by Talbot Mundy
Are jackals a tiger's friends because they flatter him and eat his leavings? Choose, ye with stripes and proud whiskers, choose between friend and enemy.--Native Proverb
They came and changed the guard two hours after dawn, to theaccompaniment of a lot of hawking and spitting, orders growled throughthe mist, and the crash of rifle-butts grounding on the rock path. Kingwent to the cave entrance, to look the new man over; but because he wasin Khinjan, and Khinjan in the "Hills," where indirectness is the key toinformation, he stood for a while at gaze, listening to the thunder oftumbling water and looking at the cliff-edge six feet away that was laidlike a knife in the ascending mist.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the new man was aMahsudi--no sweeter to look at and no less treacherous for the fact.Also, that he had boils all over the back of his neck. He was not likelyto be better tempered because of that fact, either. But it is an illwind that blows no good to the Secret Service.
"There is an end to everything," he remarked presently, addressing theworld at large, or as much as he could see of it through the cave mouth."A hill is so high, a pool so deep, a river so wide. How long, forinstance, must thy watch be?"
"What is that to thee?" the fellow growled.
"There is an end to pain!" said King, adjusting his horn-rimmedspectacles. "I lanced a man's boils last night, and it hurt him, but hemust be well to-day."
"Get in!" growled the guard. "She says it is sorcery! She says none areto let thee touch them!"
Plainly, he was in no receptive mood; orders had been spat into hishairy ear too recently.
"Get in!" he growled, lifting his rifle-butt as if to enforce the order.
"I can heal boils!" said King, retiring into the cave. Then, from asafe distance down the passage, he added a word or two to sink in as thehours went by.
"It is good to be able to bend the neck without pain and to rest easilyat night! It is good not to flinch at another's touch. Boils are bad!Healing is easy and good!"
Then, since a quarrel was the very last thing he was looking for, heretired into his own gloomy quarters at the rear, taking care to sit sothat he could see and overhear what passed at the entrance. Among otherthings in the course of the day he noticed that the watch was changedevery four hours and that there were only three men in the guard, forthe same man was back again that evening.
At intervals throughout the day Yasmini sent him food by silentmessengers; so he ate, for "the thing to do," says Cocker, "is the firstthat comes to hand, and the thing not to do is worry." It is not easy toworry and eat heartily at one and the same time. Having eaten, he rolledup his sleeves and native-made cotton trousers and proceeded to cleanthe cave. After that he overhauled his stock of drugs and instruments,repacking them and making ready against opportunity.
"As I told that heathen with a gun out there, there's an end toeverything!" he reflected. "May this come soon!"
When they changed the guard that afternoon he had grown weary of hisown company and of fruitless speculation and was pacing up and down. Thesecond guard proved even less communicative than the first, up to thepoint when, to lessen his ennui, King began to whistle. Because a SecretService man must be consistent, the tune was not English, but a weirdminor one to which the "Hills" have set their favorite love song (thatis, all about hate in the concrete!).
The echo of the waterfall within the cave was like the roaring in ashell held to the ear, but each time he came near the entrance thenew guard could catch a few bars of the tune. After a little while thehook-nosed ruffian began to sing the words to it, in a voice like aforgotten dog's.
So he stopped at the entrance and changed the tune. And the guard sangthe words of the new tune, too. After that he came out into the lightof day (direct sunlight was cut off by the huge height of the cliffs allaround) and leaned in the entrance, smiling.
"Allah preserve thee, brother!" he remarked. "Thine is a voice like awarrior's--bold and big! Thou art a true son of the Prophet!"
"Aye!" said the fellow, "that I am! Allah preserve thee, for thou hastmore need of it than I, although I guard thee just at present. Whistleme another one!"
So King whistled the refrain of a song that boasts of an Afghan invasionof India, and of the loot that came of it, and the prisoners, and thewomen--particularly the women, mentioning more than a few of them byname, and their charms in detail. It was a song to warm the very cocklesof a Hillman's heart. Nothing could have been better chosen for thatsetting, of a cave mouth half-way down the side of a gash in earth'swildest mountains, with the blue sky resting on a jagged rim a mileabove.
"Good!" said the bearded jailer. "Now begin again and I will sing!"
He threw his head back and howled until the mountain walls rang with thesong, and other men in far-off caves took it up and howled it back athim. When he left off singing at last, to drink from a water-bottle,that surely had been looted from a British soldier, King decided to bedone with overtures and make the next move in the game.
"Didst thou ever sing for her?" he asked, and the man turned round tostare at him as if he were mad, King saw then a blood-soaked bandage onthe right of his neck, not very far from the jugular.
"When she sings we are silent! When she is silent it is good to wait awhile and see!" he answered.
"Hah!" said King. "Was that wound got in the Khyber the other day?"
"Nay. Here in Khinjan. I had my thumb in a man's eye, and the bastardbit me! May devils do worse to him where he has gone! I threw him intoEarth's Drink!"
