Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “You see for yourself,” I said, turning to Akbar.

  “Ho!” he answered. “That is nothing! Those are the Jebel Waziris. They came to loot across the border, but they quarreled with us. Now they think to leave a feud or two behind them on their way home. But, by Allah, none can shoot straight against that cliff in this light — as the British learned a year ago. By day a boy could hold the path against a hundred men. By night — ride on and see!”

  “By Allah, no!” I answered, and I seized Joan Angela’s rein to make sure no spirit of daring should take hold of her and send her galloping across the line of fire.

  “I’m not afraid of anything those savages dare face,” she said, laughing at me, and Akbar bin Mahommed was in the act of seizing my rein to drag the horse forward, when it suddenly occurred to me that our chance had come. There were only two men to our rear. If we could make those plugs of ours gallop we had a reasonably good chance to escape.

  I thought of the knife, but there was not time to pull that out from its hiding-place. Besides, even in that crisis I doubt whether I would have used the blade of it on Akbar — he and I had grown too friendly (though I don’t doubt he would have shot me). I swung my fist back for a blow that should have stunned him — and the horse shied.

  Something — brown-black-heavy — slid in an avalanche of loose shale and fell from the ledge above us plump on to Akbar’s shoulders. His rifle went spinning into the ravine. A hand that must have had a grip of steel went to his mouth, and he lay helpless, heaving in spasms underneath a dark-robed thing that might have been a vampire-bat. In the shadow at our feet the outspread sleeves of the garment looked like wings. But the bat’s head turned, and Grim’s pale face glanced up at me!

  “Take the right-hand track!” he snapped. “Hurry!”

  But I could hear the rearguard coming. I jumped off the horse and waited for them, trying to draw the knife while I crouched in the shadow of a projecting spur of the rock-wall. But they came too fast, and I failed to get my belt undone in time. So I punched the first man in the nose, and he went over backward, rifle and all, into the ravine, crying out to Allah as he fell. The other fellow fired at me point-blank and singed the bandage on my head. I wrenched the rifle away, and swung the butt-end upward, catching him below the jaw, and he followed his friend, making no outcry whatever. I heard the two of them fall — thump-thump — on the rocks below.

  Now the rear was open for retreat, and I didn’t doubt for a second Grim would change his plans. I hurried back to him, and found Joan Angela helping him to lash Akbar bin Mahommed’s hands with the reins belonging to my sorry screw. Neither of them knew Grim, and to me he seemed like an apparition in a dream. Not a word was said until Akbar’s hands were safely lashed behind him. Then Grim said “Mount!” and we obeyed him.

  It never entered my head that he would still insist on the right-hand track in front of us. I reached for my brute’s nose to pull him round and start back along the way we had come; but Grim slapped his rump and kicked him forward, and in a second we were trotting straight for the great Gibraltar rock, Joan Angela leading.

  There was one great pool of light to cross before we could plunge into darkness on the right-hand side. Just before we reached it Grim vaulted up behind me, and the miserable horse nearly collapsed under our joint weight. Joan Angela jockeyed her plug into a gallop, shot through the zone of brightness, and was swallowed in the gloom. We followed at an amble, which was our poor beast’s last broken-hearted effort. Midway through the zone of light a bullet from I don’t know what direction struck him behind the girth and he pitched to the ground, throwing Grim and me into a heap in front of him. Grim pulled a pistol out and finished that business. Then we ran, each with a hand on Akbar, and found Joan Angela dismounted waiting for us in the darkness just round the bend.

  My head was swimming, but I supposed we must hurry on. However, Grim said “No.”

  “Sit down and take a cinch on things,” he suggested, fingering my bandage. “Is your head bad?”

  “Who are you?” Joan Angela asked him. “Jim Grim? Who is that? Thanks awfully for coming, anyhow!”

  “Where’s King?” I asked as soon as I could pull myself a bit together.

