Mohammed's Tooth/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
“Where's the girl?”
NARAYAN SINGH praised a number of gods for what befell, and himself not at all. Grim and I thanked the wind, that tore down the ravine in gusts of fury a man could hardly stand against, making Kangra Khan believe Allah had sent the blast to favor his own retreat northward under cover of darkness. Even the fierce tribesmen of that region were hardly likely to stir on such a night, and he reasoned, as we learned afterwards, that the Waziris would take advantage of the fury, of the elements to scoot for home. Consequently, none but his temporary allies, the putative Orakzai Pathans, could have signaled to him from below.
He added all that argument to his conviction of the Hajji's holiness and orthodoxy. Reason, argument, conviction are alike dangerous on dark nights, when the actual facts are obscure.
His men ignored all possibility of danger. Believing what they wanted to believe—that they were well-guarded against surprize by their allies in the ravine, they began to troop out of the cavern and down the ramp carrying the few odds and ends of loads that had not already been stacked at the foot of the ramp in readiness. And those who were first at the bottom crouched down behind the loads to shelter themselves from the wind; coming out of a warm cavern they doubtless felt it even more than we did.
Some of them carried lighted torches made of the resinous wood no longer needed for the fire—proof enough that they meant to march far and furiously, as otherwise they would have heaped the unburned fuel on the women. One group of six torch men stood at the end of the ledge where the ramp began, perhaps to keep tally of the men who passed; and as we reached the foot of the nearly sheer side of the ravine we could see Joan Angela standing beside Kangra Khan in the torchlight.
She was still wearing the uleema's turban and a sheepskin jacket, but somebody had robbed her of the long smock, so that she looked like a rather wretched boy in knickerbockers. There were no women near her; they were at work; but as the torchlight wavered in the wind we could see the shadowy forms of about a dozen riflemen—undoubtedly Kangra Khan's picked bodyguard.
The chief himself seemed in desperate haste, and to be trying to instil the same ambition into his men. Once he seized a torch and beat the men who passed him, driving them with it in a hurry down the ramp. Then he returned and appeared to be speaking to Joan Angela, pretty roughly to judge by his attitude; but she stood up to him, and if she was afraid we could not detect it from that distance, although the torchlight shone full in her face.
Then, with an imperious gesture to the handful of men who were watching, Kangra Khan went off with long strides down the ramp, presumably to try to get some kind of order out of the chaos among the loads. It was then that we began to climb, Grim leading, and I last. As the biggest and strongest it was my job to be a stepping block when the track proved otherwise impracticable. When they had used my shoulders to reach a higher perch they lowered Grim's girdle for me, so we went up fairly fast.
Near the top was a narrow ledge shaped roughly like an oyster-shell, jutting out about five feet below the great ledge in front of the cavern. There was just room on it for the three of us, and there we crouched, partly protected by the wall that leaned outward above us, but unseen only because Kangra Khan's men were overconfident. It was a dizzy perch, and there was a sensation as if the whole hill-side were swaying in the wind. The torchlight shone on Narayan Singh's rifle, but I neither dared to tell him of it for fear of being overheard, nor to try to move the thing lest one or other of us should lose his grip and go sliding off the smooth rock on to the fangs two hundred feet below. So the glint on the metal was seen from above; yet even that circumstance favored us.
Luckily for us the wind was playing ducks and drakes with acoustics. Who could cling to that crazy ledge, let alone reach it, without starting miniature land slides! We were breathing hard from the climb. For another thing, the rock's unevenness was painful to hands and knees, and we had to keep shifting our weight. If we had been detected, one shove with a stick would have ended the careers of all three of us, and I think if any one had shouted at us suddenly from above, we would have jumped out of our shivering skins and slid to death! There were certainly never three men who felt less heroic than we did during those interminable minutes.
However, we received warning before interference came. We had time to cling to one another and to the rock, digging fingers and feet into crannies. Some one on the ledge above yelled against the wind in Pushtu that there was an approach unguarded. He came and stood close to us with his back to the ravine, gesticulating and shouting at the torchmen. We could only catch about one word in ten that he said, but from the general drift of it he seemed anxious about the track we had climbed by. Apparently the others took no notice of him. He moved a pace or two along the ledge, and by screwing my neck around I could see the top of his head as he peered over; but he drew back instantly and went to yelling again at Joan Angela's guards. I could not hear what he said.
Presently he came back to his original position directly above us, still yelling, and lying prone on his belly, leaned over. Then his face was just five feet above us, and I could see distinctly the dark outline of his turbaned head against the sky. I took aim with the pistol; but I had to move to do that, resting my elbow on the Sikh's back; and as luck would have it, I slipped and almost fell off the ledge, so I did not fire. It was by the grace of unseen Powers that I did not drop the pistol.
I could not recover balance without scrambling to my knees. That upset the others, and forced me to stand upright to save them. I reached for the Pathan's neck, meaning to pull him over, but he was too quick and drew back. I bent my knee for Grim to mount by, and he had his hand on my shoulder when the Pathan's face grinned again within a foot of mine, and he almost screamed at me:
“The Tooth, Ram-is-den! Have you the Tooth?”
The question saved his life, as his play-acting with the guards had probably saved ours. Narayan Singh's sword licked upward, and checked only in the nick of time.
“Ho!” the Sikh laughed in my ears, “the Gods are good to us!”
And his weight followed Grim's on my knee. They scrambled on to the ledge and dragged me after them. And as if the whole thing had been timed by G. H. Q. we got to our feet as a very hurricane of firing burst out from the ravine below us.
I would like to tell exactly what happened then, but it all happened so fast that a man's brain could hardly record it. We had the full advantage of surprize, and all the corresponding disadvantage that goes with it, not least of which is that every man acts then on impulse and reason hardly enters into the ensuing chaos. The torchmen began beating out their torches—all except one, who waved his flaming stick frantically as if hoping to summon friends from heaven knew where.
By that light I saw one of the bodyguard seize Joan Angela to kill her with his tulwar, and my pistol bullet tore through the breadth of him under the arms as the tulwar was in mid-air. I saw her stoop and pick the tulwar up. Then darkness. The fool who was waving the torch had flung it down into the ravine.
We four rushed the bodyguard, and the howling wind seemed to change key as nine or ten tulwars whirled thrumming to stand us off. Those Pathans could see no more “than we could. They depended on speed of swordsmanship to bar the way as it were with a wall of live steel. But one man fired his rifle at random in our general direction, and I went like a rock out of a catapult, straight for the flash.
I use my fist in times like that—instinct, I suppose. My left took the rifleman full in the mouth, and he went down like a pole-axed steer. The others followed through behind me, and that broke line, nerve, resolution—everything. The remainder was panic, or riot, or hell, or whatever you care to call it—hand-to-hand, shoot, and slash, and butt-work in the dark, with the Sikh's sword striking fire on tulwar blades, and the gasping and grunting of desperate men in a shambles.
I heard Joan Angela cry aloud, and as I tore in to her aid she thrust out blindly with the tulwar and ran the point through the skin over my left ribs. I don't know how a man sees at a time like that. Forgotten, latent senses function. Two Pathans seized Joan Angela to carry her off. One clapped his hand over her mouth from behind, and the other seized her legs to stop her kicking. I used the pistol and missed both of them. The second man let go her legs and closed with me, groping for my eye to stick a thumb in it. I took him around the waist, up-ended him, and flung him into the ravine. I don’t know where the pistol went, or how. I never gave it a thought until some time later.
I ran back for Joan Angela, and she was gone. Yelling for the others, with no hope of being heard against the wind, I rushed down the ramp, overtaking three men. Two went backwards into the ravine like nine-pins as they turned and met my fist. The third fired at me, but too close. I knocked the rifle up, and he staggered backwards from a blow I landed on him some where, leaving the rifle in my grasp. Then he ran, and I swung for him with the butt end, finishing that business.
