Guns of the Gods: A Story of Yasmini's Youth, Talbot Mundy [book club books .TXT] 📗

fissure in the rock. One of Dick Blaine's crow-bars that he had left in the tunnel lay beside it.

"He must have found that by tapping," said Tom Tripe.

"Yes, but look why he wanted it!" Yasmini answered. "Tom, could you be as malicious as that?"

"As what, Your Ladyship?"

"See, he has poured gold into the fissure, hoping to close it up again so that nobody could find it!"

"But why didn't he work his way out with the crow-bar?" Dick objected from his perch between the bags of bullion.

"What was his life worth to him outside?" Yasmini asked. "Samson knew who murdered Mukhum Dass. He would have been a prisoner for the rest of his life to all intents and purposes. No! He preferred to hide the treasure again, and then wait here for me, suspecting that I knew where it is and would come for it! Only we came too soon, before he had it hidden!"

But it was Patali afterward, between boasting and confession, who explained that Dick was Gungadhura's real objective after all. He preferred vengeance on the American even to a settled account with Yasmini. He must have found the treasure by accident after crawling into the unsealed crack in the wall to wait there against Dick's coming.

"The money must stay here, and be removed little by little," said Utirupa.

"First of all Blaine sahib's share of it!" Yasmini added. "Who shall count it? Who!"

"Never mind the money now," Tess answered. "Dick's alive! When did you first know you'd found the treasure, Dick?"

"Not until the day that Gungadhura found me closing up the fault, and asked me to dig at the other place. The princess told me I was on the trail of it that night that you went with her by camel; but I didn't know I'd found it till the day that Gungadhura came."

"How did you know where it was?" Tess asked, and Yasmini laughed.

"A hundred guarded it. I looked for a hundred pipal trees, and found them—near the River Palace. But they were not changed once a month. I looked from there, and saw another hundred pipal trees—here, below this fort—exactly a hundred. But neither were they changed once a month. Then I counted the garrison of the fort—exactly a hundred, all told. Then I knew. Then I remembered that 'who looks for gold finds gold,' and saw your husband digging for it. It seemed to me that the vein of gold he was following should lead to the treasure, so I pulled strings until Samson blundered, trying to trick us. And now we have the treasure, and the English do not know. And I am maharanee, as they do know, and shall know still better before I have finished! But what are we to do with Gungadhura's body? It shall not lie here to rot; it must have a decent burial."

Very late that night, Tom Tripe moved the guards about on the bastions, contriving that the road below should not be overlooked by any one. The moon had gone down, so that it was difficult to see ten paces. He produced an ekka from somewhere—one of those two-wheeled carts drawn by one insignificant pony that do most of the unpretentious work of India; and he and Ismail, the Afridi gateman, drove off into the darkness with a covered load.

Early next morning Gungadhura's body was found in the great hole that Samson's men had blasted in the River Palace grounds, and it was supposed that a jackal had mangled his body after death.

(That was what gave rise to the story that the English got the treasure after all, and that Gungadhura, enraged and mortified at finding it gone, had committed suicide in the great hole it was taken from. They call the great dead pipal tree that is the only one left now of the hundred, Gungadhura's gibbet; and there is quite a number, even of English people, who believe that the Indian Government got the money. But I say no, because Yasmini told me otherwise. And if it were true that t he English really got the money, what did they do with it and why was Samson removed shortly afterward to a much less desirable post? Any one could see how Utirupa prospered, and he never raised the taxes half a mill.

Samson had his very shrewd suspicions, one of which was that that damned American with his smart little wife had scored off him in some way. But he went to his new post, at about the same time that the Blaines left for other parts, with some of the sting removed from his hurt feelings. For he took Blaine's rifle with him—a good one; and the horse and dog-cart, and a riding pony—more than a liberal return for payment of a three- thousand rupee bet. Pretty decent of Blaine on the whole, he thought. No fuss. No argument. Simply a short note of farewell, and a request that he would "find the horses a home and a use for the other things." Not bad. Not a bad fellow after all.

Chapter Twenty-Five

L'envoi

Down rings the curtain on a tale of love and mystery,
Clash of guile and anger and the consequence it bore;
The adventurers and kings
Disappear into the wings.
The puppet play is over and the pieces go in store.

Back, get ye back again to shop and ship and factory,
Mine and mill and foundry where the iron yokes are made;
Ye have trod a distant track
With a queen on camel-back,
Now hie and hew a broadway for your emperors of trade!

Go, get ye gone again to streets of strife reechoing -
Clangor of the crossings where the tides of trouble meet;
For a while on fancy's wing
Ye have heard the nautch-girls sing,
But a Great White Way awaits you where the Klax-on-horns repeat.

Back, bend the back again to commonplace and drudgery,
Beat the shares of vision into swords of dull routine,
Take the trolley and the train
To suburban hives again,
For ye wake in little runnels where the floods of thought have been.

Speed, noise, efficiency! Have flights of fancy rested you?
A while we set time's finger back, and was the labor vain?
If so we whiled your leisure
And the puppets gave you pleasure,
Then say the word, good people, and we'll set the stage again.

And that is the whole story

Smoking a cigarette lazily on Utirupa's palace roof, Yasmini reached for Tess's hand.

"Come nearer. See—take this. It is the value, and more, of the percentage of the silver that your husband would not take."

She clasped a diamond necklace around Tess's neck, and watched it gleam and sparkle in the refracted sunlight.

"Don't you love it? Aren't they perfect? And now—you've a great big draft of money, so I suppose you're both off to America, and good-by to me forever?"

"For a long time."

"But why such a long time? You must come again soon. Come next year. You and I love each other. You teach me things I did not know, and you never irritate me. I love you. You must come back next year!"

Tess shook her head.

"But why?"

"They say the climate isn't good for them until they're eighteen at least— some say twenty."

"Oh! Oh, I envy you! What will you call him? It will be a boy—it is sure to be a boy!"

"Richard will be one name, after my husband."

"And the other? You must name him after me in some way. You can not call a boy Yasmini. Would Utirupa sound too strange in America?"

"Rupert would sound better."

"Good! He shall be Rupert, and I will send a gift to him!"

(That accounts for the initials R. R. B. on a certain young man's trunk at Yale, and for the imported pedigree horse he rides during vacation— the third one, by the way, of a succession he has received from India.)

And that is the whole story, as Yasmini told it to me in the wonderful old palace at Buhl, years afterward, when Utirupa was dead, and the English Government had sent her into forced seclusion for a while—to repent of her manifold political sins, as they thought—and to start new enterprises as it happened. She had not seen Theresa Blaine again, she told me, although they always corresponded; and she assured me over and over again, calling the painted figures of the old gods on the walls to witness, that but for Theresa Blaine's companionship and affection at the right moment, she would never have had the courage to do what she did, even though the guns of the gods were there to help her.

The End