The Devil's Guard, page 12
"Yours, Elmer Rait."
Our visitor looked calmly at us, smiling.
"Any doubt about Rait's handwriting?" asked Grim.
I produced the letter Rait had written me from Lhassa and we compared the two. There was no doubt.
"All right," said Grim. "He'll start at dawn. We'll take you with us. What's your name?"
Our visitor rose very slowly from his squatting posture. It was as if some unseen hand had raised him by the shoulders; there was no apparent effort, no pause, no haste.
"If you knew my name I might fear you," he said pleasantly. "More likely you would fear me."
He took no notice whatever of Narayan Singh's automatic, but the Sikh snapped in the safety catch and put the thing away. (He said afterward that he had done that of his own volition, but I doubt it. I could feel at the time a terrific impulse to step back away from our visitor and leave him a clear way to the door. Thought was being used as a directing force by one who understood the trick. Chullunder Ghose stepped back and went and squatted by the hearth, muttering some sort of mantra as a charm against unseen influences.)
"You understand we will take you with us."
"I think not," said our visitor and took one step forward, straight toward me.
"Seize him, Rammy!" said Grim.
I think that was the only time I ever regretted having acted swiftly on Grim's suggestion. His brain and my weight and muscle have brought the two of us out of many a tight place. I used every ounce of strength to throw the man off balance and lay his shoulders on the floor before he could bring his own strength into play. I was useless against him—helpless. I don't know exactly what happened. The sensation was of being hurled back on my heels toward the far end of the room, as if I had leaned against a spinning flywheel. As I recovered balance I heard Grim's voice:
"Don't shoot!"
I had no intention of shooting. Two murdered servants to account for was enough; if this man's hints had any truth in them we were likely enough to be accused of having murdered Tsang-yang and Tsang-Mondrong. But Grim told me afterward he could not help calling out to me not to shoot; he said that at the moment it appeared to be his own will that directed him, but that the words had hardly left his lips before he knew that the suggestion came to him from some one else.
Our visitor walked from the room without haste, closing the door after him, we staring at one another until our silence was broken by Narayan Singh's gruff laugh—nervously asserting recontrol of nerve.
"There, sahibs, you have seen a Mahatma!"
"Rot!" Grim exclaimed, and from beside the hearth Chullunder Ghose piped up:
"Obscene nonsense! Mere Sikh superstition! No Mahatma would consent to be in league with murderers. That was one of the Mahatmas' enemies. That one is black, I tell you-black!—his heart is black! If you should cut it out—"
From over the gallery railing came Sidiki ben Mahommed's voice, harsh with fear:
"Out of my house! You must go now! I will not accommodate you any longer!"
"Can't go in the night," said Grim.
"You shall! You must! My family is all upset. First Mordecai, then you, now that one—it is too much! Go, I tell you!"
"No!" said Grim. "Come down and talk to us."
"Unless you go I shall inform against you! I shall say you murdered those Tibetans! Oh, I know about them. One of my servants says they lie without noses or ears on the dung in the yard! Unless you go now I shall—"
"Come down here or I'll go up there and fetch you!" Grim retorted. "You fired at us from the watch-tower."
"Of course I did! Of course I did! You were striking matches! How should I know you weren't burning my sheds?"
"How do we know our men weren't murdered by your orders" Grim retorted. "Come down and talk sense."
He came, although his wives protested, shrilling at him not to go without his rifle. One of them screamed imprecations at me over the gallery, accusing me of having murdered two men in the yard. She only stopped when Sidiki ben Mahommed himself cursed her into silence. He brought the rifle with him; Narayan Singh kept tipping its muzzle toward the ceiling for fear it might go off by accident.
"You gentlemen, I beg your pardons," he said excitedly. "I am hospitable. I was glad to welcome you. But I can not stand this. You must go. You must go now. Please!"
"What about those dead men?" Grim asked.
"I bury them! Leave it to me! Oh, do listen to me! Don't be unwise! Do believe I know what I am saying! I know Leh. I know these devils who have done this thing. They wish to get you out of my house. You must go!"
"We shall go in the morning," said Grim.
"Oh, Allah! If you delay they will burn my house. Then they will accuse us all of having murdered those two! They will bring witnesses to prove it! Please go! I pray you to go! Shall I ask on my knees?"
"We need barley," said Grim.
"You shall have it. You may take anything I have. But go now! "
"And we shall be murdered outside in the dark quite nicely!" said Chullunder Ghose, still trying to control emotions by the hearth.
Chapter Eleven—Sidiki ben Mahommed's wife.
It is a mistaken belief that polygamy is vicious; because nothing altogether lacks justification that can teach men by experience how wholesome solitude might be. There are moreover women who have much to learn.—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
To have gone straight to the British Resident with our story was possibly the proper course. But the greater propriety occurred to us of not leaving two mangled bodies to be buried by Sidiki ben Mahommed, whose nerves were so shattered that he tried to speak three languages at once. We tied up the bodies in gunny bags, loaded them on ponies and took them with us.
