Mohammed's Tooth/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
“All earth is full of wonders.”
THERE were rifle-shots, stray for the most part but now and then in ragged volleys, among the crags around us as our Waziris pursued and sniped the retreating Pathans. There was not even a guard over the supplies within the sangar wall, and even the women had taken the trail in the mist to pounce on wounded and strip the dead. The sangar was empty of all except King, when Grim, Narayan Singh and I arrived breathless. King was sitting on the bottom step outside the sangar tower, looking like a spectre with a film of gray mist blowing by him.
“She's gone!” he said, not getting up.
“Have you searched? Have shouted?” I asked.
“Shout all you want to in this wind!” he answered. “Unless she's lost her head and run away down-wind toward the border, you couldn't make her hear ten yards away. And if she's run off in a panic she'll be either miles away, or dead, or a prisoner. Shout, though, if it suits you!”
“She never was in panic in her life,” I said.
And I would have said more, but Narayan Singh interrupted me—a thing he rarely, almost never did. His usual method is to wait until everybody else has had his say, and then after a pause to say extremely little.
“We might at least try down-wind, sahibs,” he broke in. “So, we would be on our way home. If we find her, we can make tracks for the border, lying up by day.”
“You fellows go,” King answered. “I've a pledge to keep. I promised these Waziris, if they'd help me tonight, I'd stand by them until they reach their own villages.”
“!” muttered Grim. “I'll stay with you, of course,” he added.
Narayan Singh waited for orders, and I said nothing. Mixed emotion makes me speechless as a rule, and the notion of describing exactly what had happened in the well had left me–as I think Narayan Singh intended. We were all in the deep of discouragement. Narayan Singh was plucking at his beard irresolutely.
“Sahibs!” he exclaimed suddenly, stepping up to windward of us to spare noise. “Is it not best that Jeff Sahib and I should undertake this task?”
King eyed me and nodded. Grim was silent, but tossed me three clips full of pistol cartridges. I knew he hated to be left out of any difficult or dangerous employment, but his loyalty to King was paramount, and it was obvious that two would be better than one on either venture. None, except possibly Narayan Singh, had any confidence in the outcome.
“Let's go,” I said. “So long, you fellows.”
I remember we did not shake hands.
So Narayan Singh and I set forth with the wind at our backs and climbed the sangar wall, dropping down on to the track along the side of the ravine that we had rushed with such enthusiasm but a short while back. The lower end was now no longer in the moonlight, and out of the solid-looking blackness down there the only sound that came was the cry of jackals, long since attracted to the feast of slain.
"I don't know to which of us it occurred first that three jackals had come slinking the wrong way—toward us—out of darkness into moonlight—up-hill—without apparent reason. Nothing in nature happens undesignedly. We both came to a stand still. The Sikh's ears are sharper than mine, and he heard something that caused his fingers to clench tight on the barrel of his rifle. (He had left his sword with King, as likely to get in the way, and probably more useful to King now in any case, if only as a symbol of authority.)
There was nowhere to hide in the moonlight, and it was not easy to go forward silently among that loose shale, but that was the only course open, so we picked our way carefully, pausing to listen at intervals. In spite of our care, the noise we made scared away a pack of jackals that were nosing something just within the dark zone; they scampered away, whimpering. Then we heard low voices, and another sound. Narayan Singh sprang forward, and I after him. But when we reached the corner where the tracks forked on either hand of the Gibraltar-rock, there was nobody there.
Nobody—and nothing, I thought, except a jackal lurking near us, and an owl that swooped, and swooped again, afraid of us, but bent on an investigation. Suddenly the jackal threw caution to the winds and scurried by within a yard of me, seized something in the darkness under the cliff, and scampered away with it. I swung a blow at him as he went by, missed, but could see that he had something in his mouth.