That gave me a weapon, but the magazine was empty. I remember jerking out the empty shell as I ran, and sticking my thumb down into the magazine with a desperate notion of finding a cartridge jammed in there. I imagined Joan Angela's throat being cut in the darkness; for Pathans in a panic will do anything.
And panic there was. For down at the foot of the ramp where they had piled the loads the darkness was alive with spurting rifle-fire and the yells of the Waziris—both sides utterly desperate—none dreaming of quarter—and no control—no chance of it. Once I thought I heard King's voice barking commands in a momentary lull, but that may have been delusion.
Then some one rushed by from behind me, and I thought he was Narayan Singh. I ran my best to overtake him, and the two of us charged neck and neck behind a line of Pathans who were kneeling along the edge of the ramp and pouring a useless fire into the ravine, each one yelling to the others he had killed a man for every shot he fired. Bullets from below, as wild as theirs, were spattering on the cliff above our heads. I tripped over a man's legs and fell, rolling like a dead man down a steep, smooth place until a sharp rock knocked the wind out of me, and I lay there shamming dead for I dare say two minutes, until I could recover breath.
Then Narayan Singh, charging and sliding down the ramp, stumbled over me in turn, and I knew the first man had been either Akbar bin Mahommed or an enemy in flight. I pounced on Narayan Singh to let him know who I was before he plunged his sword into me.
“The sahiba!” he yelled.
He was frantic—worse than I–neither man nor beast in that hour, but more like the embodiment of some ungoverned element.
“Krishna!” he screamed, and broke loose. The night swallowed him.
Then some one lighted a torch down there among the loads—I suppose to give the Pathans a point to rally on. The Waziris yelled, and the man—or the woman, maybe-who held the torch went down under a hail of bullets. But before the light died I had seen Kangra Khan and three men on a rock at the foot of the ramp. No sign of Joan Angela. I clubbed the rifle, scrambled to my feet, and went for Kangra Khan, possessed of no thought, but an impulse.
I don't now remember how I reached him. At that point there is a gap I can't bridge, of hideous, screaming night, all streaked with rifle-fire. Even in dreams there's a gap there, although most of the incidents of that night recur in sleep in intricate detail. The next I recall I was crouched beside Narayan Singh in pitch darkness under the bulge of the rock on which Kangra Khan stood, with the rifle like a club in one hand, and the other hand on the Sikh's shoulder, to take the time from him.
WE SPRANG together, like fiends out a hell-hole. He ran a man clean through from behind with his saber, and I clubbed another. A third swung for me with a tulwar, but missed his footing and fell off the rock. Kangra Khan fired a pistol and jumped for his life, but the Sikh caught his foot, and I closed with him.
Over we went, all three together, Kangra Khan under us, down into the hole the Sikh and I had sprung from. And now, as I write, I can hear myself yelling: “Don't kill him! For the love o' God don't kill him!” I wanted news.
But it was easier to hold an eel than him, and he was stronger than any Pathan I have ever seen. Again and again he nearly broke away from us, but at last I got him in a strangle-hold, and the Sikh seized his foot. We had him pinned then.
“The sahiba!” I panted. “Tell me where she is, or I'll break your neck!”
And I let him feel the pressure, by way of evidence of good faith.
But I had to ease off to let him speak, although Narayan Singh twisted his foot to remind him of urgency. And it took him about a minute to gain enough breath. Then he coughed out a bark of a laugh, and answered me.
“By Allah, I don't know!” he said, and laughed again.
Then the Sikh took a hand in earnest.
“Have you got him, sahib?” he asked.
Then he let go the leg, and thrust the point of his bloody saber in between Kangra Khan's teeth, standing over the two of us, with his weight poised to drive the saber home.
“Speak, thou! Where is she?” he demanded.
Kangra Khan moved his head a fraction clear, and spat before he answered.
“By Allah, I don't know, I tell you!”
The saber went downward an inch.
“Then you die like a dog!” said the Sikh.
