5 files changed, 10335 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/19970.txt b/19970.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2c78d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19970.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10319 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Son of Power, by Will Levington Comfort and
+Zamin Ki Dost
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Son of Power
+
+
+Author: Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2006  [eBook #19970]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SON OF POWER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+SON OF POWER
+
+by
+
+WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT and ZAMIN KI DOST
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1920
+Copyright, 1920, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
+into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
+Copyright, 1919, by the Curtis Publishing Company
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE
+
+Zamin Ki Dost is a title given to one who lived in India many
+years--from the time when she was little more than a child.  The tale
+of tales would be her own story.  Her name is
+
+WILLIMINA L. ARMSTRONG
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+    I  THE GOOD GREY NERVE
+   II  SON OF POWER
+  III  SON OF POWER (_Continued_)
+   IV  THE MONKEY GLEN
+    V  THE MONKEY GLEN (_Continued_)
+   VI  JUNGLE LAUGHTER
+  VII  THE HUNTING CHEETAH
+ VIII  THE MONSTER KABULI
+   IX  THE MONSTER KABULI (_Continued_)
+    X  HAND-OF-A-GOD
+   XI  ELEPHANT CONCERNS
+  XII  BLUE BEAST
+ XIII  NEELA DEO, KING OF ALL ELEPHANTS
+  XIV  NEELA DEO, KING OF ALL ELEPHANTS (_Continued_)
+   XV  THE LAIR
+  XVI  FEVER BIRDS
+
+
+
+
+SON OF POWER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_The Good Grey Nerve_
+
+His name was Sanford Hantee, but you will hear that only occasionally,
+for the boys of the back streets called him Skag, which "got" him
+somewhere at once.  That was in Chicago.  He was eleven years old, when
+he wandered quite alone to Lincoln Park Zoo, and the madness took him.
+
+A silent madness.  It flooded over him like a river.  If any one had
+noticed, it would have appeared that Skag's eyes changed.  Always he
+quite contained himself, but his lips stirred to speech even less after
+that.  He didn't pretend to go to school the next day; in fact, the
+spell wasn't broken until nearly a week afterward, when the keeper of
+the Monkey House pointed Skag out to a policeman, saying the boy had
+been on the grounds the full seven open hours for four straight days
+that he knew of.
+
+Skag wasn't a liar.  He had never "skipped" school before, but the Zoo
+had him utterly.  He was powerless against himself.  Some bigger force,
+represented by a truant officer, was necessary to keep him away from
+those cages.  His father got down to business and gave him a
+beating--much against that good man's heart.  (Skag's father was a
+Northern European who kept a fruit-store down on Waspen street--a
+mildly-flavoured man and rotund.  His mother was a Mediterranean woman,
+who loved and clung.)
+
+But Skag went back to the Zoo.  For three days more he went, remained
+from opening to closing time.  He seemed to fall into deep
+absorptions--before tigers and monkeys especially.  He didn't hear what
+went on around him.  He did not appear to miss his lunch.  You had to
+touch his shoulder to get his attention.  The truant officer did this.
+It all led dismally to the Reform School from which Skag ran away.
+
+He was gone three weeks and wouldn't have come back then, except his
+heart hurt about his mother.  He felt the truth--that she was slowly
+dying without him.  After that for awhile he kept away from the
+animals, because his mother loved and clung and cried, when he grew
+silently cold with revolt against a life not at all for him, or hot
+with hatred against the Reform School.  Those were ragged months in
+which a less rubbery spirit might have been maimed, but the mother died
+before that actually happened.  Skag was free--free the same night.
+
+The father's real relation to him had ended with the beating.  It was
+too bad, for there might have been a decent memory to build on.  The
+fruit-dealer, however, had been badly frightened by the truant-officer
+(in the uniform of a patrolman), and he was just civilised enough to be
+a little ashamed that his boy could so far forget the world and all
+refined and mild-flavoured things, as to stare through bars at animals
+for seven hours a day.  In the process of that beating, hell had opened
+for Skag.  It was associated with the raw smell of blood and a thin red
+steam, a little hotter than blood-heat.  It always came when he
+remembered his father. . . .  But his mother meant lilacs.  The top
+drawer of her dresser had been faintly magic of her.  The smell came
+when he remembered her.  It was like the first rains in the Lake
+Country.
+
+
+But that was all put back.  Skag was out in the world now, making it
+exactly to suit himself.  He was in charge of himself in many ways.  A
+glass of water and a sandwich would do for a long time, if
+necessary. . . .  The West pulled him.  Awhile in the mountains, he
+lived with a prospector; there was a period in the desert when he came
+to know lizards; then there were years of the circus, when he was out
+with the Cloud Brothers, animal men of the commercial type.  Ten queer,
+hard years for the boy--as hard almost as for the animals.
+
+Back in Chicago the caged creatures had been kept better--as well as
+beasts belonging to the outdoors could be imprisoned, but the Cloud
+Brothers didn't have fine senses like their charges.  They tried to
+make wild animals live in a place ventilated for men.  There was a bad
+death-percentage and none of the big cats were in show form, until the
+Clouds began to take Skag's word for the main thing wrong.  It wasn't
+the hard life, nor the coops, nor the travel, but the steady day in and
+day out lack of fresh air.  Skag knew what the animals suffered,
+because it all but murdered him on hot nights.  Of course, there are
+tainted-flesh things like hyenas that live best on foul air, foul
+everything, but "white" animals of jungle and forest are high and
+cleanly beasts.  When well and in their prime, even their coats are
+incapable of most kinds of dirt, because of a natural oily gloss.
+
+At nineteen, Skag was in charge of the packing, moving and feeding of
+all the big cats, including pumas, panthers, leopards.  He was in and
+out of the cages possibly more than was necessary.  He learned that
+there are two ways to manage a wild animal--the "rough-neck" way with a
+club, and the fancy way with your own equilibrium; all of which comes
+in more to the point later.
+
+He was interested at the time, but not really acquainted with the
+camels and elephants.  He often chatted with Prussak, the Arab, who
+loathed camels to the shallow depths of his soul, but got as much out
+of them as most men could.  Skag dreamed of a better way still, even
+with camels.  Often on train-trips, at first, he talked with old Alec
+Binz, whose characteristic task was to chain and unchain the hind leg
+of the old "gunmetal" elephant, Phedra, who bossed her sire and the
+little Cloud herd, as much with the flap of an ear as anything
+else. . . .
+
+No, old Alec must not be forgotten, nor his sandalwood chest with its
+little rose-jar in the corner, making everything smell so strangely
+sweet that it hurt.  A girl of India had given Alec the jar twenty
+years before.  The spirit of a real rose-jar never dies; and something
+of the girl's spirit was around it, too, as Alec talked softly.  All
+this was unreservedly good to Skag--thrilling as certain few books and
+the top drawer that had been his mother's. . . .  But something way
+back of that, utterly his own deep heart-business, was connected with
+the rose-jar.  It was breathless like opening a telegram--its first
+scent after days or weeks.  If you find any meaning to the way Skag
+expressed it, you are welcome:
+
+"It makes you think of things you don't know--"
+
+"But you will," Alec had once answered.
+
+The more you knew, the more you favoured that old man of the circus
+company,--little gold ring in his ear and such tales of India!
+
+It was Alec who led Skag into the fancy way of dealing with animals,
+but of course the boy was peculiar, inasmuch as he believed it all at
+once.  Skag never ceased to think of it until it was his; he actually
+put it into practice.  Alec might have told a dozen American trainers
+and have gotten no more than a yawp for his pains.  This is one of the
+things Alec said:
+
+"If you can get on top of the menagerie in your own insides,
+Skagee--the tigers and apes, the serpents and monkeys, in your own
+insides--you'll never get in bad with the Cloud Brothers wild animal
+show."
+
+There wasn't a day or night for years that Skag didn't think of that
+saying.  It was his secret theme.  So far as he could see, it worked
+out.  Of course, he found out many things for himself--one of which was
+that there is a smell about a man who is afraid, that the animals get
+it and become afraid, too.  Alec agreed to this, but added that there
+is a smell about most men, when they are not afraid.
+
+For hours they talked together about India--tiger hunts and the big
+Grass Jungle country in the Bund el Khand, until Skag couldn't wait any
+longer.  He had to go to India.  He told Alec, who wanted to go along,
+but couldn't leave old Phedra.
+
+"I've been with her too long," he said.  "She's delicate, Skagee.  I'm
+young, but she couldn't stand it for me to go.  Times are hard for her
+on the road, and the little herd needs her as she needs me. . . ."
+
+Skag understood that.  In fact, he loved it well.  It belonged to his
+world--to be straight with the animals.  Gradually as the distance
+increased between them, the memory of old Alec began to smell as sweet
+as the sandal-wood chest in Skag's nostrils--the chest and the rose-jar
+that never could die and the old friend became one identity. . . .
+
+India didn't excite Skag, who was twenty-five by this time.  In fact,
+some aspects of India were more natural to him than his own country.
+Many people did a lot of walking and they lived while they walked,
+instead of pushing forward in a tension to get somewhere.  Skag
+approved emphatically of the Now.  The present moving point was the
+best he had at any given time.  He thought a man should forget himself
+in the Now like the animals.
+
+Besides they didn't regulate dress in India; in fact, they dressed in
+so many different ways that a man could wear what he pleased without
+being stared at.  Skag hated to be stared at above all things.  You are
+beginning to get a picture of him now--unobtrusive, silent, strong in
+understanding, swift, actually in pain as the point of many eyes,
+altogether interested in his own unheard-of things.
+
+Alec told him how to reach the jungle of all jungles, ever old, ever
+new, ever innocent on the outside, ever deadly within--the Grass Jungle
+country around Hattah and Bigawar--the Bund el Khand.  The Cloud
+Brothers had paid him well for his years; there was still script in his
+clothes for travel, but Skag had a queer relation to money, only using
+it when the law required.  Not a tight-wad, far from that, though he
+preferred to work for a meal than pay for it; much preferred to walk or
+ride than to purchase other people's energy, having much of his own.
+
+He came at last to a village called Butthighur, near Makrai, north of
+the Mahadeo Mountains in the Central Provinces.  On the first day, on
+the main road near the rest-house, there passed him on the street, a
+slim, slightly-stooped and spectacled young white man.  The face under
+the huge cork helmet, Skag looked at twice, not knowing why altogether;
+then he followed leisurely to a bungalow, walked up the path to the
+steps and knocked.  The stranger himself answered, before the servant
+could come.  He looked Skag over, through spectacles that made his eyes
+appear insane, at times, and sometimes merely absurd.  Finally he
+questioned with soft cheer:
+
+"And what sort of a highbinder are you?"
+
+Skag answered that he was an American, acquainted with wild animals in
+captivity, and that he had come to this place to know wild animals in
+the open.
+
+"But why to me?" the white man asked.
+
+"It seemed well.  I have looked into many faces without asking anyone.
+There is no chance of working for the native people here.  They are too
+many, and too poor."
+
+"You do not talk like an American--"
+
+"I do not like to talk."
+
+The white man was puzzled by Skag's careful and exact statements and
+remarked presently:
+
+"An American asking for work would say that he knew about everything,
+instead of just animals in captivity."
+
+"I have not asked for work before.  I can do without it.  I like it
+here near the forests."
+
+"You mean the jungles--"
+
+"I thought jungles were wet."
+
+"In the wet season."
+
+"Thank you--"
+
+The slim one suddenly laughed aloud though not off-key:
+
+"But I haven't any wild animals in captivity for you--"
+
+Skag did not mind the mirth.  He appreciated the smell of the house.
+It was like a hot earthen tea-pot that had been well-used.
+
+"I will come again?" he asked tentatively.
+
+"Just do that--at the rest-house.  I drop in there after dinner--about
+nine."
+
+That afternoon Skag went into the edge of the jungle.  It was a breath
+of promised land to him.  He was almost frightened with the joy of
+it--the deep leaf-etched shadows, the separate, almost reverent
+bird-notes; all spaciousness and age and dignity; leaves strange, dry
+paths, scents new to his nostrils, but having to do with joys and fears
+and restlessness his brain didn't know.  Skag was glad deep.  He took
+off his boots and then strode in deeper and deeper past the maze of
+paths.  He stayed there until the yellow light was out of the sky.  At
+the clearing again, he laughed--looked down at the turf and laughed.
+He had come out to the paths again at the exact point of his entry.
+This was his first deep breath of the jungle--something his soul had
+been waiting for.
+
+At dinner in the village, Skag inquired about the white man.  The
+native was serving him a curry with drift-white rice on plantain
+leaves.  After that there was a sweetmeat made of curds of cream and
+honey, with the flavour and perfume of some altogether delectable
+flower.  In good time the native replied that the white man's name was
+Cadman: that he was an American traveller and writer and artist, said
+to be almost illustrious; that he had been out recently with a party of
+English sportsmen, but found tiger-hunting dull after his many wars and
+adventures.  Also, it was said, that Cadman Sahib had the
+coldest-blooded courage a man ever took into the jungle, almost like a
+_bhakti yogin_ who had altogether conquered fear.  Skag bowed in
+satisfaction.  Had he not looked twice at the face under the
+helmet--and followed without words?
+
+"How far do they go into the jungle for tigers?" he asked.
+
+"An hour's journey, or a day, as it happens.  Tigers are everywhere in
+season."
+
+"Within an hour's walk?" Skag asked quietly.  The other repeated his
+words in a voice that made Skag think of a grey old man, instead of the
+fat brown one before him.
+
+"Within an hour's walk?  Ha, Ji!  They come to the edge of the village
+and slay the goats for food--and the sound cattle--and the children!"
+
+Skag laughed inwardly, thinking how good it had been in the deep
+places.  However, it was now plain that these native folk were afraid
+of tigers--afraid as of a sickness.  He walked out into the street.
+Though dark, it was still hot, and the breeze brought the dry green of
+the jungle to him and life was altogether quite right.
+
+That night he met Cadman Sahib.  They talked until dawn.  Skag was
+helpless before the other who made him tell all he knew, and much that
+had been nicely forgotten.  Sometimes in the midst of one story, the
+great traveller would snap over a question about one Skag had already
+told.  Then before he was answered fully, he would say briefly:
+
+"That's all right--go on!"
+
+". . . Behold a phenomenon!" he said at last.  "Here is one not a liar,
+and smells have meanings for him, and he has come, beyond peradventure,
+to travel with me to the Monkey Forest and the Coldwater Ruins!"
+
+It had been an altogether wonderful night for Skag.  Talking made him
+very tired, as if part of him had gone forth; as if, having spoken, he
+would be called upon to make good in deeds.  But he had not done all
+the talking and Cadman Sahib was no less before his eyes in the morning
+light--which is much to say for any man.
+
+
+These two white men set out alone, facing one of the most dangerous of
+all known jungles.  The few natives who understood, bade them good-bye
+for this earth.
+
+Many stories about Cadman had come to Skag in the three or four days of
+preparation--altogether astonishing adventures of his quest for death,
+but there was no record of Cadman's choosing a friend, as he had done
+for this expedition.  Skag never ceased to marvel at the sudden
+softenings, so singularly attractive, in Cadman's look when he really
+began to talk.  Sometimes it was like a sudden drop into summer after
+protracted frost, and the lines of the thin weathered face revealed the
+whole secret of yearning, something altogether chaste.  And that was
+only the beginning.  It was all unexpected; that was the charm of the
+whole relation.  Skag found that Cadman had a real love for India; that
+he saw things from a nature full of delicate inner surfaces; that his
+whole difficulty was an inability to express himself unless he found
+just the receiving-end to suit.  Indian affairs, town and field, an
+infinite variety, Cadman discussed penetratingly, but as one who looked
+on from the outside.
+
+"She is like my old Zoo book to me," he said, speaking of India their
+first night out.  "A bit of a lad, I used to sit in my room with the
+great book opened out on a marble table that was cold the year round.
+There were many pictures.  Many, many pictures of all beasts--wood-cuts
+and copies of paintings and ink-sketchings--ante-camera days, you know.
+All those pictures are still here--"
+
+Cadman blew a thin diffusion of smoke from his lungs, and touched the
+third button down from the throat of his grey-green shirt.
+
+"One above all," he added.  "It was the frontispiece.  All the story of
+creation on one page.  Man, beautiful Man in the centre, all the
+tree-animals on branches around him, the deeps drained off at his feet,
+many monsters visible or intimated, the air alive with wings--finches
+up to condors.  That picture sank deep, Skag, so deep that in
+absent-minded moments I half expected to find India like that--"
+
+There were no better hours of life, than these when Cadman Sahib let
+himself speak.
+
+"I haven't found the animals and birds and monsters all packed on one
+page," he added, "but highlights here and there in India, so that I
+always come back.  I have often caught myself asking what the pull is
+about, you know, as I catch myself taking ship for Bombay again.  Oh, I
+say, my son, and you never got over to the lotus lakes?"
+
+"Not yet," Skag said softly.
+
+"There's a night wind there and a tree--I could find it again.  I've
+lain on peacock feathers on a margin there--unwilling to sleep lest I
+miss the perfume from over the pools. . . .  And the roses of Kashmir,
+where men of one family must serve forty generations before they get
+the secrets; where they press out a ton of petals for a pound of
+essential oil!  And that's where the big mountains stand by--High
+Himalaya herself--incredible colours and vistas--get it for yourself,
+son."
+
+It was always the elusive thing that Cadman didn't say, that left
+Skag's mind free to build his own pictures.  Meanwhile Cadman as a
+companion was showing up flawlessly day by day.
+
+
+At the end of a long march, after many days out, they smelled the night
+cooking-fires from a village.  A moment later they passed tiger tracks,
+and the print of native feet.
+
+The twilight was thick between them as they hastened on.  Cadman Sahib
+stepped back suddenly, lifting his hand to grasp the other, but not
+quite soon enough.  That instant Skag was flicked out of sight, taken
+into the folds of mother-earth and covered--the bleat of a kid
+presently identifying the whole mystery.
+
+Skag fell about twelve feet into the black earth coolness.  He was
+unhurt, and knew roughly what had happened before he landed.  His rush
+of thoughts: shame for his own carelessness, gladness that Cadman Sahib
+was safe above, the meaning of the kid's cry and the tracks they had
+seen; this rush was broken by another deluge of earth that all but
+drowned the laugh of Cadman.  Skag had jerked back against the wall of
+earth to avoid being struck by the body of his companion who coughed
+and laughed again faintly, for his wind was very low.
+
+"You couldn't ask more of a friend than that, son.  I couldn't get you
+up to me, so I came down with you--"
+
+Of course, it was an accident.  Cadman presently explained that he had
+set down his dunnage and crept close on his knees to look into the pit
+when the dry earth caved.  Doubtless it was intended to do so, since
+this was a native tiger-trap baited with live meat.  But Cadman had not
+considered fully in time. . . .  Dust of the dry brown earth settled
+upon them now; the grey twilight darkened swiftly.  The chamber was
+about nine by fifteen feet, hollowed wider at the bottom than the top,
+and covered with a thin frame of bamboo poles, upon which was spread a
+layer of leaves and sod.  The kid had been tethered to escape the
+stroke if possible.
+
+"It's all night for us," Cadman remarked.  "They won't look at the trap
+until morning.  My packs are above--rifle and blanket--"
+
+"I have the camera," Skag chuckled.
+
+Cadman's thin hand came out gropingly.
+
+"The cigarettes are in the tea-pot," he said in a voice dulled with
+pain.
+
+"I have the pistol," Skag added dreamily.  Something of the situation
+had touched him with joy.  If he spoke at such times, it was very dryly.
+
+"Doubtless you have our bathing-suits," Cadman suggested.
+
+"And my cigarette-case has--" Skag felt in the dark, "has
+one--two--three--"
+
+"Go on," the other said tensely.
+
+"Three," said Skag.
+
+"Let's smoke 'em now.  They're calling me already."
+
+Skag passed him the case, saying; "I'm not ready.  I do not care just
+now."
+
+The other puffed dismally.
+
+"I don't always quite get you, son," he said.  "But it's all right when
+I do--"
+
+Skag mused over this.  He was hungry and he put the thought away.  He
+was athirst and he put that thought away also.  The wants came back,
+but he dealt with them more firmly.  The two men talked of appetites in
+general, and Skag explained that he handled his, just as he had handled
+the wild animals in the circus, being straight with them and gaining
+their friendliness.
+
+"Don't fight them," he said.  "Get them on your side and they will pull
+for you in a pinch."
+
+"You talk like a Hindu holy man--"
+
+"Do they talk like that?" Skag asked quickly. . . .  "It was my old
+friend with the circus--who taught me these things.  He taught me to
+make friends with my own wild animals.  It is true that he was many
+years in India. . . ."
+
+"He was the one that had the ring in his left ear?"
+
+"Right ear."
+
+The other laughed.  "It's such a novelty to find you are not a
+liar--with all you know and have been through.  I'll stop that nasty
+business of testing you.  Hear me, from now on, I'm done!"
+
+Hours passed; it was after midnight.  The waning moon was rising.  They
+could tell the light through the trees.  Cadman had smoked again, but
+Skag still expressed an unwillingness.
+
+"It doesn't want to, now," he said.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't--"
+
+"I have persuaded it to think of other things.  It is working for me."
+
+Cadman swore softly, genially.  "I never forget anything, son," he
+whispered.  "Never anything like that."
+
+"Old Alec said I should never let a day pass without doing something I
+didn't want to--or without something I wanted.  He said it was better
+than developing muscle."
+
+"Some brand of calisthenics--that.  And he was the old one with the
+rose-jar?"
+
+Skag's hand lifted toward the other and Cadman's met his.
+
+There was a wet, meaty growl, indescribably low-pitched--but no chance
+even to shout--only to huddle back together to the farthest corner.
+The beast had stalked faultlessly and pounced, landing upon the thin
+cross pieces of bamboo, but short of the bait.  Down the twelve feet he
+came with a tearing hiss of fright and rage.  Something like a muffled
+crash of pottery, it was, mixed with dull choking explosions.  The air
+of the pit seemed charged with furious power that whipped the leaves to
+shreds.
+
+"The pistol, Skag--"
+
+They were free, so far, from the rending claws.  The younger man's
+brain was full of light.  Cadman Sahib's voice had never been more calm.
+
+Skag drew a match, not the gun.  He scratched the match and held it
+high in front.  They saw the great cowering creature like a fallen pony
+in size--but untellably more vivid in line--the chest not more than
+seven feet from them, the head held far back, the near front paw lifted
+against them as if to parry a blow.
