by John Buchan
The houses clustered on the scarp and enclosed a piece of well-beaten ground and one huge cedar tree. Sounds came from the near houses, but around the tree itself the more privileged sat in solemn conclave. Food and wine were going the round, for the Maulai kohammedans have no taboos in eating and drinking. Fazir Khan sat smoking next the tree trunk, a short, sinewy man with a square, Aryan face, clear-cut and cruel. His chiefs were around him, all men of the same type, showing curiously fair skins against their oiled black hair. A mullah sat cross-legged, his straggling beard in his lap, repeating some crazy charm to himself and looking every now and again with anxious eyes to the guest who sat on the chief’s right hand.
The guest was a long, thin man, clad in the Cossacks’ fur lined military cloak, under which his untanned riding-boots showed red in the moonlight. He was still busy eating goat’s flesh, cheese and fruits, and drinking deeply from the sweet Hunza wine, like a man who had come far and fast. He ate with the utmost disregard of his company. He might have been a hunter supping alone in the solitary hills for all the notice he took of the fifty odd men around him.
By and by be finished, pulled forth a little silver toothpick from an inner pocket, and reached a hand for the long cherry-wood pipe which had been placed beside him. He lit it, and blew a few clouds into the calm air.
“Now, Fazir Khan,” he said, “I am a new man, and we shall talk. First, have you done my bidding?”
“Thy bidding has been done,” said the great man sulkily. “See, I am here with my chiefs. All the twenty villages of my tribe have been warned, and arms have been got from the fools at Bardur. Also, I have the Yarkand powder I was told of, to give the signals on the hills. The Nazri Pass road, which we alone know, has been widened. What more could man do?”
“That is well,” said the other. “It is well for you and your people that you have done this. Your service shall not be forgotten. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise?” said the Fazir Khan, his hand travelling to his belt at the sound of a threat.
The man laughed. “You know the tale,” he said. “Doubtless your mother told you it when you clutched at her breast. Some day a great white people from the north will come down and swallow up the disobedient. That day is now at hand. You have been wise in time. Therefore I say it is well.”
The stranger spoke with perfect coolness. He looked round curiously at the circle of dark faces and laughed quietly to himself. The chief stole one look at him and then said something to a follower.
“I need not speak of the reward,” said the stranger. “You are our servants, and duty is duty. But I have authority for saying that we shall hold your work in mind when we have settled our business.”
“What would ye be without us?” said the chief in sudden temper. “What do ye know of the Nazri gates or the hill country? What is this talk of duty, when ye cannot stir a foot without our aid?”
“You are our servants, as I said before,” said the man curtly. “You have taken our gold and our food. Where would you be, outlaws, vagrants that you are, hated of God and man, but for our help? Your bodies would have rotted long ago on the hills. The kites would be feeding on your sons; your women would be in the Bokhara market. We have saved you a dozen times from the vengeance of the English. When they wished to come up and burn you out, we have put them past the project with smooth words. We have fed you in famine, we have killed your enemies, we have given you life. You are freemen indeed in the face of the world, but you are our servants.”
Fazir Khan made a gesture of impatience. “That is as God may direct it,” he said. “Who are ye but a people of yesterday, while the Bada-Mawidi is as old as the rocks. The English were here before you, and we before the English. It is right that youth should reverence age.”
“That is one proverb,” said the man, “but there are others, and in especial one to the effect that the man without a sword should bow before his brother who has one. In this game we are the people with the sword, my friends.”
The hillman shrugged his shoulders. His men looked on darkly, as if little in love with the stranger’s manner of speech.
“It is ill working in the dark,” he said at length. “Ye speak of this attack and the aid you expect from us, but we have heard this talk before. One of your people came down with some followers in my father’s time, and his words were the same, but lo! nothing has yet happened.”
