Son of Power Part 42

"I mean it was utterly dark, sir," she said. "It was absolutely dark!"

"But--I'm not able to understand!" her old friend protested.

"It was there Mitha Baba found them," the Gul Moti explained. "It was there she did the '_toiling in_.' Then, she was leading them home to Hurda, when we met the caravan--at dawn."

Some of the mahouts had gathered about. The Chief Commissioner spoke to them in their speech and they answered him--calling others. Soon the men of High Himalaya drew near with grave deference, slowly stooping to touch the ground at her feet.

"No human has ever been in _that_ before," said Kudrat Sharif. "We will prepare rest for her--Chosen-of-Vishnu, the Great Preserver!"

It was after they had cared for the Gul Moti with the best they had--water from a mountain stream and food Neela Deo had carried, in a shelter made of tender deodar tips, where she now slept on a bed made of the same--that the mahouts told the Chief Commissioner and Skag, all they themselves had seen.

By this time concern had spread from Hurda throughout the country. Neela Deo had gone out to find the Gul Moti, carrying the Chief Commissioner and Son of Power. No one had come back. Calamity must have fallen. Men went out on horses to trace them. But it was certain priests of Hanuman who found the caravan first. (The Gul Moti having saved the life of a monkey king once, her safety was their concern also.) Without being seen or heard themselves, they went close enough to learn that she was making recovery from great exhaustion; and that the mahouts were caring for an elephant unable to travel by reason of a bad wound. They overheard talk of strange happenings; but more about Neela Deo's undreamed-of achievement.

Before any of the searchers from Hurda reached the caravan, mysterious gifts of provisions--much needed--were found by the mahouts, with a crude writing beside them: "For the Healer-without-fear." And those same priests of Hanuman--preparing a signal-system as they came--brought the good word back to the anxious people, who became joyous at once. Their Gul Moti was safe! Neela Deo was safe--everyone was safe. (But that was a strange saying--that Neela Deo had fought!)

Bonfires blazed up in every village within sight of the caravan's way home--from so far away as watchers on Hurda's highest hill could see--burning night and day. At last the one furthest from Hurda went out. The watchers raced in--Neela Deo's caravan was coming! One by one, the bonfires went out--till it was this side the Nerbudda. Then the people made ready.

They thronged out the great Highway-of-all-India, meeting the caravan where the slow-moving elephants turned in from open jungle. Eagerly striving to see the Gul Moti's face, eagerly pointing at Neela Deo, yet it was a stranger silent mult.i.tude. Only many tears on many tears showed their feeling.

The Gul Moti sat in Neela Deo's howdah, with the Chief Commissioner and Son-of-Power. Two men came close, carrying a long slender shape covered with pure white cloth--dripping wet.

"We be poor men," one said, "but our hands bring to thee, oh Healer--from the people of Hurda, oh Healer--" and breaking off, because his lips could speak no more, he stooped reverently to lay aside the covering.

A great folded leaf appeared; a long heavy stalk; then the flawless splendour of one bloom--immaculate! a sacred lotus, brought from far lakes. The Gul Moti received its ineffable loveliness and rose to stretch her fingers toward the mult.i.tude. Then their shouts swept the horizon.

Still, their concept of Neela Deo's character must be either shattered or restored--and soon; they would not wait. Ominously quiet questions went up to the mahouts; and the mahouts were full-ready to answer! In the end, it sounded like a wild Himalayan chant about Neela Deo's great fight to save Gunpat Rao. The people listened patiently, till an inward meaning enlightened them. Then they exulted:

"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"

"Exalted in majesty, Defender of honour, protecting his own with strength! We will remember him!"

"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"

"He with the wisdom of ages. Destroyer of devastators, preserving his friend with blood! Our children shall not forget!"

"He the Discerner of men, Equitable King! He the Discerner of evil, Invincible King! All generations after us shall hear of him; but we have looked upon his face!"

