Guns of the Gods

T >> Talbot Mundy >> Guns of the Gods

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Dick had already put the silver tube in place. Tom Tripe raised the
stone and saw it--uttered a tremendous oath--and dropped the heavy
stone back over the hole.

"What are you doing?" Dick demanded from the ladder-head, appearing
with a lantern from behind the raised trap.

"Looking for rum!" Tom answered. Then he turned on Chamu. "Did
you see what I saw? Speak a word of it, you devil, and I'll tear your
throat out! Silence, d'you understand?"

"Come out of there!" Dick ordered angrily. "I'll have to lock this cellar
door! I can't have people prospecting down there! I've got reasons
of my own for keeping that cellar undisturbed! I'm surprised at you,
Tom Tripe, taking advantage of me when my back's turned!"

The minute they were up he put a padlock on the trap, and nailed it
down to the beams as well. Then, summoning Tom's aid, he levered
and shoved into place on top of it the heavy iron safe in which he kept
his specimens and money.

"That'll do for you, Chamu!" he said finally. "I don't care to keep a butler
who takes guests into the cellar at this hour of night! You may go. I'll
give you your time in the morning."

Chamu showed his teeth, by no means for the first time. It was a favorite
method of his for covering up bad service to fall back on his reference.

"Maharajah sahib who is recommending me will not be pleased at
my dismissal!"

"You and your maharajah go to hell together!" Dick retorted. "Tell him
from me that I won't have inquisitive people in my cellar! Now go;
there's nothing more to talk about. Fire the cook, too, as soon as he
wakes! Tell him I don't like ground glass in my omelette! Not been
any in it? Well, what do I care? I don't want any in it--that's enough!
I'm taking no chances. Tell him he's fired, and you two pull your freight
together in the morning first thing!"

Ten minutes alone with Yasmini had worked wonders with Dick Blaine.
Given to making up his mind and seeing resolution through to stern
conclusions, he was her stout ally from the moment when he unlocked
the study door again until the end--a good silent ally too busy, apparently,
about his own affairs to be suspected. Certainly Samson never suspected
his real share in the intrigue--Samson, the judge of circumstances,
indiscretions, men and opportunity.

He sent Tom Tripe packing, with a flea in his ear for Chamu's benefit,
and a whispered word of friendship. Later he drove Tess down-hill in
the dog-cart, first changing his own disguise for American clothes
because the saises might be up and about when he returned at dawn,
and for them to see him in the costume of a sais would only have added
to the risk of putting Gungadhura's men on the scent of Yasmini.
Saises are almost the most prolific source of rumor, but he had a means
of stilling their tongues.

There was little to say during the dark drive. They were affectionate,
those two, without too many words when it came to leave-taking, each
knowing the other's undivided love. Tess had money--a revolver--
cartridges--some food--sufficient change of clothing for a week--
sun-spectacles; he reassured himself twice on all those points.

"If you're camel-sick, fetch it up and carry, on," he advised, "it'll soon
pass. Then a hot bath, if you can get it, before you stiffen. Failing that, oil."

The camels, with Yasmini and her women already mounted, were kneeling
in the darkness outside the house of Mukhum Dass.

"Come!" called Yasmini. "Hurry!"

Dick kissed his wife--waved his hand to Yasmini--helped Tess on to
the last camel in the kneeling line--and they were off, the camel-men
not needing to shout to make those Bikaniri racers rise and start. They
were gone like ghosts into the darkness, making absolutely no noise,
before Dick could steady his nervous horse.

Then Ismail wanted to tie Yasmini's abandoned horse to the tail of the
dog-cart, but Dick sent him off to stable it somewhere at the other side
of town to help throw trackers off the scent. He himself drove home
by a very wide circuit indeed, threading his cautious way among the
hills toward the gold-diggings, where he drove back and forward several
times around the edges of the dump, in order that the saises might
see the red dirt on the wheels afterward and believe, and tell where
he had been.

There was some risk that a panther, or even a tiger might try for the
horse in the dark, but that was not the kind of danger that disturbed
Dick Blaine much. A pistol at point-blank range is as good as a rifle
most nights of the week. He arrived home after daylight with a very
weary horse, and ordered the saises to wash the wheels at once, in
order that the color of the dirt might be impressed on them thoroughly.
They were quite sure he had been at the mine all night. Then he paid
off Chamu and the cook and sent them packing.