+
+Skag changed the match from his right hand to his left.  When the flame
+burned low, he tossed it on the ground, half way between them and the
+tiger.  There was a forward movement of the beast's spine--a little
+lower and forward.  The lifted paw curved in, but did not touch the
+ground.  The last light of the match, as it turned red, seemed bright
+in the beast's bared mouth.  In it all there was the dramatic reality
+of a dream that questions not.
+
+"He's badly frightened," Skag said.
+
+No sound from Cadman Sahib.
+
+"It's too big for him," Skag went on calmly.  "He thinks we put over
+the whole thing on him.  It's too big for him to tackle.  Wonder if
+he's got a mate?"
+
+One big green eye burned now in the pit--steady as a beacon and turned
+to them, enfolding them.  Cadman Sahib cleared his throat.
+
+"All right to talk?" he asked huskily.
+
+"Sure.  It will help--"
+
+He cleared his throat again and inquired in an enticing tone: "You
+actually don't mean to use the pistol?"
+
+"I'm not a crack-shot," Skag said queerly.
+
+"You might pass it to me.  I'm supposed to be--"
+
+"It is bad light."
+
+"And then again, you might not," Cadman laughed softly.  "I've got you,
+son--"
+
+"I will do as you say," Skag said steadily.
+
+Cadman hiccoughed.  "The eye moved," he explained.  "There--it did it
+again.  I got a feeling as if an elevator dropped a flight.  What were
+you saying?"
+
+"That I am here to take orders."
+
+"I'm taking orders to-night, son.  I wouldn't risk your good opinion by
+shooting your guest--"
+
+"He is perfect--not more than four or five years--got his full range,
+but not his weight."
+
+Skag stopped abruptly, until the other nudged him.
+
+"Go on--it's like a bench-show--"
+
+"We called them Bengalis--but that is just the trade-name--"
+
+"You intimated he might have a lady-friend--do they hunt in couples?"
+
+The boy didn't answer that.  "You've never been in a tiger's cage?" he
+asked suddenly.
+
+"I'm telling you not, so you'll excuse my apprehensions about our
+lodging--in case Herself appears.  The fact is, there isn't room--"
+
+"She won't come near, if we keep up the voices--"
+
+"It becomes instantly a bore to talk," Cadman answered.
+
+
+Sometime passed before they spoke again.  The tiger didn't seem to
+settle any; from time to time, they heard the tense concussion, the
+hissing escape of his snarl.  The kid had either escaped or strangled
+to death.
+
+"Will he stand for it until morning?" Cadman asked abruptly.
+
+"He may move a little to rest his legs."
+
+"And won't he try for the top?"
+
+"I think not.  He has already measured that.  He sees in the dark.  He
+knows there's no good in making a jump."
+
+"Nothing to jump at--with us here?"
+
+"We have put it over on him.  You have helped greatly."
+
+"How's all that?"
+
+"You don't smell afraid--"
+
+"Ah, thanks."
+
+Long afterward Cadman's hand came over to Skag's brow and touched it
+lightly.
+
+"I was just wondering, son, if you sweat hot or cold."
+
+There was a pause, before he added:
+
+"You see, I want to get you, young man.  You really like this sort of
+night?"
+
+"It is India," said Skag.
+
+Every little while through the dragging hours, Cadman would laugh
+softly; and if there had been silence for long, the warning snarl would
+come back.  The breath of it shook the air and the thresh of the tail
+kept the dust astir in the pit.
+
+"There is only one more thing I can think of," Cadman said at last.
+
+The waning moon was now in meridian and blent with daylight.  The beast
+was still crouched against the wall.
+
+"Yes?" said Skag.
+
+"That you should walk over and stroke his head."
+
+"Oh, no, he is cornered.  He would fight."
+
+"There's really a kind of law about all this--?"
+
+"Very much a law."
+
+After an interval Cadman breathed: "I like it.  Oh, yes," he added
+wearily, "I like it all."
+
+It was soon after that they heard the voices of natives and a face,
+looking grey in the dawn, peered down.  Cadman spoke in a language the
+native understood:
+
+"Look in the tea-pot and toss down my cigarettes--"
+
+At this instant the tiger protested a second time.  The native vanished
+with the squeak of a fat puppy that falls off a chair on its back.  For
+moments afterward, they heard him calling and telling others the tale
+of all his born days.  Three quarters of an hour elapsed before the
+long pole, thick as a man's arm, was carefully lowered.  Skag guided
+the butt to the base of the pit, and fixed it there as far as possible
+from the tiger.  This was delicate.  His every movement was maddeningly
+deliberate, the danger, of course, being to put the tiger into a
+fighting panic.
+
+"Now you climb," Skag said.
+
+"No--"
+
+"It is better so.  I am old at these things.  He will not leap at you
+while I am here--"
+
+"You mean he might leap, as you start to shin up the pole--alone?"
+
+"No, that will be the second time.  It will not infuriate him--the
+second one to climb."
+
+"I'll gamble with you--who goes first."
+
+"You said that you were taking orders," Skag said coldly.
+
+"That's a fact.  But this isn't to my relish, son--"
+
+"We do not need more words."
+
+
+Cadman Sahib had reached safety.  The natives were around him, feeling
+his arms and limbs, stuttering questions.  He bade them be silent,
+caught up his rifle and covered the tiger, while Skag made the tilted
+pole, beckoning the rifle back.
+
+"It's been a hard night for him," he said.
+
+The two men stood together in the morning light.  Cadman's face was
+deeply shaded by the big helmet again, but his eyes bored into the
+young one's as he offered his cigarette-case.  Skag took one, lit it
+carelessly.  Cadman was watching his hands.
+
+"You've got it, son," he said.
+
+"Got what?"
+
+"The good grey nerve. . . .  Not a flicker in your hand.  I wanted to
+know. . . .  Say, cheer up--"
+
+Skag was looking toward the tiger trap.
+
+"Ah, I see," said Cadman Sahib.
+
+"The circus is a hard life," Skag said.
+
+
+That was a kind of a feast day. . . .  At noon the natives had the
+tiger up in sunlight, caged in bamboo.  Skag presently came into a
+startling kind of joy to hear his friend make an offer to buy the
+beast.  Negotiations moved slowly, but the thing was done.  That
+afternoon the journey toward Coldwater Ruins was continued with eight
+carriers, the tiger swung between them.  Skag was mystified.  What
+could Cadman mean?  What could he do with a tiger at the Ruins or in
+the Monkey Forest?  The natives apparently had not been told the
+destination, but they must know soon.  It was all strange.  Skag liked
+it better alone with his friend.  Halt was called that afternoon, the
+sun still in the sky.  The two white men walked apart.
+
+"You get the drift, my son?"
+
+Skag shook his head.
+
+"Of course, the natives won't like it; they won't understand.  But
+we're sure he isn't a man-eater--"
+
+Skag's chest heaved.
+
+"I never knew a more decent tiger--" Cadman went on.  "Besides, he's a
+friend of yours, and not too expensive--"
+
+"You bought him to--"
+
+"I bought him for you, son--a tribute to the nerviest white man I ever
+stepped with--"
+
+That evening a great whine went up from the bearers.  It appears that
+while some were cutting wood, others preparing supper and others
+gathering dry grass for beds, the younger white man, who had made magic
+with the tiger in the pit, suddenly failed in his powers.  The natives
+were sure it was not their fault that the cover had not been securely
+fastened.  The bearers repeated they were all at work and could find no
+fault with themselves.  They were used to dealing with white men who
+did not permit bungling.  Their wailing was very loud. . . .  To lose
+such a tiger was worth more than many natives, some white men would
+say. . . .  But Cadman Sahib was rich.  He fumed but little; being of
+all white men most miraculously compassionate. . . .  Also it was true
+the beast, though full grown, was not a man-eater. . . .
+
+"And to-morrow we shall go on alone--it is much pleasanter," said Skag,
+after all was still and they lay down together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_Son of Power_
+
+His Indian name was given to Skag in the great Grass Jungle; but he did
+not know the meaning of the words when they first fell upon his ear.
+There India herself first opened for him the magic gates that seal her
+mystery.  But he did not know it was her glamour that made him utterly
+forget outside things, in the unbelievable loveliness of Grass Jungle
+days; did not know it was just as much her spell that made him forget his
+own birthright, in the paralysis of perfect fear.
+
+A part of her mystery is this forgetting--while she reveals canvas after
+canvas of life--uncovers layer beneath layer of her deeper marvels.  Skag
+was involved with his animals--and interests peculiarly personal--till it
+all came to seem like a dream.  Yet underneath his surface consciousness
+it was working in him, as the glamour of India always does, to colour his
+entire future--as the magic of India always will.
+
+After their night in the tiger pit-trap, Cadman and Skag had wandered
+southeast-ward--still searching for the Monkey Forest and the Coldwater
+Ruins--and had become lost to the world and the ways of civilisation in
+the mazes of the Mahadeo mountains.  They had found a dozen jungles full
+of monkeys, but none of them looked to Cadman like his dream.  The
+monkeys were all so melted-in to everything else; and there was so much
+too much of everything else.
+
+As for Ruins, the thing they found was too old.  It was like an exposure
+of the sins of first men--alive with bats and smaller vermin.  The
+monkeys there had preserved from age to age the germs of all depravity.
+Without words the two Americans turned away from that spot, to forget it.
+
+Skag was learning that his training in the circus had been but a mere
+beginning in the study of wild animals.  It seemed impossible that there
+could be a jungle anywhere with more beasts or greater variety, than they
+heard at night.
+
+It was as hard to come in good view of any wild creature--excepting
+monkeys--as it had been hard at first to sleep, on account of the voices
+of all creation after sundown.  To approach undiscovered, and to lie out
+and watch undiscovered, taxed and developed all their faculties; the
+fascination and excitement of it stretched their powers; and their
+successes enriched them both for a life-time.
+
+After the first eagerness to get twenty different positions of a tigress
+playing with her kittens, Cadman had become a miser of material and an
+adept in noiseless movement.  Finding that he was in danger of going
+short on sketching paper, he used it more and more as if it were fine
+gold, till his outlines were not larger than miniatures.  Also, he
+learned to glance for the flash of approval in Skag's eye.
+
+The two men had grown into a rare comradeship.  This time of year,
+sleeping in the open was luxury.  They had not suffered for food,
+excepting in the memory of such things as had once been most common.
+Well above fever-line, no ailment had touched them.  So, eating simply,
+sleeping deeply and working hard, they toughened in body and keened in
+mind--the days all full of quickening interests, every next minute due to
+develop surprise.
+
+It was by a little headlong mountain stream, that the revelation came.
+Skag was looking to see which was the business-end of his tooth-brush
+that morning when Cadman broke his sheath knife.  The accident was a
+calamity, because Skag's was already worn out cutting step-way to climb
+out of khuds, and this was all they had left to serve such a purpose.
+
+"That settles it, we must go," said Cadman, looking ruefully at the stump
+of his old blade.  "Our nearest kin wouldn't know us, but we are still
+recognisable to each other, and I'm not exactly ready to quit--are you?"
+
+"No," Skag answered absently--unwilling to realise the necessity.
+
+Cadman studied the crestfallen face--they had loved this life together
+and equally.
+
+"But do you realise, my son," he asked, "that others will have to see us,
+before we can ever again be clothed and groomed properly?"
+
+Now Skag looked at his friend with seeing eyes and blushed.
+
+"It's not the clothes, so much as--" Skag stopped.
+
+Cadman focused on Skag's face through his queer spectacles, then he
+laughed as only Cadman could laugh.
+
+So they climbed down and took train for Bombay.  Like fugitives they
+dodged the sight of correctly dressed Englishmen all the way; stopping
+over more than seven hours at Kullian--so as to reach the great city at
+night.
+
+Next morning two clean-faced and very much alive Americans arrived at the
+Polo Club for late breakfast.  Indeed they were good to look at, being in
+the finest kind of health and full of initiative.  That breakfast was
+royal in every flavour; they felt like young spendthrifts squandering
+their patrimony.  Just as they were finishing, a distinguished looking
+Englishman came across the room and greeted Cadman:
+
+"Now this is my own proverbial good luck!  Come away up to the house and
+give account of yourself.  Where are the pictures?  We'll take 'em along."
+
+Cadman presented Skag to Doctor Murdock of the University, explained that
+it was imperative for them to do some general outfitting, but promised to
+bring his friend in the afternoon.
+
+"Doctor Murdock is an extraordinary man, Skag," said Cadman, as the
+Englishman hurried away.  "Beside his chair in the University, he is said
+to be top surgeon of Bombay.  Barring none, he has more of different
+kinds of knowledge than any man I know; becomes master of whatever he
+takes up--authority, past question."
+
+"I wondered why you promised to take me along," Skag put in.
+
+"You'll be glad to have met him.  He'll be interested in you," Cadman
+answered.  "He's quite likely to take us to see some of the Indian
+nautch-girls.  They're one of his fads--for their beauty.  He has
+specialties in art as well as in science; but he's clean stuff--nothing
+rotten in him."
+
+They forgot time in the Bombay bazaars; first looking for bags, to be
+easily carried on their own persons; and then giving themselves to
+quality and workmanship in things designed for their special uses.  There
+was no hurry.  All life stretched before them, in widening vistas.
+
+Doctor Murdock's house was high on Malabar Hill.  Their hired carriage
+came in behind his trim little brougham, as it turned on the driveway
+into his compound.
+
+"My fortune again!" the Doctor called.  "I've been detained by a case and
+properly sweating for fear you'd reach my den first."
+
+Tea was served on a verandah entirely foreign and tropical and strange
+looking to Skag.  A field of palm-tops stretched away from their feet to
+the sea.  They told him the city of Bombay was hidden under those fronds.
+
+"And now you understand, Cadman," the Doctor was saying, "there's your
+own room and one next for your friend Hantee.  Your traps will be up
+before you sleep, which may not be early, for I've a tamasha on for you
+this night--you remember, I enjoy dinner in the morning?"
+
+That tamasha was a maze of strange colour, strange motion and stranger
+perfume to Skag; not penetrating his conscious nature at all--feeling
+unreal to him.
+
+"I've been watching you without shame this night, young man," the Doctor
+said to him, as they finished the after-midnight meal.  "My entertainment
+fell dead with you.  Sir.  You've been 'way off somewhere else.  I'm
+simply consumed to know what you have found in life, to make your eyes
+blind and your ears deaf to the lure of human beauty.  You're not to be
+distressed by my impudence--it's innocent."
+
+"If I may answer for my friend, I belive [Transcriber's note: believe?] I
+can tell you, Doctor."  Cadman saw consent in Skag's eye and went on: "He
+has found the lure of creatures.  He has entered into the spell of a
+young tigress playing with her kittens, in her own place.  He has watched
+another tigress fight her mate to a finish, defending her little ones
+from their sire.  He has listened to the symphonies of night and seen the
+drama of the wild.  He lives in the clean glamour of the primeval jungle."
+
+The Doctor's eyes widened for seconds; then they gloomed as he spoke:
+
+"Between you, you challenge modern manhood.  We have not conceived that
+'clean glamour' since men were young--forgotten ages past.  No, there was
+no human beauty to-night to make a man forget those tigresses. . . .  She
+was not there.  I am one of many who miss her, but I would give--"  The
+Doctor broke off, searching their faces before he spoke again: "There is
+no hope you will know the depth of the calamity; the bitterness of the
+loss.  Speaking of clean things--"
+
+"Who was she?" Cadman asked.
+
+"She was the most beautiful thing on earth.  She was indeed the most
+marvellous thing on earth, being a Bombay singing nautch-girl--undefamed.
+There has been no one else, these ages."
+
+The Doctor sat smoking, apparently oblivious of his guests.
+
+"The Spartan Helen?" Cadman suggested.
+
+"Hah!  The Spartan Helen was not invincible!"
+
+"The Noor Mahal?"
+
+"The Noor Mahal was always in seclusion."
+
+"Her name?" Skag questioned.
+
+"She had no name," the Doctor answered, "but she was called 'Dhoop Ki
+Dhil'--Heart-of-the-Sun; possibly on account of her voice.  There has
+been none like it.  The master-mahouts of High Himalaya, their voices
+pass those of all other men for splendour; but I tell you there was none
+other in the world, beside hers.  Rich men in Bombay would give fortunes
+to anyone who would find her."
+
+"Then she is not dead?" Skag spoke startled.
+
+"We do not know that she is dead," the Doctor answered.  "We would
+suppose so, but for a curious happening four days before she disappeared.
+Down in the silk-market a dealer was buying silk from an up-country
+native--a man from the Grass Jungle.  The native was exceptionally good
+to look upon.  Dhoop Ki Dhil came into the place to make some purchase.
+Her eye fell on the jungle man and she stood back.  She was a valuable
+customer, so the silk-merchant made haste to signal her forward.  But she
+shook her head and moved further back."
+
+The Doctor stopped to smoke.
+
+"After a while Dhoop Ki Dhil came forward, moving like one in a trance,
+and said to the jungle man, 'Are you a god?' and the jungle man answered
+her with shame, 'No, I am a common man.'
+
+"Now that silk-merchant will tell no more.  One doesn't blame him.  The
+natives are not patient with such a tale of her.  To hear that any man
+had taken her eye, maddened them.  She had passed the snares of
+desire--immune.  She had turned away from fabulous wealth.  She had
+denied princes and kings.  She smiled on all men alike--with that smile
+mothers have for little children."
+
+"She was a mother-thing," murmured Cadman.
+
+The Doctor turned, questioning:
+
+"A mother-thing?  Yes, probably.  But she led the singing women like a
+super-being incarnate.  She led the dancing women like a living flame.
+They sing and dance yet, but the fire of life is gone out!"
+
+"Where is the Grass Jungle?" Cadman asked.
+
+"Nobody seems to know.  As for me, I never heard of it--till this.  The
+silk-merchants say that once in several years some strange man--one or
+another--in strange garments, comes down with a peculiar kind of silk, to
+exchange for cotton cloth.  He won't take money for it and he's easily
+cheated.  He won't talk--only that he's from the great Grass Jungle.  He
+usually calls it 'great.'"
+
+"It must be possible to find," said Cadman, glancing at Skag.  "What do
+you say?"
+
+"I'm with you," Skag answered.
+
+"Now am I gone quite mad, or do I understand you?" the Doctor enquired.
+
+"I think you understand us," Cadman answered.
+
+The Doctor sprang up, exclaiming:
+
+"I've often told you, Cadman, you Americans develop most extraordinary
+surprises.  Most remarkable men on earth for--for developing at the--at
+the very moment, you understand!"
+
+"Do you know anyone who might give us something on the locality?" Skag
+asked Cadman.
+
+"That's the point.  I think I do," Cadman nodded.  "But we'll have to go
+and find out."
+
+"My resources are at your disposal," the Doctor put in.
+
+"Your resources have accomplished the first half," smiled Cadman.  "It's
+fair that the rest of it should be ours."
+
+"Then what's to do?" the Doctor questioned.
+
+"A few things to purchase first, easily done to-day," Cadman answered,
+glancing out at the faint dawn.  "Then, I know Dickson of the grain-foods
+department, at Hurda--Central Provinces.  He ought to be familiar with
+the topography of all the inside country.  We'll risk nothing by going to
+him."
+
+"Then away with you to bed and get one good sleep.  The boy will bring
+you a substantial choti-hazri when you're out of your bath at six.  I
+have a couple of small elephant-skin bags--you'll not find the like in
+shops--they're made for the interior medical service."
+
+
+So Cadman and Skag went up from Bombay that night on the Calcutta-bound
+train, facing the far interior of India.  The boy in Skag found joy in
+every detail of his outfit; especially the elephant-skin bag, stocked
+with necessary personal requirements and nothing more.  But somewhere,
+far out before him, lost in this mystery-land--was a woman.  That woman
+must be found.
+
+"What's the secret about the Doctor?" he asked Cadman, after they had
+been rolling through the night some hours.
+
+"Nobody knows, unless it's a woman he didn't get," Cadman answered.
+
+"What's the grip this wonder-woman has on him?"
+
+"Beauty and music and life, in the superlative degree; when it all
+happens together, in one woman--she grips."
+
+After that they both dreamed vague man-dreams of Dhoop Ki Dhil.
+
+"There stands Dickson Sahib himself!" Cadman exclaimed, at Hurda station;
+and Skag saw the two meet, perceiving at once that it was a friendship
+between men of very different type.
+
+Then Dickson Sahib promptly gathered them both into that Anglo-Indian
+hospitality which is never forgotten by those who have found it.  Skag
+was made to feel as much at home as the evidently much-loved Cadman; not
+by word or gesture, but by a kindly atmosphere about everything.  He met
+a slender lad of twelve years, presented to him by Dickson Sahib as "My
+son Horace," whose clear grey eyes attracted him much.
+
+After dinner Cadman told the story of Dhoop Ki Dhil.  There was perfect
+silence for minutes when he finished.  Skag was groping on and on--his
+quest already begun.  Dickson was smoking hard, till he startled them
+both:
+
+"Of course, it's altogether right; I'd like to be with you."
+
+"Then will you direct us?" Cadman asked.
+
+"As an officer in a land-department, you understand--" Dickson answered
+slowly, "I'm not supposed to send men into a place like that, to their
+death.  But I want you to know that my responsibility has nothing
+whatever to do with my concern.  Because I value your lives as men--I
+want to be careful.  You must let me think it out loud.  It's a maze.  I
+may place you, as I get on."
+
+"We appreciate your care," Cadman said earnestly.
+
+"The 'great' Grass Jungle is the proper name for vast territory--not all
+in one piece," Dickson Sahib began.  "It comes in rifts between parallel
+rivers among the mountains.  Seepage back and forth between the streams,
+gives the moisture necessary for such growth--year round.
+
+"When white men come to the edge of one of those rifts, they turn back.
+It's pestilential with wild beasts.  Natives call it the Place-of-Fear.
+White men don't challenge it--they go round.  Government has named one
+part of it--over toward the eastern end of the Vindhas--the Bund el
+Khand, the closed country; that name tells its own story."
+
+Dickson Sahib stopped, frowning.
+
+"The native with silks to exchange goes down to Bombay?" he went on.
+"That means, not Calcutta-way.  It also means, not anywhere in the
+Deccan--which clears us away from large tracts.  Yet he usually calls it
+'great'--that should mean, the Bund el Khand.  No one knows how far in;
+but you'll best approach it from this side.  I'm not dissuading you; I'd
+like to be along.  I'm offering you choice of my assortment of
+firing-pieces.  I'll work you out some running lines--they'll be ready by
+late-breakfast time.  But I'm certain your best place to leave the tracks
+will be Sehora."
