The blazing roof of the guardroom lit up even the crossroads for a
while, and Brown and his men could see that for the present there was a
good wide open space between them and the enemy. The firelight showed a
tree not far from the crossroads, and since anything is cover to men who
are surrounded and outnumbered, they made for that tree with one accord,
and without a word from Brown.
“We've all the luck,” said Brown. “There's not a detachment of any other
army in the world would walk straight on to a find like this!”
He held up one frayed end of a manila rope, that was wound around the
tree-trunk. Some tethered ox had rendered them that service.
“Fifty feet of good manila, and a fakir that needs hanging! Anybody see
the connection?”
There was a chorus of ready laughter, and the two men who had the
unenviable task of carrying the fakir picked him up and tossed him to
the tree-trunk. The roof of the guardhouse was blazing fiercely, and now
they had fired the other roofs. The fakir, the tree and the little bunch
of men who held him prisoner were as plainly visible as though it had
been daytime. A bullet pinged past Brown's ear, and buried itself in the
tree-trunk with a thud.
“Let him feel that bayonet again!” said Brown.
A rifleman obeyed, and the fakir howled aloud. An answering howl from
somewhere beyond the dancing shadows told that the fakir had been
understood.
“And now,” said Brown, paraphrasing the well-remembered wording of the
drill-book, in another effort to get his men to laughing again, “when
hanging a fakir by numbers--at the word one, place the noose smartly
round the fakir's neck. At the word two, the right-hand man takes the
bight of the rope in the hollow of his left hand, and climbs the tree,
waiting on the first branch suitable for the last sound of the word
three. At the last sound of the word three, he slips the rope smartly
over the bough of the tree and descends smartly to the ground, landing
on the balls of his feet and coming to attention. At the word four, the
remainder seize the loose end of the rope, being careful to hold it in
such a way that the fakir has a chance to breathe. And at the last
sound of the word five, you haul all together, lifting the fakir off the
ground, and keeping him so until ordered to release. Now--one!”
He had tied a noose while he was speaking, and the fakir had watched him
with eyes that blazed with hate. A soldier seized the noose, and slipped
it over the fakir's head.
“Two!”
The tree was an easy one to climb. “Two” and “three” were the work of
not more than a minute.
“Four!” commanded Brown, and the rope drew tight across the bough. The
fakir had to strain his chin upward in order to draw his breath.
“Steady, now!”
The men were lined out in single file, each with his two hands on the
rope. Not half of them were really needed to lift such a wizened load as
the fakir, but Brown was doing nothing without thought, and wasting not
an effort. He wanted each man to be occupied, and even amused. He wanted
the audience, whom he could not see, but who he knew were all around him
in the shadows, to get a full view of what was happening. They might
not have seen so clearly, had he allowed one-half of the men to be
lookers-on.
“Steady!” he repeated. “Be sure and let him breathe, until I give the
word.” Then he seized the cowering Beluchi by the neck, and dragged him
up close beside the fakir. “Translate, you!” he ordered. “To the crowd
out yonder first. Shout to 'em, and be careful to make no mistakes.”
“Speak, then, sahib! What shall I say?”
“Say this. This most sacred person here is our prisoner. He will die the
moment any one attempts to rescue him.”
The Beluchi translated, and repeated word for word.
“I will now talk with him, and he himself will talk with you, and thus
we will come to an arrangement!”'
There was a commotion in the shadows, and somewhere in the neighborhood
of fifty men appeared, keeping at a safe distance still, but evidently
anxious to get nearer.
“Now talk to the fakir, and not so loudly! Ask him 'Are you a sacred
person?' Ask him softly, now!”
“He says 'Yes,' sahib, 'I am sacred!”'
“Do you want to die?”
“All men must die!”
The answer made an opening for an interminable discussion, of the kind
that fakirs and their kindred love. But Brown was not bent just then on
dissertation. He changed his tactics.
“Do you want to die, a little slowly, before all those obedient
worshipers of yours, and in such a way that they will see and understand
that you can not help yourself, and therefore are a fraud?”
