Swinton had left instructions to be wakened before the first
raucous-voiced crow had opened his piratical beak, so, in the chill dawn
half light, a grey mist from the river bed still hovering like a shroud
over the plain, the voice of his bearer calling softly: "Sahe-e-b!
Sahe-e-b!" brought him out of a deep slumber. Dressing, he chuckled over
the apocryphal sprained ankle that had relieved him of Lord Victor's
company or offer of it. Passing that young nobleman's room, lamp in
hand, he saw, through the open door, a very red ankle, devoid of its
bandage, hanging over the bed. Swinton chuckled, muttering: "Bad
patient!"
His horse was waiting, and with a rifle across the saddle he went up the
hill, meeting Finnerty, with whom was Mahadua, at the appointed place.
"We'll leave our gee-gees here with the syces," Finnerty said, "and
Mahadua will take us by a shortcut path along the edge of the hill to
Jadoo Pool."
At Jadoo Pool, they rested while Mahadua, as keen as a "black tracker,"
searched the ground for the leopard's trail.
Finnerty had imparted to the shikari nothing beyond the fact that a
leopard had been seen in that immediate vicinity, and it was supposed he
was wounded. The shikari had declared emphatically that it would prove
to be the leopard with the man-eater's rosettes, and, no doubt, was the
animal that came out of the cave, giving rise to the belief that a ghost
homed there.
First, Mahadua passed to the plastic clay banks of the little stream
that trickled into the pool; there he picked up the pugs of a leopard,
following them unerringly to where the cunning brute had backed away and
circled when he saw Finnerty in the machan. On this circling trail a
stick freshly turned, a nestlike hollow in the loose leaves where a soft
paw had pushed, guided the tracker, so close to instinct in his
faculties, till he came upon blood spots and torn-up earth where the
leopard had been shot.
For twenty minutes Finnerty and Swinton waited, and then Mahadua came
back, saying: "Chita has been shot in a hind leg, for his jumps in
running are not big, and though he went to the deep jungle at first he
is now back at the cave."
As they went up Jadoo Nala there were no blood spots on its stony bed,
but Mahadua explained: "Chita remained hid in the jungle for a time, and
the bleeding stopped."
Coming to the doorlike entrance of the cave, Finnerty peered cautiously
in, and, seeing nothing, passed beyond, his eyes searching for tracks. A
dozen paces and a sibilant whistle from behind whirled him about to see
Mahadua facing the opening, his little axe poised for a blow of defence.
When Finnerty, cocking both barrels of his Paradox, raced back, the
shikari said: "Chita stuck his head out to look at the sahib's back, but
when I whistled he disappeared."
"Was it 'Spots' or a black leopard, Mahadua?"
"Black, sahib," he answered.
"A black leopard is the most vicious thing on earth," Finnerty said in
English, his gun holding guard, "and one wounded and in a cave is a
matter for consideration."
"He won't come out; that's sure," Swinton commented.
"Not before night--if we're here--and we can't afford the time to wait
that long."
"Smoke him out," Swinton suggested.
"Difficult; smoke won't go where you want it to, but I'll ask Mahadua if
it's possible."
"The cave is too big," the shikari replied to the query.
"How big?" Swinton asked with sudden interest.
"I don't know," and the native's eyes were evasive. "I have heard it
said that the cave went far in, but I have no desire to go into the home
of the spirits."
"My Rampore hounds would draw him," Finnerty said thoughtfully; "but I
don't want to get them mauled--perhaps killed."
The name Rampore conveyed to Mahadua the sahib's meaning, though the
English words were unintelligible. "The Banjara would send in dogs if
the sahib would pay him well," he suggested.
"He would not risk his Banjara hounds," the major objected.
"True, huzoor, but he also has 'bobbery' dogs--half Banjara breed--and
they being trained to the hunt will go in after the wounded chita."
"It's a good idea, Swinton," Finnerty declared. "We've done the very
thing I was bucking about last night; we've set adrift a wounded leopard
who'll likely turn man-eater if he doesn't die and we'll be responsible
for every native he kills."
"We've simply got to finish him off," Swinton concurred.
"We must. If you'll wait here with the shikari, keeping your eye on that
hole so he doesn't sneak away, I'll pick up my horse and gallop down to
get the Banjara and his 'bobbery pack.'"
