The low hills, as they lay baking in the sunshine of noon, showed in
scallops of glare against the light-bleached sky. A fine dust, reddish
but for that same bleaching of light, hid every green thing far and
near, making them match the straggling camel-thorns, the stunted
wormwood, the tufts of chamomile, and many another nameless aromatic
herb which in these low hills come into the world ready dressed in
dust, as it were, against the long rainless months.
Yet it was not hot here in the uplands, and so the district officer's
tent was opened at one side and propped up by bamboos more for the
convenience of its occupant holding an open-air audience than from any
quest after coolness. The upward tilt gave the tent a quaintly
lopsided look, as if it were some gigantic bird flapping one wing in
its attempt to rise and fly away from the little hollow in which it
stood.
It was a motley crowd, indeed, which awaited the fiat of the Dispenser
of Justice in these fastnesses of the central hills of India; those
climbing, rolling upward sweeps of sandstone where the ripple mark of
the tides that built them remains to tell of the vanished sea which
had once covered this dry and thirsty land, where no water is for nine
long months of the year.
It was a curious crowd also. It could not fail of being that, since it
struck the two extremes of that vast Indian scale of so-called
culture, so-called civilisation. For a land case involving several
miles of country was in dispute, and the semi-Europeanised, wholly
clothed lawyers engaged on it stood cheek by jowl with the
semi-clothed wholly aboriginal witnesses in it; representatives for
the most part of the wild tribes belonging to these waste lands and
forests. Rude iron-smelters, almost touching the bronze age in
absolute savagery; or wandering fowlers, barbaric even to the extent
of eating their poor, old, undesirable relations!
In one group, however, consisting of an old man and a young one, a
quick observer might have noticed a palpable discrepancy between the
dress (or the lack of it) and the address of the wearers. A
discrepancy which made the magistrate of the district look up with a
smile.
"Hullo! Nagdeo!" he said. "On the warpath after a tiger?" The old man
salaamed down to the ground. His skin was very dark, so that his white
moustache and thin white whiskers, brushed out to stand, each hair
singly, in a forward curve, like the whiskers of a cat, seemed to
glisten against it. For the rest, he was small, slight, but extremely
muscular, and he carried himself with no little dignity and
importance.
"Not so, _Huzoor_," he replied, and his speech rose higher in that
scale of culture and civilisation than his dress, which was no more
than a waistcloth, a string of tiger claws, and a tasselled spear--"I
come to put another foot on it. This is my grandson, _Huzoor_."
The dignity, the importance grew fifty-fold as he turned to the lad by
his side. A good head taller, fairer of skin, infinitely better
looking, there was yet something about the figure which made the eye
turn back to the smaller, older one, as it stood before authority with
a certain authority of its own.
He was, as all knew, explained Nagdeo, the keeper of one of the
wildest passes in that wild country, as his father and his father's
father had been. Who could deny it? Was not their very caste name, to
distinguish them from others, _Ghatwal_, or pass-keeping ones?
He had had to keep his a long time, because the Old God had decreed
that his son should be defeated by a tigress and her cubs; which might
happen to the best of pass-keeping ones, since those things feminine
were untrustworthy. Consequently he (Nagdeo) had had to go on beyond
the years of greatest activity until his grandson reached them.
But here the boy was now. Of age, twenty; than most, taller; as any,
learned in jungle law; with the spear, nimble; to keep the pass,
ready; to be enrolled, present, the Old God before--
With his subject the old man's words had returned to the idiom of a
wilder tongue, and he drew out of his waistcloth a little iron image
of a tiger, not three inches long, to which he salaamed reverently.
For this was the Old God.
"What is your grandson's name?" asked the district officer.
It was Baghela (tiger cub), said Nagdeo.
It had seemed a suitable name for one born six months after his father
had been found lying dead on the top of a dead tigress, his dead lips
close to the teats that would suckle her dead whelps no more.
That had been a misfortune, deplorable yet without shame, and due,
possibly, to the dead youth's over-soon marriage to a thing feminine;
such things being notoriously untrustworthy! Therefore he had
refrained from entangling _this_ one with such things feminine, the
more so because there were already sufficient of them in the house,
what with Baghela's mother and grandmother. Briefly, the worship of
two female things was sufficient for any lad without adding to the
adulation by a third!
So, in the evening, when the magistrate's legal work was over, the old
man and the young one came up to the tilted tent again, and, after a
curious little oath of fealty to the Old God--in the shape of the
three-inch tiger--and a vow of war till death against live things that
mimicked his shape had been taken from his grandfather's dictation by
Baghela, the latter's name was duly enrolled as hereditary guardian of
the Jadusa Pass, and the two struck a bee-line towards home over the
low jungle as if it belonged to them.
As indeed it did; since few travellers, save the keepers of the
passes, ventured to brave the tigers dreaming in their lairs, or
pacing the trackless wastes hungrily, after dark.