So I stooped in the shadow and groped. Narayan Singh did the same. Each of us found something. I picked up a leather legging—mate to the one the jackal had pounced on. The Sikh produced Joan Angela's cloth riding-hat. Beyond question, both articles were hers. There was even a strand of her brown hair caught in the hat-band; it glistened like gold when I stepped back into the moonlight to examine it. But there was no blood on the hat, nor on the legging, and I could feel none on the stone where the things had lain. We did not dare strike matches.
“She is not dead,” said Narayan Singh.
“They've stripped her, and chucked the body over the cliff,” said I. “We'd better climb down there and drive the jackals off.”
“Nay,” he said. “If they had stripped her, they would have carried off the garments. And since some were left, then why not all? She is alive, and not far away. She herself has removed these, for reasons. Notice, sahib: They were not thrown away at haphazard, but lay side by side, as a soldier, or a lady, would have left them. And they lay on a prominent stone, where whoever passed would see them in daylight. Yet she was unseen when she laid them there, or whoever saw would have taken them surely. She is alive, and did this purposely.”
It was possible she had removed the leggings to make running easier. I had noticed how the things caught on the backs of her boots when she walked, and the lower edge of the one we had found was worn shiny with the friction. But why the hat?
“She and I had a misunderstanding,” I said, hating to refer to it but forced, in order to make my meaning clear. “She may have felt so piqued that she has decided to make her own way back to the border.”
“Nay, sahib; for she left the hat and leggings on a stone beside the way, where we might see them. That is proof that she wished to be followed.”
The Sikh's argument seemed fair enough, and yet I found it unconvincing. I recalled a woman who had once deliberately wandered off for the sake of causing trouble, knowing well that I, whom she detested, would feel compelled to search for her and being her back. Such memories do crop up when they can do the most harm. I saw a mental vision of Joan Angela in hiding near by, chuckling at the thought of my disgruntlement.
But that unpleasant idea vanished when I remembered that we had heard more than one voice as we came down-hill. I began to hunt about for tracks, but might as well have looked for a subway entrance, there in the dark, on those dry rocks.
“There be two ways,” said the Sikh, “for we know she is not in the sangar up behind us. If she left the hat and leggings for us to see, I think she will have left another sign to show which way she took. Let us try the likeliest first.”
So we strode side by side in the dark along the right-hand fork that curved around the Gibraltar-rock, and came presently to the outcrop where, I suddenly remembered, we had left a horse standing. I had forgotten all about the beast, and believe Narayan Singh, too, had forgotten, until that instant. The beast's droppings were there still warm and in a heap, for he had stood still patiently. I struck a match at last, sheltering it between my hands. There was the mark of a man's sandalled foot imprinted plainly in the dung, and pointing along the track, away from the corner behind us.
That proved not much yet. There was nothing likelier than that a lurking hill-thief had come and stolen the horse. I could see no sign of Joan Angela's footprints. But Narayan Singh scouted forward, and at the end of about a minute stood and waited for me. When I reached him he showed me a hairpin stuck into a rolled-up piece of soiled, white cotton cloth—the sort of stuff the Hindus use for making turbans.
The Hill-women don't use hairpins—not of that sort, at any rate; nor do they pin a piece of cloth so neatly; nor would they have dropped such a long piece and left it; as a bandage, or a tape to tie bundles with, it would have been too valuable.
“That is her sign, sahib. We go forward,” said Narayan Singh.
So forward we went in a hurry, with our choice between making a noise and being waylaid, or going too slowly to have any hope of catching up, and making some noise in the bargain. It was impossible to move silently in the dark on that rough track. We broke into a run at intervals; and at the end of about a mile of up-and down-hill scrambling we had to pause for breath.
“I am thinking of that prisoner you let go, sahib. What was his name? I mean the man whose hands were tied with the reins from off the second horse,” said Narayan Singh when he had breath enough to speak.
“Akbar bin Mahommed,” I answered, louder than was necessary, because the thought spurred emphasis.
“Aye! Akbar bin Mahommed!” said a voice from a ledge up above us, and we both jumped nearly out of our skins.
I took aim at the sound, seeing nothing, not meaning to shoot, but by way of instinctive precaution. But Narayan Singh pushed my rifle up.