  “Lord knows! He and I took the trail the minute the Lancers said Miss Leich was missing. They had opinions of their own, of course, but King suspected Kangra Khan instantly. It was probable you’d have to lie up all day, and that gave us time to overtake you if we used our wits; and King knew of a bunch of Jebel Waziris whom he once befriended in some border row. So he and Narayan Singh took one side of the ravine to get their help if possible, and I came this way picking up your trail. I’m supposed to be Ali Ibraim, a very holy person from Arabia. They tell things to a holy man, you know, and don’t molest him — much. I carry a tooth of the Prophet with me — found it in a dead man’s skull this side of the Jhelum. Those were the Jebel Waziris on the far side of the ravine. It was touch and go. I was afraid they’d shoot us all, but Allah was on our side that time.”

  “How on earth did you manage it?” Joan Angela asked him.

  “It looked impossible. But Narayan Singh sent a woman to me to have herself blessed for childbirth. I gave her a written amulet, which wouldn’t be any good until she’d found him again and had him write the name of Mahommed and several angels on the back of it. After that she’d have twins. So I guess he got my message. But, by Gorry, if I don’t sleep and eat soon I’ll be no good!”

  I gave him the rice and chupatties I had cached in my handkerchief — a most disgusting mess it was.

  “Have you two eaten recently?” he asked, and then, when we told him yes, devoured the lot as if he liked it.

  “This is the best fun ever!” said Joan Angela — truthfully — fervently. She wouldn’t have changed places with any woman in the world just then! Grim met her eyes, and glanced at me.

  “We’re not through yet,” he assured her curtly.

  As he spoke there came the stuttering din of rifle-firing from around the cliff behind us...angry, spasmodic stuff...and yells of imprecation.

  “That’ll be Kangra Khan trying to fight his way back,” said Grim. “He hasn’t a chance. But the trouble is our Waziri friends have made themselves unpopular. They’re being hounded in their turn. Two outfits of Pathans are on their heels to scupper them before they can reach home; so all we’ve got is a hundred men in a hurry to reach the skyline with every man’s hand against ’em. Retreat to the border is cut off absolutely. Kangra Khan has bragged about Miss Leich and her millions; he was using that yesterday as a talking-point to rally armed men to his standard. All he accomplished was to arouse cupidity, and now they’re all on the watch for her between here and the border. They figure she’s a prize worth bagging!”

  “Won’t the British troops come for us?” Joan Angela asked.

  “Let’s hope not!” he answered. “The tribes would stop quarreling among themselves and make common cause. Even our friends the Waziris would be forgiven pro tem. The best thing the British can do is to withdraw across the border and pretend they don’t care a hoot. Time’s the main thing. Every day that passes without cash in sight will tend to decrease Miss Leich’s market price. Meanwhile, the more they quarrel among themselves for her possession, the better our chance. Gee-whizz! They’re hitting her up!”

  It began to be clear now why Kangra Khan had led his handful of men so boldly along that moonlit track. He had reinforcements waiting for him somewhere along there, and now he was leading them back to find his prisoners, suspecting probably that the Waziris had seized us. He seemed to have enough men with him to force the issue, judging by the din; but the light was against him, and the yells from the far side of the ravine were triumphant, not discouraged.

  “If King’s with the Waziris, you can bet on them safely,” Grim said, listening intently. “Lord! Let’s hope the noise don’t bring marauders our way! We haven’t a friend to windward. The Waziris are our one reliance — and a shifty lot at
that!”

  Joan Angela showed him her pistol, but he shook his head.

  “Keep that for the last contingency,” he advised. “Are you fit? Can you march? Is your nerve all right? Then never show your pistol to a soul until you have to use it on yourself. Getting killed don’t hurt. The most the best of us can ask for is to die clean. Hide that thing away.”

  But he drew his own pistol, and stood leaning against the horse, with an outcrop of the cliff on his right hand, so that he could watch the track either way and have the best of any sudden turn of affairs. I noticed he had two more pistols in a belt under his dark cloak, and when I suggested he should lend me one of them he passed it butt-first. About a second after we came within an ace of accident.

  To our right, in a momentary lull between the bursts of rifle-fire, we heard the sound of hurrying feet and clinking weapons. I stood up and leaned over the horse beside Grim, and we raised our pistols to fire point-blank along the track. It was impossible to see anything; the bulge of the cliff cut off the zone of moonlight; one and the same thought urged both of us to stagger the attacking force by a sudden burst of unexpected pistol-shots and then make a bolt for it. Joan Angela guessed our intention and stood by to jump on the horse.

  But the hurrying ceased, and the thirty or forty pairs of feet we had heard reduced themselves to three or four, who advanced at a walk more cautiously. So much the better for our plan! I calculated the probable level of a man’s heart and managed to pull that long knife out as well for a furious set-to before we beat retreat. We heard a gruff voice giving orders in Pushtu.

  “Careful now! We’re near them. Dark and the mother of death are one! Halt! I go forward alone!”

  Something blacker than the blackness loomed around the serrated outcrop. I fired. Grim knocked my pistol up in the very nick of time.

  “God save you, sahib, that is the only turban I have!” said a voice I recognized, and Narayan Singh stepped up to us, showing his teeth in a great white grin in the midst of his black beard. He pulled the turban off and rubbed his head where the bullet had grazed the scalp.

  “I have thirty men behind me,” he went on, beginning to rebind the turban as casually as if he were in camp. “But it is difficult, for these Waziris are not in love with Sikhs, who have slain too many of their comrades in the border fights. King sahib bade me bring these ruffians to hold this track, lest Kangra Khan should fight his way round the corner yonder in spite of everything. They are picked men, but who shall pick diamonds from a dunghill?” he asked, giving the turban a final twist, and adjusting the whole at last as a woman gives the final touches to her hat. “Is the sahiba well?”

  We introduced him to Joan Angela, who shook hands. She had met him before in Egypt, and was as pleased as he was to renew the acquaintance.

  “Thou and I are birds who love the storm, sahiba!” he said gallantly. “Better to die well than to live ill. This would look like opportunity; yet the gods know best. These sahibs know I speak the truth when I say I am your servant.”

  I did not catch her answer. Someone shouted for Narayan Singh, and we all went hurrying back along the track to the corner, where we piled up such loose rocks as we could find and, in the limelight, as it were, held that point of disadvantage against Kangra Khan’s men while King worked his Waziris down into the ravine below. Every man of ours had a rifle stolen from the British, and they squandered ammunition as men always do waste stolen goods; but even so, we failed in our object. Kangra Khan detected King’s purpose to join us; the Waziris made too much noise negotiating the watercourse; to judge by their yelling some of them reached our side, but when it came to climbing the steep slope they were met by a sweeping fire from several hundred rifles. Kangra Khan told off a couple of dozen men to keep us busy and poured the rest of his nickeled lead into the ravine. Once I heard a long, shrill whistle — King’s in all likelihood — and after that there was more or less silence below while the Waziris beat retreat under a galling fire up the slope they had so easily descended. Only one man reached us — a fellow with a bullet through his arm, immensely angry.

  By dint of threatening to tie her hand and foot I had persuaded Joan Angela to keep out of sight behind the corner. The newcomer crawled behind our barricade of stones until he reached her hiding place, and then got to his feet. I followed him to make sure of his intentions, but he only looked at her; he did not seem to regard her as anything more than a curiosity. And before he spoke to me he tore a strip of calico from his filthy shirt and, with one end of the strip in his teeth, proceeded to bind his arm. Joan Angela instantly offered to do it for him, but he grinned savagely, and turned his face to me.

  “Allah’s wonders! We are all dead men below there!” he said, jerking his right thumb across his shoulder. “Why not sell this woman to the Pathans if they desire her so much? My people wish to go home.”

  “How many did you lose down there in the ravine?” I asked him.

  “A thousand,” he answered. He presumably meant ten. “Where is Jimgrim? I was to speak with Jimgrim. Who art thou?”

  I told him I was Jimgrim, doubting whether it was safe to strip off Grim’s disguise as a holy man from Arabia.

  “Well met!” he answered. “But thou art a liar none the less! I am King sahib’s friend, and he told me Jimgrim is the Hajji Ali Ibraim, whom men call Jimgrim because he is beautiful and loved of many women.”

  It is no insult to be called a liar in those raw hills — rather a compliment. They envy those who have enough imagination to invent an untruth on the spur of an occasion.

  “What is the message?” I asked him. “I am Jimgrim’s friend.”

