The Three Sapphires Part 30

"How far is Kohima?" Finnerty asked.

"It is but a few hours' ride. But if the sahib comes he will find the leopard at sunset, for he will come to where the body of the fat woman lies on a hill. Now in the daylight men with spears are keeping him away till I bring the sahib for the kill. The sahibs can ride to Kohima, for there is a path."

When they arrived at Kohima, the village sat under a pall of dread, and their advent was hailed with delight. An old woman bent her forehead to Finnerty's stirrup, wailing: "Sahib, it is the daughter of Sansya who has been taken, and an evil curse rests over my house, for before, by this same black devil, was taken a son."

"We'll get busy because night will soon be upon us," Finnerty said to his companions.

They were led on foot to an almost bare plateau, and Nathu, pointing to the spearsmen fifty yards ahead, said: "The body is there, sahib, and as the sun goes behind the hills the leopard will come back to eat. He is watching us from some place, for this is his way. Here he can see without being seen."

They beheld a grewsome sight--the body of the slain woman.

"This black devil has the same trick of devouring his kill in the open as the Gharwalla man-eater had," Finnerty declared; "but I see no cover for a shot." He gazed disconsolately over the stony plateau with neither rock nor tree breaking its surface. "There is no cover," he said to Mahadua, and when the shikari repeated this to Nathu, the latter answered: "_There_ is cover for the sahib," pointing to a thick clump of aloe with swordlike leaves, twenty yards away. "My men will cut the heart out of that so that the sahib may rest within. Even if the beast is wounded he will not be foolish enough to thrust his body against those spears."

Nathu spoke, and two men came forward from a group that had lingered back on the path, and with sharp knives lashed to bamboo handles cut an entrance and a small chamber in the aloe.

Finnerty laughed. "That is a new one on me, but it will probably deceive even that black devil; he would notice anything new here the size of a cricket bat."

"Huzoor," Nathu advised, "the leopard is watching us from some place, but, cunning as he is, he cannot count; so, while we are all here, the one who is to make the kill will slip into the machan and we will go away, leaving the woman who is now dead beyond doubt. And as to his scent, sahib, I have brought a medicine of strong smell that all of his kind like, and I have put some where the woman lies and within the aloe machan, so his nose will not give him knowledge of the sahib's presence."

"It is your game, Lord Victor," Finnerty said. "We'll go in a body to the aloe, and you, taking my 10-bore, slip quickly into your cubby-hole.

Squat inside as comfortably as you can, with your gun trained absolutely on the body, and wait till the leopard is lined dead with your sights; don't move to get a bead on him or he'll twig you."

Nathu followed the sahibs, dropping on their trail from a bison horn a liquid that had been decocted from the glands of an otter for the obliteration of the sahib scent; the taint of natives would not alarm the leopard, experience having taught him that when he charged they fled.

As Gilfain sat behind the sabre-leafed wall of aloe he bent down a strong-fibred shoot to obtain a good rest for the heavy 10-bore, and an opening that gave him a view of the dead body of the woman. Beyond the plateau the jungle, fading from emerald green, through purple, to sable gloom as the sun slid down behind a western hill, took on an enshroudment of mystery. A peac.o.c.k, from high in a tamarisk that was fast folding its shutter leaves for the night, called discordantly. A high-shouldered hyena slouched in a prowling semicircle back and forth beyond the kill, his ugly snout picking from the faint breeze its story of many scents. Closer and closer the hyena drew in his shuffling trot, till suddenly, with head thrown up as if something had carried to his ear, he stood a carved image of disgusting contour against a gold-tinted sky shot with streamers of red. Then, with a shrunken cringe of fear, he slipped away and was gone.

From the jungle something like a patch of its own gloom came out upon the blurred plateau. As the thing turned to sweep along the jungle edge the fading sky light glinted on two moonstones that were set in its shadowy form.

The watcher now knew what it was. His heart raced like a motor. At the base of his skull the tightening scalp p.r.i.c.ked as though an etcher were at work. His tongue moistened parchment-dry lips. His fingers beat a tattoo upon the triggers of the gun. It was not fear; it was just "It,"

the sensation that comes to all.

More wily even than the ghoulish hyena, the leopard worked his way toward the spot of his desire. Belly to earth, he glided for yards; then he would crouch, just a darkening patch on the surface; sometimes he sat up--a black boulder. Thirty yards across from the body, he pa.s.sed beyond it to catch in his nostrils the gently stirring wind that sifted through the aloe blades to where, once more flat to earth, he waited while his sixth sense tabulated the taints.

Lord Victor's eye, trained along the barrels, saw nothing definite; he felt a darkening of the ground where the woman lay, but no form grew in outlines. Suddenly there was a glint of light as if from a glowworm; that must be the leopard's eyes. Then--Gilfain must have moved his gun--there was the gleam of white teeth fair in line with the sights as the leopard snarled with lifted head.

Inspiration pulled the triggers--once, twice! The gun's roar was followed by the coughing growl of the writhing leopard. With a dulled, automatic movement the man jammed two cartridges into the gun, and with foolish neglect of sense scrambled from his cage, the razor edge of an aloe leaf slitting his cheek, and ran to where, beside the woman's body, lay dead the one who had slain her.

An instinct rather than reason flashed across Gilfain's still floating mind, a memory of Finnerty's precaution at the death of Pundit Bagh, and, holding both barrels c.o.c.ked, he prodded the still twitching black body; but, now released from trivial things, the leopard lay oblivious of this.

Torches flickered in wavy lines where the village path topped the plateau, and a crunch of hurrying feet was heard. To rea.s.sure them Lord Victor cried a cheery, "h.e.l.lo! Whoop-ah!"

