IV
Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of Kot-
Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of the
Khusru hills--ramparts of useless earth and tumbled stone. It was
seventy miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population of something
less than two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the extent of forty
thousand pounds a year on an area that was by rather more than half
sheer, hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle people, the
miners for salt were less gentle still, and the cattle-breeders least
gentle of all. A police-post in the top right-hand corner and a tiny mud
fort in the top left-hand corner prevented as much salt-smuggling and
cattle-lifting as the influence of the civilians could not put down; and
in the bottom right-hand corner lay Jumala, the district headquarters--a
pitiful knot of lime-washed barns facetiously rented as houses, reeking
with frontier fever, leaking in the rain, and ovens in the summer.
It was to this place that Grish Chunder De was travelling, there
formally to take over charge of the district. But the news of his coming
had gone before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among the simple
Borderers, who cut each other's heads open with their long spades and
worshipped impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded to
see him, pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid milch-
buffalo, or a broken-down horse, as their limited range of metaphor
prompted. They laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know how long
the burly Sikhs were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired whether
he had brought his women with him, and advised him explicitly not to
tamper with theirs. It remained for a wrinkled hag by the roadside to
slap her lean breasts as he passed, crying, 'I have suckled six that
could have eaten six thousand of HIM. The Government shot them, and made
this That a king!' Whereat a blue-turbaned huge-boned plough-mender
shouted, 'Have hope, mother o' mine! He may yet go the way of thy
wastrels.' And the children, the little brown puff-balls, regarded
curiously. It was generally a good thing for infancy to stray into Orde
Sahib's tent, where copper coins were to be won for the mere wishing,
and tales of the most authentic, such as even their mothers knew but the
first half of. No! This fat black man could never tell them how Pir
Prith hauled the eye-teeth out of ten devils; how the big stones came to
lie all in a row on top of the Khusru hills, and what happened if you
shouted through the village-gate to the gray wolf at even 'Badl Khas is
dead.' Meantime Grish Chunder De talked hastily and much to Tallantire,
after the manner of those who are 'more English than the English,'--of
Oxford and 'home,' with much curious book-knowledge of bump-suppers,
cricket-matches, hunting-runs, and other unholy sports of the alien. 'We
must get these fellows in hand,' he said once or twice uneasily; 'get
them well in hand, and drive them on a tight rein. No use, you know,
being slack with your district.'
And a moment later Tallantire heard Debendra Nath De, who brotherliwise
had followed his kinsman's fortune and hoped for the shadow of his
protection as a pleader, whisper in Bengali, 'Better are dried fish at
Dacca than drawn swords at Delhi. Brother of mine, these men are devils,
as our mother said. And you will always have to ride upon a horse!'
That night there was a public audience in a broken-down little town
thirty miles from Jumala, when the new Deputy Commissioner, in reply to
the greetings of the subordinate native officials, delivered a speech.
It was a carefully thought-out speech, which would have been very
valuable had not his third sentence begun with three innocent words,
'Hamara hookum hai--It is my order.' Then there was a laugh, clear and
bell-like, from the back of the big tent, where a few border landholders
sat, and the laugh grew and scorn mingled with it, and the lean, keen
face of Debendra Nath De paled, and Grish Chunder turning to Tallantire
spake: 'YOU--you put up this arrangement.' Upon that instant the noise
of hoofs rang without, and there entered Curbar, the District
Superintendent of Police, sweating and dusty. The State had tossed him
into a corner of the province for seventeen weary years, there to check
smuggling of salt, and to hope for promotion that never came. He had
forgotten how to keep his white uniform clean, had screwed rusty spurs
into patent-leather shoes, and clothed his head indifferently with a
helmet or a turban. Soured, old, worn with heat and cold, he waited till
he should be entitled to sufficient pension to keep him from starving.
'Tallantire,' said he, disregarding Grish Chunder De, 'come outside. I
want to speak to you.' They withdrew. 'It's this,' continued Curbar.
'The Khusru Kheyl have rushed and cut up half a dozen of the coolies on
Ferris's new canal-embankment; killed a couple of men and carried off a
woman. I wouldn't trouble you about that--Ferris is after them and
Hugonin, my assistant, with ten mounted police. But that's only the
beginning, I fancy. Their fires are out on the Hassan Ardeb heights, and
unless we're pretty quick there'll be a flare-up all along our Border.
They are sure to raid the four Khusru villages on our side of the line;
there's been bad blood between them for years; and you know the Blind
Mullah has been preaching a holy war since Orde went out. What's your
notion?'
'Damn!' said Tallantire thoughtfully. 'They've begun quick. Well, it
seems to me I'd better ride off to Fort Ziar and get what men I can
there to picket among the lowland villages, if it's not too late. Tommy
Dodd commands at Fort Ziar, I think. Ferris and Hugonin ought to teach
the canal-thieves a lesson, and--No, we can't have the Head of the
Police ostentatiously guarding the Treasury. You go back to the canal.
I'll wire Bullows to come into Jumala with a strong police-guard, and
sit on the Treasury. They won't touch the place, but it looks well.'
'I--I--I insist upon knowing what this means,' said the voice of the
Deputy Commissioner, who had followed the speakers.
'Oh!' said Curbar, who being in the Police could not understand that
fifteen years of education must, on principle, change the Bengali into a
Briton. 'There has been a fight on the Border, and heaps of men are
killed. There's going to be another fight, and heaps more will be
killed.'
'What for?'
