Mahadua, the hunter guide, led the three sahibs always in the direction
of Kohima, sometimes finding a few pugs in soft earth. About three
o'clock two natives overtook them, their general blown condition
suggesting that their mission was urgent.
"I am Nathu, the shikari," one said, "and the Debta of Kohima has sent
for the sahib to come and destroy a black leopard who has made the kill
of a woman, for my gun--that is but a muzzle-loader--is broken. It is
the man-eater who was taken from Kohima by the rajah, and is now back;
he has cunning, for a spirit goes with him, sahib. Three women were
drying mhowa blooms in the sun, and they sat up in a machan to frighten
away jungle pig and deer who eat these flowers; perhaps they slept, for
there was no outcry till the leopard crawled up in the machan and took
the fat one by the throat and carried her off."
"How far is Kohima?" Finnerty asked.
"It is but a few hours' ride. But if the sahib comes he will find the
leopard at sunset, for he will come to where the body of the fat woman
lies on a hill. Now in the daylight men with spears are keeping him away
till I bring the sahib for the kill. The sahibs can ride to Kohima, for
there is a path."
When they arrived at Kohima, the village sat under a pall of dread, and
their advent was hailed with delight. An old woman bent her forehead to
Finnerty's stirrup, wailing: "Sahib, it is the daughter of Sansya who
has been taken, and an evil curse rests over my house, for before, by
this same black devil, was taken a son."
"We'll get busy because night will soon be upon us," Finnerty said to
his companions.
They were led on foot to an almost bare plateau, and Nathu, pointing to
the spearsmen fifty yards ahead, said: "The body is there, sahib, and as
the sun goes behind the hills the leopard will come back to eat. He is
watching us from some place, for this is his way. Here he can see
without being seen."
They beheld a grewsome sight--the body of the slain woman.
"This black devil has the same trick of devouring his kill in the open
as the Gharwalla man-eater had," Finnerty declared; "but I see no cover
for a shot." He gazed disconsolately over the stony plateau with neither
rock nor tree breaking its surface. "There is no cover," he said to
Mahadua, and when the shikari repeated this to Nathu, the latter
answered: "_There_ is cover for the sahib," pointing to a thick clump of
aloe with swordlike leaves, twenty yards away. "My men will cut the
heart out of that so that the sahib may rest within. Even if the beast
is wounded he will not be foolish enough to thrust his body against
those spears."
Nathu spoke, and two men came forward from a group that had lingered
back on the path, and with sharp knives lashed to bamboo handles cut an
entrance and a small chamber in the aloe.
Finnerty laughed. "That is a new one on me, but it will probably deceive
even that black devil; he would notice anything new here the size of a
cricket bat."
"Huzoor," Nathu advised, "the leopard is watching us from some place,
but, cunning as he is, he cannot count; so, while we are all here, the
one who is to make the kill will slip into the machan and we will go
away, leaving the woman who is now dead beyond doubt. And as to his
scent, sahib, I have brought a medicine of strong smell that all of his
kind like, and I have put some where the woman lies and within the aloe
machan, so his nose will not give him knowledge of the sahib's
presence."
"It is your game, Lord Victor," Finnerty said. "We'll go in a body to
the aloe, and you, taking my 10-bore, slip quickly into your cubby-hole.
Squat inside as comfortably as you can, with your gun trained absolutely
on the body, and wait till the leopard is lined dead with your sights;
don't move to get a bead on him or he'll twig you."
Nathu followed the sahibs, dropping on their trail from a bison horn a
liquid that had been decocted from the glands of an otter for the
obliteration of the sahib scent; the taint of natives would not alarm
the leopard, experience having taught him that when he charged they
fled.
As Gilfain sat behind the sabre-leafed wall of aloe he bent down a
strong-fibred shoot to obtain a good rest for the heavy 10-bore, and an
opening that gave him a view of the dead body of the woman. Beyond the
plateau the jungle, fading from emerald green, through purple, to sable
gloom as the sun slid down behind a western hill, took on an
enshroudment of mystery. A peacock, from high in a tamarisk that was
fast folding its shutter leaves for the night, called discordantly. A
high-shouldered hyena slouched in a prowling semicircle back and forth
beyond the kill, his ugly snout picking from the faint breeze its story
of many scents. Closer and closer the hyena drew in his shuffling trot,
till suddenly, with head thrown up as if something had carried to his
ear, he stood a carved image of disgusting contour against a gold-tinted
sky shot with streamers of red. Then, with a shrunken cringe of fear, he
slipped away and was gone.
From the jungle something like a patch of its own gloom came out upon
the blurred plateau. As the thing turned to sweep along the jungle edge
the fading sky light glinted on two moonstones that were set in its
shadowy form.