“By Allah, I do not know!”
He asked no mercy—made no appeal—betrayed no sign of weakness. Under my knee I could feel his heart thumping sturdily, and though I could not see his eyes I did not doubt they stared up as bravely as they had ever done. If he was lying he was much too big a fool to be a chieftain in those hills, for almost any tale would have sufficed to make us spare his life for at least a little while. And I do like a man who can face death in a dark hole without flinching. I would surely not have killed him that way, without more proof than I had that he had slain Joan Angela. Perhaps he guessed that.
I bade Narayan Singh put up his saber, and he obeyed me, for a wonder, for he was pretty well beside himself. He stood waiting with the saber raised, to see what I would order next. And I surprized him.
“Rope!” I said.
It was a mad enough order to give a man on that night, in such surroundings. But Narayan Singh was in a mood to cut the heart out of the impossible. The wind lulled, and I heard his saber thwack home twice. Then voices began calling for Kangra Khan, and one man lying on his belly on the rock that Kangra Khan had stood on to direct the fighting, and peering down in all directions, nearly found us. I laid my hand on Kangra Khan's mouth; not heavily; he understood the implication well enough. I would have killed him then, if he had cried out. But he made no sound, and the man went away.
In the lull of the wind I could hear a great change in the fighting. Lord knows how, but somehow, King had got control of most of his Waziris; and though there was nothing like volleys, there did seem to be a weight of firing all directed at one place. He had persuaded them to let the piled-up loads alone, and to attack the ramp. The Pathans, if not stampeding yet, were in a mind for flight, for I could hear some bawling to the women to bring the loads back to the cavern, and others crying out that they should take to the hills. Between them there was a prodigious rushing to and fro.
Then Narayan Singh came, and with the moon, looking down on the scene between wild clouds. The Sikh had a long piece of rawhide. I turned Kangra Khan over and held him while Narayan Singh lashed his wrists.
“I'll kill you if you make one unnecessary sound!” I said in his ear, and then let him get to his feet while I peered around the rock.
There was a battle raging on the ramp above us that would have done the Titans good to watch. The moon showed most of it, but threw enough in shadow to give imagination rein. King's Waziris were storming the ramp in flank, and about a dozen of Kangra Khan's men were holding it with a nerve and courage that did them credit. The moonlight was against them. Those of King's men who were covering the assault fired from shadow. Kangra Khan's men were in full view, and using stones to hurl back the storming parties.
There appeared to be two points of assault. Unless the Waziris had ladders, which was out of all question, they must be swarming on one another's shoulders to reach the ramp; and the Pathans yelled and danced with excitement every time they aimed a stone by hazard true enough to hit the leader and hurl a whole storming party down. Those twelve or so Pathans were having much the best of it, but I saw four of them shot dead during the minute or two while I watched.
Then it seemed by their excitement they had detected a new, more determined attempt. Four of them hurried for stones, and the rest began shooting fast at a target they certainly could not see, yelling to one another to correct the aim, and themselves trying to take cover against a steady hail of bullets that swept up out of the ravine. There could not possibly be more than twenty men making the assault, and perhaps ten firing from the dark to cover it, because there were some of King's Waziris still shooting into the scrimmage where the loads were being shouldered, and King had said he only had about fifty men all told. But it doesn't need great numbers to make a fierce affair.
One man hurled a stone from the ramp that apparently hit the mark, for the Pathans broke cover and danced and yelled in chorus. But I heard King's shrill whistle below, and another attack began immediately, covered by a hotter fire than ever. But in spite of the moonlight the odds were all with the Pathans. Four men could have held that flank of the ramp against a hundred unless there were some diversion.
So I had to be Diversion–Jack-in-the box—Kismet—on the flank of the Pathans! There was no alternative, unless I wished to see King's Waziris hopelessly beaten off.
“Guard the prisoners!” I shouted to Narayan Singh; and, clubbing the rifle again, I scrambled out of the hole before fear, posing as discretion, should lay a restraining hand on me. It was then or never. In another minute any help would be too late.
