Son of Power Part 30

The grim face was before him, two steady hands at work on him, pulling back his collar, taking one of Skag's hands after another--looking even between the fingers, feeling his thighs.

"I can't find that he cut you, Lad," he said gently.

Skag pushed him away. Carlin was moaning.

"I'm thinking your lad's sound, deerie," M'Cord called to her. "A minute more, to be sure." . . .

He kept a trailing hold of Skag's wrist, staring a last minute in his eyes.

No break anywhere in the younger man's flesh.

The afterglow was thickening. A servant came down the path to call them to dinner. The servant had never seen such a spectacle--the Hakima sitting with Hand-of-a-G.o.d and Son-of-Power, together--on the lawn already wet with dew--their knees almost touching. . . .

"The like's not been known before, Lad--even of a man with a sword,"

Malcolm M'Cord was saying. "You must have stood up to him two minutes.

No swordsman has done as much. . . . And it was only a _lakri_ you had--and a swordsman's blade goes soft and flat against a cobra's scales! . . . You see, they take wings when the fighting rage flows into them. It's like wings, sir. . . . Yes, you'll have a lame arm where the hood grazed. It couldn't have been the drive of the head or he would have bitten through--"

Even Skag, as he glanced into Carlin's face from time to time, forgot that Hand-of-a-G.o.d had done it again--one more king cobra with a patched |head and a life and death story to be added to the sunny cabinet in the bungalow. . . . Carlin rose to lead them to dinner at last, but Malcolm shook his head.

"On you go, you two. I'll sit out a bit in the lamplight, just here by the playhouse door. . . . She'll be looking for him soon. . . . She won't be far. She won't be long coming--to look for him. . . . She'd find him and then set out to look for you, Lad."

The lights of the bungalow windows were like vague cloths upon the lawn. . . . Carlin and Skag hadn't thought of dinner. They were in the shadow of the deep verandah. Once Carlin whispered:

"I loved the way he said 'Lad' to you."

It was hours afterwards that the shot was heard. . . . Carlin was closer. He felt her shivering. He could not be sure of the words, yet the spirit of them never left his heart:

"If I were she--and I had found you so--upon the lawn--I should want Hand-of-a-G.o.d to wait for me--like that!"

CHAPTER XI

_Elephant Concerns_

"Only the altogether ignorant do not know that the women of my line have been chaste."

It was the youngest mahout of the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades of Hurda, who spoke.

They sat in comfort under the feathery branches of tall tamarisk trees, smoking their water-pipes, after the sunset meal. It was the time for talk.

"A good beginning," said a very old man near by, "it being wise, in case of doubt, to stop the mouth of--who might speak afterward."

"And the men of my line," proceeded the youngest mahout, without embarra.s.sment, "have been ill.u.s.trious--save those who are forgotten.

They all have been of High Himalaya; yet I am the least among you. I render homage of Hill blood, hot and full, to every one of you--my elders--because you are all mahouts of High Himalaya, even as my fathers were."

The men of the stockades bowed their heads in grave acknowledgment.

"Then by what curse of what G.o.ds falls this calamity," the boy went on, "that we of the Chief Commissioner's stockades are forced to receive a mahout from the Vindha Hills; and an unreputed elephant--from the hills without repute?"

"Softly, young one, softly!" a mahout in his full prime made swift answer. "Truly it is well the young are not permitted to use that untamed strength in speech, which is best governed by the waste of sinew!"

The youngest mahout bent his head in humility and said with soft reverence:

"Will he who is most wise among us, enlighten the darkness of him who is most foolish?"

"It is that elephants of great repute have come from the Vindha Hills; and mahouts of great learning. Also, there is a luminous tradition that the most exalted creatures of their kind--those who travelled far from the high lands of Persia long ago--chose place for their future generations in the Vindha Hills; and not in High Himalaya."

This man who had first rebuked sternly and afterward explained with extreme gentleness, was Kudrat Sharif, the mahout of Neela Deo--mighty leader of their caravan. He was malik--which is to say, governing mahout--over them all; and best qualified among them. Therefore a clamour rose for more. The youngest mahout went from his place and sat near, as Kudrat Sharif continued:

"The black elephants are all but gone. Not more than one in a generation of men is seen any more. They are seldom toiled into the trap-stockades, in which the less wary are taken. The natures of those who have been snared are strange to us of the High Hills. They sometimes destroy men in their anger; they sometimes destroy themselves in their grief."

"What is the heart of this knowledge?" asked a man who had not spoken before.

"That these stockades are distinguished by Government," Kudrat Sharif replied. "The elephant who is to reach us this evening, is a black elephant--descended from the lines of ancient Persia."

A chorus of exclamations swept the circle, before the gurgle of hookahs took the moment, as the mahouts gave themselves to meditation and water-winnowed smoke.

Then the trumpet tones of an elephant were heard from far out in the gathering gloom.

"May Vishnu, the great Preserver, save us from a killer!"

The man who said these words was not less than magical in his power to control the unruly; but he never took credit to himself. "That is the voice of a fighter--smooth as curds of cream--and it reaches from far out; very far out."

The challenge-call sounded again; and the big males of the stockade answered without hesitation.

These mahouts had trained ears; and they listened--computing the stranger's rate of speed. The fullness of tone increased; and presently one said:

"He comes fast."

But they were not prepared to see the elephant that rolled into the glare of their torches out of the night.

He came to pause in the centre of the exercise arena--a vast sanded disk just front of the stockade buildings--and stood rocking his huge body, tamping the ground with his feet as if still travelling. The mahout on his neck spoke to him patiently:

"Now will my master use his intelligence to understand that we have arrived?"

Then turning to the men on the ground, the strange mahout said wistfully:

"Look on me with compa.s.sion, oh men of honour and of fame! I have heard of you, but you have not heard of me."

"We have heard of you, that you are the making of a master-mahout, in due time," answered Kudrat Sharif.

"Then the G.o.ds who preserved my fathers to old age, have not forgotten that I learned patience in my extreme youth," sighed the man.

Seeing that the elephant was not quieting, Kudrat Sharif spoke now in pacifying tones--to the mahout: