Past all, was the marvel of the hunting cheetah day, when he looked at the beast that gave no answer to his force; only murder in its savage heart--and Carlin"s name was his very breath in that peril, something of her spirit like a whisper from within his own heart.
All that afternoon Skag"s eyes strained ahead, and his respect grew for the thief elephant with his greater burden, and his wonder increased for Nels and Gunpat Rao. One dim far peak held his eyes from time to time; but Skag lived in the low beat of India"s misery--the fever and famine; the world of veils and the miseries beyond knowledge of the world. He sank and sank until he was chilled, even though the sweat of the day"s fierce burning was upon him. He understood hate and death, the thirst to kill; the slow ruin that comes at first to the human mind, suddenly cut off from the one held more dear than life. It seemed all boyish dazzle that he had ever found loveliness in this place. That boyishness had pa.s.sed. In this hour he saw only hatred ahead and mockery, if Carlin--. . . but the far dim peak of misty light held his aching eyes.
"Go on, Nels--on, old man," he would call.
And Chakkra would turn with protest that could not find words--his tongue silenced by the lean terrible face in the howdah behind him.
Presently Chakkra would fall to talking to his master, muttering in a kind of thrall at the thing he saw in the countenance of the American who had touched bottom.
Sanford Hantee was facing the worst of the past and an impossible future, having neither hate nor pity, now. Yet from time to time with a glance at the gun-case at his feet, he spoke with cold clearness:
"We must overtake them before night."
Chakkra, who had ceased singing, would bow, saying:
"The trail is hot, Sahib. They are not far."
Steadily beneath them, Gunpat Rao straightened out, lengthening his roll, softening his pitch. Nels was not trotting now, but in a long low run. Skag was aghast at himself, that his heart did not go out to these magnificent servants. There was not _feeling_ within him to answer these verities of courage and endurance; yet he could remember the human that had been in his heart.
The low hills had broken away behind them; the first veil of twilight in the air. A shelving dip opened, showing the bottom of the valley.
Skag could see nothing ahead--but Nels lying closer to the trail.
Chakkra"s shoulder was suddenly within reach of Skag"s hand, for the head of his master was lifted.
As the great curve of Gunpat Rao"s trumpet arched before his face--two things happened to Skag. A full blast of hot breath drove through him; and a keen high vibrant tone pierced every nerve. Then Chakkra shouted:
"Gunpat Rao, prince of Vindha--declares the chase is on! Hold fast, Sahib,--we go!"
The earth rose up and the heavens tipped. There was no foundation; the bulwarks of earth"s crust had given away. The landscape was racing past--but backward--and Nels, yet ahead, was a still, whirring streak.
The thing hardly believed and never seen in America--that the elephant is speed-king of the world--was revelation now! No pitch or roll; a long curving sweep this--seeming scarcely to touch the ground. This was the going Skag had called for--a night and a day. And Nels was labouring beside them now, but seeming to miss his tread--seeming to run on ice.
"Hai!" yelled Chakkra. "Who says there is none other than Neela Deo?"
A thread of silver stretched before them, crossing the line of their course. It broadened in a man"s breath. They turned the curve of the last slope, and heard the shout of the mahout far ahead. The thief elephant was running along Nerbudda"s margin to a ford.
A roar was about Skag"s head and shoulders like a storm--Gunpat Rao trumpeting again! The landscape blurred. The forward beast was growing large . . . two standing figures above him--the fling of a white arm!
The huge red howdah rocked as the thief elephant entered the river; a moment more, only the howdah showing. Distantly like the hum of furious insects, Skag heard Chakkra"s chant:
"The thief is snared! Holy Nerbudda herself weaved the snare. . . .
The hand of destiny is ours, Sahib. Nay, mine, not thine! Did not the Deputy Commissioner Sahib say _by necessity_? . . . Plunge in! . . .
Hai, but softly. Prince of thy kind, take the water softly, I say--"
And Gunpat Rao entered the river at a swimming stroke. Skag"s eyes had hardly turned from the great red howdah. There was a keen squeal from ahead, answered by a fiery hissing intake of Chakkra"s breath:
"That, Sahib, is the murderous mahout using his steel hook. . . . Yes, it was _by necessity_, the Deputy Sahib said. Certainly it was _by necessity_!"
The fling of a white arm again. Sanford Hantee was standing.
"Carlin!" he called.
The answer came back to him in some mystery of imperishable vibration.
"I am here."
The two great beasts were moiled together against the stream. . . .
The man and woman, whose eyes still held, might have missed the flash of steel that Chakkra parried with his ankas. In fact, it was the sound of a quick gasp of Margaret Annesley that made them turn, just as Chakkra shouted:
"_By necessity_, Sahib! . . . It is accomplished!"