So I charged into the moonlight, at the risk of being hit by the Waziri bullets, and the first the Pathans knew of my coming was when the butt of the rifle smacked like a pole-ax on the nearest man's head and he toppled over-side, leaving room for my swing at the next, and the next.
And of that, I remember not much. It was battle-ax work, and my strength was what counted. Four or five of them charged me, and I stepped back where an overhanging buttress of the cliff made shadow, dodging as they slashed at me, and bringing down the butt with all the force I knew.
They told me afterwards Mohammed's Tooth preserved me. Maybe! Something did. I was untouched!
Some one found the path that Grim, Narayan Singh and I had climbed by. King's second storming party reached the ramp by that route and came charging down on us. Then King and no other, with a shield made of wood in his hand to turn the defender's stones aside, and his feet on a Waziri's shoulder, gained the top and his party came scrambling after him. The Pathans took to flight, to add themselves to the chaos where the loads were. Lying, standing, kneeling, the Waziris fired savagely into that mess, sweeping the ramp and the rocks, and completing the stampede, if yells meant anything.
King and I had tried to stop them; he because ammunition now was desperately short; I because Narayan Singh was down there in the dark, with a prisoner who might mean more to us than a hundred men when it should come to daylight and a show down. The priceless, irrecoverable bullets were squandered for many minutes.
“Where's the girl?” King demanded, when he got a chance to pay attention to me.
I told him I didn't know. He said nothing—pointedly. He displayed no interest when I told him we had Kangra Khan with his hands tied. He went on mastering his men, getting them posted to repel a possible return assault, singling out the wounded, sending them up to the cavern. There were nearly a score of wounded, several with scant chance of recovery. When I stepped up to speak to him he turned his back.
Well: there was no sense in arguing. He was right. Joan Angela was missing, and I alone to blame. It was I, who had had the opportunity to snatch her away from her guards—I who missed it. It was up to me to find her, and I turned and went, straight down the ramp again.
Two-thirds of the way, down I met Narayan Singh leading Kangra Khan, who was coming quietly enough, aware that the Sikh's long saber would stop mid-way the first shout he might attempt. I stopped them, and pushed them both back into the dark behind a boulder out of reach of stray shots.
“Now,” I said to Kangra Khan, “tell me where the sahiba is, and as soon as I've found her I'll let you go free.”
He shook his head.
“Huzoor, I do not know!” he answered.
“Is she down there among your men?”
“As Allah is my witness, she did not pass me. I have not seen her since I left her well guarded near the cavern. She is slain no doubt.”
He looked nearly as despondent as I felt, for from his point of view Joan Angela's death meant the loss of an enormous ransom. But Narayan Singh was unconvinced.
“I say, kill him, sahib!” he broke in. “If she is dead, he slew her! Kill him, and then you and I together will search for her body below there.”
But I felt fairly well convinced that Kangra Khan was telling truth; and never yet having murdered a prisoner I felt no disposition to begin.
“Take him to the cavern,” I said. “I'm going down alone.”
Narayan Singh objected strenuously. He begged me to come with him to the cavern, arguing that Kangra Khan might otherwise escape—a manifest absurdity. He said if I would consent to that, he would return with me and protect me while I searched for the sahiba's body.
“For thou and I have campaigned together often. Thy honor and mine are one!” he argued.
At last I consented to stay where I was while he led Kangra Khan to the cavern and returned to join me in the search. It did not amuse me to meet King again without Joan Angela dead or alive. My mental processes are no man's business but my own, and King's opinion of me, though I value it, was not the issue. I am the man who must live with myself.
I waited an interminable time, listening to the scattered shots of some of King's Waziris, who were peppering the enemy's retreat and making it as difficult as possible to get away with the remaining baggage. Every minute seemed priceless, yet the Sikh did not come. I decided to go down alone, and had started, when I heard him come hurrying behind me. I put on speed then. To wait would only lose more time. He started to run, crying—
“Sahib! sahib!”
