Neela Deo was barely in on the sanded disk, when the elephants lifted their heads as one and saluted him with an earth-rocking blast; again and yet again. Then he thrust his head forward, reached his trumpet-tip—quivering before him—and made speed till he came close to the Chief Commissioner's place, where he rendered one soft salute and wheeled into position by the stand. This was a movement no one had anticipated. Nothing like it was in the plan; the Chief Commissioner had not intended to ride! But Neela Deo demanded him and there was nothing for it but to go; so with a very white face, he stepped into the howdah.

Waves upon waves of enthusiasm swept the multitude. They shouted to heaven—for all time it was established. No man could ever deny it—Neela Deo himself had made his meaning perfectly plain, that he had done the marvel thing sixteen weeks before, to save the life of his friend—their friend! They stood up and flung their flower-garlands on both of them—as Neela Deo, with a stately tread, carried the Chief Commissioner around the circle. The nautch-girls sprang from their platforms into the middle of the arena and danced their most wonderful dances—tossing the fallen garlands, like forest fairies at play.

Then a thousand voices lifted upon the great chorus of laudation, which had been prepared in high-processional time; the drums and the sitars furnishing a dim background for the volume of sound. The elephants turned out of their stations as Neela Deo passed them and came into their accustomed formation behind him. The tread of four times forty such ponderous feet, in perfect time with the music, shook the earth.

The chorus told the story of the incredible manner of their Chief Commissioner's deliverance; it exalted his record and his character; it pledged the preservation of his fame. Then a master-mahout from High Himalaya went alone to the centre of the disk and in incomparable tones—such as master-mahouts use—having no accompaniment at all, told the story of Neela Deo's birthright. The people were utterly hushed; but the elephants kept their even pace—as if listening. Then the great chorus came back, rendering the acknowledgment of a human race.

At last the multitude rose up and loosed its strangling exultation in mighty shouts. The elephants raised their big heads, threw high their trumpets and rent the leagues of outer night—as if calling to their brothers in the Vindha Hills.

The next part of the celebration was to happen suddenly. The mahouts had planned it in sheer boyishness; and to their mountain hearts it meant something like the clown-play in a western circus. Its success depended on whether Neela Deo had enough foolishness in him—to play the game. So now they wheeled the elephants into their stations again, just in time before one section of the enclosure folded down flat on the ground. This left that part open to the outside world; for the shrubs that used to grow thick at the feet of the tamarisk trees had been rooted up and green tenting-cloth stretched in their place. One shrub still grew in the midst of that opening.

Neela Deo stopped short one moment—frozen so still that he looked like a granite image—then, feeling toward the shrub with his trumpet tip an instant only, flung up his head with a joyous squeal and was upon it before a man could think. The shrub melted to pulp under his tramping feet. Then they saw the black and yellow stripes of the tiger he had killed in this same way—tramping, tramping. He was doing it over again, for them.

The mahouts laughed, calling their strange mountain calls; and the people went quite mad. Even the English taxidermist who had taken the trouble to sew and roughly stuff that mangled tiger-skin for the mahouts—even he shouted with them. Every time Neela Deo put that little quirk into his trunk and slanted his head in that absurd angle—Neela Deo, whose smooth dignity had never shown a wrinkle before—they broke out afresh.

This clown-play certainly brought the people back to earth; but it did something queer to the elephants. Having learned to know human voices, they had already felt the mounting excitement; they had already been tamping the ground with hard driving strokes, as if making speed on the open highway—for some time. But in this abandonment to amusement, this joyous unrestraint, they must have found some reminder. They did not have Neela Deo's sense of humour. But they must have remembered the unwalled distances of their own Hills—the hedge of shrubs had been taken away; the tall slender tamarisk trees still standing, made no obstruction. Beyond the waning torches they must have looked and seen the quenchless glory of the same old Indian stars.

It was Nut Kut, the great black elephant not long down from his own wilds among the Vindha Hills, who left his station first and moved on out into the night. Gunpat Rao followed him. . . . One by one they filed away. Indeed, there was not one shrub left to bar their path. But in this falling of calamity upon their so successful foolish plan, the mahouts were stricken—desperate. There was something grotesque about their hands, as they disappeared. With wild gestures and twisted-back faces many of them went out of sight. The elephants were surely their masters, in that hour.

They all passed quite close to where the Chief Commissioner sat in Neela Deo's howdah. Neela Deo had regained his dignity; he was gravely driving fragments of black and yellow stripes into the sand—patiently finishing his job. But Kudrat Sharif's voice had no effect upon the others; and the Chief Commissioner was entirely helpless. No one could prevent their going. Then it appeared that one had not gone—one other, beside Neela Deo.

Mitha Baba, the greatest female of the caravan, under her pale rose caparison and gold lacquered howdah with its curtains of frost-green, was beating the ground with angry feet and thrusting her head aside impatiently. Something was holding her. When he saw, the Chief Commissioner made haste to reach her—leaving Kudrat Sharif, who was confident of keeping Neela Deo.

Mitha Baba's station in the circle was close to where the Gul Moti sat; her new housings had been specially designed to recognise her devotion to the Gul Moti, whose low 'cello tones were now soothing the great creature and restraining her. But when the Chief Commissioner approached, Mitha Baba started, flinging herself forward—and the Gul Moti was suddenly at the edge of the stand. Just as the elephant lunged out to take her stride, the colourful voice that she had never refused to obey said:

"Come near, Mitha Baba, come near!"

Mitha Baba was not sure about it; she struck the voice aside with her head. But the voice was saying:

"Mitha Baba, you may take me with you!"

Then Son-of-Power was on his feet, but it was too late—Mitha Baba decided quickly and she acted soon—he could not reach the edge in time to go himself, but on an impulse he threw his great-coat into the Gul Moti's hands and she laughed as she caught it from the howdah.

In swerving suddenly to pass close by the stand, the elephant had unbalanced her boy-mahout from her neck; but his father—the very old mahout—was coming as fast as he could across the space before them, calling to her—like the lover of wild creatures that he was.

Carlin bent from her howdah and spoke joyously:

"Put him up, Mitha Baba, put him up!"

And Mitha Baba scarcely broke her stride, which was lengthening every step, as she obediently circled the old man with her trunk and carelessly flung him on her neck.

"We'll fetch them all home!" the Gul Moti's voice floated back, as they melted away into the night.

The Chief Commissioner gave Son-of-Power his hand—being without words, for the moment.

"Is she safe?" Skag asked.

"Absolutely safe!" the Chief Commissioner assured him. "The caparisons may be doused in the Nerbudda, but the howdahs will not be in the least wet."

"What did she mean—that she'd fetch them all back?"

"She meant that Mitha Baba has been used in the High Hills—for years before she was sent down—to decoy wild elephants into the trap-stockades. She's entirely competent, is Mitha Baba; she's the leader of my caravan—next to Neela Deo. Of course Neela Deo is our only hope of overtaking them; he's fast enough, but this is rather soon after his injury, and he'll have to rest a bit. In the meantime, come away up to the house; we'll talk there."



CHAPTER XIV

Neela Deo, King of All Elephants (Continued)

To possess one white elephant is calamity. But if Evil—the nameless one—could possess a pair, he would breed an army able to break down the very walls of Equity.

Indra—supreme hypocrite—fathered the first two, who were brother and sister. Kali—wife of Shiva, the great destroyer—Kali—goddess of plague and famine and fear and death—was their mother.

Beware the white elephant—who is never white. The stain of Indra is on his skin; the shadow of Kali on his hair. Honour is not in him!

The Gul Moti had always loved adventures; and she had been in the throat of several. But this was no lark; it was more serious than funny. Thirty-eight of the most valuable elephants in India were rolling away before her toward the Vindha Hills. If they once arrived there, no man could say how many of them, or if any of them, would ever be recovered. The Nerbudda River crossed their path mid-way—almost at flood. If they entered that tide—deep and wide and muddy—state-housings of great value would be hopelessly damaged.

Mitha Baba was beginning to show that she did not like the old mahout's urging—but Mitha Baba was always willful. Indeed, the Gul Moti was depending much on this same willfulness. The splendid female was still young, but she had been for years a celebrated toiler of wild elephants; and it was well known she had loved the game. Had she forgotten it? Could she be reminded? First, it was supremely important to overtake all the others this side the Nerbudda.

The old mahout gasped a broken cry, as Mitha Baba lifted him and set him not too gently on the ground; she was in a hurry herself and she was making speed on her own account—she objected to being urged. The Gul Moti, understanding in a flash, cried quickly:

"No, no! Mitha Baba, I want him! Put him up to me—put him up to me—soon!"

Mitha Baba wavered in her long stride.

"Mitha Baba, I want him—I want him!"

And the elephant turned on a circle and caught him up, throwing him far enough back, so the Gul Moti could help him into the howdah.

"My day is done!" he said bitterly.

"Nay, father!" the girl physician answered him. "She knew you were not safe there."

"Is it so?" the old man marvelled. "Indeed, she always loved me! Now I am satisfied!"