The other"s blade had whirled into the water. They had heard the welt as Chakkra"s ankas came down. The strange mahout looked drunken and spineless for a second; then there was a red gush under his white cloth as he pitched into the stream.
The Great Dane had just caught up. He was in the river below them--not doubting his part had come.
"Nels, steady! Let him go!" Skag called. "Don"t touch, old man!"
And then, after the thief elephant, having no fight in him, was made fast, they heard Chakkra singing his song, but paid no attention. . . .
It was a longer journey back to Hurda, for they came slowly, but there was no haste; and two, at least, in the hunting howdah could transcend pa.s.sing time, each by the grace of the other. Gunpat Rao was returned to the Deputy Sahib with an amulet to add to his trophy-winnings; and a sentence or two that might have been taken from the record of Neela Deo himself. The thief elephant was found to be a runaway that had fallen into native hands. And Nels was restored to Bhanah by the way of the heart of Carlin Deal. . . .
They never found out how far the two women would have been taken beyond the Nerbudda. After they had first mounted into the red howdah at Hurda, the messenger of the Kabuli had disappeared into the crowd and was not seen again. . . . As for the monster himself, he had suffered enough to plan craftily. (The Nerbudda took his mahout and covered him quite as deeply as the crowd had covered his messenger at Hurda.)
Much in his silence afterward, and in the great still joy that had come to him, Sanford Hantee chose to reflect upon the mystery of pain he had known on the lonely out-journey--the spiritless incapacity to cope with life--the loss even of his mastercraft with animals. He would look toward Carlin in such moments and then look away, or possibly look within. By her, the meanings of all life were sharpened--jungle and jungle-beast, monster, saint and man--the breath of all life more keen.
CHAPTER X
_Hand-of-a-G.o.d_
Skag and Carlin had come back from Poona where five of Carlin"s seven brothers had been present at her marriage. There were weeks in Hurda now, while Skag"s equipment for jungle work arrived bit by bit. They lived some distance from the city and back from the great Highway-of-all-India, in Malcolm M"Cord"s bungalow, a house to remember for several reasons.
The Indian jungles were showing Skag deep secrets about wild animals--knowledge beyond his hopes. Some things that he thought he knew in the old days as a circus-trainer were beginning to look curious and obsolete, but much still held good, even became more and more significant. The things he had known intuitively did not diminish.
These had to do with mysterious talents of his own, and dated back to the moment he stood for the first time before one of the "big cat"
cages at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. That was his initiation-day in a craft in which he had since gone very far as white men go--even into the endless fascination of the cobra-craft.
Skag was meeting now from time to time in his jungle work some of the big hunters of India, men whose lives were a-seethe with tales of adventure. When they talked, however, Skag slowly but surely grasped the fact that what they had was "outside stuff." They knew trails, defensive and fighting habits, species and calls; they knew a great collection of detached facts about animals but it was all like what one would see in a strange city--watching from outside its wall. There was a certain boundary of observation which they never pa.s.sed. All that Skag cared to know was across, on the inner side of the wall.
As for the many little hunters, they were tame; only their bags were "wild." They never even approached the boundary. Skag reflected much on these affairs. It dawned on him at last, that when you go out with the idea of killing a creature, you may get its att.i.tude toward death, but you won"t learn about how it regards life.
The more you give, the more you get from any relation. This is not only common knowledge among school-teachers, but among stock-raisers and rose-growers. Almost every man has had experience with a real teacher, at least once in his life--possibly only a few weeks or even days, but a bit of real teaching--when something within opened and answered as never before. It was like an extension of consciousness.
If you look back you"ll find that you loved that teacher--at least, liked that one differently, very deep.
Skag wanted a great deal. He wanted more from the jungle doubtless than was ever formulated in a white man"s mind before. He wanted to know what certain holy men know; men who dare to walk to and fro in the jungles without arms, apparently without fear. He wanted to know what the priests of Hanuman know about monkeys; and what _mahouts_ of famous elephants like Neela Deo and Mithi Baba and Gunpat Rao of the Chief Commissioner"s stockades, know about elephants.
At this point one reflection was irresistible. The priests of Hanuman gave all they had--care, patience, tenderness, even their lives, to the monkey people. There were no two ways about the _mahouts_; they loved the elephants reverently; even regarding them as beings more exalted than men. As for the holy men--the sign manual of their order was love for all creatures. No, there was no getting away from the fact that you must give yourself to a thing if you want to know it. . . . Skag would come up breathless out of this contemplation--only to find it was the easiest thing he did--to love wild animals. . . .
Skag had reason to hold high his trust in animals. He had entered the big cat cages countless times and always had himself and the animals in hand. He had made good in the tiger pit-trap and certainly the loose tiger near the monkey glen didn"t charge. All this might have established the idea that all animals were bound to answer his love for them.