IV

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 Dé 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 Dé 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 Dé, 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 Dé 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 Dé, “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 Dé

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 Dé 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 monopolizing 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

water-courses 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 Dé 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 heart-broken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary—except

in that it rid us of the 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.

Rest 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!”