+
+Dickson Sahib was worrying with a match, his face troubled, as he
+muttered:
+
+"Now if Hand-of-a-God--"
+
+"What is that?" Skag asked quietly, of Cadman.
+
+"That," smiled Dickson Sahib, "is a Scotchman.  This civil station of
+Hurda is famous because he lives here.  He is an absolutely perfect shot.
+Years ago he took all the medals and cups at the great shooting
+tournaments.  He took 'em all, till for shame's sake he withdrew from
+contesting.  He goes to the tournaments just the same--the crackshotmen
+wouldn't be without him--but he doesn't enter for the trophies any more."
+
+"He is called the avenger of the people, Skag," Cadman put in, "because
+he goes out and gets the man-eaters; never sights for anything but the
+eye or the heart, and never misses."
+
+"As I was saying," Dickson Sahib went on, "if Hand-of-a-God were here,
+he'd go without asking.  Or even if the Rose-pearl's brother Ian were
+here, he's quick enough.  But he plays with situations, rather."
+
+"Don't let this situation trouble you, Dickson," said Cadman.
+
+There fell a moment of curious silence.  Cadman was a bit pale, but
+Skag's face looked serene, as he questioned innocently:
+
+"Rose-pearl?"
+
+"Yes," Dickson Sahib began absently, "she's here when she's not visiting
+one of her numerous brothers; just now it's Billium in Bombay.  Her
+degree is from London University and the medical service recognises her
+work among the people.  She's a holy thing to them; indeed, she never
+rests when there's much sickness among them.  But one wouldn't ask a
+favour of one of her brothers."
+
+"Hold on, Dickson, I protest!" Cadman interrupted laughingly.  "I'm not
+such a bad shot myself, you know!"
+
+"The Grass Jungle is crowded--I say crowded--with the worst kinds of
+blood-eaters.  You may want an extra good shot; at the very top notch of
+practice, what's more."
+
+As Dickson Sahib came out with it, he noticed Skag's surprise, and
+challenged him:
+
+"Bless your soul, man, I believe it's your grip that grips us!"
+
+Skag's serene face got warm, but Cadman assented.
+
+"Skag dwells in the fundamentals," he explained; "most of us never touch
+'em.  He's practically incapable of fear; and the idea of failure never
+occurs to him."
+
+Early next morning Cadman got a telegram calling him to Calcutta; and
+afterward to England.
+
+"We'll take time to do this big thing first, though," he said, putting
+the wire into Skag's hand.  "They want me sooner--as you see; but they'll
+get me later.  Come away and I'll send word to that effect."
+
+Skag was realising what it would have meant to him, if Cadman had failed;
+so he asked--vaguely--something about the Rose-pearl.
+
+"Don't let yourself get interested in her, son.  That family is like a
+secret sanctuary; and she is the holy thing behind the altar.  She's
+unattainable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_Son of Power (Continued)_
+
+They left the train at Sehora and struck out through rough country,
+following Dickson Sahib's directions.  They camped in full jungle--wild
+beast voices ringing through the night.
+
+Next day they came into a valley like Eden, nourished by a small river.
+On its banks--near a mud-walled, grass-thatched village--Cadman
+discovered a devout man of great learning, who rested on the path of a
+long pilgrimage.  The devout man was approachable and spoke perfect
+English; so they asked him about the land ahead.
+
+"The Grass Jungle, sons?  It is the place of secret ways.  Only the very
+innocent of men-things dwell there; those not soiled by the wisdom of
+evil.  To the wise of the world, it is the place of plague and pestilence
+and fear; and swift death by heat--and the shedding of blood.  Past all
+else--to such--it is the place of the shedding of blood."
+
+He stopped a moment, musing; then in softer tones went on:
+
+"The days are all still there.  The creature-multitude sleeps in hidden
+lairs--black and gold and brown and grey--all veiled in golden gloom.
+The little men-things go their ways, on their own man-paths, which they
+only know; remember this--they only know.
+
+"When you go in, they will send boys with you from one village to the
+next; but only in the early hours, or in the late hours of day.  See that
+you do not persuade them otherwise.  The full-day heat is called 'blight'
+because it robs men of their wits."
+
+Skag scarcely breathed, till the Learned spoke again.
+
+"At night--I speak who know--at night the earth rises up to the heavens
+on the voices of the wild and the ears of the gods are offended.
+Creatures go out on their own paths--as the men-things go on theirs by
+day.  They rend and contend, they kill and are killed; but they do not
+cease till dawn."
+
+The devout man's head sank low upon his breast and he was very still.
+
+"It's romance, Skag," whispered Cadman, "but that's not saying it's our
+romance.  The man's off again in his abstractions; but I'm going to try
+once more."
+
+Skag nodded.
+
+Touching the wise man's foot with reverence and speaking in the form of
+utmost respect, Cadman asked:
+
+"Is it well that we go in?  We search for one who sings as the
+super-human sing; we search for the sake of sick hearts--her heart and
+others.  Is it well?"
+
+The eyes that lifted were not abstract; they were very deep and keen.
+Both the Americans felt winnowed before he spoke again.
+
+"Ignorance is not good, but innocence is the supreme defence.  If it is
+the will of the beneficent gods that you find the unmothered woman of
+great beauty in time, then it shall be so.  But be patient.  Move slowly
+through the little peoples, forgetting your search--I say forgetting your
+search, as you go.  Be kind; haste will not delay the sacrifice--kindness
+may.  The way lies before you.  Peace."
+
+Cadman rose at once.  They had been dismissed with a benediction; nothing
+further could be obtained.  Otherwise Skag would have been a
+question-mark before that poor old man till morning.
+
+"But he knows!"
+
+The words seemed wrung out of Skag, as they sat apart.
+
+"He does; there's no gamble about that.  But if we challenge him, the
+chances are--he'll revoke that benediction!" Cadman speculated
+whimsically.  "Then we'll have all the people against us--which is to
+say, every prospect of success would go glimmering.  No, there's nothing
+for it but to go ahead, as fast as we can--slowly."
+
+"But what do you suppose he meant by 'forgetting'?" Skag asked.  "That we
+mustn't let the natives know we're looking for her?"
+
+"I believe you've got it!" Cadman assented.
+
+"Then I've forgotten!" Skag said with decision.
+
+"I will have forgotten, by morning," Cadman answered.
+
+They were on their way as soon as it was light enough to see their
+compass.  They slept at two villages; and early the third day came out of
+sketchy mountains into full view of the great Grass Jungle itself.  In
+long low waves, it billowed away from them to the dim rugged line of
+Vindha against the sky.  It looked like massed plumes of feathers--all
+golden-green.
+
+That day they walked down toward it with few words.  To Skag it was
+perfectly natural enchantment--veiling the mystery of Dhoop Ki Dhil.  He
+never thought of it as a death-trap for himself.
+
+Under the late afternoon sun, the rolling waves of golden-green took on
+an aspect of measureless distance; clean reaches, absolutely unbroken by
+anything save their own majestic undulations.  The most innocent
+landscape on earth, more enticing than the sand-desert--its softer
+mystery breathed forth the faint searching perfume of growing things.
+Its undertone was well-being.  Its overtone was peace.
+
+"Do you suppose they're doing any harm to her, in there?" Cadman asked.
+
+"No," Skag answered, but his face was grim as he spoke.
+
+When they came into it, they found not grass but bamboo, twelve to
+sixteen feet high, standing root to root.  They camped at a village in
+its edge; and before they slept, twenty lads were ready to lead them in
+the man-paths, next morning.
+
+The villages had not been visible from the mountain-side, being solidly
+double-thatched with bamboo.  Garden and fruit-stuffs were underneath;
+and animals for milk and butter.
+
+The people were semi-primitive.  Physical degeneration was not found.
+Indeed their bodily perfection was extraordinary.  In mind, they were
+like children; happy and friendly, joyful to teach all they knew--joyful
+to show all they had.  The days rang with clean, childish laughter; but
+there was no philosophy.  There was no deep concern, no lasting grief, no
+hate.
+
+"Skag, my son," said Cadman solemnly, "if a man really wants to depart
+from sin--this is the place to come!"
+
+By this time they had passed through several villages, camping
+under double-thatch and inside heavy stockade guards.  Being unable
+to release himself from the thrall of his life-quest, even while
+every element of his manhood was deep in the thrall of a "singing
+nautch-girl--undefamed--" Skag's trained ears had been extending his
+education in what was the cult of cults to him.  He had listened longer
+than Cadman at night, to those voices of the wild by which the ears of
+the gods are offended.
+
+Surely his secret consciousness--during those night-watches--had grappled
+with the unknown ahead, reaching impatient fingers to find and save Dhoop
+Ki Dhil in time.  But he let no flicker of that thought colour his answer.
+
+"I don't know," he said dubiously, "if I'm not mistaken, I've heard some
+sinful language at night."
+
+As they got further in, two names attracted their attention--spoken
+together like one word--Dhoop Kichari-lal and Koob Soonder.  Of course
+Koob Soonder--Utterly Beautiful--they first thought could mean none other
+than the Bombay nautch-girl whom they sought--yet later they were to
+learn the truth.  But the last part of the first name--Kichari-lal--they
+did not know.  Yet no one would interpret it to them; the innocent people
+looked frightened when they asked.
+
+Still, the name recurred; and like following golden threads through
+meshes of green--all this life was gold and green--they became fascinated
+by the tracing of it.
+
+Then they heard of a man who "knew everything and was able to tell it."
+They found him strangely clothed in soft brown, surrounded by youngsters;
+and asked for all he knew about Dhoop Kichari-lal and Koob Soonder.
+(Their request would have been made in different form, if they had
+recognised his order at first glance.)  He eyed them keenly, before
+speaking:
+
+"Dhoop Kichari-lal?  That is the name of a colour which the woman from
+far wears; she whom Jiwan Kawi loved and would have wed.  And Koob
+Soonder--small sister of Jiwan Kawi--our strong young man who went away;
+she whose mother was taken by Fear when she was a babe, she who was
+stricken by the blight when she began to run--she who was named for her
+perfect beauty, before the Grass Jungle had seen beauty more perfect--"
+
+"Do you know all the story?" Cadman interrupted, with dry lips.
+
+"All," said the man.  "Am I not here to teach the little people with the
+telling of tales?  Jiwan Kawi was sent on the great adventure, to change
+our silks for cotton cloths--which the people consider more desirable."
+(There was the hint of a tender smile on his lips, as he said the last
+words.)  "Jiwan Kawi was the most strong, the most beautiful of all our
+young men when these same leaves were small, in the spring."  He paused,
+seeming to forget them--his eyes on the leaves.
+
+Then his manner changed, taking on a quality of austere impressiveness,
+as he continued:
+
+"Jiwan Kawi returned from the great adventure; but a woman came after
+him--sunrise to sunset behind.  She had followed him from the place of
+the multitudes, where all the people dwell together.  He had seen her
+there; he had loved her there; he had fled in fear from her beauty; he
+had fled in distraction away back to his own place.  Now--his joy showed,
+past telling.  But she had come without a mother to give her in marriage;
+and marriage cannot be, otherwise.
+
+"If it had not been for her so great beauty!  Surely our women are
+beautiful--as the gods know how to make common women.  But when they saw
+her--they went back into their houses and covered their faces from the
+light of her eyes.
+
+"That was the calamity; for a woman must be given in marriage by the
+heart of a woman--sincere and unafraid.  And there was not one without
+fear.  Jiwan Kawi went out into the jungle that night; and he never came
+back.  Fear may have taken him."
+
+The man looked away toward the horizon.
+
+"Then she put on her body the one garment of hindu-widowhood, unadorned;
+but without marriage.  She said, 'I will mourn for the children that have
+not been--that are not--that cannot be.'  The women heard the voice of
+her mourning; and they forgot her too-great beauty, to serve her
+too-great pain--when it was late.
+
+"They gave her the little Koob Soonder, to mother.  Now it is that the
+child, who has no wit and little reason, goes out into the place of
+sacrifice to find Fear; and the woman in a widow's garment goes after, to
+fetch her back.  Then the woman who mourns for unborn children, goes out
+into the night-paths--as Jiwan Kawi went--and the little Koob Soonder
+follows, to fetch her back.
+
+"So they are going, always going out into the place of sacrifice--where
+Fear lives.  Some day or some night--Fear will take them."
+
+"What kind of fear?" Cadman asked, with a dry throat.
+
+"Fear is name enough.  There is none other."
+
+The man's reply was spoken in conclusive tones.  He sat as if oblivious,
+for several minutes.  Then searching them both earnestly with haggard
+eyes, he spoke direct:
+
+"Have you looked on Dhoop Ki Dhil, for whom you come so far?  Have you
+heard her voice?"
+
+Both the Americans shook their heads.
+
+"Will you look on her in the paths of my understanding?  Will you render
+yourselves to know her in the currents of my blood?"
+
+"We will," Cadman answered tensely.
+
+The man lifted his face toward the night-sky, becoming perfectly still
+before he spoke:
+
+"She is the breath of the early spring-time, when the pulse of the earth
+awakes.  She is the midnight moon of all summers, in all lands.  The rose
+of daybreak is in her smile; the flames of sunset in her face.
+Lightnings of the monsoon break from her eyes; and she mothers the
+mothers of men with their tenderness.  Her body moves like flowing water;
+and she is the joy of all joy and the sorrow of all sorrow, in motion."
+
+The man lifted his hand, as if to interrupt himself.
+
+"The majesties of High Himalaya are in her voice; and distances of
+star-lit night."
+
+He stopped, seeming to listen to something they could not hear.
+
+"The tides of the seasons flow through the blood of common men," he went
+on; "they carry the gold of delight away; and the rock-stuff of strength.
+Then men are old.  It is not so with her.  Bitter waters of grief have
+drenched her, they have covered her as the deep covers the lands below;
+but her ascending flames of life consume them all.  She rises like a
+creature made of jewels, to enlighten men against the snares of that same
+deep from which she has come up--wearing splendours of loveliness for
+garmenture.
+
+"The people weep their tears for her pain; but she heals their hurts with
+a look.  She restores their dead memories of youth to old men--their
+memories of dead loves.  She restores the eyes of girlhood to the elder
+women, who have long been weary with yearning after dead little
+ones--after dead men.  She has taught the little people who cannot
+think--the child-hearted people--that Love-the-transcendent can never die!
+
+"Dhoop Ki Dhil?  She is youth, eternal!  She is motherhood--the divine
+lotus of the world!"
+
+Turning to face Cadman and Skag, the man said gently:
+
+"The way lies before you.  Go swiftly now.  Peace."
+
+And rising softly in the dead hush, he moved away.
+
+Cadman sat long meditating, before he spoke at all; then it was like
+thinking aloud:
+
+"A mystic brother of the Vindhas--one with the old man outside; not
+leaving these little semi-primitives alone--identifies himself with
+them--that's good business!"
+
+"Let's get on!" breathed Skag.
+
+They made the utmost speed possible, till they came to the village that
+startled them.  The childlike care-freedom was gone.  Light-heartedness
+was quenched.  Apprehension took its place; low tones, no laughter--a
+look of helpless suffering like the large-eyed wonder in the face of a
+grieved child.
+
+They asked about the next village.
+
+"Fear lives there," they were told.
+
+"What fear?" Cadman asked.
+
+"Do you know the king of all serpents--he who comes over any wall, he who
+goes through any thatch?  He dwells there.  He feeds upon the children of
+men and upon their creatures.  He comes only to the edge, but he eats!"
+
+The boy who told them this was so different from other boys they had
+seen, that Cadman asked him direct:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am here under a master, doing a certain work in my novitiate," the boy
+said simply.
+
+"Will you take us there in the morning?" Cadman asked.
+
+The boy looked at them intently, before he answered:
+
+"It is just inside the nesting-place of all the serpents in the world;
+but Fear is their king.  We who are here to serve, have no weapons; and
+we cannot overcome malignant things with kindness.  If you will deliver
+the people from that serpent-king, by destroying his evil life, all the
+snakes will go further back into the jungle.  For many generations--if
+the gods will, for always--the innocent people will be safe.  I will take
+you there, if you will kill him."
+
+"We will try," Cadman said, not even turning to look at Skag.
+
+They found the village in total paralysis of all natural activities.  It
+was like a deadly pall.  This was no new terror; it was old
+devastation--bred into the bone of consciousness.
+
+A little girl came near to watch Cadman, who was getting out his gun.
+She had never seen one before.  He whispered to her--it seemed not right
+to speak aloud in this place--and asked her where was Dhoop Ki Dhil.  The
+child shook her head, but answered him:
+
+"Wherever you will see the sun-melted red."
+
+"What is that?" he wondered.
+
+"That?  That is the long-long, wide-wide cloth that covers all her body.
+It is made of so-thick silk" (she showed him six fingers), "that many
+times as thick as we know how to make."
+
+"What is the name of the boy who led us here?" he asked next.
+
+"We call him _Dhanah_ and many other names; but he is not a small boy, he
+is a man--very wise and sad."
+
+At that moment they heard a voice like golden 'cellos and golden clarions
+and golden viols--calling "Koob Soon-n-der, Koob Soon-n-der!" and the boy
+came past, running hard.
+
+"Soon!" he shouted.
+
+But Skag was at his heels and Cadman followed close, the short
+firing-piece in his hands.
+
+The paths were narrow, the bamboo dense; the boy leaped into a curve and
+was lost.  They raced after him, till the path broadened at the top of an
+elevation.  Pausing an instant to listen, they saw--directly in front of
+them a little way distant--a tall post; a dark post, seven or eight feet
+above the bamboo tops, stiff and straight.
+
+It held their eyes by its strange sheen.  It began to lean stiffly toward
+one side--as if falling.  It straightened and leaned the other way.  Then
+undulation crept into it, till the top-end followed the outline of a
+double loop--like a figure-of-eight.
+
+The snake had chained them this long.  Skag recovered with an inward
+revulsion that rent him.  He plunged down the path, his faculties
+surging--thought, feeling, realisation, volition--tearing him.
+
+He met Dhanah carrying an utterly limp girl in his arms--the boy's face
+gone grey.
+
+As Skag fled on past Dhanah, the whole story of Dhoop Ki Dhil was eating
+in his brain like fire.  She was somewhere in there ahead of
+him--somewhere near that monster snake.
+
+The weaving of the serpent's head, looping in long reaches above the
+bamboo tops--looking over them, looking down into them, looking for its
+prey--had frozen him to the marrow of his bones.
+
+Dhoop Ki Dhil had come out into this blind maze to find and save the
+heat-blighted child from--that death.  He knew what that death was
+like--he had seen a big snake kill a goat once, in the circus, for food.
+. . .  The frost in his bones bit deeper, because this was Dhoop Ki
+Dhil--the wonder-woman--who was in there, somewhere close to that snake.
+He heard the Bombay Doctor's tones again, as he ran; and the words of the
+brown-robed mystic went like flame and acid through his blood.
+
+. . . Why couldn't he hear Cadman?  Cadman had the gun.  But if he
+himself could only reach her before the snake--if he could only--  And a
+soft blur of sun-melted red loomed ahead of him.
+
+Dhoop Ki Dhil did not walk, she did not run; but her glide was almost as
+swift as Dhanah's flight.
+
+When Skag met her face to face, he shivered with a shock of
+realisation--her ineffable beauty glowed like coals in a trance of some
+unearthly devotion.  Her human mind was not there--an incomparable calm
+reigned in its stead.
+
+"Come!" he urged strangely.
+
+She moved with him, tilting her beautiful head to indicate something
+behind.
+
+He looked--the snake was coming through the long narrow path, coming on;
+huge undulations, touching the ground but coming through the air, without
+any look of haste.  The path was plenty wide for it, there was plenty
+time for it--it was overtaking them as if they stood still.
+
+Then, for one eternal moment, Skag knew fear.  It was
+cold--long--metallic.  It was invincible--without pity.  He heard human
+voices and the sound of running water--in a dream.  Near by, he heard a
+low sweet laugh.  The eyes of fathomless splendour beside him were not
+looking into his, but they were full of that love which transcends fear.
+And the birthright of Sanford Hantee rose up in him.
+
+"That's right, come on!" he cried to her.
+
+She looked up; and he followed her glance--one great undulation swayed
+above them--surging in oozy motion--curving down; just higher than their
+faces--a broad flat head--thin lateral lips--stark lidless eyes.
+
+Skag ran with his arm about Dhoop Ki Dhil's shoulders.  He ran as fast as
+he could--and still look up.  He dared not loosen his eyes from those
+eyes of evil--he must hold them with what strength he had.
+
+They were utterly patient--those eyes of unveiled malice; as if there had
+never been strength in the universe but that of sin--as if sin looked
+down for the first time on something different.
+
+Skag was perfectly definite in his intention; he meant to hold the snake
+if he could.  Some of his training had been in the use of his eyes to
+control animals under stress.
+
+So he ran with his arm about Dhoop Ki Dhil's shoulders, the flame of his
+volitional power burning straight up into those pitiless, lidless
+eyes--till he came into a sentiency that had no cognisance of time.
+
+. . . The raw curse of wickedness and the bitter length of hate, beat
+down upon him--out of the great snake's naked eyes.  The deadly stench of
+old corruption, poured down upon him--in the great snake's breath.
+
+It challenged the manhood and womanhood of his humankind, with all the
+crimes of violence they had ever done.  Skag met it wistfully at first,
+with knowledges of loving-kindness; then a rising force that almost
+choked him, of confidence in ultimate good.
+
+. . . Cadman had found the right path at last.  What he saw blotted
+everything else out.  Calling his reserves of control, he sighted with
+the utmost care.  His big-game bullet shattered the serpent's head.  It
+launched backward and Skag heard a heavy stroke on the ground, almost
+before he realised that the lidless eyes of ancient evil had disappeared
+from so near his face.
+
+A mighty shout went up from the people, as the monster coils began to
+thresh living bamboo into pulp.  No one saw the hands of the two
+Americans grip.
+
+Then the majesties of High Himalaya and the distances of star-lit night,
+poured forth from Dhoop Ki Dhil's lifted lips.
+
+Cadman and Skag followed her among the people going back to the village.
+Once she whirled with an inimitable movement, flinging her fingers toward
+Skag, in a gesture that seemed to focus the eyes of the whole world upon
+him.  (And in that instant, the American men could not have spoken a
+word--for the richness of her in their hearts.)
+
+The light of intelligence flooded her face; her mind had returned to her,
+unmarred--a radiant scintillance.
+
+"She is naming you 'Rana Jai' for the generations to come," Cadman
+interpreted.  "She says no mortal man ever held the king of all serpents
+from his stroke--ever delayed him from his chosen prey--this thing they
+have seen you do.  It is your tradition for the future.
