King--of the Khyber Rifles Part 57

While the Rangar spoke there came three more earth tremors in swift succession, and a thunder out of Khinjan as if the very "Hills" were coming to an end. The mare grew frantic and the Rangar summoned six men to hold her.

Suddenly, right over the top of Khinjan's upper rim, where only the eagles ever perched, there burst a column of water, immeasurable, huge, that for a moment blotted out the sun. It rose sheer upward, curved on itself, and fell in a million-ton deluge on to Khinjan and into Khinjan valley, hissing and roaring and thundering.

Earth's Drink had been blocked by the explosion and had found a new way over the barrier before plunging down again into the bowels of the world. The one sky-flung leap it made as its weight burst down a mountain wall was enough to blot out Khinjan forever, and what had been a dry mile-wide moat was a shallow lake with death's rack and rubbish floating on the surface.

The earth rocked. The Hillmen prayed, and King stared, trying to memorize all that had been. Suddenly it flashed across his mind that the Rangar who had striven like a fiend to stab him only a matter of hours ago was now standing behind him, within a yard.

He was up on his feet in a second and faced about. The Rangar laughed.

"So ends the 'Heart of the Hills!'" he said. "Think kindly of her, sahib. She thought well enough of you!"

He laughed again and sprang on the black mare, and before King could speak or raise a hand to stop him he was off, h.e.l.l-bent-for-leather along the precipice in the direction of the Khyber Pa.s.s and India. Two of the men who had come out of Khinjan mounted and spurred after him.

King collected his men and the women and children. It was easy, for they were numb from what they had witnessed and dazed by fear. In half an hour he had them mustered and marching.

"Let us go back and loot the mullah's camp and take the women!" urged a dozen men at least.

"Go then!" said King. "Go back! But I go on!"

"He is afraid! The hakim is afraid of what he saw!"

King let them think so. He let them think anything they chose, knowing well that what had unnerved him had at least rendered them amenable to leading. They would have no more dared go back without him, and without at least a hundred others, than they would have dared go and hunt in the ruins of Khinjan.

Even Ismail clang to his stirrup and would not leave him, looking like a fledgling with his beard all new-sprouted on his jaw, and eyes wider than any bird's.

"Why art thou here?" King asked him. "Had she no true men who would die with her?"

The Afridi scowled, but choked the answer back.

"Art thou my man now?" King asked him. But he shook his head.

So they marched without talking over the hideous boulder-strewn range that separates Khinjan from the Khyber, sleeping fitfully whenever King called a halt, and eating almost nothing at all, for only a few of them had thought of bringing food.

They reached the Khyber famished and were fed at Ali Masjid Fort, after King had given a certain pa.s.sword and had whispered to the officer commanding. But he did not change into European clothes yet, and none of his following suspected him of being an Englishman.

"A Rangar on a black mare has gone down the pa.s.s ahead of you in a hurry," they told him at Ali Masjid. "He had two men with him and food enough. Only stopped long enough to make his business known."

"What did he say his business is?" asked King.

"He gave a sign and said a word that satisfied us-on that point!"

"Oh!" said King. "Can you signal down the Pa.s.s?"

"Surely."

"Courtenay still at Jamrud?"

"Yes. In charge there and growing tired of doing nothing."

"Signal down and ask him to have that bath ready for me that I spoke about. Good-by."

So he left Ali Masjid at the head of a motley procession that grew noisier and more confident every hour. Ismail still clung to his stirrup, but began to grow more lively and to have a good many orders to fling to the rest.

"You mourn like a dog," King told him. "Three howls and a whine and a little sulking-and then forgetfulness!"

Ismail looked nasty at that but did not answer, although he seemed to have a hot word ready. And thenceforward he hung his head more, and at least tried to seem bereaved. But his manner was unconvincing none the less, and King found it food for thought.

The ex-soldiers and would-be soldiers marched in fours behind him, growing hourly more like drilled men, and talking, with each stride that brought them nearer India, more as men do who have an interest in law and order. Behind them tramped the women from Khinjan, carrying their babies and their husbands loads; and behind them again were the other women, who had been told they would be overtaken in the Khyber, but who had actually had to run themselves raw-footed in order to catch up.

Down the Khyber have come conquerors, a dozen conquering kings, and as many beaten armies; but surely no stranger host than this ever trudged between the echoing walls. The very eagles screamed at them.

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 cl.u.s.ter 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.

Signals preceded them, and Courtenay himself rode up the Pa.s.s to greet them. But of course he was not very cordial to King, considering his disguise; and he chose to keep the Hillmen in doubt yet as to their eventual reception. But one of them, the Orakzai Pathan (for nothing could completely unman him), shouted to know whether it was true that pardons had been offered for deserters, and Courtenay nodded. They were less timid after that. Some of them pulled medals out and pinned them outside their shirts.

At Jamrud they were given food and their rifles were taken away from them and a guard was set to watch them. But the guard only consisted of two men, both of whom were Pathans, and they a.s.sured them that, ridiculous though it sounded, the British were actually willing to forgive their enemies and to pardon all deserters who applied for pardon on condition of good faith in the future.

That night they prayed to Allah like little children lost and found. The women crooned love-songs to their babies over the clear fires and the men talked-and talked-and talked until the stars grew big as moons to weary eyes and they slept at last, to dream of khaki uniforms and karnel sahibs who knew neither fear nor favor and who said things that were so. It is a mad world to the Himalayan Hillman where men in authority tell truth unadorned without shame and without consideration-a mad, mad world, and perhaps too exotic to be wholesome, but pleasant while the dream lasts.

Over in the fort Courtenay placed a bath at King's disposal and lent him clean clothes and a razor. But he was not very cordial.

"Tell me all the war news!" said King, splashing in the tub. And Courtenay told him, pa.s.sing him another cake of soap when the first was finished. After all there was not much to tell-butchery in Belgium-Huns and guns-and the everlastingly glorious stand that saved Paris and France and Europe.

"According to the cables our men are going the records one better. I think that's all," said Courtenay.

"Then why the stuffiness?" asked King. "Why am I talked to at the end of a tube, so to speak?"

"You're under arrest!" said Courtenay.

"The deuce I am!"

"I'm taking care of you myself to obviate the necessity of putting a sentry on guard over you."

"Good of you, I'm sure. What's it all about?"

"I don't mind telling you, but I'd rather you'd wait. The minute you were sighted word was wired down to headquarters, and the general himself will be up here by train any minute."

"Very well," said King. "Got a cigar? Got a black one? Blacker the better!"

He was out of his bath and remembered that minute that he had not smoked a cigar since leaving India. Naked, shaved, with some of the stain removed, he did not look like a man in trouble as he filled his lungs with the saltpeterish smoke of a fat Trichinopoli.

And then the general came and did not wait for King to get dressed but burst into the bathroom and shook hands with him while he was still naked and asked ten questions (like a gatling gun) while King was getting on his trousers, divining each answer after the third word and waving the rest aside.

"And why am I arrested, sir?" asked King the moment he could slip the question in edgewise.

"Oh, yes, of course. Try the case here as well as anywhere. What does this mean?"

Out of his pocket the general produced a letter that smelt strongly of a scent King recognized. He spread it out on a table, and King read. It was Yasmini's letter that she had sent down the Khyber to make India too hot to hold him.