Caste Part 10

Then suddenly the pressure on his throat ceased, it fell away; the air rushed to the parched lungs. With a wrench his brain cleared, and he went down; but now with power in his arms, the arms that still clung about the dazed Hunsa, and he was on top.

Scarce aware of the action, out of a fighting instinct, he dragged from its holster his heavy pistol, and beat with its b.u.t.t the ugly head beneath, beat it till it was still. Then he staggered to his feet and looked wonderingly at the form of the Bagree behind who lay sprawled on the road, a great red splash across the white jacket on his breast.

In the Gulab's hand was still clutched the dagger she had drawn from her girdle and driven home to save the sahib who had sat like a G.o.d in her heart. With the other hand she held out from contact with her limbs the muslin _sari_ that was crimsoned where the blood of the Bagree had fountained when she drew forth her knife.

Barlow darted forward as Bootea reeled and caught her with an arm.

Close, the face, fair as that of a memsahib in the pallor of fright and the paling moonlight, sweet, of finer mould, more spiritual than the Mona Lisa's, puritanically simple, the ma.s.s of black hair drawn straight back from the low broad brow--for the rich turban had fallen in her fight for freedom--woke memory in the sahib; and as the blood ebbed back through the girl's veins, the pale cheeks flushed with rose, her eyelids quivered and drew back their shutters from eyes that were like those of an antelope.

"You--you, Gulab, the giver of the red rose, the singer of the love song!" Barlow gasped.

"Yes, Captain Sahib, you who are like a G.o.d--" Bootea checked, her head drooped.

But Barlow putting his fingers under her chin and gently lifting the face asked, "And what--what?"

"You came like one in a dream. Also, Sahib, I am but one who danced before you and you have saved me."

"And, little girl, you saved my life."

He felt a shudder run through the girl's form, and then she pushed him from her crying, "Sahib--Hunsa! Quick!"

For the jamadar, recovering his senses, had risen to his knees fumbling at his belt groggily for his knife.

Barlow swung the pistol from its holster and rushed toward Hunsa, but the latter, at sight of the dreaded weapon, fled, pursued for a few paces by the Captain.

The girl saw the sandal soles lying upon the ground where Hunsa had dropped them in the struggle, and slipped them beneath her breast-belt, a quick thought coming to her that if the Captain saw them he might recognise them as the footwear of the soldiers. Also Hunsa had said they were for a purpose.

Barlow followed the fleeing shadow for a dozen strides, then his pistol barked, and swinging on his heel he came back, saying, with a little laugh, "That was just to frighten the beggar so he wouldn't come back."

But Bootea's eyes went wide now with a new fear; the sound of the shot would travel faster even than the fleeing Hunsa: and if the decoits came--for already they would be making ready for the road--this beautiful G.o.d, with eyes like stars and a voice of music, would be killed, would be no more than the Bagree lying on the road who was but carrion. In her heart was a new thing. The struggle with Hunsa, the fright, even the horribleness of the blood upon her knife, was washed away by a hot surging flood of exquisite happiness. The Hindu name for love--"a pain in the heart"--was veritably hers in its intensity; the sahib's arm about her when she had closed her eyes had caused her to feel as if she were being lifted to heaven.

She laid a hand on Barlow's arm and her eyes were lifted pleadingly to his: "You must go, Sahib--mount your horse and go, because--"

"Because of what?"

"There are many, and you will be killed. Hunsa will bring others."

"Others--who are they?"

But the Gulab had turned from him and was listening, her eyes turned to the road up which floated from beyond upon the hushed silence that was about them,--that seemed deeper because of the dead man lying in the moonlight,--the beat of Hunsa's feet on the road. Once there was the whining note of wheels that claimed a protest from a dry axle; once there was a clang as if steel had struck steel; and on the droning through the night-hush was a rasping hum as if voices clamoured in the distance. This was the bee-hive stirring of the startled village.

"What is it, Bootea?" Barlow asked.

The eyes raised to his face were full of fright, a pleading fright.

"Sahib," she answered, "do not ask--just go, because--"

"Yes, girl, why?"

"That this is dead (and her hand gestured toward the slain Bagree) and that others are dead, is; but you,--will you mount the horse and go back the way you came, Sahib?"

Her small fingers clutched the sleeve of the coat he wore--it was of hunting cloth, red-and-green: "Others are dead yonder, and evil is in the hearts of those that live. Go, Sahib--please go."

Barlow's mind was racing fast, in more materialistic grooves than the Gulab's. There was something about it he didn't understand; something the girl did not want to tell him; some horrible thing that she was afraid of--her face was full of suppressed dread.