The watcher now knew what it was. His heart raced like a motor. At the
base of his skull the tightening scalp pricked as though an etcher were
at work. His tongue moistened parchment-dry lips. His fingers beat a
tattoo upon the triggers of the gun. It was not fear; it was just "It,"
the sensation that comes to all.
More wily even than the ghoulish hyena, the leopard worked his way
toward the spot of his desire. Belly to earth, he glided for yards; then
he would crouch, just a darkening patch on the surface; sometimes he sat
up--a black boulder. Thirty yards across from the body, he passed beyond
it to catch in his nostrils the gently stirring wind that sifted through
the aloe blades to where, once more flat to earth, he waited while his
sixth sense tabulated the taints.
Lord Victor's eye, trained along the barrels, saw nothing definite; he
felt a darkening of the ground where the woman lay, but no form grew in
outlines. Suddenly there was a glint of light as if from a glowworm;
that must be the leopard's eyes. Then--Gilfain must have moved his
gun--there was the gleam of white teeth fair in line with the sights as
the leopard snarled with lifted head.
Inspiration pulled the triggers--once, twice! The gun's roar was
followed by the coughing growl of the writhing leopard. With a dulled,
automatic movement the man jammed two cartridges into the gun, and with
foolish neglect of sense scrambled from his cage, the razor edge of an
aloe leaf slitting his cheek, and ran to where, beside the woman's body,
lay dead the one who had slain her.
An instinct rather than reason flashed across Gilfain's still floating
mind, a memory of Finnerty's precaution at the death of Pundit Bagh,
and, holding both barrels cocked, he prodded the still twitching black
body; but, now released from trivial things, the leopard lay oblivious
of this.
Torches flickered in wavy lines where the village path topped the
plateau, and a crunch of hurrying feet was heard. To reassure them Lord
Victor cried a cheery, "Hello! Whoop-ah!"
When Finnerty and Swinton arrived at the head of a streaming procession
a soft glow of satisfied victory loosened Gilfain's tautened nerves, and
he babbled of the joy of slaying man-eaters till cut short by the
major's: "Well, this act is finished, so we'll get back."
Mahadua was already busy. The leopard was quickly triced to a pole, and
they were back in Kohima. Then there was ritual, for the hillmen of the
jungle have their ways, and the killing of a man-eater is not of daily
habit, and Mahadua, knowing all these things, had to collect a levy.
The slain one was deposited in front of the debta's house, and Mahadua,
with some fantastic gyrations supposed to be a dance, collected a rupee
from the headman, also from the villagers flour and ghee and honey, for
that was the custom when a man-eater was slain.
Six strong carriers, each armed with a torch, were supplied by the debta
to bear the trophy, slung from a bamboo, down to the next village, which
was Mayo Thana.
For the sahibs milk and rice cakes and honey were supplied, and their
praises sounded as demigods. Lord Victor, as he sat on a block of wood
that was a grain mortar, found his knees in the thin, bony arms of an
old woman whose tears of gratitude splashed upon the hand with which he
patted her arm. She was Sansya, the slain woman's mother.
As they left Kohima, the carriers waving their torches in rhythmic lines
of light, the leader sent his powerful voice echoing down the slopes in
a propitiatory song to the god of the hills, which also conveyed an
order to Mayo Thana to prepare a relay of bearers.
Weirdly mystic the torch-lighted scene, the leader's voice intoning the
first line, and the others furnishing the chorus as they sang:
"God of our Hills!
Ho-ho, ho-ho!
The leopard is slain!
Ho-ho, ho-ho!
To thee our praise!
Ho-ho, ho-ho!"
To the flowing cadence of this refrain the six bearers of the leopard
trotted down the mountain path in rhythmic swing.
At Mayo Thana, a mile down, and at Mandi, half a mile beyond, thrifty
Mahadua collected his tithe as master of the hunt, and obtained
torch-bearers, the lot from Mandi having the task of shouldering the
burden till the elephant party was reached.
For an hour they travelled among heavy-bodied creepers and massive trees
when, through the solemn stillness, echoed the far-off tinkle of a bell.
Without command, Mahadua stood silently in the path, his head turned to
listen. Five seconds, ten seconds--the sahibs sitting their saddles as
silent as their guide, and again, now unmistakable, to their ears
floated the soft note that Finnerty had likened to the clink of ice in a
glass.
Mahadua, holding up his torch so that its light fell upon Finnerty's
face, turned his eyes questioningly.
"It is Moti's bell?" Finnerty said, query in his voice.
"Yes, sahib; but it is not on Moti's neck, because it would not just
speak and then remain silent, and then speak and then remain silent, for
in the jungle her pace would keep it at tongue all the time."
