The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend behind it. First a few piercing notes like the shrieks of beaters in a faraway cover, and next, large, full, and smooth, the refrain of the wild song: ‘And oh, and oh, the green pulse of Mundore – Mundore!’
‘All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call last,’ said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief. The call brought back memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his mother’s kiss, and the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he dropped asleep among his men. So he hooked the dark collar of his new mess-jacket, and went to dinner like a prince who has newly inherited his father’s crown.
Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers. He knew his own value, and no money and no rank within the gift of the Government would have induced him to put studs in young officers’ shirts, or to hand them clean ties. Yet, when he took off his uniform that night, and squatted among his fellows for a quiet smoke, he told them what he had done, and they said that he was entirely right. Thereat Bukta propounded a theory which to a white mind would have seemed raving insanity; but the whispering, levelheaded little men of war considered it from every point of view, and thought that there might be a great deal in it.
At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the unfailing subject of shikar – big game-shooting of every kind and under all sorts of conditions. Young Chinn opened his eyes when he understood that each one of his companions had shot several tigers in the Wuddar style – on foot, that is – making no more of the business than if the brute had been a dog.
‘In nine cases out often,’ said the Major, ‘a tiger is almost as dangerous as a porcupine. But the tenth time you come home feet first.’
That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn’s brain was in a whirl with stories of tigers – man-eaters and cattle-killers each pursuing his own business as methodically as clerks in an office; new tigers that had lately come into such-and-such a district; and old, friendly beasts of great cunning, known by nicknames in the mess – such as ‘Puggy’, who was lazy, with huge paws, and ‘Mrs Malaprop’, who turned up when you never expected her, and made female noises. Then they spoke of Bhil superstitions, a wide and picturesque field, till young Chinn hinted that they must be pulling his leg.
‘’Deed we aren’t,’ said a man on his left. We know all about you. You’re a Chinn and all that, and you’ve a son of vested right here; but if you don’t believe what we’re telling you, what will you do when old Bukta begins his stories? He knows about ghost-tigers, and tigers that go to a hell of their own; and tigers that walk on their hind feet; and your grandpa’s riding-tiger, as well. Odd he hasn’t spoken of that yet.’
‘You know you’ve an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don’t you?’ said the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.
‘Of course I do,’ said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of Chinn by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are allowed to look at it on Sundays.
‘Well, I wasn’t sure. Your revered ancestor, my boy, according to the Bhils, has a tiger of his own – a saddle-tiger that he rides round the country whenever he feels inclined. I don’t call it decent in an ex-Collector’s ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even our men, who might be called moderately cool, don’t care to beat that country if they hear that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger. It is supposed to be a clouded animal – not stripy, but blotchy, like a tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war or pestilence or – or something. There’s a nice family legend for you.’
‘What’s the origin of it, d’you suppose?’ said Chinn.
‘Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Perhaps it was the tiger’s revenge, or perhaps he’s huntin’’em still. You must go to his tomb one of these days and inquire. Bukta will probably attend to that. He was asking me before you came whether by any ill-luck you had already bagged your tiger. If not, he is going to enter you under his own wing. Of course, for you of all men it’s imperative. You’ll have a first-class time with Bukta.’
The Major was not wrong. Bukta kept an anxious eye on young Chinn at drill, and it was noticeable that the first time the new officer lifted up his voice in an order the whole line quivered. Even the Colonel was taken aback, for it might have been Lionel Chinn returned from Devonshire with a new leaseof life. Bukta had continued to develop his peculiar theory among his intimates, and it was accepted as a matter of faith in the lines, since every word and gesture on young Chinn’s part so confirmed it.
The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the reproach of not having shot a tiger; but he was not content to take the first or any beast that happened to arrive. In his own villages he dispensed the high, low, and middle justice, and when his people – naked and fluttered – came to him with word of a beast marked down, he bade them send spies to the kills and the watering-places, that he might be sure the quarry was such an one as suited the dignity of such a man.
Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most truthfully saying that the beast was mangy, undersized – a tigress worn with nursing, or a broken-toothed old male – and Bukta would curb young Chinn’s impatience.
