioner, whose name we hold in honour above other men. Will you see that it be known—not one thread has been taken or changed from the pack of the Kabuli; also, the chief commissioner—out of his equity which has never failed—shall judge us, knowing that we did the beating for the Sahiba's sake."

The chief commissioner at Hurda was a good and a just man. He listened seriously and spoke to Carlin of the value of good Indian servants in the houses of the English; of the dangers of the tiger in the grass and the serpent upon the rock and the Kabuli in the khud—to whom he would attend at once.

It was many weeks after that when the case was called, and Deenah's eyes grew red-rimmed like a pit-terrier's as he told the story again, but his voice fondled the ears of those present in the court-room. . . . One by one, the other four Kabulies left the market-place in Hurda; and when the monster himself had been made to pay and his healing had been uninterrupted for many weeks, there came, a day when the unwalled city of Hurda knew him no more.

He was not forgotten, even though months sped by; for in Miss Annesley's heart was a pang over the big man who had been horribly hurt. . . . Meanwhile for Carlin all life was changed—as the magic of swift afterglow changes every twig and leaf and stem. Then came her hard days, watching for Skag's return—the weeks passing while he waited in Poona. Every morning from a distance, she observed the train come in from the South. When Skag did not appear, sometimes she would go alone for a while to the edge of the jungle, but never deep, because he had asked her not to. Sometimes it was an hour or two before she was ready to look out at the world or the light again. . . .

One early morning as she crossed the market-place, Carlin saw a strange elephant there with his mahout; and a messenger approached deferentially, asking if she were the Hakima, and if she could lead the way to Annesley Sahiba. . . . Four hours' journey away—this was the messenger's story—a native prince whose dignity included the keeping of one elephant, an honourable dispensation from Indian Government, had called in great need for the ministration of the Hakima, and that of her friend, Annesley Sahiba—for lo, unto him a child was to be born.

Carlin asked if she were needed at once—thinking of the many days and the train at noontime. The messenger said that within four hours he was told to deliver the Hakima and Annesley Sahiba at the palace door. He followed along, and the elephant came behind him, as she walked toward Margaret's bungalow. . . . If Skag were to come this day, she thought! . . . Deenah was away, but Carlin left word with his wife that she would be back that night, or early the next day. Margaret was ready. Carlin was in the howdah beside her, before there was really a chance to think.



CHAPTER IX

The Monster Kabuli (Continued)

Skag did arrive from Poona that day. When Carlin did not come to the jungle-edge, and the vivid open area between him and the city showed no movement, he did not linger many minutes. Power had come to him from the waiting days, and this hour was the acid test. All his life he had refused to look back or look ahead, making the Now—the present moving point, his world—wasting no energy otherwise.

In the long waiting days, he had learned what many a man afield had been forced to learn in loneliness, that when he was very still, and feeling high, not too tired—in fact, when he could forget himself—something of Carlin came to him, over the miles.

But in spite of all he knew, much force of his life had strained forward to this moment of meeting. The shock of disappointment dazed him. His first thought was that there was some good reason; but after that, the misery of faint-heartedness stole in, and he wondered the old sad wonder—if love had changed.

Skag hurried back to the station where he had left the Great Dane, Nels, with Bhanah, who would have to find quarters for himself. Nels stood between the two, waiting for his orders; and wheeled with a dip of the head almost puppy-like when the man decided. So Skag walked on toward the road where Carlin lived; and at his heels, with dignity, strode one of the four great hunting dogs in India. Presently he saw Miss Annesley's head-servant, Deenah, running toward him—face grey with calamity.

And now Skag heard of the coming of the messenger with the strange elephant; and the black edging began to run about Deenah's tale, as he revealed the ugly possibilities in his own mind that the Monster Kabuli had his part in this sending:

". . . Now Hantee Sahib must learn," Deenah finished, "that not within four hours' journey from Hurda; nay, not within six hours' journey from Hurda, is there any native prince with the dignity of one elephant."

. . . They were walking rapidly toward the house of the chief commissioner whom Deenah said was away in the villages. Their hope of life and death fell upon the Deputy Commissioner-Sahib. Always as he spoke, Deenah's face steadily grew more grey, the rims of his eyes more red. His memories of the monster were flooding in like the rains over old river-beds, and there was no mercy for Skag in anything he said.

The Deputy Commissioner, a perfectly groomed man, leisurely appeared. He did not wear spectacle or glass; still there was a glisten about his eyes, as if one were there. He came out into the verandah opening a heavy cigarette-case of soft Indian gold. His head tilted back as if sipping from a cup, as he lit and inbreathed the cigarette. To Skag he seemed so utterly aloof, so irreparably out of touch with a man's needs at a moment like this, that he could not have asked a favour or adequately stated his case. Deenah took this part, however. If there were drama or any interest in the tale, there was no sign from the Deputy, whose eyes now cooled upon Nels, and widened. Presently he interrupted Deenah to inquire who owned this dog.

The servant signified the American, and Skag took the straight glisten of the Englishman's glance for the first time.

"May I inquire? From whom?"

Skag coldly told him that the dog had been owned by Police Commissioner Hichens of Bombay. . . . The deputy regretfully ordered Deenah to continue his narrative, and in the silence afterward, presently spoke the name:

"Neela Deo, of course—"

This meant the Blue God, the leader of the caravan; and signified the lordliest elephant in all India. . . . The Deputy, after a slight pause, answered himself:

"But Neela Deo is away with the chief commissioner. . . . Mitha Baba—"

There was another lilting pause. This referred to a female elephant, the meaning of whose name was "Sweet Baby." The Deputy capitulated:

"Mitha Baba, yes; especially since she knows the Hakima—and oh, I say, that's a strange tale, you know—"

He glanced from Deenah to Nels, to Skag; but received no encouragement to narrate same. Not in the least unbalanced, he tipped back his head and took another drink from between his smoky fingers; then his glassless eye glittered out through the white burning of the noon, as he added:

"But Mitha Baba would not chase a strange elephant, unless she positively knew the creature was running off with her own Gul Moti. . . . She's discriminating, is Mitha Baba. But I say, Gunpat Rao came from the Vindhas, you know."

It dawned upon Skag that this wasn't monologue, but conversation; also that it had some vague bearing upon his own affairs. The pause was very slight, when the Deputy resumed:

"Yes, Gunpat Rao is from the Vindha Hills, within the life-time of one man. . . . Mitha Baba is as fast, but she won't do it; so there's an end. Gunpat Rao. . . . Gunpat Rao. The mahouts say young male elephants will follow a strange male for the chance of a fight. It's consistent enough. Yes, we'll call in Chakkra. . . . Are you ready to travel, sir?"

