TWO OLD FRIENDS
The Svâns are a strange and peculiar race, declared indeed by the few
outsiders who have ever seen them and come back, to be the most original
of mankind. And Usi proved at least that much, by showing some rudiments
of gratitude.
Although he had managed to tell his tale, with failure of words, and
gasps for breath, and rolling of his eyes when the agony came back, poor
Wolfsmeat was not fit for much, except to be laid in a soft and shady
place, consoled with tobacco and cordials, and continually asked how he
felt now. We soon understood what he wished to say, even without the
interpreter, for he had picked up small pieces of divers tongues, by
being so long among the mountain troops. More than once we feared that
he would never bear up from the pains and privations he had undergone;
but he said that he should be unworthy of the name of a Shamylid, or son
of Shamyl, unless he could starve for a week, without showing immoderate
signs of hunger. If the signs Usi had manifested, after only three days,
were moderate, no wonder that the big wolf turned and fled from a
countenance so expressive.
Strogue, and Cator, and myself, who might now be called the three
leaders, sat late into that night, discussing the story of this patient
sufferer. What chance had we of being in time, even if we could raise
force enough to prevent the murder in cold blood appointed for next
Monday? All the fighting men of this tribe of Ossets in the Upper Terek,
and the Ardon valleys, would probably be mustered there to carry out the
execution. Cator had often heard of the place so clearly described by
the injured Svân, and he told us that these wild folk called it the
"Valley of Retribution." From Usi's account, it was plain that Marva was
making a tribal revenge of it. Her brother would be tried and condemned
by the tribe, in expiation of the death of their former chief, Prince
Rakhan. Him she had hated and scorned perhaps; for she was not of the
sweet kind of women, who look at their wrongs with dewy eyes; but
according to the Osset creed her duty was--blood for blood, and soul for
soul. Strong in her own dominion now, she might drop all that, if she
saw fit, and cry, "Bygones be bygones." Every man of the tribe (being in
his heart most loyally afraid of her) would have joined all his cousins
in lamenting, that the days were not as they had been; that nobody had
the courage now to keep up good old customs; and yet, however right
one's own mind was, what could one do, but as the others did? And then
to sigh, and cast a glance at Heaven (that forbears to fall upon us) and
light another pipe with some remorse, but plenty of sentiment to make it
draw.
This was not for us to do, in a state of things beyond all understanding
of any man not in the thick of them; and a thousandfold worse for him,
if he is there. Nothing is more pleasing than to hear a man tell the
story of some touch-and-go adventure he has been through. If he is an
Englishman, he is sure to be self-ashamed about it, and describe himself
as much more frightened than his slow system gave him time to be. But
whoever he is, you may depend upon it that he will put into the
narrative a lot of things which never occurred--till afterwards. And I
am afraid that I shall do this, when I try to tell how we went on,
though I mean to tell everything word for word, which ought to be the
same as fact for fact.
But lo, at the very outstart, indignation cripples one! We know that it
is sure to go too far, and to put things into darker colours than clear
truth has cast into them. In dread of this, a truthful man draws back,
and takes too weak a brush.
All of us were put upon that sense of wrong which stirs us up to think
less of our own poor lives, and more of that great power which the Lord
has planted in us (though He has not always worked it out), to show that
we are something more than the brute creation round us. The sense of
justice, and good will, and love to those of our own kind, and hate of
all that wrong them. Even if Sûr Imar had not been the man he was, and
Dariel's father, I would gladly have risked my life--if time were
allowed me to know what I was about--rather than let such inhumanity
triumph among human beings. Strogue and Cator were of the same mind, and
the rest of the miners found that a little excitement would not be
amiss. The worst of it was that they were inclined to underrate the
enemy. To them it seemed sound argument that a dozen Englishmen could
larrup, almost with their neckties, thirty or forty of such fellows as
they were like to meet with. Even if there had been truth in that, and
it would be most ungrateful on my part to disparage them, what would
they do if they had to encounter perhaps a hundred men all well armed?
Therefore we must increase our force, and that without loss of a minute.
To call for Russian interference would be vain, for they had no
brigade--even if they would have used it--that could be brought up in
three days' time. We must act for ourselves; as the rule is laid down
generally for poor Englishmen, because they are so few, yet always
called upon to meet so many.