Then, in the white fire of what men call genius, the Gul Moti stood up to meet this new emergency—leaning toward Mitha Baba's head—and called in ringing tones:

"Now come, Mitha Baba, we're away! We're going out to fetch them in! Away, away, awa-a-ay!"

So long as he lived, the old mahout told of the intoxicating splendour of that young voice—the golden beauty of those tones; of how Mitha Baba reached out further and further every stride, to its rhythm, till the earth rose up and the stars began to swing.

"We'll fetch them in, Mitha Baba, we'll fetch them in! . . . Away, away, awa-a-ay!"

But the toiler of wild elephants had remembered the game she loved.

As they topped the crest of a low hill, the Gul Moti scanned the country declining before her toward the Nerbudda. A string of jewels appeared—incredibly gorgeous in mid-day light. It was thirty-eight full-caparisoned elephants—going fast. Mitha Baba called on them to wait for her; but they remained in sight only a few minutes. The Gul Moti's high courage sank; the caravan was too near the river to be delayed by Mitha Baba's calls—the river too far ahead.

"Do they ever obey her, Laka Din?" the Gul Moti asked.

"They always used to," the old man replied dubiously.

Finally Mitha Baba came out into the straight descent toward the river. No elephants were in sight, but a blotch of colour showed on the bank.

"Well done for those mahouts!" the Gul Moti cried out in relief. "The caparisons at least are safe. How did they do it?"

"It was well done, Hakima-ji," the old man exulted. "The masters were listening to Mitha Baba, delaying between her and the river—space of six breaths; then those men became like monkeys! It is no easiness—unfastening everything from top of an elephant. (I who am old have done it!) Also, some went down to loosen underneath buckles. You shall see."

They found four very disconsolate mahouts on the bank of the river beside the great pile of nicely arranged stuff.

"I want the smallest howdah you have!" called the Gul Moti, as the men sprang in front of Mitha Baba.

"But, Hakima-ji," they protested, "by getting down—we were left behind!"

"I must not be left—and yet you must take these clothes from her!" the Gul Moti said, while they helped the old man to the ground.

"Then go to her neck—oh, Thou Healer-without-fear! She will not wait long—she follows Nut Kut, the demon! and Gunpat Rao, who both got away with everything on!"

Still hoping, the Gul Moti slipped over the edge of the big howdah and climbed toward Mitha Baba's neck. The mahouts worked fast stripping her. Then Mitha Baba flung her head, striding away from their puny fingers, and plunged into the river. Sinking at first enough to wet the Gul Moti a little, she rose beautifully as she found her swimming stroke.

Day went by—and no elephants in sight. Night came on—and no elephants in sight. Mitha Baba rolled across the Nerbudda valley, as confident of her way as if she travelled the great Highway-of-all-India. She began to climb into the rising country beyond, as certain of her steps as if she were coming in to her own stockades. The Gul Moti took up her call again—thinking of the caravan they were following. But Mitha Baba was not thinking of the caravan. It had happened that the Gul Moti's tones had fallen upon those intonations used in High Himalaya, to send the toilers out to toil wild elephants in.

It was night-time, before the moon came up, when a strange elephant crashed past them—lunging in the opposite direction. It reeled as it ran and went down on its knees; evidently having been done to death in a fight. But the outline of it, in the shadows, appeared too lean to be one of her own.

Soon after that, Mitha Baba trumpeted in a new tone of voice—one the Gul Moti had never heard before. It sounded very wild, very desolate.

"In the name of all the gods, Mitha Baba, what's the meaning of that?" the Gul Moti enquired with a little tension—it being one of those moments when one gains assurance by speech.

But Mitha Baba's reply was in the very oldest language of India—one even the mahouts know only a very little of. It rose in wild, wistful tones—higher and higher. It was repeated from time to time; the sense of it strangely thrilling to the girl on her neck.

. . . They were well up in the mountains, so far that the trees had become massive of body and heavy and dense of top—the moon only just showing through—when they heard the trumpeting of elephants, off toward the east. Mitha Baba answered at once, turning abruptly toward the east.

"Mitha Baba!" the Gul Moti protested, "our people have never gone off in this direction—where are we, anyway?"

Mitha Baba's calling was just as wild as before; but it had become wild exultation.

. . . They were coming up into what reminded the Gul Moti of something she had heard—that the really old jungle is always dark; that the light of day never touches earth there. This was almost dark, the moon glinting through black shadows—only at intervals.

The sense of this place was strange. It might be on another planet. And that thought touched the root of the difference—this was not on, this was in. Everything felt in—deep in.

Here Mitha Baba changed her voice again. (Nothing had ever happened to the Gul Moti like it.) It was still wild, still wistful—quite as much so as before. But there was a cooing roll in it—away and away the most enticing thing human ears ever listened to. It sounded like Nature—weaving all spells of all glamour, in tone; soft-flaming gold, in tone; soft-flaming rose, in tone; and on and on—the very softest, deepest magics of life-perpetual!

. . . The trumpeting ahead was fuller and nearer, distinctly nearer; almost as if they were coming into it. Then, without warning, the mighty mountain trees cut off the moon-lit sky. It had been dark before—now it was utterly dark!

Suddenly the Gul Moti was aware of a strong earth-smell. There was no stench about. It had a quality of incense made of tree-gums and sandalwood and perfume-barks, all together. Then a dull thudding caught her ear—almost rhythmic.

. . . The earth-smells deepened and the thudding thickened. Mitha Baba was not climbing any more; moving smoothly, on what felt like firm soil, she seemed to turn and turn again. It was fathoms deep in rayless night—the place that never knew the light of day!

Carlin clung tight to Mitha Baba's neck and remembered everything actual, everything definite, everything sound and sensible she knew. The earth-smells filled her nostrils, her lungs, her blood; tree-gums, sandal-wood, perfume-bark, body-warmth—charging the air.

And over all—wild, and wistful, and pulsing-tender—the weaving of Mitha Baba's enchantment through the dark.

The thudding all about her on the ground—must be the sound of many wild feet! This must be—the "toiling in."

. . . A rending, tearing noise broke in on Mitha Baba's voice; and at once a great crash among the trees, high up. (Someone had torn a sapling from its place and flung it far.)

. . . The keen squeal of a very little elephant—right near—and the angry protest of a strange voice. (Some mother's baby had been pinched, in the crowd!)

. . . It must be imagination—this strong nearness! The Gul Moti, putting out her hand, touched—skin! And within the same breath, on both sides of Mitha Baba—first this side and then that side—two great elephants challenged each other. They were both long, rocking blasts, a little above and almost against the Gul Moti's quickened ears. She shivered under the shock.

Mitha Baba, without breaking her step, backed away from between them; and the impact of frightful blow meeting frightful blow, bruised through the outbreak of much trumpeting.

As Mitha Baba went further and further from the fighters, the Gul Moti was amazed at the sounds of their meeting—like explosions. She remembered their tonnage; and recalled having heard that an elephant fight is not the sort of thing civilised men call sport.

. . . A soft, feeling thing crept from the Gul Moti's shoulder along down her back! With convulsive fingers she clung tighter to Mitha Baba's neck. Instantly Mitha Baba turned a bit, driving sidewise at the stranger with her head. The Gul Moti's confidence in the great female's intention to protect her, was established!

At last, lifting her head sharply to utter a different call, Mitha Baba developed a peculiar drive in her motion; a queer drive in the whole huge body that had something to do with a wide swinging of the head. It made them both touch the strange elephants, every few minutes; and always there was a storm of trumpeting all about. Gradually these outbreaks began to sound toward one side; but the direction kept changing—so the Gul Moti made out that Mitha Baba was moving round and round on the outside of the mass.

After a while they came again into the vicinity where the big males were still fighting. Mitha Baba rocked on her feet a moment, calling a curious low call—a question, softly spoken. At once there was the sound of rapid movement in front. Then Mitha Baba literally whirled—plunging away at incredible speed—almost exactly in the opposite direction from the one she had been facing.

Doctor Carlin Deal Hantee tried to remember Skag—tried to remember her own name. She locked herself about that neck with her strength—she clung with her might. She flattened her body and gripped with her fingers and with her toes—long since having kicked off her low shoes. Away and away they went, coming out into the moonlight—long enough to see a mass of dun shadows rising and falling, lurching and rolling, on all sides. Surely the Gul Moti had known that this was a wild elephant herd—these hours. Surely the Gul Moti had heard the "toiling" of them in! But what was Mitha Baba going to do with them—now that she had them?

Down the long slopes and up the steep inclines—the two big elephants close on either side of Mitha Baba—plunging into khuds and out again—most of the time up-ended, one way or the other, at astounding angles—the wild herd raced with Mitha Baba toward whatever destination she might choose.

Dawn broke upon them while they were still in the very rugged hills; and as the mountain outlines cleared of mist, the Gul Moti saw that Mitha Baba was leading her catch straight away back to Hurda. True to her training—there being no trap-stockades near—the toiler was taking them home! The situation was absurd; but it roused the Gul Moti—like one out of a dream—to actual joy.