“Since your father’s time things have changed, my brother. Then the English were very much on the watch, now they sleep. Then there were no roads, or very bad ones, and before an army could reach the plains the whole empire would have been wakened. Now, for their own undoing, they have made roads up to the very foot of yon mountains, and there is a new railway down the Indus through Kohistan waiting to carry us into the heart of the Punjab. They seek out inventions for others to enjoy, as the Koran says, and in this case we are to be the enjoyers.”
“But what if ye fail?” said the chief. “Ye will be penned up in that Hunza valley like sheep, and I, Fazir Khan, shall be unable to unlock the door of that sheepfold.”
“We shall not fail. This is no war of rock-pigeons, my brothers. Our agents are in every town and village from Bardur to Lahore. The frontier tribes, you among the rest, are rising in our favour. There is nothing to stop us but isolated garrisons of Gurkhas and Pathans, with a few overworked English officers at their head. In a week we shall command the north of India, and if we hold the north, in another week we shall hold Calcutta and Bombay.”
The chief nodded his head. Such far-off schemes pleased his fancy, but only remotely touched his interest. Calcutta was beyond his ken, but he knew Bardur and Gilgit.
“I have little love for the race,” he said. “They hanged two of my servants who ventured too near the rifle-room, and they shot my son in the back when we raided the Chitralis. If ye and your friends cross the border I will be with you. But meantime, till that day, what is my duty?”
“To wait in patience, and above all things to let the garrisons alone. If we stir up the hive in the valleys they may come and see things too soon for our success. We must win by secrecy and surprise. All is lost if we cannot reach the railway before the Punjab is stirring.”
The mullah had ceased muttering to himself. He scrambled to his feet, shaking down his rags over his knees, a lean, crazy apparition of a man with deep-set, smouldering eyes.
“I will speak,” he cried. “Ye listen to the man’s words and ye are silent, believing all things. Ye are silent, my children, because ye know not. But I am old and I have seen many things, and these are my words. Ye speak of pushing out the English from the land. Allah knows I love not the breed! I spit upon it, I thirst for the heart of every man, woman, and child, that I might burn them in the sight of all of you. But I have heard this talk before. When I was a young priest at Kufaz, there was word of this pushing out of the foreigner, and I rejoiced, being unwise. Then there was much fighting, and at the end more English came up the valleys and, before we knew, we were paying tribute. Since then many of our people have gone down from the mountains with the same thought, and they have never returned. Only the English and the troops have crept nearer. Now this stranger talks of his Tsar and how an army will come through the passes, and foreigner will fight with foreigner. This talk, too, I have heard. Once there came a man with a red beard who spoke thus, and he went down to Bardur, and lo! our men told me that they saw him hanged there for a warning. Let foreigner war on foreigner if they please, but what have we to do in the quarrel, my children? Ye owe nothing to either.”
The stranger regarded the speaker with calm eyes of amusement.
“Nothing,” said he, “except that we have fed you and armed you. By your own acts you are the servants of my master.”
The mullah was rapidly working himself into a frenzy. He swung his long bony arms across his breast and turned his face skywards. “Ye hear that, my children. The free people, the Bada-Mawidi, of whose loins sprang Abraham the prophet, are the servants
of some foreign dog in the north. If ye were like your fathers, ye would have long ago ere this wiped out the taunt in blood.”
The man sat perfectly composed, save that his right hand had grasped a revolver. He was playing a bold game, but he had played it before. And he knew the man he had to deal with.
“I say again, you are my master’s servants by your own confession. I did not say his slaves. You are a free people, but you will serve a greater in this affair. As for this dog who blasphemes, when we have settled more important matters we will attend to him.”
The mullah was scarcely a popular member of his tribe, for no one stirred at the call. The stranger sat watching him with very bright, eager eyes. Suddenly the priest ceased his genuflexions, there was a gleam of steel among his rags, then something bright flashed in the air. It fell short, because at the very moment of throwing, a revolver had cracked out in the silence, and a bullet had broken two of his fingers. The man flung himself writhing on the ground, howling forth imprecations.