"A good place for one's enemies!" laughed King.
"Aye!"
"A man told me last night," said King, drawing on imagination withoutany compunction at all, "that the fight in the Khyber was because ajihad is launched aleady."
"That man lied!" said the guard, shifting position uneasily, as ifafraid to talk too much.
"So I told him!" answered King. "I told him there never will be anotherjihad."'
"Then art thou a greater liar than he!" the guard answered hotly. "Therewill be a jihad when she is ready, such an one as never yet was! Indiashall bleed for all the fat years she has lain unplundered! Not a throatof an unbeliever in the world shall be left un-slit! No jihad? Thouliar! Get in out of my sight!"
So King retired into the cave, with something new to think about. Wasshe planning the jihad! Or pretending to plan one? Every once in a whilethe guard leaned far into the cave mouth and buried adjectives at him,the mildest of which was a well of information. If his temper was thetemper of the "Hills," it was easy to read disappointment for a jihadthat should have been already but had been postponed.
When they changed the guard again the new man proved surly. There wasno getting a word out of him. He showed dirty yellow teeth in a wolfishsnarl, and his only answer was a lifted rifle and a crooked forefinger.King let him alone and paced the cave for hours.
He was squatting on his bed-end in the dark, like a spectacled image ofBuddha, when the first of the three men came on guard again and at lastIsmail came for him holding a pitchy torch that filled the dim passagefull of acrid smoke and made both of them, cough. Ismail was red-eyedwith it.
"Come!" he growled. "Come, little hakim!" Then he turned on his heel atonce, as if afraid of being twitted with desertion. He seemed to want toget outside, where he could keep out of range of words, yet not to wishto seem unfriendly.
But King made no effort to speak to him, following in silence out on tothe dark ledge above the waterfall and noticing that the guard with theboils was back again on duty. He grinned evilly out of a shadow as Kingpassed.
"Make an end!" he advised, spitting over the Cliff into thunderousdarkness to illustrate the suggestion. "Jump, hakim, before a worsething happens!"
To add further point be kicked a loose stone over the edge, and themovement caused him to bend his neck and so inadvertently to hurt hisboils. He cursed, and there was pity in King's voice when he spoke next.
"Do they hurt thee?"
"Aye, like the devil! K
hinjan is a place of plagues!"
"I could heal them," King said, passing on, and the man stared hard.
"Come!" boomed Ismail through the darkness, shaking the torch to makeit burn better and beckoning impatiently, and King hurried after him,leaving behind a savage at the cave mouth who fingered his sores andwondered, muttering, leaning on a rifle, muttering and muttering againas if he had seen a new light.
Instead of waiting for King to catch up, Ismail began to lead the way atgreat speed along a path that descended gradually until it curved roundthe end of the chasm and plunged into a tunnel where the darkness grewopaque. In the tunnel the torch's smoke cast weird shadows on walls androof, and the fitful light only confused, so that Ismail slowed down andlet him come up close.
Then for thirty minutes he led swiftly down a crazy devil's stairwayof uneven boulders, stopping to lend a hand at the worst places, buteverlastingly urging him to hurry. They were both breathless, and Kingwas bruised in a dozen places when they reached level going at least sixor seven hundred feet below the cave from which they started.
Then the hell-mouth gloom began to grow faintly luminous, and thewaterfall's thunder burst on their ears from close at hand. They emergedinto fresh wet air and a sea of sound, on a rock ledge like the oneabove. Ismail raised the torch and waved it. The fire and smoke wanderedup, until they flattened on a moving opal dome, that prisoned all thenoises in the world.
"Earth's Drink!" he announced, waving the torch and then shutting hismouth tight, as if afraid to voice sacrilege.
It was the river, million-colored in the torch-light, pouring from ahalf-mile-long slash in the cliff above them and plunging past themthrough the gloom toward the very middle of the world. Its width was amatter of memory, and its depth unguessable, for although dim moonlightfiltered through it, he did not know where the moon was, nor how farsuch light could penetrate through moving water. Somewhere it metrock-bottom and boiled there, for a roar like the sea's came up fromdeeps unimaginable.
He watched the overturning dome until his senses reeled. Then he crawledon hands and knees to the ledge's brink and tried to peer over. ButIsmail dragged him back.
"Come!" he howled; but in all that din his shout was like a whisper.
"How deep is it?" King bellowed back.
"Allah! Ask Him who made it!"
The fear of the falls was on the Afridi, and he tugged at King's arm ina frenzy of impatience. Suddenly he let go and broke into a run. Kingtrotted after him, afraid too, to look to right or left, lest thefear should make him throw himself over the brink. The thunder and thehugeness had their grip on him and had begun to numb his power to thinkand his will to be a man. Suddenly when they had run a hundred yards,Ismail turned sharp to the right into a tunnel that led straight backinto the cliff and sloped uphill. As the din of the falls grew lessbehind him and his power to think returned, King calculated that theymust be following the main direction of the river bed, but edging awaygradually to the right of it. After ten minutes' hurrying uphill heguessed they must be level with the river, in a tunnel running nearlyparallel.