Strogue struck the proper note. Of savage people I knew nothing, save of
Income-tax Commissioners, who charged us twice upon our land,--once for
our crime in owning it, and once for the profit which they alone were
able to make out of it. But the Captain said: "These men will fight. And
they fight quite as bravely as we do, only with more passion in it. To
beat them, we must have man for man, or something very near it. The only
plan is to find your friend Stepan, and all the fellows he can bring.
That poor beggar who is groaning in his sleep seems to know where to
find him. He will not be able to walk for days; but he can tell us where
to go."
We had searched in vain, as I may have said, for any sign of Stepan near
Karthlos. That was one of the things which made us sure that treachery
was at work; for if he had travelled with the heavy goods, straightway
home, as his orders were, he ought to have been at Karthlos long ago, in
spite of the terrible winter. But no one seemed to know where to find
him, although a rumour was spread abroad that his master was returning.
There was, however, every prospect now of discovering him and those
other retainers who had been with the Chief in his exile, for Usi could
not have been so long the forester or huntsman of that district without
knowing where to find all the principal members of his adopted tribe.
What could be finer justice than that a fiendish plot of fratricide
should be discomfited chiefly through the brutality of its conceiver? If
that tortured victim could but recover the use of his swollen limbs, we
might push along towards the Lesghian valleys in time to rouse the tribe
on the Saturday night. But to carry poor Usi was a sad, slow drag, and
to go without him would be useless, even if humanity allowed it.
"Bear's grease!" was his perpetual moan; "Oh, that men valued the
precious bear's grease! If the good Lord would send me only half a pound
of bear's grease, I would leap like the Ibex, and dance like the Tûr."
Then, as if to show that Heaven itself had taken a turn in our favour, a
most unusual thing came to pass, although at the time I was very far
from being at all surprised at it. But those who knew the country said
that such a thing scarcely ever happened, and all of our little company
might live to be ninety, and keep eyes like twenty, without ever seeing
such a thing again. However, I can answer for it, and was not at all
disturbed by it.
We came, walking heavily yet tenderly, and like men who (if they were in
England) would go to their chemist and ask him whether he had tried his
"Celandine" on his own feet,--we came about the middle of that
day--Friday it was and a critical time--to a corner where two torrents
ran into one another's arms, with as much noise as two Frenchmen make.
There were no trees, not a leaf to break the sun; everything was either
hard or wet; and the light itself seemed to come in gurgles, as if it
were almost giddy with the shining of the water, and the staring of the
rocks. In the loose spread of it, below the rush of the two streams into
one another,--both being buxom with snow on the melt, which affords them
a thickness of suet,--there I saw a great sprawling thing--sprawling at
least it appeared to be, and at the same time splashing. I happened to
be foremost of the file, yet for the life of me, I could not make out
what it was; till Cator spoke over my shoulder thus--
"Motherly she-bear, carrying her cub! Economical father wants to kill
it--they always do at this time of year--mother takes a different view.
She will land in a second. Aim behind the shoulder. The kid is fine
eating. If you feel like missing, let me do it for you."
"Get away!" I answered; "I came first--what have you got to do with it?"
I put up my rifle, but when she landed with wonderful care not to hurt a
hair of the baby in her clumsy mouth, and then looked at it so
proudly--though it was but an ugly little lump--and began to lick the
holy trickle from its newly opened eyes, such a touch of nature went
into my heart, that I would rather have shot myself almost. "Fire, you
stupid!" keen Cator cried. And fire I did, but not at her. For
paterfamilias came down raging, with his coat thrown back on his body,
and his little eyes rolling, and his hairy chin poked out in fury at his
wife's self-assertion. My bullet behind his open shoulder told him that
there might be two opinions about paternal duty, and he rolled like a
log into the swirling torrent, and was washed up on our side a hundred
yards below. Then Usi, the Svân, in a glory of excitement rose from his
litter, and told us what to do; and we cut him out the fat that lies
along the kidney part, and he scrabbled it into his stringy legs, and
fell back again, and smiled at them. In less than half an hour he could
walk, and we had all we could do to keep up with him.
