by John Masters
Mohan stated out across the pit. His eyes hurt. It was certain now, laid like a sentence upon him, that only one woman could share his life; and she was Rukmini, without a father, who loved Smith.
Half an hour later Aitu came, with Kendrick, the headman, and the rest of the party. The headman looked down at the wounded man. ‘It is not a Gond, as I had thought - and hoped,’ he said sadly. ‘It is a man from Konpara, Ram Rattan.’ He turned the corpse over with his foot ‘And this is his cousin, Ghulloo.’ He turned sharply on the wounded man. ‘Who else?’
‘None,’ Ram Rattan answered indifferently. Kendrick stood over him. ‘Why did you do this thing?’ he asked sternly.
The prisoner was a slight, short man in early middle age. Smith knelt by him, probing his wound. The man must have been in agony, but his face showed nothing. He answered Kendrick’s question. ‘For Konpara, sahib, we did it.’
‘Explain yourself,’ Kendrick snapped. ‘Remember, you have committed an act for which you can be transported across the Black Water for life.’
Ram Rattan spoke slowly, long pauses between each sentence. The climbing sun burned hotter on Mohan’s back. ‘Konpara lives each for all, all for each. When a man’s house falls down in the rains, all must work to restore it. The upper forest is common land. All must work in it, to cut the bushes, to put out fires ... One night my cousin Ghulloo dreamed a dream. The god Indra came to him in all majesty, armed with the lightning and the rainbow. He commanded Ghulloo that he must make sacrifice in the ancient manner if disaster was to be averted from Konpara. My cousin was much frightened. He told me of the dream. I told him that he had eaten too much dal the night before. Twice again the dream returned to him. The third night, to me also. Then we knew that we must do it. We debated long whether we should tell the headman, for if it concerned the village he should know. He should lead us, even. But my cousin said, No. He said, ‘Huttoo Lall has not had the dreams. He will tell us to wait He will prevent us.’ Even so, to make sure, I asked Huttoo Lall whether he had any dreams -’
Did he?’ Kendrick interrupted.
‘He did,’ the headman said! ‘Yesterday. I told him to mind his own affairs, for I slept well.’
‘Go on,’ Kendrick said.
‘So we did it,’ Ram Rattan said.
‘But why her?’ Kendrick said, ‘Why not Smith Sahib, Foster Sahib? Why not me?
Ram Rattan said, ‘In our dreams, Indra commanded us - a woman.’ Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘Afterwards, we were going to sacrifice ourselves.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Kendrick said.
Ram Rattan pointed to the wooden plate at his neck. Rukmini showed hers, and said, ‘It is true.’
Mohan produced the brooch from his pocket All were very similar, except that his own, the one prepared for the ritual in Deori, carried no mark. He knew that when a Rajah had been appointed, it would carry his personal mark. The others bore, burned into them with a fine point, the device of a bow.
Kendrick stared down at Ram Rattan for a long time, then said, ‘What was the nature of the disaster which would come to Konpara?’
The man said, ’How should we know, lord?’
Kendrick turned to the headman. ‘Have him carried to Deori, under escort. To the jail hospital He will be tried in the high court next month.’ The headman stooped and hit the man savagely across the head with, the handle of his axe. ‘Fool, idiot, criminal!’ he said. Instead of saving the village, you would have destroyed it’.
‘Stop!’ Rukmini cried.
Mohan started forward, shocked by the sudden outburst of violence. Until now the whole affair, from the beginning through Ram Rattan’s explanations, had been carried out in a dignified, almost ritual manner.
Ram Rattan said, ‘I have deserved it... It was Ghulloo and I who brought the Buddha statue and buried it. Let me be punished for that, too.’
Rukmini cried, ‘You did?’
Ram Rattan said, ‘We brought it in a bullock cart, pretending we had gone to Deori for two days. We did it for the reward.’
‘And the gold?’ Kendrick shouted. ‘You placed the gold bars there too - just for a reward of a few rupees?’
The man said, ‘Of the gold we knew nothing. How could we?’
The headman raised his hand again, but Smith said, ‘Enough! Send now for men to carry him, and a stretcher. It is a bad wound.’
The headman said, ‘I have already done so, sahib. I will wait here till they come.’
‘Don’t touch him again,’ Rukmini said.
The headman said, ‘I will not - though he deserves to die.’
Mohan helped Rukmini into the saddle of one of the horses. ‘I’m taking her home now,’ he said briefly to the others.