This was to Skag.

No array of terms could express how ready to travel was Sanford Hantee. The Bengali mahout, Chakkra, appeared; a sturdy little man with blue turban, red kummerband, and a scarf and tunic of white.

The Deputy flicked away his cigarette and now spoke fast—talk having to do with Nels, with the Hakima, with Gunpat Rao, who was his particular mahout's master, and of the strange elephant who had carried the two Sahibas away.

Chakkra reported at this point that he had seen this elephant in the market place, an old male—with a woman's howdah, covering too few of his wrinkles—and a mahout who would ruin the disposition of anything but a man-killer. Chakkra appeared to have an actual hatred toward this man, for he enquired of the Deputy:

"Have I your permission to deal with the mahout of this thief elephant?"

"Out of your own blood-lust—no. Out of necessity—yes."

A queer moment. It was as if one supposed only to crawl, had suddenly revealed wings. Not until this instant did Skag realise that a Chief Commissioner had the flower of England to pick his deputies from, and had made no mistake in this man. . . . A moment later, Nels had been given preliminary instruction, and Skag was lifted, with a playful flourish of the trunk, by Gunpat Rao himself, into the light hunting howdah. Chakkra was also in place, when the Deputy waved his hand with the remark:

"Oh, I say, I'd be glad of the chase, myself, but an official, you know, . . . and Lord, what a dog!"

The last was as Nels swung around in front of Gunpat Rao's trunk as if formally to remark: "You see we are to travel together to-day."

The Deputy detained them a second or two longer, while he brought his gun-case and a pair of pistols, to save the time of Skag procuring his own at the station. They heard him call, after the start:

"It might be a running fight, you know. . . ."

A little out, Nels was given the scent of the strange elephant and Deenah left them, with nothing to mitigate the evil discovery that Carlin and her friend had been carried straight through the open jungle country, toward the Vindhas; not at all in the direction the messenger had stated within hearing of the other servants.

A steady beat through Skag's tortured mind—was Deenah's story of the monster Kabuli; no softness nor mercy in those details. He had watched, in the Deputy, a man unfold, after the mysterious manner of the English. He had entered suddenly, abruptly into one of the most enthralling centres of fascination in Indian life—the elephant service. He had seen the exalted and complicated mechanism of a Chief Commissioner's Headquarters get down to individual business with remarkable speed and not the loss of an ounce of dignity. But under every feeling and thought—was the slow bass beat of Deenah's story about the monster Kabuli.

Nels had been called to the trail in the very hour of his arrival. Skag would have supposed their movement leisurely, except that he saw Nels steadily at work. Gunpat Rao, the most magnificent elephant in the Chief Commissioner's stockades—excepting Neela Deo and Mitha Baba—was making speed under him, at this moment. (Gunpat Rao had approved of him instantly, swinging him up into the howdah with a glad grace and a touch that would not unfreshen evening wear.)

Chakkra, the mahout, was singing the praises of Gunpat Rao, his master, as they rolled forward; flapping an ear to keep time and waving his ankas—the steel hook of which was never used.

"Kin to Neela Deo, is Gunpat Rao; liege-son to Neela Deo, the King!" he repeated.

It appeared that he was reminding Gunpat Rao, rather than informing the American, of this honour.

"Did I not hear the Deputy Commissioner Sahib say that he came from the Vindhas, and that Neela Deo is from High Himalaya?" Skag asked.

The mahout's face turned back; his trailing lids did not widen in the fierce sunlight. It was the face of a man still singing.

"The kinship is of honour, not of blood, Sahib," he answered.

Then Chakkra informed Skag that Kudrat Sharif, Neela Deo's mahout, was the third of his line to serve the Blue God, who was not yet nearly in the ictus of his power and beauty; while he, Chakkra, was the only mahout Gunpat Rao had known—since he came down from the Vindhian trap-stockades, where he was snared. He was about thirty years younger than Neela Deo, the King. Would the Sahib bear in mind that an elephant continues to increase in strength and wisdom for an hundred years? And now would he consider Gunpat Rao's size—the perfection of his shape? Might not such a Prince claim relationship to such a King?

. . . Chakkra then pointed out that when the grandson of his own little son should sit just here, behind the incomparable ears of his beloved—the ears with linings like flower-petals—so, looking out upon the world from a greater height than this—then doubtless people would have learned that another mighty elephant had come into the world.

Skag missed nothing of the talk. Another time it would have filled him with deep delight. It belonged to his own craft. A man might use all the words, of all the languages in all their flexibilities and never tell the whole truth of his own craft. In fact, a man can only drop a point here and there about his life work. One never comes to the end.

Also before his eyes was the joy of Nels in action—the big fellow leaping to his task, steadily drawing them on, it appeared; and always a breath of ease would blow across Skag's being as he noted the quickening; but when that was merely sustained for a while, the hope of it wore away, and he wanted more and more speed—past any giving of man or beast. . . . The old drum of the Kabuli tale constantly recurred, as if a trap door to the deeps were often lifted. Skag would brush his hand across his brow, shading his head with his helmet lifted apart for a moment, to let the sunless air circulate.

They passed through the open jungle merging into a country of low hills and frequent villages. The rains that had broken in Poona had not yet reached this country. . . . The sun went down and the afterglow changed the world. Carlin's afterglow, it was to Skag, from their moment at the edge of the jungle—on the evening of the troth; there was pain about it now. India had a different look to him—alien, sinister, of a depth of suffering undreamed of, because of the beating bass of the Kabuli tale, intensified by the sense that falling night would slacken the chase. . . .

Skag had lost the magic of externals, the drift of his great interest. All his lights were around Carlin, and powers of hatred, altogether foreign to his faculties, pressed upon him in the threat of the hour. . . . Yes, Chakkra remembered the five Kabuli men who had sat in the market-place. Yes, he remembered the story of the beating of the monster, the long slow healing after that; and his last look, as he left Hurda for the last time. . . .

It was well, Chakkra said, that they had open country for the chase. It was well that the Kabuli did not call to the Sahibas, and hide them in one of the great Mohammedan households of Hurda—where even Indian Government might not search. It was well that the Kabuli did not dare to come closer to Hurda than this, so that they had a chance to overtake his elephant afield, before the walls of the purdah closed. . . .