Perhaps the going of Finnerty, with his large virility, had taken
something of mental sustenance from the shikari, for he now lost
somewhat his buoyant nonchalance.
"Sit you here, sahib, on this flat rock," he advised, "for here you face
well the cave door, and if the evil brute makes a sudden rush you will
have an advantage. As to the dogs, if it is a bhut they will not enter
the cave, and if they do enter it will be because the spirit has gone."
"But, Mahadua, we saw him. How will he disappear through the rock walls
of a cave?"
"As to the ways of a bhut not even the priest at my village of Gaum
could say aught."
"Did you ever see a spirit, Mahadua?" Swinton queried, with the double
purpose of whiling away the time as they waited and drawing from the man
one of those eerie tales that originate with the half-wild forest
dwellers.
"Sahib, I never saw my father, but there is no doubt that I had one; it
was said that he died before I was born, and I believe it."
"Well, did you then know of one from people you believed in?"
"Yes, sahib. The priest of Gaum, which is my village, knew well the
tiger that was named the 'One Who Looks Up.' You know, sahib, a tiger
when he walks through the jungle never looks up at the trees, there
being nothing there in the way of his food nor that he fears; though if
he be shot at from a machan, after that, if he catches in his nostrils
the taint of a sahib, he will remember, and will see such a trap."
"Tell me of the One Who Looks Up," Swinton begged.
"He was a man-killer, Sahib, and one day he killed a woodsman, but was
disturbed before he had eaten the poor fellow, and went away, the man's
bhut going with him. A Dep'ty Sahib had a machan put in a tree above the
body, and sitting there in the moonlight he saw bagh creeping toward his
victim; but before the Dep'ty Sahib could shoot the dead man's arm
lifted up, and a finger pointed at the machan. Bagh looked up, and
seeing the Dep'ty Sahib fled."
The shikari's voice suddenly dropped to a whisper, and without the move
of a muscle he said: "Look at the cave mouth and you will see chita
watching you. Move very slow and you may get a shot."
Swinton's gun was lying across his knee, and gently pulling back the
hammers he slowly carried the stock toward his shoulder. As their eyes
met, the leopard's lip curled in a snarl that bared his hooked fangs,
and his ears flattened back, giving the head a cobra-like look. Inch by
inch the gun crept upward, the unblinking eyes viewing this move with
malevolent interest.
As the stock touched Swinton's shoulder he drooped his head to train his
eye along the sights, for the shot must go true to the small brain
beneath that sloping skull, or, stung by the wound, the leopard would
charge and there would be no escape from a mauling; but his eye,
travelling along the barrels, looked into the dark void of the cave. In
a brief second the cunning beast had vanished.
"He will not return for some time, sahib; he knows what a gun is.
Perhaps even it is a spirit," the shikari said.
Dropping the gun to his knee Swinton asked: "What was the end of the One
Who Looks Up?"
"The Dep'ty Sahib was a man of resource, and coming down he pegged to
the ground both arms of the one whose bhut had gone with the tiger;
then, as he waited in the machan, the tiger came back, thinking the
sahib would have gone, and, as the dead man gave him no sign, crept
close up, when the Dep'ty Sahib killed him."
"And you believe that story is true, Mahadua?"
"The guru says it is; but whether it is true or not matters only to the
one who is devoured."
For some time Mahadua sat facing the cave, turning over in his mind a
little business venture; then raising his head, he looked into Swinton's
dead-blue eyes, only to turn away in blinking haste before their
disconcerting inertia. He coughed, adjusted his little brown cap, and
said: "Sahib, as to this one in the cave we shall know when the dogs
come if it is a spirit; but if we had made an offering to the shrine, or
even promised Safed Jan, who guards the mountain pass, a goat in
sacrifice, all might have been well."
"It is too late now," Swinton suggested.
"If the sahib will bestow a silver rupee for the sacrifice of a goat to
Safed Jan, Mahadua will make a ceremony over the gun and the bullet will
not be turned by the spirit."
Swinton smiled at this wily touch while the man's master was away, but
drawing forth a rupee he bestowed it upon the man who had capitalised a
spirit. Very gravely Mahadua plucked a handful of grass, and, wrapping
the coin in this, rubbed it along the barrels of Swinton's gun, tapped
the locks with it, and then slipped the rupee into his jacket pocket,
saying in a voice blithesome with relief--or cupidity: "If Safad Jan has
observed, luck will follow."
Pariah-like yowls came up the pass, and Finnerty, with the herdsman and
his brother holding in leash six dogs, appeared. The pack was a motley
one, a canine kaleidoscope that, as it tumbled in the sunshine, showed
all the various hues of ancestry from red Irish terrier to mizzled
collie. One had a bulldog head and the lank, scraggy body of a village
pariah; two had the powerfully boned frame of the Banjara hound; but all
showed the uncertain, treacherous temper of their pariah cross.
Each dog was held by a rawhide leash fastened to a wide leather collar
studded with iron spikes to prevent a leopard from taking his favourite
jugular-severing jaw grip of the neck.
As he sat down for a minute's rest, the major said: "I fancy this may
cost me a pretty penny for my friend, the herdsman, has made me agree to
pay ten rupees for each dog killed, and five apiece for the mauled ones.
He was deuced curious over the night's work, but I told him we saw no
one. He admitted that he didn't deliver the note to Lord Victor, saying
he had lost it."
"Do you think by any chance he had an inkling Lord Victor was going
there, and didn't want him to know we'd be there?"
"No. He says we saw no one because we spoiled the hunt by going like a
marriage procession; that we went by the road, and that his brother, the
watchman, saw Prince Ananda watching us, both going and coming."
"The sahib will have rested now, and the sun is hot," the Banjara
interposed.
Finnerty, rising, placed the men; Swinton behind the flat boulder he had
sat on, and from the top of which his gun would range the cave mouth;
two convenient trees were allotted to Mahadua, the herdsman, and his
brother when the dogs had been slipped. Finnerty would stand on some
ground a little higher where he could rake the nala, both up and down,
should the leopard bolt.
The dogs had been given a noseful of the leopard's trail, and, when they
were slipped, with a chorus of yelps they made for the cave, while their
owner slipped nimbly to his allotted tree. It was a tense moment; the
Banjara, perched on the lower limb of a mhowa, was avariciously hoping
the leopard would kill the whole pack, for at ten rupees a head they
were better dead.
Mahadua's face grew grave as, instead of the tumult of a fierce battle,
stillness held within the cavern; the eager yelps of the dogs as they
had scrambled over lose stones to enter the cave had ceased. The leopard
was, no doubt, a spirit, and had perhaps hushed the dogs. At any rate, a
flesh-and-blood leopard would now be giving battle and voices of pain
and passion would be filling the cavern with cries.
Finnerty was muttering: "Damn if I can make it out; it's a rummy go!"
At that instant the pack came stringing out, and the leader stood
looking wonderingly at the sahibs.
"They are afraid," Mahadua jeered; "they went in thinking it was a hare.
Oh, they are a true Banjara pack!"
The herdsman put a hand on a long knife in his belt, and with fury in
his eyes said: "Will the Presence take a slipper to this monkey's mouth
or shall I open its windpipe? The leopard is not within, for my dogs do
not lie."
The pack was now running about in the silly, aimless manner of "gaze"
dogs where there is no quarry to see, and only a scent that is cold to
their very dull nose-sense.
The shikari pointed this out, saying: "Keeper of mud cows, if the
leopard had but just passed out in the fear of your coming he would have
left a fresh scent trail that even your dogs, who hunt but by the eye,
would have found, and if the chita is not a spirit he is still within."
The Banjara drew his long, vicious knife, but as Finnerty grasped his
arm he said, pointing in disdain at Mahadua: "This is a knife for game,
not for cutting the throat of a chicken; I go into the cave to prove
that of dog or shikari the shikari is the liar."
At this his brother also drew a knife, and, calling to the dogs, who
sprang at his bidding to the cave, the two Banjaras followed at their
heels.
"We might have a look; it's altogether mysterious," Finnerty said,
turning to the captain.
The latter nodded. "I've got an idea; we'd better go in!"
They passed into a long, narrow chamber--so long that it reached into
deep gloom, with no end wall showing. They could see the dogs pass into
the mysterious black shadow beyond and again reappear; always, going and
coming, they sniffed at one spot. Here Finnerty struck a match, and
Mahadua, dropping to his knees, examined the rock, saying: "The leopard
rested here--there is blood."
Led by Finnerty, they followed the dogs along the corridor, coming upon
a blank wall. There was no leopard; he had vanished as mystically as a
spirit might have done. Finnerty lighted matches, but there were only
the sullen walls on three sides.