Through grey avenues of forest trees—rolling down khuds, ringing up crags—the voice of Nut Kut went on out beyond the mountain peaks, to meet approaching day. Nut Kut, the great black elephant who had been trapped in these same Vindha Hills only a few years ago, was rejoicing in freedom again. Nut Kut, who had already made his reputation as the most deadly fighter known to the mahouts, was exulting in strength. It was his joy-song. It came from straight ahead. Mitha Baba answered with a rollicking squeal. But the wild herd voices were savage—chaotic. Now Nut Kut's challenge came back—looming. The situation was no longer absurd.

It meant a fight—an open fight—between the wild herd and the caravan. The wild herd would never give Mitha Baba over to her own—they would surely fight to keep her. Everything tightened in the Gul Moti and locked—hard. She had known most of the caravan elephants all her life—what would happen to them? They had lived among men these many and many years—never permitted to fight—they could not be equally fighting-fit. The herd would be much leaner—it must be much tougher. So she bruised her head and her heart between the things that were due to happen to her caravan—horrible punishments and almost certain deaths.

When the caravan appeared, the males were leading; the four females well in the rear. Nut Kut's flaming orange and imperial-blue trappings covered and cumbered him; and young Gunpat Rao's gorgeous saffron and old-rose burned through the Gul Moti's eyes to the hard lump in her throat—it was the one time in their lives when they should be free.

At once the wild females gathered their youngsters—and some who seemed almost mature—cutting them out from the herd and driving them back. This revealed the wild fighters—many more in number than those of the caravan. The approaching challenges, from both sides, were thundering thick and fast now. The two bodies of elephants were plunging down the opposite sides of a deep khud and would meet in the broad bottom. Mitha Baba—the big males on each side of her—was setting the pace for this side, as if everything depended on time. But when they were quite close, she rushed ahead—straight through the caravan and beyond.

Mitha Baba had been leading her catch to her own stockades—being in no wise responsible that they were not trap-stockades! Now, the home elephants having come to receive it, she had rushed it in—exactly as she would have rushed it into a trap. But Mitha Baba was not satisfied. With a curious little call she wheeled, coming back to face the wild herd from her own side.

It was a turmoil that looked and sounded like nothing imaginable. The fighting pairs were choosing each other and taking place. They had plenty of room. When it was settled between them, Nut Kut was facing the most powerful-looking of the wild fighters; and Gunpat Rao, another who looked almost as dangerous. The extra males of the wild herd—every one formidable—were skirmishing about, watching for a chance to interfere. It looked bad for the caravan.

The mahouts—the Gul Moti had scarcely remembered them till now—were calling back and forth about a bad one, a "tricky elephant." Following their gestures, she saw a pale shape moving around in the open. They left no doubt that he represented the worst of all danger. They were charging each other to watch him—never mind what.

. . . The fight was on. Plainly—in every tone, every action—the wild went in with wild enthusiasm, the tame with grave determination. Mitha Baba, having come in closer than any of the other females, did not move,—save for a constant turning of her head under the Gul Moti's icy fingers—seeming to keep an eye on all the separate fights at once.

Her fear for the caravan elephants was anguish, her fatigue extreme; but excitement held the Gul Moti in a vise. She saw the fighters meet, skull to skull. (Those were the frightful blows she had heard in the dark, through the trumpeting of a whole herd!) How could any living thing endure the impact of such weight? She looked to see the skin break away and fall apart at once. She expected to see an elephant's head split open. It was nerve-wrecking—an arena of giant violence.

"Pray the gods to send Neela Deo!" one of the mahouts shouted.

"Pray the gods to send Neela Deo!" others called back.

The Gul Moti knew that Neela Deo did not fight; that it was his leadership they needed. Soon she heard a muffled cry from the same mahout:

"Men of the Hills, mourn with me!"

(A low wind of tone replied.)

His elephant seemed slower than the one against him; slower in getting back—in coming on. . . . Now he was wavering—shaken through his whole bulk by every meeting. . . . He was not running—he was dazed—he was down! Staring wide-eyed at the horror—the way a barbarian elephant kills—the Gul Moti was glad Skag did not see! . . . The mahout had managed to reach a tree in time to save his own life and was crouching on a branch, with his head buried in his arms.

Nut Kut was finishing with the leader of the wild herd—more mercifully than the wild was of doing it—when two of the extras charged him together. Ram Yaksahn, his mahout—whose voice had not been heard before—cried out; and Mitha Baba went in like a thunder-bolt. How it happened no one could tell, but one of the wild elephants—before Mitha Baba's rush, or in the instant when she reached him—caught his tusk under Nut Kut's side-bands. They were made of heavy canvas, with chains on top. As Mitha Baba drove at him and Nut Kut turned—his tusk ripped out sidewise. With a frantic scream he got away, running up into the jungle—still screaming so far as they could hear.

The Gul Moti, numb with weariness, had held on with her last ounce of strength. Now she sat amazed at her escape—while a tumult of trumpeting shattered the air about her. There was disturbance among the fighting pairs; some staying with each other, some changing—running to and fro—charging at odd angles. But when the confusion cleared—more fresh ones had come in!

Now Nut Kut was a whirl-wind—he was unbelievable. One broke away from him and ran—demoralised. One died—fairly defeated. Still others came to meet him; yet his challenges were triumphant to the point of frenzy.

"Call on the gods! The devil is in!" rang out.

Gunpat Rao was now fighting for his life. The "tricky elephant" had charged him from the open. This was the bad one whom the mahouts had recognised on sight—had feared from the beginning. Gunpat Rao was one of the finest young elephants in captivity; one of the swiftest in the caravan; but the mahouts knew he could not think a trick! The sense of his danger swept them.

The Gul Moti knew that "white elephants" are always feared—being almost always bad. This one was not white; nor grey, nor yellow. He was whitish-grey—dull-tawny overcast—unclean looking. He was larger in frame than Gunpat Rao; but very lean—long, loose-jointed. He moved like a suckling trying to caper. But there was a rakish look about him.

In spite of all their own stress—every one of their elephants being in some degree of jeopardy—the mahouts gave as much attention to Gunpat Rao as they could. It was foregone conclusion—he was doomed. Bracing themselves to witness his defeat, expecting to see his bitter death in the end, yet the bad one's method at the start maddened them beyond control.

"He was bred in the Pit!" one mahout called.

"His father was Depravity!" another called back.

And they cursed him with the curses of the Hills.

Chakkra, who was Gunpat Rao's mahout, was a plucky little man; but his face had gone old.

The pale one's behaviour was entirely different from any the Gul Moti had seen. He was doing nothing regular—not using the common methods at all. He was giving Gunpat Rao no chance to get back—to put his body-weight into his drive. He was staying too close. He was circling—starting to rush in and veering away—round and round, in and out. Then the Gul Moti saw! He was manoeuvring to strike Gunpat Rao back of his ear! He was trying to "hit below the belt!"

So Gunpat Rao was kept pivoting in his own tracks to face the danger, with scant room to meet a rush when it came. And always it came when least suggested by the other's manner. Then the pale one squealed—a succession of thin, cutting tones—and Gunpat Rao answered with a charge. The pale one raced away from him, wheeling suddenly and coming in behind his head. (An instant before, it looked as if they would meet fairly.) But Gunpat Rao, being in full drive and not on guard against such a manoeuvre, could not stop quickly; yet he swerved just enough to clear that yellow tusk—with a long slash in his flank! . . . Gunpat Rao began to show that he was baffled. His trunk came around—feeling of Chakkra!

"He wants Neela Deo! His heart is alone!" Chakkra cried out.

"Pray the gods to send Neela Deo!" the mahouts answered together.

And from the khud-wall behind them, a thundering challenge rolled down. It was like an avalanche of dynamic power.

Now the elephants of the Chief Commissioner's stockades gave account of themselves. Youth had returned to them—courage had been restored. They clamoured to heaven that they were doing well. They shouted to the universe that they belonged to him—to Neela Deo, their King!

Sanford Hantee scarcely saw—an impossible thing—Carlin on Mitha Baba's neck! Her face was actually strange—the awful pallor—the fire. It left his brain a blank to other impressions, for minutes.

The Gul Moti only glimpsed the stone-white face of her American, beside the Chief Commissioner, as Neela Deo charged past, on his way to take over the fight that was taxing Gunpat Rao to the last breath before defeat. Neela Deo had seen at once where he was needed most. He went in with a charging challenge that was intoxication to those who heard—all the assurance of ancient mastership in it.

No one had ever seen Neela Deo fight before. Kudrat Sharif was so astonished that he barely got back from his neck in time to be out of the way. The mahouts were amazed—Neela Deo did not fight! Neela Deo was the Lord of peaceful rule!

Many of the fighting pairs broke away from each other, when they heard Neela Deo's charging challenge, as if agreeing that the destiny of all hung on the issue of his contest. This left most of the mahouts free to watch. With passionate distress they saw the King—wounded almost to death less than four months since—carrying a heavy howdah and three men—going in to fight with a bad elephant who was all but fresh. They cursed the wild elephant with every inward breath, seeing as little hope for Neela Deo as they had seen for Gunpat Rao.