Then, listening, they waited. Again they heard it, and again there was
silence.
"Easy, easy!" Finnerty commanded, and, moving with less speed than
before, they followed Mahadua.
As they came to a break in the forest where some hills had burst through
its gloomed shroud to lift their rocky crests into the silver moonlight,
Finnerty heard, nearer now, the bell, and, startled by its unfamiliar
note, a jackal, sitting on his haunches on the hilltop, his form
outlined against the moonlit sky, threw up his head to send out a faint,
tremulous cry. The plaintive wail was caught up as it died away by
another jackal, and then another--they were like sentinels calling from
posts in a vast semicircle; then with a crashing crescendo of screaming
yelps all broke into a rippling clamour that suggested they fled in a
pack.
"Charming!" Lord Victor commented. "Topping chorus!"
In the hush that followed this jackal din, Finnerty could hear the
tinkling bell. "Does it come up this path?" he asked the shikari.
"Yes, sahib, and I thought I heard Moti laugh."
The major turned to Swinton. "I've got a presentiment that
somebody--probably the man that stuck a knife into Baboo Dass'
thief--having the bell, has got Moti away from my fellows and is leading
her up this path to the hills. I'm going to wing him." He slipped from
the saddle, his 10-bore in hand. "Of course, if I can get my clutches on
him----" He broke off to arrange action. "Put out the torch, Mahadua,
and have your match box ready to light it in a second. You two chaps had
better turn your horses over to the syces. With Mahadua I'll keep in
advance."
Mahadua, putting his little hand up against Finnerty's chest, checked at
a faint, rustling, grinding sound that was like the passing of sandpaper
over wood. Finnerty, too, heard it. Perhaps a leopard had forestalled
them in waylaying the one who had signalled his approach; or perhaps the
one had stilled the telltale sapphire tongue, and was near. No, it
tinkled, a score or more yards beyond. The shikari's hand clutched
spasmodically in a steadying grip of Finnerty's coat; there was a
half-stifled gasp from its owner as two lurid eyes weaved back and forth
in the black depths in which the path was lost.
Finnerty's iron nerve went slack; his boy days of banshee stories
flooded his mind in a superstitious wave as those devilish eyes hovered
menacingly ten feet from the ground.
"A spirit!" Mahadua gasped as he crawled his way behind the major.
"Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle!" The sound came just below where the eyes had
gleamed; then a smothering cry--the crunching, slipping sound of
sandpaper on wood; a rapid clatter of the bell; a noise like the hiss of
escaping steam mingled with the crunch of breaking bones; and again the
gleaming eyes cut the darkness in sinuous convolutions.
A gasp--a cry of: "Gad, what is it?" came from behind Finnerty, and
beyond there was a heavy thud, the clatter of a bamboo pole, as, with
cries of horror, the men of Mandi dropped their burden and fled, gasping
to each other: "It is the goblin of the Place of Terrors, and if we
look upon his eyes we shall become mad!"
In front of Finnerty the jungle was being rent asunder. With a wild
trumpet note of battle, drawn by the bell clangor, an elephant crashed
through impeding limbs and seized the evil-eyed goblin.
"A light!" Finnerty grabbed the torch, and as it flared to a match that
trembled in Mahadua's fingers he thrust it back into the guide's hand,
cocking the hammers of his 10-bore.
The resined-torch flare picked out against the grey of Moti's neck a
white-and-black necklace, the end of which was wound about a swaying
vine, and in the coils, drawn flat like an empty bag, was a man from
whose neck dangled a clanging bell.
"A python!" Finnerty cried as he darted forward to get a shot at the
wide-jawed head that, swaying back and forth, struck viciously with its
hammer nose at Moti's eyes.
The jungle echoed with a turmoil that killed their voices; the shrill,
trumpet notes of Burra Moti had roused the forest dwellers; a leopard,
somewhere up in the hills, answered the defiant roars; black-faced
monkeys, awakened by the din, filled the branches of a giant sal and
screamed in anger.
Great as was the elephant's strength, she could not break the python's
deadly clasp; she was like a tarpon that fights a bending rod and
running reel, for the creeper swayed, and the elastic coils slipped and
held and gave and gathered back, until its choking strength brought her
to her knees.
[Illustration: "GREAT AS WAS THE ELEPHANT'S STRENGTH, SHE COULD NOT
BREAK THE PYTHON'S DEADLY CLASP."]
For a second the serpent's head was clear--a yard above, and the 10-bore
spat its lead fair into the yawning mouth. The coils slipped to
looseness; the big elephant neck drew in the cooling air, and Moti, wise
as a human, knew that she was saved. A grunt of relief rippled weakly
from her trunk, and Finnerty, slipping up as she lay still bound in the
python's folds, patted her on the forehead and let her hear his voice.