“Not so, sahib,” he said quietly. “We are two, against we know not how many. “O—Akbar bin Mahommed!” he called out, pitching his voice to an almost falsetto note, to make it carry.
There was no answer; only the echo and re-echo, wailing away and away into the distance. He called again; but only more echoes, and then silence, punctured by the distant crack of a skirmisher's rifle.
WE CLIMBED up on the ledge, and it took us ten minutes of strenuous scrambling, hauling each other up in turns, since we could not find even a goat track. There was nothing on the ledge, and no body, although we found a way down, that led to a spot fifty yards beyond where the track, that we had been following before, forked. So we followed the new direction, throwing caution to the winds. It was no use trying to go silently. Whoever lay in wait for us had an easy task in any event. We did better to save time and husband strength by striding at ease, if the phrase can be made to fit stumbling through stone-strewn shadow.
Whatever King's and Grim's predicament might be, we were pretty surely now cut off from hope of reaching them. The dawn was beginning to announce its coming, cold-gray in the east. The wind changed and blew more chill. I felt hungry, and wondered what Joan Angela might have to eat, supposing she were really still alive; tired, and wondered whether she were not exhausted, even though she had the horse; hopeless, because of the absurdity of going further, with all those ragged hill-sides swarming with ambushed men, and daylight due.
“That man Akbar called to us for some good reason, sahib,” said Narayan Singh.
But I did not answer. There was no use in saying what I thought. We were enough discouraged. I remembered tales of how those Hillmen will decoy a man until he stands exactly where it suits them best to murder him. We were easy marks, at the end of our tether, leg-weary, beginning to grow thirsty, and without supplies. I sat down, and the Sikh chose a rock beside me. For a while we sat in silence. Then—
“Akbar bin Mahommed!” a voice croaked from a ledge above us.
I turned swiftly, and this time, because the dawn was brightening, I caught sight of a man's head in a notch between two boulders. It was there for a second, and then gone. Narayan Singh got to his feet.
“Sit down,” I said. “If he's an enemy, we're easy prey. If he's a friend he'll watch, and see we're not coming, and call to us again.”
So we sat still, nervously alert for sounds. But we sat for at least ten minutes, and the sun rose in a sea of color, tipping the hills with gold, before anything happened. Then the same voice called, from the same place, and I saw Akbar bin Mahommed's face between the rocks, with a thin wisp of smoke blowing along the wind behind it.
“In the name of Allah, the All-merciful, the Lord of all, this way! I am thy friend, Ram-is-den!” he cried out. “May my off spring eat me if I lie!”
“Are you alone?” I called back.
“Nay, since He who sees all is everywhere! But when ye come we shall be three men.”
“And a woman?”
“Nay!”
Hope, that had sprung in an instant, was dashed again. However, the smoke suggested breakfast. We began to climb, Akbar directing us at intervals from overhead, counseling caution and warning us to keep our heads low.
“For, though I am a friend, there be those who are not!” he explained, as if he were announcing something new.
At the last he reached over the ledge and seized me by the hand, helping me to swarm the ten-foot scarp. And then the two of us hauled up Narayan Singh.
There was a cave at the back, and thence the smoke came. The opening was two-thirds blocked by a boulder, but it was a drafty hole, shaped roughly like a curved gourd, full of the acrid smoke from a small fire of dung and sticks and litter, on which, of all unexpected things, tea was stewing in a battered, enameled-iron kettle.
“Where is the sahiba?” I demanded.
“God knows,” he answered naively.
“You know!” I said, seizing his arm and giving him a jerk to make him face me.
“Who knows the way of a woman?” he retorted. “The animals—the rocks—the wind—men's hearts—a man may understand. But not women. Allah forgot to make them comprehensible.”
“He made me easy to understand!” I assured him, backing him against the wall. “I'm going to learn from you where the sahiba is, or kill you.”
“Then thou art a wizard, Ram-is-den! Read my heart! Tell me what is written there that I myself know not!”
“Tell me first what you do know,” I demanded.