"It is as I have said," the Banjara growled; "Mahadua, who has grown too
old for the hunt, gave forth so much monkey chatter that the sahib saw
not the leopard pass."
Mahadua lifted his cap. "See, hunter of cow tics, I take off my
head-cover to thee as a great shikari. Sahib," he pleaded, "turn back
this owner of mongrels, for I know where the chita will be found."
"Where?" Finnerty questioned.
"He will go up in the hills to the village of Kohima, where he was
caught in a trap. It is said he killed many people near that village,
for he was a man-eater."
"How far is Kohima?"
"It is six kos, or perhaps eight, and again it might be that it is ten
by the road, but the chita will go through the jungle in a matter of
half that distance."
The Banjara laughed, clapping a cupped palm over his mouth, giving vent
to a note of derision. "The little monkey has a desire in his belly,
sahib," he said, ceasing his popping mirth. "The women of Kohima are
famed for the arak they distill, so Mahadua, with the sahib to pay for
it, would get in a state to see leopards even in the village."
"I think we'd better get rid of this argument," Finnerty remarked,
adding: "Come to the bungalow for your pay, Lumbani."
Calling their dogs, the Banjara and his brother departed.
"Now we're up against a mental dead wall, captain. What shall we do?"
Finnerty asked.
"You'd like to go after Burra Moti, of course--"
"Yes; but I'd rather pot this black devil. I don't want any natives'
blood on my head."
"But we haven't a trail to follow; I believe we'll find that leopard
back in his cage."
"Good heavens, man, he couldn't get through the solid wall!"
"But he did."
Finnerty blinked his eyes in unison with his rapid thoughts. A suspicion
lingered in his mind that the animal had really slipped from the cave
without Swinton seeing him--perhaps through his attention having been
taken up by Mahadua. Indeed it was the only reasonable explanation of
his astounding disappearance. With boyish diffidence he asked: "Did you
and Mahadua do anything; that is, did he take up your attention
with--well, he's a garrulous old cuss, especially on spirits."
Swinton in candour related what had occurred, and when he told of the
rupee-gun ceremony the major, with a start, exclaimed: "Ah!"
"I know what you mean by that, major," Swinton said, with a little
laugh, "but I never took my eyes off that hole in the wall."
But Finnerty shook his head. "Do you know what they call the leopard in
every mess in India?--'The Artful Dodger.'" Then he added hastily:
"We'll settle your theory first, captain. On our way back to have some
breakfast we'll look in at the zoo, and if there's a black leopard there
with a wound it will be the one we're after; if there is one without a
wound it will mean that we shot a jungle beast last night; if the cage
is empty the brute either slipped your vigilance or is, as Mahadua says,
a spirit."
The word leopard being familiar to the servant, he knew what the sahibs
were discussing, and contributed: "Our eyes were always on the door,
sahib, and if a spirit took the leopard through the walls he would lead
him to Kohima, for it is said that all his kills were made through the
aid of one he acquired there."
"Come on!" Finnerty said. "We're in a fit condition of mystification to
almost accept the little man's thesis."
A strange attendant was at the teakwood gate, but when the major
explained that they simply wanted a look at the animals, being sahibs,
he swung the gate for their entrance, closing it from the inside to
stand near them. The heavily barred cage was empty, and there was no
movement in the den behind to which a small door gave entrance.
"Where is the black leopard?" Finnerty asked quite casually.
A frown of reticence clouded the native's face as he answered: "I don't
know, sahib."
With a covert movement, the major slipped into the man's fingers a
rupee. The gateman coughed, adjusted his belt, and said: "The Burra
Sahib, Nawab Darna Singh, sent away the man who was on the gate; that is
why I am now here."
"Did the man sleep at his post?"
"It may be that he did, sahib, and that way the black leopard escaped;
but he was beaten by the rajah--no doubt he deserved it--and Nawab Darna
Singh thinks that in anger he may have freed the dangerous one, for a
small door was left open."
"And the leopard has not been seen to-day?"
"No, sahib; but it is said he was shot, by whom or where I have not
heard."
Then the two passed through the gate as mystified as when they entered.
"That destroys my solution of the mystery," Swinton declared.
With a laugh, Finnerty said: "Mahadua has the only unassailable
belief--that it is a spirit. But now for some breakfast. Our horses are
just around the turn. We'll slip over to my bungalow, and while we're
eating send down for Lord Victor."