Smith stood by her saddlebow, looking up. ‘Rest, sleep,’ he told her. ‘Think of nothing.’ She nodded, smiling down into his eyes.
A thin loin-clothed young man ran up the side of the rock, and stopped, panting slightly, in front of Kendrick. He made a deep salaam. ‘In the middle of the night the tigress returned to Gharial, sahib, and broke into a house. The house was empty. We had her trapped, and set fire to the house. She escaped through the roof and away, breaking one man’s shoulder.’
Kendrick ran a hand through his hair. As though speaking to himself, he muttered, ‘She is too clever for us. She has learned too much. I shall have to go to Saugor and learn all that I can about her. I fear it will take me some days, and meanwhile you will not get anyone to work for you in your search.’
‘We must kill the poor tigress first,’ Rukmini said. ‘It is her fate - her part.’
Kendrick said, ‘I will start out tomorrow. There’s work to be done before I can go - and I am... tired. I have ridden twenty miles, walked twenty, and slept only two hours, and those in a tree, since killing the male.’
Mohan and Rukmini rode away from them all, down the slope, along the ridge crest. Rukmini said, ‘Who understood that they would take me to Indra’s Rock?
Mohan said, ‘I did ... No, I think Barbara Kendrick did; She said something that made me understand... that made me feel, first, and then I understood.’
That is why she is an artist,’ Rukmini said. ‘And I am alive, and we have learned much.’
‘Don’t think about it any more,’ he said. It’s all over.’
‘I want to,’ she said earnestly. ‘The Rite of the Labourers in Deori, and the attempt with me, are both continuations . Of the sacrifice of the workmen who made the cave, and for the same purpose - to keep the secret of the cave. The people down in Deori, you and the Chamberlain and the Archivist - the Aryans - do not know why you want to keep it secret. You do not even know that that is the purpose of the rite. But the people here - the Dravidians - do know.’
They entered Cheltondale and servants scurried about with fruit juice and warm milk and food, while Rukmini sank back on the couch, drawing her feet under her and still talking. Mohan watched her with a deep pang of love and despair. The events of the night, the hours in the jungle under threat of death, the lack of sleep had only served to put a film of languor on her vitality.
‘By what right do we try to wrest the secret from them, then?’ she asked, looking at him but speaking to herself. ‘If they are willing to die, to kill, to give up lakhs of rupees-who are we to force them to such lengths? It is the Venus, Mohan. I cannot believe that evil lies in wait for them where that statue, that woman, stands and dances. They are afraid, but I believe there is no reason for fear. We must go on until we can lift this fear from them... with which they have lived for a long time.’
‘What can we do?’ Mohan said. ‘No one will work until the tigress is killed.’
She said, ‘Our servants here. Why should they not help?’
‘If they can be persuaded...’ Mohan began doubtfully.
‘I will ask them to,’ she said, leaping to her feet. Time is becoming short.’
‘You must lie down, get some sleep,’ Mohan cried.
‘Later,’
she said.
Chapter 23
Mohan paced carefully through the thin jungle, his head bent Every five paces he glanced up to make sure he was heading straight for the white stick stuck into the ground a hundred and fifty feet ahead of him. Two grooms, a water carrier, and the dishwasher walked spread in a line to his right, Mohan glanced at the dishwasher and called, ‘Don’t keep looking around you. Don’t look anywhere except on the ground. After all these years the mouth of the cave may be so small that a dog can hardly enter.’
The youth said, ‘Very good, lord.’ He was visibly shaking with nervousness.
Mohan said, ‘The tigress is not here. She is beyond Gharial’
‘Very good, lord,’ the youth whimpered. ‘But she is a devil’
They continued their slow pacing. They reached the white stick and Mohan carefully moved it ten paces to the north, and turned. Now the other white stick, at the east end of this line, was dead ahead of him. The search continued.
The afternoon sun poured down almost without check through the scrub teak. The ground was covered with brown spear grass up to a foot and a half high, rocks large and small, tiny fissures and larger ones, gnarled roots of trees curving under split rocks. Hardly a quarter of the area in which it was geologically possible for the cave to be had been searched.
As Mohan moved his white sticks for the twelfth time, one of the grooms said, ‘Lord, two men are coming.’
Mohan straightened his back and wiped his forehead. Two men were walking fast towards them over the shoulder of the Konpara Ridge, apparently having come from the village. The groom said, ’One is Huttoo Lall, the headman.’