He was looking for the beggars, to pay them, when Tom Tripe's dog
arrived and began hunting high and low for Tess. Trotters had something
in his mouth, wrapped in cloth and then again in leather. He refused
to give it to Dick, defying threats and persuasion both. Dick offered
him food, but the dog had apparently eaten--water, but he would not drink.

Then the three beggars came, and watched Dick's efforts with the
interest of spectators at a play.

"Messenge!" said Bimbu finally, nodding at the dog. That much was
pretty obvious.

"Princess!" he added, seeing Dick was still puzzled. It flashed across
Dick's mind that on the dresser in the bedroom was Tess's hat that
Yasmini had worn. Doubtless to a dog's keen nose it smelt of both
of them. He ran to fetch it, the dog followed him, eager to get into the
house. He offered the hat to the dog, who sniffed it and yelped eagerly.

"Bang goes fifty dollars, then!" he laughed.

He took the hat to Bimbu.

"Can you ride a camel?" he demanded.

The man nodded. "Another would drive it."

"Do you know where to get one?"

Bimbu nodded again.

"Take this hat, so that the dog will follow you, and ride by camel to the
home of Utirupa Singh. Here is money for the camel. If you overtake
the princess there will be a fabulous reward. If you get there soon
after she does there will be a good reward. If you take too long on
the way there will be nothing for you but a beating! Go--hurry--get a
move on! And don't you lose the dog!"

Chapter Twelve

There are they who yet remember, when the depot's forty jaws
Through iron teeth that chatter to the tramping of a throng
Spew out the crushed commuter in obedience to laws
That all accord observance and that all agree are wrong;
When rush and din and hubbub stir the too responsive vein
Till head and heart are conquered by the hustle roaring by
And the sign looks good that glitters on the temple gate of Gain, -
"There are spaces just as luring where the leagues untrodden lie!"

There are they who yet remember 'mid the fever of exchange,
When the hot excitement throttles and the millions make or break,
How a camel's silent footfall on the ashen desert range
Swings cushioned into distances where thoughts unfettered wake,
And the memory unbidden plucks an unconverted heart
Till the glamour goes from houses and emotion from the street,
And the truth glares good and gainly in the face of 'change and mart:
"There are deserts more intensive. There are silences as sweet!"

"Ready for anything! If I weaken, tie me on the camel!"

There are camels and camels--more kinds than there are of horses.
The Bishareen of the Sudan is not a bad beast, but compared to the
Bikaniri there are no other desert mounts worth a moment's consideration.
Fleet as the wind, silent as its own shadow, enduring as the long hot-
season of its home, the trained Bikaniri swings into sandy distances
with a gait that is a gallop really--the only saddle-beast of all that lifts
his four feet from the ground at once, seeming to spurn the very laws
of gravity.

They are favored folk who come by first-class Bikaniri camels, for the
better sort are rare, hard held to, and only to be bought up patiently by
twos and ones. Fourteen of them in one string, each fit that instant for
a distance-race with death itself, was perhaps the best proof possible
of Yasmini's influence on the country-side. They were gathered for
her and held in readiness by men who loved her and detested Gungadhura.

Normally the drivers would have taken a passenger apiece, and seven
of the animals would have been ample; but this was a night and a dawn
when speed was nine-tenths of the problem, and Yasmini had spared
nothing--no man, no shred of pains or influence,--and proposed to spare
no beast.

They rode in single file, each man with a led camel ridden by a woman,
except that Yasmini directed her own mount and for the most part showed
the way, her desert-reared guide being hard put to keep his own animal
abreast of her. There is a gift--a trick of riding camels, very seldom
learned by the city-born; and he, or she, who knows the way of it enjoys
the ungrudged esteem of desert men all the way from China to Damascus,
from Peshawar to Morocco. The camels detect a skilled hand even
more swiftly than a horse does and, like the horse, do their best work
for the rider who understands. So the only sound, except for a gurgle
now and then, and velvet-silent footfalls on the level sand, was the
grunts of admiration of the men behind. They had muffled all the camel-bells.

