E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures

by E. Hoffmann Price

  He wiped the cool drops of water from his beard, and stalked down the street. Old Yusuf, the gunsmith, squatted in his booth, filing a breechblock into shape. In back, his son operated a creaking lathe, foot driven, slowly turning a rifle barrel that would some day settle a feud, or start one. Gul Mast was so glad to see a familiar face that he almost saluted Yusuf; then he checked himself, for the gunsmith owed him fifty rupees, with interest compounded for nearly a year.

  Better not depend on Yusuf.

  He ate grilled lamb and cucumbers and sour milk at a restaurant which was crowded with dish-faced Uzbeks. Their barbarous Mongolian chatter told him nothing, and made him feel even more a stranger.

  Next he went to the cobbler, a newcomer, to have a worn sole patched. It was dusk now, and men gathered about the fountain to drink tea, and gamble, to tell monstrous lies, to sing ballads and to play droning tunes on reed pipes. Gul Mast was shocked at hearing someone pronounce his name; he whirled, catching up his rifle, and he cursed the devil who had inspired him to take off the boots he needed for fast action on foot.

  The shoemaker, fortunately, was intent on his work, squinting by the light of a rag floating in a dish of tallow. Then Gul Mast heard and saw: an old man, pious and learned, judging from his Persian tunic, was pointing toward the inscribed block, and saying, “Gul Mast, may God be gracious to him, gave us this.”

  Barefooted, he went across the street, and saluted the group. “Uncle,” he said, “out of your kindness, tell me of the generous and saintly man who brought the blessing of water to this town.”

  The mullah was not amazed to hear a white-bearded man address him, very respectfully, as “uncle,” though for a moment, it seemed to Gul Mast it had been an error to forget his assumed age. The scholar answered, “Brother, this is the memorial to a hero, the nephew of Haroun. The lines are in Persian—I composed them myself—telling how Gul Mast Khudayar inspired many companions to valor, and died with them to win a battle.”

  “Allah requite you,” the disguised hero stuttered, when he swallowed his horror. “Did the sorrowing uncle spend his whole fortune on this father of fountains?”

  The mullah stroked his beard for a moment. “Allah is the Knower. Though it is said that Haroun kept a small parcel of land and perhaps ten or fifteen thousand rupees for his old age. But he did not outlive his grief.”

  Gul Mast wondered if he would outlive his own. He stumbled across the street to get his shoes, and he did not have to feign the stoop of old age. His heart was hardly in it when he haggled, for the ensuing half hour, about the price of the repair work.

  Later, in the gate of the darkened serai, he stood listening to the gurgle of the fountain. He whispered, fiercely, “God curse Haroun, God curse his ancestors and all his kinsmen, the goat-bearded old fool did that to spite distant relatives, and may Satan damn them also!”

  He spat in the general direction of the fountain, and then went to his cubicle in the second floor gallery which overhung the compound of the serai. And weary as he was, his sleep was not restful. Time and again he awakened from the sound of the fountain; every gurgle, every splash was a rupee out of his pocket.

  The following day, he went about his spying; and very quickly began to realize the difficulty and danger of the task he had approached. First of all, there was the chance that in spite of his white beard, some shrewd person would become suspicious: for the woman in Peshawar had neither the art nor the science to put wrinkles into his face; none of her clients had ever made any such outrageous demands! So Gul Mast, subjected to the scrutiny which all strangers got when it seemed that they had come to Darabad to stay, spent uncomfortable hours wondering when someone would remark about the lack of wrinkles in his weathered face.

  Caravan men and traders, who came and went, got little attention, but with Gul Mast, it was different. Everyone was eager to know his business, his intentions, his place of origin; he was quizzed about his kinsmen and offspring; and he was in constant unease lest someone pick a contradiction in his carefully rehearsed story. More than that, he spent most of his time answering rather than asking.

  True, evasion had its place. A certain vagueness, a judicious changing of the subject: these helped establish him as a man who had taken a sudden trip for his health. But there was always the chance that he would forget to walk with an old man’s stoop, or that someone would wonder why the backs of his hands were not puckered from age.