Mohan waited in the stifling heat. Soon the two men arrived. The second was the young messenger from Gharial, he who had brought news of the tigress yesterday morning. His face was twisted in pain, and his left arm hung across his body in a loop of grass rope.
‘Lord,’ he said, knelt, and rose again. ‘Lord - she has killed. A woman of our village. At an hour before noon today. She has taken the body into the jungle, but not far. She has been growling and roaring since then. Our lambardar thinks she has not started to eat yet’ He swayed on his thin, whipcord legs. ‘It was the Resident Sahib’s order that the news should be brought at once, day or night’.
‘Your arm?’
‘I fell, lord, running over the rocks in the dry bed of the Hariganga.’
Mohan said, ‘Huttoo Lall, please send him down to Deori at once, to the hospital, I’ll see what we can do about the tigress.’
He hurried up the gentle incline towards Cheltondale with long strides, his servants at his heels. Mr Kendrick had left at dawn this morning for Saugor. By now he would be twenty or thirty miles beyond Deori. He turned to the dishwasher. ‘Run to the scaffold, and tell Smith Sahib what has happened. Ask him to come to Cheltondale at once.’
The youth dashed away, grinning, his nervousness evaporated. Mohan slowed his pace. His heart beat fast and his belly felt empty.
Smith arrived. Mohan said, ‘Did the boy tell you?
‘Yes.’ He said nothing more.
Well, Mohan thought, what am I to do? Why don’t you say something? Say ‘Of course you can’t go after it yourself, that would be suicide. You don’t have enough jungle knowledge.’ Accompanying Mr Kendrick was one thing. Going by himself was another. Smith said nothing.
Mohan said, ‘What do you think we ought to do?’
Smith said, ‘Someone should go to Gharial at once. It might be possible to surprise her on the kill. She’s acting strangely, almost as though she’s challenging them to go out and get the body away from her.’
‘Where’s Rukmini?’ Mohan asked suddenly. ‘Wasn’t she with you?’
‘For a time, soon after tiffin. Then she went to Southdown.’
Mohan wished Smith would give him an order. Now he had to say it, ‘I suppose I could go myself... ‘
Smith said, ‘Yes. They seem to have some good men in Gharial. I’m sure if you picked a couple of their best shikaris you’d be in much less danger.’
‘Why don’t you come with me?’ Mohan asked suddenly.
Smith said, ‘I have given up killing - anything - with my own hands. I wouldn’t be much protection for you. Besides, I think I should stay here.’
‘Why?’ Mohan asked him bluntly.
Smith looked at him with his deep head-on stare. He said, ‘I don’t believe that those two men, Ghulloo and Ram Rattan, were responsible for bringing the Buddha here from the shrine.’
‘What does it matter?’ Mohan muttered, not disbelievingly, but because he wanted to know.
Smith said, ’I mean that the conspiracy is not broken up. It means that we do not know who is involved, but we do know that they will kill Rukmini was their objective last time - why not again? Someone ought to be here to guard her.’
Mohan paced rapidly up and down the floor. ‘Foster,’ he said, ‘why shouldn’t Foster come with me?’
‘He’d like to,’ Smith said. ‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t take him. He’s eager to show that he’s as good a man as - anyone -but he’s too clumsy in the jungle. You might be signing his death warrant.’
‘His?’ Mohan said bitterly. ‘What about mine?’ He faced Smith suddenly, ‘Look here! I’m not going unless you come too.’
He met Smith’s eye. Let him think what he liked. He would not leave the man here with the self-appointed task of guarding Rukmini, while he himself went away, perhaps to be killed.
Smith seemed to be thinking. Rukmini slipped into the room. ‘What’s this about the tigress, Mohan?’
The men rose. Mohan told her briefly. .When he had finished, Smith said, ‘We’re going to Gharial.’
She said, ’But you don’t take life.’
‘I don’t,’ he said, smiling, ‘but I will help others. Illogical, I know. Also, I shall carry a long stick. Giving a tigress a poke in the eye is permissible. Even tigers have to be taught good manners. May I order your grooms to get the horses ready, Mohan? And have some food prepared?’
‘Of course,’ he said. Smith left the room.
Mohan faced Rukmini. ‘Mr Smith is worried about your safety. He thinks another attempt may be made. I want you to go down to Deori at once, and stay in the palace, in the women’s quarters, until I come back. Don’t leave them for any reason at all. Go at once.’
Rukmini said slowly, ‘I think I must stay here, my lord.’