We also took Sidiki ben Mahommed. It was snowing, but he knew the trails. He protested, he begged, he swore that his wives and his house were in danger; he threatened to accuse us to the authorities. But we were adamant and I think we saved his life; he should guide us on the first stage of the journey, or we would remain in his house until use could find another guide. That settled it; He was unwilling that we should remain in his house another hour.
We had to reach an almost unknown Lamaistic monastery said to be perched on a crag some fifty miles away and only to be reached by rarely traveled trails. That, Benjamin had told us, was the keyhole to the secret gate of Tibet, and we had the key that fitted it in the form of his letter to the abbot of the monastery; but neither crag nor monastery could be found on any map we had.
It was after midnight when we set out, Sidiki ben Mahommed leading, with Narayan Singh beside him to make sure he did not bolt. We were all mounted, for our host had supplied us with extra ponies in his eagerness to be rid of us. He was in such haste to be off that he could hardly wait for us to pay him for the sacks of barley we drew from his store. I rode last, being heaviest; to take advantage of the trampled snow, and as I followed the last pack pony through the gate where a cluster of Ladakhi household servants stood scared and ready to bolt the gate behind me, a woman rushed out from the shadow and seized my bridle rein. One of the servants tried to pull her away but she struck him in the face and spat at him. The darkness there was deepened by the planted trees so I could scarcely see her, but she seemed to be only a girl although she bulked big in a yak-skin cloak with a hood pulled down over her eyes. Before I could guess what she intended she had seized my shoulders and swung up behind me on the pony.
Two of Sidiki's servants tried to drag her off, crying out to me that she was their master's wife. She cursed and struck at them. Then she stuck a knife against my ribs and ordered me in broken Hindustanee to ride on. I seized her wrist and tried to throw her off the pony, but she hung on and swore she would betray us all unless I let her ride.
By that time, what with the wind and snow and Sidiki ben Mahommed's haste, the others were all out of earshot. Five Ladakhi Moslems came out of the yard; one of them seized the pony's head and the others yelled at me while they tried to drag the woman to the ground, she screaming that Sidiki ben Mahommed had promised her she might come with him.
That was a palpable lie, but it suggested a solution of the problem that might serve until I could overtake the others. I declared I had heard Sidiki ben Mahommed make the promise; nobody believed, but one of the servants agreed to follow on foot to see whether it were true or not. The woman tried to prevent that, but I had no time to spare so I started the pony along the track and the servant followed, the others shutting the gate and bolting it.
I proposed to let the woman ride a short distance and then upset her into the snow for the man servant to pick up and lead home again. But we had not ridden more than fifty yards before she began talking, with her arm over my shoulder, raising herself so as to yell against the wind into my ear. Again the broken Hindustanee:
"I have set fire to the house! I hate Sidiki! Unless you obey me I shall say you fired the house because you were accused of having murdered two men! I shall go straight to the British Resident and tell him all about you!"
There was no sign yet of any house on fire, nor anything to do that I could think of, except to hurry forward and consult the others.
But to overtake the others was not easy. I could not make them hear me by shouting against the wind. The snow was deep with only a narrow trodden track between two drifts, and all the pack ponies were in front of me blocking the way; my own pony floundered in the deep snow whenever I tried to work my way around them. I tried to get the Ladakhi servant to run ahead with a message for Grim, but he refused, saying it was his duty to guard his master's wife.
To have yelled louder or discharged my pistol would have been at the risk of attracting attention from some of the men who had murdered Tsang-yang and Tsang-Mondrong; they were probably night prowling within earshot; our only chance of escaping from them was to get away silently in darkness with the falling snow hiding our tracks.
"Where do you want to go?" I asked the girl, supposing she had a lover and was trying to make use of me to get to him.
"I go with you!" she answered. "If Sidiki sees me, you must kill him!"
That was a nice kettle of fish! Aside from the girl's threat to betray our flight to the authorities, there was the obligation to our host. If his house was burning (I could see no sign of it) or if the police should get on our trail and should overtake us before we could bury those dead Tibetans in a drift—I could have killed her without much added excuse! And the man who trudged behind was nearly as great a nuisance, since he would be certain to talk, whatever happened. I offered to pay him to take the woman home by force; but she told him, if he did that, she would accuse him of having set fire to the house and would say she had followed to warn her husband of what he had done. He flew into a rage at that and threatened to knife her—drew a knife and flourished it. She promptly claimed my protection?
By that time we were more than a mile from Sidiki's house and, as far as I could judge in the darkness, we were following a trail that led uphill between two spurs of a mountain. There was not a sign of any other dwelling—no lights—no stars—nothing but darkness and howling wind, with the distance between me and my friends increasing because of the halt for a row with that Ladakhi servant.
I don't know what I should have done if it had not been for the Tibetan ponies, who as usual were full of high spirits because their noses were turned homeward. One of them had kicked Chullunder Ghose off into a snow-drift and gone off at a gallop. I heard the babu bellowing for help, rode forward and pulled him out into the track. I explained the situation. He enjoyed it.
"You might marry her in Tibet!" he suggested.
