Rung Ho! Part 3

"I would speak of that," he interrupted--"You will not come away?"

She shook her head.

"Your father could remain."

She shook her head again. "I stay with him," she answered.

"At present, Jaimihr is the danger, Miss-sahib; but I think that at present he will dare do nothing. The Maharajah dare do nothing either, yet. Should either of them make a move to interfere with you, it would not be safe to appeal to the other one. You will not understand, but it is so. In that event, there is a way to safety of which I would warn you."

"Thank you, Mahommed Gunga. What is it?"

"There are men more than a day's ride away from here who are to be depended on--by you, at least--under all circ.u.mstances. Is that old woman to be trusted?"

"How should I know?" she smiled. "I believe she is fond of me."

"That should be enough. I would like, if the Miss-sahib will permit, to speak with her."

At a word from Miss McClean the old hag came out into the sun again and blinked at the Rajput, very much afraid of him. Mahommed Gunga saluted Miss McClean--swore at the old woman--pointed a wordless order with his right arm--watched her shuffle half a hundred yards up-street--followed her, and growled at her for about five minutes, while she nodded.

Finally, he drew from the pocket of his crimson coat a small handful of gold mohurs--fat, dignified coins that glittered--and held them out toward her with an air as though they meant nothing to him--positively nothing--Her eyes gleamed. He let her take a good look at the money before replacing it, then tossed her a silver quarter-rupee piece, saluted Miss McClean again--for she was watching the pantomime from the doorway still--and mounted and rode off, his back looking like the back of one who has neither care nor fear nor master.

At the caravansary his squire came running out to hold his stirrup.

"Picket the horse in the yard," said Mahommed Gunga, "then find me another servant and bring him to me in the room here!"

"Another servant? But, sahib--"

"I said another servant! Has deafness overcome thee?" He used a word in the dialect which left no room for doubt as to his meaning; it was to be a different servant--a subst.i.tute for the squire he had already. The squire bowed his head in disciplined obedience and led the horse away.

An hour later--evening was drawing on--he came back, followed by a somewhat ruffianly-looking half-breed Rajput-Punjaubi. The new man was rather ragged and lacked one eye, but with the single eye he had he looked straight at his prospective master. Mahommed Gunga glared at him, but the man did not quail or shrink.

"This fellow wishes honorable service, sahib." The squire spoke as though he were calling his master's attention to a horse that was for sale. "I have seen his family; I have inquired about him; and I have explained to him that unless he serves at thee faithfully his wife and his man child will die at my hands in his absence."

"Can he groom a horse?"

"So he says, sahib, and so say others."

"Can he fight?"

"He slew the man with his bare hands who p.r.i.c.ked his eye out with a sword."

"Oh! What payment does he ask?"

"He leaves that matter to your honor's pleasure."

"Good. Instruct him, then. Set him to cleaning my horse and then return here."

The squire was back again within five minutes and stood before Mahommed Gunga in silent expectation.

"I shall miss thee," said Mahommed Gunga after five minutes' reflection.

"It is well that I have other servants in the north."

"In what have I offended, sahib?"

"In nothing. Therefore there is a trust imposed."

The man salaamed. Mahommed Gunga produced his little handful of gold mohurs and divided it into two equal portions; one he handed to the squire.

"Stay here. Be always either in the caravansary or else at call. Should the old woman who serves Miss Maklin-sahib, the padre-sahib's daughter come and ask thy aid, then saddle swiftly the three horses I will leave with thee, and bear Miss Maklin-sahib and her father to my cousin Alwa's place. Present two of the gold mohurs to the hag, should that happen."

"But sahib--two mohurs? I could buy ten such hags outright for the price!"

"She has my word in the matter! It is best to have her eager to win great reward. The hag will stay awake, but see to it that thou sleepest not!"

"And for how long must I stay here, sahib?"

"One month--six months--a year--who knows? Until the hag summons thee, or I, by writing or by word of mouth, relieve thee of thy trust."

At sunset he sent the squire to Miss McClean for the letters he had promised to deliver; and at one hour after sunset, when the heat of the earth had begun to rise and throw back a hot blast to the darkened sky and the little eddies of luke-warm surface wind made movement for horse and man less like a fight with scorching death, he rode off, with his new servant, on the two horses left to him of the five with which he came.