Such was the burden of Chakkra's ramble, and there was no balm in it for Skag. The weight settled heavier and heavier upon him with the ending of the day. Nels was a phantom of grey before them in the shadows, leisurely showing his powers. At times, while he ranged far ahead, they would not hear him for several minutes; then possibly a half-humorous sniff in the immediate dark, and they knew the big fellow waited for Gunpat Rao to catch up. Once he was lost ahead so long that Skag spoke:

"Nels—"

The answer was a bound of feet and a whine below that pulled the man's hand over the rim of the howdah, as if to reach and touch his good friend.

"Take it, Nels—good work, old man," Skag said.

They passed through zones of coolness as the trail sank into hollows between the hills, and Gunpat Rao rolled forward. Pitch and roll, pitch and roll—as many movements as a solar system and the painful illusion of slowness over all. Often in Skag's nostrils one of the subtlest of all scents made itself known, but most elusively—a suggestion of shocking power—like an instant's glimpse into another dimension. If you answer at all to an expression which at best only intimates—the smell of living dust—you will have something of the thing that Skag sensed in the emanation of Gunpat Rao, warming to action.

Occasionally as they crossed the streams there was delay in finding the trail on the other side. Once in the dark after a ford, when Nels had rushed along the left bank to find the scent, Gunpat Rao plunged straight on to the right without waiting; and the mahout sang his praises with low but fiery intensity:

"He is coming. He is coming into his own!"

"What do you mean, Chakkra? Make it clear to me who have not many words of Hindi—"

"The meaning of our journey appears to him, Sahib; from our minds, from the thief ahead and from the great dog,—the thing that we do is appearing to him. He knows the way—see—"

Nels had come in from the lateral and found that Gunpat Rao was right. An amazing point to Skag, this. The great head before him, with Chakkra's legs dangling behind the ears, had grasped something of the urge of their chase. A vast and mysterious mechanism was locked in the great grey skull. Actually Gunpat Rao seemed to laugh that he had shown the way to Nels.

"You don't mean, Chakkra, that he goes into the silence like a holy man?"

"It is like."

Skag had seen something of this in his India—the yogi men shutting their eyes and bowing their heads and seeming to sink their consciousness into themselves, in order to ascertain some fact without and afar off.

"Our lord gives his mind to the matter and the truth unfolds—" Chakkra added.

"Will the other elephant travel through the night so steadily?"

(The sense of his own powerlessness was in him like a spear.)

"Not like this, Sahib," said Chakkra.

The hint, however, was that the thief elephant would make all speed; that the lead of the four hours would be conserved as carefully as possible by the other mahout.

"But he has a woman's howdah," Chakkra invariably added. "Two Sahibas, as well as the mahout himself. . . . To-morrow will tell—hai, to-morrow will tell, if they go that far!"

That was always the point of the blackest fear—that the elephant ahead should come to some Mohammedan household, and leave Carlin where no one could pass the veil.

"But what of the messenger who brought word to the Sahibas?" Skag asked.

"He would slip away. Some hiding place for him—possibly back at Hurda."

Chakkra seemed sure of this.

That was Skag's long night. He tried to think of the Kabuli as if he were an animal. A man might have a destroying enmity against a cobra or a tiger or a python; but it was not black and self-defiling like this thing which crept over him, out of the miasma of Deenah's tale.

In the dawn they reached a small river. Skag saw Nels lose his tread in the deepening centre, swing down with the current an instant and then strike his balance, swimming. Here was coolness and silence. To-night he would know. To-night, if he did not have Carlin—

. . . Gunpat Rao stood shoulder-deep in the stream. Skag fancied a gleam of deep massive humour under the tilt of the great ear below him, as the elephant, none too delicately, set his foot forward into the deeper part of the stream. His trunk and Chakkra's voice were raised together—for Chakkra was slipping:

"Hai, my Prince, would you go without me? Would you leave the Sahib alone in his proving-time? Would you leave my children fatherless? . . . There is none other—"

They stood in the lifting day overlooking a broad sloping country—the Vindha peaks faintly outlined in the far distance.

"It is the broad valley of Nerbudda," Chakkra said, "full of milk and wine against the seasons. One good day of travel ahead to the bank of Holy Nerbudda, Sahib, before the fall of night—if the chase holds so long."

Skag did not eat this day. It was not until high noon that they halted by a spring of sweet water, and the American thought of his thirst. Nels was leaner. He plunged to the water; then back to the scent again with a far challenge call. (It was like the echo of his challenge to the cheetah as the wall of the waters loomed across the hills, above Poona.) On he went, seriously; his mouth open in the great heat, his tongue rocking on its centre like nothing else.

Gunpat Rao seemed gradually overcoming obstructions; as if his great idea mounted and cleared, his body requiring time to strike its rhythm. Chakkra sang to him. The sun became hotter and higher—until it hung at the very top of the universe and forgot nothing. There was a stillness in the hills that would frighten anything but a fever bird to silence. To Skag it was a weight against speech and he sat rigidly for many moments at a time—all his life of forest and city, of man and creature, passing before his tortured eyes. . . . And the words Carlin had spoken; all the mysteries of his nights near Poona when she had seemed to draw near as he fell asleep—seemed to be there as he came forth from a dream. Always he had thought he could never forget the dreams—only to find them gone utterly, before he stood upon his feet. Past all, was the marvel of the hunting cheetah day, when he looked at the beast that gave no answer to his force; only murder in its savage heart—and Carlin's name was his very breath in that peril, something of her spirit like a whisper from within his own heart.

All that afternoon Skag's eyes strained ahead, and his respect grew for the thief elephant with his greater burden, and his wonder increased for Nels and Gunpat Rao. One dim far peak held his eyes from time to time; but Skag lived in the low beat of India's misery—the fever and famine; the world of veils and the miseries beyond knowledge of the world. He sank and sank until he was chilled, even though the sweat of the day's fierce burning was upon him. He understood hate and death, the thirst to kill; the slow ruin that comes at first to the human mind, suddenly cut off from the one held more dear than life. It seemed all boyish dazzle that he had ever found loveliness in this place. That boyishness had passed. In this hour he saw only hatred ahead and mockery, if Carlin—. . . but the far dim peak of misty light held his aching eyes.

"Go on, Nels—on, old man," he would call.

And Chakkra would turn with protest that could not find words—his tongue silenced by the lean terrible face in the howdah behind him. Presently Chakkra would fall to talking to his master, muttering in a kind of thrall at the thing he saw in the countenance of the American who had touched bottom.