When they started the night was deepest purple, set densely with a
mass of colored jewels; even the whitest of the stars stole color from
the rest. But gradually, as they raced toward the sky-line and the stars
paled, the sky changed into mauve. Then without warning a belt of pale
gold shone in the west behind them, and with the false dawn came the
cool wind like a legacy from the kindly night-gods to encourage humans
to endure the day. A little later than the wind the true dawn came, fiery
with hot promise, and Tess on the last camel soon learned the meaning
of the cloak Yasmini had made her wear. Worn properly it covers all
the face except the eyes, leaving no surface for the hot wind to torture,
and saving the lips and lungs from being scorched.

In after years, when Yasmini was intriguing for an empire that in her
imagination should control the world, she had the telegraph and telephone
at times to aid her, as well as the organized, intricate system of British
Government to manipulate from behind the scenes; but now she was
racing against the wires, and in no mood to appeal for help to a government
that she did not quite understand as yet, but intended to foot royally
in any case.

The easiest thing Gungadhura could do, and surest thing he would
attempt once word should reach him that she had vanished from Sialpore
would be to draw around her a network of his own men. Watchers
from the hills and lurkers in the sand-dunes could pass word along of
the direction she had taken; and the sequel, if Gungadhura was only
quick enough, would depend simply on the loneliness or otherwise
of the spot where she could be brought to bay. If there were no
witnesses his problem would be simple. But if murder seemed too
dangerous, there was the Nesting-place of Seven Swans up in the
mountains, as well as other places even lonelier, to which she and
Tess could be abducted. Tess might be left, perhaps, to make her
own way back and give her own explanation of flight with a maharajah's
daughter; but for Yasmini abduction to the hills could only mean one
of two things: unthinkable surrender, or sure death by any of a hundred
secret means.

So the way they took was wild and lonely, frequented only by the little
jackals that eat they alone know what, and watched by unenthusiastic
kites that always seemed to be wheeling in air just one last time before
flying to more profitable feeding ground. Yet within a thousand paces
of the line they took lay a trodden track, well marked by the sun-dried
bones of camels (for the camel dies whenever he feels like it, without
explanation or regret, and lies down for the purpose in the first
uncomfortable place to hand).

Yasmini and the guide between them, first one, then the other assuming
the direction, led the way around low hills and behind the long, blown
folds of sand netted scantly down by tufted, dry grass, always avoiding
open spaces where they might be seen, or hollows too nearly shut in
on both sides, where there might be ambush.

Twice they were seen before the sun was two hours high, the first time
by a caravan of merchants headed toward Sialpore, who breasted a
high dune half a mile away and took no notice; but that would not prevent
the whole caravansary in the city's midst from knowing what they had
seen, and just how long ago, and headed which way, within ten minutes
after they arrived--as, in fact, exactly happened.

The second party to catch sight of them consisted of four men on camels,
whose rifles, worn military fashion with a sling, betrayed them as
Gungadhura's men. "Desert police" he called them. "Takers of tenths"
was the popular, and much more accurate description. The four gave
chase, for a caravan in a hurry is always likely to pay well for exemption
from delay; and coming nearly at right angles they had all the advantage.
It was crime to refuse to halt for them, for they were semi-military,
uniformed police. Yet their invariable habit of prying into everything
and questioning each member of a caravan would be certain to lead
to discovery. They had a signal station on the hill two miles behind
them, to keep them in touch with other parties, north, south, east and west.
It looked like Yasmini's undoing, for they were gaining two for one
along the shorter course. Tess fingered the pistol her husband had
made her bring, wondering whether Yasmini would dare show fight
(not guessing yet the limitless abundance of her daring), and wondering
whether she herself would dare reply to the fire of authorized policemen.
She did not relish the thought of being an outlaw with a genuine excuse
for her arrest.

But the four police were oversure, and Yasmini too quick-witted for them.
They took a short cut down into a sandy hollow, letting their quarry get
out of sight, plainly intending to wait on rising ground about a thousand
yards ahead, where they could foil attempts to circumvent them and,
for the present, take matters easy.

Instantly Yasmini changed direction, swinging her camel to the right,
down a deep nullah, and leading full pelt at right angles to her real course.
It was ten minutes before the men caught sight of them again, and by
that time they had nearly drawn abreast, well beyond reasonable rifle
range, and were heading back toward their old direction, so that the
police had lost advantage, and a stern chase on slower camels was
their only hope but one. They fired half a dozen shots by way of calling
attention to themselves--then wheeled and raced away toward the
signal station on the hill.