“Be seated then, sahibs. Who am I that I should not tell truth? And see: I have tea that I stole from the fattest bunnia in Dera Ghazi Khan—very good stuff indeed, and stewed thoroughly. Moreover, eggs; behold them! Nine chupatties—lo, three apiece! A woman will be beaten presently because her man lacks food. I gave her the tea not long ago, and she was beaten for not saying whence she had it. Such is life, inshallah! Bellies ache for food. None but Allah knoweth whence a meal comes. Sahibs, it is pleasanter beyond the fire, where less smoke is. So, with your honors' good permission, eggs! Three eggs apiece—a hen's best effort, in the name of the All-Wise! We must drink tea from the kettle, having no cups. It is hot. Beware of it. I tried to steal cups, but there were none.”
He paused with his mouth full of eggs and chupattie.
“Where is the sahiba?” I repeated.
“Ah! She? God knows. I was telling what I know with your honor's favor, when your honor interrupted. Sahib, I am thy man. We are friends forever. None shall thrust a feud between us. I went forth with swollen wrists to find a set of garments, is it not so?”
“And to bring a holy youth to me, alive,” I reminded him.
“Ah! That one! Such a simpleton he is! Take another egg, sahib—none save Allah knoweth whence a meal comes. Let the hen not have labored in vain! Lo, I went forth with swollen wrists. Is the smoke offensive? Let us tread the fire out. It is cold, but the sun is rising. Sons of evil mothers might observe the smoke. In the name of Allah, no more bloodshed than is necessary. If they come here we must kill them, and the hills are full of dead already. So. Lo, I have a sheepskin. It was warm when I took it, for a woman slept in it. I will lend it to your honor until the sun gets high. Thereafter it will serve for pillow for the three of us, inshallah.”
He tossed the sheepskin over my shoulders and sat down again. I sat closer to Narayan Singh to let him share it, for the whistling wind was keen. Akbar bin Mahommed resumed his tale.
“So I went forth with swollen wrists to do your honor's bidding, we being friends, whom none shall separate. Who am I, that I should not tell truth? God witnesseth. There is a village on the shoulder of the hill that men call Iskanderan, none knoweth why. Thither I went, bearing in mind your honor's wishes, much exercised with wonder how this cunning purpose might be accomplished, yet hopeful, since Allah knoweth all—aye, even the unlawful ways of women! So I came in great haste to the village on the humped-up shoulder of Iskanderan, my wrists still hurting. And I lay, praying Allah for cunning and courage, in the shadow of the stone wall that surrounds the evil-smelling place. God witnesseth. He heard me.
“Lo. The house of the man, whose wife, I am witness, has more than once deceived him, stands thus, at the corner of the wall, with a flat roof, and thereon a breastwork—easy to defend, and hard to enter. Had the man been there, we three were not in this place now. But Allah, who is All-wise, put a hope of loot into the fool's head, and he was one of those who prowled the hills last night to strip the slain—a very jackal. May his eyes drop out! May he learn in good time what his wife is, and eat mockery! The dog!
“All earth is full of wonders. It happened his wife had obeyed him, and lay within, behind a locked door, snoring, for I heard her. There was none else in the house. To right and left the wall is lower, and I chose the darker side, leaping the wall and descending silent-footed in the piled cow-dung. None heard me. Allah is my friend.
“I went to the shed where they keep the hens, and wrung a hen's neck lest she make an alarm. Beneath her were ten eggs. The hen is yonder, sahibs, in the corner, proving that I lie not. I cut her throat before the life left. Those I hid where I could find them presently, and then crept to the woman's door. But I dared not beat on it, and she slept like a bear in winter.
“None the less, it was dark, for the peak above the shoulder of the hill shut off the moon—an unwise situation for a man's house, whose wife and Um Kulsum are one!—and a beam projected. Moreover, there are crannies in the stone into which a man's toes may be thrust. Allah is my friend.
I reached the roof, whereon was a trap-door opening outward—by the favor of God unlocked. I opened and descended.