+
+"She says I am your guardian, sent by the gods, to destroy the
+serpent--for your sake--so saving the people."  Cadman finished huskily.
+
+"But I didn't reach him, Cadman," Skag protested.  "I didn't touch
+him--inside!"
+
+As they all came into the village enclosure, Dhoop Ki Dhil slipped into a
+house near by, saying that Dhanah thought the child slept too deeply--she
+would care for her.
+
+The people were beside themselves with joy.  But presently Dhoop Ki Dhil
+came out, looking straight up.  Her hands were palm to palm, reaching
+slowly upward from her breast to their full stretch; there she gently
+opened them apart.  A perfect hush fell on all.
+
+"The child is gone," Cadman said, in an undertone.
+
+Then the people began a low chant.  It was not mourning.  It was as if a
+great multitude sang a great lullaby together.
+
+"Boy, boy!  This is a hard knock at our civilisation!"
+
+Cadman was not aware that he had spoken.  Skag shook his head.
+
+"God! how I love it!" burst from him; and he had no shame of that love.
+
+Little Koob Soonder's body--in heavy silks of gleaming blue--was laid on
+a bamboo pyre.  Dhoop Ki Dhil tenderly sprinkled flower-petals and
+incense-oils over all, and lighted the four corners for the motherless
+one, herself.  Cadman and Skag watched the clean flames, till only silver
+ashes were on the ground.  And all the while the people sang their great
+soft lullaby, without tears or any sign of mourning.
+
+Hours later, the voice of Dhoop Ki Dhil rose on the night--far away.  It
+seemed to compass the planet with its golden power and to descend from
+the empyrean of sound; further and further--transcending the voices of
+the wild--the very heart of love, the very soul of light.  But they saw
+no more of her; and the people next morning made no reply to Cadman's
+natural enquiry; no one would tell what had happened to Dhoop Ki Dhil.
+
+All the way to the edge of the great Grass Jungle, where they had come
+in, a multitude went before and after--establishing the tradition of
+their deliverance.  Finally Cadman asked the people why they spoke no
+word of Dhoop Ki Dhil, excepting as to things finished.  The people bowed
+their heads and one answered for them all:
+
+"It is finished.  When we of the Grass Jungle mourn, we do not use words."
+
+
+As they walked slowly into the open, listening to the voices of the
+child-people, the name "Rana Jai" recurred often.
+
+"I haven't heard what that word means yet," Skag said.
+
+"Rana Jai?" Cadman repeated.  "The exact translation is Prince of
+Victory; but Dhoop Ki Dhil made her meaning clear--Son of Power; a great
+deal more."
+
+After that, they had little to say.  Certainly Cadman would never forget
+the length of time he had seen the looming head--less than two feet from
+Skag's face--the incredible power that flamed up out of the young man's
+eyes.  Certainly Skag was full of content as to the safety of the people.
+But all realisations were lost in a gnawing depression about Dhoop Ki
+Dhil.
+
+When they came to Sehora, the station-man held out a letter in quaintly
+written English; it read:
+
+
+_From the wayside Dhoop Ki Dhil sends greetings to Son of Power, most
+exalted; and to his guardian, most devoted._
+
+_She pays votive offerings from this day, at sunrise and at sunset, for
+those men--incense and oils and seed--to safety from all evil, and
+fulfillment of their so-great destiny._
+
+_The gods, all-beneficent, have preserved him--Jiwan Kawi, the man of
+men!  He met her in the night-paths; and he goes now with her--to her own
+people.  Jiwan Kawi, the man of men!_
+
+_The Grass Jungles are in her heart, like dead rose-leaves; their perfume
+in her blood, is forever before the gods--remembering Son of Power and
+his guardian._
+
+_Dhoop Ki Dhil touches their holy feet._
+
+
+The two Americans looked into each other's eyes, without words--the
+Calcutta-bound train was alongside.
+
+"Remember, I'm responsible for you from now on, son!" Cadman said, as he
+loosed Skag's hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Monkey Glen_
+
+Skag and Cadman were back in Hurda where Dickson Sahib lived, and the
+younger man was disconsolate at the thought of Cadman's leaving for
+England.  During those few last days they were much together in the
+open jungle around the ancient unwalled city; and once as they walked,
+two strange silent native men passed them going in toward the
+wilderness.
+
+"The priests of Hanuman," Cadman whispered.
+
+Skag enquired.  He had a new and enlarged place in his mind for
+everything about these men.  Cadman explained that these priests serve
+the monkey people: to this purpose they are a separate priesthood.
+Abandoning possessions and loves and hates of their kind, they live
+lives of austerity, mingling with the monkey people in their own
+jungles; eating, drinking with them; sleeping near; playing and
+mourning with them--in every possible way giving expression to
+good-will.  All this they do very seriously, very earnestly, with
+reverence mingled with pity.
+
+"The masses here think these men worship the monkeys," Cadman added.
+"It's not true.  Most Europeans dismiss them as fanatics--equally
+absurd.  I've been out with them."
+
+Skag had actually seen the faces of the two men just passed.  The
+impression had not left his mind.  They were dark clean faces, grooved
+by much patient endurance, strong with self-mastery and those fainter
+lines that have light in them and only come from years of service for
+others.
+
+Cadman certainly had no scorn for these men.  He had passed days and
+nights with their kind in one of the down-country districts.  His tone
+was slow and gentle when he spoke of that period.  It wasn't that
+Cadman actually spoke words of pathos and endearment.  Indeed, he might
+have said more, except that two white men are cruelly repressed from
+each other in fear of being sentimental.  They are almost as willing to
+show fear as an emotion of delicacy or tenderness.
+
+"The more you know, the more you appreciate these forest men," Cadman
+capitulated and laughed softly at the sudden interest in Skag's face as
+he added: "I understand, my son.  You want to go into the jungle with
+these masters of the monkey craft.  You want to read their lives--far
+in, deep in yonder.  Maybe they'll let you.  They were singularly good
+to me. . . .  It may be they will see that thing in your face which
+knocks upon their souls."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+Cadman laughed again.
+
+"In the West they know little of these things; but the fact is, it's
+quite as you've been taught: the more a man overcomes himself, the more
+powers he puts on for outside work.  And when a man is in charge of
+himself all through, he has a look in his eye that commands--yes, even
+finds fellowship with the priests of Hanuman."
+
+"Would these priests see such a look?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because they have it themselves.  It's evident as sun-tan, to the
+seers, who are what they are because they rule themselves.  Your old
+Alec Binz had it right.  You handle wild animals in cages or afield
+just in proportion as you handle yourself.  Those who command
+themselves see self-command when it lives in the eye of another. . . .
+They called me--those priests did--years ago.  I almost wanted to live
+with them for a while; but it was too hard."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"They said I must forsake all other things in life to serve the monkey
+people--that I must stay years with them, winning their faith, before I
+would be of value--that all life in the world must be forgotten."
+
+Cadman laughed wistfully.  "I wasn't big enough," he added, "or mad
+enough, as you like.  Perhaps they'll know you at once, or it might
+take labour and patience to convince them you have not an unkind
+thought toward any of their monkey friends and no scorn of them because
+they serve in such service."
+
+The out and out staring fact of the whole matter, Skag realised, was
+that these priests believed the monkeys to be a race of men who have
+been far gone in degeneration.  They gave their lives to help the
+return progress.  The order of Hanuman had already endured for many
+generations.  The value of their work was hardly appreciable from any
+standpoint outside; they counted little the years of a man's life; they
+were trained in patience to a degree hardly conceivable to a Western
+mind.
+
+". . . Of course they work in the dark," Cadman said.  "The natives try
+to obey in these matters, but do not understand; and one young European
+with a rifle can undo a whole lot of their devoted labour among the
+tree-people.  You see, the priests work with care and kindness,
+following, ministering, accustoming the monkeys to them, never
+betraying them in the slightest--"
+
+Skag nodded, keenly attentive.  He knew well from his experience as a
+show trainer what it means to get the confidence of the big cats; and
+how months of careful work could be ruined in a moment by an ignorant
+hand.  Deep, steady, inextinguishable _kindness_ was the thing.
+
+"Yes, to be kind and square," Cadman resumed.  "And one of the
+strangest and most remarkable things that ever came to me in the shape
+of a sentence was from one of these priests.  He was an old man, grey
+pallor stealing in under the weathered brown of his face.  He had that
+look in his eye that has nothing to do with years, but means that a man
+is so sufficient unto himself that he can forget himself utterly. . . .
+He spoke of the condition of the tree-folk, of the incommunicable
+sorrow of them--as if it were his own destiny.  The one sentence of
+his, hard to forget--in English would be like this:
+
+"_'After a man has lived with these monkey people for a long time, and
+always been kind, one of them may come and stand before him and let
+tears roll down his hairy face.  And this is all the confession of
+sorrow he can make!'_"
+
+Skag caught the deep thing that had stirred Cadman.  The latter added
+with a touch of scorn:
+
+"Once I told this thing, as I have told you, to a group of Europeans in
+a steamer's smoking room.  And two of them laughed--thought I was
+telling a funny story. . . .  These priests are apt to be very bitter
+toward one who wrongs one of their free-friends.  They believe that it
+is a just and good thing to make a man pay with his life, for taking
+the life of a monkey; because it impedes his coming up and embitters
+the others.  One way to look at it?"
+
+
+Skag was in and out of the jungle most of the days after Cadman left
+for Bombay to sail.  Closer and closer he drew to the deep, sweet
+earthiness and the mysteries carried on outside the ken of most men.
+One dawn, from a distance he watched a sambhur buck pause on the brow
+of a hill.  The creature shook his mane and lifted up his nose and
+sniffed the dawn of day.
+
+Skag knew that it was good to him, knew how the sensitive grey nostrils
+quivered wide, drinking deep draughts of cool moist air.  The grasses
+were rested; the trees seemed enamoured of the deep shadows of night.
+The river gurgled musically from the jagged rocks of her mid-current to
+the overleaning vines and branches of her borders.
+
+This was a side stream of the Nerbudda.  Already Skag shared with the
+natives the attitude of devotion to the great Nerbudda.  She was sacred
+to the people, and to every creature good, for her gift was like the
+gift of mothers.  When all the world was parched and full of deep
+cracks, yawning beneath a heaven white and cloudless, and rain forsook
+the land, and every leaf hung heavy and dust-laden; when heat and
+thirst and famine all increased, till creatures crept forth from their
+hot lairs at evening and moved in company--who had been enemies, but
+for sore suffering--then would she yield up her pure tides to satisfy
+their utmost craving. . . .
+
+Skag lived deep through that morning.  The rose and amber radiance of
+dawn fell into all the hearts of all the birds; and wordless songs came
+pulsing up from roots of growing things.  The sambhur lifted high his
+head again and spread the fan of one ear toward the wind, while one
+breathed twice.  Then there fell a sudden rustling on the branches; and
+swift along the river's brim, the sharp, plaintive cry of monkeys,
+beating down through all the startled stillness with their wailing
+voices.  These turned, hurrying away in one direction, with fearless
+leaps and clinging hands and ceaseless chattering.  Their cries at
+intervals, bringing answers, until the air was a-din with monkeys,
+leaping along the highways of the trees.
+
+Women of the villages, children tending goats, labourers among the
+driftings of the hills and on the open slopes, holy men and those who
+toiled at any craft--heard the shrill calls along the margins of the
+jungle and knew that some evil had fallen on a leader of his kind among
+the monkey people.
+
+Then Skag saw two priests of Hanuman rising up from the denser shadows
+where the river was lost in the jungle.  Quickly girding themselves,
+they followed the multitudes.  Skag did not miss their stern faces, nor
+the instant pause as they dipped their brown feet with prayers into the
+river.  He dared to follow.  The priests turned upon him, silent,
+frowning; but he was not sent back.
+
+Skag recalled Cadman's words, but also that he was known among the
+natives as one white man not an animal-killer.  His name Son of Power
+had followed him to Hurda; word about him had travelled with mysterious
+rapidity.  To his amazement Skag found that the people of Hurda knew
+something of the story of the tiger-pit and his part in delivering the
+Grass Jungle people from the toils and tributes of the great
+snake. . . .  He was not sent back.
+
+For a long time, until the forenoon was half spent, the three marched
+silently.  One halted at length to pick up from the leaves a white silk
+kerchief, bearing in one corner two English letters wrought in
+needle-work.  This was lifted by the elder of the priests and folded in
+the thick windings of his loin-cloth.  Deeper and deeper into the
+jungle they travelled, never far from the river.
+
+Suddenly the branches parted, the path ceased; a smooth, perfect carpet
+of tender, green grass spread out before them and reached and clung to
+the lip of a deep, clear pool--beaten out through the ages, by the
+weight of the stream falling on a lower ledge of rock from the brow of
+a massive boulder.  The mighty trees of the forest stretched their huge
+arms over this spot, as if to keep it secret, so that even the fierce
+sunshine was mellowed before it touched the earth.
+
+In the midst of rich grasses, in the shadow of an overleaning rock, a
+wounded monkey lay stretched upon fresh leaves.  The two priests went
+near him, softly, while the tree-branches filled in and swayed--under
+weight of monkeys finding places.  Here and there a local chattering
+broke the stillness for a moment, where some dry branch snapped,
+refusing to bear its burden.
+
+For minutes the two hesitated, considering the wounded one; then the
+elder priest drew out the kerchief.  Skag did not understand all the
+words spoken, but he made out that this kerchief was a token that
+should find the hand that caused the wound "_and seal it unto
+torment_."  The second priest's lips moved, repeating the same
+covenant.  The elder then turned back toward the city, signifying that
+Skag might follow.
+
+After they had walked some time, the old priest halted and drew forth
+the kerchief again.  He examined the monogram woven with a fine needle
+into the corner.  To him the shape of the first English letter was like
+a ploughshare, and the second was like the form in which certain large
+birds fly in company over the heights of the hill country.  The priest
+looked long, then hid the kerchief once more, and they hurried on.
+
+Near the unwalled city, the priest sat down before the pandit, Ratna
+Ram, whose seat was under the kadamba tree by the temple of Maha Dev.
+Ratna Ram was learned in the signs of different languages and could
+write them with a reed, so that those who had knowledge could decipher
+his writing, even after many days and at a great distance: Ratna Ram,
+to whom the gods had given that greatest of all kinds of wisdom,
+whereby he could hold secretly any knowledge and not speak of it till
+the thing should be accomplished.  (The pandit was well known to Skag
+who studied Hindi before him for an hour or more, on certain days.)
+
+Taking the reed from Ratna Ram, the old priest carefully reproduced the
+letters he had memorised--A. V.--explained that he had found a
+kerchief, doubtless fallen from some foreigner as he walked in the
+jungle. . . .  Did the pandit know the man whose name was written
+so? . . .  Now the priest spoke rapidly in his own tongue, repeating
+the covenant Skag had heard him pronounce in the monkey glen.
+
+For a while Ratna Ram sat silent.  The priest waited patiently, knowing
+that the pandit's wisdom was working in him and that he was considering
+the matter.
+
+Then Ratna Ram spoke to the priest:
+
+"Oh, Covenanted, you are learned in many things and I am ignorant.  But
+knowledge of some things has pierced to my understanding like a sharp
+sword.  Consider, oh, Covenanted, Indian Government, who is lord over
+all this land, over the Mussulman and over us also, over our lands and
+over all our possessions, in whose hand is the protection of our lives
+and the safety of our cattle.  The foreigner has no honour to the life
+of any creature of the jungle, neither in his heart, nor in his
+understanding, nor in his laws.  But know this and understand it; to
+Government the life of one human is heavier to hold in the hand than
+all the lives of all the tribes of the people of Hanuman.  This is a
+good and wise thing to remember at this time, for there is no safe
+place to hide from Government in all this land; no, not even in the
+rocks, if he be searching for those who have taken one of his lives;
+and there is no force to bring before him to meet his force; and there
+is no holding the life from him, that he will take in punishment; and
+if many lives have taken his one life, he will have them all.  Consider
+these sayings."
+
+When Ratna Ram had ceased speaking, the priest sat without answering
+for a short space; then he inquired:
+
+"Has Government force enough to put between, that we should not
+accomplish to take the slayer alive?"
+
+"No.  His armies are not here; but it would not be many days before
+they would reach this place."
+
+"Not before our purpose could be fulfilled?"
+
+"It may be, not _before_.  But soon after."
+
+"That is well.  We fear not death.  Shall we not surely die?  What
+matters it?  Our covenant stands."
+
+Ratna Ram begged the priest to rest a little under the kadamba tree.
+Rising up, he gathered his utensils of writing and put them in a
+cotton-bag; and with a glance at Skag to follow, left the place walking
+toward the city.  Skag knew by this time, that his teacher, the pandit,
+considered the matter of serious import.  They reached the verandah
+steps of an English bungalow and Skag would have retired, but Ratna Ram
+would not hear, wishing him to keep a record of this affair.
+
+"The priest of Hanuman trusts _you_," he said, "and my righteousness to
+him, as well as to Government, must have witness."
+
+He knocked.  A girl came to the door.  All life was changed for
+Skag. . . .  The girl, seeing the shadowed face of the pandit, inquired
+if he sorrowed with any sorrow.
+
+"Only the sorrow that over-shadows thy house, Gul Moti-ji."
+
+Ratna Ram explained that he had come in warning, but also in equal
+service for the priests of Hanuman who wanted the life of her
+cousin--A. V.--the young stranger from England.  The fact that the
+young man was away from Hurda this day was well for him, because he had
+shot and wounded a great monkey, the king of his people.
+
+In the next few minutes Skag missed nothing, though his surface
+faculties were merely winding spools, compared to the activity of a
+great machine within.  He grasped that A. V. stood for Alfred Vernon,
+the girl's cousin, a young man recently from England. . . .  Yes, A. V.
+had occasionally gone into the jungle with a light rifle.  Sometimes he
+had brought in a wild duck, or a grey _marhatta_ hare; once a
+black-horned gazelle, but usually a parrot, a peacock or a jay. . . .
+Yes, sometimes he had been gone for hours. . . .  Yes, she had told him
+about the evil and also the danger of shooting monkeys.
+
+Skag now recalled the young man with the rifle--a well-fed,
+well-groomed, well-educated young Englishman, thoroughly qualified
+sometime, to make a successful civil engineer and a career and fortune
+for himself in India.
+
+The girl apparently had not seen Skag so far.  The pandit had called
+her Gul Moti-ji.  So this was the Rose Pearl--the unattainable! . . .
+And now the pandit informed her that though the cousin might be
+scornful, it would only be because he was foolish with the foolishness
+of the ignorant.
+
+"But I am not scornful.  I understand--" the girl said.  "I am only
+considering swiftly what can be done."
+
+"They are waiting the death of the great monkey--"
+
+The girl's eyes were filled with shadows and great energies also.
+
+"If his life could be saved?"
+
+"Then his life could be saved, Gul Moti-ji," the pandit replied
+briefly, but Skag knew he meant the life of the cousin.
+
+"Is it far?"
+
+"Yes, two hours' walk."
+
+Someone within the door of the bungalow now spoke, saying: "Carlin,
+dear, I may be a bit late--you must not be troubled about me."
+
+The girl answered the voice within. . . .  So her name was also Carlin.
+She had many names surely, but Skag liked this last one best.  She
+turned to the pandit now, speaking slowly:
+
+"Did one of the priests of Hanuman come to you with this story--just
+now?"
+
+"Yes, Gul Moti-ji."
+
+"Is he waiting?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will he take me--to the place of the wounded one?"
+
+The pandit considered.  Skag felt very sure that the priest would do
+this.
+
+"I will ask him.  I can do no more.  If the monkey still lives--your
+cousin's only hope will be in your healing power, Hakima."
+
+"Wait--I will go with you, now."
+
+Skag released his breath deeply when she had re-entered.  Apparently
+she had not seen him so far.
+
+
+The old priest arose as the three approached the kadamba tree.
+
+"Peace, Brother," the girl said to him.
+
+"Unto thee also, peace," he replied.
+
+Skag marvelled at the inflections of her voice--low trailing words that
+awoke at intervals into short staccato utterances.  It was all awake
+and alive with feeling.  She did not ignore a fact the English often
+miss, that there are certain unwritten laws of these elder people which
+are as potent and unswerving as any mind-polished tablets that have
+come down to England from Greece and Rome.
+
+It was an hour of marvelling to Skag.  He saw something that he had not
+seen so far in India.  To her face the darker Indian blood was but a
+redolence.  Doubtless it was because of this--some ancient wonder and
+depth of lineage--that Skag had looked twice.  He had never looked upon
+a woman this way before.  No array of terms can convey the innocence of
+his concept. . . .  She was tall for a girl--almost eye to eye with him.
+
+He didn't quite follow her words of Hindi, but his mind was running
+deep and true to hers, in meanings.  She told the priest that she had
+come to save her cousin, who never could be made to understand what he
+had done, even though he lost his life in forfeit.  She said the monkey
+people would be devastated, if he paid his life; that the priests of
+Hanuman would be driven deeper and deeper into the jungles; that her
+heart was with them in soundness of understanding, for she was of India
+who hears and understands.  She held up a little basket saying she had
+brought bandages, stimulants, nourishments, and had come asking
+permission to go with the priests now, to the wounded one, to care for
+him with her own strength. . . .
+
+Skag saw that her scorn for the ignorance that had caused the wound was
+a true thing; that she felt something of the mystery of pity for the
+monkey people; that she could be very terrible in her rage if she let
+it loose, but that she loved this stupid cousin also.  All Skag's
+faculties were playing at once, for he perceived at the same time this
+girl would see many things of life in terms of humour and it would be
+good to travel the roads with her because of this. . . .  Apparently
+she had not seen him, Sanford Hantee, to this moment.
+
+The priest weighed her words and spoke coldly, saying that his order
+did not consider consequences to men, when they took life.  A monkey
+king had been shot.  The wound was eating him to death.  It was
+unwritten law which may never be broken, for the life of one who kills
+a monkey to be taken by the priests of Hanuman.  Up through the ages
+this law had not served to destroy the monkey people, but to protect
+them.
+
+The girl said gently: "Let me go to him.  Do you not see that I am
+indeed of this land, with its blood in my veins?"
+
+
+Ratna Ram had taken his seat once more under the kadamba tree.  It was
+early afternoon and the three were travelling through the jungle.  The
+girl Carlin was always looking ahead--one thing only upon her
+mind--time and distance and words, as clearly obstructions to her, as
+the occasional branches across the path.  Once when Skag fixed a big
+stone for her to pass dry across a shallow ford, she turned to thank
+him, but her eyes did not actually fill with any image of himself.  He
+missed nothing--neither the standpoint of the priest, nor of the
+English, nor the vantage of this girl who stood between.