He proved to be right, for they came to a gap in the wall, and Ismailthrust the torch through it. The light shone on swift black water, and awind rushed through the gap that nearly blew the torch out. It accountedaltogether for the dryness of the rock and the fresh air in the tunnel.The river's weight seemed to suck a hurricane along with it--air enoughfor a million men to breathe.
After that there was no more need to stop at intervals and beat thetorch against the wall to make it burn brightly, for the wind fanned ituntil the flame was nearly white. Ismail kept looking back to bid Kinghurry and never paused once to rest.
"Come!" he urged fiercely. "This leads to the 'Heart of the Hills'!" Andafter that King had to do his best to keep the Afridi's back in sight.
They began after a time to hear voices and to see the smoky glare madeby other torches. Then Ismail set the pace yet faster, and they becamethe last two of a procession of turbaned men, who tramped along awinding tunnel into a great mountain's womb. The sound of slippersclicking and rutching on the rock floor swelled and died and swelledagain as the tunnel led from cavern into cavern.
In one great cave they came to every man beat out his torch and tossedit on a heap. The heap was more than shoulder high, and three partscovered the floor of the cave. After that there was a ledge above theheight of a man's head on either side of the tunnel, and along the ledgelittle oil-burning lamps were spaced at measured intervals. They lookedancient enough to have been there when the mountain itself was born,and although all the brass ones suggested Indian and Hindu origin, therewere others among them of earthenware that looked like plunder fromancient Greece.
It was like a transposition of epochs. King felt already as if thetwentieth century had never existed, just as he seemed to have left lifebehind for good and all when the mosque door had closed on him.
A quarter of a mile farther along the tunnel opened into another, yetgreater cave, and there every man kicked off his slippers, withoutseeming to trouble how they lay; they littered the floor unarranged anduncared for, looking like the cast-off wing-cases of gigantic beetles.
After that cave there were two sharp turns in the tunnel, and then atlast a sea of noise and a veritable blaze of light.
Part of the noise made King feel homesick, for out of the mountain'svery womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made useof before the days of electricity and steam. It was being worked byinexpert hands, for the time was something jerky; but it was robbed ofits tinny meanness and even majesty by the hugeness of acavern's roof, as well as by the crashing, swinging march itplayed--wild--wonderful--invented for lawless hours and a kinglesspeople.
"Marchons!--Citoyens!--"
The procession began to tramp in time to it, and the rock shook. Theydeployed to left and right into a space so vast that the eye at firstrefused to try to measure it. It was the hollow core of a mountain,filled by the sea-sound of a human crowd and hung with huge stalactitesthat danced and shifted and flung back a thousand colors at theflickering light below.
There was an undertone to the clangor of the music-box and the humanhum, for across the cavern's farther end for a space of two hundredyards the great river rushed, penned here into a deep trough of lessthan a tenth its normal width--plunging out of a great fanged gap andhurrying out of view down another one, licking smooth banks on its waywith a hungry sucking sound. Its depth where it crossed the cavern'send could only be guessed by remembering the half-mile breadth of thewaterfall.
There were little lamps everywhere, perched on ledges amid thestalactites, and they suffused the whole cavern in golden glow, made thecrowd's faces look golden and cast golden shimmers on the cold, blackriver bed. There was scarcely any smoke, for the wind that went like astorm down the tunnel seemed to have its birth here; the air was freshand cool and never still. No doubt fresh air was pouring in continuallythrough some shaft in the rock, but the shaft was invisible.
In the midst of the cavern a great arena had been left bare, andthousands of turbaned men squatted round it in rings. At the end wherethe river formed a tangent to them the rings were flattened, and at thatpoint they were cut into by the ramp of a bridge, and by a lane leftto connect the bridge with the arena. The bridge was almost the mostwonderful of all.
So delicately formed that fairies might have made it with a gutteredcandle, it spanned the river in one splendid sweep, twenty feet abovewater, like a suspension bridge. Then, so light and graceful that itscarcely seemed to touch anything at all, it swept on in irregulararches downward to the arena and ceased abruptly as if shorn off by agiant ax, at a point less than half-way to it.
Its end formed a nearly square platform, about fourteen feet abovethe floor, and the broad track thence to the arena, as well as all thearena's boundary, had been marked off by great earthenware lamps, whosegreasy smoke streaked up and was lost by the wind among the stalactites.
"Greek lamps, every one of 'em!
" King whispered to himself, but hewasted no time just then on trying to explain how Greek lamps had evergot there. There was too much else to watch and wonder at.
No steps led down from the bridge end to the floor; toward the arena itwas blind. But from the bridge's farther end across the hurrying waterstairs had been hewn out of the rock wall and led up to a hole of twicea man's height, more than fifty feet above water level.