  And the agonizing expense of it all! Where the real Gul Mast had haggled for an hour over two pais, the disguised Gul Mast had to be careless of rupees. Instead of telling a beggar that with frugality and good investments, he would have been prosperous, he gave an anna. The whole town was fleecing him.

  But finally he learned the details of Gul Mast’s valor, though this took patience, for a stranger would not normally be interested in more than the bald facts. The Sardar, it seemed, had been shot from his horse, early in the pursuit, and the second in command had driven on to final victory.

  “When an orderly came up beside him,” Taimur the pipemaker said to the white bearded stranger, “the Sardar spoke the name of Gul Mast. He said that name before he died, just that name, and pointed to his tunic where he wore many medals. From others, we learned how the men of Darabad had been sent to save the day, so we knew that the dying Sardar meant to decorate the bravest of them all, Gul Mast, the Friend of God. His body was never found-doubtless he fell into a cleft.”

  The tobacco which Gul Mast bought became rank and bitter in his nostrils. The Sardar, intending to denounce him, had inflicted the worst possible punishment. Allah alone knew how many thousand rupees that accursed fountain and aqueduct had cost!

  He had come to bushwhack whatever witnesses there were against him; now this was unnecessary, seeing that he was not an outlaw. But there was a new problem, that of sifting all the stories, and from the details building up a plausible yarn to account for his resurrection. His death had brought izzat to the town, which was more than his life had done. Planning was needed, and each day’s spying cut deeply into his supply of cash.

  Meanwhile, the administrator of Uncle Haroun’s estate pilfered all that he could. Ahmad, called Hafiz because he had memorized the entire Koran, had begun wearing silk pants and a silver-embroidered jacket; the old scoundrel had married two new wives. If Gul Mast did not act soon, there would be nothing left to claim.

  Nor was a resurrection so simple to arrange. Revealing himself at once would require an explanation of his having taken the precaution of disguise. While a dead hero was sacred, a living money-lender was something else. His debtors might profitably pick holes in the story.

  That memorial fountain fascinated Gul Mast. He sat there, day after day, watching his rupees gurgle up and flow over, refreshing men and dogs and camels and women. At times he felt that his hair and beard would soon become naturally white from sustained misery, but for all this, he took a certain wry pleasure in hearing the old men speak of Gul Mast’s valor.

  The thrill, however, became a chill whenever the new wives of Ahmad Hafiz came to draw water. They clanked with golden anklets, they reeked of costly perfumes; every day, the residual legacy was fading, and the administrator became greasy from over-eating.

  Meanwhile, there was a small sprouting of black at the roots of Gul Mast’s beard. It was time to leave, for he could not return too soon after the departure of the venerable and generous “Abdul Karim”; someone would suspect. Though he had by now learned sufficient details of the battle to shape a logical tale of lying wounded and too helpless to call for aid as the victors rushed by, the story had to be seasoned and ripened, lest some debtors pick holes in it.

  Several times, when Gul Mast was on the point of leaving, that splendid fountain drew him back, though he did not know why. He had ceased cursing it and Uncle Haroun; he saved his damnation for Ahmad Hafiz and the perfumed wives. He had ceased to resent the Sardar’s farewell gestu
re, and the fatal story which the orderly had brought back.

  Then, of an evening, he saw a man from a neighboring village, one Usaf Abbas, who had served in the other company of that same badly riddled battalion: an onion-nosed fellow with an unpleasant sneer, an ungenerous man who never borrowed money for hasheesh or tobacco; all in all, not the sort of man one would trust.

  Usaf, squatting by the fountain which had refreshed him, did not recognize the dead hero. He was grinning when he looked up from the shining na’astalik script, and he said to Gul Mast, “It is well that Haroun died when he did. Verily, his nephew, may pigs defile his bones, was too stingy to burn a cartridge in self-defense.”

  A passerby heard this statement, and halted near the group of old men. “Doubtless Gul Mast was not extravagant,” was the fair-minded answer, “but in his death he made up for his life. Many of us repaid our borrowings to the old man, his uncle. Gul Mast brought izzat to the town, and the king once mentioned his name in public prayer.”