The Beluchi repeated the question in the guttural tongue that apparently
the fakir best understood. In the fitful light cast by the burning
roofs, it was evident that the fakir had been touched in the one weak
spot of his armor.
There can scarcely be more than one reason why a man should torture
himself and starve himself and maim and desecrate and horribly defile
himself. At first sight, the reason sounds improbable, but consideration
will confirm it. It is vanity, of an iron-bound kind, that makes the
wandering fakir.
“Ask him again!” said Brown.
But again the fakir did not answer.
“Tell him that I'm going to let him save his face, provided he saves
mine. Explain that I, too, have men who think I am something more than
human!”
The Beluchi interpreted, and Brown thought that the fakir's eyes gleamed
with something rather more than their ordinary baleful light. It might
have been the dancing flames that lit them, but Brown thought he saw the
dawn of reason.
“Say that if I let my men kill him, my men will believe me superhuman,
and his men will know that he is only a man with a withered arm!
But tell him this: He's got the best chance he ever had to perform
a miracle, and have the whole of this province believe in him
forevermore.”
Again the fakir's eyes took on a keener than usual glare, as he listened
to the Beluchi. He did not nod, though, and he made no other sign,
beyond the involuntary evidence of understanding that his eyes betrayed.
“His men can see that noose round his neck, tell him. And his men know
me, more or less, and British methods anyhow. They believe now, they're
sure, they're positive that his neck's got about as much chance of
escaping from that noose as a blind cow has of running from a tiger. Now
then! Tell him this. Let him come the heavy fakir all he likes. Tell
him to tell his gang that he's going to give an order. Let him tell them
that when he says 'Hookum hai!' my men'll loose his neck straight away,
and fall down flat. Only, first of all he's got to tell them that he
needs us for the present. Let him say that he's got an extra-special
awful death in store for us by and by, and that he's going to keep us
by him until he's ready to work the miracle. Meantime, nobody's to touch
us, or come near us, except to bring him and us food!”
The fakir listened, and said nothing. At a sign from Brown the rope
tightened just a little. The fakir raised his chin.
“And tell him that, if he doesn't do what I say, and exactly what I say,
and do it now, he's got just so long to live as it takes a man to choke
his soul out!”
The fakir answered nothing.
“Just ever such a wee bit tighter, men!”
The fakir lost his balance, and had to scramble to his feet and stand
there swaying on his heels, clutching at the rope above him with his one
uninjured hand, and sawing upward with his head for air. There came a
murmur from the shadows, and a dozen breech-bolts clicked. There seemed
no disposition to lie idle while the holiest thing in a temple-ridden
province dangled in mid-air.
“In case of a rush,” said Brown quietly, “all but two of you let go! The
remainder seize your rifles and fire independently. The two men on the
rope, haul taut, and make fast to the tree-trunk. This tree's as good a
place to die as anywhere, but he dies first! Understand?”
The fakir rolled his eyes, and tried to make some sort of signal with
his free arm.
“Just a wee shade tighter!” ordered Brown. “I'm not sure, but I think
he's seeing reason!”
The fakir gurgled. No one but a native, and he a wise one, could have
recognized a meaning in the guttural gasp that he let escape him.
“He says 'All right! sahib!'” translated the Beluchi.
“Good!” said Brown. “Ease away on the rope; men! And now! You all heard
what I told him. If he says 'Hookum hai!' you all let go the rope, and
fall flat. But keep hold of your rifles!”
The fakir's voice, rose in a high-pitched, nasal wail, and from the
darkness all around them there came an answering murmur that was like
the whispering of wind through trees. By the sound, there must have been
a crowd of more than a hundred there, and either the crowd was sneaking
around them to surround them at close quarters, or else the crowd was
growing.
“Keep awake, men!” cautioned Brown.
“Aye, aye, sir! All awake, sir!”
“Listen, now! And if he says one word except what I told him he might
say, tip me the wink at once.”
Brown swung the Beluchi out in front of him where he could hear the
fakir better.