The Gul Moti watched—appalled. It seemed to her that the pale one had been playing—before he engaged with Neela Deo. But he did not play any more. He manoeuvred so fast that his body appeared to glance in and out. But Neela Deo foiled him with still greater speed. Her eye could not follow all—the maze, the glamour, the incredible spectacle.

Neela Deo's first blow had shaken the pale one, carrying a different dimension of force from any in himself. He gave way—backing from it with an angry scream, showing surprise and rage in every movement. When he circled round, trying to get in on Neela Deo's side, the King was too quick for him—forcing him out, forcing him further out; not permitting him to follow his chosen course, whatever direction he took. He came in with his peculiar art of approaches—the jarring blow was there! He played all his lightning feints—the shock that rocked him was a flash quicker! Neela Deo met him squarely, whatever curve he made—whatever tangent he turned upon. This, every time, in spite of himself; for he always meant to avoid that crash!

He tried his falsetto squeals—all aggravation in them. But Neela Deo refused to accept taunts. This caused an instant's pause—the pale one seeming to consider. Then he raced away and came back on a full drive, as if meaning to meet the King in a legitimate encounter—after all. But Neela Deo only lowered his head a fraction, leaning a bit forward; and the pale one, instead of finishing straight, or passing alongside close enough to strike—swerved out. This was the moment when Neela Deo charged him and he ran, dodging—far beyond the range of the fighting arena—down the khud valley. Everyone followed; the wild elephants running by themselves—screaming in harsh tones; the caravan—trumpeting in clear, full tones; the mahouts, calling the name of the King—beside themselves with delight.

But Neela Deo was at the pale one's heels—his tusks not dangerous, having been shortened and banded. Yet they were sharp enough to make the pale one turn and defend himself. And desperately he fought, using every faculty of his nature—every value of his wild fitness. Still the crook in him showed. It was all faster now than in the beginning, but he was not exhausted, he was not broken; only a bit less certain, a breath less quick, when he tried the same old trick—to get in back of Neela Deo's ear. And it was on that false turn that Neela Deo caught him fairly in the throat—caught him and finished him in one thrust—with the blunt point of a banded tusk. (That was the miracle of it all—the banded tusk!)

Then Neela Deo stood back, put up his trunk and uttered a long, strong blast. They were ringing tones—mounting clarion tones, with tremendous volume at the top. They were the King's proclamation of victory.

The mahouts answered him in High Himalayan voices—full of unleashed devotion. The caravan made announcement of that allegiance the heart of an elephant gives—sometimes. But the wild herd broke away and ran shrieking up into the Vindha Hills.

Coming down from Mitha Baba's neck between Skag's hands, the Gul Moti smiled into his anguished eyes.

"Carlin! Are you—safe?" he asked.

"Safe—now!" she answered.

The tone of that low "now" startled him.

"Where have you been?" he breathed.

"Far—" she said, "very far!"

"But where?" he questioned.

"It was not in our world, Skag," she said. "It was—dark!"

The Chief Commissioner had come close, to hear; was stroking her shoulder, in fact—in an absent-minded way—shaking his head.

"You can't mean—the dark?" he broke in.

"I mean it was utterly dark, sir," she said. "It was absolutely dark!"

"But—I'm not able to understand!" her old friend protested.

"It was there Mitha Baba found them," the Gul Moti explained. "It was there she did the 'toiling in.' Then, she was leading them home to Hurda, when we met the caravan—at dawn."

Some of the mahouts had gathered about. The Chief Commissioner spoke to them in their speech and they answered him—calling others. Soon the men of High Himalaya drew near with grave deference, slowly stooping to touch the ground at her feet.

"No human has ever been in that before," said Kudrat Sharif. "We will prepare rest for her—Chosen-of-Vishnu, the Great Preserver!"

It was after they had cared for the Gul Moti with the best they had—water from a mountain stream and food Neela Deo had carried, in a shelter made of tender deodar tips, where she now slept on a bed made of the same—that the mahouts told the Chief Commissioner and Skag, all they themselves had seen.

By this time concern had spread from Hurda throughout the country. Neela Deo had gone out to find the Gul Moti, carrying the Chief Commissioner and Son of Power. No one had come back. Calamity must have fallen. Men went out on horses to trace them. But it was certain priests of Hanuman who found the caravan first. (The Gul Moti having saved the life of a monkey king once, her safety was their concern also.) Without being seen or heard themselves, they went close enough to learn that she was making recovery from great exhaustion; and that the mahouts were caring for an elephant unable to travel by reason of a bad wound. They overheard talk of strange happenings; but more about Neela Deo's undreamed-of achievement.

Before any of the searchers from Hurda reached the caravan, mysterious gifts of provisions—much needed—were found by the mahouts, with a crude writing beside them: "For the Healer-without-fear." And those same priests of Hanuman—preparing a signal-system as they came—brought the good word back to the anxious people, who became joyous at once. Their Gul Moti was safe! Neela Deo was safe—everyone was safe. (But that was a strange saying—that Neela Deo had fought!)

Bonfires blazed up in every village within sight of the caravan's way home—from so far away as watchers on Hurda's highest hill could see—burning night and day. At last the one furthest from Hurda went out. The watchers raced in—Neela Deo's caravan was coming! One by one, the bonfires went out—till it was this side the Nerbudda. Then the people made ready.

They thronged out the great Highway-of-all-India, meeting the caravan where the slow-moving elephants turned in from open jungle. Eagerly striving to see the Gul Moti's face, eagerly pointing at Neela Deo, yet it was a stranger silent multitude. Only many tears on many tears showed their feeling.

The Gul Moti sat in Neela Deo's howdah, with the Chief Commissioner and Son-of-Power. Two men came close, carrying a long slender shape covered with pure white cloth—dripping wet.

"We be poor men," one said, "but our hands bring to thee, oh Healer—from the people of Hurda, oh Healer—" and breaking off, because his lips could speak no more, he stooped reverently to lay aside the covering.

A great folded leaf appeared; a long heavy stalk; then the flawless splendour of one bloom—immaculate! a sacred lotus, brought from far lakes. The Gul Moti received its ineffable loveliness and rose to stretch her fingers toward the multitude. Then their shouts swept the horizon.

Still, their concept of Neela Deo's character must be either shattered or restored—and soon; they would not wait. Ominously quiet questions went up to the mahouts; and the mahouts were full-ready to answer! In the end, it sounded like a wild Himalayan chant about Neela Deo's great fight to save Gunpat Rao. The people listened patiently, till an inward meaning enlightened them. Then they exulted:

"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"

"Exalted in majesty, Defender of honour, protecting his own with strength! We will remember him!"

"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"

"He with the wisdom of ages. Destroyer of devastators, preserving his friend with blood! Our children shall not forget!"

"He the Discerner of men, Equitable King! He the Discerner of evil, Invincible King! All generations after us shall hear of him; but we have looked upon his face!"

"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"



CHAPTER XV

The Lair

Carlin appeared to get right again in a few days of quiet after her terrific experience on Mitha Baba. There were a few more wonderful weeks for Skag and herself in the Malcolm M'Cord bungalow in Hurda—weeks always remembered. Then Skag undertook a little adventure of his own that had to do with Tiger. He was away seven days in all and made no report of the thing he had done to his department. He came back with a deeper quiet in his eyes and told no one but Carlin what the days had shown him. Skag never was at his best in trying to make words work. He was slow to explain. He had been hurt two or three times in earlier days, trying to tell something of peculiar interest to his work and finding incredulity and uncertain comment afterward. This made the animal trainer more wary than ever about talk.

But Carlin required few words. Carlin always understood. She didn't praise or fall into excesses of admiration, but she understood, and the older one gets the dearer that becomes. Carlin didn't advise with Skag whether she should speak of the matter. She merely decided that her old friend, Malcolm M'Cord, Hand-of-a-God, deserved to be told. The silent Scot knew much about animals and this was an affair that would stand high in his collection of musings and memories. M'Cord observed, in a Scotch that had suffered no thinning in thirty years of India, that if he hadn't known Hantee Sahib he would be forced to pass by Carlin's report as an invention, though a "fertile" one. It was M'Cord who decided that Government should get at least a private account of the affair.

A remarkable tiger pair had operated for several years in the broken cliff country stretching away toward the valley of the Nerbudda beyond the open jungle round Hurda. As mates they had pulled together so efficiently that the natives had started the interminable process of making a tradition concerning them. These were superb young individuals and not man-eaters, for which reason Hand-of-a-God had not been called out to deliver the natives; also on this account Skag had been interested from the beginning.

Their lair had never been found, but they had been seen together and singly over a ranging ground that covered seventy miles and contained several dejected villages. Once, hard pressed for game, the male tiger had entered a village grazing ground and made a quick kill—on the run—of one of the little sacred cows—a tan heifer much loved by the people. The point of comment was that the tiger had spared the boy; in fact, the young herder had been unable to run so rapidly as his little drove, which was lost in a dust cloud ahead of him. The tiger had actually passed him by, entered the drove, knocked the heifer down and stood over it as the boy circled past.

