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

RALPH CUNNINGHAM reached Peshawur at last with no less than nine tigers to his gun, and that in itself would have been sufficient to damn him in the eyes of more than half of the men who held commands there. Jealousy in those days of slow promotion and intrenched influence had eaten into the very understanding of men whose only excuse for rule over a conquered people ought to have been understanding.

It was not considered decent for a boy of twenty-one to do much more than dare to be alive. For any man at all to offer advice or information to his senior was rank presumption. Criticism was high treason. Sport, such as tiger-shooting, was for those whose age and apoplectic temper rendered them least fitted for it. Conservatism reigned: “High Toryism, sir, old port, and proud Prerogative!”

Mahommed Gunga grinned into his beard at the reception that awaited the youngster whom he had trained for months now in the belief that India had nothing much to do except reverence him. He laughed aloud, when he could get away to do it, at the flush of indignation on his protege's face. Tall, lean-limbed, full of health and spirits, he had paid his duty call on a General of Division; with the boyish enthusiasm that says so plainly, “Laugh with me, for the world is mine!” he had boasted his good luck on the road, only to be snubbed thoroughly and told that tiger-shooting was not what he came for.

He took the snub like a man and made no complaint to anybody; he did not even mention it to the other subalterns, who, most of them, made no secret of their dissatisfaction and its hundred causes. He listened, and it was not very long before it dawned on him that, had not Mahommed Gunga gone with him to pay a call as well, the General Division would not have so much as interviewed him.

Mahommed Gunga soon became the bane of his existence. The veteran seemed in no hurry to go back to his estate that must have been in serious need of management by this time, but would ride off on mysterious errands and return with a dozen or more black-bearded horsemen each time. He would introduce them to Cunningham in public whenever possible under the eyes of outraged seniors who would swear and, fume and ride away disgust at the reverence paid to “a mere boy, sir—a bally, ignorant young jackanapes!”

Had Cunningham been other than a born soldier with his soldier senses all on edge and sleepless, he would have fallen foul of disgrace within a month. He was unattached as yet, and that fact gave opportunity to the men who looked for it to try to “take the conceit out of the cub, by gad.”

“They “—everybody spoke of them as “they”—conceived the brilliant idea of confronting the youngster with conditions which he lacked experience to cope with. They set him to deal with circumstances which had long ago proved too difficult for themselves, and awaited confidently the outcome—the crass mistake, or oversight, or mere misfortune that, with the aid of a possible court martial, would reduce him to a proper state of humbleness.

Peshawur, the greatest garrison in northern India, was there on sufferance, apparently. For lack of energetic men in authority to deal with them, the border robbers plundered while the troops remained cooped up within the unhealthiest station on the list. The government itself, with several thousand troops to back it up, was paying blackmail to the border thieves! There was not a government bungalow in all Peshawur that did not have its “watchman,” hired from over the border, well paid to sleep on the veranda lest his friends should come and take tribute in an even more unseemly manner.

The younger men, whose sense of fitness had not yet been rotted by climate and system and prerogative, swore at the condition; there were one or two men higher up, destined to make history, whose voices, raised in emphatic protest, were drowned in the drone of “Peace! Peace is the thing to work for. Compromise, consideration, courtesy, these three are the keys of rule.” They failed to realize that cowardice was their real keynote, and that the threefold method that they vaunted was quite useless without a stiffening of courage.

So brave men, who had more courtesy in each of their fingers than most of the seniors had all put together, had to bow to a scandalous condition that made England's rule a laughing-stock within a stone's throw of the city limits. And they had to submit to the indecency of seeing a new, inexperienced arrival picked for the task of commanding a body of irregulars, for no other reason than because it was considered wise to make an exhibition of him.

Cunningham became half policeman, half soldier, in charge of a small special force of mounted men engaged for the purpose of patrol. He had nothing to do with the selection of them; that business was attended to perfunctorily by a man very high up in departmental service, who considered Cunningham a nuisance. He was a gentleman who did not know Mahommed Gunga; another thing he did not know was the comfortable feel of work well done; so he was more than pleased when Mahommed Gunga dropped in from nowhere in particular—paid him scandalously untrue compliments without a blush or a smile and offered to produce the required number of men at once.

Only fifty were required. Mahommed Gunga brought three hundred to select from, and, when asked to do so in order to save time and trouble, picked out the fifty best.

“There are your men!” said the Personage off-handedly, when they had been sworn in in a group. “Be good enough to remember, Mr. Cunningham, that you are now responsible for their behavior, and for the proper night patrolling of the city limits.”

That was a tall order, and in spite of all of youth's enthusiasm was enough to make any young fellow nervous. But Mahommed Gunga met him in the street, saluted him with almost