Talbot Mundy

“ King ordered, and the little procession started.
“Oh, men of the 'Hills,' ye look like ghosts--like graveyard ghosts!” jeered Courtenay, as they all filed past him. “Ye look like dead men, going to be judged!”
Nobody answered. They strode behind the horses, with the swift silent strides of men who are going home to the “Hills”; but even they, born in the “Hills”' and knowing them as a wolf-pack knows its hunting-ground, were awed by the gloom of Khyber-mouth ahead. King's voice was the first to break the silence, and he did not speak until Courtenay was out of ear-shot. ”

“ Instantly a hundred men rose from different directions and raced for the arena, each with a curved sword in either hand. The yelling changed back into the chant, only louder than before, and by that much more terrible. Cymbals crashed. The music-box resumed its measured grinding of The Marseillaise. And the hundred began an Afridi sword dance, than which there is nothing wilder in all the world. Its like can only be seen under the shadow of the “Hills.”
Ismail put his hands together and howled through them like a wolf on the war-path, nudging King with an elbow. ”

“ Chapter XI Long slept the Heart o' the Hills, oh, long! (Ye who have watched, ye know!) As sap sleeps in the deodars When winter shrieks and steely stars Blink over frozen snow. Ye haste? The sap stirs now, ye say? Ye feel the pulse of spring? But sap must rise ere buds may break, Or cubs fare forth, or bees awake, Or lean buck spurn the ling!
“Kurram Khan!” the lashless mullah howled, like a lone wolf in the moonlight, and King stood up.
It is one of the laws of Cocker, who wrote the S. S. Code, that a man is alive until he is proved dead, and where there is life there is opportunity. ”

“ Fool--fool--fool not to throw the head to them! Squeamish one! Man like a child! What is the head but earth when the life has left it? What would thy head be without the nimble wit? Fool--fool--fool! And clever! Turned the joke on Muhammad Anim! Turned it on Bull-with-a-beard in a twinkling--in the bat of an eye--in a breath! Turned it against her enemy and raised a laugh against him from his own men! Ready o' wit! Shameless one! Lucky one! Allah was surely good to thee!”
Still exulting, he let go, but none too soon for comfort. King's ribs were sore from his hugging for days. ”

“ The mist turned red. The crystal ball became as it were a ball of fire revolving within itself. The fire turned to blood, and the blood to fire again. The very cavern that they knelt in seemed to sway. Yasmini screamed and moaned. She loosed King's hands to cover her own eyes.
And as she did that King sank, like a sack half-empty and toppled over sidewise on the floor asleep.
He neither dreamed nor was conscious of anything, but slept like a dead man, having fought against her mesmerism harder than he knew.
Statesmen, generals, outlaws, all make their big mistakes and manage to recover. ”

“ The Rangar chuckled softly.
“There are no fools in the world like Englishmen! Listen! You are being offered life and liberty! Here is the key to both!”
He made the gold bracelet ring on the rock by way of explanation.
“Take the key and go!”
“No!” said King.
“Very well, sahib! Hear the other side of it! Beyond those two red lights there is a curtain. This side of that curtain you are Athelstan King of the Khyber Rifles, or Kurram Khan, or whatever you care to call yourself. Beyond it, you are what she calls you! Choose!” ”

“ A great slice of Khinjan suddenly caved in with a roar, and smoke and dust burst upward through the tumbling crust.
There was a pause after that, as if the waiting elements were gathering strength. For ten minutes they watched and scarcely breathed. Rewa Gunga gained the summit and, dismounting, stood by King with the reins over his arm. The mare was too blown to do anything but stand and tremble. And King was too enthralled to do anything but stare.
“That is what a woman can do for a man!” said Rewa Gunga grimly. “She set a fuse and exploded all the dynamite. ”

