The Bronze Bell Part 24

An hour pa.s.sed as three. The heat became terrific; not a breath of wind stirred. The face of the world lost its contours in wavering mirage.

The travellers found lukewarm water in the station and breakfasted sparingly from their own stores of biscuit and tinned things. Then, in the shadow of the station, they settled down to wait, bored to extinction. Lulled by the hushed chatter of the telegraph sounder, Doggott nodded and slept audibly; Amber nodded, felt himself going, roused with a struggle, and lapsed into a dreary mid-world of semi-stupor.

In the simple fulness of Asiatic time a tonga came from Heaven knew where and roused him by rattling up beside the platform. He got up and looked it over with a just eye and a temper none the sweeter for his experience. It was a brute of a tonga, a patched and ramshackle wreck of what had once been a real tonga, with no top to protect the travellers from the sun, and accommodation only for three, including the driver.

The Eurasian ticket-agent alighted and solicited rupees. He got them and with them Amber's unvarnished opinion of the tonga; something which was not received with civility by the driver.

He remained in his seat--a short, swart native with an evil countenance and, across his knees, a sheathed tulwar--arguing with Amber in broken English and, abusing him scandalously in impurest Hindi, flinging at him in silken tones untranslatable sc.r.a.ps of bazaar Billingsgate. For, as he explained in an audible aside to the ticket-agent, this sahib was an outlander and, being as ignorant as most sahibs, could not understand Hindi. At this the Eurasian turned away to hide a grin of delight and the driver winked deliberately at Amber the while he broadly sketched for him his ancestry and the manner of his life at home and abroad.

Thunderstruck, Amber caught himself just as he was on the point of attempting to drag the driver from his seat and beat him into a more endurable frame of mind. He swallowed the hint and gave up the contest.

"Oh, very well," he conceded. "I presume you're trying to say there isn't another tonga to be had and it can't be helped; but I don't like your tone. However, there doesn't seem to be anything to do but take you. How much for the two of us?"

"Your servant, sahib? He cannot ride in this tonga," a.s.serted the driver impa.s.sively.

"He can't! Why not?"

"You can see there is room for but two, and I have yet another pa.s.senger."

"Where?"

"At the first dak-bungalow, Sahib, where the mail-tonga broke down last night. This tonga, which I say is an excellent tonga, an _aram_ tonga, a tonga for ease, is sent to take its place. More than this, I am bidden to go in haste; therefore there is little time for you to decide whether or not you will go with me alone. As for your servant, he can follow by this afternoon's mail tonga."

Upon this ultimatum he stood, immovable; neither threats nor bribery availed. It was an order, he said: he had no choice other than to obey.

Shabash! Would the sahib be pleased to make up his mind quickly?

Perforce, the sahib yielded. "It'll be Labertouche; he's arranged this," he told himself. "That loafer said he'd gone on ahead of us."

And comforted he issued his orders to Doggott, who received and acceded to them with all the ill-grace imaginable. He was to remain and follow to Kuttarpur by the afternoon's tonga. He forthwith sulked--and Amber, looking round upon the little Tephet that was Badshah Junction, had not the heart to reprove the man.

"It's all very well, sir," said Doggott. "I carn't s'y anything, I know. But, mark my words, sir--beggin' your pardon--there'll be trouble come of this. That driver's as ill-favoured a scoundrel as ever I see.

And as for this 'ere ape, if 'e smiles at me just once more, I'll give 'im what-for." And he scowled so blackly upon the Eurasian that that individual hastily sought the seclusion which the station granted.

Amber left him, then, with a travelling-bag and a revolver for company, and the ticket-agent and his bad temper to occupy his mind.

Climbing aboard, the Virginian settled himself against the endless discomforts of the ride which he foresaw; the tonga was anything but "an _aram_ tonga--a tonga for ease," there was no shade and no breeze, and the face of the land crawled with heat-bred haze.

To a crisp crackling of the whip-lash over the backs of the two st.u.r.dy, s.h.a.ggy, flea-bitten ponies, the tonga swept away from the station, swift as a hunted fox with a dusty plume. The station dropped out of sight and the desert took them to its sterile heart.

On every hand the long swales rolled away, sunbaked, rocky, innocent of any sign of life other than the trooping telegraph poles in the south, dest.i.tute of any sort of vegetation other than the inevitable ak and gos. Wherever the eye wandered the prospect was the same--limitless expanses of raw blistering ochres, salmon-pinks, and dry faded reds, under a sky of bra.s.s and fire.

Amber leaned forward, watching the driver's face. "Your name, tonga-wallah?" he enquired.

"Ram Nath, sahib." The man spoke without moving his head, attending diligently to the management of his ponies.

"And this other pa.s.senger, who awaits us at the dak-bungalow, Ram Nath--is he, perchance, one known both to you and to me?"

Ram Nath flicked the flagging ponies. "How should I know?" he returned brusquely.

"One," persisted Amber, "who might be known by such a name as, say, Pink Satin?"

"What manner of talk is this?" demanded Ram Nath. "I am no child to be amused by a riddle. I know naught of your 'Pink Satin.'" He bent forward, shortening his grasp upon the reins, as if to signify that the interview was at an end.

Amber sat back, annoyed by the fellow's impudence yet sensitive to a suspicion that Ram Nath was playing his part better than his pa.s.senger, that the rebuke was merited by one who had ventured to speak of secret things in a land whose very stones have ears. For all that he could say their every move was watched by invisible spies, of whom the rock-strewn waste through which they sped might well harbour a hidden legion.... But perhaps, after all, Ram Nath had nothing whatever to do with Labertouche. Undeniable as had been his wink, it might well have been nothing more than an impertinence. At the thought Amber's eyes darkened and hardened and he swore bitterly beneath his breath. If that were so, he vowed, the tonga-wallah would pay dearly for the indiscretion. He set his wits to contrive a way to satisfy his doubts.