+
+It was a queer breathless day for him, altogether to his liking, but
+more intense than he understood.  The girl's lithe power, the
+tirelessness of her stride, the quick grace, low voice and
+steady-shaded eyes full of, full of--
+
+Skag hadn't the word at hand.  Cadman Sahib would know. . . .  That
+look of the eyes seldom went with young faces, Skag reflected; in fact,
+he had only found it before in old mothers and old nurses and old
+physicians.  Certainly it had to do with forgetting oneself in
+service. . . .
+
+The priest began to talk or chant as he strode along.  It was neither
+speech nor song.  It did not bring the younger two closer together,
+though they saw that monkeys were following, up in their tree-lanes.
+At times when Skag dropped behind, he wondered why the girl did not see
+the things that delighted him--a sparkling pool, the gleam of damp
+rocks, the velvet moss with restless etchings of sunbeam.  Yet he knew
+that it was only to-day she looked past these things; that these really
+were her things; that she belonged to the jungle, not to the
+house. . . .  She must greatly love this stupid cousin. . . .  Skag
+never tired watching the firm light tread of her--like the step of one
+who starts out to win a race. . . .  There was jubilant music of a
+waterfall--the priest reverently stopped his chanting.
+
+Then they came to the great rock and the second priest arose, his eye
+glancing past Skag and Carlin to the eye of his fellow of the order of
+Hanuman.
+
+For an instant the silence was of an intensity that hurt.
+
+"Is he--?" Carlin began.
+
+The priest who had brought them answered, though there had been no
+words:
+
+"No, the king yet lives."
+
+Under the shadow of the overleaning rock, stretched on fresh wet
+leaves, the monkey king was lying.  His eyes were bright, but the haze
+of fever was over them; thin grey lips parted and parched; a strained
+look about the mouth.  He breathed in quick, panting breaths--too far
+gone to be afraid, as Carlin leaned over; but there was a forward
+movement in the over-hanging branches, a swift breathless shifting of
+the monkeys.
+
+She opened the little basket.  Skag watched her face as she first laid
+her hand on the monkey's head.  He saw the thrill of horror and
+understood it well, for this was alien flesh her hand touched--not like
+the flesh of horse or dog or cow which is all animal.  She struggled
+with a second revulsion, but put it away.  She found the wound in the
+shoulder and asked for hot water, which a priest quickly prepared and
+brought in an earthen jar.  She bathed the wound, and put some liquid
+on his dry lips.  The tree man was too full of alien suffering to be
+cognisant, as yet; but the great test was now, when under her hands
+appeared a little instrument of jointed steel. . . .  She was talking
+to him softly as to a sick child.  He drew a quick breath--his eyes
+wide as a low cry came from him, and the whole forest seemed to quiver
+with a suffocating interest, monkeys ever pressing nearer.  Skag saw
+one little brown hand stretch (twisting as if to bury its thumb) and
+lay hold of Carlin's dress. . . .  Then he sighed, like a whip of air
+when a spring is released and Skag saw the bullet in the instrument.
+
+It was held before him.  She dropped it into Skag's hand thinking it
+was the priest's. . . .  Then she dressed the wound, giving medicine
+and nourishment until the tree king slept.
+
+The afternoon was spent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_The Monkey Glen (Continued)_
+
+In the lull Carlin appeared to have no thought of going back to Hurda.
+The younger priest made her comfortable with dry leaves.  Skag brought
+a log for her to lean against.  For the first time she appeared to
+notice that he was not one of the priests of Hanuman. . . .  She did
+not speak.  Dusk was falling.  At intervals she would look into his
+face.  The priests brought fruit and chapattis.  Delicate sounds of a
+wide stillness began to steal through the shadows.  Creatures of the
+forest crept out from their lairs and called, one to another.  Down
+towards the river a tiger coughed; and there was a shiver along the
+branches where the monkeys sat.  The priests had merely glanced at each
+other.  Carlin had not seemed to hear.
+
+Three torches were kept blazing through the night, and by their light
+the girl gave medicine and nourishment to the wounded one from time to
+time.  She did not speak to Skag, who often sat before her for an
+interval, but she would occasionally look into his face, her eyes
+dwelling with a curious calm upon him.
+
+In the morning the wounded one was conscious.  That day the suffering
+wore upon him, and they brought wet leaves as the sun rose higher and
+kept them changed beneath him, for coolness. . . .  The fever left him
+after the heat of noon.  Not until then, did Carlin look upon Skag and
+speak at the same time.
+
+"Have I seen you before? . . .  Who are you?"
+
+When Skag heard himself answer, he realised his voice had something in
+it he had never known before.
+
+
+. . . That afternoon Carlin went back to Hurda, but came again for an
+hour late in the afternoon.  The next morning early, she came once more
+and Skag was there.  That afternoon, the elder priest said:
+
+"He will live."
+
+"Yes," Carlin repeated softly.
+
+"But you don't seem glad," Skag said.
+
+She was looking back toward the city.
+
+"I was wondering if I could make them see what it means to spend the
+afternoon in the jungle with a rifle."
+
+"Couldn't they understand that this work of yours has delivered your
+cousin from death?"
+
+"Oh, no, they would laugh at that.  They would remind me that I have
+always been strange.  Even if my cousin lost his life, they would not
+learn.  The priests would be called fanatics and would be made to
+suffer and all the monkey-peoples--"
+
+Skag could see that.
+
+"Why do you not leave them?"
+
+"Oh, I do not hate my people.  I have many brothers, real men; and then
+you must know English Government does wonderful things."
+
+They were starting back toward the city leaving the two priests.  Most
+strangely, as no one Skag had ever met, Carlin could see the native and
+the English side of things.  He felt that Cadman would say this of her,
+too.  He wanted sanction on such things, because he felt that already
+his judgment was not cold--on matters that concerned her.  Everything
+about her was more than one expected.  She seemed to have an open
+consciousness, which saw two or all sides of a question before speech.
+
+
+A great weakness had come upon Skag.  It was in his limbs and in his
+voice and in his mind.  It had not been so when the priests were near,
+nor when there was work to do.  Now they were alone; the jungle was
+vast with a new vastness.  The girl was taller and more powerful--her
+sayings veritable, equitable.  There were golden flashes among the rich
+shadows of her mind, like the cathedral dimness of the jungle on their
+right hand as they walked, slanting shafts of sunlight raining through.
+
+They walked slowly.  Skag reflected that since his first sight of the
+sambhur, he had watched and done nothing.  All his life had been like
+that.  Yet this girl watched and worked, too.  She loved the English
+and the natives, too.  She had skilled hands, a trained body, a
+cultured mind--certainly a wonderful mind, as full of wonder as this
+jungle, with a sacred river flowing through.
+
+Moreover, she could ask questions like Cadman--the spirit of things.
+He told her of his mother, of his running away from school when he
+first saw the animals at Lincoln Park Zoo, how they enveloped him, so
+that he thought nothing but of them, lived only for animals later as a
+circus trainer, and had come to India to see the life of the wild
+creatures outside of cages. . . .  His tongue fumbled in the telling.
+
+"But I do not see yet, why the priests of Hanuman let you go with
+them--"
+
+"Nor I," said Skag.
+
+"But they know you are not an animal-killer--"
+
+They walked rather slowly. . . .  Night was upon them when they reached
+the edge of the jungle and heard voices.  The back of Skag's hand
+nearest Carlin was swiftly touched and she whispered breathlessly:
+
+"My people.  They are coming for me--good-bye---"
+
+The last few words had been just for him; the tone might have come up
+from the centre of himself.
+
+Skag was alone, but he did not hurry into the city.  There was more in
+the solitude than ever before, more mystery in the jungle, more in the
+dusty scent of the open road.  Greater than all, in spite of all
+doubting and realisation of insignificance, there was unquestionably
+more in himself.
+
+Early the next morning, Skag was abroad in the city and saw the two
+priests of Hanuman approach Ratna Ram.  They raised their hands in
+silent greeting as he came near and immediately arose and turned toward
+Carlin's bungalow.  Skag was glad to follow, when they signified he
+might, for the thing at hand was his own deep concern.  There was a
+catch in his throat as Carlin appeared on the verandah.  Her eyes met
+Skag's before she spoke to the priests.
+
+"Is he worse?"
+
+The elder spoke for both, as is the custom:
+
+"Peace be on thee, thou of gentle voice and skillful hands.  We greet
+thee in the name of Hanuman; and are come, to render up to thee the
+forfeit life, even according to our covenant; for thou hast saved the
+wounded king, and he will not die.  Behold the cloth with the shape of
+the foreigner's sign in it; this we held for a token that the
+foreigner's life was ours: this we render now to thee.  His life is
+thine and not ours."
+
+The old man laid the silk kerchief at Carlin's feet.
+
+Skag had thought the danger over yesterday, but he saw that the young
+Englishman's life held in ransom, had only just now been returned to
+the girl. . . .  That forenoon was the time to Skag of the great
+tension.  Carlin had stood for a moment longer than necessary on the
+verandah, after the priests had turned away.  It was as if she would
+speak--but that might signify anything or nothing.  It was just a point
+that made the hours more breathless now, like the sentence of quick low
+tones last night, when the voices of her people were heard at the edge
+of the jungle.  Were these everything or nothing--glamour or life-lock?
+Often he remembered that her eyes had sought his to-day, even before
+looking to the priests for news.
+
+
+He stood at the edge of the jungle at high noon.  The city was filmed
+in heat.  Faint sounds seemed to come out of the sky.  Skag was
+watching one certain road.  The trance of stillness was not broken.  He
+turned back into the green shade. . . .  He would not delay in Hurda.
+He would not linger.  His friend Cadman had been gone for some days.
+Yet about going there was a new and intolerable pain.
+
+Skag forced himself back from the clearing.  He felt less than himself
+with his eyes fixed upon that certain road; a man always does when he
+wants something terribly.  Still he did not enter the deep jungle.  At
+last he heard a step.  He turned very slowly, not at all like a man to
+whom the greatest thing of all has happened. . . .  Carlin had come and
+was saying:
+
+". . . I heard voices in the house this morning when you came.  Someone
+was listening, so I could not speak. . . .  Something keeps
+growing--something about our work in the jungle.  I want to go to the
+monkey glen again--now."
+
+It was like unimaginable riches.  There were moments in which he had
+counterpart thoughts for hers in his own mind; as if she spoke from
+another lobe of his own brain.  Her words expressed himself.
+
+"I thought you would be here," she told him presently.  "I wanted to
+see you again."
+
+She was flushed from crossing the broad area tranced in noon heat; and
+now the green cool of the jungle was sweet to her, and they were close
+together, but walking not so slowly as last night. . . .  Loneliness
+came to them when they reached the empty place where the wounded one
+had lain in the shelter of the rock.  They felt strangely excluded from
+something that had belonged to them.  All the wide branches above were
+empty.  Still that was only one breath of chill.  Tides of life brimmed
+high between them; they had vast mercies to spare for outer sorrows.
+
+"He may not have done so well after being moved," she whispered.
+
+Skag was thinking of the cough he had heard.  The monkeys had
+understood that. . . .  Just now the younger of the two priests of
+Hanuman appeared magically.  There was quiet friendliness deep in his
+calm, desireless eyes.
+
+"All is well," he told them.  "They have carried their king to a yet
+more secret place, where we may not--"
+
+He did not finish that sentence but added: "Only we who serve them may
+go there.  All is well.  They would not have moved him, had they not
+been sure that life was established in him."
+
+The priest did not linger.  Then Carlin wanted to know everything--how
+India had called Skag at the very first. . . .  Was it all jungle and
+animal interest; or was he called a little to the holy men?  Did he not
+yearn to help in the great famine and fever districts; long to enter
+the deep depravities of the lower cities with healing?
+
+Skag had listened in a kind of passion.  Wonderful unfoldment in regard
+to these things had come to him from Cadman Sahib, but as Carlin
+touched upon them, they loomed up in his mind like the slow approach to
+cities from a desert.  Carlin's eyes, turned often to his, were like
+all the shadows of the jungle gathered to two points of essential dark,
+and pinned by a star veiled in its own light.
+
+"I thought it was only the wild animals that called to me, but now I
+know better," he said.  "And my friend Cadman, who has gone, opened so
+much to me.  He often spoke of the holy men, until one had to be
+interested--"
+
+Carlin halted and drew back looking at him with a kind of still
+strength all her own.
+
+"You do not know that the natives think _you_ are something of the
+kind?"
+
+"I--a holy man?"
+
+"I heard them speak of you last night.  You see they have heard of your
+deliverance of the Grass Jungle people."
+
+Skag was learning how wonderfully news travels in India.
+
+"Of course, it was all easy to believe, after what I saw--"
+
+"What did you see?" he asked.
+
+"That the two priests of Hanuman permitted you to follow them here--"
+
+Then Carlin verified what Cadman had said, that the priests make no
+mistakes in these things. . . .  Presently Skag was listening to
+accounts of Carlin's life.  He was insatiable to hear all.  In some
+moments of the telling, it was like a phantom part of himself that he
+was questing for, through her words.  Her story ran from the Vindhas to
+the Western Ghat mountains, touching plain and height and shore (but
+not yet High Himalaya), touching tree jungle, civil station, railway
+station and cantonments; stories including a succession of marvellous
+names of cities and men; intimations that many great servants of India
+and England were of her name; that she had seven living brothers, all
+older; all at work over India.  Finally Skag heard that Carlin had
+spent eight years in England studying medicine and surgery, and again
+that the natives called her the _Gul Moti_, which means the Rose Pearl;
+or _Hakima_, which means physician.  But her own name was Carlin!
+
+When they came back to the edge of the jungle again, it was the hour of
+afterglow.  Its colours entered into him and were always afterward
+identified with her.  Carlin left him, laughingly, abruptly; and Skag
+was so full of the wonder of all the world, that he had not thought to
+ask if he should ever see her again.
+
+
+As night came on, Skag thought more and more of the parting; and that
+there had been no words about Carlin's coming again.  He felt himself
+living breathlessly towards the thought of seeing her; and it was not
+long before this fervour itself awoke within him a counter resistance.
+Manifestly this pain and yearning and tension--was not the way to the
+full secret.  As carefully stated before, Skag approved emphatically of
+the Now.  The present moving point was the best he had at any given
+time.  He thought a man should forget himself in the Now--like the
+animals.
+
+Yet the hours tortured.  That night had little sleep for him, and the
+marvels of Carlin--face and voice, laugh, heart, hand--grew upon him
+contrary to all precedent.  This was a battle against all the wild
+animals rolled into one; most terribly, a battle because there seemed
+such a beauty about the yearning which the girl awoke in him.
+
+He was abroad early next day.  The thought had come, that she might
+find him in the jungle at noon or soon afterward as yesterday.  As the
+dragging forenoon wore on, Skag was in tightening tension.  He hated
+himself for this, but the fact stubbornly remained that all he cared
+for in the world was the meeting again.  It seemed greater than
+he--this agony of separation.  It brought all fears and
+self-diminishing.  It told him that Carlin would run from him, if she
+knew he wanted her presence so.  He knew her kind of woman loves
+self-conquest--the man who can powerfully wait and not be victimised by
+his own emotions. . . .
+
+So it was that Skag fled from himself, when there was still a half hour
+before noon.  He could not meet her, longing like this.
+
+There was sweat on Skag's forehead as his limbs quickened away from the
+place of meeting yesterday.  The more he left it behind, the more sure
+he became that Carlin would come.  It seemed he was casting away the
+one dear and holy thing he had ever known--yet it resolved to this:
+that he dared not stand before her with his heart beating as if he had
+run for miles and his chest suffocating with emotions--the very
+features of his face uncertain, his voice unreliable. . . .  If a man
+entered the cage of a strange tiger, as little master of himself as
+this--it would be taking his life in his own silly hands.  Skag
+couldn't get past this point, and he had a romantic adjustment in his
+mind about Carlin and the tiger--one all his own.
+
+
+Deeper and deeper into the jungle he went, along the little river, but
+all paths appeared to lead him to the monkey glen; and there he sat
+down at last and remembered all that Alec Binz had told him about
+handling himself in relation to handling animals, and all that Cadman
+Sahib had told him from the lips of wise men of India . . . but all
+that Skag could find was pain--rising, thickening clouds of pain.
+
+He kept seeing her continually as she entered the jungle (walking so
+silently and swift, her face flushed from crossing the open space this
+side of the city in the terrible heat of noon)--and then not finding
+him there.  Something about this hurt like degrading a sacred thing,
+but he didn't mean to.  He repeated that he didn't mean to hurt
+her. . . .  Then suddenly it occurred to him that it was all his own
+thinking about her coming at noon.  There had been no word about it.
+She might not have thought of coming again.  This was like a cold
+breath through the jungle.  It was as intolerable as the other thought
+of her disappointment.
+
+. . . There was an almost indistinguishable _slithering_ of soft pads
+in the branches.  Skag looked up suddenly and the air seemed jerked
+with a concussion of his start.  The monkeys were back.  They had been
+watching, the branches filling.  When he looked up, the whole company
+stirred nervously.
+
+Skag laughed.  It was good.  There was but one formulated thought--that
+Carlin would be glad to hear this; she would appreciate this.  The
+return of the monkeys had a deep significance to Skag, because he had
+really first seen the wonder of Carlin just here--working over the
+wounded one.  The immediate tree-lanes were filled with watchers in
+suffocating tension then.  It was curiosity now--nothing covered, but
+playful.  Skag wished he could chant like the priests, for the
+monkey-folk.  He wished he had many baskets of chapattis to spread out
+upon the grasses for them. . . .  As he sat, face-lifted, he heard that
+tiger-cough again.
+
+The monkeys huddled a second--it was panic--then they melted from
+sight.  It was like the swift blowing away one by one, of the top
+papers of a deep pile on a desk.
+
+Skag was now essentially absorbed.  It couldn't be a mistake.  The
+monkeys knew.  He himself knew from days and nights with the big cats.
+There was no cough just like that.  It was in a different direction
+from before, back toward the city this time, but as before, muffled and
+close down to the riverbed. . . .  Nothing of the cub left in that
+cough; neither was there hurry or hunger or any particular rage or
+fear.  A big beast finishing a sleep, down in some sandy niche by the
+river; a solitary beast full of years, a bit drowsy just this moment,
+and in no particular hurry to take up the hunt.  Such was the picture
+that came to Skag with a keen kind of enjoyment.  The thrill had lifted
+his misery for a minute.  This was something to cope with.  It took
+away the heart-breaking sense of inadequacy.
+
+It wasn't the thrill of a hunt that animated Skag.  The fact is, he
+hadn't even a six-shooter along.  This was the closeness of the real
+thing again--the deep joy, perhaps, of testing outside of cages once
+more, the power that had never failed.  And just now along the river
+and beyond the place where the cough came from--Carlin was coming!
+
+The last of the monkeys had flicked away.  Skag arose and held his hand
+high, palm toward her.  She beckoned, but still came forward.  Skag
+moved without haste, but rapidly.  All the beauty and wonder of Carlin
+was the same; it lived in his heart, integrate and unparalleled as
+ever, but some power had come to him from the cough of the tiger.
+Around all the fear, even for her life, was the one splendid
+thing--that she had followed him into the monkey glen.
+
+She was nearing the place where the cough had come from, yet Skag did
+not run.  A second time he held up his hand, palm outward, but she
+still came forward laughing.
+
+"You ran from me?"
+
+"I did not think of you coming so far--to-day."
+
+Skag had stepped between her and the river, turning her toward the
+city, but Carlin drew back.
+
+"I have come so far.  I want to go to our--to the monkey glen!"
+
+She was watching him strangely.  Skag understood something that moment:
+that he might know of Carlin's delight through her eyes, of all joy and
+good that he might bring, but that he should never know from her eyes
+if he brought hurt.  Skag put this back into the deep place of his mind.
+
+"All right.  We'll go back," he said.  "They were here--the whole
+troupe.  Just a minute ago, they swung away--"
+
+He saw for an instant her wonderment that he had come alone.  She would
+have been very glad to see the monkey people again; she could not quite
+see why she should have missed this; she did not understand his
+words--that he had not expected her to follow into the glen.
+
+She was sitting down on her own log, but he stood.  Skag was driven to
+speak.  The need had now to do with one of his favourite words.  It was
+a matter of _equity_ that he speak.  The words came in a slow ordered
+tone:
+
+"I was waiting for you there--back at the edge of the jungle--but it
+came to me that I was not ready."
+
+Carlin had been looking away into the three-lanes.  Her eyes came up to
+his.
+
+"Not ready?" she said.
+
+"All night I could only remember one thing--"
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"That you had not told me you would come again."
+
+Carlin's shoulders lifted a little.  She cleared her throat, saying:
+
+"I thought of it."
+
+"This morning the idea occurred that you might come to the jungle at
+noon--like yesterday, but the hours wouldn't pass after that.  I met
+something different that would not be quiet--"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I mean in myself."
+
+Carlin's eyes widened a little, but she only said:
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"It would not rest.  I could not wait in calm.  I was afraid you
+wouldn't come--yet I was afraid of your coming.  My face worked of its
+own accord, and my words would not say what I knew--"
+
+"When was that?"
+
+"It was worse when I reached the jungle a little before noon and began
+to watch for you."
+
+"And--you ran away?"
+
+"I was not good to look upon."
+
+"But you are not like that now--quite controlled--like blue ice--"
+
+Skag turned his eyes slowly back the path by the river where the cough
+had come from.
+
+"I am better now," he said.
+
+"I wonder if anyone ever thought of running away like that?"
+
+"It is not a good feeling to be at the mercy of oneself," Skag said.
+
+Carlin caught a quick breath.  There was a steadiness in his eyes.  It
+was steadier than anything she knew.  The light of it was so high and
+keen that it seemed _still_.
+
+"Nothing like this has happened before," he said quietly.
+
+Carlin arose.  Their eyes met level.
+
+"Everything is changed," he went on.  "It was like a grief that you
+were not here--when the monkeys came in. . . .  I'm not right.  I did
+not know before that a girl was part of me.  It was all animals before.
+I'm not ready--but I will be!  You are good to listen, but really you
+had to--"
+
+Carlin let her lids fall a second.
+
+"I mean I couldn't stop when it started."
+
+There was silence before he finished: "I know everything better.  I
+know all the creatures better--all the cries they make.  And yet I'm
+less--I'm only half--"
+
+It was then her hand came out to him.