On either side of the bridge end a passage had been left clear to theriver edge, and nobody seemed to care to invade it, although it was notmarked off in any way. Each passage was about fifty feet wide and quitestraight. But the space between the bridge end and the arena, and thearena itself, had to be kept free from trespassers by fifty swaggeringruffians armed to the teeth.
Every man of the thousands there had a knife in evidence, but the arenaguards had magazine rifles well as Khyber tulwars. Nobody else worefirearms openly. Some of the arena guards bore huge round shields ofprehistoric pattern of a size and sort he had never seen before, evenin museums. But there was very little that he was seeing that night of akind that he had seen before anywhere!
The guards lolled insolently, conscious of brute strength and specialfavor. When any man trespassed with so much as a toe beyond the ring oflamps, a guard would slap his rifle-butt until the swivels rattled andthe offender would scurry into bounds amid the jeers of any who hadseen.
Shoving, kicking and elbowing with set purpose, Ismail forced a waythrough the already seated crowd, and drew King down into the crampedspace beside him, close enough to the arena to be able to catch theguards' low laughter. But he was restless. He wished to get nearer yet,only there seemed no room anywhere in front.
The music-box was hidden. King could see it nowhere. Five minutes afterhe and Ismail were seated it stopped playing. The hum of the crowd diedtoo.
Then a guard threw his shield down with a clang and deliberately firedhis rifle at the roof. The ricocheting bullet brought down a shower ofsplintered stone and stalactite, and he grinned as he watched thecrowd dodge to avoid it. Before they had done dodging and while he yetgrinned, a chant began--ghastly--tuneless--so out of time that the wordswere not intelligible--yet so obvious in general meaning that nobodycould hear it and not understand.
It was a devils' anthem, glorifying hellishness--suggestive of thegnashing of a million teeth, and the whicker of drawn blades--moreshuddersome and mean than the wind of a winter's night. And it ceased assuddenly as it had begun.
Another ruffian fired at the roof, and while the crack of the shot yetechoed seven other of the arena guards stepped forward with long hornsand blew a blast. That was greeted by a yell that made the caverntremble.
Instantly a hundred men rose from different directions and raced for thearena, each with a curved sword in either hand. The yelling changed backinto the chant, only louder than before, and by that much more terrible.Cymbals crashed. The music-box resumed its measured grinding of TheMarseillaise. And the hundred began an Afridi sword dance, than whichthere is nothing wilder in all the world. Its like can only be seenunder the shadow of the "Hills."
Ismail put his hands together and howled through them like a wolf on thewar-path, nudging King with an elbow. So King imitated him, although oneextra shout in all that din seemed thrown away.
The dancers pranced in a circle, each man whirling both swords aroundhis head and the head of the man in front of him at a speed that passedbelief. Their long black hair shook and swayed. The sweat began to pourfrom them until their arms and shoulders glistened. The speed increased.Another hundred men leaped in, forming a new ring outside the first,only facing the other way. Another hundred and fifty formed a ringoutside them again, with the direction again reversed; and two hundredand fifty more formed an outer circle--all careering at the limit oftheir power, gasping as the beasts do in the fury of fighting to thedeath, slitting the air until it whistled, with swords that missed humanheads by immeasurable fractions of an inch.
Ismail seemed obsessed by the spirit of hell let loose--drawn by it,as by a magnet, although subsequent events proved him not to have beenaltogether without a plan. He got up, with his eyes fixed on the dance,and dragged King with him to a place ten rows nearer the arena, that hadbeen vacated by a dancer. There--two, where there was only rightlyroom for one--he thrust himself and King next to some Orakzai Pathans,elbowing savagely to right and left to make room. And patience provedscarce. The instant oaths of anything but greeting were like overture toa dog fight.
"Bismillah!" swore the nearest man, deigning to use intelligiblesentences at last. "Shall a dog of an Afridi bustle me?"
He reached for the ever-ready Pathan knife, and Ismail, with both eyeson the dancing, neither heard nor saw. The Pathan leaned past King tostab, but paused in the instant that his knife licked clear. From aswift side-glance at King's face be changed to full stare, his scowlslowly giving place to a grin as he recognized him.
"Allah!"
He drove the long blade back again, fidgeting about to make more roomand kicking out at his next neighbor to the same end, so that presentlyKing sat on the rock floor instead of on other men's hip-bones.
"Well met, hakim! See--the wound heals finely!"
Baring his shoulder under the smelly sheepskin coat, he lifted a bandagegingerly to show the clean opening out of which King had coaxed a bulletthe day before. It looked wholesome and ready to heal.
"Name thy reward, hakim! We Orakzai Pathans forget no favors!" (Now thatboast was a true one.)
King glanced to his left and saw that there was no risk of beingoverheard or interrupted by Ismail; the Afridi was beating his fiststogether, rocking from side to side in frenzy, and letting out about oneyell a minute that would have curdled a wolf's heart.
"Nay, I have all I need!" he answered, and the Pathan laughed.
"In thine own time, hakim! Need forgets none of us!"
"True!" said King.