“I'll hang you, remember, after I've hanged him, if anything goes
wrong!”
“He is saying, sahib, exactly what you said.”
“He'd better! Listen now! Listen carefully! Look out for tricks!”
The fakir paused a second from his high-pitched monologue, and a murmur
from the darkness answered him.
“Stand by to haul tight, you men!”
“All ready, sir!”
The rope tightened just a little--just sufficiently to keep the fakir
cognizant of its position. The fakir howled out a sort of singsong
dirge, which plainly had imperatives in every line of it. At each
short pause for breath he added something in an undertone that made the
Beluchi strain his ears.
“He says, sahib, that they understand. He says, 'Now is the time!' He
says now he will order 'Hookum hai!' He says, 'Are you ready?' He says,
sahib,--he says it, sahib,--not I--he says, 'Thou art a fool to stare
thus! Thou and thy men are fools! Stare, instead, as men who are
bewitched!'”
“Try to look like boiled owls, to oblige his Highness, men!” said Brown.
“Now, that's better; watch for the word! Easy on the rope a little!”
The men did their best to pose for the part of semimesmerized victims
of a superhuman power. The flame from the burning roofs was dying down
already, for the thatch burned fast, and the glowing gloom was deep
enough to hide indifferent acting. With their lives at stake, though,
men act better than they might at other times.
The fakir spun round on his heels and, clutching with his whole hand at
the rope, began to execute a sort of dance--a weird, fantastic, horrible
affair of quivering limbs and rolling eyeballs, topped by a withered arm
that pointed upward, and a tortured fingernail-pierced fist that nodded
on a dried-out-wrist-joint.
“Hookum hai!” he screamed suddenly, waving his sound hand upward, and
bringing it down suddenly with a jerk, as though by sheer force he was
blasting them.
“Down with you!” ordered Brown, and all except Brown and the Beluchi
tumbled over backward.
“Keep hold of your rifles!” ordered Brown.
The fakir's wailing continued for a while. With his own hand he took the
noose from his neck and, now that the flames had died away to nothing
but spasmodic spurts above a dull red underglow, there was no one in
the watching ring who could see Brown's sword-point. Only Brown and
the fakir knew that it was scratching at the skin between the fakir's
shoulder-blades.
“It is done!” said the fakir presently. “Now take me back to my dais
again!” And the Beluchi translated.
“I'd like to hear their trigger-springs released,” suggested Brown.
“This has all been a shade too slick for me. I've got my doubts yet
about it's being done. Tell him to order them to uncock their rifles, so
that I can hear them do it.”
“He says that they are gone already!” translated the Beluchi.
“Tell him I don't believe it!” answered Brown, whose eyes were straining
to pierce the darkness, which was blacker than the pit again by now.
The fakir raised his voice into a howl--a long, low, ululating howl like
that he had uttered when they found him on his dais. From the distance,
beyond the range of rifles, came a hundred answering howls. The fakir
waited, and a minute later a hundred howls were raised again, this time
from an even greater distance.
Then he spoke.
“He says that they are gone,” translated the Beluchi. “He says he will
go back to his dais again.”
“'Tshun!” ordered Brown. “Now, men, just because we've saved our skins
so far is no reason why we should neglect precautions. We're going to
put this imitation angel back on his throne again, so the same two carry
him that brought him here. There's no sense in giving two more men the
itch, and all the other ailments the brute suffers from! Form up round
him, the rest. Take open order--say two paces--and go slow. Feel your
way with your fixed bayonet, and don't take a step in the dark until
you're sure where it will lead you. Forward-march! One of you bring that
rope along.”
The weird procession crawled and crept and sidled back to where it had
started from not so long before--jumping at every sound, and at every
shadow that showed deeper than the coal-black night around them. It took
them fifteen minutes to recross a hundred yards. But when they reached
the earthen throne again at last, and had hoisted the fakir back in
position on it, there had been no casualties, and the morale of the men
in Sergeant Brown's command was as good again as the breech-mechanism of
the rifles in his charge.