Meanwhile the tonga rocked and bounded fiendishly over an infamous parody of a road, turning and twisting between huge boulders and in and out of pebbly nullahs, Ram Nath tooling it along with the hand of a master. But all his attention was of necessity centred upon the ponies, and presently his tulwar slipped from his knees and clattered upon the floor of the tonga. Amber saw his chance and put his foot upon it.

"Ram Nath," he asked gently, "have you no other arms?"

"I were a fool had I not." The man did not deign to glance round. "He hath need of weapons who doth traffick with the Chosen of the Voice, sahib."

"Ah, that Voice!" cried Amber in exasperation. "I grow weary of the word, am Nath."

"That may well be," returned the man, imperturbable. "None the less it were well for you to have a care how you fondle the revolver in your pocket, sahib. Should it by any chance go off and the bullet find lodgment in your tonga-wallah, you are like to hear more of that Voice, and from less friendly lips."

"I think you have eyes in the back of your head, Ram Nath." Amber withdrew his hand from his coat pocket and laughed shortly as he spoke.

"There is a saying in this country, sahib, that even the stones in the desert have ears to hear and eyes to see and tongues withal to tell what they have seen and heard."

"Ah-h!... That is a wise saying, Ram Nath."

"There be those I could name who would do well to lay that saying to heart, sahib."

"You are right, indeed.... Now if there be aught of truth in that saying, and if one were unwisely to speak a certain name, even here----"

"The echo of that name might be heard beyond the threshold of a certain Gateway, sahib."

Amber grunted and said no more, contented now with the a.s.surance that he was in truth in touch with Labertouche, that this Ram Nath was an employee of the I.S.S. The wink was now explained away with all the rest of the tonga-wallah's churlishness. Since there was a purpose behind it all, the Virginian was satisfied to contain his curiosity.

Nevertheless he could not help thinking that there must be some fantastic exaggeration in the excessive degree of caution that was thus tacitly imposed upon him.

He looked round him, narrowing his eyes against the sun-glare; and the desert showed itself to his eyes a desert waste and nothing more. The day lay stark upon its lifeless face and it seemed as if, within the wide rim of the horizon, no thing moved save the tonga. They were then pa.s.sing rapidly over higher ground and seemed to have drawn a shade nearer to the raw red northern hills. Amber would have said that they could never have found a solitude more absolute.

The thought was still in his mind when the tonga dipped unexpectedly over another ridge, began to descend another long grade of dead, parched earth, and discovered some distance ahead of them on the wagontrack a cloud of dust like a tinted veil, so dense, opaque, and wide and high that its cause was altogether concealed in its reddish, glittering convolutions. But the Virginian knew the land well enough to recognise the phenomenon and surmise its cause, even before his ears began to be a.s.sailed by the hideous rasping screech of wheels of solid wood revolving reluctantly on rough-hewn axles guiltless of grease. And as the tonga swiftly lessened the distance, his gaze, penetrating the thinning folds, discerned the contours of a cotton-wain drawn by twin stunted bullocks, patient noses to the ground, tails a-switch. Beside his cattle the driver plodded, goad in hand, a naked sword upon his hip. Within his reach, between the rude bales of the loaded cart, the b.u.t.t of a bra.s.s-bound musket protruded significantly.... All men went armed in that wild land: to do as much is one of the boons attendant upon citizenship in an unprogressive, independent native State.

Deliberately enough the carter swerved his beasts aside to make way for the tonga, lest by undue haste he should make himself seem other than what he was--a free man and a Rajput. But when his fierce, hawk-like eyes encountered those of the dak traveller, his att.i.tude changed curiously and completely. Recognition and reverence fought with surprise in his expression, and as Ram Nath swung the tonga past the man salaamed profoundly. His voice, as he rose, came after them, resonant and clear:

"_Hail, thou Chosen of the Gateway! Hail_!"

Amber neither turned to look nor replied. But his frown deepened. The incident pa.s.sed into his history, marked only by the terse comment it educed from Ram Nath--words which were flung curtly over the tonga-wallah's shoulder: "Eyes to see and ears to hear and a tongue withal ... sahib!"

The Virginian said nothing. But it was in his mind that he had indeed thrust his head into the lion's mouth by thus adventuring into the territory which every instinct of caution and common-sense proclaimed taboo to him--the erstwhile kingdom of the Maharana Har Dyal Rutton. It was, in a word, foolhardy--nothing less. But for his pledged word it had been so easy to order Ram Nath to convey him back to Badshah Junction to order and to enforce obedience at the pistol's point, if needs be! Honour held him helpless, bound upon the Wheel of his Destiny: he must and would go on....

He sat in silent gloom while sixty minutes were drummed out by the flying hoofs. The hills folded in about the way, diverting it hither and yon with raw, seamed spurs, whose flanks flung back harsh and heavy echoes of the tonga's flight through riven gulch and scrub-grown valley. And then it was that Ram Nath proved his mettle. Hardened himself, he showed no mercy to his pa.s.senger, and never once drew rein, though the tonga danced from rock to ridge and ridge to rut and back again, like a tin can on the tail of an astonished dog. As for Amber, he wedged his feet and held on with both hands, grimly, groaning in spirit when he did not in the flesh, foreseeing as he did nine hours more of this heroic torture punctuated only by brief respites at the end of each stage.

CHAPTER XII

THE LONG DAY