There were no firearms in the village, so that the natives did not venture close in the falling darkness. It was evident next day, however, that the tiger had not fed on the spot of the kill. It was supposed that the female had come to help him carry away the game.

Also, this was the same tiger pair that had leaped an eight-foot wall surrounding another village, made their choice of a sizable bullock in a herd of ordinary cattle, and actually helped each other drag the carcass over the wall and away—a daylight raid, this, witnessed from the shadows of several village huts.

So the stories went, but nothing monotonous about them. Often for months at a time no villager would sight the tiger mates. It was positively stated that there were no other mature tigers within the vicinity: that is, within the seventy-miles range. The pair had been known to bring up at least three litters; but the young had been driven at the approach of maturity to outlying hunting grounds, as had been all the weaker tigers of the vicinity.

Now the report came into Hurda that an English hunter had wounded the big female. Another report followed that the Englishman had killed the male and wounded the female. The hunter himself did not appear in Hurda; nor was a trophy hide recorded anywhere. Skag heard the two stories. Thinking over the affair, he called Nels for a stroll in the open jungle toward the Monkey Glen.

To the American there was a pang about the hunter's story. He was altogether unsentimental, but wild animals had to do with his reason for being and there was his fixed partiality for tigers. The uncertainty about the story troubled him. This was the time of year for kittens and it was seldom far from his mind that these parents were not man-eaters. The stories of the hunter were indefinite. The thing worked upon Skag as he walked. The thought of finding the motherless lair and bringing in a hamper of starving young occurred to him as a sane performance, but not one to speak about. Also his servant, Bhanah, reported Nels superbly fit for travel and adventure.

The animal trainer rode the elephant, Nut Kut, into one of the villages in the tiger-ranging grounds and left him in charge of the mahout, saying that he might be gone two or three days and that he was out for a ramble among the waste places of the valley. Skag took merely a haversack, a canteen, light blanket and a hunting belt, carrying a knife and a six-shooter but no rifle. Nels actually lost his dignity in enthusiasm for the excursion, and they were miles away from a village and hours deep in an apparently leisurely journey before he subsided into that observant calm which was his notable characteristic.

This light travelling, with none other than the great hunting dog, brought him back a keen zest of appreciation and memories of early days among the circus animals, and his first adventures in India with Cadman. Moreover, there was a fresh mystery that had to do with Carlin after Skag's first supper fire afield. He had always resented the fact that it was straight out-and-out pain for him to be away from the place she had made in Hurda. Suffering of any kind to Skag was a sign of weakness. He had dwelt long on the subject.

The mystery of that first night out had to do with the fact that Carlin seemed to be near. He had known something of this before, a flash at least, but nothing like this. There wasn't the pain about separation he had known aforetime. It was as if the miracle he had longed for had come—some awakening of life within himself that was quick to her presence even at a distance and cognisant that absence was illusion. Carlin's uncle, the mystic of the Vindhas, had told him that there were mysteries of romance that had to do with separation as well as with together, and that real mates learn this mystery through the years. To-night Skag found to his wonder that the mystic had spoken the truth.

He cooked the supper joyously and shared it with Nels, talking to him often and answering himself for the Dane. The camp was in the open and the night was presently lustrous with stars. There was a sense of well-being, together with his fresh delight in the unfolding secret of Carlin's nearness, that made him enjoy staying awake. Nels was wakeful also—as if these moments were altogether too keen with life to waste in sleep.

"It's just a ramble, old man. We'll be about it early," Skag said toward the last. "We may find what we're after and we may not. In any case we'll live on the way."

That was Skag's old picture of the Now; making the most of the ever-moving point named the Present.

"And I'm expecting great things from you, my son—an altogether new brand of self-control—if we find what we're out after. I don't mind telling you that it's Tiger, Nels—tiger babies possibly—little orphans just grown enough to be demons and just knowing enough not to behave."

Nels woofed.

"Half-grown tiger cubs are apt to be a whole lot meaner than their parents," Skag went on. "Wild—that's the word. They haven't sense enough to be careful or mind enough to be appealed to. I think that's something of what I mean to say."

Skag was taking more pains to explain than he would to a man. Nels didn't get it—didn't even make a pretense. He knew what Tiger meant, but so far as he was concerned that subject had been dropped some moments since. He had listened intently to the point in which Tiger ceased to be the topic—sitting on his haunches. Then he dropped to his front elbows, and as Skag's voice trailed away he rolled quietly to his side, keeping himself courteously awake.

There was silence. Skag's eyes were far off among the blazing Indian stars.

"We'll manage 'em together," he added sleepily. The next day they wandered—rough desolate country in burning sunlight. It gave the impression that the whole surface crust of earth had been burned to a white heat ages ago. Low hills with clifflike faces; shallow nullahs used only a month or two a year to carry the monsoon deluges to the Nerbudda; the stones of the river bottoms bone-white—everywhere sparse and scrubby foliage with dust-covered leaves. There was no turf in this stony world except the sand of the hollows and the wind eddied most of these spaces like water, quickly covering all tracks. It was toward the end of the afternoon that Nels first intimated a scent.

Tiger of course—that was Nels' orders—but it wasn't fresh. Skag gave the Dane word to do the best he could and followed leisurely. The big fellow worked with painful care for more than an hour before he became sure of himself; then his speed quickened, following a dry nullah at last, for several miles. The dark was creeping in before they came to a deep fissure among the rocks where the empty waterway sunk into a pool which was not yet dry. Skag and the Dane drank deep; then the man filled his canteen, with the remark:

"We'll camp a little back, not to obstruct the water hole. All trails end here. To-morrow morning we'll get fresh tiger scent if we're in luck. But I wonder what we're trailing?"

It was a fact of long establishment among the villages that only the one mated pair worked this section of the country. According to one of the stories of the English hunter, the male tiger had been killed and the female wounded—in which case what was this? Certainly there was nothing to indicate that the scent was left by a wounded tiger. Others might have doubted Nels' discrimination, but Skag scouted that in his own mind. The Dane knew Tiger. It was as distinct and individual to him from the other big cats as the voices of friends one from another.

Nels was said to have met Tiger in battle before he came to Skag, but it was no purpose of his present master to give him a chance now. It was established that several of the great Indian hunting dogs had survived such meetings. Malcolm M'Cord declared that a veteran in the cheetah game would show himself master in any ordinary tiger affair.

They were tired and sun drained. Skag laid down his blankets in the early dusk and there were hours of sleep before he was awakened by the different activities at the water hole. Nels apparently had been awake for some time, studying the separate noises in a moveless calm. Skag touched his chest affectionately. A panther or some smaller cat had just made a kill among the rocks above the pool, yet Nels' hackles had not lifted in answer to the bawl of the stricken beast.

"Spotted deer possibly," Skag muttered. Then he added to the Dane:

"You're an all-right chap to camp with, son. You'd sit it out alone until they brought the fracas to our doorstep rather than disturb a friend's sleep. That's what I call being a white man."

Skag always thought of Cadman as the unparallelled comrade for field work. In fact, he had learned many of the little niceties of the open from the much-travelled American artist and writer—finished performances of comradeship, a regard for the unwritten things, reverence for those rights which never could be brought to the point of words, but which give delicacy and delectation to hours together between men. Skag never ceased to delight in the silence and self-control of the Dane. The dog rippled and thrilled with all the fundamental elements of friendship and fidelity, but his big body seemed able to contain them with a dignity that endeared him to the one who understood. Bhanah's work in the training of this fellow was nothing short of consummate art.

Breakfasting together, Skag refreshed Nels' mind with the work of the day—that it meant Tiger, that all lesser affairs might come and go. The big fellow was up and eager to be off, before Skag finished strapping his blanket roll. There was rather a memorable moment of sentiency just there. Skag was on one knee as he glanced into Nels' face. His own powers were highly awake that minute, so that he actually sensed what was in the dog's mind—that they must go down to the pool for a look before moving on. The thing was verified a moment later when Nels led the way down into the dim ravine to the margin of the water.

Tiger tracks—full four feet on the soft black margin of the pool—a huge beast, unmarked by any toe scar or eccentricity. Long body, heavy, a perfect thing of his kind. It was as if the tiger had stood some moments listening. Yet the natives declared that only the mated pair operated in this range and the hunter was said to have killed the male. If these were the tracks of the tigress she certainly was not badly hurt. There wasn't the overpressure of a single pad to indicate her favouring a muscle anywhere. And this couldn't have been the track of anything but a mature beast—the finished print of a perfect specimen.

"That hunter didn't tell it all, Nels, or else he didn't do it all," Skag remarked. "We started out to find a sick tigress and a hamper of neglected babies. I'm not saying we won't find that much. The thing is, we may find more."

Nels was already five yards away across the pebbly hollow, waiting for Skag to follow along the ravine. Not a sign of a track that human eye could detect after that—straight, dry, stony nullah bed, deeply shadowed from the narrow walls and stretching ahead apparently for miles. At least it was cool work; the sun would not touch the floor of the fissure for hours yet. Nels never faltered. His pace gradually quickened until Skag softly called. The Dane would remember for fifteen or twenty minutes, when Skag, again finding that he had to step uncomfortably fast to keep up, would laughingly call a check. The man was watching the walls and the coverts of broken rock, and Nels' speed, if left alone, altogether occupied his outer faculties.