The stranger looked half apologetically at the chief, whose glum demeanour had never relaxed. “Sorry,” he said; “it had to be done in self-defence. But I ask your pardon for it.”
Fazir Khan nodded carelessly. “He is a disturber of peace, and to one who cannot fight a hand matters little. But, by Allah, ye northerners shoot quick.”
The stranger relinquished the cherry-wood pipe and filled a meerschaum from a pouch which he carried in the pocket of his cloak. He took a long drink from the loving-cup of mulled wine which was passing round.
“Your mad priest has method in his folly,” he said. “It is true that we are attacking a great people; therefore the more need of wariness for you and me, Fazir Khan. If we fail there will be the devil to pay for you. The English will shift their frontier-line beyond the mountains, and there will be no more lifting of women and driving of cattle for the Bada-Mawidi. You will all be sent to school, and your guns will be taken from you.”
The chief compressed his attractive features into a savage scowl. “That may not be in my lifetime,” he said. “Besides, are there no mountains all around? In five hours I shall be in China, and in a little more I might be beyond the Amu. But why talk of this? The accursed English shall not escape us, I swear by the hilt of my sword and the hearts of my fathers.”
A subdued murmur of applause ran around the circle.
“You are men after my own heart,” said the stranger. “Meanwhile, a word in your own ear, Fazir Khan. Dare you come to Bardur with me?”
The chief made a gesture of repugnance. “I hate that place of mud and lime. The blood of my people cries on me when I enter the gates. But if it is your counsel I will come with you.”
“I wish to assure myself that the place is quiet. Our success depends upon the whole country being unsuspicious and asleep. Now if word has got to the south, and worse still to England, there will be questions asked and vague instructions sent up to the frontier. We shall find a stir among the garrisons, and perhaps some visitors in the place. And at the very worst we might find some fool inquiring about the Nazri Pass. There was once a man in Bardur who did, but people laughed at him and he has gone.”
“Where?” asked the chief.
“To England. But he was a harmless man, and he is too old to have any vigour.”
As the darkness grew over the hills the fires were brightened and the curious game of khoti was played in groups of six. The women came to the house-doors to sit and gossip, and listened to the harsh laughter of their lords from beside the fires. A little after midnight, when the stars were picked out in the deep, velvet sky, Fazir Khan and the stranger, both muffled to the ears, stole beyond the street and scrambled down the perilous path-ways to the south.
CHAPTER 22
THE OUTPOSTS
Towards the close of a wet afternoon two tongas discharged Lewis, George, two native servants, and a collection of gun-cases in the court-yard of the one hotel in Bardur. They had made a record journey up country, stopping to present no letters of introduction, which are the thieves of time. Now, as Lewis found himself in the strait valley, with the eternal snows where the sky should be, and sniffed the dry air from the granite walls, he glowed with the pleasure of recollection.
The place was the same as ever. The same medley of races perambulated the streets. Sheep-skinned Central Asians and Mongolian merchants from Yarkand still displayed their wares and their cunning; Hunza tribesmen, half-clad Chitralis, wild-eyed savages from Yagistan mingled in the narrow stone streets with the civilized Persian and Turcoman from beyond the mountains. Kashmir sepoys, an untidy race, still took their ease in the sun, and soldiers of South India from the Imperial Service Troops showed their odd accoutrements and queer race mixtures. The place looked and smelled like a kind of home, and Lewis, with one eye on the gun-cases and one on the great hills, forgot his heart-sickness and had leisure for the plain joys of expectation.
“I am going to get to work at once,” he said, when he had washed the dust out of his eyes and throat. “I shall go and call on the Logans this very minute, and I expect we shall see Thwaite and some of the soldiers at the club to-night.” So George, much against his will, was compelled to don a fresh suit and suffer himself to be conducted to the bungalow of the British Resident.