“ Nay, I will drink no draughts! I am a man, not a cess-pool!”
“And I will study how to heat hot irons!” said Darya Khan, with grim conviction. “It is likely that, having worked for a blacksmith once, I may learn quickly! Phaughghgh! I have tasted physic! I have drunk Apsin Saats! (Epsom Salts.) ”
He spat, too, in a very fury of reminiscence.
“Good!” said King. “Henceforward, then, I am Kurram Khan, the dakitar, and ye two are my assistants, Ismail to hold the men with boils, and Darya Khan to heat the irons--both of ye to be my men and support me with words when need be!” ”

“ Chapter IV Men boast in the Hills, when they ought to pray; For the wind blows lusty, and the blood runs red, And Law lies belly upwards for a man to wreak his fancy on it. Down in the plains, in the dust of the plains Where law is master and a good man ought to boast, They all lie belly downwards praying for their Hills again!
The rear lights of the train he had not taken swayed out of Delhi station and King grinned as he wiped the sweat from his face with a dripping handkerchief. Behind him towered the hook-nosed Ismail, resentful of the unexpected. ”

“ The heat came upward like a furnace blast, and the smoke was a great red cloud among the stalactites. Round and round that holocaust the thousands did their sword-dance, yelling as the devils yelled at Khinjan's birth. They needed no wine to craze them. They were drunk with fanaticism, frenzy, lust!
“The women brought that wood from fifty miles away!” Yasmini shouted in his ear; for the din, mingling with the river's voice, made a volcano chord. “It is a week's supply of wood! But so they are--so they will be! They will lay waste India! They will butcher and plunder and burn! ”

“ He did not even look over the edge of the road, down into the amazing waterfall, nor up to the round disk of sky.
King turned back and looked into the other caves--saw the weary horse and mule fed, watered and bedded down--took note of the running water that rushed out of a rock fissure and gurgled out of sight down another one--examined the servants' cave and saw that they had been amply provided with blankets. There was nothing lacking that the most exacting traveler could have demanded at such a distance from civilization. ”

“ King, with the movement of determination that a man makes when about to force conclusions, drew up his sleeves above the wrist. At that instant the moon shone through the mist and the gold bracelet glittered in the moonlight.
“May God be with thee!” said “Lord of the Rivers” at once. And without another word he laid down his rifle and went to help off-load the mules.
King stepped aside and cursed softly. To a man who knows how to enforce his own authority, it is worse than galling to be obeyed because he wears a woman's favor. ”

“ The guards lolled insolently, conscious of brute strength and special favor. When any man trespassed with so much as a toe beyond the ring of lamps, a guard would slap his rifle-butt until the swivels rattled and the offender would scurry into bounds amid the jeers of any who had seen.
Shoving, kicking and elbowing with set purpose, Ismail forced a way through the already seated crowd, and drew King down into the cramped space beside him, close enough to the arena to be able to catch the guards' low laughter. ”

“ King accepted a cigarette for politeness' sake and took occasion to admire the man's slender wrist, that was doubtless hard and strong as woven steel, but was not much more than half the thickness of his own.
The Rajputs as a race are proud of their wrists and hands. Their swords are made with a hilt so small that none save a Rajput of the blood could possibly use one; yet there is no race in all warring India, nor any in the world, that bears a finer record for hard fighting and sheer derring-do. ”

“ And I know where the Sleeper dug his gold!”
They sat in silence for a long while after that, she looking at the table, with its ink and pens and paper, and he thinking, with hands clasped round one knee; for it is wiser to think than to talk, even when a woman is near who can read thoughts that are not guarded.
“Most disillusionments come simply,” King said at last. “D'you know, Princess, what has kept the sirkar from really believing in Khinjan Caves?”
She shook her head. “The gods!” she said. “The gods can blindfold governments and whole peoples as easily as they can make us see!” ”

“ The East forgets nothing. The West ignores. But there are men from the West who are willing to look and to listen and to try to understand; like King, they go high in the Service. There are others who look on at the magic with an understanding eye and are caught by it. Their end is not good to contemplate. The East is fettered in her own mesmeric spell and must suffer until she wakes.
Yasmini held the upright column of the ivory stand with both hands, close under the disk at the top. ”

