by Talbot Mundy
King obeyed and sniffed too. It smelt of something far more subtle than musk. He recognized the same strange scent that had been wafted from behind Yasmini’s silken hangings in her room in Delhi. As he unfolded the note — it was not sealed — he found time for a swift glance at Rewa Gunga’s face. The Rangar seemed interested and amused.
“Dear Captain King,” the note ran, in English. “Kindly
be quick to follow me, because there is much talk of a
lashkar getting ready for a raid. I shall wait for
you in Khinjan, whither my messenger shall show the way.
Please let him keep his rifle. Trust him, and Rewa
Gunga and my thirty whom you brought with you. The
messenger’s name is Darya Khan.
“Your servant,
“Ysamini.”
He passed the note to Courtenay, who read it and passed it back.
“Are you the messenger who is to show this sahib the road to Khinjan?” he asked.
“Aye!”
“But you are one of three who left here and went up the Pass at dawn! I recognize you.”
“Aye!” said the man. “She met me and gave me this letter and sent me back.”
“How great is the lashkar that is forming?” asked Courtenay.
“Some say three thousand men. They speak truth. They who say five thousand are liars. There is a lashkar.”
“And she went up alone?” King murmured aloud in Pashtu.
“Is the moon alone in the sky?” the fellow asked, and King smiled at him.
“Let us hurry after her, sahib!” urged Rewa Gunga, and King looked straight into his eyes, that were like pools of fire, just as they had been that night in the room in Delhi. He nodded and the Rangar grinned.
“Better wait until dawn,” advised Courtenay. “The Pass is supposed to be closed at dusk.”
“I shall have to ask for special permission, sir.”
“Granted, of course.”
“Then, we’ll start at eight to-night!” said King, glancing at his watch and snapping the gold case shut.
“Dine with me,” said Courtenay.
“Yes, please. Got to pack first. Daren’t trust anybody else.”
“Very well. We’ll dine in my tent at six-thirty,” said Courtenay. “So long!”
“So long, sir,” said King, and each went about his own business, King with the Rangar, and Ismail and all thirty prisoners at his heels, and Courtenay alone, but that much more determined.
“I’ll find out,” the major muttered, “how she got up the Pass without my knowing it. Somebody’s tail shall be twisted for this!”
But he did not find out until King told him, and that was many days later, when a terrible cloud no longer threatened India from the North.
Chapter VI
Oh, a broken blade,
And an empty bag,
And a sodden kit,
And a foundered nag,
And a whimpering wind
Are more or less
Ground for a gentleman’s distress.
Yet the blade will cut,
(He should swing with a will!)
And the emptiest bag
He may readiest fill;
And the nag will trot
If the man has a mind,
So the kit he may dry
In the whimpering wind.
Shades of a gallant past — confess!
How many fights were won with less?
“I think I envy you!” said Courtenay.
They were seated in Courtenay’s tent, face to face across the low table, with guttering lights between and Ismail outside the tent handing plates and things to Courtenay’s servant inside.
“You’re about the first who has admitted it,” said King.
Not far from them a herd of pack-camels grunted and bubbled after the evening meal. The evening breeze brought the smoke of dung fires down to them, and an Afghan — one of the little crowd of traders who had come down with the camels three hours ago — sang a wailing song about his lady-love. Overhead the sky was like black velvet, pierced with silver holes.
“You see, you can’t call our end of this business war — it’s sport,” said Courtenay. “Two battalions of Khyber Rifles, hired to hold the Pass against their own relations. Against them a couple of hundred thousand tribesmen, very hungry for loot, armed with up-to-date rifles, thanks to Russia yesterday and Germany to-day, and all perfectly well aware that a world war is in progress. That’s sport, you know — not the ‘image and likeness of war’ that Jorrocks called it, but the real red root. And you’ve got a mystery thrown in to give it piquancy. I haven’t found out yet how Yasmini got up the Pass without my knowledge. I thought it was a trick. Didn’t believe she’d gone. Yet all my mer swear they know she has gone, and not one of them will own to having seen her go! What d’you think of that?”
“Tell you later,” said King, “when I’ve been in the ‘Hills’ a while.”
“What d’you suppose I’m going to say, eh? Shall I enter in my diary that a chit came down the Pass from a woman who never went up it? Or shall I say she went up while I was looking the other way?”
“Help yourself!” laughed King.
“Laugh on! I envy you! I f the worst comes to the worst, you’ll have had the best end of it. If you fail up there in the ‘Hills’ you’ll get scoughed and be done with you. You’ll at least have had a show. All we shall know of your failure will be the arrival of the flood! We’ll be swamped ingloriously — shot, skinned alive and crucified without a chance of doing anything but wait for it! You’re in luck — you can move about and keep off the fidgets!”
For a while, as he ate Courtenay’s broiled quail, King did not answer. But the merry smile had left his eyes and he seemed for once to be letting his mind dwell on conditions as they concerned himself.
“How many men have you at the fort?” he asked at last.
“Two hundred. Why?”
“All natives?”
“To a man.”
“Like ’em?”
“What’s the use of talking?” answered Courtenay. “You know what it means when men of an alien race stand up to you and grin when they salute. They’re my own.”
King nodded. “Die with you, eh?”
“To the last man,” said Courtenay quietly with that conviction that can only be arrived at in one way, and that not the easiest.
“I’d die alone,” said King. “It’ll be lonely in the ‘Hills.’ Got any more quail?”
And that was all he ever did say on that subject, then or at any other time.
“Here’s to her!” laughed Courtenay at last, rising and holding up his glass. “We can’t explain her, so let’s drink to her! No heel-taps! Here’s to Rewa Gunga’s mistress, Yasmini!”
“May she show good hunting!” answered King, draining his glass; and it was his first that day. “If it weren’t for that note of hers that came down the Pass, and for one or two other things, I’d almost believe her a myth — one of those supposititious people who are supposed to express some ideal or other. Not an hallucination, you understand — nor exactly an embodied spirit, either. Perhaps the spirit of a problem. Let y be the Khyber district, z the tribes, and x the spirit of the rumpus. Find x. Get me?”
“Not exactly. Got quinine in your kit, by the way?”
“Plenty, thanks.”
“What shall you do first after you get up the Pass? Call on your brother at Ali Masjid? He’s likely to know a lot by the time you get there.”
“Not sure,” said King. “May and may not. I’d like to see him. Haven’t seen the old chap in a donkey’s age. How is he?”
“Well two days ago,” said Courtenay. “What’s your general plan?”
“Hunt!” said King. “Hunt for x and report. Hunt for the spirit of the coming ruction and try to scrag it! Live in the open when I can, sleep with the lice when it rains or snows, eat dead goat and bad bread, I expect; scratch myself when I’m not looking,
and take a tub at the first opportunity. When you see me on my way back, have a bath made ready for me, will you — and keep to windward!”
“Certainly!” said Courtenay. “What’s the Rangar going to do with that mare of his? Suppose he’ll leave her at Ali Masjid? He’ll have to leave her somewhere on the way. She’ll get stolen. Gad! That’s the brightest notion yet! I’ll make a point of buying her from the first horse-thief who comes traipsing down the Pass!”
“Here’s wishing you luck!” said King. “It’s time to go, sir.”
He rose, and Courtenay walked with him to where his party waited in the dark, chilled by the cold wind whistling down the Khyber. Rewa Gunga sat, mounted, at their head, and close to him his personal servant rode another horse. Behind them were the mules, and then in a cluster, each with a load of some sort on his head, were the thirty prisoners, and Ismail took charge of them officiously. Darya Khan, the man who had brought the letter down the Pass, kept close to Ismail.
“Are you armed?” King asked, as soon as he could see the whites of the Rangar’s eyes through the gloom.
“You jolly well bet I am!” the Rangar laughed.
