Rung Ho! Part 31

"Very well. Now I will make you a proposal. On behalf of the Company I offer you and your men pay at the rate paid to all irregular cavalry on a war basis. In return, I demand your allegiance."

"To whom, sahib? To you or to the Company?"

"To the Company, of course."

"Nay! Not I! For the son of Cunnigan-bahadur I would slit the throats of half Asia, and then of nine-tenths of the other half! But by the breath of G.o.d--by my spurs and this sabre here--I have had enough of pledging!

I swore allegiance to Howrah. Being nearly free of that pledge by Allah's sending, shall I plunge into another, like a frightened bird fluttering from snare to snare? Nay, nay, bahadur! For thyself, for thy father's sake, ask any favor. It is granted. But thy Company may stew in the grease of its own cartridges for ought I care!"

Cunningham stood up and bowed very slightly--very stiffly--very punctiliously. Mahommed Gunga leaped to his feet, and came to attention with a military clatter. Alwa stared, inclining his head a trifle in recognition of the bow, but evidently taken by surprise.

"Then, good-by, Alwa-sahib."

Cunningham stretched out a hand.

"I am much obliged to you for your hospitality, and regret exceedingly that I cannot avail myself of it further, either for myself or for Mahommed Gunga or for Mr. and Miss McClean. As the Company's representative, they, of course, look to me for orders and protection, and I shall take them away at once. As things are, we can only be a source of embarra.s.sment to you."

"But--sahib--huzoor--it is impossible. You have seen the cavalry below.

How can you--how could you get away?"

"Unless I am your prisoner I shall certainly leave this place at once.

The only other condition on which I will stay here is that you pledge your allegiance to the Company and take my orders."

"Sahib, this is--why--huzoor--"

Alwa looked over to Mahommed Gunga and raised his eyebrows eloquently.

"I obey him! I go with him!" growled Mahommed Gunga.

"Sahib, I would like time to think this over."

"How much time? I thought you quick-witted when you made Jaimihr prisoner. Has that small success undermined your power of decision? I know my mind. Mahommed Gunga knows his, Alwa-sahib."

"I ask an hour. There are many points I must consider. There is the prisoner for one thing."

"You can hand him over to the custody of the first British column we can get in touch with, Alwa-sahib. That will relieve you of further responsibility to Howrah and will insure a fair trial of any issue there may be between yourself and Jaimihr."

Alwa scowled. No Rajput likes the thought of litigation where affairs of honor are concerned. He felt he would prefer to keep Jaimihr prisoner for the present.

"Also, sahib"--fresh facets of the situation kept appearing to him as he sparred for time--"with Jaimihr in a cage I can drive a bargain with his brother. While I keep him in the cage, Howrah must respect my wishes for fear lest otherwise I loose Jaimihr to be a thorn in his side anew. If I hand him to the British, Howrah will know that he is safe and altogether out of harm's way; then he will recall what he may choose to consider insolence of mine; and then--"

"Oh, well--consider it!" said Cunningham, saluting him and making for the door, close followed by Mahommed Gunga. The two went out and it left Alwa to stride up and down alone--to wrestle between desire and circ.u.mspection--to weigh uncomfortable fact with fact--and to curse his wits that could not settle on the wisest and most creditable course.

They turned into another chamber of the tunnelled rock, and there until long after the hour of law allowed to Alwa they discussed the situation too.

"The point was well taken, sahib," said Mahommed Gunga, "but he should have been handled rather less abruptly."

"Eh?"

"Rather less abruptly, sahib."

"Oh! Well--if his mind isn't clear as to which side he'll fight on, I don't want him, and that's all!" said Cunningham. And Mahommed Gunga bitted his impatience fiercely, praying the one G.o.d he believed in to touch the right scale of the two. Later, Cunningham strode out to pace the courtyard in the dark, and the Rajput followed him.

CHAPTER XXVII

The trapped wolf bared his fangs and swore, "But set me this time free, And I will hunt thee never more!

By ear and eye and jungle law, I'll starve--I'll faint--I'll die before I bury tooth in thee!"

WHILE Alwa raged alone, and while Mahommed Gunga talked to Cunningham in a rock-room near at hand, Rosemary McClean saw fit to take a hand in history. It was not her temperament to sit quite idle while others shaped her destiny; nor was she given to mere brooding over wrongs. When a wrong was being done that she could alter or alleviate it was her way to tackle it at once without asking for permission or advice.

From where her chair was placed under the long veranda she could see the pa.s.sage in the rock that led to Jaimihr's cell. She saw his captors take him up the pa.s.sage; she heard the door clang shut on him, and she saw the men come back again. She heard them laugh, too, and she overheard a few words of a jest that seemed the reason for the laughter.