But old Nagdeo was jubilant over the mere chance of coming across one;
not that it was likely, since what tiger ever was whelped which would
dare to face him and his grandson? "Men"--here he gave a sidelong
glance of pure adoration at Baghela's height--"who had no backs; who,
if they failed, as even pass-keepers must sometimes, were found face
up to the sky, face up to the claws, face up to the teeth!"
Of course, sometimes, the accursed brutes who assumed the shape of the
Blessed Budhal Pen--the Old God of Gods--would, out of sheer spite,
roll a dead man over and claw at his back; but that also was without
shame, since dead men had no choice.
So the old man babbled on garrulously, and the young one listened,
till they reached the little village at the foot of the pass. The moon
had risen by this time, and showed the upright slabs of sandstone
clustering under the wide-spreading tamarind trees on its outskirts.
Slabs marking the graves of dead and gone inhabitants.
"I am ready now for the young girls to break their pitchers and cover
my emptiness with the shards," said the old man, pausing for a second
beside a cluster of these stones. Then he raised his hand and spoke to
the unseen: "Fear not, Slumberers! He who comes to join you hath no
scratch upon his back."
That was his _Nunc Dimittis_. After which he made his way to a low
shingled stone hut, covered with gourds, which stood on some rising
ground outside the hamlet towards the pass; drank to excess--from pure
joy--of a nauseous spirit made by the untrustworthy feminine out of
wild berries, and then slept as sound as if he were indeed with the
Slumberers.
For this question of the due keeping of the pass had been on the old
man's nerves for months. The rains would be due ere long, bringing, no
doubt, those twinges of lumbago to a grandfather's back which had of
late made it difficult, indeed, to keep the pass open for travellers;
since to do that a man must give the beasts no rest. He must harry
their lairs when they were absent, scare them from the road with
strange noises and ringing of bells, and, if they were obdurate, face
claws and teeth.
But now there was some one to do all this. Some one of the true race,
yet by the fiat of the Old God bigger than most. Ay! and with more
personal enmity than most towards the evil ones who stole the Old
God's likeness. For must not those six unborn mouths of wrong, of
loss, of grief and anger, count for something?
Yes! Baghela would be a Keeper of the Pass, indeed! That was the old
man's thought as he fell asleep, his dream as he lay sound as the
Slumberers themselves. And Baghela slept, too, the badge of his new
office, a necklace of tiger claws, round his neck, a tasselled spear,
hung with jingling bells, beside him. But the untrustworthy feminine,
the mother, the grandmother, still sate by the embers of the fire
whispering fearfully; for _they_ knew that those six unborn mouths,
translated in _their_ way, might mean something very different.
Baghela himself, however, had no suspicion of the possibility. He set
about his new duties with an immense amount of swagger. The least hint
of a marauding intruder about the winding path which led to the
fertile valleys towards the south, would send him through the village
with boastful jinglings of his bells. And, as luck would have it, that
jingling seemed all powerful for a time towards the keeping of the
pass.
Nagdeo, who, now that the necessity for presenting a youthful
appearance was over, permitted himself a seat amongst the village
elders, a certain stiffness of carriage generally, used to boast of
this peace dogmatically. Such a thing as no _news_, even, of
intruders, so far on in the season, was unheard of. He himself, in his
palmiest days, had never been so fear-compelling. It was those six
unborn mouths of hereditary hatred which did it, no doubt.
And Baghela thought so too, as long as the rain was slight, as long as
the flocks and herds kept to the uplands, and only the shepherds and
herdsmen had tales to tell of loss. Then, one day, the clouds broke in
slanting shafts of almost solid rain, and the water ran over the
rippled sandhills as if it had been a tide once more. Then the sun
shone for another day, and at dusk everything but a yard or two of
shadow round Baghela as he patrolled the path was a blank nothingness,
blotting out even the darkness with wet, impenetrable vapour, dulling
even the sound of the bells, deadening all scent.
So, neither he nor the tiger had an instant's warning.
They were face to face in a moment.
Then Baghela knew what those unborn mouths had wrought in him. Terror,
absolute, uncontrollable, seized on all his young strength; he knew
nothing save the desire to escape. The next instant he felt a hot
vapour on his back, heard the husky angry cough that sent it there,
and all that young strength of his spent itself in a cry like that of
the untrustworthy thing feminine, when they had told it of a young
husband's death.
Into the mist he fled, feeling the cold vapour in his face, the hot
behind; until, suddenly desperate, every atom of him leaped forward
from what lay behind, and he fell.
None too soon; for even as he shot downward a shadow shot over him in
the mist, and something ripped his bare back lightly, as, with greater
impetus than his, that shadow plunged into the void.
A second afterwards a long-drawn howl of rage and spite rose upward
through the mist to meet Baghela's whimpers as he lay, caught above
the sheer precipice, by a bush.