“ We be blind men--blind we be--blind--blind! Oh, pity us! Is any kismet worse than ours? Oh, show us to the hakim! Show us the way to him! Lead us to him! Oh, the famous, great, good hakim who can heal men's eyes!”
The mullah looked down on them like a vulture waiting to see them die, and seeing they did not die, turned his back and went into his cave. Close to the ramp they stopped, and the front man, cocking his head to one side as only birds and the newly blind do, gave voice again in nasal singsong.
“Will none tell me where is the great, good, wise hakim Kurram Khan?” ”

“ The Khyber, fouled by memory, looks like the very birthplace of the ghosts when the moon is fitful and a mist begins to flow.
“Cheloh!” King called merrily enough; but his horse shied at nothing, because horses have an uncanny way of knowing how their riders really feel. They led mules and the spare horse, instead of dragging at their bridles, pressed forward to have their heads among the men, and every once and again there would sound the dull thump of a fist on a beast's nose--such being the attitude of men toward the lesser beasts. ”

“ Then for thirty minutes he led swiftly down a crazy devil's stairway of uneven boulders, stopping to lend a hand at the worst places, but everlastingly urging him to hurry. They were both breathless, and King was bruised in a dozen places when they reached level going at least six or seven hundred feet below the cave from which they started.
Then the hell-mouth gloom began to grow faintly luminous, and the waterfall's thunder burst on their ears from close at hand. They emerged into fresh wet air and a sea of sound, on a rock ledge like the one above. Ismail raised the torch and waved it. ”

“ And as they neared Jamrud Fort the men who sought pardons began to grow sheepish. They began to remember that the hakim might after all be a trickster, and to realize how much too friendly--how almost intimate he had been with the sahibs at Ali Masjid. They began to cluster round him instead of letting him lead, and by the time they met the farthest outposts up the Khyber they were as nervous as raw recruits and ready to turn and bolt at a word--for no one can be more timid than your Hillman when he is not sure of himself, just as no one can be braver when he knows his ground. ”

“ All at once Ismail's manner became unencouraging. He ceased to make a fuss over the dancer and began to eye King sidewise, until at last he seemed unable to contain the malice that would well forth.
“At the gate there were only words!” he whispered. “Here in this cavern men wait for proof!”
He licked his teeth suggestively, as a wolf does when he contemplates a meal. Then, as an afterthought, as though ashamed, “I love thee! Thou art a man after my own heart! But I am her man! ”

“ The spectators were set surging by the showers of stone splinters, that hurt whom they struck, and their snarl was like a wolf-pack's when a tiger interferes. But the guards thought it all a prodigious joke and the more the crowd swore the more they laughed.
Panting--foaming at the mouth, some of them--the dancers ran to their seats and set the crowd surging again, leaving the arena empty of all but the guards. The man whose seat Ismail had taken came staggering, slippery with sweat, and squeezed himself where he belonged, forcing King into the Pathan's empty place. ”

“ There was nothing there calculated to set an Englishman at ease. In spite of the Rangar's casual manner, Yasmini's reception room felt like the antechamber to another world, where mystery is atmosphere and ordinary air to breathe is not at all. He could sense hushed expectancy on every side--could feel the eyes of many women fixed on him--and began to draw on his guard as a fighting man draws on armor. There and then he deliberately set himself to resist mesmerism, which is the East's chief weapon. ”

“ But the one-eyed guide who had led them to the mosque thrust himself between Darya Khan and Ismail, pushed King aside and took the lead.
“Nay!” he said, “I am responsible to her.”
It was the first time he had spoken and he appeared to resent the waste of words.
The tunnel that led to the left was pierced in twenty places in the roof for rifle-fire; a score of men with enough ammunition could have held it forever against an army. But the right-hand way looked undefended. Nevertheless, the guide led to the left, and King followed him, filled with curiosity. ”