"Put the bell on her, sahib," Mahadua advised, "for now that she is
tired she will be at peace."
Mahadua's call to the carriers was answered far down the trail; but
reassured by his cry of, "The big snake is dead!" they came back. More
torches were lighted, their flickering glare completing a realistic
inferno.
Down on her bended legs like a huge, elephant-faced god, a dead man,
clad in the snuff-coloured robe of a priest, laced to her neck by the
python coils and surrounded by black-skinned torch-bearers, Moti might
well have been taken for some jungle fetish.
The men of Mandi carried little axes in their belts, and with these the
serpent cable was cut and uncoiled. He was a gigantic brute, thirty feet
long and thicker than a man's thigh. The mottled skin, a marvellous
pattern of silver and gold and black, looked as though nature had hung
out an embellished sign of "Beware!" Or, perhaps, mothering each of its
kind, had, with painstaking care, here limned a deceiving screen like
the play of sunlight or moonlight through leaves on the dark limb of a
tree.
As the priest's limp body flopped to earth a jade-handled knife fell
from a leather girdle. Swinton picked it up, saying: "This is familiar,
major."
"There are two of them," Finnerty answered, stooping to reach another
that still rested in its sheath.
The strap that held the sapphire bell, wound twice around the priest's
shoulders, was evidently intended for Moti's neck, and with a continuous
stream of low-voiced endearments, Finnerty buckled it to place.
Touching the iron chain that still held in its stride-shortening grip
Moti's legs, Finnerty said: "That's why they came along at such a slow
pace, and it will help us shoo the old girl back; she'll know that she
can't cut up any didos."
Mahadua, though he didn't understand the English, realising something of
this, said: "Sahib, Moti will be like a woman that has had her cry of
passion; she will now bear with her friends. I will go in the lead with
a torch, and if the sahib will spare one of the bridle reins, holding an
end and allowing Moti to take the other end in her fingers as she might
the tail of an elephant, she will follow the horse."
It was soon arranged thus. At a word from Finnerty, Moti lumbered
heavily to her feet, while he stood with uplifted whip, ready to cut a
stinging blow to her trunk should she show signs of temper. Quite
understanding this threat, Moti gently thrust her trunk toward the
major's face and fumbled his chin with her thumb and finger as though
she would say: "I know a friend when I find him."
As they neared the elephant encampment, Moti, catching the sound of
Bahadar's ears fanning flies, rumbled a soft message of peace; but there
was no expected noise of greeting from the natives, no bustle of
sleepers rising to greet the sahibs. They came right into the camp
before some of the men, who had slept with their heads rolled in the
folds of turbans or loin cloths, sat up groggily or struggled to
incapable feet. The mahout reeled up from somewhere near Bahadar and
salaamed drunkenly, a foolish, deprecating leer on his lips.
The sight of Moti partly sobered him, and his mind caught up the blurred
happenings of the night. "An evil spirit, sahib," he babbled, "caused us
to fall heavy in sleep, and we were wakened by the breaking of the
rawhide nooses that bound Moti; then she fled to the jungle."
"This fool is drunk!" Mahadua declared angrily. "If the sahib will beat
him with a whip he will tell who brought the arak."
Gothya repudiated Mahadua's assertion, but a firm tap of the riding whip
on his buttocks, with threats of more, gradually brought out the story
of their debauch. A party of native liquor runners, men who smuggled
arak across the line from Nepal, had stumbled upon the party and had
driven a thriving trade.
"That accounts largely for the stealing of Moti," Finnerty declared. He
had in his hand the rawhide noose, showing that it had been cut close to
the elephant's leg. Evidently the priest had been able to crawl right in
to the camp, the drunkards having let their fire die.
The mahout, salaaming, said: "Sahib, the jungle is possessed of evil
gods to-night. Just when it was growing dark we saw passing on a white
horse the one who gallops at night to destroy."
"Was that before you became drunk, or since?" Finnerty asked
sarcastically.
"At that time the wine had not arrived, sahib. We all saw passing yonder
in the jungle where there is no path the white horse."
"Gad! It has been the girl coming down out of the hills," Finnerty said
to Swinton. "There must be something about to materialise when she
waited so late. We'll camp here," he added to Mahadua. "Send a couple of
these fellows to the keddha to tell Immat to bring out his tusker, with
a couple of ropes."
The men were sent off, a fire built, the tent pitched, and Finnerty's
servant, who had been brought in charge of the commissariat, prepared a
supper for the sahibs.
Bahadar, seeing that Burra Moti had overcome her waywardness, knelt down
for a restful night, but Moti, true to her African elephant habit,
remained on her stalwart legs, fondling her recovered sapphire trinket.