“Whereafter, after a while, the woman gave me tea and this kettle, and chupatties that were waiting against her man's return. Those I hid beside the eggs and hen, returning to have further word with her, she having unlocked the door that admits to the yard, in fear of me who might so easily betray her, and in greater fear of neighbors to the right and left. An evil conscience, sahibs, is by Allah's favor a good man's opportunity. Lo, I practised on her fears.
“The crazy youth who preaches new politics, wearing fine clothes and the white turban of an uleema since he went to school in Samarkand, slept—so she told me—in a house on the far side, and alone that night, since all who had the courage were on foot in the hills, in search of loot. He has no wife. I bade her go bring him, on any pretext. She is very fair to look at. She refused. But her husband had left his second knife—lo, this one!—hanging by its girdle from a rafter. I showed her the edge of it.
“By and by she brought the youth, he much enamored—yet presently much more afraid of me, and of the point of the knife at his belly. A simpleton, though full of politics! Clean-shaven like a fool, though old enough for a beard a foot long. Brave with long words, but as fearful of cold steel as a camel is of ghosts. And in love with the woman.
“So I promised to betray them both to the woman's husband, unless obedience were the very breath he breathed. And I stripped him naked, rolling his clothes in a bundle—white turban and all. Thereafter I bade him go and hide his nakedness in garments fit for a man, and to return, and to come with me on a certain errand; for I bore in mind your honor's wish that I should bring him living and unhurt.
“But he was over-fearful, and more evil-minded than the witch who gave him birth! When he had clothed himself, by Allah it occurred to his treacherous mind that I was alone in the house with the woman; and if he aroused the village, she and I could be taken red-handed, he acquiring honor, and we caught like rats in a cess-pit!
“So he wakened two or three, and they others. And before I knew it, as the Most High is my witness, there were nine men, mostly old ones, but a youth or two—and one in his prime, whom I will slay for his insolence if Allah wills—all beating on the door and demanding entrance.
“So I whispered to the woman, bidding her say that shaven fool had sought to se duce her and had started this false alarm for vengeance on her because she refused him. Then I left by the roof very silently, closing the trap-door after me and dropping down into the dung, the knife and the kettle clanging together as I fell. But I leaped the wall before they saw me, and they searched in vain, some swearing the clang of the kettle was this thing, and some that, while I lay crouched in a shadow. Allah is my friend.
“I heard them questioning the woman. And I heard her lie, like the Um Kulsum that she is, first none believing her, then one or two; and then all believing her, because there was no trace of me, and the shaveling lacked an explanation for his change of garments. So they beat him for having wakened them, and drove him home with a threat in his ears that he should make his reckoning with the woman's husband. And I returned over the wall for the eggs and chupatties and the hen, finding them where I hid them, though an egg was broken where a fool in search of me had set his heel on it, leaving nine.
"I DID up the food in the bundle of clothes, hung the kettle to my belt, and with the knife held ready set forth to find your honors, praising Allah, who is Lord of Virtue, and my friend. Lo, sahibs, here I am, by Allah's favor! Yet not without a happening on the way. Not by any means.
“I set forth. To myself I laughed, because the man whose wife had served my purpose is a cuckold, who shall learn it at the proper time, and eat shame, and be shot when he picks a quarrel with me. None the less, I was filled with regret because the shaveling I had promised I would bring lay dreading the dawn and the woman's husband. Allah put a thought into my heart. Lo, consider how He works to preserve His friends! A miracle! It crossed my mind that the shaveling would gladly come away with me, for great fear of the woman's husband. I turned back, minded to regain the village on the upward side where his house is. So I chose another trail, and as I turned along it, by the grace of the Most High I heard footsteps!
“There was the clank of knives and rifles, and the heavy tread of men returning with a night's loot.I lay behind a rock, and soon I saw moonlight shining on the faces of three men—that woman's husband one of them. Had I not turned back when Allah put the thought into my heart, it had been I on whom the moon shone! Your honors would not have breakfasted! They had three rifles each, and clothing, and some bandoleers, and what not else. I let them pass, though it burned my heart not to possess at least one rifle.
