"It is right for you to know," the master-mahout went on, "that mahouts are a kind of men by themselves apart. Their knowledges are of elephants--sealed--not open to those from without. Yet I speak as one of my kind, being qualified, if in the future you have need of anything from us--it is yours."
And without giving Skag a chance to answer him, but with a stately gesture of salaam, the master-mahout had returned to his place and was calling another elephant.
Skag turned toward Horace, who was drawing a fine looking native forward by the hand. The boy spoke with repressed excitement--otherwise showing no sign of Nut Kut"s strenuous handling:
"Skag Sahib, I want you to know Kudrat Sharif, the malik of the Chief Commissioner"s elephant stockades. It is not known, you understand--meaning my father--but the malik has always been very wonderful to me."
Kudrat Sharif smiled with frank affection on the boy, as he drew his right hand away, to touch his forehead in the Indian salaam. The gesture showed both grace and dignity--as d.i.c.kson Sahib had said.
"I am exalted to carry back to my stockades the story of the manner of your work, Son-of-Power," he began.
"My name is Sanford Hantee," Skag deprecated gently.
"But you will always be known to Indians of India as Son-of-Power!"
Kudrat Sharif protested. "It is a lofty t.i.tle, yet you have established it before many."
Just then a great elephant came near, playfully reaching for Kudrat Sharif with his trunk.
"And this is Neela Deo, the leader of the caravan!" laughed Horace.
"It is my shame that there is no howdah on him to carry you; we came like flight, when Nut Kut"s escape was known," Kudrat Sharif apologised. "But after some days, when Nut Kut"s excitement sleeps, we shall be distinguished if Son-of-Power chooses to come to the stockades and consider him.
"I heard your judgment of his nature, Sahib; and I say with humility that I shall remember it, in what I have to do with the most strange elephant I have ever met. Truly we are not sure of Nut Kut, whether he is a mighty being of extreme exaltation, above others of his kind in the world, or--a prince from the pit!"
Kudrat Sharif salaamed again; and Neela Deo lifted him to his great neck and carried him away.
Walking home, Horace expressed himself to his friend--as the heart of a boy may be expressed; and Skag dropped his arm about the slender shoulders, speaking softly:
"Remember, son, a little more--would have been too much."
"All right, Skag Sahib, because now you understand; but--isn"t he interesting?"
Knowing well what the boy meant about the great strange creature--more than his fighting propensities, deeper than his physical might--Skag a.s.sented thoughtfully:
"Yes; I would like to know him better."
CHAPTER XII
_Blue Beast_
Across the river at the military camp, the cavalry outfits were preparing for a jungle outing. It isn"t easy to name the thing they contemplated. Pig-sticking couldn"t be called a quest, yet there are "cracks" at the game, quite the same as at polo or billiards.
Horse and man carry their lives on the outside, so to speak. The trick of it all is that a man never knows what the tusker will do. You can"t even count on him doing the opposite. And he does it quick. Often he sniffs first, but you don"t hear that until after it is done. Men have heard that sniff as they lay under a horse that was kicking its life out; yet the sniff really sounded while they were still in the saddle--the horse still whole.
All the words that have to do with this sport are ugly. It"s more like a snort than a sniff. . . . You really must see it. A trampled place in the jungle--tusker at bay---a mounted sticker on each side waiting for the move. The tusker stands still. He looks nowhere, out of eyes like burning cellars. That is as near as you can come with words--trapdoors opening into cellars, smoke and flame below.
At this moment you are like a negative, being exposed. There is filmed among your enduring pictures thereafter, the raking curving snout, yellow tusks, blue bristling hollows from which the eyes burn. The lances glint green from the creepers. . . .
Then the flick of the head that goes with the snort. The boar isn"t there--lanced doubtless. . . . Yes, the cavalry "cracks" get him for the most part and then you hear men"s laughter and bits of comment and the strike of a match or two, for very much relished cigarettes. But now and then, the scene shifts too quickly and the _other_ rider may see his friend"s mount stand up incredibly gashed--a white horse possibly--and this _other_ must charge and lance true right now, for the boar is waiting for the man in the saddle to come down.
n.o.body ever thinks of the boar"s part. Queer about that. It"s the bad revolting curve that goes with a tusker"s snout, in the sag of which the eye is set, that puts him out of reach of decent regard. Only two other curves touch it for malignity--the curve of a hyena"s shoulder and the curve of a shark"s jaw. Three scavengers that haven"t had a real chance. They weren"t bred right.
Among the visitors that came in for the jungle play was Ian Deal, one of the younger of Carlin"s seven brothers; one of the two who hadn"t appeared for her marriage. The other missing brother was in Australia, but Ian Deal had been in India at the time of the ceremony and not the full-length of India away. Skag had thought about this; Carlin had doubtless done more than that. Once she had flushed, when someone had marked Ian"s absence to the point of speaking of it. Before that, Skag had only heard that Ian was one of the best-loved of all. . . .
He watched the meeting of the brother and sister. It was at the railway station in Hurda, and Skag couldn"t very well get away. There was something almost like anguish in the face of the young man as he hastened forward--anguish of devotion that never hoped to express itself; anguish by no means sure of itself, because it burned with the thought of Carlin being nearer to any man. Ian didn"t speak, as he stopped with a rush before his sister. He merely touched her cheek, but his eyes were the eyes of a man whose heart was starving. The English observe that this jealous affection occasionally exists between twins; the Hindus suggest certain mysterious spiritual relations as accounting for it. . . . Finally Skag realised that Carlin"s eyes were turned to him, something of pity in them and something of appeal.