‘Go to Deori,’ he repeated. He wanted to tell her he could not bear to think of her in danger, but if she loved Smith he must not reveal to her the new, overwhelming depth of his love for her.
She said, ‘I don’t want to leave Mrs Kendrick alone here.’
‘Ask her to go to Deori with you.’
‘She won’t go,’ Rukmini said. ‘Not with Mr Kendrick away for three days-and two nights.’ She met Mohan’s eye.
Mohan said, ‘Oh. I see.’
It’s her first chance to talk, to find out how much it really matters, apart from the sex.’ Has she told you all this?’
‘A little. But that’s not the only reason, Mohan. We will never learn anything unless we bend with these people. Don’t you remember? If others besides Ghulloo and Ram Rattan are involved, we must give them a chance to show themselves.’
Smith returned. ‘They’ll be ready in free minutes. What rifle are you taking?’
‘I only have one here,’ Mohan said. ‘A .300 magazine Zago.’
‘Rather light,’ Smith said. ‘And a double-barrelled rifle would be better for this. What about borrowing one of Kendrick’s?’
‘We can’t,’ Mohan said. He keeps the bolts in a safe in his study with his confidential papers - and he has the key. The .300 will have to do.’
Smith said, ‘It will do all right, if you hit the right spot. Are you going to send Mr Kendrick a telegram?’
‘I’d better.’ Mohan went to the desk, found a pencil and scribbled the telegram. Rukmini said she’d have it sent down to Deori after they’d gone. Th
e major-domo announced that the horses were ready, the wallets loaded with sandwiches and cold tea. As they left the room Smith took Rukmini’s hand. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Keep close to the bungalow. Tell Jim Foster we’ve gone.’
A few moments later Mohan rode at Smith’s side down the steep zigzags to the foot of the dam, and past the coolie camp. There, instead of following the cart track in its right-handed curve round the base of the hills towards Deori, they took a narrow path that led due east, straight into the shallow roll of the jungle. Mohan forced ahead and urged his horse into a canter.
The shadows stretched long ahead. The sun would set in less than half an hour. It would be full dark in another forty minutes or so after that - say an hour and a quarter from now. Ten miles to go - about an hour, on this path. They would reach Gharial just in time, and then they’d have to wait until the morning. Stalking the tigress in the dark would be suicide, In the morning he would be afraid again. Now, the horse moved powerfully under him and he felt only an excited determination.
Near half-way he saw ahead the streaked red and black rocks that formed the dry bed of the Hariganga, a hundred yards wide between low cliffs. At this time of year there was only a trickle of water in the centre of it, linking a few scattered black pools. Here the messenger from Gharial had broken his arm.
They reached it and descended the diff at a place where the feet of generations had worn a steep slope into the rock. In the stream bed Smith came up alongside him. ‘I would carry the rifle ready if I were yon, Mohan.’
‘We’re miles away yet,’ he said. The sun had just sunk in a brilliant spread of scarlet and purple.
‘She’s behaving strangely,’ Smith said.
Mohan began to unstrap the rifle, which was slung across his back. The horse, picking its way carefully, left the river bed and with a powerful surge of its hindquarters forced up the narrow exit on the far bank.
The horse saw the tigress coming a fraction of a second before Mohan did, the same fraction of a second before her bellowing roar struck him a physical blow in the face. The horse bounded forward and upward, his hind legs on the firm rock, and arched twenty feet forward and five feet into the air in a single tremendous convulsion of terror. Bounding horse and leaping tigress met in mid-air. The shock slammed Mohan out of the saddle and the rifle flew from his hand. As he tumbled he saw the black and yellow stripes rolling over, and the horse already twenty feet beyond, bounding away at full gallop. Then his shoulder hit the ground; he rolled like a shot rabbit, fighting to get to his feet, trying always to keep the yellow and black stripes in view. Smith’s mare had panicked, and followed the other horse at a bucking gallop. Mohan rolled to a stop in a kneeling position against a tree, the breath knocked out of his body. Groaning for air he saw that Smith sat firm in the mare’s saddle, his long stick held down. The mare leaped over the tigress and in her frantic plunging her hoofs caught the tigress full in the chest The tigress coughed once with a deep, rasping grunt. Smith could get away, Mohan thought, the rifle, where was the rifle? He saw it close to his hand and crawled towards it, one eye on the tigress. She was up again, apparently unhurt. Ten yards behind her, Smith slid off the mare. The mare stumbled, fell. Smith came steadily back towards the tigress, the staff in his hand.