"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"

CHAPTER XV

_The Lair_

Carlin appeared to get right again in a few days of quiet after her terrific experience on Mitha Baba. There were a few more wonderful weeks for Skag and herself in the Malcolm M'Cord bungalow in Hurda--weeks always remembered. Then Skag undertook a little adventure of his own that had to do with Tiger. He was away seven days in all and made no report of the thing he had done to his department. He came back with a deeper quiet in his eyes and told no one but Carlin what the days had shown him. Skag never was at his best in trying to make words work. He was slow to explain. He had been hurt two or three times in earlier days, trying to tell something of peculiar interest to his work and finding incredulity and uncertain comment afterward. This made the animal trainer more wary than ever about talk.

But Carlin required few words. Carlin always understood. She didn't praise or fall into excesses of admiration, but she understood, and the older one gets the dearer that becomes. Carlin didn't advise with Skag whether she should speak of the matter. She merely decided that her old friend, Malcolm M'Cord, Hand-of-a-G.o.d, deserved to be told. The silent Scot knew much about animals and this was an affair that would stand high in his collection of musings and memories. M'Cord observed, in a Scotch that had suffered no thinning in thirty years of India, that if he hadn't known Hantee Sahib he would be forced to pa.s.s by Carlin's report as an invention, though a "fertile" one. It was M'Cord who decided that Government should get at least a private account of the affair.

A remarkable tiger pair had operated for several years in the broken cliff country stretching away toward the valley of the Nerbudda beyond the open jungle round Hurda. As mates they had pulled together so efficiently that the natives had started the interminable process of making a tradition concerning them. These were superb young individuals and not man-eaters, for which reason Hand-of-a-G.o.d had not been called out to deliver the natives; also on this account Skag had been interested from the beginning.

Their lair had never been found, but they had been seen together and singly over a ranging ground that covered seventy miles and contained several dejected villages. Once, hard pressed for game, the male tiger had entered a village grazing ground and made a quick kill--on the run--of one of the little sacred cows--a tan heifer much loved by the people. The point of comment was that the tiger had spared the boy; in fact, the young herder had been unable to run so rapidly as his little drove, which was lost in a dust cloud ahead of him. The tiger had actually pa.s.sed him by, entered the drove, knocked the heifer down and stood over it as the boy circled past.

There were no firearms in the village, so that the natives did not venture close in the falling darkness. It was evident next day, however, that the tiger had not fed on the spot of the kill. It was supposed that the female had come to help him carry away the game.

Also, this was the same tiger pair that had leaped an eight-foot wall surrounding another village, made their choice of a sizable bullock in a herd of ordinary cattle, and actually helped each other drag the carca.s.s over the wall and away--a daylight raid, this, witnessed from the shadows of several village huts.

So the stories went, but nothing monotonous about them. Often for months at a time no villager would sight the tiger mates. It was positively stated that there were no other mature tigers within the vicinity: that is, within the seventy-miles range. The pair had been known to bring up at least three litters; but the young had been driven at the approach of maturity to outlying hunting grounds, as had been all the weaker tigers of the vicinity.

Now the report came into Hurda that an English hunter had wounded the big female. Another report followed that the Englishman had killed the male and wounded the female. The hunter himself did not appear in Hurda; nor was a trophy hide recorded anywhere. Skag heard the two stories. Thinking over the affair, he called Nels for a stroll in the open jungle toward the Monkey Glen.

To the American there was a pang about the hunter's story. He was altogether unsentimental, but wild animals had to do with his reason for being and there was his fixed partiality for tigers. The uncertainty about the story troubled him. This was the time of year for kittens and it was seldom far from his mind that these parents were not man-eaters. The stories of the hunter were indefinite. The thing worked upon Skag as he walked. The thought of finding the motherless lair and bringing in a hamper of starving young occurred to him as a sane performance, but not one to speak about. Also his servant, Bhanah, reported Nels superbly fit for travel and adventure.

The animal trainer rode the elephant, Nut Kut, into one of the villages in the tiger-ranging grounds and left him in charge of the mahout, saying that he might be gone two or three days and that he was out for a ramble among the waste places of the valley. Skag took merely a haversack, a canteen, light blanket and a hunting belt, carrying a knife and a six-shooter but no rifle. Nels actually lost his dignity in enthusiasm for the excursion, and they were miles away from a village and hours deep in an apparently leisurely journey before he subsided into that observant calm which was his notable characteristic.