King mounted, and Courtenay shook hands; then he went to Rewa Gunga’s side and shook hands with him, too.
“Good-by!” called King.
“Good-by and good luck!”
“Forward! March!” King ordered, and the little procession started.
“Oh, men of the ‘Hills,’ ye look like ghosts — like graveyard ghosts!” jeered Courtenay, as they all filed past him. “Ye look like dead men, going to be judged!”
Nobody answered. They strode behind the horses, with the swift silent strides of men who are going home to the “Hills”; but even they, born in the “Hills”’ and knowing them as a wolf-pack knows its hunting-ground, were awed by the gloom of Khyber-mouth ahead. King’s voice was the first to break the silence, and he did not speak until Courtenay was out of ear-shot. Then:
“Men of the ‘Hills’!” he called. “Kuch dar nahin hai!”
“Nahin hai! Hah!” shouted Ismail. “So speaks a man! Hear that, ye mountain folk! He says, ‘There is no such thing as fear!’”
In his place in the lead, King whistled softly to himself; but he drew an automatic pistol from its place beneath his armpit and transferred it to a readier position.
Fear or no fear, Khyber-mouth is haunted after dark by the men whose blood-feuds are too reeking raw to let them dare go home and for whom the British hangman very likely waits a mile or two farther south. It is one of the few places in the world where a pistol is better than a thick stick.
Boulder, crag and loose rock faded into gloom behind; in front on both hands ragged hillsides were beginning to close in; and the wind, whose home is in Allah’s refuse heap, whistled as it searched busily among the black ravines. Then presently the shadow of the thousand-foot-high Khyber walls began to cover them, and King drew rein to count them all and let them close up. To have let them straggle after that point would be tantamount to murder probably.
“Ride last!” he ordered Rewa Gunga. “You’ve got the only other pistol, haven’t you?”
Darya Khan, who had brought the letter, had a rifle; so King gave him a roving commission on the right flank.
They moved on again after five minutes, in the same deep silence, looking like ghosts in search of somebody to ferry them across the Styx. Only the glow of King’s cheroot, and the lesser, quicker fire of Rewa Gunga’s cigarette, betrayed humanity, except that once or twice King’s horse would put a foot wrong and be spoken to.
“Hold up!”
But from five or ten yards away that might have been a new note in the gaining wind or even nothing.
After a while King’s cheroot went out, and he threw it away. A little later Rewa Gunga threw away his cigarette. After that, the veriest five-year-old among the Zakka Khels, watching sleepless over the rim of some stone watch-tower, could have taken oath that the Khyber’s unburied dead were prowling in search of empty graves. Probably their uncanny silence was their best protection; but Rewa Gunga chose to break it after a time.
“King sahib!” he called softly, repeating it louder and more loudly until King heard him. “Slowly! Not so fast!”
“Why?”
King did not check speed by a fraction, but the Rangar legged his mare into a canter and forced him to pull out to the left of the track and make room.
“Because, sahib, there are men among those boulders, and to go too fast is to make them think you are afraid! To seem afraid is to invite attack! Can we defend ourselves, with three firearms between us? Look! What was that?”
They were at the point where the road begins to lead up-hill, westward, leaving the bed of a ravine and ascending to join the highway built by British engineers. Below, to left and right, was pit-mouth gloom, shadows amid shadows, full of eerie whisperings, and King felt the short hair on his neck begin to rise.
So he urged his horse forward, because what Rewa Gunga said is true. There is only one surer key to trouble in the Khyber than to seem afraid — and that is to be afraid. And to have sat his horse there listening to the Rangar’s whisperings and trying to see through shadows would have been to invite fear, of the sort that grows into panic.
The Rangar followed him, close up, and both horse and mare sensed excitement. The mare’s steel shoes sent up a shower of sparks, and King turned to rebuke the Rangar. Yet he did not speak. Never, in all the years he had known India and the borderland beyond, had he seen eyes so suggestive of a tiger’s in the dark! Yet they were not the same color as a tiger’s, nor the same size, nor the same shape!