He nodded more to himself than to the other man. He needed, forinstance, very much to know who was planning a jihad, and who"Bull-with-a-beard" might be; but it was not safe to confide just yet ina chance-made acquaintance. A very fair acquaintance with some phases ofthe East had taught him that names such as Bull-with-a-beard are oftenalmost photographically descriptive. He rose to his feet to look. Ablind man can talk, but it takes trained eyes to gather information.
The din had increased, and it was safe to stand up and stare, becauseall eyes were on the madness in the middle. There were plenty besideshimself who stood to get a better view, and he had to dodge from side toside to see between them.
"I'm not to doctor his men. Therefore it's a fair guess that he andI are to be kept apart. Therefore he'll be as far away from me now aspossible, supposing he's here."
Reasoning along that line, he tried to see the face on the far side, butthe problem was to see over the dancers' heads. He succeeded presently,for the Orakzai Pathan saw what he wanted, and in his anxiety to beagreeable, reached forward to pull back a box from between the ranks infront.
Its owners offered instant fight, but made no further objection whenthey saw who wanted it and why. King wondered at their sudden change ofmind, the Pathan looked actually grieved that a fight should have beenspared him. He tried, with a few barbed insults, to rearouse a spark ofenmity, but failed, to his own great discontent.
The box was a commonplace affair, built square, of pine, and hadprobably contained somebody's new helmet at one stage of its career. Thestenciled marks on its sides and top had long ago become obliterated bywear and dirt.
King got up on it and gazed long at the rows of spectators on the farside, and having no least notion what to look for, he studied the facesone by one.
"If he's important enough for her to have it in for him, he'll not befar from the front," he reasoned and with that in mind he picked outseveral bull-necked, bearded men, any one of whom could easily haveanswered to the description. There were too many of them to give him anycomfort, until the thought occurred to him that a man with
brains enoughto be a leader would not be so obsessed and excited by mere prancingathleticism as those men were. Then he looked farther along the line.
He found a man soon who was not interested in the dancing, but who hadeyes and ears apparently for everything and everybody else. He watchedhim for ten minutes, until at last their eyes met. Then he sat down andkicked the box back to its owners.
He looked again at Ismail. With teeth clenched and eyes ablaze, theAfridi was smashing his knuckles together and rocking to and fro.There was no need to fear him. He turned and touched the Pathan's broadshoulder. The man smiled and bent his turbaned head to listen.
"Opposite," said King, "nearly exactly opposite--three rows back fromthe front, counting the front row as one--there sits a man with his armin a sling and a bandage over his eye."
The Pathan nodded and touched his knife-hilt.
"One-and-twenty men from him, counting him as one, sits a man with a bigblack beard, whose shoulders are like a bull's. As he sits he hangs hishead between them--thus."
"And you want him killed? Nay, I think you mean Muhammad Anim. His timeis not yet."
The suggestion was as good-naturedly prompt as if the hakim's need hadbeen water, and the other's flask were empty. He was sorry he could notoffer to oblige.
"Who am I that I should want him killed?" King answered with mildreproof. "My trade is to heal, not slay. I am a hakim."
The other nodded.
"Yet, to enter Khinjan Caves you had to slay a man, hakim or no!"
"He was an unbeliever," King answered modestly, and the other noddedagain with friendly understanding.
"What about the man yonder, then?" the Pathan asked. "What will you haveof him?"
"Look! See! Tell me truly what his name is!"
The Pathan got up and strode forward to stand on the box, kicking asidethe elbows that leaned on it and laughing when the owners cursed him.He stood on it and stared for five minutes, counting deliberately threetimes over, striking a finger on the palm of his hand to check himself.
"Bull-with-a-beard!" he announced at last, dropping back into placebeside King. "Muhammad Anim. The mullah Muhammad Anim."
"An Afghan?" King asked.
"He says he is an Afghan. But unless he lies he is from Isbtamboul(Constantinople)."
Itching to ask more questions, King sat still and held his peace. Thedirer the need of information in the "Hills," and in all the Eastfor that matter, the greater the wisdom, as a rule, of seeminguninquisitive. And wisdom was rewarded now, for the Pathan, who wouldhave dried up under eager questioning, grew talkative. Civility andvolubility are sometimes one, and not always only among the civilized.King--the hakim Kurram Khan--blinked mildly behind his spectacles andlooked like one to whom a savage might safely ease his mind.
"He bade me go to Sikaram where my village is and bring him a hundredmen for his lashkar. He says he has her special favor. Wait and watch, Isay!
"Has he money?" asked King, apparently drawing a bow at a venture forconversation's sake. But there is an art in asking artless questions.
"Aye! The liar says the Germans gave it to him! He swears they will sendmore. Who are the Germans? Who is a man who talks of a jihad that isto be, that he should have gold coin given him by unbelievers? I saw aGerman once, at Nuklao. He ate pig-meat and washed it down with wine.Are such men sons of the Prophet? Wait and watch, say I!"