This light travelling, with none other than the great hunting dog, brought him back a keen zest of appreciation and memories of early days among the circus animals, and his first adventures in India with Cadman. Moreover, there was a fresh mystery that had to do with Carlin after Skag's first supper fire afield. He had always resented the fact that it was straight out-and-out pain for him to be away from the place she had made in Hurda. Suffering of any kind to Skag was a sign of weakness. He had dwelt long on the subject.

The mystery of that first night out had to do with the fact that Carlin seemed to be near. He had known something of this before, a flash at least, but nothing like this. There wasn't the pain about separation he had known aforetime. It was as if the miracle he had longed for had come--some awakening of life within himself that was quick to her presence even at a distance and cognisant that absence was illusion.

Carlin's uncle, the mystic of the Vindhas, had told him that there were mysteries of romance that had to do with separation as well as with together, and that real mates learn this mystery through the years.

To-night Skag found to his wonder that the mystic had spoken the truth.

He cooked the supper joyously and shared it with Nels, talking to him often and answering himself for the Dane. The camp was in the open and the night was presently l.u.s.trous with stars. There was a sense of well-being, together with his fresh delight in the unfolding secret of Carlin's nearness, that made him enjoy staying awake. Nels was wakeful also--as if these moments were altogether too keen with life to waste in sleep.

"It's just a ramble, old man. We'll be about it early," Skag said toward the last. "We may find what we're after and we may not. In any case we'll live on the way."

That was Skag's old picture of the Now; making the most of the ever-moving point named the Present.

"And I'm expecting great things from you, my son--an altogether new brand of self-control--if we find what we're out after. I don't mind telling you that it's Tiger, Nels--tiger babies possibly--little orphans just grown enough to be demons and just knowing enough not to behave."

Nels woofed.

"Half-grown tiger cubs are apt to be a whole lot meaner than their parents," Skag went on. "Wild--that's the word. They haven't sense enough to be careful or mind enough to be appealed to. I think that's something of what I mean to say."

Skag was taking more pains to explain than he would to a man. Nels didn't get it--didn't even make a pretense. He knew what Tiger meant, but so far as he was concerned that subject had been dropped some moments since. He had listened intently to the point in which Tiger ceased to be the topic--sitting on his haunches. Then he dropped to his front elbows, and as Skag's voice trailed away he rolled quietly to his side, keeping himself courteously awake.

There was silence. Skag's eyes were far off among the blazing Indian stars.

"We'll manage 'em together," he added sleepily. The next day they wandered--rough desolate country in burning sunlight. It gave the impression that the whole surface crust of earth had been burned to a white heat ages ago. Low hills with clifflike faces; shallow nullahs used only a month or two a year to carry the monsoon deluges to the Nerbudda; the stones of the river bottoms bone-white--everywhere spa.r.s.e and scrubby foliage with dust-covered leaves. There was no turf in this stony world except the sand of the hollows and the wind eddied most of these s.p.a.ces like water, quickly covering all tracks. It was toward the end of the afternoon that Nels first intimated a scent.

Tiger of course--that was Nels' orders--but it wasn't fresh. Skag gave the Dane word to do the best he could and followed leisurely. The big fellow worked with painful care for more than an hour before he became sure of himself; then his speed quickened, following a dry nullah at last, for several miles. The dark was creeping in before they came to a deep fissure among the rocks where the empty waterway sunk into a pool which was not yet dry. Skag and the Dane drank deep; then the man filled his canteen, with the remark:

"We'll camp a little back, not to obstruct the water hole. All trails end here. To-morrow morning we'll get fresh tiger scent if we're in luck. But I wonder what we're trailing?"

It was a fact of long establishment among the villages that only the one mated pair worked this section of the country. According to one of the stories of the English hunter, the male tiger had been killed and the female wounded--in which case what was this? Certainly there was nothing to indicate that the scent was left by a wounded tiger. Others might have doubted Nels' discrimination, but Skag scouted that in his own mind. The Dane knew Tiger. It was as distinct and individual to him from the other big cats as the voices of friends one from another.

Nels was said to have met Tiger in battle before he came to Skag, but it was no purpose of his present master to give him a chance now. It was established that several of the great Indian hunting dogs had survived such meetings. Malcolm M'Cord declared that a veteran in the cheetah game would show himself master in any ordinary tiger affair.