Yasmini held her course for an hour after that, until a spur of the hillside
and another long fold of the desert shut them off from the signaler's view.
There she called a halt, unexpectedly, for the camels did not need it.
She was worried about Tess--the one untested link in her chain of fugitives.

"Can you keep on through all the hot day?" she asked. "These other
women are as lithe as leopards, for I make them dance. They are better
able to endure than cheetahs. But you? Shall I put two women on
one camel, and send you back to Sialpore with two men?"

Tess's back ached and she was dizzy, but her own powers had been
tested many a time; this was not more than double the strain she had
withstood before, and she was aware of strength in reserve, to say
nothing of conviction that what Yasmini's maids could do she herself
would rather perish than fall short of. There is an element of sheer,
pugnacious, unchristian human pride that is said to damn, while it saves
the best of us at times.

"Certainly not! I can carry on all day!" she answered.

Yasmini emitted her golden bell-like laugh that expressed such
immeasurable understanding and delight in all she understands. (It has
overtones that tell of vision beyond the ken of folk who build on mud.)

"The maids shall knead your muscles for you at the other end," she
answered. "Courage is good! You are my sister! You shall see things
that the West knows nothing of! If those thrice-misbegotten Takers
of Tenths had not seen us, we would have reached our goal a little after
midday. As it is, they have certainly signaled to another party of
Gungadhura's spawn somewhere ahead of us, who will be coming
this way with eyes open and a lesson in mind for those who disregard
their comrades' challenge to halt and be looted! When I am maharanee
there shall be a new system of protecting desert roads! But I dare
not try conclusions now. We must take a wide circuit and not reach
our destination until night falls. Are you willing?"

"Ready for anything!" said Tess. "If I weaken, tie me on the camel!"

"Good! So speaks a woman! One woman of spirit is the master of a
dozen men--always.

They all drank sparingly of tepid water, ate a little of the food each had,
and were off again without letting the camels kneel--heading now away
from the hills toward a dazzling waste of silver sand, across which the
eyes lost all sense of perspective, and all power to separate three
objects in a row; a land of mirage and monotony, glittering in places
with the aching white of salt deposits.

The heat increased, but the speed never slackened for an instant. Flies
emerged from everywhere to fasten on to unprotected skin, and the
only relief from them was under the hot cloaks that burned them with
the heat absorbed from sun and wind. But even in that ghastly wilderness
there were other living things. Now and then a lean leopard stole away
from in front of them; and once they saw a man, naked and thinner
than a rake, striding along a ridge on heaven knew what errand. There
were scorpions everywhere.

Hour after hour, guided by desert-instinct that needs no compass, and
ever alert for sky-line watchers, Yasmini and the headman took turns
in giving direction, he yielding to her whenever their judgment differed.
And whether she was right or not in every instance, she brought them
at last to a little desert oasis, where there was brackish water deep
down in a sand-hole, and a great rock offered shadow to rest in.

There they lay until the sun declined far enough to lose a little of his
power to scorch, and the camels bubbled to one another, thirstless,
unwearied, dissatisfied, as the universal way of camels is, kneeling in
a circle, rumps outward, each one resentful of the other's neighborhood
and, above all, disgruntled at man's tyranny.

"By now," laughed Yasmini, smoking one of Tess's cigarettes in the
shadow of the rock, "Gungadhura knows surely that my palace is empty
and the bird has flown. Ten dozen different people will have carried
to him as many accounts of it, and each will have offered different
explanation and advice! I wonder what Jinendra's fat priest has to say
about it! Gungadhura will have sent for him. He would hardly ride to
the priest through the streets, even in a carriage, with that love-token
still raw and smarting with which I marked his face! Two reliable reports
will have reached him already as to which direction I have taken. Yet
the telegraph will have told him that I have not been seen to cross the
border, and he will be wondering--wondering. May he wonder until his
brains whirl round and sicken him!"

"What can he do?" suggested Tess.

"Do? He can be spiteful. He will enter my palace and remove the
furniture, taking my mother's legacies to his own lair--where I shall
recover them all within three weeks--and his own beside! I will be
maharanee within the month!"

"Aren't you a wee bit previous?" suggested Tess.