After a while he rose and crept carefully up to the verge; then sate
and shivered at himself; at this inheritance of fear. And more than
once his hand sought that faint scratch upon his back. It was not
much; not more than a kitten might have made in play, but he felt it
like a brand.
By degrees, however, he began to think. The tiger must be lying dead,
or at least helpless, below the rocks. He must get down to it, leave
the marks of his spear in it; the mark of its claws ...
A surge of shame swept through him. No! he must go back unscathed; no
one must have the chance, in dressing wounds, of seeing that faint
mark behind.
So the next morning, old Nagdeo could scarcely contain himself for
pride, as he sate among the village elders. The boy had killed his
first tiger without a scratch. Had brought home its skin, the biggest
seen for years. True, the lad himself had found the fight too hard,
and was even now shivering and shaking with ague; but that only proved
how hard the fight had been. And the untrustworthy feminine were
dosing him, so he would be afoot again in a day or two. Then the
village would see that, ere a month was over, a naked child might go
through the pass alone in safety. But it was not so!
Baghela, it is true, was well enough by day, but as the dusk came on,
his strong young limbs always fell a shivering and a shaking. "There
is more room for quaking, see you, in him than in me," old Nagdeo
would explain elaborately to his cronies, as he held out an arm, which
with the inaction, the sudden cessation of imperious efforts, began to
show its age clearly; "but one must pay for size and strength, and
courage; and there is no harm done as yet. The mimicking devils had
their lesson when he killed their champion without a scratch."
But the harm came in time. A party of salt-carriers, taking advantage
of a break in the rains, arrived at the village carrying an extra
load; the body of a man killed by a tiger, half eaten by jackals.
"Ague or no ague, sonling," said old Nagdeo almost coaxingly to the
lad half-an-hour after the appearance of this grim visitor, "thy bells
must be heard in the pass to-night. They will be all-sufficient,
considering the lesson thou hast taught the beasts. And thou art
strong enough for the ringing of bells. Thou canst return afterwards
to shiver and shake, sonling, since thou art not of those to do that
in the pass. No! no!"
The old man's chuckle at his little joke was tenderly triumphant; but,
when he had gone, and the untrustworthy feminine alone remained,
Baghela turned with a sob to his mother, who crouched beside him, and
hid his face in her clothes, as if he had been a hurt child.
"Mother!" he cried, "I got it from thee!"
"Yes! heart of my heart," she answered passionately, "and from thy
murdered father too. Have I not told thee so, often? As for this old
man! See you! Since _this_ has come upon us, and the shivering is no
longer refuge--go! There is no need to ring the bells--no need to go
farther than the little caves. And the old man fails fast. He will
not live long. Then, when he is dead, the old tale will be told,
and we can tell a new one, like other folk. Why, even now, see you,
there is no need for travellers to cross the pass. Let them take the
'rail' which the _Huzoors_ have made! All this old-world talk is
foolishness--yesterday's bread has been eaten, its water drunk; 'tis
time for a new dinner!"
It was more than a month after this that some one, sitting on the
village dais underneath the tamarind trees in sight of the Slumberers,
in trying to use a betel-cutter, said carelessly, "_It hath grown
rusty, like Baghela's bells!_"
Nagdeo turned on the speaker like lightning. That month had left him
curiously aged, with a wistful, anxious expectancy on his old face.
Though when, more than once, folk had commented on his changed looks,
and asked what ailed him, he had only replied, almost apologetically,
"Death lingers; 'tis time I was with the Slumberers, since Baghela
keeps the pass as his fathers did."
But now his old voice rose haughtily, "Like thy wits rather! Canst not
see that the youth hath been overbrave? The mimicking devils will not
face the bells. And who can kill a foe that keeps his distance? And if
the bells ring not, is it not in hopes to lure the cowards close--to
take them unawares?"
The arguments came swiftly, as if they had been rehearsed before;
rehearsed without audience; and yet when old Nagdeo moved off as if in
displeasure, his hands crept out towards the stones which marked the
Slumberers, his eyes sought them almost pitifully.
And that night, after Baghela had gone on his rounds, after the
untrustworthy feminine had slothfully sought its bed, the old Keeper
of the Pass crept out in the rear of the young one, spear in hand; yet
without the jingles, since what need was there for two sets?
Two! But where was the one?
The old man's face grew more feline in its watchful anxiety, as he
prowled among the bushes in the half moonlit darkness, listening for
the challenge. And none came, though more than once in the denser
shadow of thick jungle, he saw two spots of green light telling that
some one was _waiting_ to be challenged. But where was the challenger?
The night was far spent ere he was found, fast asleep on a bed of dry
leaves in the little cave.