Sanford Hantee was facing the worst of the past and an impossible future, having neither hate nor pity, now. Yet from time to time with a glance at the gun-case at his feet, he spoke with cold clearness:

"We must overtake them before night."

Chakkra, who had ceased singing, would bow, saying:

"The trail is hot, Sahib. They are not far."

Steadily beneath them, Gunpat Rao straightened out, lengthening his roll, softening his pitch. Nels was not trotting now, but in a long low run. Skag was aghast at himself, that his heart did not go out to these magnificent servants. There was not feeling within him to answer these verities of courage and endurance; yet he could remember the human that had been in his heart.

The low hills had broken away behind them; the first veil of twilight in the air. A shelving dip opened, showing the bottom of the valley. Skag could see nothing ahead—but Nels lying closer to the trail. Chakkra's shoulder was suddenly within reach of Skag's hand, for the head of his master was lifted.

As the great curve of Gunpat Rao's trumpet arched before his face—two things happened to Skag. A full blast of hot breath drove through him; and a keen high vibrant tone pierced every nerve. Then Chakkra shouted:

"Gunpat Rao, prince of Vindha—declares the chase is on! Hold fast, Sahib,—we go!"

The earth rose up and the heavens tipped. There was no foundation; the bulwarks of earth's crust had given away. The landscape was racing past—but backward—and Nels, yet ahead, was a still, whirring streak. The thing hardly believed and never seen in America—that the elephant is speed-king of the world—was revelation now! No pitch or roll; a long curving sweep this—seeming scarcely to touch the ground. This was the going Skag had called for—a night and a day. And Nels was labouring beside them now, but seeming to miss his tread—seeming to run on ice.

"Hai!" yelled Chakkra. "Who says there is none other than Neela Deo?"

A thread of silver stretched before them, crossing the line of their course. It broadened in a man's breath. They turned the curve of the last slope, and heard the shout of the mahout far ahead. The thief elephant was running along Nerbudda's margin to a ford.

A roar was about Skag's head and shoulders like a storm—Gunpat Rao trumpeting again! The landscape blurred. The forward beast was growing large . . . two standing figures above him—the fling of a white arm!

The huge red howdah rocked as the thief elephant entered the river; a moment more, only the howdah showing. Distantly like the hum of furious insects, Skag heard Chakkra's chant:

"The thief is snared! Holy Nerbudda herself weaved the snare. . . . The hand of destiny is ours, Sahib. Nay, mine, not thine! Did not the Deputy Commissioner Sahib say by necessity? . . . Plunge in! . . . Hai, but softly. Prince of thy kind, take the water softly, I say—"

And Gunpat Rao entered the river at a swimming stroke. Skag's eyes had hardly turned from the great red howdah. There was a keen squeal from ahead, answered by a fiery hissing intake of Chakkra's breath:

"That, Sahib, is the murderous mahout using his steel hook. . . . Yes, it was by necessity, the Deputy Sahib said. Certainly it was by necessity!"

The fling of a white arm again. Sanford Hantee was standing.

"Carlin!" he called.

The answer came back to him in some mystery of imperishable vibration.

"I am here."

The two great beasts were moiled together against the stream. . . . The man and woman, whose eyes still held, might have missed the flash of steel that Chakkra parried with his ankas. In fact, it was the sound of a quick gasp of Margaret Annesley that made them turn, just as Chakkra shouted:

"By necessity, Sahib! . . . It is accomplished!"

The other's blade had whirled into the water. They had heard the welt as Chakkra's ankas came down. The strange mahout looked drunken and spineless for a second; then there was a red gush under his white cloth as he pitched into the stream.

The Great Dane had just caught up. He was in the river below them—not doubting his part had come.

"Nels, steady! Let him go!" Skag called. "Don't touch, old man!"

And then, after the thief elephant, having no fight in him, was made fast, they heard Chakkra singing his song, but paid no attention. . . .

It was a longer journey back to Hurda, for they came slowly, but there was no haste; and two, at least, in the hunting howdah could transcend passing time, each by the grace of the other. Gunpat Rao was returned to the Deputy Sahib with an amulet to add to his trophy-winnings; and a sentence or two that might have been taken from the record of Neela Deo himself. The thief elephant was found to be a runaway that had fallen into native hands. And Nels was restored to Bhanah by the way of the heart of Carlin Deal. . . .

They never found out how far the two women would have been taken beyond the Nerbudda. After they had first mounted into the red howdah at Hurda, the messenger of the Kabuli had disappeared into the crowd and was not seen again. . . . As for the monster himself, he had suffered enough to plan craftily. (The Nerbudda took his mahout and covered him quite as deeply as the crowd had covered his messenger at Hurda.)

Much in his silence afterward, and in the great still joy that had come to him, Sanford Hantee chose to reflect upon the mystery of pain he had known on the lonely out-journey—the spiritless incapacity to cope with life—the loss even of his mastercraft with animals. He would look toward Carlin in such moments and then look away, or possibly look within. By her, the meanings of all life were sharpened—jungle and jungle-beast, monster, saint and man—the breath of all life more keen.



CHAPTER X

Hand-of-a-God

Skag and Carlin had come back from Poona where five of Carlin's seven brothers had been present at her marriage. There were weeks in Hurda now, while Skag's equipment for jungle work arrived bit by bit. They lived some distance from the city and back from the great Highway-of-all-India, in Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow, a house to remember for several reasons.

The Indian jungles were showing Skag deep secrets about wild animals—knowledge beyond his hopes. Some things that he thought he knew in the old days as a circus-trainer were beginning to look curious and obsolete, but much still held good, even became more and more significant. The things he had known intuitively did not diminish. These had to do with mysterious talents of his own, and dated back to the moment he stood for the first time before one of the "big cat" cages at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. That was his initiation-day in a craft in which he had since gone very far as white men go—even into the endless fascination of the cobra-craft.

Skag was meeting now from time to time in his jungle work some of the big hunters of India, men whose lives were a-seethe with tales of adventure. When they talked, however, Skag slowly but surely grasped the fact that what they had was "outside stuff." They knew trails, defensive and fighting habits, species and calls; they knew a great collection of detached facts about animals but it was all like what one would see in a strange city—watching from outside its wall. There was a certain boundary of observation which they never passed. All that Skag cared to know was across, on the inner side of the wall.

As for the many little hunters, they were tame; only their bags were "wild." They never even approached the boundary. Skag reflected much on these affairs. It dawned on him at last, that when you go out with the idea of killing a creature, you may get its attitude toward death, but you won't learn about how it regards life.