A six-hundred-mile ride without spare horses, in the heat of northern India, was an undertaking to have made any strong man flinch. The stronger the man, and the more soldierly, the better able he would be to realize the effort it would call for. But Mahommed Gunga rode as though he were starting on a visit to a near-by friend; he was not given to crossing bridges before he reached them, nor to letting prospects influence his peace of mind. He was a soldier. He took precautions first, when and where such were possible, then rode and looked fate in the eye.

He appeared to take no more notice of the glowering looks that followed him from stuffy balconies and dense-packed corners than of the mosquitoes to and the heat. Without hurry he picked his way through the thronged streets, where already men lay in thousands to escape the breathlessness of walled interiors; the gutters seemed like trenches where the dead of a devastated city had been laid; the murmur was like the voice of storm-winds gathering, and the little lights along the housetops were for the vent-holes on the lid of a tormented underworld.

But he rode on at his ease. Ahead of him lay that which he considered duty. He could feel the long-kept peace of India disintegrating all around him, and he knew--he was certain--as sometimes a brave man can see what cleverer men all overlook--that the right touch by the right man at the right moment, when the last taut-held thread should break, would very likely swing the balance in favor of peace again, instead of individual self seeking anarchy.

He knew what "Cunnigan-bahadur" would have done. He swore by Cunnigan-bahadur. And the memory of that same dead, desperately honest Cunningham he swore that no personal profit or convenience or safety should be allowed to stand between him and what was honorable and right!

Mahommed Gunga had no secrets from himself; nor lack of imagination. He knew that he was riding--not to preserve the peace of India, for that was as good as gone--but to make possible the winning back of it. And he rode with a smile on his thin lips, as the crusaders once rode on a less self-advertising errand.

CHAPTER IV

"You have failed!" whispered Fate, and a weary civilian Threw up his task as a matter of course.

"Failed?" said the soldier. He knew a million Chances untackled yet. "Get me a horse!"

THAT was a strange ride of Mahommed Gunga's, and a fateful one--more full of portent for the British Raj in India than he, or the British, or the men amid whose homes he rode could ever have antic.i.p.ated. He averaged a little less than twenty miles a day, and through an Indian hot-weather, and with no spare horse, none but a born horseman--a man of light weight and absolute control of temper--could have accomplished that for thirty days on end.

Wherever he rode there was the same unrest. Here and there were new complaints he had not yet heard of, imaginary some of them, and some only too well founded. Wherever there were Rajputs--and that race of fighting men is scattered all about the north--there was ill-suppressed impatience for the bursting of the wrath to come. They bore no grudge against the English, but they did bear more than grudge against the money-lenders and the fat, litigious traders who had fattened under British rule. At least at the beginning it was evident that all the interest of all the Rajputs lay in letting the British get the worst of it; even should the British suddenly wake up and look about them and take steps--or should the British hold their own with native aid, and so save India from anarchy, and afterward reward the men who helped--the Rajputs would stand to gain less individually, or even collectively, than if they let the English be driven to the sea, and then reverted to the age-old state of feudal lawlessness that once had made them rich.

Many of the Hindoo element among them were almost openly disloyal. The ryots--the little one and two acre farmers--were the least unsettled; they, when he asked them--and he asked often--disclaimed the least desire to change a rule that gave them safe holdings and but one tax-collection a year; they were frankly for their individual selves--not even for one another, for the ryots as a cla.s.s.

n.o.body seemed to be for India, except Mahommed Gunga; and he said little, but asked ever-repeated questions as he rode. There were men who would like to weld Rajputana into one again, and over-ride the rest of India; and there were other men who planned to do the same for the Punjaub; there were plots within plots, not many of which he learned in anything like detail, but none of which were more than skin-deep below the surface. All men looked to the sudden, swift, easy whelming of the British Raj, and then to the plundering of India; each man expected to be rich when the whelming came, and each man waited with ill-controlled impatience for the priests' word that would let loose the hundred-million flood of anarchy.

"And one man--one real man whom they trusted--one leader--one man who had one thousand at his back--could change the whole face of things!"

he muttered to himself. "Would G.o.d there we a Cunnigan! But there is no Cunnigan. And who would follow me? They would pull my beard, tell me I was scheming for my own ends!--I, who was taught by Cunnigan, and would serve only India!"

He would ride before dawn and when the evening breeze had come to cool the hot earth a little through the blazing afternoons he would lie in the place of honor by some open window, where he could watch a hireling flick the flies off his lean, road-hardened horse, and listen to the plotting and the carried tales of plots, pretending always to be sympathetic or else open to conviction.