In Rajputana, as in other portions of the East, men laugh with meaning as a rule, and seldom from mere amus.e.m.e.nt. Included in the laugh there usually lies more than a hint of threat, or hate, or cruelty. And, in partial confirmation of the jest she unintentionally overheard, she saw no servant go to the chuckling spring to fill a water-jar. She recalled that Jaimihr only sipped as much as he could dip up in the hollow of his hand, and that physical exertion and suffering of the sort that he had undergone produces prodigious thirst in that hot, dry atmosphere.

She waited until dark for Cunninham, growing momentarily more restless.

She recalled that she was a guest of Alwa's, and as such not free to interfere with his arrangements or to suggest insinuations anent his treatment of prisoners. She recalled the pride of all Rajputs, and its accompanying corollary of insolence when offended. There would come no good--she knew--from asking anybody whether Jaimihr was allowed to drink or not.

Cunningham, with that middle-aged air of authority laid over the fire and ability of youth, would be able, no doubt, to enforce his wishes in the matter after finding out the truth about it. But Cunningham did not come; and she remembered from a short experience of her own what thirst was.

The men-at-arms were all on the ramparts now, watching the leaderless cavalry on the plain. They had even left the cell door unguarded, for it was held shut by a heavy beam that could not be reached from the inside; and they were all too few, even all of them together, to hold that rock against eight hundred. It was characteristic, though, and Eastern of the East, that they should omit to padlock the big beam. It pivoted at its centre on a big bronze pin, and even a child could move it from the outside; it was only from the inside that it was uncontrollable. From inside one could have jerked at the door for a week and the big beam would have lain still and efficient in its niche in the rock-wall; but a little pressure underneath one end would send it swinging in an arc until it hung bolt upright. Then the same child who had pushed it up could have swung the teak door wide.

Rosemary, growing momentarily thirstier herself as she thought of the probable torture of the prisoner, walked down to the spring and filled a dipper, as she had done half a dozen times a day since she first arrived. She had carried almost all her own and her father's water, for Joanna was generally sleeping somewhere out of view, and no other body-servant had been provided for her. There was a fairly big bra.s.s pitcher by the spring. She filled it. n.o.body noticed her.

Then she recalled that n.o.body would notice her if she were to carry the bra.s.s pitcher in the direction of her room, for she had done that often.

She picked it up, and she reached the end of the veranda with it without having called attention to herself. She set it down then to make quite sure that she was un.o.bserved.

But some movement of the cavalry on the plain below was keeping the eyes of the garrison employed. Although a solitary lantern shone full on her, she reached the pa.s.sage leading to the prisoner's cell unseen; and she walked on down it, making no attempt to hide or hurry, remembering that she was acting out of mercy and had no need to be ashamed. If she were to be discovered, then she would be, and that was all about it, except that she would probably be able to appeal to Cunningham to save her from unpleasant consequences. In any case, she reasoned, she would have done good. She was quite ready to get herself and her own in trouble if by doing it she could insure that a prisoner had water.

But she was not seen. And no one saw her set the jar down by the door.

No one except the prisoner inside heard her knock.

"Have you water, Jaimihr-sahib?" she inquired.

The East has a hundred florid epithets for one used in the West; and in a land where water is as scarce as gold and far more precious the mention of water to a thirsty man calls forth a flood of thought such as only music or perhaps religion can produce in luckier climes. Jaimihr waxed eloquent; more eloquent than even water might have made him had another--had even another woman--brought it. He recognized her voice, and said things to her that roused all the anger that she knew. She had not come to be made love to.

She thought, though, of his thirst. She remembered that within an hour or two he might be raving for another reason and with other words. The big beam lifted on her hands with barely more effort than was needed to lift up the water-jar; the door opened a little way, and she tried, while she pa.s.sed the water in, to peer through the darkness at the prisoner. But there were no windows to that cell, and such dim light as there was came from behind her.

"They have bound me, sahiba, in this corner," groaned Jaimihr. "I cannot reach it. Take it away again! The certainty that it is there and out of reach is too great torture!"

So she slipped in through the door, leaving it open a little way--both her hands busy with the bra.s.s pitcher and both eyes straining their utmost through the gloom--advancing step by step through mouldy straw that might conceal a thousand horrors.

"You wonder, perhaps, why I do not escape!" said a voice. And then she heard the cell door close again gently.

Now she could see Jaimihr, for he stood with his back against the door, and his head was between her and the little six-inch grating that was all the ventilation or light a prisoner in that place was allowed.

"So you lied to me, even when I brought you water?" she answered. She was not afraid. She had nerve enough left to pity him.