+
+"Does it mean anything to you?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"_Does it mean everything to you--too?_"
+
+Her voice trailed.  It was closer.  It was everywhere.  It was like a
+voice coming up from his own heart:
+
+"Yes, everything--especially because you could run away. . . .  But
+I--came!"
+
+
+They were walking toward Hurda among the shadows, Skag closer to the
+river. . . .  The night was coming with a richness they had never
+seen--tinted shadows of purple, orange and rose--almost a living gleam
+to the colours; the evening air cool and sweet.
+
+Carlin told him that her family must understand and be considered and
+give approval. . . .  There was an eldest brother in Poona who must be
+seen. . . .  All arrangements must be made with him.  Skag said he
+would go to Poona at once. . . .
+
+They were lingering now at the edge of the jungle; its spices upon them
+in the dry air.
+
+". . . And I will wait here in Hurda," Carlin was saying.  "You may be
+gone many days.  You may not find him at once, and you will have to
+wait at Poona, but I shall know when you come.  The train coming _up_
+is before noon.  Listen!  You will not find me at the bungalow.  No,
+that would not be the way for us. . . .  This will be perfect.  I will
+be waiting for you--our place--back in the monkey glen."
+
+"It is the perfect thought, but you must not go back there alone," he
+said.  "I had not meant to tell you now, but it was that--made me
+steady--a tiger back there.  He gave me nerve for your coming--a good
+turn it was, the most needful turn! . . .  Yes, a tiger lying down on
+the river margin, as we talked--do not go in deeper, when I am
+away. . . .  And on the day I come, meet _me here_ at the edge of the
+jungle and we will go in there to our place--together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_Jungle Laughter_
+
+It was while Skag was waiting near Poona, for Carlin's eldest brother
+Roderick Deal, that he became toiled in the snare of his own interest
+in jungle laughter.  It is a strange tale; lying over against the mud
+wall of the English caste system in India.  It is to be understood that
+a civil officer of high rank in that country is a man whose word is
+law.  His least suggestion is imperative.  The usages of his household
+may not be questioned by a thought, if one is wise.
+
+Police Commissioner Hichens was such a man.  He was stationed in Bombay
+and there is nothing better in appointment in all India.  His
+responsibilities were heavy like those of an empire.  Personally he was
+austere--entirely unapproachable.  Of his home life no one knew
+anything whatever, outside the very few of equal rank.  It was
+understood that the mother of his two small children had died more than
+a year ago.  Some indiscreet person had mooted that she was not sent
+Home in time.  Still, European women do not live long in that climate
+anyway; and it is common knowledge that to maintain a family requires
+several successive mothers.
+
+The present Mrs. Hichens was but recently a bride; a mere girl and
+lovely; but within a few weeks of her landing, Bombay fever had begun
+to destroy the more tangible qualities of her beauty--which could not
+be permitted.
+
+It does not take long for the most exalted official to discover that
+Bombay fever resembles the Supreme Being in that it is no respecter of
+persons.  Yet it was not even so nearly convenient to send this Mrs.
+Hichens Home, as it had been to send that Mrs. Hichens Home; and that
+had been quite out of the question.  But the Western Ghat mountains
+furnish a very good barricade against Bombay fever.  (Devoutly inclined
+persons have even intimated that they were specially placed there for
+the convenience of men who are much attached to their homes.)
+
+Extending a thousand miles parallel with the coast, from five to forty
+miles inland, built mostly of pinnacles and peaks rising a few hundred
+or a few thousand feet from near sea level, more rugged than any
+mountains of their size in the world, the Western Ghats are like a
+section of Himalaya in miniature.  The railway line up has a
+reversing-station proclaimed far and wide to be the most splendid piece
+of railway engineering on earth.  (That there are several more splendid
+in the Rocky Mountains is unimportant.)
+
+Just over the top, about seventy miles from Bombay, is Khandalla and
+Lanowli and further on, Poona.  Poona is a military station, sometimes
+too far.  Lanowli is a railway station--which means that no one lives
+there who is fit to associate with a police commissioner's wife.  But
+Khandalla is no station at all, being only a small mountain village
+with three or four abandoned bungalows far apart from each other.
+Heaven knows who built them in the beginning, but whoever it was, they
+must have done it too late, because there is a neglected grave or two
+near each one.
+
+The native agents got in every good argument for the bungalows, but
+Police Commissioner Hichens was not persuaded.  He seemed to have a
+constitutional antipathy to those bungalows.
+
+No, the bungalows might be safer and dryer and warmer at night; they
+might be cleaner and healthier and more comfortable all the time; but
+he wanted a tent and he meant to put it where he wanted it.  So, at
+great expense of time and labour on the part of natives, but very
+little expenditure of money on his part, he succeeded in hoisting a
+tent from Bombay to the top of the Western Ghat mountains, of a size
+and of an age and of a strength which suggested a military mess-camp.
+
+The tent was set up in the Jungle at the edge of Khandalla.  The
+servants would find quarters in Khandalla village; a cook, a cook's
+servant-boy and a butler for the entire household; a boy for the small
+son, an ayah for the wee girl and a very expensive ayah for the lady
+herself.
+
+If an ayah is expensive enough, she is usually a very intelligent
+person, thoroughly informed on most general subjects pertaining to her
+own country and entirely competent to impart that information.  It is
+understood she will always interpret the native standpoint relative to
+any matter under discussion.  Her value as a servant may be great, but
+her value as an instructor will be greater.  It was necessary that each
+of the ayahs should be wife to one of the men servants, but it is
+always possible to make a temporary arrangement of that sort to
+accommodate the customs of a high official.
+
+So the present Mrs. Hichens was to be established in the tent, very
+comfortably matted as to the floor and furnished with all necessary
+appointments of a satisfying quality and wealthy appearance.  Men of
+high rank must do all things with a certain pomp and circumstance,
+otherwise the ignorant might sometimes forget their rank.  And rank
+must never be allowed to be forgotten.
+
+Police Commissioner Hichens would spend all week-ends with her; that is
+to say, he would leave Bombay by the first train going up after Court
+closed on Saturday and would be obliged to take the Sunday evening
+train down.  The two children so recently come into the care of a
+second mother, would be occupied and entertained by their servants; and
+the little girl, not quite three years old, would be under the
+additional guardianship of a Great Dane dog who had once belonged to
+her own mother.
+
+It will be observed that the Great Dane dog is spoken of as a
+personality.  He was so.  He seemed to have quite fixed conclusions
+about the family.  He ignored the servants (excepting Bhanah the cook,
+who was a servant as far out of the ordinary as the lady's own ayah).
+He tolerated the small boy.  He approved of the new lady.  He never
+ceased to mourn for his dead mistress; especially in the presence of
+the man.
+
+He would extend his great length on the floor in a low couchant
+position, not too close to where the man sat--and search the strong
+human face with eyes more strong.  Without the twitch of a muscle
+anywhere in his whole body, he would endure the man's gaze as long as
+the man chose, with a level look of cold, untiring rebuke.  There was
+no anger in it, no flash of light, no flame of passion--but it had a
+way of eating in.
+
+The servants bear common witness that it is the only thing they have
+ever known to drive the Sahib away from the delightful relaxations of
+his own home, which he claimed as sanctuary from the stress and grind
+of his official days.  But the Great Dane Nels had done it more than
+once.  Afterward the Sahib would sometimes take Nels on a
+hunting-furlough.
+
+It was the first Mrs. Hichens who took the puppy with her, when she
+went to India with Police Commissioner Hichens; and before she died he
+was made to promise her on his honour, that he would care for and
+protect Nels as if Nels were his own son, so long as Nels should live.
+There was no help for it.
+
+Especially as it was quite well known among the servants, that on the
+very day of her death she had made the Sahib with his own hands lay the
+sleeping child over on the bed underneath Nels' out-stretched paws;
+because this was done in the presence of Baby's ayah and of her own
+ayah also, and therefore two witnesses had heard her say:
+
+"Nels, I am giving my baby to you.  The Sahib her father is not able to
+be with her, much.  But you are to care for my baby for me.  Do you
+understand, my dear?"  She often called Nels "my dear" with a peculiar
+inflection on the _dear_ and an upward lilt of tone.
+
+And Nels had agreed, because he pressed the little body hard and lifted
+up his big grey head and cried a long, low cry.  And the lady had
+laughed a little and wiped glistening tears from her death-misted face,
+for her baby would be--not _quite_ alone.
+
+So all the servants knew that Nels had owned the child from that day.
+Now it is not a wise thing to antagonise a body of East Indian servants
+in matters which they consider sacred; and Police Commissioner Hichens
+was a lawyer and a judge and a wise man.  He might fear Nels as he
+feared death itself, the two being equivalent in his mind, but he might
+not destroy Nels with his own hand, nor let it be known that he had
+caused the great dog's death.  Still, if he took Nels with him on
+hunting-furloughs, as often as possible setting him to charge most
+deadly game, there was always the possibility of an accident.
+
+To many it seemed strange that the present Mrs. Hichens, a regal young
+English thing, was made to live in a lonely tent, well back among dense
+jungle growths, quite out of sight or call away from any human
+habitation, with her husband's little son and littler daughter and the
+Great Dane dog.  Certainly the servants were about during the daytime;
+as much out of sight as possible, according to their good teaching.
+But at night there were no servants about; they were all far away at
+the other end of the village, because the natives who lived at this
+side were low caste.
+
+And it was at night the thing developed.  A slow-driving inquisition,
+night after night.  It drove her through and beyond the deadly fever
+lassitude.  She was not building up out of it; she was beaten down
+below it.  She was beaten through all the successive stages of breaking
+nerves.  She used all the known arguments, all the intellectual methods
+to sustain pure courage, to hold herself immune.  She used them all up.
+
+At first, when her husband came up for his weekends, he was quite
+evidently pleased with his arrangement.  And it would take a
+self-confidence which had long since gone a-glimmering out of her, to
+break in on his enthusiasm with any criticism of his provisions for her
+comfort; certainly no criticism on any basis of noise.  It has been
+said that Police Commissioner Hichens was an unapproachable man; and
+some things are impossible.  One can die, you know, any death.  But
+some things are entirely impossible.
+
+The day came when she dragged her weary weight up from the couch and
+drove her unsteady frame along the new pathway through jungle thickets
+toward the village.  The idea had been gnawing in her consciousness for
+days; to find the nearest house or hut or any kind of place where human
+beings lived, so as to have it in her mind where to run when the time
+came.  It had come to that.  It went in circles through her brain; when
+the time came to run, she positively must know where to run.
+
+Her progress was slow and painful.  When her limbs shook so she could
+not stand alone, she leaned against a tree.  She must not lie down on
+the ground on account of the centipedes and scorpions.
+
+
+"Hello--"
+
+Startled a little, she turned toward the voice.  A man's voice, very
+low.  It came from somewhere behind her.  She broke away from her
+support and the fever-surge caught her and whipped her from head to
+foot.  Her balance was going--
+
+"I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to frighten you."
+
+She was kept from falling by the arm of the stranger.
+
+"No.  It's the fever.  I assure you it's the fever."
+
+Now he just steadied her with one hand.  The fever was filling her
+brain with a dull haze. . . .  He was slender and not tall.  He was
+much bronzed.  She could see only his eyes and his mouth.  He spoke
+again:
+
+"Why are you alone in this jungle--with such a fever?"
+
+The words dropped into her consciousness; even, smooth, like pebbles
+gently released into water.
+
+Then the blackness of outer darkness came up between.
+
+
+. . . That was how the present Mrs. Hichens began to know Skag.
+
+He carried her back along the path, fresh-marked by her own footsteps,
+to the tent.
+
+Next afternoon he called to learn how she was.  He had a sheaf of wild
+mountain lilac-blooms in his hand.
+
+"Oh, lovely!  I haven't seen lilacs since England."
+
+"They make me think of my mother," he said, giving the flowers into her
+hands.
+
+"I would so much like to hear about your mother."
+
+Skag had not the habit of much speaking, but he found it easy to tell
+this English girl about the mother who had died when he was a child.
+She leaned against banked pillows and watched the changes flow across
+his face.  They were almost startling and yet so clean, so wholesome,
+that she felt inwardly refreshed, as by a breath from mountain heights.
+
+Naturally he went on to tell her about Carlin; but when at last he
+spoke her name, the English girl interrupted him:
+
+"Is it possible you are meaning Doctor Carlin Deal?"
+
+"Yes; do you know her?" Skag asked.
+
+"I have met her several times--quite frightened at first, because I had
+heard about her--you know she is very learned, even for one much older."
+
+"I know she is a physician."
+
+"Yes; London Medical.  But it's not just her profession; it's herself.
+She's really wonderful; her sweetness is so strong and--all her
+strengths are so lovely."
+
+"She is wonderful to me," Skag said.
+
+"I'm congratulating you, you understand?"  The present Mrs. Hichens
+smiled as she added: "I've heard that she has a fine discernment of
+men."
+
+He went before sunset.  After he had gone she asked her ayah to find
+out about who he was and whatever concerning him.
+
+When Police Commissioner Hichens came up that week-end, he was so
+seriously dissatisfied with the tediousness of her recovery, that she
+had no inclination to tell him about having gone out from the tent on
+her own unsteady feet, at all.  Certainly it would be calamitous for
+him to hear of her having been carried in by a perfect stranger.  For
+which reason she called her ayah, while the Sahib was in his bath
+before dinner and said to her hurriedly:
+
+"Ayah, will you do a thing for my sake?"
+
+"To the shedding of my blood, Thou Shining."
+
+"Then guard from the master that he shall not learn of my going out, or
+of the stranger who appeared."
+
+"He shall never learn.  Never while he lives shall he learn, unless
+from your own lips."
+
+"Will all the other servants help you, Ayah dear?"
+
+"It is already considered and determined among us.  He shall never
+learn from us."
+
+"Why are you all good to me?"
+
+"Because by the hand of our master, who is our father and our mother,
+our bodies live; but by the grace of thy soul our hearts are glad.  _It
+is better to have joy in the heart one day than to endure upon the
+fatness which grows out of a full stomach for ten years._"
+
+"Oh, Ayah, don't tell me things like that, because they are never to be
+forgotten."
+
+"That is a great saying, oh Flower-of-Life.  A saying come down from
+many generations.  My people have found in it much food.  The most poor
+among us go empty many days by the strength in it.  And it is known
+that holy men have lived long years of holy life, without any
+satisfaction to the body at all, dwelling in that courage by which the
+unutterable of suffering may be endured, entirely by the _memory of one
+day_."
+
+The ayah's voice finished in the tones of ceremony; and she moved
+smoothly from the room, unconscious that she had not been dismissed.
+
+The following evening, after the police commissioner had gone down, the
+ayah brought report concerning the stranger.  His name was Sanford
+Hantee Sahib.  He was an American Sahib.  He did not consort with any
+of his own people, nor with Europeans.  Of all human beings he had only
+one friend and associate, Cadman Sahib, who was a great man among
+men--as was well known by even the ignorant.  Cadman Sahib had been
+heard to call him "Skag," but Cadman Sahib would permit no one to call
+him by that title excepting himself; therefore it was a sealed title,
+to pronounce which few are worthy.  Five days ago Sanford Hantee Sahib
+had come by train from far in the interior, beyond the Grass Jungle
+country, to meet an Indian Sahib of high rank in the railway service,
+at Poona.  It was an appointment personal to himself; no one knew the
+purpose.  Also, why Cadman Sahib had not come together with him was not
+known, unless--
+
+"Oh, Ayah!  I don't care a bit about Cadman Sahib--_will_ you be good
+enough.  What about the man?  Now go on."
+
+"Most illustrious lady, the thing is an exaltation.  I am poor and
+ignorant.  My head is at your feet.  One like I am should not approach
+power like his save turning fresh from a bath."
+
+"Ayah dear!  I am prepared."
+
+"He has the power to control all wild animals.  So great is his power
+that not long ago, when he and his so-fortunate friend Cadman Sahib had
+both fallen into a tiger pit-trap and a mighty young tiger in his full
+strength had come after them, falling bodily down upon them and being
+full of fright and fury, had turned upon them to destroy them,
+beholding his master's face, the beast had become subject to him in the
+instant and had sat quietly before him the whole night, without moving
+to hurt them.  What man will require more than this?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake!  What a tale.  But Ayah, what sort of man is he?"
+
+"Who will be able to know what sort of man?  Is it not enough?"
+
+"We require much more than that."
+
+"Lady, I--who am not as you are--I have not bathed since dawn.  Surely
+calamity will fall on me, if I set my tongue to the nature of such an
+one."
+
+"If he is holy, then he will be willing to help."
+
+"The knowledge of him among men is that he _is that_."
+
+"Then, Ayah, I will take the danger of calamity away from you, for I
+have need.  Speak."
+
+"It is known that he resembles the most high masters themselves, in
+that he is _always kind_.  And yet there was a strange saying, that he
+permitted his friend Cadman Sahib to destroy the head of a mighty
+serpent who had feasted upon the creatures and children of a Grass
+Jungle village.  Now these things could not both be true at the same
+time, unless he had taken a vow to protect the children of men.  In
+that case his presence in the land was a benediction beyond the
+benediction of twenty years of full rains.  He might even be one of the
+high gods, incarnated to serve Vishnu the Great Preserver, if what they
+said was true, that he had been recognised by Neela Deo, the Blue
+god--king of all the elephants--in _his own place_."
+
+"Then, Ayah, fasten it all into one word."
+
+"That he is a very great mystic.  Not one of the yogis who are unclean
+and scrap-fed, but a true mystic; a master and an adept in one of the
+greatest of all powers."
+
+"_Have no fear_.  I alone shall carry the burden of speaking."
+
+Since there are few more potent benedictions than "Have no fear," the
+ayah withdrew in deep content.
+
+
+While Skag sat in the tent next day, the police commissioner's wife
+said to him:
+
+"I have learned that you are a wonder man."
+
+"That is a mistake."
+
+"Is it true that you and a friend spent the night in a pit-trap with a
+living, unchained tiger and that he did not hurt you?"
+
+"A part of the night, yes."
+
+"Will you explain it on any ordinary grounds?"
+
+"Maybe not quite ordinary.  I travelled several years with a circus in
+America; and I learned to handle animals, especially big cats of
+different sorts."
+
+"How do you do it?"
+
+"A man does it by first mastering the wild animals in himself.  Then he
+must have learned never to be afraid."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"He must always be fair to them.  I mean he must never take advantage
+of them; never do anything to them that would make him fight back, if
+he were in their place."
+
+"I am thinking what a difference there is between your standpoint and
+that of the hunters of wild animals I know.  But tell me--have you ever
+been afraid?"
+
+"Yes, once."
+
+"Really afraid?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I want to hear about it some day, if you will be so good; but first I
+want to tell you a story of fear; two kinds of fear.  There has been no
+one I could speak to--and I am in need of help."
+
+"I would like to help you.  Tell on."
+
+"Do you know much about hyenas?"
+
+"I know they are the most unclean of all beasts.  I have never heard
+that they are dangerous to men."
+
+"Sometimes they are.  Only a little way from where we sit in this
+jungle, a woman was killed and eaten last year, by a hyena.  But I am
+not afraid for myself.  I have said my fear is of two kinds.  First, I
+am seriously concerned for the children; especially the baby.  She is
+frail at her best and if it were not for her long afternoon naps, I am
+unwilling to think what would come to her just from the sort of thing
+which has been happening.  She is highly organised; and one has heard
+that any kind of nerve-shock is most dangerous to such children.  Then,
+there is a different kind of fear, _quite_ different; it is for her
+Great Dane dog."
+
+"Won't he charge them?"
+
+"That is the most awful part of it.  Of all creatures I have ever
+known, I may as well say of all people I have ever known, he has the
+most splendid courage.  One night in every week he is taken to Bhanah's
+own quarters, so that his master shall not be disturbed.  The change
+seemed to relieve him, at first.  But--one who had not seen could never
+conceive how gradually, through the long, long nights--I have watched
+his almost super-human courage--breaking."
+
+Skag opened his lips to speak, but she put up her hand.
+
+"This is hard to tell because I have never known that I could be
+afraid.  I have always supposed that I had perfect courage.  But while
+Nels' courage has been in the wrecking, my own has been wrecked--quite!"
+
+Her voice was very low and very bitter.
+
+"I don't believe it's as bad as that."
+
+She glanced up and smiled the slow smile of extreme age upon extreme
+youth.
+
+"My husband, the police commissioner, has hunted in India more than
+twenty years; some of his friends longer than that.  I suppose they are
+as familiar with the natures and doings of most animals in this country
+as foreign hunters can become.  But of course the natives know jungle
+creatures even better.  We have two servants, born in these hills, my
+ayah and Bhanah the old cook; I have much from both of them.  But my
+experience here in this tent, has--as the natives would
+say--established it all in me.  You will have heard that hyenas are
+almost always the scouts for tigers."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Cadman told me that."
+
+"Jackals run with them.  The hunters say that between the hyena, whose
+stench is beyond description awful, and the jackal, whose stench is
+strong dog, they obliterate the tiger smell and so prevent the
+desperate panic coming in time to the hunted creatures, who fear the
+tiger more than anything."
+
+"Hyenas in captivity do not smell so exceptionally bad."
+
+"One has heard that all flesh-eating animals in captivity are fed clean
+meat, reasonably fresh--"
+
+"They are; and for the moment I forgot their reputation--that would
+make a difference."
+
+"It is claimed here, that they eat only two kinds of flesh, at
+once--human and dog.  They say that the hyena entices and betrays to
+the killing, the tiger kills and eats his fill, then the jackals come
+in and leave only bones and tendon-stuff for the hyena.  This is what
+he devours as soon as it is old enough to suit his taste."
+
+"Are all these animals here in this jungle?"
+
+"Plenty of jackals; but the tigers have been killed out of all this
+part of these Ghats by the European sportsmen of Bombay and Poona.  The
+hunters disregard hyenas; so there are many left, with no killer to
+kill for them."
+
+"That might make them dangerous."
+
+"And they will tell you that when a hyena is forced to kill for
+himself, he invariably hunts for a dog.  It has become very important
+to me that dog flesh is their first choice.  And dogs never fight
+hyenas; never even to defend their own lives.  They may bark or howl
+while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near
+they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and
+submit.  Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the
+power to call dogs to them. . . .  For five weeks I have been alone in
+this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the
+spartan soul of Nels the Great Dane dog; and I have seen and I have
+heard the _process_ of the hyena's lure."
+
+"That is what I want to hear about."
