Overhead the gloomy rock walls reared up on either side for many hundred
feet, seeming in places well nigh to meet, in others, leaning outward so
as completely to obliterate the narrow blue thread of sky. Loose
stones, round stones, every conceivable shape of stone, large and small,
constituted the natural paving of the natural roadway, and slipped and
rattled under the tired, stumbling hoofs of the two horsemen; the three
rather, for the rear was brought up at a respectful distance by a
mounted syce.
It was cool in the depths of the great chasm, cool but strangely stuffy.
Both Europeans were in khaki suits, quite looking like having seen
service, and wore Terai hats. Each carried a business-like magazine
rifle--and, incidentally, knew thoroughly well how to use it when
occasion demanded. And each had been so using it, but for peaceful
purpose, for they were returning from a fairly successful markhor stalk
in the craggy range, of which this chasm, cleaving the heart of an
otherwise unbroken mass of rock, formed a natural roadway.
"I tell you what it is, Helston," the older of the two men was saying.
"This is no sort of place to go through during the rainy season. The
water rushes down it as through a spout. I've had a narrow squeak or
two in just such a tube as this before."
"Yes. You can see that. There's high watermark."
The other followed his upward glance. Just a few scarcely perceptible
bits of stick and dry grass quite twenty feet overhead.
"By Jove, Helston, but what an eye you've got. And you're new to this
end of the country too."
"Yes. I've got an eye--for trifles--as you say, Coates," returned
Helston Varne. "But I only wish some of the things I've got to--I've
had to--clear up, were as easy to deduce as that--only I don't, because
it would eliminate the sporting element altogether. By the way, there's
some one coming from the opposite direction. We shall meet directly,
but I hope it isn't a lot of beastly loaded camels, or Heaven only knows
how we are going to pass each other."
"What? Why you've got an ear as well as an eye. Blest if _I_ can hear
anything."
"Not, eh?" Then, after a moment of listening--"By Jingo, yes--it is
camels."
Now the sound grew audible to all, that of deep toned voices and the
roll and rattle of loose stones, and soon, round a bend of the rock wall
appeared a characteristic and extremely picturesque group.
There might have been ten or a dozen men. The one who led was mounted
on a fine camel, but the rest were afoot. Another camel brought up the
rear, loaded with baggage. They were tall, hook-nosed, copper coloured
men, with jetty beards and an equally jetty tress flowing down in front
over each shoulder. They were clad in loose white garments, and their
heads surmounted by the ample turban wound round the conical _kulla_--
and all were armed with the inevitable and razor-edged tulwar, three or
four indeed carrying rifles besides. At sight of the Europeans they
halted, and their looks were not friendly. In point of fact these
expressed distinct suspiciousness, partly dashed with a restrained
combination of fanatical and racial hatred. But the whole group was
splendidly in keeping with the stern wildness of its background.
"Now how the devil are we going to pass each other, and who's going to
give way?" mused Varne Coates in an undertone. Helston said nothing.
His mind was absorbed entirely with taking in and thoroughly
appreciating the effect of the picture.
"Salaam, brothers," began Coates, speaking Hindustani: "This _tangi_ is
over narrow for two parties to pass each other. Is it not wider a
little back, the way you have come?"
The look of hostility on the dark faces seemed to deepen ever so
slightly. To Helston's acute observation it deepened more than
slightly.
"Or the way _you_ have come," came the answer from more than one voice.
But the man on the camel said nothing, perhaps because he did not
understand--or as a freeborn mountaineer, did not choose to understand--
the language of servants--of slaves. But he did not look friendly.
Things were at a decided deadlock.
There was just barely room to pass, but only then by floundering up the
most rugged part of the dry watercourse. But Varne Coates, Commissioner
of Baghnagar, and temporarily quartered on leave at the frontier station
of Mazaran for the purposes chiefly of markhor stalking, was
temperamentally a peppery man, and traditionally entirely opposed to the
idea of giving way to natives whoever they might be. And it looked
uncommonly as though he would have to do so now.
"Here, Gholam Ali," he called back over his shoulder to the syce. "You
talk to these people. They don't seem to understand _me_."
The man came forward, and Helston was not slow to notice that his tones,
as he talked, were respectful, not to say deferential. The face of the
camel rider the while was that of a mask. He uttered a few laconic
words in a deep toned voice, and in Pushtu.