The more you give, the more you get from any relation. This is not only common knowledge among school-teachers, but among stock-raisers and rose-growers. Almost every man has had experience with a real teacher, at least once in his life—possibly only a few weeks or even days, but a bit of real teaching—when something within opened and answered as never before. It was like an extension of consciousness. If you look back you'll find that you loved that teacher—at least, liked that one differently, very deep.

Skag wanted a great deal. He wanted more from the jungle doubtless than was ever formulated in a white man's mind before. He wanted to know what certain holy men know; men who dare to walk to and fro in the jungles without arms, apparently without fear. He wanted to know what the priests of Hanuman know about monkeys; and what mahouts of famous elephants like Neela Deo and Mithi Baba and Gunpat Rao of the Chief Commissioner's stockades, know about elephants.

At this point one reflection was irresistible. The priests of Hanuman gave all they had—care, patience, tenderness, even their lives, to the monkey people. There were no two ways about the mahouts; they loved the elephants reverently; even regarding them as beings more exalted than men. As for the holy men—the sign manual of their order was love for all creatures. No, there was no getting away from the fact that you must give yourself to a thing if you want to know it. . . . Skag would come up breathless out of this contemplation—only to find it was the easiest thing he did—to love wild animals. . . .

Skag had reason to hold high his trust in animals. He had entered the big cat cages countless times and always had himself and the animals in hand. He had made good in the tiger pit-trap and certainly the loose tiger near the monkey glen didn't charge. All this might have established the idea that all animals were bound to answer his love for them.

But India was teaching him otherwise.

In the hills back of Poona he had met a murderer. That cat-scream at the last chilled him to the very centre of things. Cheetahs were malignant; no two ways about that. Skag hadn't failed. He never was better. There was no fear nor any lack of concentration in his work upon the cheetah beast. Any tiger he knew would have answered to his cool force, but the cheetah didn't.

It was the same with the big snake in the grass jungle. Skag had met fear there—something of monstrous proportion, more powerful than will, harder to deal with by a wide margin than any plain adjustment to death. It stayed with him. It was more formidable than pain. He had talked with Cadman about a peculiar inadequacy he felt in dealing with the snake—as if his force did not penetrate. Cadman knew too much to hoot at Skag's dilemma. The more a man knows, the more he can believe.

"It would be easier with a cobra than a constrictor," Cadman had said. "You'd have to strike just the right key, son. This is what I mean: The wireless instruments of the Swastika Line answer to one pitch; the ships of the Blue Toll to another. . . . But I've seen things done—yes, I've seen things done in this man's India. . . . I saw a man from one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas breathe a nest of cobras into repose; also I have seen other brothers pass through places where the deadly little karait is supposed to watch and wait and turn red-eyed."

The more Skag listened and learned and watched in India, the more he realised that if he knew all there was to know about the different orders of holy men, all the rest of knowledge would be included, even the lore of the jungle animals. He had come into his own considerable awe through what he had seen in the forest with the priests of Hanuman, but things-to-learn stretched away and away before him like range upon range of High Himalaya.

Malcolm M'Cord was the best rifle-shot in India. The natives called him Hand-of-a-God. As usual they meant a lot more than a mere decoration. M'Cord was one of the big master mechanics—especially serving Indian Government in engine building—a Scot nearing fifty now. For many years he had answered the cries of the natives for help against the destroyers of human life. Sometimes it was a mugger, sometimes a cobra, a cheetah, often a man-eating tiger that terrorised the countryside. There are many sizeable Indian villages where there is not a single rifle or short piece in the place; repeated instances where one pampered beast has taken his tolls of cattle and children of men, for several years.

The natives are slow to take life of any creature. They are suspicious toward anyone who does it thoughtlessly, or for pastime; but the Hindu also believes that one is within the equity of preservation in doing away with those ravagers that learn to hunt men.

In the early days M'Cord began to take the famous shoot trophies. Time came when this sort of thing was no longer a gamesome event, but a foregone conclusion. His rifle work was a revelation of genius—like the work of a prodigious young pianist or billiardist in the midst of mere natural excellence.

He had wearied of the game-bag end of shooting, even before his prowess in the tournaments became a bore. . . . So there was only the big philanthropy left. The silent steady Scot gave himself more and more to this work for the hunted villagers as the years went on. It sufficed. Many a man has stopped riding or walking for mere exercise, but joyously, and with much profit, taken it up again as a means to get somewhere.

It was Carlin who helped Skag to a deep understanding of her old friend, the Scot, and the famous bungalow in which he lived.

"It is 'papered' and carpeted and curtained with the skins of animals, but you would have to know what the taking of those skins has meant to the natives and how different it is from the usual hunter-man's house. The M'Cord bungalow is a book of man-eater tales—with leather leaves."

Carlin, who had been one of M'Cord's favourites since she was a child, saw the man with the magic of the native standpoint upon him. . . . With all its richness there was nothing of the effect of the taxidermist's shop about the place. Altogether the finest private set of gun-racks Skag had looked upon was in the dim front hall. Bhanah and Nels had a comfortable lodge to themselves, and there was a tiny summerhouse at the far end of the lawn that had been an ideal of Carlin's when she was small. The playhouse had but one door, which was turned modestly away from the great Highway. It was vined and partly sequestered in garden growths, its threshold to the west. The Scottish bachelor had turned this little house over to the child Carlin years ago, as eagerly as his entire establishment now. Yet the woman was no less partial to the playhouse than the child had been.

. . . They hardly saw the Scot. In fact it was only a moment in the station oval. Skag looked into a grey eye that seemed so steady as to have a life all its own and apart, in the midst of a weathered countenance both kindly and grim. . . . There was a tiny locked room on the south side of the bungalow, vividly sunlit—a room which in itself formed a cabinet for mounted cobras—eight or ten specimens with marvellous bodies and patchy-looking heads. . . . The place was heavily glazed, but not with windows that opened. Skag caught the hint before Carlin spoke—that the display might have a queer attraction for cobras that had not suffered the art of the taxidermist.

Skag turned to the girl as they stood together at the low heavy door, leading into the library. Something in her face held him utterly—something of wisdom, something of dread—if one could, imagine a fear founded on knowledge. . . . A brilliant mid-afternoon. Bhanah and Nels had gone to the stockades. Since the chase and rescue of Carlin, Nels and the young elephant Gunpat Rao were becoming friends—peculiar dignities and untellable reservations between them—but undoubtedly friends.