“ King would have liked to tear his eyes away from the scenes that followed in the tree-lined streets, but the crystal ball held him as if in a trance--that and Yasmini's hands that clasped his own like hot torture chamber clamps. Animals fighting to the death are not so vile, nor so inhuman as men can be in the hour of what they call victory. ”

“ I was in Delhi when you were! I watched and listened while you and Rewa Gunga talked in my house! I was in Rewa Gunga's carriage on the train that he took and you did not! I have learned at first hand that you are not a fool. But that was not enough! You had to be three things--clever and brave and one other. The one other you are! Brave you have proved yourself to be! Clever you must be, to trick your way into Khinjan Caves, even with Ismail at your elbow! ”

“ The flood that was draining India of her armed men had left Jamrud high and dry with a little nondescript force stranded there, as it were, under a British major and some native officers. There were no more pomp and circumstance; no more of the reassuring thunder of gathering regiments, nor for that matter any more of that unarmed native helplessness that so stiffens the backs of the official English.
Frowning over Jamrud were the lean “Hills,” peopled by the fiercest fighting men on earth, and the clouds that hung over the Khyber's course were an accent to the savagery. ”

“ King trotted after him, afraid too, to look to right or left, lest the fear should make him throw himself over the brink. The thunder and the hugeness had their grip on him and had begun to numb his power to think and his will to be a man. Suddenly when they had run a hundred yards, Ismail turned sharp to the right into a tunnel that led straight back into the cliff and sloped uphill. As the din of the falls grew less behind him and his power to think returned, King calculated that they must be following the main direction of the river bed, but edging away gradually to the right of it. ”

“ Life is as simple as all that.--Cocker
Delhi boasts a round half-dozen railway stations, all of them designed with regard to war, so that to King there was nothing unexpected in the fact that the train had brought him to an unexpected station. He plunged into its crowd much as a man in the mood might plunge into a whirlpool,--laughing as he plunged, for it was the most intoxicating splurge of color, din and smell that even India, the many-peopled--even Delhi, mother of dynasties--ever had evolved. ”

“ Itching to ask more questions, King sat still and held his peace. The direr the need of information in the “Hills,” and in all the East for that matter, the greater the wisdom, as a rule, of seeming uninquisitive. And wisdom was rewarded now, for the Pathan, who would have dried up under eager questioning, grew talkative. Civility and volubility are sometimes one, and not always only among the civilized. King--the hakim Kurram Khan--blinked mildly behind his spectacles and looked like one to whom a savage might safely ease his mind. ”

“ No honest man knows that road! Lead on, Darya Khan, thou Lord of Rivers! Do thy duty as badragga and beware lest we get our knees wet at the fords! Ismail, you march next. Now I. You other two and the mule follow me. Let the man with the belly ache ride last on the other horse. So! Forward march!”
So Darya Khan led the way with his rifle, and King's face glowed in cigarette light not very far behind him as he legged his horse up the narrow track that led northward out of the Khyber bed. ”

“ No man with half an eye for a horse could have failed to recognize that black mare, having ever seen her once. She came like a goat among the rocks, just as she had once dived into darkness in the Khyber with King following. In another two minutes King had recognized the Rangar's silken turban. And now there was no need to restrain the men; they all stood and watched, to know what new turn affairs were taking.
Most of them were staring downward at the Rangar's head as he urged the mare up the cliff path, when the explanation of Yasmini's message came. ”

“ Ismail seized the leather bag and started to obey.
“Leave that bag. Leave it, I say!”
“But some man may steal it, sahib. How shall a thief know there is no money in it?”
“Leave it and go!”
Ismail departed, grumbling, and King turned on Darya Khan.
“Take the remaining man, and go up the Pass!” he ordered. “Stand out of ear-shot and keep watch. Come when I whistle!”
“But this one has a belly ache where Ismail smote him! Can a man with a belly ache stand guard? His moaning will betray both him and me!” ”