"_Hazur_, it is a sirdar of the Gularzai," translated the syce, "His
name Allah-din Khan. He does not know the _Hazur_, and this is his
country. _Hazur_, he says, does not belong to the _Sirkar_ here [the
Government, or administration], but is a stranger. Further down the
_tangi_ is a wide space where all can pass one another. `Let those who
come _up_ then make way for those who come _down_.' Those are the words
of the sirdar."
Here was an _impasse_. Helston Varne noticed on his kinsman's face a
sort of apoplectic tendency to grow purple. He realised that the
situation was critical--very. He noticed likewise that the expression
on the faces of the opposite party was one of scowling determination,
but he further noticed that there was nothing insolent or provocative in
it. This seemed to save the situation. His keen brain saw a way out.
It was rather a funny one, but it might answer.
"See now, Gholam Ali," he said, in Hindustani, of which he had a
thorough knowledge. "When we sportsmen have a difference we throw up a
coin, and decide according to choice whether the King's head is
uppermost or not. The Gularzai are sportsmen like ourselves. So we can
toss up for who shall give way."
He produced a rupee, and watched the face of the chief while this was
put to him. The latter gave a slight nod, and said a word or two to his
followers. They crowded forward.
"What does the sirdar say?" went on Helston. "The King's head or the
other side?"
"The King's head," was the answer.
"Good. Let one of them throw up the rupee," said Helston, handing it
over.
A tall, hook-nosed barbarian came forward, and taking the coin, sent it
spinning high in the air. It came down with a clink, rebounded, and
settled. The King's head was undermost.
"`Tails.' We've won," said Helston, looking up. "But if they'd like
two out of three, we can call again."
But the sirdar shook his head.
"It is child's play," he said. "Still--a test is a test--and a game a
game. We keep to it."
And to the intense relief of at any rate two of them, he turned his
camel round, and retraced his way up the _tangi_, followed by his
retinue.
"Well I'm damned!" was all that Coates could muster.
"No you're not. We've got round that hobble," answered his kinsman
placidly. "It was rather a funny situation though, wasn't it. Fancy
tossing for priority of way, bang, so to speak, in the heart of the
earth. Well, Allah-din Khan is a sportsman anyhow."
"Is he? Wait a bit. We haven't _passed_ him yet." And the answer
carried a potential suggestiveness, which, under the circumstances, was
unpleasant.
However, such was not borne out by events. A few hundred yards higher
up, the _tangi_ widened out considerably, and here they found the sirdar
and his following awaiting them. Helston said a few pleasant and
courteous words as they passed, which were gravely but not sullenly,
received. But the hostile stare on the faces of the chief's following,
there was no mistaking.
"That's what comes of sending the escort on ahead," said Varne Coates.
"If they'd been along we needn't have stood any nonsense from Mr
Allah-din Khan. It would have been man for man then, or very nearly,
and a good deal more than rifle for rifle."
"Don't know it isn't a good thing that we did," answered the other with
some conviction. "The evenness of numbers would probably have brought
on a row. And I'm perfectly certain any one of those chaps is equal to
any two of ours, if not three."
"But the rifles?"
"Even then, they wouldn't have given us time to use them. No. I think
we're well out of that racket, Coates."
"All right. I shall be glad to see camp anyhow. I'm yearning for a
long, stiff, cool peg. Wrangling and getting into a wax is very dry
work. Well, we're not far off now, thank the Lord."
The _tangi_ was widening out considerably. The cliffs no longer rose
sheer and facing each other, but had changed into tumbling crags and
pinnacles, and terraced ledges, while beyond lay a glimpse of more open
country. But on one hand the mouth of the pass was dominated by a huge,
magnificent cliff wall.
"Look there," cried Coates, glancing at a point halfway up this where
some objects were moving. "Markhor--three of them! But they are wild.
At that height they ought to be standing calmly staring at us, and
they're off already as if the devil was after them."
And as the words left his mouth, the answer--the explanation--came,
startlingly, unpleasantly.
For an echoing roar broke from the cliff front just below the point they
had been scanning, and something heavy and vicious and convincing
thudded hard with a "klopf" against a boulder just to the right of
Helston. The rock face was marked as with the splatter of blue lead.
"We're being sniped, by God?" exclaimed Coates, reining in. The syce
had instinctively drawn behind the nearest boulder, and had dismounted.
Again came the crash, together with a score of bellowing reverberations
as the echoes tossed from crag to crag. This time the missile shaved
the neck of Helston's horse so close as to set that noble animal
snorting and curvetting in such wise that the rider was put to some
trouble to keep his seat.
"This is damn silly," growled Coates. "Well, there's nothing for it but
to take cover and think it out. If we could only get a glimpse of the
_soor_."