'Because the teeming millions of this district don't exactly approve of
you, and think that under your benign rule they are going to have a good
time. It strikes me that you had better make arrangements. I act, as you
know, by your orders. What do you advise?'
'I--I take you all to witness that I have not yet assumed charge of the
district,' stammered the Deputy Commissioner, not in the tones of the
'more English.'
'Ah, I thought so. Well, as I was saying, Tallantire, your plan is
sound. Carry it out. Do you want an escort?'
'No; only a decent horse. But how about wiring to headquarters?'
'I fancy, from the colour of his cheeks, that your superior officer will
send some wonderful telegrams before the night's over. Let him do that,
and we shall have half the troops of the province coming up to see
what's the trouble. Well, run along, and take care of yourself--the
Khusru Kheyl jab upwards from below, remember. Ho! Mir Khan, give
Tallantire Sahib the best of the horses, and tell five men to ride to
Jumala with the Deputy Commissioner Sahib Bahadur. There is a hurry
toward.'
There was; and it was not in the least bettered by Debendra Nath De
clinging to a policeman's bridle and demanding the shortest, the very
shortest way to Jumala. Now originality is fatal to the Bengali.
Debendra Nath should have stayed with his brother, who rode steadfastly
for Jumala on the railway-line, thanking gods entirely unknown to the
most catholic of universities that he had not taken charge of the
district, and could still--happy resource of a fertile race!--fall sick.
And I grieve to say that when he reached his goal two policemen, not
devoid of rude wit, who had been conferring together as they bumped in
their saddles, arranged an entertainment for his behoof. It consisted of
first one and then the other entering his room with prodigious details
of war, the massing of bloodthirsty and devilish tribes, and the burning
of towns. It was almost as good, said these scamps, as riding with
Curbar after evasive Afghans. Each invention kept the hearer at work for
half an hour on telegrams which the sack of Delhi would hardly have
justified. To every power that could move a bayonet or transfer a
terrified man, Grish Chunder De appealed telegraphically. He was alone,
his assistants had fled, and in truth he had not taken over charge of
the district. Had the telegrams been despatched many things would have
occurred; but since the only signaller in Jumala had gone to bed, and
the station-master, after one look at the tremendous pile of paper,
discovered that railway regulations forbade the forwarding of imperial
messages, policemen Ram Singh and Nihal Singh were fain to turn the
stuff into a pillow and slept on it very comfortably.
Tallantire drove his spurs into a rampant skewbald stallion with china-
blue eyes, and settled himself for the forty-mile ride to Fort Ziar.
Knowing his district blindfold, he wasted no time hunting for short
cuts, but headed across the richer grazing-ground to the ford where Orde
had died and been buried. The dusty ground deadened the noise of his
horse's hoofs, the moon threw his shadow, a restless goblin, before him,
and the heavy dew drenched him to the skin. Hillock, scrub that brushed
against the horse's belly, unmetalled road where the whip-like foliage
of the tamarisks lashed his forehead, illimitable levels of lowland
furred with bent and speckled with drowsing cattle, waste, and hillock
anew, dragged themselves past, and the skewbald was labouring in the
deep sand of the Indus-ford. Tallantire was conscious of no distinct
thought till the nose of the dawdling ferry-boat grounded on the farther
side, and his horse shied snorting at the white headstone of Orde's
grave. Then he uncovered, and shouted that the dead might hear, 'They're
out, old man! Wish me luck.' In the chill of the dawn he was hammering
with a stirrup-iron at the gate of Fort Ziar, where fifty sabres of that
tattered regiment, the Belooch Beshaklis were supposed to guard Her
Majesty's interests along a few hundred miles of Border. This particular
fort was commanded by a subaltern, who, born of the ancient family of
the Derouletts, naturally answered to the name of Tommy Dodd. Him
Tallantire found robed in a sheepskin coat, shaking with fever like an
aspen, and trying to read the native apothecary's list of invalids.
'So you've come, too,' said he. 'Well, we're all sick here, and I don't
think I can horse thirty men; but we're bub--bub--bub blessed willing.
Stop, does this impress you as a trap or a lie?' He tossed a scrap of
paper to Tallantire, on which was written painfully in crabbed Gurmukhi,
'We cannot hold young horses. They will feed after the moon goes down in
the four border villages issuing from the Jagai pass on the next night.'
Then in English round hand--'Your sincere friend.'
'Good man!' said Tallantire. 'That's Khoda Dad Khan's work, I know. It's
the only piece of English he could ever keep in his head, and he is
immensely proud of it. He is playing against the Blind Mullah for his
own hand--the treacherous young ruffian!'
'Don't know the politics of the Khusru Kheyl, but if you're satisfied, I
am. That was pitched in over the gate-head last night, and I thought we
might pull ourselves together and see what was on. Oh, but we're sick
with fever here and no mistake! Is this going to be a big business,
think you?' said Tommy Dodd.
Tallantire gave him briefly the outlines of the case, and Tommy Dodd
whistled and shook with fever alternately. That day he devoted to
strategy, the art of war, and the enlivenment of the invalids, till at
dusk there stood ready forty-two troopers, lean, worn, and dishevelled,
whom Tommy Dodd surveyed with pride, and addressed thus: 'O men! If you
die you will go to Hell. Therefore endeavour to keep alive. But if you
go to Hell that place cannot be hotter than this place, and we are not
told that we shall there suffer from fever. Consequently be not afraid
of dying. File out there!' They grinned, and went.