There was a kind of stillness in the place and hour, as they stood together, that made it seem they had never been alone before. Deep awe had come to Skag. As he looked now upon her beauty and health and courage, with eyes that saw another loveliness weaving all wonders together—he knew a kind of bewildered revolt that life was actually bounded by a mere few years; that it could be subject to change and chance. Thus he learned what has come to many a man in the first hours after bringing his great comrade home—that there must be some inner fold of romance to make straight the insistent torture at the thought of illness and accident and death itself—something somehow to enable a man to transcend all three-score and ten affairs and know that birth and death are mere hurdles for the runners of real romance.

. . . The sunlight brought out faint but marvellous gleamings from the serpents. It was as if every scale had been a jewel. . . . Skag looked closer. It wasn't bad mounting. It was really marvellous mounting. His eye ran from one to another. Every cobra's head had been shattered by a bullet. The broken tissues had been gathered together, pieced and sewn—the art of the workman not covering the dramatic effect entirely, yet smoothing the excess of the horror away.

". . . I've heard of cobras always, yet I never tire and never seem any nearer them," Carlin was saying. "I remember the word cobra when I heard it the first time—almost the first memory. It never becomes familiar. They are mysterious. One can never tell the why or when about them. One never gets beyond the fascination. The more you know the more you prepare for them in India. It's like this—any other room would have windows that open. . . . Cobras have much fidelity. We think of them as reptiles; and yet they are life-and-death-mates, like the best of tiger pairs. One who kills a cobra must kill two or look out—"

Carlin had strange lore about mated pairs; about moths and birds and other creatures (as well as men-things) finding each other and living and working together; about a tiger that had mourned for many seasons alone, after some sportsman had killed his female; about another rollicking young tiger pair that leaped an eight foot wall into a native yard in early evening, made their kill together of a plump young cow, and passed it up and over the wall between them.

"The cubs were hungry," Carlin had said.

Still they did not leave the door-way of the cobra room. Skag saw that something more was coming. Once more he was drawn to the mystery of the holy men by her tale:

". . . I was a little girl. It was here in Hurda. . . . I had strayed away into the open jungle, not toward our monkey glen, but farther south where the trees were scarce. . . . Of course I shouldn't have been alone—"

Skag was staring straight at one of the cobras. Carlin turned and placed her hand upon his sleeve. She knew that he was fighting that old dread that had come upon him on the day of the elephant pursuit—a dread well enough founded, grounded upon many tragedies—of the pitfalls and menaces and miasmas of old Mother India; the infinite variety, craft, swiftness and violence of her deaths. (White hands were certainly clinging to Skag.) One's vast careless attitudes to life are fearfully complicated when life means two and not the self alone.

"This isn't a horrible story—" she said.

He cleared his throat; then laughed.

"I'll get past all this," he muttered. "Go on, Carlin—"

"I heard a step behind," she said. "It was my uncle—the most wonderful of many uncles. I have not seen him since that day. He is a little older than my eldest brother—possibly thirty at that time—tall, dark, silent; a frowning man, but not to me. Even then he belonged to one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas—lesser, you know, in relation to the great brotherhoods of the Himalayas. In fact it is from the Vindha Hills that they move on when they are called—up the great way and beyond—"

Another of Carlin's themes—always the dream in her mind of climbing to the heights.

"We walked on together through one of the paths—some time I will show you. It was not like anyone else coming to find a child, or coming to take it back. A most memorable thing to a little one, this elaborate consideration from a great man. He did not suggest that I turn. He made himself over to my adventure."

She waited for Skag to see more of the picture from her mind than her words suggested:

"Ahead on the path—leisurely, like nothing else, a cobra reared, a king cobra, as great as any of these. He barred our way. There comes a penetrating cold from the first glance. It's like an icy lance to the centre of consciousness. Then I felt the man's presence beside me. My confidence was that which only a child can give. What the mind knows and fears has too much dominion afterward. . . . The appalling power and beauty of the cobra fascinated me. I have never quite forgotten. There was a lolling trailing grace about the lifted length, the head slightly inclined to us, the hood but partly spread—something winged in the undulation, a suggestion of that which we could not see, faintly like the whir of a humming bird's wings. That is it—an intimation of forces we had not senses to register—also colours and sounds! . . . My hand was lost in the great hand. My uncle did not turn back. He was speaking. There was that about his tones which you had to listen for—a low softness that you had to listen to get. Yes, it was to the cobra that he spoke.

". . . There was never a poem to me like those words, but they did not leave themselves in continuity. I could not say the sentences again. I seem to remember the vibration—some sense of the mysterious, kindred with all creatures—and a vast flung scroll of wisdom and poetry, as if the serpents had been a great and glorious people of blinding, incredible knowledges—never like us—but all the more marvellous for their difference! . . . And the cobra hung there, his eyes darkening under the gentleness of the voice—then reddening again like fanned embers. . . .

"Then I heard my uncle ask to be permitted to pass, saying that he brought no harm to the mother, undoubtedly near, nor to the baby cobras—only good-will; but that it was not well for a man and a little girl to be prevented from passing along a man-path. . . . It was only a moment more that the way was held from us. There was no rising at all, to fighting anger. A cobra doesn't, you know, until actual attack. In leisurely undulations, he turned and entered the deeper growths. A moment later my uncle pointed to the lifted head in the shadows. One had need to be magic-eyed to see. We went on a little way and walked back. It was not that we had to pass—but that we must not be obstructed." . . .

This was the India that astonished Skag more than all hunter tales, more than any hunter prowess; but there were always two sides. . . . The weeks were unlike any others he had ever known. The mystery deepened between him and Carlin. Almost the first he had heard of her was that she was "unattainable"—yet they had known each other at once. . . . Still Carlin was unattainable; forever above and beyond. Such a woman is no sooner comprehended on one problem than she unfolds another; much of man's growth is from one to another of her mysteries. And always when he has passed one, he thinks all is known; and always as another looms, he realises how little he knows after all. . . .

A thousand times Skag recalled the words of the learned man who had spoken to Cadman and himself on their way to the grass jungle. "You will acknowledge love, but you will not know love until it is revealed by supreme danger. The way of your feet is in the ascending path. Hold fast to the purposes of your own heart and you will come into the heights."

Could Carlin be more to him than now? . . . Yes, she was more to-day than yesterday. It would always be so. Love is always love, but it is always different. . . . Sometimes he would stay away from the bungalow for several hours. He was of a nature that could not be pleased with himself when he gave way tumultuously to the thing he wanted—which was continually to be in Carlin's presence. His every step in the market-place, or in the bazaar, had its own twitch back toward Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow; his every thought encountering a pressure of weight to hurry home.