The Sahib was from home, at Gilgit, but Madame would receive the strangers. So the two found themselves in a drawing-room aggressively English in its air, shaking hands with a small woman with kind eyes and a washed-out complexion.
Mrs. Logan was unaffectedly glad to see them. She had that trick of dominating her surroundings which English ladies seem to bear to the uttermost ends of the globe. There, in that land of snows and rock, with savage tribesmen not thirty miles away, and the British frontier-line something less than fifty, she gave them tea and talked small talk with the ease and gusto of an English country home.
“It’s the most unfortunate thing in the world,” she cried. “If you had only wired, Gilbert would have stayed, but as it is he has gone down to Gilgit about some polo ponies, and won’t be back for two days. Things are so humdrum and easy-going up here that one loses interest in one’s profession. Gilbert has nothing to do except arrange with the foreman of the coolies who are making roads, and hold stupid courts, and consult with Captain Thwaite and the garrison people. The result is that the poor man has become crazy about golf, and wastes all his spare money on polo ponies. You can have no idea what a godsend a new face is to us poor people. It is simply delightful to see you again, Mr. Haystoun. You left us about sixteen months ago, didn’t you? Did you enjoy going back?”
Lewis said yes, with an absurd sense of the humour of the question. The lady talked as if home had been merely an interlude, instead of the crisis of his life.
“And what did you do? And whom did you see? Please tell me, for I am dying for a gossip.”
“I have been home in Scotland, you know. Looking after my affairs and idling. I stood for Parliament and got beaten.”
“Really! How exciting! Where is your home in Scotland, Mr. Haystoun? You told me once, but I have forgotten. You know I have no end of Scotch relatives.”
“It’s in rather a remote part, a place called Etterick, in Glenavelin.”
“Glenavelin, Glenavelin,” the lady repeated. “That’s where the Manorwaters live, isn’t it?”
“My uncle,” said Lewis.
“I had a letter from a friend who was staying there in the summer. I wonder if you ever met her. A Miss Wishart. Alice Wishart?”
Lewis strove to keep any extraordinary interest out of his eyes. This voice from another world bad broken rudely in upon his new composure.
“I knew her,” he said, and his tone was of such studied carelessness that Mrs. Logan looked up at him curiously.
“I hope you liked her, for her mother was a relation of my husband, and when I have been home the small Alice has always been a great friend of mine. I wonder if she has grown pretty. Gilbert and I used to bet about it on differen
t sides. I said she would be very beautiful some day.”
“She is very beautiful,” said Lewis in a level voice, and George, feeling the thin ice, came to his friend’s rescue. He could at least talk naturally of Miss Wishart.
“The Wisharts took the place, you know, Mrs. Logan, so we saw a lot of them. The girl was delightful, good sportswoman and all that sort of thing, and capital company. I wonder she never told us about you. She knew we were coming out here, for I told her, and she was very interested.”
“Yes, it’s odd, for I suppose she had read Mr. Haystoun’s book, where my husband comes in a good deal. I shall tell her about seeing you in my next letter. And now tell me your plans.”
Lewis’s face had begun to burn in a most compromising way. Those last days in Glenavelin had risen again before the eye of his mind and old wounds were reopened. The thought that Alice was not yet wholly out of his life, that the new world was not utterly severed from the old, affected him with a miserable delight. Mrs. Logan became invested with an extraordinary interest. He pulled himself together to answer her question.
“Oh, our errand is much the same as last time. We want to get all the sport we can, and if possible to cross the mountains into Turkestan. I am rather keen on geographical work just now, and there’s a bit of land up here which wants exploring.”
The lady laughed. “That sounds like poor dear Mr. Gribton. I suppose you remember him? He left here in the summer, but when he lived in Bardur he had got that northern frontier-line on the brain. He was a horrible bore, for he would always work the conversation round to it sooner or later. I think it was really Mr. Gribton who made people often lose interest in these questions. They had to assume an indolent attitude in pure opposition to his fussiness.”