They were scarcely visible to him or one another in the blackness,
but he sensed the change in them, and changed his own tune to fit the
changed condition.
His voice had nothing in it but the abrupt military explosion when he
gave his orders now--no argument, no underlying sympathy. He was no
longer herding a flock of frightened children. He was ordering trained,
grown men, and he knew it and they knew it. The orders ripped out, like
the crack of a drover's whip.
“Fall in, now, properly! 'Tshun! Right dress! To two paces--open
order--from the center--extend! Now, then! Left and right wings--last
three at each end forward--right wheel--halt. That's it. 'Bout face. Now
each man keep two eyes lifting till the morning. If anything shows up,
or any of you hear a sound, shoot first and challenge afterward!”
They were standing so when the pale sun greeted them, in hollow square,
with their backs toward the fakir, who was squatting, staring straight
in front of him, on his dais, with his back turned to the tree and his
withered arm still pointing up to heaven like a dead man's calling to
the gods for vengeance.
A little later, Brown made each alternate man lie down and get what
sleep he could just where he was, with a comrade standing over him. He
himself slept so for a little while. But one of the men heard something
move among the hanging tendrils of the baobab, investigated with his
bayonet-point, and managed to transfix a twelve-foot python. After that
there was, not so much desire for sleep. The fakir either slept with his
eyes open or else dispensed with sleep. No one seemed able to determine
which.
When the day grew hotter, and the utterly remorseless Indian sun
bore down on them, and on the aching desolation of the plain and the
burnt-out guardhouse, the fakir still sat unblinking, gazing straight
out in front of him, with eyes that hated but did nothing else. He
seemed to have no time nor thought nor care for anything but hate and
the expression of it.
At noon, three little children came to him, and brought him water in a
small brass bowl, and cooked-up vegetables wrapped in some kind of leaf.
Brown let him have theirs, and bribed the frightened children to go and
bring water for the men and himself. He gave them the unheard-of wealth
of one rupee between them, and they went off with it--and did not come
back.
Meanwhile the fakir had drunk his water, and had poured out what was
left. He had also eaten what the children had brought him, and suddenly,
from vacant, implacable hatred, he woke up and began to be amused.
“Ha-ha!” he laughed at them. “Ho-ho!” And then he launched out with a
string of eloquence that Brown called on the Beluchi to translate.
“Who said there would be thirst, and the sound of water! Is there a
thirst? Who spoke of an anthill and of hungry ants and raw red openings
in the flesh for the little ants to run in and out more easily?”
The Beluchi translated faithfully, and the men all listened.
“Tell him to hold his tongue!” growled Brown at last.
“Ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho!” laughed the fakir. “The heat grows great, and the
tongues grow dry, and none bring water! Ho-ho! But I told them that I
needed these for a deadlier death than any they devised! Ho-ho-ho-ho!
Look at the little crows, how they wait in the branches! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
See how the kites come! Where are the vultures? Wait! What speck sails
in the sky there? Even the vultures come! Ho-ho-ho-ho!”
“I hear a horse, sir!” said one of the men who watched.
“I heard it more than a minute ago,” said Brown.
The fakir stopped his mockery, and even he listened.
“Ask him,” said Brown, “where are the men who set fire to the
guardroom?”
“He says they are in the village, waiting till he sends for them!” said
the Beluchi.
“Keep an eye lifting, you men,” ordered Brown. “This'll be a messenger
from Bholat, ten to one. Mind they don't ambush him! Watch every way at
once, and shoot at anything that moves!”
“Clippety-clippety-clippety-cloppety--”
The sound of a galloping horse grew nearer; a horse hard-ridden, that
was none the less sure-footed still, and going strong in spite of sun
and heat. Suddenly a foam-flecked black mare swung round a bend between
two banks, and the sun shone on a polished saber-hilt. A turbaned
Rajput rose in his stirrups, gazed left and right and then in front of
him--from the burned-out guardhouse to the baobab--drew rein to a walk
and waved his hand.
“By all that's good and great and wonderful,” said Brown aloud, “if
here's not Juggut Khan again!”