  Usaf’s laugh was poisonous. “Oh men! There was one of the dying who cursed Gul Mast for tricking his comrades into charging, while he hid behind some rocks. I speak of Wali Dad, whose fields were seized to satisfy the debt which Haroun inherited from the nephew.”

  Gul Mast’s beard twitched, and he got a firm grip on his rifle. He shouted, “Thou father of several dogs, thou son of a nose-less mother, I marched with the rebels, and I am one of those who saw the valor of Gul Mast. He came like a roaring lion toward our guns. His leader lagged from fear, but Gul Mast came on, shouting his names and titles.”

  He paused for breath. Spectators gathered to hear these new details about their hero. One said to Usaf, “Rub thy head and go thy way. Is it not enough when even a former enemy praises him?”

  Gul Mast could feel the growing indignation of the townsmen; it made him light-headed as the Sardar’s medal had made that fool, Shir Dil. Never given to needless quarreling, Gul Mast bellowed, and with surprising volume for an old man, “We fired at him, we missed, we were surprised. And when his gun was empty, he still came on, cutting and hewing.” Then some devil entered Gul Mast and took his tongue. “I myself saw him stand to face three men, after our cannons had rolled down hill. He slew them all, and he fell from his wounds when he went to meet the others.”

  And another devil took possession of Usaf, who could have rubbed his head and gone his way.

  He said, “Gul Mast was a skinflint and a skulker, how could he change? Is it not written, anoint a serpent with rose water for a hundred years and he remains a serpent?”

  This was bad enough, and then Usaf spat at the dedication slab. Gul Mast cursed and jerked his rifle to his hip, but he was not quick enough. From his side, so close that the blast fairly shattered his ear drum, one of the villagers had cut loose with a pistol. Usaf dropped his own half-leveled weapon, clawed his sheepskin jacket, and clutched the fountain’s edge. His hand slipped, and he crumpled in the dust, and lay there twitching.

  Gul Mast bounded forward, cursed the dying man, booted him in unfeigned fury. And his voice sounded strange in his own ears when he gave the corpse a final kick and croaked, “Oh Men! Before we fled, I went to Gul Mast to plunder him, but I could not, for he was a brave man. He gave me a medal, saying that the Sardar had pinned it on him at the start of the surprise attack, since there was little chance that any man would return alive. It was Gul Mast’s valor that made the Sardar honor him rather than the leader of the company!”

  He fumbled in his coat, and brought out the medal, which he laid on the rim of the fountain. Before a man of the group could say “Mashallah,” he went on, “So I waited until the wrath of war cooled down, and I was afraid to tell of my purpose, lest you kill me. But Gul Mast had begged me to send this medal to his uncle. Here it is, and the peace upon you!”

  He turned his back on the fountain and the townsmen, and stalked toward the gate with the two stumpy watch towers. There were only a few rupees left in his purse; and now that he had buried Gul Mast beyond any resurrection, he realized that he had showed very little more judgment than the late Usaf Abbas.

  On the other hand, while izzat was certainly not worth a man’s life, it was cheap enough at fifteen thousand rupees: and a practical man could soon get a fresh start in Peshawar. So he reached out with his long legs, and chuckled as he heard the last faint gurgle of the fountain he had brought to Darabad.

  BONES FOR CHINA

  Originally appeared in Speed Adventure Stories, July 1945.

  When Yang Li-cheng recovered enough strength to struggle to his knees, he noted the two men who squatted beside the trail, watching him; his first concern, however, was to look at the sun, to see how long he had been unconscious. He felt better when he saw how little time he had lost. He tried to get to his feet, for there was no time to waste, only weariness and the aching old bones. The fever he had brought all the way from the Burmese jungle bore him down almost as much as did the pack on his back.