  “King sahib says: ‘She should die, and if a youth should step into her shoes, and he a holy man, it might be well.’ But he said: ‘Jimgrim is the man who will attend to it.’ None the less, if Jimgrim fights among the rocks there, thou and I might throw her over the cliff and save him trouble. Have you the holy youth to take her place?”

  “Let Jimgrim do his own work,” I answered, stepping between Joan Angela and him. “What is the rest of the message?”

  “Where is that Sikh? Is he here?”

  We peered round the corner, and I pointed out Narayan Singh crouching behind a boulder, firing into black night. “By Allah’s teeth, I have a bone to pick with that Sikh! The dog called me a son of—”

  “Pick it with me, then,” I answered. “Give me the rest of the message first.”

  I laid a hand on him, for he was minded to go after Narayan Singh that minute. He tried to break away, but I jerked him round again to face me.

  “Kill him!” said a voice beside me. “It was he who set fire to the cloth- stalls in Peshawar half a year since!” And Akbar bin Mahommed, with his hands still lashed behind him, thrust his face between us. “Yussuf, thou dog, I would kill thee myself if I were not tied!”

  “Trussed like a pig!” answered Yussuf, and spat into Akbar’s face.

  For answer Akbar ducked his head and butted the Waziri like a ram, hitting him in the belly and sending him reeling backward into the line of fire where a bullet drilled him through the head from ear to ear and he lay grinning in the moonlight, twitching his fingers, with his brains oozing out on the rock.

  So we never received the latter part of King’s message, and had no means of guessing what his plan might be. I dragged a fellow out of the line of fire and sent him to try to cross the ravine and bring an answer back; but he never returned, and whether he was shot or simply ran away I don’t know.

  When I had sent that messenger I shouted for Grim, but though he heard me it was several minutes before he came crawling behind the improvised barricade. Heavy firing had returned from the far side of the ravine, but there was still a chance that Kangra Khan’s men might try to rush the corner, and Grim saw fit to give that danger his first attention. He was moving from man to man, encouraging each in turn. I saw him pull out the “Prophet’s tooth” and show it to several of them. Then their war-cry went up— “Allaho
Akbar!” — and there ceased to be much risk of flinching.

  Meanwhile, Akbar bin Mahommed thrust his face up close to mine and stared into my eyes as if he could see through them to the thought behind.

  “Let my hands go, Ramm-is-den,” he urged. “I swear friendship. By Allah and the Prophet and the honor of my father; by my father’s beard and mine, and by the Holy Tomb, I swear I am thy friend! Untie my hands. By Allah’s breath I will be thy brother until I die!”

  He turned to Joan Angela, and looked into her eyes as he had into mine.

  “Sahiba, thou art this man’s wife. Bid him loose me. I will be thy man and his until Azrael summons all of us.”

  She did not understand a word of Pushtu, but his appeal was obvious enough. He shook the hands behind him that were lashed with the leather thong so tightly that the wrists were swelling, and turned half toward her so that she might loose the knots if I refused.

  “Do you know these hills hereabouts?” I asked him.

  “Aye. There is not a cranny I do not know.”

  “How far to the nearest village?”

  “There are four villages that I could reach before the moon sets.”

  “Have you friends among them?”

  “Nay! Who loves me hereabouts?”

  He doubtless read the disappointment on my face, for his eyes were close to mine again.

  “But there are those who fear me,” he added. “There is a woman who must do my bidding lest I laugh in her husband’s face, and she die of his knife. Listen, Ramm-is-den! Inshallah, I may help thee, for I heard what that dog of a Waziri said. If she is to die” — he glanced at Joan Angela— “and a youth shall take her place...by Allah am I wrong, or does it mean that she shall not die, and that only the clothes are needed, so that she may pass for a hairless boy? Then I am the man to manage it! Loose my hands and give me a weapon. Give me that knife. I know a young Afridi hereabouts who has been to Bokhara and picked up foreign manners there, along with a way of wearing clothes that would shame a Hindu. He teaches some new kind of politics to the younglings, because the elders will not listen to him, and goes unharmed because they say he is mad. I will strip him naked, and she may wear his foppery. Loose me! Let me make haste!”