"Money?" said King. "He admits it? And none dare kill him for it? Yousay his time is not yet come?"
More than ever it was obvious that the hakim was a very simple man. ThePathan made a gesture of contempt.
"I dare what I will, hakim! But he says there is more money on the way!When he has it all--why--we are all in Allah's keeping--He decides!"
"And should no more money come?"
This was courteous conversation and received as such--many a long leagueremoved from curiosity.
"Who am I to foretell a man's kismet? I know what I know, and I thinkwhat I think! I know thee, hakim, for a gentle fellow, who hurt mealmost not at all in the drawing of a bullet out of my flesh. Whatknowest thou about me?"
"That I will dress the wound for thee again!"
Artless statements are as useful in their way as artless questions. Letthe guile lie deep, that is all.
"Nay, nay! For she said nay! Shall I fall foul of her, for the sake of anew bandage?"
The temptation was terrific to ask why she had given that order, butKing resisted it; and presently it occurred to the Pathan that his owntheories on the subject might be of interest.
"She will use thee for a reward," he said. "He who shall win and keepher favor may have his hurts dressed and his belly dosed. Her enemiesmay rot."
"Who is fool enough to be her enemy?" asked King, the altogether mildand guileless.
The Pathan stuck out his tongue and squeezed his nose with one fingeruntil it nearly disappeared into his face.
"If she calls a man enemy, how shall he prove otherwise?" he answered.Then he rolled off center, to pull out his great snuff-box from theleather bag at his waist.
"Does she call the mullah Muhammad Anim enemy?" King asked him.
"Nay, she never mentions him by name."
"Art thou a man of thy word?" King asked.
"When it suits me."
"There was a promise regarding my reward."
"Name it, hakim! We will see."
"Go tell the mullah Muhammad Anim where I sit!"
The fellow laughed. He considered himself tricked; one could read thatplainly enough; for taking polite messages does not come within theHills' elastic code of izzat, although carrying a challenge is anothermatter. Yet he felt grateful for the hakim's service and was ready toseize the first cheap means of squaring the indebtedness.
"Keep my place!" he ordered, getting up. He growled it, as some menspeak to dogs, because growling soothed his ruffled vanity.
He helped himself noisily to snuff then and began to clear a passage,kicking out to right and left and laughing when his victims protested.Before he had traversed fifty yards he had made himself more enemiesthan most men dare aspire to in a lifetime, and he seemed well pleasedwith the fruit of his effort.
The dance went on for fifteen minutes yet, but then--quiteunexpectedly--all the arena guards together fired a volley at the roof,and the dance stopped as if every dancer had been hit. The spectatorswere set surging by the showers of stone splinters, that hurt whom theystruck, and their snarl was like a wolf-pack's when a tiger interferes.But the guards thought it all a prodigious joke and the more the crowdswore the more they laughed.
Panting--foaming at the mouth, some of them--the dancers ran to theirseats and set the crowd surging again, leaving the arena empty of allbut the guards. The man whose seat Ismail had taken came staggering,slippery with sweat, and squeezed himself where he belonged, forcingKing into the Pathan's empty place. Ismail threw his arms round the manand patted him, calling him "mighty dancer," "son of the wind," "princeof prancers," "prince of swordsmen," "war-horse," and a dozen moreendearing epithets. The fellow lay back across Ismail's knees,breathless but well enough contented.
And after a few more minutes the Orakzai Pathan came back, and Kingtried to make room for him to sit.
"I bade thee keep my place!" he growled, towering over King and pluckingat his knife-belt irresolutely. He made it clear without troubling touse words that any other man would have had to fight, and the hakimmight think himself lucky.
"Take my seat," said King, struggling to get up.
"Nay, nay--sit still, thou. I can kick room for myself. So! So! So!"
There was an answering snarl of hate that seemed like a song to him,amid which he sat down.
"The mullah Muhammad Anim answered he knows nothing of thee and caresless! He said--and he said it with vehemence--it is no more to him wherea hakim sits than where the rats hide!"
He watched King's face and seeing that, King allowed his facial musclesto express chagrin.
"Between us, it is a poor tim
e for messages to him. He is too full ofpride that his lashkar should have beaten the British."
"Did they beat the British greatly?" King asked him, with only vagueinterest on his face and a prayer inside him that his heart mightflutter less violently against his ribs. His voice was as non-committalas the mullah's message.
"Who knows, when so many men would rather lie than kill? Each one whoreturned swears he slew a hundred. But some did not return. Wait andwatch, say I!"
Now a man stood up near the edge of the crowd whom King recognized;and recognition brought no joy with it. The mullah without hair oreyelashes, who had admitted him and his party through the mosque intothe Caves, strode out to the middle of the arena all alone, struttingand swaggering. He recalled the man's last words and drew no consolationfrom them, either.
"Many have entered! Some went out by a different road!"
Cold chills went down his back. All at once Ismail's manner becameunencouraging. He ceased to make a fuss over the dancer and began to eyeKing sidewise, until at last he seemed unable to contain the malice thatwould well forth.