That night we slept in Kazbek village, which is on the great Russian
road; and we laid our plans for the morrow. Cator was to make rush for
the mine, which he could reach before nightfall, and implore Jack
Nickols to spare us every son of a gun who could handle a rifle; while
Strogue, and Usi, and myself, and others, made every hour of daylight
tell for our race in quest of Stepan. We feared that those vile Ossets
had a short cut across the western mountain, from their village to the
"Valley of Retribution," which would bring them in front of any speed of
ours; and unhappily so it proved indeed. And they must have carried Usi
by that track, when they caught him spying in their valley; although
they gave him small chance of knowing what was time, or where was road.
For the mighty mass of Kazbek lay betwixt the Osset villages, and the
vale which had been for ages hallowed to their horrible revenge.
At daybreak on Saturday we set forth, in the midst of a miserable
drizzle, which would have made the way as hard to find as it was bad
when found, except for the knowledge of the land which Usi showed. That
son of Shamyl, as he loved to be called, was of infinite service to our
cause. Very seldom did he care to speak, unless he was consulted; and
the bronze cast of his rugged face beneath that hairy thicket showed no
more life than the juniper scrub which we saw on the cheeks of the
mountain. But the quick blue flash of his eyes, whenever we caught them
unexpectedly, was like the point blank spark that comes, when the
lightning is over one's own lawn. Let me not be in that man's
black-books--was the first thought of even the boldest mind, as Strogue
said more than once to me.
Presently this "Bear-slayer" showed us that he deserved the name of
"Straight-pipe," which he had received from Shamyl. For while we were
halting in a glen to feed, Gator's rifle stood against a rock. We
grudged every moment, and were eating against time, when one of those
great black eagles, which are the grandest of European birds, came
soaring above us at a mighty height, searching the earth for lamb, or
kid, or perhaps a nice babe fast asleep beneath a rock. With Cator's
leave, Usi raised his gun, and he must have been as quick as light, for
the crack of the rifle and the heavy flop of the dead bird on the track
before us, were the first I knew of the matter, although I was standing
within a few yards of him. "That's a grand shot; I couldn't have done
that, although I am not a bad hand," said Strogue. But the Svân was not
satisfied with his work. "I struck him too far behind," he said, "my own
pipe would have done it better. I must get time to search for it among
the ashes." But we could not spare him yet; for he alone could show us
the men we wanted.
How it may be in the winter I know not, and perhaps no one would care to
know much about it then, but to me, who was used to very reasonable
weather (sometimes dull and sometimes fickle, but scarcely ever furious,
and generally comprehensible), the style of this Caucasian sun, whether
as he asked his way among a crowd of pinnacles, or whether as he mounted
high, strong, and hot above them, or even when he meant to be
compassionate and genial in looking back at his long day's work--all I
can say is, that to a man of Surrey, who lives out of doors nearly all
day long, and can tell you the time within half an hour, whether it be
cloudy or whether it be clear, the climate was incongruous. At home, you
could look up at the sky, and after making wise allowances for the way
of the wind, and the manner of the clouds, and the inclination of the
quicksilver, you could generally say something, which could be explained
away when a little incorrect. But here the only wisdom was to shake your
head, and say the developments are complicated, pressure variable and
conflicting, local showers not improbable, thunder not impossible. As
our Scientific Staff begins to waver, after predicting rain every day,
in a drought of three months' duration.
That Saturday evening the sun went down (so far as we could get a
straight look at him through such ins and outs), genial, bountiful, a
great globe of good will, squandering gold upon a maiden world of snow,
which it blushed to accept, and yet spread upon its breast.
"The weather at any rate is on our side," was my cheerful remark to
Captain Strogue; "if we can only find those fellows, we shall be all
right."
"Don't you be too sure," he said, "there may be a hurricane to-morrow."
Travelling eastward all that day, we had passed the foot of Karthlos
long ago, under Usi's guidance; for to climb the steep would be waste of
time, as there was no strength of men there now. Then we descended into
another valley, and Usi blew upon a horn, and listened. We heard no
reply, but he heard something, and led us, as the yellow light turned
grey, into a hollow place with huts around it, and out rushed two
enormous dogs, and behold they were _Kuban_ and _Orla_!