  The two men had not been in sight when Li-cheng stumbled and fell beside the trail which rose steeply toward the pass. For miles back, the country was barren and rocky, without a village, or any rice fields. Like Li-cheng, the strangers had broad-brimmed hats, mushroom-shaped; dirty blue shirts, worn with the tails flopping outside their tattered cotton pants. Their straw sandals were so shredded as to be little more than tokens of footgear. They were dressed like Chinese farmers, but Li-cheng sensed that things other than tilling the soil occupied them.

  “Which way do you go, grandfather?” one asked, as the two helped him to his feet.

  “Ming Tien,” Li-cheng answered, pointing to the pass.

  His destination was the home which he had left nearly half a century previous, to join his grandfather in California.

  “It is not good to go to Ming Tien.”

  There was command in the advice yet also the deference proper when addressing the aged. Farmers did not have the manner of the man who spoke, nor his grimness, nor that purposeful glance. The scars which seamed his face, and showed through the rents in his shirt were unusual; and it was odd indeed for two farmers to be popping up from rocks of a barren slope, so far from any field.

  Li-cheng regarded the two, and resolutely said, “My grandfather says I have to hurry to Ming Tien.”

  They regarded Li-cheng, and the big earthenware jar which weighted his pack. “The Japs are marching up the valley; they’ll be at Ming Tien soon.”

  “I must go on. Grandfather has been away from home for nearly a hundred years.”

  The men exchanged glances. The scarred one began to understand, and he said, kindly, “Eat first, the way is steep.”

  They gave him cold rice and cold tea which they brought from somewhere behind the rocks. When he had eaten, they helped Li-cheng to his feet, and set him on his way.

  “Walk slowly,” they said.

  Later, halting on the crest he had so painfully reached, Li-cheng twisted his scrawny neck to say over his shoulder, “Venerable grandfather, it is not far to Ming Tien.”

  There was no answer, but by now he had learned that grandfather picked his own times for speech, so, hearing no correction, he was comforted. He knew that his memory was not tricking him, and that the nearest of the mud-walled villages, and its girdle of diked rice fields must indeed be the home he had left so long ago.

  When Li-cheng finally reached the gate of the village, he knelt and clawed deep into the dark earth of the street, and smelled it as though it were perfume. His thousand wrinkles puckered into a smile, and he said, “Venerable Ancestor, this is the earth of Ming Tien, you are at home.”

  Then he gravely saluted the blank-faced farmers who had gathered. “This person’s grandfather is in the jar. I have brought his bones from America.”

  “Ai! From Mei Kuo?”

  “Yes, from Mei Kuo.”

  And he told how, after having shipped grandfather’s bone
s to China, he had learned that there had been a mistake which had caused an entire lot to go astray. “So,” he concluded, “when I wrote letters and got no answers, I went to Shanghai to get his bones from the warehouse, to take them to Canton and then come inland, but there was talk of war, and the ship went to Manila and then to Singapore. From there I walked.”

  Of Yang Li-cheng’s four brothers, none remained. As for his nephews, some were dead, others were in the army. It was clear now why there had been no answers to his letters, and it was good that he had himself brought grandfather’s bones to Ming Tien for burial with the others whose graves were on the knoll.

  They made him tell them of his march, and he said, “Each day I walked as far as I could. Sometimes people showed me the way, and sometimes grandfather told me how to go.”

  No one considered this improbable. The big wonder was America, and when he told them of the land, they politely concealed their incredulity, for Li-cheng’s filial piety made him honorable. Some day, the government would erect a commemorative gateway at the village.

  Presently, the feng shui man joined the group, for he had heard talk of bones. No one could lay the foundations of a house, or start a journey, or be married, or buried, without first learning the auspicious day. Though the magician was nearly as old as Li-cheng, his eyes were bright, and his wits were young.

  After taking into account the phase of the moon, the wishes of the Air Dragons and the Earth Dragons, he said, “Honorable Yang, the lucky day for burial is eleven days from now.”

  But the farmers pointed to the smoke on the horizon. “The Japs are coming, they ruin what they cannot steal. We leave in the morning, go with us before they kill you.”

  Li-cheng was so nearly spent that he could not endure the thought of further marching. The feng shui man added, “Later, there will be other lucky days. You can come back.”