When Finnerty and Swinton arrived at the head of a streaming procession a soft glow of satisfied victory loosened Gilfain's tautened nerves, and he babbled of the joy of slaying man-eaters till cut short by the major's: "Well, this act is finished, so we'll get back."

Mahadua was already busy. The leopard was quickly triced to a pole, and they were back in Kohima. Then there was ritual, for the hillmen of the jungle have their ways, and the killing of a man-eater is not of daily habit, and Mahadua, knowing all these things, had to collect a levy.

The slain one was deposited in front of the debta's house, and Mahadua, with some fantastic gyrations supposed to be a dance, collected a rupee from the headman, also from the villagers flour and ghee and honey, for that was the custom when a man-eater was slain.

Six strong carriers, each armed with a torch, were supplied by the debta to bear the trophy, slung from a bamboo, down to the next village, which was Mayo Thana.

For the sahibs milk and rice cakes and honey were supplied, and their praises sounded as demiG.o.ds. Lord Victor, as he sat on a block of wood that was a grain mortar, found his knees in the thin, bony arms of an old woman whose tears of grat.i.tude splashed upon the hand with which he patted her arm. She was Sansya, the slain woman's mother.

As they left Kohima, the carriers waving their torches in rhythmic lines of light, the leader sent his powerful voice echoing down the slopes in a propitiatory song to the G.o.d of the hills, which also conveyed an order to Mayo Thana to prepare a relay of bearers.

Weirdly mystic the torch-lighted scene, the leader's voice intoning the first line, and the others furnishing the chorus as they sang:

"G.o.d of our Hills!

Ho-ho, ho-ho!

The leopard is slain!

Ho-ho, ho-ho!

To thee our praise!

Ho-ho, ho-ho!"

To the flowing cadence of this refrain the six bearers of the leopard trotted down the mountain path in rhythmic swing.

At Mayo Thana, a mile down, and at Mandi, half a mile beyond, thrifty Mahadua collected his t.i.the as master of the hunt, and obtained torch-bearers, the lot from Mandi having the task of shouldering the burden till the elephant party was reached.

For an hour they travelled among heavy-bodied creepers and ma.s.sive trees when, through the solemn stillness, echoed the far-off tinkle of a bell.

Without command, Mahadua stood silently in the path, his head turned to listen. Five seconds, ten seconds--the sahibs sitting their saddles as silent as their guide, and again, now unmistakable, to their ears floated the soft note that Finnerty had likened to the clink of ice in a gla.s.s.

Mahadua, holding up his torch so that its light fell upon Finnerty's face, turned his eyes questioningly.

"It is Moti's bell?" Finnerty said, query in his voice.

"Yes, sahib; but it is not on Moti's neck, because it would not just speak and then remain silent, and then speak and then remain silent, for in the jungle her pace would keep it at tongue all the time."

Then, listening, they waited. Again they heard it, and again there was silence.

"Easy, easy!" Finnerty commanded, and, moving with less speed than before, they followed Mahadua.

As they came to a break in the forest where some hills had burst through its gloomed shroud to lift their rocky crests into the silver moonlight, Finnerty heard, nearer now, the bell, and, startled by its unfamiliar note, a jackal, sitting on his haunches on the hilltop, his form outlined against the moonlit sky, threw up his head to send out a faint, tremulous cry. The plaintive wail was caught up as it died away by another jackal, and then another--they were like sentinels calling from posts in a vast semicircle; then with a crashing crescendo of screaming yelps all broke into a rippling clamour that suggested they fled in a pack.

"Charming!" Lord Victor commented. "Topping chorus!"

In the hush that followed this jackal din, Finnerty could hear the tinkling bell. "Does it come up this path?" he asked the shikari.

"Yes, sahib, and I thought I heard Moti laugh."

The major turned to Swinton. "I've got a presentiment that somebody--probably the man that stuck a knife into Baboo Da.s.s'

thief--having the bell, has got Moti away from my fellows and is leading her up this path to the hills. I'm going to wing him." He slipped from the saddle, his 10-bore in hand. "Of course, if I can get my clutches on him----" He broke off to arrange action. "Put out the torch, Mahadua, and have your match box ready to light it in a second. You two chaps had better turn your horses over to the syces. With Mahadua I'll keep in advance."

Mahadua, putting his little hand up against Finnerty's chest, checked at a faint, rustling, grinding sound that was like the pa.s.sing of sandpaper over wood. Finnerty, too, heard it. Perhaps a leopard had forestalled them in waylaying the one who had signalled his approach; or perhaps the one had stilled the telltale sapphire tongue, and was near. No, it tinkled, a score or more yards beyond. The shikari's hand clutched spasmodically in a steadying grip of Finnerty's coat; there was a half-stifled gasp from its owner as two lurid eyes weaved back and forth in the black depths in which the path was lost.

Finnerty's iron nerve went slack; his boy days of banshee stories flooded his mind in a superst.i.tious wave as those devilish eyes hovered menacingly ten feet from the ground.

"A spirit!" Mahadua gasped as he crawled his way behind the major.

"Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle!" The sound came just below where the eyes had gleamed; then a smothering cry--the crunching, slipping sound of sandpaper on wood; a rapid clatter of the bell; a noise like the hiss of escaping steam mingled with the crunch of breaking bones; and again the gleaming eyes cut the darkness in sinuous convolutions.

A gasp--a cry of: "Gad, what is it?" came from behind Finnerty, and beyond there was a heavy thud, the clatter of a bamboo pole, as, with cries of horror, the men of Mandi dropped their burden and fled, gasping to each other: "It is the goblin of the Place of Terrors, and if we look upon his eyes we shall become mad!"