“When, their backs were toward me I set forth again, abandoning hope of the shaveling, but praising Allah, who had brought the fool to mind. And I reached unseen the corner where your honor had befriended me. But the fight was over, and I heard stray rifle-shots beyond the sangar; and after considering a while I guessed that your honors' great valor and cunning had put Kangra Khan to flight. So I approached the sangar, and found only dead men lying there.
“The women had been busy. Women are women, sahibs. The dead were in many pieces, and as for loot, the thieves—may Allah curse them!—had left not so much as a button or a finger-ring. But they had left their own stores unguarded, so I helped myself. Thereafter I went to the watch tower, where the sacred well is, minded to drink a little of the water that protects a man against red-sickness and the bullets of a foe, inshallah.
“Sahibs, may the Lord of all forget me if I lie! I was half-way down the ladder, when I jumped at one leap to the top! This heart of mine, that is a man's and beats in one place sturdily, remained there! When I reached the summit it overtook me, and returned into my bosom with a thump, causing every hair of my body to wriggle like a worm! Mashallah! Did a voice from the well not speak to me? And am I the wind or the water, that I should hear such a marvel and not feel terrified? Nay, by Allah, I was flesh, and very nearly decomposed!
“Nay, I heard not what the voice said. I was afraid, sahibs. He who is afraid hears fear, and nothing else. Said I to myself, there is a devil in the well, fouling holy water! Should it truly be a devil, thinks I, in the name of Allah I will show that is no place for him; and if it is a man in hiding, well and good; his spirit shall go where no living man can ever see it! I got me a good-sized stone, about as heavy as a man can lift with two hands. I hove it, thus, above my head, standing back a little from the well-mouth, lest the devil come forth, or a man shoot up at me. And I stood on tip toe, thus. I raised a shout to Allah to direct the aim and smite His enemy. The voice spoke again from the well, and I answered it!
“'Ho! In the name of Allah, and of His servant Mohammed, I, Akbar bin Mohammed, answer thee!' I shouted.
“And I flung the stone—a great stone, sahibs!
“Mashallah! He is great, and wise, and wonderful! He knoweth all. He foresees and predestinates. I told you how I stood a little back, lest the devil come forth, or a man shoot up at me. The stone, too, slipped a little, in my hands as I strained my strength to it. And lo, it hit the well wall. Lo, it bounded off and smashed a ladder rung. Then lo, it splashed into the water. And, Mashallah! when the echo of the splash was finished, a beautiful voice like a houri's came forth, saying—
“'Akbar bin Mahommed, why do you try to kill me?'
“Aye, English, sahibs. The voice spoke English.”
He paused, the silence eloquently illustrating an emotion much too deep for words. It was a full minute before he took up the tale again.
“Now the houris speak the language of the Koran, sahibs. English is an unknown speech to them. So I reasoned this must be a woman. I am not afraid of women. Nay! A woman has her reasons to fear me, or to admire me! Until I lie stricken in the dark by some man's bullet, and the hags come forth with knives, I will fear no woman! So I stepped to the mouth of the well with a second stone—a smaller one—intending this time to make better aim.
“'Come forth!” I called to her, hoping thus to hear her as she set foot on the broken ladder rung, and to direct the flight of the stone, with Allah's aid, accordingly.
“Mashallah! As my head appeared between the well mouth and the stars, she fired a pistol at me! But, as Allah is All merciful, the bullet missed!
“Thereafter the voice like a houri's came forth again, speaking angrily. And He who governs all things opened my ears and understanding, so that I knew her for Joan-angela Sahiba. And I said again—
“'Come forth!'
“And when her face appeared above the well-mouth, looking white and angry, with such little English as I have I bade her praise the name of Allah, the All-merciful, who had sent to her assistance such an one as me, and not a dog of a Waziri, who might have offered her insult and worse things. Whereat she laughed, and we were friends. A most wise, excellent sahiba!”