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.
V
It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their night attack on the
lowland villages. The Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
plunder; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out of the
very earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down under the stars, so that
no man knew where to turn, and all feared that they had brought an army
about their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the panic of that flight
more men were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife
jabbed upwards, and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then there
rose a cry of treachery, and when they reached their own guarded
heights, they had left, with some forty dead and sixty wounded,
all their confidence in the Blind Mullah on the plains below. They
clamoured, swore, and argued round the fires; the women wailing for the
lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses on the returned.
Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for he had taken no part
in the fight, rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out that the
tribe owed every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah, who
had lied in every possible particular and talked them into a trap. It
was undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should
presume to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah
pretended, herald a general time of license and lifting; and the
inexplicable madness of the English had not in the least impaired
their power of guarding their marches. On the contrary, the baffled and
out-generalled tribe would now, just when their food-stock was lowest,
be blockaded from any trade with Hindustan until they had sent hostages
for good behaviour, paid compensation for disturbance, and blood-money
at the rate of thirty-six English pounds per head for every villager
that they might have slain. ‘And ye know that those lowland dogs will
make oath that we have slain scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or
must we sell our guns?’ A low growl ran round the fires. ‘Now, seeing
that all this is the Mullah’s work, and that we have gained nothing but
promises of Paradise thereby, it is in my heart that we of the Khusru
Kheyl lack a shrine whereat to pray. We are weakened, and henceforth
how shall we dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border, as has been our
custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji’s tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us,
and rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He has helped two score of us
into Paradise this night. Let him therefore accompany his flock, and we
will build over his body a dome of the blue tiles of Mooltan, and burn
lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall be a saint: we shall have
a shrine; and there our women shall pray for fresh seed to fill the gaps
in our fighting-tale. How think you?’
A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of
unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion,
and met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet,
glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and
calling down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a
game of blind man’s buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk
Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.
They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped
aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back
of his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his
adherents to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for
Khoda Dad Khan had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men
described to him the glories of the shrine they would build, and the
little children clapping their hands cried, ‘Run, Mullah, run! There’s
a man behind you!’ In the end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan’s
brother sent a knife home between his ribs. ‘Wherefore,’ said Khoda Dad
Khan with charming simplicity, ‘I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!’ No
man gainsaid him; and they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.
On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry
charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked
with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in
leash so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald’s
right ear had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its
unskilled rider, Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and
sobbed till Tommy Dodd made him lie down and rest.
‘We must wait about till the morning,’ said he. ‘I wired to the Colonel
just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He’ll be
furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the
hills won’t give us any more trouble.’
‘Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar
on the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You’re quite
sure, Tommy, that--that stuff was--was only the skewbald’s ear?’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Tommy. ‘You just missed cutting off his head. _I_ saw
you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.’
Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother
officers demanding the court-martial of Tommy Dodd for ‘spoiling the
picnic,’ and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris,
Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a
dozen of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the
Beshaklis restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section
of the Khusru Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming
with life as usual, while such of their men as had taken refuge in
the watercourses and ravines were being driven out by the troopers.
By sundown began the remorseless patrol of the Border by police and
trooper, most like the cow-boys’ eternal ride round restless cattle.
‘Now,’ said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of
twinkling fires below, ‘ye may see how far the old order changes. After
their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the
tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown
the hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire
Sahib--who loves me--and see if I can stave off at least the blockade.
Do I speak for the tribe?’
‘Ay, speak for the tribe in God’s name. How those accursed fires wink!
Do the English send their troops on the wire--or is this the work of the
Bengali?’
As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he was delayed by an interview
with a hard-pressed tribesman, which caused him to return hastily
for something he had forgotten. Then, handing himself over to the
two troopers who had been chasing his friend, he claimed escort to
Tallantire Sahib, then with Bullows at Jumala. The Border was safe, and
the time for reasons in writing had begun.
‘Thank Heaven!’ said Bullows, ‘that the trouble came at once. Of course
we can never put down the reason in black and white, but all India will
understand. And it is better to have a sharp short outbreak than five
years of impotent administration inside the Border. It costs less. Grish
Chunder De has reported himself sick, and has been transferred to his
own province without any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not having
taken over the district.’
‘Of course,’ said Tallantire bitterly. ‘Well, what am I supposed to have
done that was wrong?’
‘Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all your powers, and should
have reported, and written, and advised for three weeks until the Khusru
Kheyl could really come down in force. But I don’t think the authorities
will dare to make a fuss about it. They’ve had their lesson. Have you
seen Curbar’s version of the affair? He can’t write a report, but he can
speak the truth.’
‘What’s the use of the truth? He’d much better tear up the report. I’m
sick and heartbroken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary--except
in that it rid us of that Babu.’
Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed forage-net in his hand, and
the troopers behind him.
‘May you never be tired!’ said he cheerily. ‘Well, Sahibs, that was a
good fight, and Naim Shah’s mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib.
A clean cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded coat, and deep into the
collar-bone. Well done! But I speak for the tribe. There has been a
fault--a great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine, Tallantire Sahib,
kept the oath we sware to Orde Sahib on the banks of the Indus.’
‘As an Afghan keeps his knife--sharp on one side, blunt on the other,’
said Tallantire.
‘The better swing in the blow, then. But I speak God’s truth. Only the
Blind Mullah carried the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said
that there was no more Border-law because a Bengali had been sent, and
we need not fear the English at all. So they came down to avenge that
insult and get plunder. Ye know what befell, and how far I helped. Now
five score of us are dead or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry,
and desire no further war. Moreover, that ye may better listen to us,
we have taken off the head of the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have
led us to folly. I bring it for proof,’--and he heaved on the floor the
head. ‘He will give no more trouble, for I am chief now, and so I sit
in a higher place at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this head.
That was another fault. One of the men found that black Bengali beast,
through whom this trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping.
Reflecting that he had caused loss of much good life, Alla Dad Khan,
whom, if you choose, I will to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and
I bring it to you to cover your shame, that ye may bury it. See, no man
kept the spectacles, though they were of gold.’
Slowly rolled to Tallantire’s feet the crop-haired head of a spectacled
Bengali gentleman, open-eyed, open-mouthed--the head of Terror
incarnate. Bullows bent down. ‘Yet another blood-fine and a heavy
one, Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the head of Debendra Nath, the man’s
brother. The Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the Khusru
Kheyl know that.’
‘Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for me. The thing was under
our hills asking the road to Jumala and Alla Dad Khan showed him the
road to Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a fool. Remains now what
the Government will do to us. As to the blockade--’
‘Who art thou, seller of dog’s flesh,’ thundered Tallantire, ‘to speak
of terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills--go, and wait there
starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out
for punishment--children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be
still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!’
‘Ay,’ returned Khoda Dad Khan, ‘for we also be men.’
As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, ‘And by God, Sahib,
may thou be that man!’