“Look, sahib!”
“Look at what?”
“Look!”
After a second or two he caught a glimpse of bluish flame that flashed suddenly and died again, somewhere below to the right. Then all at once the flame burned brighter and steadier and began to move and to grow.
“Halt!” King thundered; and his voice was as sharp and unexpected as a pistol-crack. This was something tangible, that a man could tackle — a perfect antidote for nerves.
The blue light continued on a zigzag course, as if a man were running among boulders with an unusual sort of torch; and as there was no answer King drew his pistol, took about thirty seconds’ aim and fired. He fired straight at the blue light.
It vanished instantly, into measureless black silence.
“Now you’ve jolly well done it, haven’t you!”’ the Rangar laughed in his ear. “That was her blue light — Yasmini’s!”
It was a minute before King answered, for both animals were all but frantic with their sense of their riders’ state of mind; it needed horsemanship to get them back under control.
“How do you know whose light it was?” King demanded, when the horse and mare were head to head again.
“It was prearranged. She promised me a signal at the point where I am to leave the track!”
“Where’s that guide?” demanded King; and Darya Khan came forward out of the night, with his rifle cocked and ready.
“Did she not say Khinjan is the destination?”’
“Aye!” the fellow answered.
“I know the way to Khinjan. That is not it. Get down there and find out what that light was. Shout back what you find!”
The man obeyed instantly and sprang down into darkness. But King had hardly given the order when shame told him he had sent a native on an errand he had no liking for himself.
“Come back!” he shouted. “I’ll go.”
But the man had gone, slipping noiselessly in the dark from rock to rock.
So King drove both spurs home, and set his unwilling horse to scrambling downward at an angle he could not guess, into blackness he could feel, trusting the animal to find a footing where his own eyes could make out nothing.
To his disgust he heard the Rangar follow immediately. To his even greater disgust the black mare overtook him. And even then, with his own mount stumbling and nearly p
itching him headforemost at each lurch, he was forced to admire the mare’s goatlike agility, for she descended into the gorge in running leaps, never setting a wrong foot. When he and his horse reached the bottom at last he found the Rangar waiting for him.
“This way, sahib!”
The next he knew sparks from the black mare’s heels were kicking up in front of him, and a wild ride had begun such as he had never yet dreamed of. There was no catching up, for the black mare could gallop two to his horse’s one; but he set his teeth and followed into solid night, trusting ear, eye, guesswork and the God of Secret Service men who loves the reckless.
Once in a minute or so he would see a spark, or a shower of them, where the mare took a turn in a hurry. Once in every two or three minutes he caught sight for a second of the same blue siren light that had started the race. He suspected that there were many torches placed at intervals. It could not be one man running. More than once it occurred to him to draw and shoot, but that thought died into the darkness whence it came. Never once while he rode did he forget to admire the Rangar’s courage or the black mare’s speed.
His own horse developed a speed and stamina he had not suspected, and probably the Rangar did not dare extend the mare to her limit in the dark; at all events, for ten, perhaps fifteen, minutes of breathless galloping he almost made a race of it, keeping the Rangar, either within sight or sound.
But then the mare swerved suddenly behind a boulder and was gone. He spurred round the same great rock a minute later, and was faced by a blank wall of shale that brought his horse up all standing. It led steep up for a thousand feet to the sky-line. There was not so much as a goat-track to show in which direction the mare had gone, nor a sound of any kind to guide him.
He dismounted and stumbled about on foot for about ten minutes with his eyes two feet from the earth, trying to find some trace of hoof. Then he listened, with his ear to the ground. There was no result.
He knew better than to shout, for that would sound like a cry of distress, and there is no mercy whatever in the “Hills” for lost wanderers, or for men who seem lost. He had not a doubt there were men with long jezails lurking not far away, to say nothing of those responsible for the blue torchlight.