So I ran too, knowing he could overtake me, I had nearly reached the bottom, and was by the rock where Kangra Khan had stood, when he laid a hand on my shoulder from behind.
“Come, sahib!” he said, and turned, and started running, on his way back up the ramp.
Seeing I did not follow at once, he turned and shouted:
“Come, sahib! Quickly! King sahib's request!”
“What has happened?” I demanded; but the wind blew the words back in my face, and if he heard me he did not answer.
He stood there beckoning in the moonlight within easy range of the Pathans, and I suspected by his gestures he was grinning. It looked very much like a trick of his to prevent me from taking a long chance among the rocks. There are always plenty of friends to dissuade a fellow from the proper course. I turned my back on him, and started forward.
In a second he was in pursuit of me again, jumping and sliding down the ramp in a little avalanche of loose stones.
“Come!” he insisted. “King sahib sends for you!”
And before I could ask for an explanation he was gone again, scrambling up the slide on hands and knees. Far up above me I could see King standing in the moonlight on the ledge before the cavern, talking to about a dozen men, of whom one looked like Kangra Khan, our prisoner. There seemed nothing in the way of excitement going on up there. But Narayan Singh beckoned and shouted:
“Come swiftly! King sahib waits!”
I stepped out into the moonlight from the shadow of the rock, and climbed up on another rock to get a view of the surroundings. I was not up there a second before King caught sight of me—blew his whistle—and began beckoning violently.
I jumped down into the shadow, still intending to go forward, but saw King himself and half a dozen men come hurrying down the ramp, and that decided me to wait and hear what they might have to say. I crawled back to the bottom of the slide and stood there in total darkness—perfectly invisible; but I could see all the ramp and the men who came down it.
Half-way down the ramp King stopped and blew his whistle. Narayan Singh stood up and waved his arms again, yelling, “Sahib! Sahib!”
I could not pretend after that, nor could King pretend, that I had turned back of my own free will. I was satisfied to go and discover what King had to say before continuing the search, at all events.
But the moment I stepped into moonlight, and he saw me coming, King started back, beckoning to me once and taking it for granted I would follow him. He never once looked back to see whether I was coming. Neither did Narayan Singh wait, but scrambled to overtake King. So I climbed up the ramp all alone, in no hurry, disgusted at the turn of events, and sore with King, whom I suspected of having cold feet after as good as ordering me out on a forlorn hope.
But it was all very matter-of-fact up there. Nobody seemed disturbed, or to expect an attack before morning. They were loafing about, cleaning rifles, and I saw smoke issuing from the cavern-mouth, and two Waziris climbed over the edge of the ramp with water slopping out of half-filled kerosene cans. If they dared use the well in the ravine it meant that the Pathans had drawn off further than I thought. That was not reassuring. It might mean that King had definite news that Joan Angela was already miles away.
I came up with him at last, feeling pretty well exhausted, for a good deal of the heavy work that night had fallen to my share, and my head had not properly recovered from that blow I received the first night.
“What's the news?” I demanded.
“We're safe for tonight,” he said simply, reaching out his hand for my blood-stained rifle.
He examined it casually and tossed it over the cliff.
“Why not go in and rest?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the cavern.
Not answering I stuck my hands into my pockets and accepted his advice.
There was a good fire in there. They had gathered what fuel the Pathans had left scattered about, and a brilliant flame was lighting up a great hole in the cliff that would have held a thousand men. Some wounded Waziris were sitting and sprawling around the fire, and toward the rear there were two people bandaging the rest, who were sitting with their backs against the wall, waiting their turn. One of the two was Grim. He turned his head as I passed the fire, and nodded a curt greeting.
“I saw Joan Angela,” I said, “but they carried her off almost under my eyes. It was my fault. Can I help here?”
“Sure! Lend a hand,” said a voice that made me nearly jump out of my skin; and Joan Angela looked up from tearing turbans into bandages to laugh at me. “It was Jim here who carried me off. Come over here and get busy!”