"At the gate there were only words!" he whispered. "Here in this cavernmen wait for proof!"
He licked his teeth suggestively, as a wolf does when he contemplatesa meal. Then, as an afterthought, as though ashamed, "I love thee! Thouart a man after my own heart! But I am her man! Wait and see!"
The mullah in the arena, blinking with his lashless eyes, held botharms up for silence in the attitude of a Christian priest blessinga congregation. The guards backed his silent demand with threateningrifles. The din died to a hiss of a thousand whispers, and then thegreat cavern grew still, and only the river could be heard suckinghungrily between the smooth stone banks.
"God is great!" the mullah howled.
"God is great!" the crowd thundered in echo to him; and then the vaulttook up the echoes. "God is great--is great--is great--ea--ea--eat!"
"And Muhammad is His prophet!" howled the mullah. Instantly theyanswered him again.
"And Muhammad is His prophet!"
"His prophet--is His prophet--is His prophet!" said the stalactites, inloud barks--then in murmurs--then in awe-struck whispers.
That seemed to be all the religious ritual Khinjan remembered or couldtolerate. Considering that the mullah, too, must have killed his manin cold blood before earning the right to be there, perhaps it wasenough--too much. There were men not far from King who shuddered.
"There are strangers!" announced the mullah, as a man might say, "Ismell a rat!" But he did not look at anybody in particular; he blinkedat the crowd.
"Strangers!" said the stalactites, in an awe-struck whisper.
"Show them! Show them! Let them stand forth!"
"Oh-h-h-h-h! Let them stand forth!" said the roof.
The mullah bowed as if that idea were a new one and he thought it betterthan his own; for all crowds love flattery.
"Bring them!" he shouted, and King suppressed a shudder--for what proofhad he of right to be there beyond Ismail's verbal corroboration of alie? Would Ismail lie for him again? he wondered. And if so, would thelie be any use?
Not far from where King sat there was an immediate disturbance in thecrowd, and a wretched-looking Baluchi was thrust forward at a run, witharms lashed to his sides and a pitiful look of terror on his face. Twomore Baluchis were hustled along after him, protesting a little, butlooking almost as hopeless.
Once in the arena, the guards took charge of all three of them and linedthem up facing the mullah, clubbing them with their rifle-butts toget quick obedience. The crowd began to be noisy again, but the mullahsigned for silence.
"These are traitors!" he howled, with a gesture such as Ajax might haveused when he defied the lightning.
The roof said "Traitors!"
"Slay them, then!" howled the crowd, delighted. And blinking behind thehorn-rimmed spectacles, King began to look about busily for hope, wherethere did not seem to be any.
"Nay, hear me first!" the mullah howled, and his voice was like a wolf'sat hunting time. "Hear, and be warned!"
The crowd grew very still, but King saw that some men licked their lips,as if they well knew what was coming.
"These three men came, and one was a new man!" the mullah howled. "Theother two were his witnesses! All three swore that the first man camefrom slaying an unbeliever in the teeth of written law. They said he ranfrom the law. So, as the custom is, I let all three enter!"
"Good!" said the crowd. "Good!" They might have been five thousandjudges, judging in equity, so grave they were. Yet they licked theirlips.
"But later, word came to me saying they are liars. So--again as thecustom is--I ordered them bound and held!"
"Slay them! Slay them!" the crowd yelped, gleeful as a wolf-pack on ascent and abandoning solemnity as suddenly as it had been assumed. "Slaythem!"
They were like the wind, whipping in and out among Khinjan's rocks,savage and then still for a minute, savage and then still.
"Nay, there is a custom yet!" the mullah howled, holding up both arms.And there was silence again like the lull before a hurricane, with onlythe great black river talking to itself.
"Who speaks for them? Does any speak for them?"
"Speak for them?" said the roof.
There was silence. Then there was a murmur of astonishment. Overopposite to where King sat the mullah stood up, who the Pathan had saidwas "Bull-with-a-beard"--Muhammad Anim.
"The men are mine!" he growled. His voice was like a bear's at bay; itwas low, but it carried strangely. And as he spoke he swung his greathead between his shoulders, like a bear that means to charge. "The proofthey brought has been stolen! They had good proof! I speak for them! Themen are mine!"
The Pathan nudged King in the ribs with an elbow like a club and tickledhis ear with hot breath.
"Bull-with-a-beard speaks truth!" he grinned. "'Truth and a lietogether! Good may it do him and them! They die, they three Baluchis!"
"Proof!" howled the mullah who had no hair eyelashes.
"Proof--oof--oof!" said the stalactites.
"Proof! Show us proof!" yelled the crowd.
"Words at the gate--proof in the cavern!" howled the lashless one.
The Pathan next King leaned over to whisper to him again, but stiffenedin the act. There was a great gasp the same instant, as the whole crowdcaught its breath all together. The mullah in the middle froze intomobility. Bull-with-a-beard stood mumbling, swaying his great head fromside to side, no longer suggestive of a bear about to charge, but of onewho hesitates.