At last, a noble animal was marked down – a ten-foot cattle-killer with a huge roll of loose skin along the belly, glossy-hided, full-frilled about the neck, whiskered, frisky, and young. He had slain a man in pure sport, they said.
‘Let him be fed,’ quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove out cows to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.
Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great moneys for the mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this of Bukta’s.
‘It is not good,’ said he to the Colonel, when he asked for shooting-leave, ‘that my Colonel’s son who may be – that my Colonel’s son should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle beast. That may come after. I have waited long for this which is a tiger. He has come in from the Mair country. In seven days we will return with the skin.’
The mess gnashed their teeth enviously. Bukta, had he chosen, might have invited them all. But he went out alone with Chinn, two days in a shooting-cart and a day on foot, till they came to a rocky, glary valley with a pool of good water in it. It was a parching day, and the boy very naturally stripped and went in for a bathe, leaving Bukta by the clothes. A white skin shows far against brown jungle, and what Bukta beheld onChinn’s back and right shoulder dragged him forward step by step with staring eyeballs.
‘I’d forgotten it isn’t decent to strip before a man of his position,’ thought Chinn, flouncing in the water. ‘How the little devil stares! What is it, Bukta?’
‘The Mark!’ was the whispered answer.
‘It is nothing. You know how it is with my people!’ Chinn was annoyed. The dull-red birthmark on his shoulder, something like a conventionalised Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory, or he would not have bathed. It occurred, so they said at home, in alternate generations, appearing, curiously enough, eight or nine years after birth, and, save that it was part of the Chinn inheritance, would not be considered pretty. He hurried ashore, dressed again, and went on till they met two or three Bhils, who promptly fell on their faces. ‘My people,’ grunted Bukta, not condescending to notice them. ‘And so your people, Sahib. When I was a young man we were fewer, but not so weak. Now we are many, but poor stock. As may be remembered. How will you shoot him, Sahib? From a tree; from a shelter which my people shall build; by day or by night?’
‘On foot and in the daytime,’ said young Chinn.
‘That was your custom, as I have heard,’ said Bukta to himself. ‘I will get news of him. Then you and I will go to him. I will carry one gun. You have yours. There is no need of more. What tiger shall stand against thee?’
He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a ravine, full-gorged and half aslee
p in the May sunlight. He was walked up like a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the shattering roar of the charge with a single shot – it seemed to him hours as he sighted – which tore through his throat, smashing the backbone below the neck and between the shoulders. The brute crouched, choked, and fell, and before Chinn knew well what had happened Bukta bade him stay still while he paced the distance between his feet and the ringing jaws. ‘Fifteen,’ said Bukta. ‘Short paces. No need for a secondshot. Sahib. He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil the skin. I said there would be no need of these, but they came – in case.’
Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta’s people – a force that should have blown the ribs out of the beast had Chinn’s shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as interested beaters, some five or six, waiting the word to skin. Bukta watched the life fade from the wild eyes, lifted one hand, and turned on his heel.
‘No need to show that we care,’ said he. ‘Now, after this, we can kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib.’
Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. ‘That also was your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to cantonments. Will the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and, perhaps, forget that I am his officer?’
‘But those men – the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps—’
‘Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In the Lines I am one thing. Here I am another.’
This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of drill in the next world. That night, after a little talk with his subjects, he devoted to an orgy; and a Bhil orgy is a thing not to be safely written about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in the thick of it, but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden. Wild folk came and pressed about his knees with offerings. He gave his flask to the elders of the village. They grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with flowers. Gifts and loans, not all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music rolled and maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the ancient times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but, unless the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to waken late the next day – half a march from the village?
‘The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went tosleep,’ Bukta explained. ‘My people carried him here, and now it is time we should go back to cantonments.’
The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent, made it hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.
‘My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget. When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and they will give him as many men as we need.’
Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the tiger, and Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of many. When Bukta could not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took care to put him in good hands, and Chinn learned more of the mind and desire of the wild Bhil in his marches and campings, by talks at twilight or at wayside pools, than an uninstructed man would have come at in a lifetime.
Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their relatives – mostly in trouble – and to lay cases of tribal custom before him. They would say, squatting in his verandah at twilight, after the easy, confidential style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor had run away with such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how many cows would Chinn Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written order came from the Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the plains to give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to disregard that order? On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would the rash voyager return alive?
‘But what have I to do with these things?’ Chinn demanded of Bukta, impatiently. ‘I am a soldier. I do not know the Law.’
‘Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order and they will abide by it. Thou art their Law.’
‘But wherefore?’
Every trace of expression left Bukta’s countenance. The idea might have smitten him for the last time. ‘How can I say?’ hereplied. ‘Perhaps it is on account of the name. A Bhil does not love strange things. Give them orders, Sahib – two, three, four words at a time such as they can carry away in their heads. That is enough.’
Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word spoken in haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages beyond the smoky hills – was, in truth, no less than the Law of Jan Chinn the First, who, so the whispered legend ran, had come back to earth to oversee the third generation in the body and bones of his grandson.
There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils knew that Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta’s village with his presence after slaying his first – in this life – tiger; that he had eaten and drunk with the people, as he was used; and – Bukta must have drugged Chirm’s liquor very deeply – upon his back and right shoulder all men had seen the same angry red Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the flesh of Jan Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As concerned the foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young officer in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn, who had made the Bhil a man; and believing, they hastened to carry his words, careful never to alter them on the way.
Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one horror of being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept their convictions to themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he knew his regiment, never guessed that each one of the six hundred quick-footed, beady-eyed rank-and-file, at attention beside their rifles, believed serenely and unshakenly that the subaltern on the left flank of the line was a demigod twice born – tutelary deity of their land and people. The Earth-gods themselves had stamped the incarnation, and who would dare to doubt the handiwork of the Earth-gods?
Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name served him well in the lines and in camp. His men gave no trouble – one does not commit regimental offences with a god in the chair of justice – and he was sure of the best beaters in the district when he needed them. They believed that theprotection of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that belief beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.
His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum, in spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home to Devonshire. The people, very humanly, learned the weak side of their god. It is true he was unbribable, but bird-skins, butterflies, beetles, and, above all, news of big game pleased him. In other respects, too, he lived up to the Chinn tradition. He was fever-proof. A night’s sitting out over a tethered goat in a damp valley, that would have filled the Major with a month’s malaria, had no effect on him. He was, as they said, ‘salted before he was born’.
Now, in the autumn of his second year’s service an uneasy rumour crept out of the earth and ran about among the Bhils. Chinn heard nothing of it till a brother-officer said across the mess-table: ‘Your revered ancestor’s on the rampage in the Satpura country. You’d better look him up.’
‘I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I’m a little sick of my revered ancestor. Bukta talks of nothing else. What’s the old boy supposed to be doing now?’
‘Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger. That’s the story. He’s been seen by about two thousand Bhils, skipping along the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to death. They believe it devoutly, and all the Satpura chaps are worshipping away at his shrine – tomb, I mean – like good ’uns. You really ought to go down there. Must b
e a queer thing to see your grandfather treated as a god.’
‘What makes you think there’s any truth in the tale?’ said Chinn.
‘Because all our men deny it. They say they’ve never heard of Chinn’s tiger. Now that’s a manifest lie, because every Bhil has.’
‘There’s only one thing you’ve overlooked,’ said the Colonel, thoughtfully. ‘When a local god reappears on earth it’s always an excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are about as wild as your grandfather left them, young ’un. It means something.’
‘Meanin’ they may go on the war-path?’ said Chinn.
‘Can’t say – as yet. Shouldn’t be surprised a little bit.’
‘I haven’t been told a syllable.’
‘Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back.’
‘Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn’t he tell me that?’
Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and the answer surprised him.
‘Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is out in the Satpura country.’
‘What do the wild Bhils think that it means?’
‘They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what is coming? Say only one little word, and we will be content.’
‘We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live, to do with drilled men?’
‘When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet.’
‘But he has not waked, Bukta.’
‘Sahib’ – the old man’s eyes were full offender reproof–‘if he does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the moonlight? We know he is awake, but we do not know what he desires. Is it a sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why does Jan Chinn ride out? Who had done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib, we are thy people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee in my arms – not knowing.’
The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Page 47