The sight seemed to take the finder back, not to his more immediate
ancestors, the purely savage hunters of those low hills, but to
something older still, to the barbarians who had swept down on them to
found principalities and powers; for all the calm dignity of the
Indo-Scythic sculptures was in Nagdeo's pose as he pricked the sleeper
with his spear.
"Rise up, Keeper of the Pass; they wait for thee without."
Baghela was on his feet in a second. He knew the time had come, and
something of the old racial courage in him held that new fear in
check.
Until, not a hundred yards without the cave, in the faint grey light
of the now coming dawn, a paler shadow showed in the darker shadows,
long, low, sinuous; and something moved across their path with no
sound of footfall; only a crackle of dry twigs, a sudden, soft, short
wheeze, and then silence.
"Ring the bells, Keeper of the Pass," came the old man's voice. "There
is no fear. Has not the tale of thy prowess spread among the tiger
people?"
His prowess! The sting of that slight scratch was as fire on the lad's
back; he paused. But a spear from behind reached to his, struck it
sideways, and the next instant the challenge echoed through the pass.
And was accepted.
The shadow grew short, showed paler; till two green lights flashed
out, and with a roar that rolled among the rocks, the tiger faced
them, crouched and sprang.
Old Nagdeo, his vanished youth returning for a space, sprang too,
watching that other spring; so, spear in hand, found himself close to
the striped skin of the base usurper of the Old God's shape, into
which, with all the force he possessed, he drove his weapon's point.
But Baghela, with no thought but flight, felt the full force of those
mighty claws on his back, and fell. Perhaps his neck was broken;
anyhow, he lay still, heedless of the piteous cry that followed:--
"Face him, Keeper of the Pass! Face the teeth, face the claws, ere
thou seekest the Slumberers!"
Yet the entreaty was not utterly disregarded; since--Baghela
dead--that Keepership passed again to one whose face faced the old
enemy bravely.
That face, however, had no triumph of victory in it, when Nagdeo
stooped over his grandson's body, and turned its scored back to be
hidden by Mother Earth. There was no mark anywhere else--not a
scratch. That, at any rate, must not be. That must be remedied before
the villagers saw it; before even the sun saw it. For was not Budhal
Pen, the Old God, the Sun-god also?
So he drew the lad's body deliberately within reach of the mighty
claws, and used them, slack as they were in newly-come death, for his
purpose.
Then he sat down beside the two dead bodies, and looked at his own for
scratch or hurt. There was not one; not even a bruise, not a spot of
blood. So none need know. The girls might weep as they broke their
pitchers over Baghela bewailing his dead courage.
The courage which had died before he did, though none should know of
it. Yet it had died. And who was to blame?
Nagdeo sat gazing stupidly at his grandson's long length, at his
fairer beauty; then suddenly he stood up.
That was it, of course!
And if that were so, then it were best to settle it before dawn, when
folk might come prying. He bent curiously over the dead lad, then laid
his hand on the dead heart.
"Go! Keeper of the Pass, to the Slumberers without fear. I, Nagdeo,
will punish the intruder."
Half-an-hour after, he stood silently in his hut beside his still
sleeping wife. The old woman, blind, deaf, near her end as it was,
scarcely stirred as he drove his spear through her heart.
"I doubt thee not, Naole," he said inwardly, "unless a devil wronged
thee; but thy son's son must be avenged. He must take no stranger's
blood to the Slumberers."
But Herdasi, the lad's mother, was awake, and screamed.
"Hold thy peace, fool!" said the old man, fiercely, "if thou wouldst
not proclaim thyself harlot. Thy son is dead--face downwards. It came
not from me, nor from my son; so that of us which goes to join the
Slumberers must be avenged on the vile spirit that took form within
thee. Come out from under the bed, woman! if thou wouldst prove he got
it not with thy knowledge. Oh! untrustworthy feminine!"
And after a pause the untrustworthy feminine did come out with a
curious dignity.
"He got it not from me but from my love. Yet what matter if he be
dead!" said Herdasi, and so died with her face to the foe to save her
son's name. Since, if it was a devil's doing, none could blame the
lad.
They found the old man sitting beside the two dead women when they
came to tell him that the Keeper of the Pass had given his life for
its safety.
"Yea, I know," replied Nagdeo, quietly. "I went and found him before
dawn when he returned not. So I came home and slew these useless ones.
Since he was dead, and I am nigh death, and there was none to keep the
untrustworthy feminine from wandering."
He adhered to this story steadfastly in the district magistrate's
court, and when he was condemned to death made but one request--that
he might be allowed to face it with the insignia of his office about
him. So on the eve of his execution they gave the old man back his
necklace of tiger claws, and told him he would be allowed to jingle
his bells on his way to the scaffold. But when they came to rouse him
in the morning he was lying dead, face upward; his arms, his chest,
his throat all rent and ripped by those same tiger claws.
But there was not even a scratch upon the back of the last Keeper of
the Pass.