It was eleven in the forenoon and Skag reckoned they must be close to the Nerbudda when Nels halted—even bristled a bit, his broad black muzzle quivering and held aloft. Skag came up softly and stood close. He touched his finger to his tongue and drew a moist line under his nostrils, trying to get the message that Nels was working with so obviously. Presently an almost noiseless chuckle came from the man, and he touched Nels' shoulder as if to say that he had it too. The thing had come unexpectedly—the faintest possible taint of a lair.

They would have passed it a hundred times if it had not been for the scent. The silence was absolute and the walls of the fissure apparently as unbroken as usual. No human eyes would have noted the wear of pads upon the stones, and one had to pass and look back to see the cleft in the walls of the ravine, far above the high-water mark, which formed the door of significant meaning for the man. Nels hadn't seen this much, but he couldn't miss now. He nosed the pebbles again and made an abrupt turn to the right. They climbed to the rocks near the entrance. The taint was unmistakable now—past doubt a bone pile of some kind in there—and Nels had followed Tiger to the door.

Skag sat down upon a stone a little below and mopped his forehead, with a smile at the Dane. For ten minutes he sat there. He thought of the first time he had ever entered a tiger cage as a mere boy, way back in the Middle West of the States, travelling with the circus. A bored show tiger in that cage, and he had blinked unconcernedly at the boy. Years of circus life had atrophied that tiger's organs of resentment. Miles and miles of the public stream had passed his cage with awe, speculating upon the great cat's ferocity. Skag had merely to learn after that, the trick of it all—that one's perfect self-control not only soothes but disarms most normal beasts. Skag had cultivated such self-control in recent years to a degree that made him the astonishment of many Hindu minds. India had shown him that the attainment of this sort of poise is a stage of the same mastery that the mystics are out after—to gain complete command of the menagerie in one's own insides. Hundreds of times after that, night and day, in storm, in sultry weather, Skag had entered the cages of all kinds of animals in all their moods.

His first adventure in India came back, when with his friend Cadman he had fallen into the pit trap and the grand young male tiger had tumbled after them. Skag had prevailed upon the nervy Cadman to sit tight and not to shoot, against all that the writer man knew; also he had appeared to prevail upon the tiger to keep his side of the pit until they were rescued. And now Skag recalled the big tiger that had lain on the river margin near the Monkey Glen while he had told Carlin that he had never really seen what a woman was like before. The presence of the big sleepy cat down among the wet foliage had nerved him and called out all his strength for that romantic crisis.

He thought of the moment under the poised head of the great serpent in the place of fear in the grass jungle; and of the coming of Nut Kut, the incomparable black elephant, whom he had forced to listen in spite of the red hell in the untamable eyes. Always between and in and round, his thoughts were of Carlin—her voice, her presence, the curious art of her ministration and the utterly wise lure of her heart. Even now he couldn't quite be calm under the whip of memory of the afternoon of the cobra fight. The whole panorama might have been named Carlin so far as Skag was concerned.

He didn't think of his own danger now. It wasn't that he ignored it; rather that he had entered upon a new dimension of his power. He had no thought of failure. No thought came to him that Carlin would have prevented his entering had she been near. This was different from anything he had ever been called to do, but his power was different. The thing that engaged his mind was utterly clear from every angle. He couldn't have missed the novelty from the unusual stress of Nels' manner. The big Dane was actually burning with excitement. His eyes were filled with firelight and back of the smoky burning was a dumb appeal turned to his chief. Hyenas alone had been able to break Nels' nerve for himself, but he was frightened now for the man. The big bony jowl was steadily pressed like a knuckled hand against Skag's knee, the body only half lifted from the dry stones and cramped with tension.

Skag's eyes were turned up toward the mouth of the lair and his left hand fell to the Dane's head. The beast actually shook because his eyes were covered a second.

"Of course you're to stay outside, Nels," he said softly as he rose.

The dog lowered his breast to the stones. It was like a blow to him—the one thing he had feared most.

"Don't, Nels!" the man muttered. "You're to stand at the mouth of the lair and watch there. I need you there—outside, of course."

The dog followed him heavily up the slope past the high-water mark. Skag turned with a cheering whisper, shielding his eyes from the light for a moment before peering in. There was a sound like blown paper across a marble floor and then another sound—low, soft, prolonged, like the hiss of escaping steam.

Skag shoved himself into the narrow, rocky aperture. He could see nothing for the moment. The taint was oppressive at the first breath of the still air. There were kittens—no doubt of that. He heard their scurrying; he felt their eyes and the sort of melting panic in the place that would have utterly unstrung any but a perfectly keyed set of nerves.

It was a cave, the mouth higher than the floor. The way down was jagged and precipitous. Skag, advancing softly, had to feel for each step and yet give no distracting attention to keep his footing, for the full energy of his faculties was directed ahead.

The sound of blown paper was from the kittens—that was clear enough. Yet the hissing continued and this was the mystery of it all—that there appeared to be no movement besides. If this sound came from the tigress, at least, she had not stirred to meet him.

The hiss sunk to a low guttural grating. No cub had a cavernous profundity of sound such as that. Still there was not the stir of a muscle, so far as his senses had detected.

Skag was puzzled. Big game before him, possibly nerved to spring, and yet the tensity was not like that. The man stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness—waiting for the mystery to clear. Then to the right, like a little constellation suddenly pricking through the twilight, Skag saw a cluster of young stars. His heart warmed—kittens hunched there in a bundle and watching him. Their pricked ears presently shadowed somewhat from the blacker background; then he saw the little party suddenly swept and overturned, as if a long thin arm had brushed them back out of reach of the intruder.

Now his eyes turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest—the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. She lay upon her side.

Thus it was that he was rounded back to the original proposition. He had found the lair of the wounded tigress and her young. For fully two minutes Skag stood quiet before her, working softly—her hiss changing at slow intervals to the cavernous growl. The kittens were too young to organise attack—the tigress was too maimed for resistance, even though at bay in lair with her kittens to defend.

Now the man saw the gleam of her eyes. She had followed his movements and was holding him now, but half vacantly. The pity of it all touched him; the rest of the story cleared. Her tongue was like a blown bag, the blackness of it apparent even in the dark. She was dying of thirst, the bullet wound in the shoulder turned up to him. The little ones were still active, for the tigress had fed them until her whole body was drained. He saw how her breast had been torn by the thirsty little ones—the open sores against the soft grey of her nether parts. Skag backed out. Nels pressed him—half lifted his great body in silent welcome.

"Oh, yes," Skag was saying, "we got the call, all right, my son. Four little duds in there eating their mother alive, and she full of fever from a wound—no water for days. I'm just after the canteen, Nels."

Skag entered again. His movements were deliberate, but not stealthy. He spoke softly to the creature on the floor—his voice lower than the usual pitch, yet sinking often deeper still. The words were mere nothings, but they carried the man's purpose of kindness—carried it steadily, tirelessly. The great beast tried to rise as he stepped closer. Skag waited, still talking. He had uncorked the canteen and held it forward—his idea being not only that she would smell the water but become accustomed to the thing in his hand. Each time he pressed a bit nearer she struggled to rise toward him—Skag standing just out of reach, tirelessly working with his mind and voice. He keenly registered her pain and helplessness in his own consciousness and was unwilling to prolong it, yet at the same time he had a very clear understanding of the patience required to bring help to her.

It was fully a quarter of an hour before he bent close, without starting a convulsion of fear and revolt in the huge fevered body upon the rocky floor. Skag poured a gurgle of water upon the swollen tongue, watching the single baleful tortured eye that held his face. The water was not wasted, though not drunk, for it washed away some of the poison formed of the fever and the thirst. Skag poured again and for a second the great holding eye was lost to him and the tongue moved.

Thus he worked, permitting her fear and rage to rouse no answer in kind from himself; talking to her softly, luring her out of fury into the enveloping madness of her own great need.

He waited a moment and her tongue stretched thickly to draw to itself the water on the rock; then he turned toward the cubs. They scurried back deeper into the cave. He poured a gill or two of water into a hollow of the rock and returned to the mother. Presently as he moistened her tongue again, one of the little ones crept forward and began to lap the puddle on the rock.

Skag smiled in the gloom. The others were presently beside the baby leader. A few moments later Skag interrupted his ministrations to the mother to fill the hollow for the kittens again. All this with less than three pints of water—the work of a full half hour as he found when he emerged to Nels and the light.

"It's only a beginning, old man. We've got to get more water. It's five hours' march back to the pool where we camped. I'm gambling that we're a lot nearer than that to the Nerbudda."

Nels' jubilation was stayed by the unfolding of fresh plans that were not slow to dawn upon his eager mind. They hastened along the river bed, continuing in the direction they had come. Skag was in a queer elation, dropping a sentence from time to time. Suddenly he halted. It had occurred to him to recall something his mind had merely noted during the work in the cave. There was fresh meat there. He had not looked close, but at least two partly devoured carcasses had lain in the shadows.