+
+"You shall hear; but will you be good enough to remember, please, Nels
+is no average dog.  There is nothing better in lineage than his.  Also,
+he is a thoroughly trained hunting dog.  My husband, the police
+commissioner, has used him in hunting tigers and cheetahs, black
+panthers and leopards of the long sort, the big black bears of Himalaya
+and jungle pigs, which we call wild boars at Home.  To different famous
+hunting districts of the country he has taken Nels, on many
+hunting-furloughs; and Nels' courage stands to him and to his friends,
+the very last word in courage.  I have often heard him say he does not
+know a man with courage to equal that which has never once failed in
+Nels."
+
+"I should like to know that dog."
+
+"You shall certainly meet him; and it may be you are the one to know
+him.  I am confident no one does, now."
+
+"About the hyenas?"
+
+"The hyena has three kinds of call.  The most common is the bark of a
+puppy.  (If you ever hear it you will not wonder why mother dogs go out
+to it, to their death.)  Presently the bark breaks into a puppy's cry.
+It whimpers, then it climbs up into heart-breaking desolation; the
+wailing cry of a lost puppy.  It snaps out in distraction futile little
+yappings; then it whimpers again, like sobbing.  So on for hours.
+
+"The next most common is a laugh; a harsh, senseless laugh.  The effect
+is to terrorise, to paralyse its prey.  It is wicked.  It climbs up
+into piercing, high, falsetto tones; all maniacal. . . .  So insane
+that though one knows perfectly well what it is, it chills one's blood.
+This keeps on a long time, with variations.  Every change seems worse
+than the last.  But sooner or later it brings one up standing with a
+laugh impossible to describe, unless it is devilish--so clear, so keen,
+so intelligent, so beyond expression malicious.  Toward morning this
+sometimes brings sweat.  Oh, maybe not if one were alone; but with
+Nels, watching Nels--indeed yes!
+
+"The last and least often heard--I mean they do not do it every night,
+sometimes not for several nights, sometimes they do all three in one
+night--is the cry of a little native baby; the cry of a lost baby; the
+cry of a deserted baby; the cry of a baby alone out in the jungle
+shadows and frightened to death."
+
+She stopped and lay quite still; seeming to forget he was there.
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Nothing, only it keeps on sometimes the rest of that night.  They
+never mix the three kinds together.  Even when they do them all in one
+night, they are usually in this order as I am telling you.  Sometimes
+the baby is still for a few minutes; then it begins again and goes on."
+
+Again she stopped a long time.  Suddenly she flung up her hand and
+spoke faster:
+
+"No, there's nothing more about that little deserted native baby's cry,
+excepting that I've started up in broad daylight afterward, with a cold
+panic in my heart that it had really been a baby, a true baby and I had
+failed to go and save it.  And--the nights, the long nights I have
+fastened my weight on Nels' neck to keep him inside of this door!"
+
+She pointed to the opening by her couch.
+
+"Why don't you chain him?"
+
+"He goes on a leash perfectly, but he has never been taught to be
+chained up.  My husband has never permitted the servants to do it.  I
+tried it here myself, but he suffers and cries; and that keeps both the
+children awake.  It would jeopardise Baby's life to force him.  On
+account of the ceremony which occurred a few hours before her mother
+died, the servants believe she belongs to Nels.  They claim that he
+acknowledges the ownership.  I will admit that he behaves like it.  She
+has often kept him back.  He goes from this tent door to her cot
+yonder, to look at her.  But always he comes back to the door.  Some
+night my weight will not be sufficient.  That is my fear."
+
+"The situation is clear and I think I can manage it, if you will leave
+it to me for a night or two.  These beasts must be kin to a big snake I
+met in the Grass Jungle country.  My friend Mr. Cadman shot him.  That
+was when I found fear--"
+
+At that moment Skag heard the clear, treble tones of a child's voice:
+
+"Nels-s, Nels-s, Nels-s!"
+
+And the veriest fairy thing his eyes had ever looked upon came flying
+in the tent door before him.  Her head was a halo of gold made of the
+finest kind of baby curls.  She was unbelievable.  She was like a
+flame, beside the couch.
+
+"This is Betty, our baby."
+
+The child lifted intensely blue eyes and while Skag smiled into them,
+he was without words before the vivid whiteness of her face.  She was
+sent with her ayah to the back of the tent for her nap.  Then Nels came
+in.
+
+Skag had never seen such a dog.  For size, for proportions, for power,
+for dignity, he was quite beyond comparison.
+
+"This is Nels, one of the four greatest hunters in India."
+
+Nels came to him at once.  With a searching regard he looked into
+Skag's face one long moment, then a glow came up in his eyes and he
+swung about and stretched himself alongside Skag's chair, reached his
+arms out before him and laid his chin on them, almost touching the
+man's foot.  Skag leaned over and stroked the big head.  It felt like
+sealskin, but it was soft clean grey colour.
+
+"Nels has adopted you, Wonder Man!"
+
+The lady on the couch spoke like a small child, marvelling.
+
+"I am glad to have his friendship.  But I wish, if you will excuse me,
+I wish that you wouldn't call me by that name.  Skag is not my real
+name, but the few friends I have call me Skag.  I'd be pleased if you
+would call me that."
+
+"That's very nice of you, but do you much mind?  I like Wonder Man
+better."
+
+"I don't believe I quite understand why."
+
+"Partly from things I've heard about you.  But rather more on account
+of what I've seen just now.  I fancy the natives are not far wrong and
+you are a wonder man to them. . . .  If you do this sort of thing,
+delivering people who are in danger of their lives, and getting the
+devotion of creatures as hard to win as Nels, I can see that you are
+going to have a great reputation in this India.  And you are not to be
+in the least disturbed if I call you Wonder Man; I am believing the
+title is prophetic at least."
+
+"What I'm doing for you is only what any man would do.  If you hear me
+outside to-night, don't be startled.  I'll get the beast as soon as I
+can.  If there's more than one, I'll stay around till they're cleaned
+out."
+
+
+Soon after dusk Skag circled out into the jungle.  He carried one of
+the best hunting-pieces made and plenty of ammunition.  Taking a
+position in sight of the tent on the jungle side, he waited.  Within
+half an hour a little puppy began to bark.  No man alive could ever
+know it was anything but a puppy.  It yapped and whimpered a while and
+then it began to get frightened.  He moved toward it, but it stopped.
+For several minutes there was silence.  Then another one began back of
+him.  He slipped through the shadows with the utmost caution, but
+before he got near it, it also stopped.  This occurred several times.
+At last, away in another direction, a wild, grating laugh broke out.
+He turned at once and moved carefully but swiftly to come in range
+between it and the tent.
+
+This laugh-thing was torture.  It couldn't stop.  It was insane.  He
+thought it would never be done.  In a few minutes it was important to
+have it done.  She had said it was to paralyse its prey.  It was enough
+to paralyse anything.  Then he jumped.  Now _that_ was devilish!  But
+he was coming closer to the sound and getting interested, when it
+stopped.  So he followed it from place to place.  Always, when he got
+near possible range, it stopped.  Always it began in a few minutes in
+some other spot.  There might be a dozen. . . .
+
+And a woman, alone with two children and a dog, had endured this six
+nights out of seven, night after night all night, for five weeks. . . .
+
+
+Near morning, toward the front, a sick baby began to cry.  While he
+made his way around, his steps quickened to the very urge of its need.
+He was quite near the tent when--a clear, high, agonised shriek.  It
+was the girl!  And he ran.
+
+There was an instant when he did not realise anything.  He just saw.
+Fifty feet from the tent, the Great Dane dog, his head low, almost
+touching the ground, moving slowly, step by step--with a long, slender,
+white figure dragged bodily on his neck.  Then he heard:
+
+"Rodger!  Keep back!  Take care of Baby.  Nels, _Nels_!  Nels, you must
+_listen_ to me. . . .  _Nels_!"
+
+He caught hold of her and the dog at the same moment.
+
+"Don't let him go.  _Don't let go of Nels_!"
+
+"All right, I won't.  Now will you go back to the tent, please?  I've
+got Nels.  I'm going with him."
+
+"No, _the thing has happened_!  I tell you, he doesn't even know me!
+Why do you want him to go at all?"
+
+"Because they keep out of my range, alone.  He'll lead me to this one.
+I'll take care of him.  Now go; will you please go back?"
+
+"I don't--"
+
+A frantic scream from a boy's throat and in the same instant the
+lifting cry of a younger child.  Clear in the door-space of the tent,
+behind them, two little figures clung together in the opening--and just
+at one side, close to the children, a dark, ungainly shape!  Skag
+sprang three jumps toward the opposite side, dropped on one knee and
+fired.  The shape bounced up, crumpled over and lay still.
+
+They both ran to the children.  Skag had just made sure the beast was
+dead, when he heard:
+
+"Nels, Nels!--He is gone!"
+
+"If you'll shut the door safely, I'll take care of Nels."
+
+"It won't fasten, but I'll stay."
+
+The Great Dane was not in sight but Skag knew the direction.  He ran
+almost upon them.  Nels stood, but crouched toward the ground.  A shape
+rose against him--above his shoulders on the other side.  Skag slipped
+around to reach it without hitting the dog.  In the same instant Nels
+took a blow from the jungle beast's head.  The two swerved over toward
+one side.  Skag set his gun-muzzle against the hyena's neck--he could
+see that much--and blew it away from him.  (There wouldn't be much
+danger but it was dead.)  Then he knelt, his hand instantly wet at
+Nels' throat.  But the blood was not gushing, it was streaming.  He put
+his arms underneath to lift him, but couldn't do it alone.  There was
+nothing to do but go for the girl.
+
+"I'm sorry.  I need your help.  Dare we leave the children a minute?"
+
+"Yes, Baby is falling asleep; and Rodger is brave, he will watch
+her. . . .  Tell me, is Nels killed?"
+
+"No, I think we can save him.  But we must be quick."
+
+She was by his side running, as he added:
+
+"I know how to do it, when we get him to the light."
+
+They worked together and it was all they could do, but they got Nels
+into the tent.  She brought the materials he asked for, and while he
+stopped the flow of blood and dressed the wound, she went to the baby.
+When he rose she was leaning over the child.
+
+"I'm afraid something has happened to her!  Her face is strange  Her
+breath is not right.  I wish Ayah would come; I don't know a thing
+about babies!"
+
+"Is there a doctor near?"
+
+"Not this side Poona."
+
+"I can go after him."
+
+"You're awfully good, but there will be no train before the one my
+husband comes up on.  It's a holiday.  He would have been up last
+evening, only he had important business.  I am not at liberty to
+determine about a physician, because he will be here so soon."
+
+"Shall I go after the ayah?"
+
+"That might help--thank you so much!"
+
+
+Skag learned in the next two hours that there is nothing in life more
+difficult for a man to find, than servants' quarters in a native
+village.  By full daylight he gave up and tramped back a considerable
+distance.  As he approached the tent, an Englishman came out walking
+rapidly toward him.  Police Commissioner Hichens had a very red face.
+He spoke before Skag could see his eyes:
+
+"Sir, I take pleasure in ordering you to leave my premises.  You will
+be good enough not to be seen again in this vicinity."
+
+"Yes?  You--are--finding--fault--with--me?"
+
+"What occurs to mine does not in the least concern you!  You are
+occupying yourself with my affairs.  I will not permit it.  Am I
+explicit enough?"
+
+"You are explicit enough."
+
+Skag wheeled on the path and walked away from the police commissioner
+under a sharp revelation that if he didn't get away at once, he would
+do a thing he had never been inclined to do before.  He was amazed by
+his own fury.  Unconsciously he spoke aloud:
+
+"I never wanted to----"
+
+"_Remember, it is not necessary to touch the unclean._"
+
+Low tones of strange vibration.  Skag looked up.  A brown-robed man
+stood before him.  (The long straight lines of the garment were made of
+a material hand-woven of camel's hair, known in the High Himalayas as
+_puttoo_.)  The quiet face was in chiselled lines.  The level dark eyes
+were looking deep into the place where Skag's soul lived.  Skag was
+intensely conscious that he stood in a Presence.  He endured the eyes.
+They made him feel better.  The robed man spoke again:
+
+"I speak to give you assurance that those you have served will be cared
+for.  Also, a responsibility may fall upon you.  If you accept, a great
+good will come to you in this life."
+
+"I will do what I can."
+
+"_Peace be with thee._"
+
+"Shall I see you again?"
+
+"Never."
+
+Skag stood aside and the robed man walked toward the tent.
+
+Skag went back to Poona.  Carlin's eldest brother Roderick Deal had not
+come yet.  Still waiting, a week later, he walked one morning on the
+stone causeway, which is a most attractive unit in the architecture of
+Poona's great waterworks, and filled his eyes with the Ghat vistas
+toward the north and west.  Joyous dog tones made him glance back.  It
+was Nels, straining forward on a heavy chain-leash in the old cook's
+hand.
+
+"Let him go."
+
+Now Skag noticed that the dog moved with some effort, possibly with
+some pain; but when he arrived, Nels reared his mighty body and set his
+paws on Skag's two shoulders.  Skag hugged him and eased him down.  The
+old cook handed Skag a note.  It read:
+
+
+To the Wonder Man, by the hand of Bhanah the cook, who is a gift to the
+Man from the gods.  Together with Nels the beautiful, a gift to the Man
+from Eleanor Beatrice (Hichens)--who is free!
+
+Bhanah the cook will tell his master the rest.  Save this, that Eleanor
+Beatrice is grateful with her full heart to the Man.
+
+He is to remember that he has been adopted by Nels.  He is to walk
+softly because he is on the way to be adopted--of course it is past
+belief, but also it is past question--by the mightiest of all mystic
+orders, whose messengers have accomplished this thing.
+
+N.B.  The Sahib is to enquire of his servant Bhanah what is the native
+meaning of "walk softly."  He will find Bhanah entirely trustworthy in
+all matters of information.
+
+
+Skag looked up and the old cook spoke:
+
+"I, who am speaking to Sanford Hantee Sahib, am Bhanah--entered into
+covenant before the gods that I am his servant to serve him with my
+strength, so long as I endure to live.
+
+"I bring from the shining lady who was my mistress, whom may the gods
+protect! certain messages for him alone.
+
+"The child is dead.  Her body lies deep in a metal case beside her
+mother's, near one of the old bungalows."
+
+"I am sorry to hear that."
+
+"Death does not snare the soul.  If she were still here, Nels would not
+be free to come to my master.  And my master has become his heart's
+desire."
+
+"I am glad to have him and you."
+
+The old cook laid his hand on his forehead and bent low before Skag.
+
+"The lady-beautiful will sail from Bombay in a few days, returning to
+her own mother's house.  She is forever free from Police Commissioner
+Hichens Sahib, who was my master only for her sake and for the sake of
+Nels.  The lady's own ayah will go with her to her own country, to
+serve her as I serve thee.
+
+"These things are accomplished by a Power which works through those who
+are seldom seen and never known of men.
+
+"I have spoken and it is finished.  Have I permission to take Nels to
+my quarters where he can rest?  He is well; but not yet fully strong.
+If my master will tell us his place, we will come to him in the
+morning."
+
+Skag told them.  The recognition of Nels as a personality amused him;
+but he did not quarrel with it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_The Hunting Cheetah_
+
+Since Bhanah and Nels had come to him, Skag had fallen into the way of
+taking Nels out quite early for a full day's tramp through the broken
+shelving Ghats.  (This helped to bear the weight of the days till
+Carlin's eldest brother should reach Poona.)  The contours were
+different from anything he had seen along the top or toward the sea; as
+if in the beginning the whole range had been dropped on the planet and
+its own weight had shattered the eastern side, to settle from the
+cracks or roll over upon the plains.  Nels would travel close beside
+him for hours; but if he ever did break away, Skag had only to call
+quietly, "Nels, steady!" and Nels would return joyfully.  He never
+sulked.
+
+Every morning now, Bhanah carefully stowed in Skag's coat, neat packets
+of good and sufficient food for himself and the dog at noontime.  Skag
+had never been cared for in his life; he had neither training nor
+inclination to direct a servant.  But there was no need.  Bhanah knew
+perfectly well what was right to be done; and he was committed with his
+whole heart to do it.
+
+The order of Skag's life was being softly changed; but he only knew his
+servant did many kind things for him which were very comfortable.  He
+was a little bothered when Bhanah called him "My Master"--having not
+yet learned that servants in India never use that title, excepting in
+affection which has nothing to do with servitude.
+
+The morning came, when Roderick Deal arrived.  Carlin had said that all
+arrangements must be made with her eldest brother; and some tone within
+her tone had impressed Skag with concern which amounted to
+apprehension.  But when he walked into Roderick Deal's office and met
+the hand of Carlin's eldest brother--there was a light in his eye which
+that Indian Sahib found good to see.
+
+Roderick Deal overtopped the American by two inches.  He was slender
+and lithe.  His countenance was extraordinary to Skag's eye for its
+peculiar pallor; as if the dense black hair cast a shadow on intensely
+white flesh--especially below the temples and across the forehead.
+There was attraction; there was power.  Skag saw this much while he
+found the eyes; then he saw little else.  He decided that Sanford
+Hantee had never seen really black eyes before; the size startled him,
+but the blackness shocked.  (It was in the fortune of his life that he
+should never solve the mystery of those eyes.)  Skag felt the impact of
+dynamic force, before he spoke:
+
+"You will not expect enthusiasm from me, my son, when as the head of
+one of the proudest families in all India, I render official consent,
+upon conditions, to your marriage with my sister Carlin. . . .  You are
+too different from other men."
+
+Skag had something to say, but he found no words.
+
+"You are to be informed that the only sister of seven brothers is a
+most important person.  She is called the Seal of Fortune in India;
+which is to say that good fortune for all her brothers is vested in
+her.  If calamity befalls her, there is no possible escape for them.
+This is the established tradition of our Indian ancestors.
+
+"We smile among ourselves at this tradition, as much as you do; but
+there are reasons why we choose to preserve it, among many things from
+those same Indian ancestors.  We have no cause to hate them.  Hate is
+not in our family as in others of our class; but we never forget that
+it is _our class_."
+
+The brooding pain in the man was a revelation.  Carlin had said, ". . .
+there are things you must understand."
+
+"You are already aware that we are English and Indian.  But you do not
+conceive what that means.  It is my duty to speak.  All life appears to
+me first from the English standpoint; but you see the _shadow of India
+under my skin_.  All life appears to my sister first in the Indian
+concept; but you will not easily find the shadow of India under her
+skin.  We have one brother--darker than the average native. . . .  Are
+you prepared to find such colour in one of your own?"
+
+The question was gently spoken, but the eyes were like destiny.
+
+"Any child of hers will be good to me," Skag answered softly.
+
+A glow loomed in the blacknesses and Roderick Deal flashed Skag a smile
+which reminded him, at last, of Carlin.
+
+"European men, in the early days, were responsible for the branding,
+now carried by thousands in India--carried with shame and the bitterest
+sort of curses.  But our line is unique in this regard.  We are
+conditioned by a pride, as great as the shame I have spoken of.  On
+account of it, no one of us may enter marriage without public ceremony
+of as much circumstance as is expedient."
+
+The storm-lights had gone down and a half-deprecatory, half-embarrassed
+expression, made the face look so quite like any other man's, that Skag
+smiled.
+
+". . . Because we are descended from two extraordinary romances, both
+of which were celebrated by the marriage of an imperial Indian
+woman--one Brahmin, one Rajput--with a British man of noble family--one
+Scotch, one Irish.  Carlin will tell you the stories; she loves them."
+
+Again the smile like Carlin's.
+
+"So she must come down to Poona, where she was born; and the ceremony
+must be performed in the cathedral here, by the Bishop himself--who is
+a real man by the way, as well as distinguished."
+
+. . . That was all right.
+
+"You are to be published at the time of your marriage, in all the
+English and vernacular printed sheets throughout India, specifically as
+a scientist whose research will take you much into jungle life."
+
+Roderick Deal paused for reply.  Skag considered a moment and said
+tentatively:
+
+"If my work will come under that head?"
+
+"Oh, quite! there is no question.  And now I am come to the explanation
+of my delay.  There have been preparations to make; dealings with
+Indian government.  As you will understand, Government would be
+entirely unapproachable by any man himself desiring such an
+appointment.  But influence is able to set in operation the examination
+of his records; and if they are good enough, the rest can be
+accomplished.
+
+"Carlin convinced me that you would make no serious protest; and I am
+assuring you that these conditions are really good fortune to you.  But
+they are imperative; it must be this way or not at all."
+
+Skag was given opportunity to speak, but he had nothing to say, yet.
+
+"You must enter the service of Indian government in the department of
+Natural Research.  The appointment will give you distinction not to be
+scorned and a salary better than my own--which is very good."
+
+After a moment's thought, Skag said:
+
+"Will it tie me up?"
+
+"Not in the least.  On the contrary, it will make you free."
+
+"What about my obligations?"
+
+"Your obligations will be entirely vested in reports, which you will
+turn in at your discretion.  I understand that you already have
+materials which would be considered highly valuable.  Also, I hear that
+you have fallen heir to Nels, the great hunting dog.  Of the four that
+are well known, he is easily the best.  And he is young; he will bring
+you experiences out of the jungle such as no man could find alone.
+What the Indian Research department wants, is _knowledge of animals_."
+
+"That's exactly what I want."
+
+"Your Department will facilitate you, immensely.  I speak positively,
+because the initial work is finished; there remains nothing, but that
+you shall come with me to the department offices and become enrolled.
+However, not before you are properly outfitted.  My tailoring-house
+will take care of you."
+
+"A uniform?"
+
+"Not a uniform exactly, but strictly correct; rather military, but more
+hunting; perfectly suitable and very comfortable.  You'll be quite at
+home in it.  It's the sort for you."
+
+The eyes measured Skag's outlines appraisingly, but betrayed nothing.
+
+"We have not finished.  The matter of clothing is adjacent to another
+not less important.  A foreigner in this country is nothing better than
+a wild man, without a servant."
+
+"I have one--" Skag spoke with inward satisfaction: "--Bhanah the old
+cook, who did serve Police--"
+
+"Not Police Commissioner Hichens' _Bhanah_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How?"
+
+"He came to me."
+
+"Did you negotiate with him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then will you kindly tell me, why?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+There was a marked pause.  The eyes had become wide.
+
+"Well--really . . .  _Are_ you the sort-of-thing I've been hearing
+about?"
+
+Roderick Deal's expression was kindly-quaint; and Skag answered the
+look rather than the words:
+
+"How should I know what that is?"
+
+"You _have_ astonished me.  And I am pleased.  From Bombay to Calcutta
+and from Himalaya to Madras--you will find no more valuable man, than
+that same Bhanah.  He is called old, but he is not old.  If you have
+noticed, the term is always spoken as if it were one with his
+name--because of his learning.  He is the man of men for you.  _How_
+did he come to you?"