Carlin was full of deep joys of understanding. One did not have to finish sentences for her. She meant India—its hidden wisdom. She had the thing called education in great tiers and folds. Skag's education was of the kind that accumulates when a man does not know he is being educated. . . . Certainly Carlin was unattainable—this was an often recurring thought as he learned Hindi from her and something of Urdu; the usages of her world, its castes and cults.

Down in the unwalled city one mid-afternoon, he finished certain errands and started for the bungalow. Had he let himself go, his feet would have stormed along. He laughed at the joy of the thing; and he had only been away since tiffin. Yet there was tension too—the old mystery. A man cannot feel all still and calm and powerful, when there has suddenly descended upon him realisation of all that can possibly happen to take away one so much more important than one's own life as to make contrast absurd. Skag was looking ahead into stark days, when he would be called upon to take big journeys alone into the jungle for the service. It was very clear there might be many weeks of separation . . . and now it was only a matter of hours. He was nearing the little gate. . . .

These are affairs men seldom speak about—seldom write; yet his experience was one that a multitude of men have felt vaguely at least. There was a laugh about it, a sense of self-deprecation; but above all, Skag knew for the sake of the future that he must get himself better in hand against this incredible pull to the place where she was. It seemed quite enough to reach the compound or the grass plot and hear her step.

She was not at the gate. He halted. Malcolm M'Cord was expected home this day. He might have come. Surely he might give two such rare good friends a chance to have a chat together . . . in Malcolm's own house, too. Besides there was no better chance than now for a bit of moral calisthenics. Skag turned back. No one was very near to note that he was a bit pale. Still he was laughing. Even Nels, his Great Dane, would have thought him weird, he reflected. Had Bhanah been along, there could have been no possible explanation. . . . He was walking toward the city, but his eyes were called back again. Carlin had come to the gate. She held up her right arm full and straight—her signal always, such an impulse of joy in it.

He waved and made a broken sort of gesture toward Hurda, as if he had forgotten something. Minute by minute he fought them out after that—sixty of them, ninety of them, good measure, sixty seconds each, before he started at last to the bungalow again. The sun was low. The bazaars were but a little distance back, when he met Bhanah and Nels out for their evening exercise. . . . No, M'Cord-Sahib had not yet come. . . . Yes, all was quite well with the Hakima, Hantee-Sahiba, who was reading in the playhouse. . . .

Quite alone. Skag quickened, but repressed himself again. It was business for contemplation—the way Bhanah had spoken of Carlin as Hantee Sahiba, after her usual title. . . . He heard the birds. The great Highway was deserted; the noise of the city all behind. . . . If he had merely "acknowledged love" so far, as the learned man had said—what must be the nature of the emotion that would reveal the full secret to him? Always when his thoughts fled away like this, his steps seized the advantage and he would find himself in full stride like a man doing road-work for the ring.

She wasn't at the gate this time. Just now Skag felt the first coolness of evening, the shadow of the great trees. . . . She did not come to the gate. His hand touched its latch and still he had not heard her voice. On the lawn path—in that strange lovely wash of light—he stood, as the sun sank and the afterglow mounted. This was always Carlin's hour to him—the magic moment of the afterglow. In such an hour in the outer paths of the tree jungle, they had spoken life to life.

"Malcolm M'Cord—is that you, Malcolm?"

Her voice was from the playhouse. It was steady but startling. Something cold in it—very weary. Still he did not see her. The door was on the western side.

Skag answered.

"Oh—" came from Carlin.

There was an instant intense silence; then he heard:

"Go into the house. I thought it was Malcolm. . . . I'll join you. Don't come here—"

He turned obediently. He had the male's absurd sense of not belonging. . . . He might at least be silent and do as she said. A keener gust of reality then shot through him. His steps would not go on. She must have heard his change from the gravel to the grass, for she called:

"It's all right, go right in—"

"But, Carlin—"

"Don't come here, dear! It's—not for you to see now!"

He halted, an indescribable chill upon him. The low threshold was in sight, yet Carlin did not appear in the doorway. It was not more than sixty feet away, across the lawn. It may have been something that she had on. . . . A gold something. This came because of a fallen bit of gold-brown tapestry on the threshold. It had folds. Out of the cone of it, was a rising sheen like thin gold smoke. A fallen garment was the first thing that came to Skag's mind, keyed to the suggestion of some fabric which Carlin was to put on. The thing actually before his eyes had not dislodged for an instant, the thought-picture in his mind.

Right then Skag made a mistake. He had not taken ten running steps before he knew it, and halted. That which had been like rising gold smoke was a hooded head—lifting just now, dilating. Already he knew, almost fully, what the running had done. The thought of Carlin in the playhouse had over-balanced his own genius. He walked forward now, for the time not hearing Carlin's words from within. . . . The door was open; the windows were screened. The girl was held within by the coiled one on the stone. . . . She was imploring Skag to go back:

". . . to the house!" he heard at last. "Wait there—don't come! It is death to come to me!"

He could not see her.

"Where are you standing, Carlin?"

"Far back—by the sewing machine! . . . Will you not—will you not, for me?"

He spoke very coldly:

"While he watches me from the stone—you come forward slowly and shut the door!"

"That would anger him into flying at you—"

Quite as slowly, his next words:

"I do not think he is angry with me—"

Yet Skag was not in utter truth right there, even in his own knowledge. His voice did not carry conviction of truth. . . . The thing unsteadied his concentration. The fact that he had started to run and thus ruffled the cobra, was still upon him like shame. It reacted to divide his forces now, at least to make tardier his self-command. Back of everything—Carlin's danger. There was a quick turn of his eye for a weapon, even as he heard a deep tone from Carlin—something immortal in the resonance:

". . . You might save me . . . but, don't you see—I want you more!"

A lakri of Bhanah's leaned against the playhouse at the side towards the road.

The cobra had lifted himself erect upon his tail almost to the level of Skag's eyes, hood spread. Carlin talked to him—low tones—no words which she or Skag should know again. . . .

The lakri was of iron-wood from the North, thick as the man's wrist at the top. It pulled Skag's eye a second time. It meant the surrender of his faith in his own free-handed powers to reach for the lakri; it meant the fight to death. It meant he must disappear from the cobra's eye an instant behind the playhouse. . . . Carlin's tones were in the air. He could not live or breathe until the threshold was clear—no concentration but that. . . . Like the last outburst before a breaking heart, he heard:

"If you would only go—go, my dear!"