The crowd was staring at the end of the bridge. King stared, too, andcaught his own breath. For Yasmini stood there, smiling on them all asthe new moon smiles down on the Khyber! She had come among them like aspirit, all unheralded.
So much more beautiful than the one likeness King had seen of her thatfor a second he doubted who she was--more lovely than he had imaginedher even in his dreams--she stood there, human and warm and real, whohad begun to seem a myth, clad in gauzy transparent stuff that made nosecret of sylph-like shapeliness and looking nearly light enough to blowaway. Her feet--and they were the most marvelously molded things he hadever seen--were naked and played restlessly on the naked stone. Not onepart of her was still for a fraction of a second; yet the whole effectwas of insolently lazy ease.
Her eyes blazed brighter than the little jewels stitched to her gossamerdress, and when a man once looked at them he did not find it easy tolook away again. Even mullah Muhammad Anim seemed transfixed, like agreat foolish animal.
But King was staring very hard indeed at something else--mentallycursing the plain glass spectacles he wore, that had begun to film overand dim his vision. There were two bracelets on her arm, both barbaricthings of solid gold. The smaller of the two was on her wrist and thelarger on her upper arm, but they were so alike, except for size, and soexactly like the one Rewa Gunga had given him in her name and that hadbeen stolen from him in the night, that he ran the risk of removing theglasses a moment to s
tare with unimpeded eyes. Even then the distancewas too great. He could not quite see.
But her eyes began to search the crowd in his direction, and then heknew two things absolutely. He was sitting where she had ordered Ismailto place him; for she picked him out almost instantly, and laughed asif somebody had struck a silver bell. And one of those bracelets was theone that he had worn; for she flaunted it at him, moving her arm so thatthe light should make the gold glitter.
Then, perhaps because the crowd bad begun to whisper, and she wanted allattention, she raised both arms to toss back the golden hair that camecascading nearly to her knees. And as if the crowd knew that symptomwell, it drew its breath in sharply and grew very still.
"Muhammad Anim!" she said, and she might have been wooing him. "That wasa devil's trick!"
It was rather an astounding statement, coming from lovely lips in sucha setting. It was rather suggestive of a driver's whiplash, flickedthrough the air for a beginning. Muhammad Anim continued glaring and didnot answer her, so in her own good time, when she had tossed her goldenhair back once or twice again, she developed her meaning.
"We who are free of Khinjan Caves do not send men out to bring recruits.We know better than to bid our men tell lies for others at the gate.Nor, seeking proof for our new recruit, do we send men to hunt a headfor him--not even those of us who have a lashkar that we call our own,mullah Muhammad Anim. Each of us earns his own way in!"
The mullah Muhammad Anim began to stroke his beard, but he made noanswer.
"And--mullah Muhammad Anim, thou wandering man of God--when that lashkarhas foolishly been sent and has failed, is it written in the Kalamullahsaying we should pretend there was a head, and that the head was stolen?A lie is a lie, Muhammad Anim! Wandering perhaps is good, if in searchof the way. Is it good to lose the way, and to lie, thou true followerof the Prophet?"
She smiled, tossing her hair back. Her eyes challenged, her lips mockedhim and her chin scorned. The crowd breathed hard and watched. Themullah muttered something in his beard, and sat down, and the crowdbegan to roar applause at her. But she checked it with a regal gesture,and a glance of contempt at the mullah that was alone worth a journeyacross the "Hills" to see.
"Guards!" she said quietly. And the crowd's sigh then was like the nightwind in a forest.
"Away with those three of Muhammad Anim's men!"
Twelve of the arena guards threw down their shields with a suddenclatter and seized the prisoners, four to each. The crowd shivered withdelicious anticipation. The doomed men neither struggled nor cried,for fatalism is an anodyne as well as an explosive. King set his teeth.Yasmini, with both hands behind her head, continued to smile down onthem all as sweetly as the stars shine on a battle-field.
She nodded once; and then all was over in a minute. With a ringing "Ho!"and a run, the guards lifted their victims shoulder high and bore themforward. At the river bank they paused for a second to swing them. Then,with another "Ho!" they threw them like dead rubbish into the swiftblack water.
There was only one wild scream that went echoing and re-echoing to theroof. There was scarcely a splash, and no extra ripple at all. No headscame up again to gasp. No fingers clutched at the surface. The fearfulspeed of the river sucked them under, to grind and churn and pound themthrough long caverns underground and hurl them at last over the greatcataract toward the middle of the world.
"Ah-h-h-h-h!" sighed the crowd in ecstasy.
"Is there no other stranger?" asked Yasmini, searching for King againwith her amazing eyes. The skin all down his back turned there and theninto gooseflesh. And as her eyes met his she laughed like a bell at him.She knew! She knew who he was, how he had entered, and how he felt. Nota doubt of it!