"They were mighty thirsty, Nels," he muttered. "The mother dying of thirst, but the little ones were only sultry compared. Yes, they're old enough to tear at fresh meat. They weren't so bad off and there was plenty of meat there. Only thirsty," he added thoughtfully.

It was clear to his mind that the tigress had been helpless at least three days, possibly four. She could not have brought the game. There was one conclusive reason—that the meat was in an altogether too fresh condition to have been brought by the mother before she gave up. Skag walked rapidly. They did not reach the Nerbudda, but sighted a village back Horn the river bed after nearly two hours' walk.

They refilled the canteens and procured two water skins besides; also a broad deep gourd which Skag carried empty. The man's difficulty was to escape without assistance. A white man in his position was not supposed to carry goatskin water bags over his shoulders. The boys of the village followed him after the elders had given up, and Skag halted at last to explain that this was an affair that would interest them very much—when a teller came back to tell the story; but that this was the doing part of the story and must be carried to its conclusion alone.

A little later in the nullah bed he fastened the canteen and the gourd to Nels' collar, but continued to pack the two skins himself—a rather arduous journey in full Indian daylight with between forty and fifty pounds of water on his shoulders. It was four in the afternoon when they neared the mouth of the lair and Nels was drooping again.

"Buck up, old man!" Skag said. "I'll go in for a while with the thirsty ones. Then we'll make a camp and have some supper together."

Skag heard the hiss again as he entered the darkness, and the kittens were not so still as before. Only a trifle less leisurely he approached the mother. He knew that any strength that had come would only feed her hostility so far; that a man was not to win the confidence of a great mammal thing like this in a day. His first impulse was to silence the kittens with a gourd of water, but he could not bear to make the mother wait.

She raised her head against him as before, but the smell of the water caught and altered her fury more swiftly this time. Skag saw the glare go out from the great eye as the tortured mouth was cooled; and now the hope grew within him that the tigress might actually be saved. He talked softly to her as he poured drop by drop upon her tongue from the side—the little ones pressing closer and closer. Even in the convulsive trembling that took her body from time to time there was an inflowing rather than the ebb of strength.

Presently he left her long enough partly to fill the big gourd for the babies. He had scarcely drawn back before the first was at the edge. Lapping was not enough for this infant. He wanted to cover himself; apparently to overturn the dish upon himself. The others helped to balance the gourd for a moment or two, but the massed effort became too furious and over it went among them. Skag laughed. Only a portion was wasted, for the kittens followed the little streams on the rock, tonguing them as they moved and filled. He tried them again, only covering the bottom of the gourd, but it was as swiftly overturned. Still the young had drunk enough presently and went to tearing at the meat in the deeper shadows.

Skag went back to the mother, still using the canteen for her. Alternately now he dropped the water upon the wound in her shoulder. There were hours of work here to soften the fever crust and establish drainage. Some time afterward this work was stopped abruptly by the warning of Nels at the door. Skag stood his canteen against a rock and hurried forth. Nels stood at the mouth of the lair, his head turned up the river bed. His eyes did not alter from their look of fixity as the man emerged. The shoulder nearest Skag merely twitched a trifle, the left paw lifting to the toes. Skag followed the Dane's eyes.

The great male himself stood stock-still in the centre of the river bed, the carcass of a lamb having dropped from his mouth. So strange, so vast and still, the picture, that it seemed dreamlike; the great, round, sunny eyes unwinking—serious rather than savage—a dark-banded thing of gold in the ruddy gold of late afternoon.

Skag was silent, the magic of the moment flowing into him. Nels had not moved. Skag had been forced to walk round him to find room to stand. They faced the big Bengali together for an instant, the man's hand dropping softly to the dog's shoulder.

"The king himself, son," Skag whispered raptly. "He's the loveliest thing in stripes. We'll have to look out for this fellow, Nels. There's no fear in him. We're on his premises and the missus is sick and needs quiet. He's apt to charge, and I can see his point of view. We'll back down, son, and not obstruct the gentleman's door."

They couldn't have been three seconds clambering down the rocks to the nullah bed, yet the male tiger was twenty feet nearer when they looked up. Moreover, he had brought the lamb with him, and this time he kept it in his mouth as he watched.

"We mustn't let him see our dark side again, Nels," Skag muttered. "See if we can't stare as straight as he does. God, what a picture! Yet I'm rather glad he's got that lamb. He must have brought it far. Carrying out her orders doubtless. Only a great male would do that. Oh, it's not that he cares for the babies, Nels. It's to please her that he does it! And she's down and done, but running the lair!"

So Skag talked, hardly knowing what he said, keeping in touch with Nels with his hand and holding the eyes of the royal beast that seemed to be made of patience and poise and gilded beauty. Skag didn't step back, but presently to the side, away from the mouth of the lair. The tiger's counter movement was not to lessen the distance between them this time, but to drop to his haunches, still holding his game. He rocked a little on his hind feet, that ominous undulation which portends the charge. Not more than ten seconds passed and no outward change was apparent, yet there was a relief of tension in Skag's voice.

"It's the little lamb that saved us that time, Nels. I think we've passed it—passed the crisis, my boy. We'll just stand by now and measure patience with him."

It was two minutes before Skag ventured a further movement to the right. The tiger made absolutely no counter this time. Skag now spoke to Nels:

"You're doing beautifully, son."

The dog had stood by like part of himself. The droop and the quiver that he had known twice that day when the man disappeared into the lair had given way in the real test to unbreakable nerve and defiant heart. Yet it was less the courage than his absolute obedience that entered the man with a charge of feeling that instant. A minute later Skag took another ten steps to the right.

In the deeper shadows, less than an hour afterward, he struck a match to the little supper fire a hundred yards up the slope from the mouth of the lair. Skag then loosened his hunting belt, dropping the weight from him to the blanket with a sigh of content. The hardware had chafed him all day and had only been really forgotten in the stresses of action.

"I didn't pack that gun for tiger," he said softly. "Why, I would as soon have shot our good Arab, Kala Khan, or put a bullet between Nut Kut's eyes, as to stop that big fellow bringing young mutton home—to please her! Won't Carlin love to hear that! Oh, yes, it's been a day, son, one more day! I've loved it minute by minute, and you've been—well, I can't think in words, when it comes to that."

The big fellow drowsed in the firelight, his four paws stretched evenly toward the man.

In the morning and afternoon of the next two days Skag brought water to the tigress and bathed her shoulder long. On the third day he could not be sure that the male had left the lair until late afternoon, and when he finally ventured to the mouth and his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness within he saw that the tigress was watching him from the deeper shadows—not prone, but on three feet.

He filled the gourd and weighted it with stones; then backed out.

"We're starting for Hurda to-night, son," he said to Nels. "I've left her a drink or two, and by the time she needs more, she'll be able to get to the river herself."

Carlin must have caught the reality of that moment of crisis from Skag's telling—the moment when the male tiger might have charged but didn't, because she succeeded in making Malcolm M'Cord see it, too.

"And you say there was no sign from the tiger, but that Hantee Sahib knew when the instant was past?" the famous marksman repeated curiously.

Carlin nodded.

"But how did he know?"

"Ask him," she said.

"Huh," he muttered. "I might as well enquire of the Dane beastie."



CHAPTER XVI

Fever Birds

Carlin had been listless for a day or two. This was several weeks after her forty-two hours on Mitha Baba. They were still living in Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow. Skag woke in the night, not with a dream, but rather with a memory. He was broad awake and recalled an incident that had entirely escaped his day-thoughts for a long time. It had to do with that hard-testing period, just after his meeting with Carlin, when he had journeyed to Poona to confer with the eldest brother, Roderick Deal, and had been forced to wait more than a month. In that interval he had learned about hyenas at first hand, through the plight of Beatrice Hichens and the children; also his servant Bhanah had come to him, and the Great Dane, Nels; still it had been a vague stretch of days, in retrospect.

It was during the return-trip to Hurda that the thing happened which held him now as he lay broad awake. Toward twilight, as the train halted at one of the civil stations, a white-covered cot was lifted aboard. There was a kind of silence about that station. The mountains were near on the left hand which was to the West. The white glare of Indian day had softened into delicate rose. A haze of orange and bronze lay upon the lower slopes of the mountains, magically enriching the greens; and the blue against which the mountains were contoured, was pure and immense and still. It was difficult to remember the fret and pain and discolouration of a world bathed in so vast a peace. . . .

At first he thought that the body on the cot was in its shroud. The hush about it and from the mountains touched him with a feeling that he had not quite known before, the depth of it having to do with Carlin. Then he saw, back of the natives who had lifted the cot, yet not too near, the figure of an Englishman of the Military—standing quietly by, as if casually ordering a platoon of soldiers in the duty of loading the train. Now Skag looked at the man's face. It had nothing to do with the lax grace of the officer's figure. This was the face of a man who could endure anything without a cry—a narrow face, tanned and a bit hard possibly from years of self-repression—a silent man, doubtless loved for the feeling around him, rather than because of what he was accustomed to say or do—a face stricken now to the verge of chaos—unchanging anguish of fear and loneliness and sorrow imprinted from within. A strange white glow, that had nothing to do with the tan, shone forth from the skin—etheric disruption, subtler than the breakdown of mere cells. This man would put a bullet in his brain if pressed too far, but he would not cry out. Just now he was close to his limit.