He had chosen—or the weakness for him. There was an instant—as his hand closed upon the lakri, the corner of the playhouse wall shutting him off from the cobra—an instant that was doom-long, age-long, long enough for him to picture in his own thoughts the king turning upon the threshold—entering, rising before Carlin! . . . The threshold was empty as he stepped back, but the cobra had not entered. Perturbed that the man had vanished, he had slid down into the path to look.

Skag breathed. "And now if you will shut the door, Carlin—"

A great cry from Carlin answered.

Thick and viperine, the thing looked, as it hurled forward. It was like the fling of a lash. Four feet away, Skag looked into the hooded head poised to strike, the eyes flaming into an altogether different dimension for battle.

The head played before him. The breadth of the hood alone held it at all in the range of the human eye—so swift was the lateral vibration, a sparring movement. The whole head seemed delicately veiled in a grey magnetic haze. Its background was Carlin—standing on the threshold.

"I won't fail—if you stay there!" he called.

It was like a wraith that answered—again the old mystery, as if the words came up from his own heart:

"I—shall—not—come—to—you—until—the—end!"

Skag was back in the indefinite past—all the dear hushed moments he had ever known massed in her voice.

"Stay there—not nearer—and I can't fail!"

He was saying it like a song—his eyes not leaving the narrow veiled head before him. It was like a brown sealed lily-bud of hardened enamel, brown yet iridescent—set off by two jewels of flaming rose. There was no haste. The king's mouth was not tight with strain. It was the look of one certain of victory, certain from a life that knew no failures—the look of one that had learned the hunt so well as to make it play. . . .

The brown bud vanished. Skag struck at the same time. His lakri touched the hood. With all his strength, though with a loose whipping wrist, he had struck. The lakri had touched the hood, but there was no violence to the impact. . . . Carlin's love tones were in his heart. Skag laughed.

The head went out of sight. Skag struck again. It was as if his lakri were caught in a swift hand and held for just the fraction of a second. No force to the man's blow. The cobra was no nearer; no show of haste. Skag's stick was a barrier of fury, yet twice the king struck between . . . twice and again. Skag felt a laming blow upon a muscle of his arm as from sharp knuckles.

And now they were fast at it. The man heard Carlin's cry but not the words:

"Stay there!" he sang in answer. "Not nearer—just there and I can't lose! . . . It isn't in the cards to lose, Carlin—"

Yet his mind knew he could not win. The cobra's head and hood recoiled with each blow. It took Skag's highest speed—as an outfielder takes a drive bare-handed, his hands giving with the ball. The head moved past all swiftness, even the speed greatest swordsmen know. It was like something that laughed. Before the whirring lakri, the cobra head played like a flung veil between and through and around.

. . . So, for many seconds. The grey magnetic haze was a dirty brown now. The man was seeing through blood. He could not make a blow tell. He could not see Carlin. . . . She was not talking to him. . . . She was calling upon some strange name. . . . His arm was numbed again—like a blow from a leaden sling. There was a suffocating knot in his throat and the smell of blood in his head . . . that old smell of blood he had known when his father whipped him long ago. . . .

He tried to chop straight down to break in upon the king's rhythm. It answered quicker than his thought. . . . Yes, it was Malcolm M'Cord, she was calling. . . . He saw her like a ghost now. She was utterly tall—her arms raised! . . . Then he heard a rifle crack—then a breath of moisture upon his face—the sealed bud smashed before him—the rest whipping the ground.

Skag went to Carlin who had fallen, but he was pulled off abruptly.

"I say, Lad, let me have a look at you. . . . The child's right enough. Let her rest—"

The grim face was before him, two steady hands at work on him, pulling back his collar, taking one of Skag's hands after another—looking even between the fingers, feeling his thighs.

"I can't find that he cut you, Lad," he said gently.

Skag pushed him away. Carlin was moaning.

"I'm thinking your lad's sound, deerie," M'Cord called to her. "A minute more, to be sure." . . .

He kept a trailing hold of Skag's wrist, staring a last minute in his eyes.

No break anywhere in the younger man's flesh.

The afterglow was thickening. A servant came down the path to call them to dinner. The servant had never seen such a spectacle—the Hakima sitting with Hand-of-a-God and Son-of-Power, together—on the lawn already wet with dew—their knees almost touching. . . .

"The like's not been known before, Lad—even of a man with a sword," Malcolm M'Cord was saying. "You must have stood up to him two minutes. No swordsman has done as much. . . . And it was only a lakri you had—and a swordsman's blade goes soft and flat against a cobra's scales! . . . You see, they take wings when the fighting rage flows into them. It's like wings, sir. . . . Yes, you'll have a lame arm where the hood grazed. It couldn't have been the drive of the head or he would have bitten through—"

Even Skag, as he glanced into Carlin's face from time to time, forgot that Hand-of-a-God had done it again one more king cobra with a patched head and a life and death story to be added to the sunny cabinet in the bungalow. . . . Carlin rose to lead them to dinner at last, but Malcolm shook his head.

"On you go, you two. I'll sit out a bit in the lamplight, just here by the playhouse door. . . . She'll be looking for him soon. . . . She won't be far. She won't be long coming—to look for him. . . . She'd find him and then set out to look for you, Lad."

The lights of the bungalow windows were like vague cloths upon the lawn. . . . Carlin and Skag hadn't thought of dinner. They were in the shadow of the deep verandah. Once Carlin whispered:

"I loved the way he said 'Lad' to you."

It was hours afterwards that the shot was heard. . . . Carlin was closer. He felt her shivering. He could not be sure of the words, yet the spirit of them never left his heart:

"If I were she—and I had found you so—upon the lawn—I should want Hand-of-a-God to wait for me—like that!"



CHAPTER XI

Elephant Concerns

"Only the altogether ignorant do not know that the women of my line have been chaste."

It was the youngest mahout of the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades of Hurda, who spoke.

They sat in comfort under the feathery branches of tall tamarisk trees, smoking their water-pipes, after the sunset meal. It was the time for talk.

"A good beginning," said a very old man near by, "it being wise, in case of doubt, to stop the mouth of—who might speak afterward."

"And the men of my line," proceeded the youngest mahout, without embarrassment, "have been illustrious—save those who are forgotten. They all have been of High Himalaya; yet I am the least among you. I render homage of Hill blood, hot and full, to every one of you—my elders—because you are all mahouts of High Himalaya, even as my fathers were."