"Not I! I never boast. My mother taught me that. Or when I do boast
it is to put men off the scent. I boasted once to Samson sahib when
be offered to have me sent to college, telling him I was in the same
school as himself and would learn the quicker. He has wondered ever
since then what I meant. "Krishna!" she laughed impiously. "I wonder
what Samson sahib would not give to have me in his clutches at this
minute! Have I told you that Gungadhura plots with the Northwest tribes,
and that the English know it? No? Didn't I tell you? Samson sahib
would give me almost anything I asked, if he knew that it was I who
told his government of Gungadhura's plots; he would know then that
with my knowledge to guide him he would be more than a match for
Gungadhura, instead of a ball kicked this and that way between
Gungadhura and the English! Sometimes I almost think he would
consent to try to make me maharanee!"

"Why not give him the chance then?"

"For two reasons. The English too often desert their commissioners.
My sure way is better than his blundering attempts! The other reason
is an even better one, and you shall know it soon. I think--I do not know--
I think, and I hope that the fat high priest of Jinendra is playing me false,
and has gone to Samson sahib to make a bargain with him. Samson
sahib will consent to no bargains with that fat fool, if I am any judge of
hucksters; but he will have his ears on end and his eyes sore with over-
watchfulness from now forward! Oh, I hope Jinendra's priest has gone
to him! I tried to stir treachery in his mind by brow-beating him about
the bargain that be tried to force from me!"

"But what are you and the priest and Samson all bargaining about?"
demanded Tess.

"The treasure of Sialpore! But I make no bargains! I, who know where
the treasure is! Why should I offer to share what is mine? I will have
a marriage contract drawn, and you shall be a witness. That treasure
is my dowry. Listen! Bubru Singh my father died without a son--the
first of all that long line who left no son to follow him. The custom was
that he should tell his son, and none else, the secret of the treasure.
He hated Gungadhura; and, not knowing which the English would
choose for his successor, Gungadhura or another man, he told no one,
making only hints to my mother on his death-bed and saying that if I,
his daughter, ever developed brains enough to learn the secret of the
treasure, then I might also have wit enough to win the throne and all
would be well."

"And you discovered it? How did you discover it?"

"Not I."

"Who then?"

"Your husband did!"

"My husband? Dick Blaine? But that can't be true; he never told me;
he tells me everything."

"Perhaps he would have told if he had understood. He hardly understands
yet. Only in part--a little."

"Then how in the world--?"

Yasmini's golden laugh cut short the question as she rose to her feet
with a glance at the westering sun.

"Let us go. Two hours from now we shall cross the border into another
state. Two hours after night-fall our journey is ended. Then the last
game begins--the last chukker--and I win!"

Tess wished then that they had never halted! The rest had given her
muscles time to stiffen, and her nerves the opportunity to learn how
tired they were. As the camels rose jerkily and followed their leader
in line at the same fast pace as before she grew sick with the agony
of aching bones and the utter weariness of motion repeated again and
again without varying or ceasing. Every ligament in her body craved
only stillness, but the camel's unaccustomed thrust and sway continued,
repeated to infinity, until her nerves grew numb and she was hardly
conscious of time, distance, or direction.

Once again there was pursuit, but Tess was hardly conscious of it--
hardly realized that shots were fired--clinging to the saddle in the misery
of a sickness more weakening and deathly than the sort small boats
provide at sea. The sun went down and left her cooler, but not recovered.
She knew nothing of boundaries, or of the changing nature of the country-
side. It meant nothing to her that they were passing great trees now,
and that once they crossed a stream by a wide stone bridge. The only
thought that kept drumming in her mind was that Dick, the ever dependable,
had misinformed her. She had "fetched it up"--a dozen times. True
to his instruction, she had "carried on." But it did not pass! She felt
more sick, more agonized, more weary every minute.

But at last, because there is an end even to the motion of a camel, in
this world of example instances, about two hours after nightfall the
caravan halted in the shadow of great trees beside a stone house with
a wall about it. Her camel knelt with a motion like a landslide, and Tess
fell off forward on the ground and fainted, only snatched away by strong
hands in the nick of time to save her from the camel's teeth. Uncertain,
unforgiving brutes are camels--ungrateful for the toil men put them to.
For an hour after that she was only dimly conscious of being laid on
something soft, and of supple, tireless women's hands that kneaded
her, and kneaded her, taking the weary muscles one by one and coaxing
them back to painlessness.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20