It was all very quick then. Skag"s hand was out to her brother. Ian didn"t see it. Only his right elbow raised the slightest bit; his dark face flushed and paled that second. The stare was refined; it wasn"t hate so much as astonishment that any man could ever bring the thing about to touch Carlin"s heart. Back of it all was the matter that Ian Deal would have died before confessing--the pain and powerlessness of a brother who loves jealously.
Few beings of his years would have seen so deep and kept his nerve that instant, but Skag had been different since his battle with the cobra.
He had decided never to lose his nerve again. This was the first test since that day. . . . His throat tightened a second, so that he had to clear it. All he knew then was that her brother was striding away, having muttered something about the need to see after unshipping Kala Khan, his Arab mount, which was aboard the train. There was a sort of shimmer between Skag"s eyes and Ian Deal"s vanishing legs that made them seem lifted out of all proportion. Then Carlin caught his arm, carried him forward and to her at the same time, as she whispered:
"You were perfect, Skag-ji. I never loved you so much as that moment, when poor Ian refused to take your hand--"
Skag cleared his throat a second time. . . . Carlin had used that name only once or twice before; and only in moments of her greater joy in him. He had been told by Horace d.i.c.kson that "ji" used intimately was "nicer" than any English word.
Something in this experience threw Skag back to the point of the cobra and the last experience with crippling nerves. Of course, it was the thought of Carlin imprisoned in the playhouse that broke him. Starting to run when he first saw the cobra on the threshold, he counted Failure. That burst of speed for ten steps had put the king into fighting mood. Skag had beaten thin in his own mind the possibility of ever committing Failure again. A man must not lose his nerve in the stress of a loved one"s peril. One doesn"t act so well to bring the event to a winning. In fact, there is no excuse and no advantage and no decency in losing one"s nerve, any time, any place. . . .
Skag had _known_ things in certain seconds of his duel with the cobra.
(Mostly, a man only thinks he knows.) Carlin had stood on the threshold, not more than fifteen feet away, while he was engaged. No one had told him at that time, that the man does not live who can continue to keep off a fighting cobra from striking home; but Skag learned in that short interval. He faced not only the fastest thing he had ever seen move, but it was also the _stillest_. It would come to a dead stop before him--stillness compared to which a post or a wall is mere squat inertia. This lifted head and hood was sustained, elate--having the moveless calm one might imagine at the centre of a solar system. Its outline was mysteriously clear. Often the background was Carlin"s own self. The action took place in the period of the Indian afterglow, in which one can see better than in brilliant sunlight, a light that breathes soft and delicate effulgences. The cobra at the point of stillness was like dark dulled jewels against it--dulled so that the raying of the jewels would not obscure the contour.
And once toward the last, as he fought (the inside of his head feeling like a smear of opened arteries), Skag had seen Carlin over the hood of the cobra. She had seemed utterly tall, utterly enfolding; his relation to her, one of the inevitables of creation. Nothing could ever happen to take her away for long. Matters which men call life and death were mere exigencies of his scheme and hers _together_.
In a word, it was a breath of the thing he had been yearning for, from the moment he first saw her in the monkey glen; the need was the core of the anguish he had known in the long pursuit of the thief elephant; the thing that must come to a man and a maid who have found each other, if there is to be any equity in the romantic plan at all, unless the two are altogether asleep and content in the tight dimensions of three-score-and-ten.
Skag had seen that he could not win; but he had also seen that Carlin was _there_--there to stay! . . . Something in her--that no fever or poison or death could take away--something for him! The thing was vivid to him for moments afterward; it lingered in dimmer outlines for hours; but as the days pa.s.sed, he could only hold the vital essence of what he had learned that hour.
Carlin was more to him every day--more dear and intimate in a hundred ways; yet always she held the quest of her before him; a constant suggestion of marvels of reserve; mysteries always unfolding, of no will or design of hers. It seemed to the two that they were treading the paths of a larger design than they could imagine; and Skag was sure it was only the dullness of his faculty and the slowness of his taking, not Carlin"s resources of magic, that limited the joy.
Ian Deal took up his quarters across the river with the cavalry. He did not come to the bungalow.
"He has always been strange," Carlin said. "In some ways he has been closer to me than any of the others. Always strange--doing things one time that showed the tenderest feeling for me and again the harshest resentment. You could not know what he suffered--remaining away when we were married. He has always hoped I would stay single. The idea was like a pa.s.sion in him. Some of the others have it, but not to the same degree. . . . You know we have all felt the tragedy over us. We are different. The English feel it and the natives, too; yet we hold the respect of both, as no other half-caste line in India. It is because of the austerity of our views on one subject--to keep the lineage above reproach as it began. . . . No, Ian will not come here.
He has seen his sister. He will make that do--"
"Why don"t you go to him?" Skag asked.
She turned her head softly.
"You Americans are amazing."
"Why?" he laughed.
"An Englishman or any of my brothers in your place, wouldn"t think India could contain Ian Deal and himself."