Skag knew something of what passed in the English officer's heart, because he himself was learning what love means. Before his hour with Carlin in the afterglow, on their way back from the monkey glen, he would never have dreamed that there was such feeling in the world; in fact, he would have been unable to read the vivid story of it in the officer's face. . . . So much in a second or two.

The cot had been partly lifted into the coach. The face now was uncovered—the white wasted face of a lovely woman, a woman still living; an utterly delicate face, telling the story of one who had never met a rough impact from the world. It was as if there had always been a strong hand between her and the grit and the grind of world-affairs—first her father's and then the lover's. In the great silence, the eyelids opened. It seemed that night and chill had suddenly come in. The lips moved. The most mournful and hopeless voice spoke straight into Skag's eyes:

"Oh, won't you please stop those fever birds!"

Skag supposed it an isolated sentence of delirium. He didn't understand. There was a drive of drama or tragedy back of it, but his mind did not give him details. He did not see the English officer again. He did not know if he entered the train. One thing Skag knew: Deep under that narrow masculine face there was a capacity for feeling that this officer's men never saw; that his closest associates never saw. The American reverenced the secret. . . . Sometimes during the hushes of the night, when the train stopped for a moment, Skag lying awake, heard the voice of the woman. There was a feeling from it utterly strange to him. It carried him out of himself, as if he shared something of her delirium and something of the man's agony.

The next day was one of the hardest that Skag ever lived, for Carlin was not at Hurda to meet him. She had gone with a strange elephant into the country. That was the day of the chase on the great young elephant Gunpat Rao, the day in which the story of the monster Kabuli unfolded. The face of the man at the mountain station and the sentence of the woman were completely erased from his surface consciousness, as the memory of an illness.

That was months away, and life had been very full in between. . . .

Carlin said she was just tired, when he went to her room in the morning. She looked at him long. It suddenly came to him vaguely, that she wasn't thinking; rather that her eyes were merely turned to his face. A queer breathlessness came to him a little later, as her head rolled to one side—such a sinking of weakness in the movement. It reminded him with a shock that she had never seemed quite tireless since that long ride on Mitha Baba's neck. But never before had her face turned away from him.

And now he saw a certain inimitable loveliness of her. There were no words to describe the last—only that it was Spirit made of all the dusks and all the white fires. There was something little about her that called an undreamed-of tenderness; and something superb and mysterious, so vast that he could be held in it like a toy in the hands.

Burning Indian day was walled and curtained and barred from the place where she lay. White of the walls, white of her face, white of the pallet—the rest a breathless, ungleaming shadow that held a heat not from the sun, as it seemed, but from the centre of the earth.

. . . Skag was away in timelessness and an unfamiliar space. This space was not fixed to one dimension, but moved back and forth. As Bhanah came to him, he saw more than Bhanah animate upon the features—like someone who had belonged always, whom he had known for ages, whom Carlin had always known. So many things struck him differently now; as if they belonged not just to this crisis, but to a crisis of eons.

Yet externals in the main were so trifling. Carlin didn't eat; people seemed to take that as significant. Malcolm M'Cord came. Margaret Annesley came. Horace Dickson's father came. Skag went to the bazaars and back again. He went to the monkey glen. It was all a blur. Once he caught himself walking on the great Highway-of-all-India; and once deep in the jungle. He passed the civil surgeon of Hurda on his own verandah; and someone said that the old "family doctor" was to come from Poona. . . . Now he was in Carlin's room and Carlin was looking at him. He saw her face the moment he entered the room, and the fact that he had come in from the fierce daylight into the shadows did, not seem to blur his eyes, even for a second.

Her people in the room—Bhanah, the ayah, the civil surgeon, Ian Deal and someone else—but the line from her eyes to Skag was not crossed. The heart of the man leaped from what he saw—the transcendent understanding which needed no words; the look of all looks that meant herself—a little lingering smile on the lips, the endless lure of her wise eyes.

But all that was whipped away as he came three steps nearer her couch. The wonder of it was not taken, but the old pain returned; rather, the pain had been there all the time, but he had forgotten for a space. He saw the ashen and frail face again and the inexpressible weariness of her eyes, too tired to tell of it, too tired to stay! Then the face of the English officer appeared for his eyes—hovering back of the people, in a background of mountains. . . .

Carlin seemed listening. What she heard came out of a grey intolerable monotony; but still her eyes held his. They seemed concentrated upon some weakness of his nature—some dementia that had been before her for years, that had confronted her in every highway of life, frightened away every opportunity and spoiled every day. Her hand lifted just slightly, the palm turned toward him:

"Oh, won't you please stop those fever birds?"

. . . Then one day Skag, standing in the darkened library, heard Margaret Annesley and one of her friends speaking together in the verandah.

"But does she really hear anything?" the friend asked.

"Oh, yes; though you never hear them unless you are ill with the fever."

"How strange and terrible, and is it a particular fever?"

"Jungle fever, dear. It comes to us sometimes of itself, but more often after a shock. . . . Carlin's night in the dark—"

Skag's arm lifted in a curve to cover his face as if from a blow. . . . Yet Margaret Annesley was not quite right; for he had learned to hear what Carlin heard:

From far away very faint, curiously thin tones came to him; always repeating one word, with an upward inflection, like a question. Every repetition sounded the fraction of a degree higher than the last, till they were far above the compass of any human voice:

"Fee-vur? fee-vur? fee-vur? fee-vur? — — —" and on and on.

When it began, quite low, he heard infinite patience in it; gradually, it grew full of fear; then it climbed into a veritable panic of terror.

When it stopped at last, on a long distracted "u-u-u-r-r-r-r?"—he heard the male bird's answer, sounding nearer, in deep tones of utter hopelessness, with a prolonged descending inflection:

"Bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r!"—the Indian word for fever, repeated only three times. Then the female began again; so, day and night—night and day.

After he had once heard it, he could always hear it. So he learned that they never rest. Always, by listening, he could hear it at some point of its maddening scale—its insane assurance of the hopelessness of jungle fever.

Skag faced the ultimatum. This was different. It had nothing to do with his world of animal dangers. This was a slow devouring which he could not touch nor stay. Carlin was melting before his eyes. . . . The brothers had come in, one by one, from over India. (Margaret Annesley had attended to that.) Skag met them, moved quietly about, yet could not remember their faces one from another. He answered when spoken to, but retained no registration as to whom he had spoken, or what had been said. Sometimes he was alone for a few moments with Carlin; and when her eyes were open he was appalled by the growing sense of distance in them. Then before she spoke, he would hear what she heard:

"Bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r!"

There were queer rifts of light in his mind, instants when he realised that all the hard moments of the past had prepared him for this. He saw clearly that he could not have endured, even to the present hour, without every experience life had shown him—especially without the difficult ones. He lived again the great moments—all the Indian afterglows that were identified with Carlin—perfect lessons of mercy she had taught him, through the very yearning of his own heart in her presence to be worthy of days with her. Never useless words from Carlin, but always the vivid meaning. He had been slow at first to see how much more magic were their days together, because she paid for them with a night-and-day readiness to go forth to the call of service to others.

Yet through all, he was utterly, changelessly desolate. Not only bitterness, but an icy bitterness, was upon all meaning and movement of life. It was almost like a conspiracy that no part in ministration was demanded of him by those who were now in his house. The doctors talked to Miss Annesley or to the servants; the brothers came and went with their fear and fidelity—but spoke to Skag of other things than the illness. Still, in his heart a concept slowly formed—that he had something which Carlin needed now; that this something had to do, though it was different, with the power he used to change animals. It seemed absurd even to think of this—with all these wise ones around him, not perceiving it. They formed a barrier of their thoughts which kept him from expression. He stood apart for hours as the days passed, thinking of his part; and yet the icy bitterness held him from action.

Sometimes his heart seemed dying; chill already upon it. Again he seemed filled with a strange vitality, other than his own. This phenomenon frightened him more than the first, so that he would hurry to look at Carlin lest the strength had come from her. He tried to think the strength back to her; to think all his own besides; but there was no drive to his mind-work because he did not have faith in himself.

At length came the night when the fever birds ceased for Carlin. Out of a great soft depth of tone which no one but Skag had heard before (which he had thought no other would hear until there was a baby in her arms), her words came with unforgettable intensity:

"Oh, the jungle shadows! The jungle shadows!"

After that he did not know whether it was night or day, until he heard the end of a sentence from the doctor from Poona:

". . . only four hours left to break the fever."

The room was in great still heat—heat of a burning night, a smothering heat to the couch from a distant lamp—the fire of the day coming up from the ground like flashes of anger. . . .

A strange stillness was settling on everything; the silence before had not been so heavy. The old family doctor from Poona came into it; and Margaret Annesley stood by him near the bed.