There were many loose boulders at the entrance to the chasm, and only in
the nick of time did they get behind two of these. For a third bullet
hummed over the very spot, now in empty air, a fraction of a second ago
occupied by Helston and his horse.
"He's getting our range now, and no mistake," went on Coates. "Now we
must try and get his. Just about halfway up the _khud_ there, below
where we sighted the markhor."
For some minutes there was no further sign. The sniper seeing now
nothing to snipe at, did not snipe. Meanwhile he was enjoying the fun
of keeping two of the ruling race crouching behind rocks for their
lives. He had the best part of the day before him to enjoy it in, for
it was quite early afternoon, and his time was all his own. When they
came out into the open, as sooner or later they would be sure to do--for
they were but scantily endowed with the saving grace of patience, these
infidels--then he would have them; the whole three, with good fortune;
only he would spare the syce perhaps, because he was a believer.
"This is a nice cheerful country, Coates, and a fairly eventful day of
it," remarked Helston. "First, we as nearly as possible have a hand to
hand scrap for the right to pass an exceedingly cut-throat looking gang
of ruffians, then no sooner are we clear of that than we have to slink
behind stones like scared rabbits, because some sportsman unknown takes
it into his head that we make very good moving targets at a given
distance. And I don't quite see the way out, that's the worst of it.
Do you?"
"Not unless we can get a sight on the _budmash_," was the reply. "I've
put mine at four hundred yards."
"Yes. That would do it," agreed Helston. "Stop. I've got an idea--
give me a leg up to the top of this boulder. There are several loose
stones there that I can get behind, and use as sort of loopholes."
"Better not. He'll have you there to a dead cert," warned the other.
"I'll chance that. So. That's it."
Whether the sniper had seen this move, or whether he himself was tired
of inaction, another bullet now pinged hard and viciously against the
boulder itself. This just suited Helston Varne. He was able in that
moment's flash to locate the lurking place of their enemy, and himself,
lying flat, was able to get his piece forward, and cover it. With the
aid of a loophole-like formation of the stones he felt that he could not
miss.
"Work the dummy trick, Coates," he called back, in a low voice. "Draw
his fire somehow. I've got the spot exactly covered, and--I think we
shall soon be on our road again."
"All right," came back the answer. "I'll give a cough when I'm all
ready to show the lure."
It was a strange drama this duel between hidden foes, and for its
setting one of the wildest scenes of wild Nature. The mountain side
opposite, rising in huge terraced cliffs, the ledges affording sparse
hold for a scanty growth of pistachio shrub. Beneath, the stones and
boulders of the now dry watercourse, and behind, the craggy entrance to
the great _tangi_. No vegetation either, save coarse dry grass, no sign
of life, unless a cloud of kites, wheeling in circles high overhead,
against the blue. And, facing each other, unseen, two units of humanity
lay there, each bent on relieving the human race of one. Then Varne
Coates coughed.
But simultaneously, with the echoing roar from the cliff face, Helston
pressed trigger. The sound from opposite was not that of a missile
striking a hard substance.
"Got him," he said, quietly. "Yes. He's done. I could see it plainly.
He got it just under the chin, as he was watching the effect of his
pull-off."
"The effect of his pull-off," said Coates, "is that he's got the range
plumb by now, and if anything had been inside the boot I stuck out, its
owner would have gone very lame for life. Look hereat it." And he held
it up showing a hole neatly drilled just above the ankle. "Sure you've
got him though?"
"So sure that--Well, look."
Helston had slid down from his coign of vantage, and now deliberately
walked forth into the open. Here he stood for a few moments, gazing up
at the cliff.
"That's practical faith at any rate," said Coates, grimly. "Yes, you
certainly must have `got him,' or he'd have got you by this. Still,
it's risky. There might have been two of them."
"There might, but there weren't."
"How the deuce could you tell that?"
"By the systematic way the _one_ was getting the range."
"Oh, good old Sherlock Holmes again!" laughed Coates. "Now we can head
for that `peg' I was yearning for just now, and in dry fact--devilish
_dry_--have been ever since."
"What are we going to do about--that?" said Helston, with a nod in the
direction of their late menace.
"Do? Why, not say a damn thing about it to anybody. Gholam Ali won't
for his own sake. He's half a Pathan himself and knows better than to
advertise trouble. Yes, as you were saying--it's a nice cheerful
country this, not dull by any means."
The other laughed significantly.
"No," he said. "But this time it's a case of the sniper sniped."
And then they both laughed.