Suddenly, through no sequence of reasoning, in fact there was no data to go upon, nothing except that a girl--the Gulab was just that--stood there afraid--through him she had just escaped from a man who was little more than an ape--stood quivering in the moonlight alone, except for himself. So, suddenly, he acted as if energised by logic, as if mental deduction made plain the way.

"You are right," he said: "we must go."

He laid a hand upon the bridle-rein of the grey, that had stood there with the submission of a cavalry horse, saying, "Come, Bootea."

Foot in stirrup he swung to the saddle; and as the grey turned, he reached down both hands saying: "Come, I'll take you wherever you want to go."

But the girl drew back and shook her beautifully-modelled head,--the delicate head with the black hair smoothed back to simplicity, and her voice was half sob: "It can't be, Sahib, I am but--" She checked; to speak of the decoits even, might lead to talk that would cause the Sahib to go to their camp, and he would be killed; and she would be a witness to testify against her own people, the slayers of the sepoys.

Barlow laughed, "Because you are a girl who dances you are not to be saved, eh?" he said. "But listen, the Sahibs do not leave women at the mercy of villains; you must come," and his strong sun-browned hands were held out.

Bootea, wonderingly, as if some G.o.d had called to her, put her hands in Barlow's, and with a twist of his strong arms she was swung across his knees.

"Put your arms about my waist, Gulab," he said, as the grey, to the tickle of a spur, turned to the road. "Don't lean away from me," he said, presently, "because we have a long way to go and that tires.

That's better, girl," as her warm breast pressed against his body.

The big grey, with a deep breath, and a sniffle of satisfaction, scenting that his head was turned homeward, paced along the ghost-strip of roadway in long free strides. Even when a jackal, or it might have been a honey-badger, slipped across the road in front, a drifting shadow, the Turcoman only rattled the snaffle-bit in his teeth, c.o.c.ked his ears, and then blew a breath of disdain from his big nostrils.

In the easy swinging cradle of the horse's smooth stride the minds of both Barlow and the Gulab relaxed into restfulness; her arms about the strong body, Bootea felt as if she clung to a tower of strength--that she was part of a magnetic power; and the nightmare that had been, so short a time since, had floated into a dream of content, of glorious peace.

Barlow was troubling over the problem of the gorilla-faced man, and thinking how close he had been to death--all but gone out except for that figure in his arms that was so like a lotus; and the death would have meant not just the forfeit of his life, but that his duty, the mission he was upon for his own people, the British government, had been jeopardised by his partic.i.p.ation in some native affair of strife, something he had nothing to do with. He had ridden along that road hoping to overtake the two riders that now lay dead in the pit with the other victims of the thugs--of which he knew nothing. They were bearing to him a secret message from his government, and he had ridden to Manabad to there take it from them lest in approaching the city of the Peshwa, full of seditious spies and cutthroats, the paper might be stolen. But at Manabad he had learned that the two had pa.s.sed, had ridden on; and then, perhaps because of converging different roads, he had missed them.

But most extraordinarily, just one of the curious, tangented ways of Fate, the written order lay against his chest sewn between the double sole of a sandal. Once or twice the hard leather caused him to turn slightly the girl's body, and he thought it some case in which she carried jewels.

CHAPTER X

They had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile when the road they followed joined another, joined in an arrowhead. The grey turned to the left, to the west, the homing instinct telling him that that way lay his stall in the city of the Peshwa.

"This was the way of my journey, Bootea," Barlow said; "I rode from yonder," and he nodded back toward the highway into which the two roads wedged. "It was here that I heard your call, the call of a woman in dread. Also it might have been a business that interested me if it were a matter of waylaying travellers. Did you see two riders of large horses, such as Arabs or of the breed I ride, men who rode as do _sowars_?"

"No, Sahib, I did not see them."

This was not a lie for it was Ajeet who had seen them, and because of the Sahib's interest she knew the two men must have been of his command; and if she spoke of them undoubtedly he would go back and be killed.

"Were they servants of yours, Sahib--these men who rode?"

Barlow gave off but a little sliver of truth: "No," he answered; "but at Manabad men spoke of them pa.s.sing this way, journeying to Poona, and if they were strangers to this district, it might be that they had taken the wrong road at the fork. But if you did not see them they will be ahead."

"And meaning, Sahib, it would not be right if they saw you bearing on your horse one who is not a memsahib?"

"As to that, Gulab, what might be thought by men of low rank is of no consequence."