Rung Ho! A Novel, Talbot Mundy [free ebook reader for ipad .txt] 📗

“Slay, then!”

“Up now, and slay!”

There would be an instant, eager restlessness, while Ali Partab would glance over to where the horses stood, and would wonder why the word that loosed him was so long in coming. The hadji would calm his listeners and tell them to get ready, but be still and await the sign.

“There were to be one hundred years, ran the prophecy; but ninety-nine and a portion have yet run. Wait for the hour!”

Then, for perhaps the hundredth time, Ali Partab would pretend that movement alone could save one or other of his horses from heat apoplexy. He would mount, and ride at a walking pace through the streets that seemed like a night view of a stricken battle-field, turn down by the palace wall, and then canter to the schoolhouse, where the hag—wiser than her mistress—would be sleeping in the open.

“Thou! Mother of a murrain! Toothless one! Is there no word yet?”

The hag would leer up through the heavy darkness—make certain that he had no lance with him with which to prod her in the ribs—scratch herself a time or two like a stray dog half awakened—and then leer knowingly.

“Hast thou the gold mohurs?” she would demand.

“Am I a sieve?”

“Let my old eyes see them, sahib.”

He would take out two gold coins and hold them out in such a way that she could look at them without the opportunity to snatch.

“There is no word yet,” she would answer, when her eyes had feasted on them as long as his patience would allow.

“Have they no fear then?”

“None. Only madness!”

“See that they bite thee not! Keep thy wits with thee, and be ready to bring me word in time, else—”

“Patience, sahib! Show me the coins again—one little look—again once!”

But Ali Partab would wheel and ride away, leaving her to mumble and gibber in the road and curl again on to her blanket in the blackest corner by the door.

Once, on an expedition of that kind, he encountered Duncan McClean himself. The lean, tall Scotsman, gray-headed from the cares he had taken on himself, a little bowed from heat and hopelessness, but showing no least symptom of surrender in the kind, strong lines of a rugged face, stood, eyes upward, in the moonlight. The moon, at least, looked cool. It was at the full, like a disk of silver, and he seemed to drink in the beams that bathed him.

“Does he worship it?” wondered Ali Partab, reining from an amble to a walk and watching half-reverently. The followers of Mohammed are most superstitious about the moon. The feeling that he had for this man of peace who could so gaze up at it was something very like respect, and, with the twenty-second sense that soldiers have, he knew, without a word spoken or a deed seen done, that this would be a wielder of cold steel to be reckoned should he ever slough the robes of peace and take it into his silvered head to fight. The Rajput, that respects decision above all other virtues, perhaps because it is the one that he most lacks, could sense firm, unshakable, quick-seized determination on the instant.

Duncan McClean acknowledged the fierce-seeming stare with a salute, and Ali Partab dismounted instantly. He who holds a trust from such as Mahommed Gunga is polite in recognition of the trust. He leaned, then, against the horse's withers, wondering how far he ought to let politeness go and whether his honor bade him show contempt for the Christian's creed.

“Is there any way, I wonder,” asked the Scotsman, the clean-clipped suspicion of Scots dialect betraying itself even through the Hindustanee that he used, “of getting letters through to some small station?”

“I know not,” said the Rajput.

“You are a Mohammedan?” The Scotsman peered at him, adjusting his viewpoint to the moon's rays. “I see you are. A Rajput, too, I think.”

“Ha, sahib.”

“There was a Rangar here not very long ago.” This man evidently knew the proper title to give a he true believer of the proudest race there is. Ali Partab's heart began to go out to him—“an officer, I think, once of the Rajput Horse, who very kindly carried letters for me. Perhaps you know of some other gentleman of your race about to travel northward? He could earn, at least, gratitude.”

“So-ho!” thought Ali Partab to himself. “I have known men of his race who would have offered money, to be spat on!—Not now, sahib,” he answered aloud.

“Mahommed Gunga was the officer's name. Do you know him, or know of him, by any chance?”

“Ha, sahib, I know him well. It is an honor.”

The Scotsman smiled. “He must be very far away by this time. How many are there, I wonder, in India who have such things said of them when their backs are turned?”

“More than a few, sahib! I would draw steel for the good name of more than a hundred men whom I know, and there be many others!”

“Men of your own race?”

“And yours, sahib.”

There was no bombast in the man's voice; it was said good-naturedly, as a man might say, “There are some friends to whom I would lend money.” No man with any insight could mistake the truth that underlay the boast. The Scotsman bowed.

“I am glad, indeed, to have met you. Will you sit down a little while?”

“Nay, sahib. The hour is late. I was but keeping the blood moving in this horse of mine.”

“Well, tell me, since you won't stay, have you any notion who the man was whom Mahommed Gunga sent to get my letters? My daughter handed them to him one evening, late, at this door.”

“I am he, sahib.”

“Then—I understood—perhaps I was mistaken—I thought it was his man who came?”

“Praised be Allah, I am his man, sahib!”

“Oh! I wonder whether my servants praise God for the privilege!” McClean made the remark only half-aloud and in English. Ali Partab could not have understood the words, but he may have caught their meaning, for he glanced sideways at the old hag mumbling in the shadow and grinned into his beard. “Are you in communication with him? Could you get a letter to him?”

“I have no slightest notion where he is, sahib.”

“If my letters could once reach him, wherever he might be, I would feel confident of their arriving at their destination.”

“I, too, sahib!”