I threatened to send him back with her unless he could think of something more practical than that, and he stood still, thinking, until his feet grew cold and he began to stamp them in the snow. Then he came up close and whispered. His was better than no advice at all, so I jumped off the pony, knocked the knife out of the Ladakhi's hand, seized him and held his arms until Chullunder Ghose could tie them behind him. Then I took the woman's knife away and tied her hands too, she cursing me like a cat beset by terriers. I had hardly finished when a flame shot up out of the darkness more than a mile away, and the girl, nearly falling as she struggled to free herself, screamed excitedly
"Sidiki's house!"
That might have been a signal. Suddenly three men rushed at us out of the darkness. One; a giant, who seemed to be their leader, made for me and I swung my fist straight for his jugular vein; he went headlong in the snow and lay still. The second man went for Chullunder Ghose, and the third for the girl, who appeared to expect him, letting herself fall into his arms. He had his hands full, so I went to the babu's rescue. His antagonist was lunging at him with a long knife and the babu, on his back, was kicking skilfully.
It occurred to me to make that man a prisoner, but he turned on me with a knife. I hit hard, landing with my left over his heart and he went down like a pole-axed bullock, giving way at the knees and falling forward.
The third man had mounted the pony and was trying to pull the woman up behind him, but the pony was giving him trouble. I knocked him down. The pony bolted, following the trail, and that was perfectly satisfactory; there would now be two riderless ponies, whose arrival, crowding themselves into the line, would be sure to bring back Grim and Narayan Singh.
I tried to take that third man prisoner but he slipped away into the darkness. To have fired at him might have brought half the countryside in pursuit of us. Sidiki's house was blazing furiously now, making a splurge of light veiled by the snow—an amazingly beautiful scene, with the shadowy trees in the foreground and here and there a glimpse of men and animals. I stooped to examine the man I had hit over the heart. He seemed dead, so I began to look for the giant who had attacked me first, and Chullunder Ghose yelled a warning as I peered into the drift where I thought he had gone for good. He had recovered. He came at me suddenly; Chullunder Ghose threw himself down in the way and the giant tripped over him, the babu clinging to his legs. I seized the giant's knife wrist and in a second we were all three down together.
That greasy monster was the strongest man I have ever wrestled with. I weigh two hundred and forty pounds, and Chullunder Ghose at least as much; he flung us about like threshers clinging to a wounded whale, and though I rained blows at him whenever I could get a hand free they only seemed to increase his violence. He hit as hard as I did. Using both hands with all my might I could not make him let go of the knife. It was all I could do to keep the knife out of my heart and, even so, he cut me badly in a dozen places. He was a first-class fighting man.
To make things worse, the woman got her hands free somehow and began to help him. She jumped on my back and tried to throttle me, her finger nails tearing the skin of my throat. Chullunder Ghose crawled out of the fight and wrenched her off me, throwing her down in the snow and sitting on her.
Then the giant began to have the best of it. My hold on his knife wrist weakened. His dark face, close to mine, leered as he levered me on to my back, my own foot slipping on the crushed snow as I tried to escape from under him. I could not yell to Chullunder Ghose, and he could not see what was happening, for it was black dark down between the drifts. The giant broke my hold on his wrist at last, and though I could not see the knife I knew he was poising it to plunge it into me.
But that second's enjoyment of anticipation cost him his life. There came a thudding of hoofs down wind and a slither as a pony halted, all four feet together. Being half-dead I could hear little and see less, but I could feel the giant collapse on top of me.
"Hurt, sahib!" asked Narayan Singh's voice.
He pulled the dead man off and helped me to my feet, I leaning on him, for I had lost a lot of blood. Then Grim came galloping, and Chullunder Ghose took his weight off the woman to give her a chance to explain herself, but she had no breath left and only sobbed and writhed. With an arm over Grim's shoulder and Narayan Singh's, I managed to gasp out what had happened.
"Where's that Ladakhi servant?" Grim asked.
He went to look for him. The man was lying face downward on the snow, with his throat cut and his hands still tied behind him. Grim went in search of the man I had hit over the heart. He was gone; not a sign of him anywhere.
Then Sidiki ben Mahommed came, riding frantically, our two runaway ponies trailing him. He cried out:
"Oh, my house! My house and all my fortune! Oh you bringers of bad luck—what you have done to me!"
Grim helped him off his pony.
"There's your wife," he said. "Ask her."
Sidiki looked at her and kicked her with enthusiasm.
"Curse the day I ever saw you!" he exclaimed. In that mood he was not much like Queen Victoria and Lord Roberts. He would have kicked his wife to death if Grim had not prevented.
"What next?" Grim asked him.
Neither Grim nor I nor any one knew what to do. We could hardly leave Sidiki in the case he was, with his house on fire, although from what we could see of the blaze through the snow there was no chance of saving a stick of the place. If we returned we were sure to be charged with arson, murder, robbery; Sidiki ben Mahommed probably would be the first to turn on us. I was bleeding from a dozen knife wounds, weak, growing weaker, and possibly incapable of staying on a pony's back. And if we should go on without Sidiki we would have no guide.
Meanwhile, all the pack ponies had been left in a sheltered place half a mile up the track and were probably rolling on their loads.