+
+"He brought Nels with the note, that the dog was a gift.  When he
+spoke, he said he was committed before the gods to serve me as long as
+he lived."
+
+"How did his voice sound?"
+
+"A queer, level tone."
+
+"There is no doubt.  _It is enough for one day_."
+
+The words were spoken with almost affectionate inflections.  Skag was
+puzzled.  Roderick Deal stepped to the door and spoke to a servant;
+returning to his seat, he smiled openly into Skag's eyes before
+speaking:
+
+"Now you will come with me.  We must lose no time."
+
+"Yes, I want to get back to Hurda as soon as I can."
+
+"Not before the monsoon breaks.  It is due any day now, any hour.  Till
+ten days after it has broken, no sane man will take train."
+
+"I want to get back.  I think I will risk it."
+
+"You will pardon me, you are not allowed."
+
+The tone was perfect authority.  The eyes smouldered, but the lips
+smiled.
+
+"You are not used to be in any way conditioned, I understand that; but
+I am not willing to be responsible to my only sister for the smashed
+body of her one man.  Oh, I assure you _not_!  And you may one day
+grant that the guardianship of an elder brother is not a bad thing to
+have.  Why--I beg your pardon, but of course you are not here long
+enough to know the situation."
+
+He stopped abruptly and looked away, considering.
+
+"I will put it in one word and tell you that _one_ moment _any_ train,
+on _any_ track, may be perfectly safe; and the next moment, it may be
+going down the khud with half a mountain.  Again, we exercise the
+utmost care in all bridge-building--with no reservation of resources;
+but almost every year a bridge or more goes with the crash."
+
+"The crash?"
+
+"The reason why we say the great monsoon 'breaks' is not because itself
+breaks, but because--whatever happens to be underneath, you understand."
+
+The floor of protest had dropped away.  Skag's face said as much.
+
+"The tailors will need till the rails are safe to get you fitted; and
+before the monsoon comes, I suggest that you take your hunter up into
+the cheetah hills.  Cheetahs are not supposed, by those at Home, to
+attack men.  Many of them will not; but they are unreliable.  The
+forfeits they have taken from unbelief have made them a bad reputation,
+among the English."
+
+"The cheetahs I have seen in cages have been mild, compared with
+tigers."
+
+"Cheetah kittens are snared and broken at once by hard handling;
+meaning that it is not the cheetah himself, but what is left of him,
+one sees either in the kennels of the princes or in the foreign cages.
+You will remember my warning about his character?"
+
+"Thank you, yes."
+
+"Good.  I have known men to prefer not . . .  Then you will carry
+yourself alert in any kind of jungle.  If you sight a cheetah, be
+prepared; he may _not_ attack.  He may.  Few men have eyes good enough
+to follow him after his first spring.  One should be a perfect shot;
+are you that?"
+
+"I am a good shot, but I don't like to kill animals."
+
+"Then I am the last man to commend you to the cheetah hills . . . if it
+were not for Nels.  He is entirely competent to take care of you,
+unless in one possible emergency.  They sometimes, but rarely, work in
+pairs.  If ever the dog should be occupied with one and another should
+be in _sight_--be sure your unwillingness to kill does not delay you to
+the instant of charge."
+
+"You imply that it is necessary to carry a gun in any kind of
+jungle--always?"
+
+"Always wise, of _course_; but I consider it less imperative just now,
+because the animals are not what we call fighting.  They are waiting
+for the great monsoon.  So--you might take your dog up into the cheetah
+hills--"
+
+"I don't see how a dog--"
+
+"He'll break the cheetah's back and cut his throat, before the real
+start is made at you.  But Bhanah will tell you whatever; and he is
+entirely reliable.  You may depend upon him, without reservation."
+
+"That's a big thing to know."
+
+"India has many good servants, but Bhanah is a rare man."
+
+The unquenchable fires in Roderick Deal's eyes began to feed upon some
+enigma in Skag's own; he endured it a moment and then interruption
+became expedient:
+
+"Does the monsoon come on schedule?"
+
+"It does."
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"It is as much an experience as a spectacle.  I'm not attempting to
+describe the thing itself; it should be seen.  But across the
+southwestern part of India, it includes the procession of the animals.
+All animals from all covers, running together."
+
+"There is something like that in the far north of America," Skag said.
+"It is called the passage of the Barren Ground Caribou.  They move
+south before the first winter storms in thousands.  I've heard that
+sometimes their lines extend out of sight.  They have no food, but they
+do not stop to forage.  Our northern hunters say that nothing will stop
+them."
+
+"That's interesting; immensely.  I've not heard of it."
+
+"But I didn't mean to interrupt you."
+
+"Our creatures move in a trance of panic, straight away from the coming
+rains.  I say a trance, because they appear to be oblivious of each
+other; hunter and hunted go side by side, without noticing."
+
+The drive of Skag's life-quest was working in him, as if nothing had
+ever given it pause.
+
+"Do they go fast?"
+
+"The timid and lumbering come out first, hurrying; they increase in
+numbers, all sorts, and run faster till those near the end go at top
+speed--it's a thing to see.  Bhanah will tell you when and where to
+watch it; but be careful and get under good roofing in time.  And then,
+after the tracks are set right, if you must reach Hurda in order to
+come back with Carlin . . .  Man, God help you if you do not give my
+sister the best of your gifts!"
+
+"Why, I belong to her--"
+
+Their hands met; and Skag's soul rose up without words, to answer a
+white flame in the inscrutable eyes.
+
+
+Early the following morning, Sanford Hantee Sahib said to his servant:
+
+"Bhanah, what do you know about cheetahs?"
+
+"Such little things as a man may know, Sahib."
+
+"Are you willing to give some of it to me?"
+
+"All that I am and all that I can, belongs to my master."
+
+"Is that--the regular--"
+
+"Nay, _nay_!  It is right for my master to consider, that I serve him
+not for a price.  This is true service--as men in my land bring to
+things holy.  Those who serve for the weight of silver, render the
+weight of their hands."
+
+"I don't want you to begin thinking that I'm holy though--you
+understand that."
+
+"There are meanings which will appear to the Sahib in time; it is not
+suitable that they come from me.  But this much may be spoken: if my
+master serves in a great service--then I, who am a poor man and
+ignorant, may give something if I serve him."
+
+"If that's what you mean, it's all right.  Then we won't go out this
+morning, Nels and I.  It'll be the time to get some of that little
+knowledge of yours about cheetahs."
+
+It seemed to Skag that the uncertainty about just why Bhanah had come
+to him, was cleared away; and there was a dignity about the man which
+he liked.  It was all right.
+
+"Sanford Hantee Sahib should not go to find cheetahs before he knows
+his dog," Bhanah began.
+
+"Just what are you getting at?"
+
+"My master is a preserver of life and Nels is a great hunter."
+
+"I've thought of that.  Is there any danger that he will kill when I
+don't want him to?"
+
+"Sahib, I, Bhanah, have known Nels since he was a puppy, I have seen
+him take his training to kill; therefore I believe he will quickly be
+taught to work together with my master, who is his heart's desire.
+This is the chief thing, that my master is his heart's desire.  But
+also I know--he will kill when there is need for him to kill."
+
+"Does he ever fail?"
+
+"If he had ever failed, he would not be here.  The Police Commissioner
+Hichens Sahib--to whom may the gods render his due!--has many times set
+him in the teeth of death; when occasion could be prepared, always."
+
+"He did not fight the hyena."
+
+"Now the Sahib speaks of an evil thing.  For _that_ reason he was made
+to live in a tent in the Jungle."
+
+"But what--"
+
+"The hyena is _evil-itself_; and a dog has no hope in him to fight with
+it.  We may not 'speak _a name_ in the same breath of common-judgment';
+but I say that the living fear in a man's body made secret covenant
+with the knowledge of this fact--because the man had long desired that
+Nels should die.  The lady-beautiful and his small children--all
+together--I say they were made to live in danger--that some hyena might
+destroy Nels!"
+
+Only Bhanah's voice showed feeling as he finished.
+
+"So that's what I interfered with; and that's why he let the dog be
+given to me."
+
+"It is straightly spoken.  But the Sahib will not hold Nels less, for
+courage or for power?  There is not one to equal him."
+
+"Bhanah, we'll put that hope into Nels, against when he hears a hyena."
+
+"That will be with the good hunting-piece in my master's hands, at
+first--to teach him confidence.  Then he will fear--_not anything on
+earth_.  Then it will be _all_ like the cheetah hills to him.  Sahib,
+it is more satisfying than food."
+
+"Where are the cheetah hills from here?"
+
+"South and West; not the way the Sahib has gone before."
+
+"You haven't told me about them before."
+
+"Because Nels was not come to full strength, since his hurt."
+
+"I'd hate to have him meet an accident."
+
+"To-morrow he will go safe.  He rose up last night and listened to a
+hunting cheetah's cry."
+
+"Are they close as that?"
+
+"Not to a European Sahib's ear; but to Nels, yes."
+
+"Deal Sahib said you would tell me about the cheetahs."
+
+"What I have of value is by the common wayside; but _fortune causes
+wealth to flow down mountain streams for those who climb_.  There are
+several things to consider, Sahib."
+
+Skag was amused; he had not yet heard that only the ignorant teach
+without apology.  As seriously as possible, he said:
+
+"I am listening."
+
+Bhanah spoke gravely; his words falling like weights:
+
+"That he is--seldom seen--till it is too late--to prepare.  He is
+treacherous."
+
+"Where does he hide?"
+
+"In the large-leaved trees which stretch their branches like that."
+And Bhanah held his arms out horizontally, one above the other,
+parallel.
+
+"All right."
+
+"That he is quicker than a man's eye."
+
+Skag waited.
+
+"And that he is more deadly than the tiger."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Because he is more quick.  Because he is equal in power, even when he
+is not equal in weight.  Because he fights not only for food, not only
+for life, but for the love of killing.  Of all living things, he is the
+creature of blood-lust.  He is the name-of-fear, incarnate.  It would
+not be a good thing for my master to hear, nor for his servant to
+tell--the cheetah's ways with a body from which life is gone out."
+
+"You've made a strong argument for the cheetah as a fighter, Bhanah,
+but you don't seem to stand much for his character."
+
+"Who faces the hunting cheetah, Sahib, faces death.  If the cheetah
+falls upon him from above, or comes upon him from behind, he will know
+death; but he will never know the cheetah.  A hunter's first shot must
+do its work; he will not often have time to fire again."
+
+"I've got that.  But I don't quite see what chance a dog has with him."
+
+"Only four dogs in this my land, have any chance with him, Sahib."
+
+"And the others?"
+
+"They live because they have not met a cheetah."
+
+"How does Nels do it?"
+
+"My master must look upon that, to understand.  I have seen, but I
+cannot show it.  It--" and a rare smile lighted the dark shadows of
+Bhanah's face, "is _soon_."
+
+"I've heard the Indian princes use them for hunting."
+
+"Yes, Sahib, many Indian princes keep hunting cheetahs as English
+Sahibs keep hunting horses.  They go out after small things; and
+innocent--mostly deer, of all kinds; even the _neel gai_, the great
+blue cow."
+
+"Will Nels attack such things?"
+
+"Nels will not attack the defenseless; he has not been used for it.
+His ways are established in that; there is no fear.  If he should be
+ranging at any time, he will return at the first call; but if he does
+not, my Master, let him go.  Be certain, _Nels knows_."
+
+"That's good.  I'm in this country to get acquainted with animals--"
+
+"But to the preserving of men?"
+
+"When I find it's necessary, I've no objection then--"
+
+Bhanah stooped quickly and touched Skag's feet.
+
+"Vishnu, the Great Preserver, has sent another Hand to this my India."
+
+Skag looked into the man's face and found high light in it.
+
+
+Next dawn was hot, but there was a stimulation in it; not like the
+mountains, not like the sea.  The air was full of a mellow enticement,
+like strange incense; or romance.  Skag enquired of his servant if the
+day would be right for the cheetah hills.
+
+Bhanah turned to the southeast and scanned the horizon line.  Then he
+held up his hand, palm toward the same direction, for a minute.  At
+last he walked to a shrub and looked at its leaves, closely.
+
+"It may be that one day is left for my master to go into the cheetah
+hills; but the earth makes ready for the breaking of the great monsoon."
+
+Skag was getting interested in the Indian standpoint; he was finding
+something in it.  Quite innocently, he used the subtlest method known
+to learn.
+
+"What is the great monsoon?"
+
+"Beneficence."
+
+"What is the earth doing?"
+
+"Now, she is holding very still.  When it breaks, she will shake.
+Having endured three days, she will rise up and cast off her old
+garments, putting on new covering--entirely clean."
+
+"Will I be able to see that?"
+
+"Nay, Sahib!  The wall of the waters will be between your eye and every
+leaf."
+
+
+. . . The wall of the waters; like the tones of a bell far off, the
+words sank into some deep place in Skag.  This day they would recur to
+him; and in the years to come, they would recur again and yet again.
+
+Swinging along out of Poona toward the cheetah hills, Skag was buoyant
+with healthy energy.  His heart was like the heart of a boy.
+Consistent with his old philosophical dogma, this present was certainly
+the best he had ever known.  Carlin was in it, as surely as if she were
+present.  Roderick Deal had proved to be a man to respect; and to love,
+secretly . . . "the guardianship of an elder brother."
+
+Looking back, he saw that Poona City was beautiful, lying close against
+the eastern side of the Ghats, just as they begin to fold away toward
+the plains.  No breath of plague or pestilence from Bombay could reach
+across the ramparts of that mountain range.
+
+The air was getting hotter every minute; but it was good.  The vistas
+stretched far--all satisfying.  Bhanah said the monsoon was close.
+"Beneficence"; the Indian idea of a deluge.  He liked it all.
+
+They came up into the hills through some stretches of stiff climbing;
+and on the margin of a broad shelf Skag stopped for breath.  The
+panorama behind had widened and extended immensely.  The face of a
+planet seemed to reach from his feet across to the eastern horizon,
+descending.  He sat down on a flat rock and Nels comfortably extended
+himself near by.
+
+It was all good.  The great golden jewel back in his heart, full of
+afterglows--Carlin.  The finding of a real man.  The ways, the
+reservations, the revelations, of Bhanah.  The beauty and character of
+the dog at his foot . . .
+
+Nels had lifted his head.  His eyes were fixed intently on the empty
+white distances of the sky.  His pointed ears were set at a queer
+angle.  There was nothing unusual to be seen, nothing Skag himself
+could hear.  He paid closer attention; and presently, began to get a
+perfume.  It was the great, good earth-smell; richer and fuller every
+minute.
+
+Then Nels stood up and faced the southeast.  Skag looked where the dog
+seemed to be looking.  Along the horizon line he saw an edge of dark
+grey.  No, the horizon line was cut; this thing lay against the earth
+as straight as the blade of a knife.
+
+Now Skag began to feel something in the air.  He couldn't recognise it,
+nor define it, but it was imperative--some kind of urge.  There was the
+sense of emergency, perfectly clear; so much that he turned and looked
+about, listening for a call.  He thought of Carlin; could she be in any
+need?  He was glad she wasn't here; this was a good place to get away
+from . . .  Ah, that was it!  _The urge to run_.
+
+"How is it, Nels, old man, does the great monsoon make us feel like
+moving?"
+
+Nels stood like a thing carved out of solid pewter.  He did not hear.
+He faced the southeast.  But Skag understood why the animals were due
+to make a procession; the chief thing was to get away.  Then Skag
+settled into a perfect calm.
+
+Four spotted deer came trotting up the shoulder of a near incline,
+almost directly toward them.  The dog watched them with a casual eye.
+They went by, sixty feet away.  Nels was looking further on to where a
+big brown bear ambled along, making good time for one of her
+build--behind her, a yearling.  Still Nels showed no inclination to
+leave his place.
+
+As if it were a vision of the night, the whole landscape before Skag
+became dotted with specks; all moving.  All moving in the same
+direction, almost toward him.  As the numbers increased, he saw that
+they ran straight; there was no swerving.  In spite of what Roderick
+Deal had told him, his mind demanded the reassurance of his own voice.
+
+"Nels, is it real?  Are we asleep?"
+
+The dog was a stoic; he moved one ear, but he did not lift an eye.
+
+Skag noticed that the hush in the air seemed to have laid a bond of
+silence on all these creatures.  He had heard no calls, no cries.  And
+these were the calling, crying animals of the world.
+
+Here and there at some distance, he saw the ungainly, shambling gait of
+hyenas, in twos and fours and threes together, or alone.  Once when
+four passed quite near, he felt Nels' shoulder against his thigh.
+
+"Nels, old man, buck up.  I tell you, get a grip.  They may be the
+devil, but he isn't hard to kill.  I'll show you.  Do you get me, son?"
+
+Nels looked up into the man's face, a long look.  Then he pressed his
+head close, under Skag's hand.
+
+Spotted deer ran in small groups; they came into sight and passed out
+quickly.  More swift and more beautiful, were slender deer with single
+horns, twisted spirally; sometimes very long.  Skag thrilled to their
+pride of action; but Nels seemed in no wise interested.
+
+There was another kind of deer seen at some distance; the bucks were
+full-antlered and from where Skag stood, they looked light grey colour.
+Rabbits scuttled in and out of sight constantly, all over the landscape.
+
+Between the parallel lines of seven spotted deer on one side and a
+small herd of grey deer on the other, he saw a great, low-leaping
+beast; plainly yellow with black stripes--one tiger the sportsmen had
+not bagged.
+
+Evidently some mighty thing had transcended enmity and annihilated
+fear--_for one day_.
+
+Little things held his eye one while.  Creatures like monster
+rats--they were really mongooses--racing for their lives.  Lizards from
+two to eighteen inches long; and he saw one with rainbow colours in his
+skin, mostly red.  He learned afterward it was a great-chameleon; and
+angry.  He saw one small scaled thing, rather like a crocodile in
+shape, but with a sharp-pointed nose; it waddled by, near enough to
+show two little black beads in its face.
+
+When Skag lifted his eyes the earth seemed to have given up a score of
+packs of jackals.  Their action was not like the wolf nor like the dog;
+it was a short, high leap--giving to a running pack the effect of
+_bobbing_.  They were more perfect wolves than the American coyote, but
+smaller; and they looked to have much fuller coats.  Searching the
+location of these groups of bobbing runners, his eye lifted toward the
+southeast.
+
+. . . The grey knife-blade had cut away half the world.  It lay
+straight across the earth, midway between his feet and where the
+horizon line should curve.  Without any look of motion, without any
+shine or sheen, smooth as a wall of dull-polished granite, it rose to
+beyond sight in the sky--the utterly true line of its base upon the
+ground.
+
+. . . So this was _the wall of the waters_.
+
+No man dare interpret it to any other man; but Skag found perfect awe.
+Then he grew very quiet--his faculties alert as never before.
+
+
+When he noticed the landscape again, the bobbing packs were gone.
+Slender spotted things in pairs and alone, were leopards--leaping long
+and low.  A great dark creature, going like the wind, was a black
+panther.
+
+Then he saw, right before him, the unthinkable.  Majesty in miniature.
+A perfect East Indian musk buck--the most beautiful of living things.
+The wee fellow came on, leaping to the utmost of his strength; his
+nostrils wide, his lips apart, his eyes immense.  He swayed a little,
+wavered and fell.
+
+Skag ran and leaned over him--the little heart was driving out the
+little life.  It seemed a pity out of all proportion. . . .  He held
+the tiny breathless thing tenderly, as if it were a dead child. . . .
+So he laid it down reluctantly, at last; and straightened--to see a
+hunting cheetah coming toward him, not far away.
+
+He glanced down, Nels was not there.  He looked all about, Nels was not
+in sight.  Then the reserves in Skag's nature came up.  All his
+training flashed across his brain.  Every nerve, every muscle in his
+body, was instantly adjusted to emergency.  There was no failure in
+co-ordination.
+
+He stood quietly watching the cheetah.  It appeared not to have seen
+him.  If it kept on, it would pass about seventy feet away.  But Skag
+knew it would not keep on.  With his mind he might think it would, but
+something in him knew it would not.
+
+He remembered Carlin; no, he must not think of her now.  He remembered
+that Nels was gone; no, he must not think of that either.  All the
+weapons he had were in his heart, in his head.  He set himself in
+order, ready.  Recalling, while he waited, with what joy he had been
+ready to face the tiger that coughed near the monkey glen, to stand
+between Carlin and it--he was aware that now he faced a hunting cheetah
+_as much for her_.
+
+The cheetah stopped, and turning toward him direct, laid itself along
+the ground so tight he could see only a line of colour among the
+grasses.  There it seemed to stay.
+
+When a man deals with a cat, to allay fear or to establish any common
+ground of sympathy, he ought to see its eyes.  While realising this
+fact, Skag heard a piercing cat-scream, some distance back of him.  He
+had not heard sounds from any of the animals before. . . .  He found
+himself calculating whether the monsoon or night or the cheetah, would
+reach him first.
+
+Changing sun-rays had laid a sheen resembling silver upon the wall; not
+dazzling, but softly bright.  After a while the cheetah showed, nearer
+than when it settled into the grass.  The wall was moving forward
+surely--as surely as time--but the cheetah would reach him first.
+
+At last he saw two yellow discs.  Then he worked with his power--his
+supreme confidence.  He had never been more quiet, never more fearless
+in his life.
+
+The hunting cheetah moved toward him without pause, till he could see
+the whole body along the ground; the broad, short head; the wide,
+sun-lit eyes.  And while he sent his steady force of human-kindly
+thought into those eyes, they _narrowed into slits_.  In that instant
+Skag knew that the beast had no fear to allay; no quality of nature he
+could touch.  It was a murderer, pure and simple.
+
+Then he thought of Carlin. . . .  Of her brother.  . . .  Of Nels.  He
+opened his lips to speak, but the name did not pass his throat.
+
+Carlin, Carlin!  It was only a question of time; and Skag folded his
+arms.
+
+And high against the wall of the waters rolled the clarion
+challenge-call of Nels, the Great Dane dog.  The cheetah leaped and
+settled back.  Skag turned to look the way it faced.  A grey line
+flashed along the ground.  Skag did not know it, but he was racing
+toward their meeting.
+
+The cheetah lifted and met Nels, body against body, in mid-air--Skag
+heard the impact.  Nels had risen full stretch, his head low between
+his shoulders; the cheetah's wide-spread arms went round him, but his
+entire length closed upon the cheetah's entire length--like a
+jack-knife--folding it backward.  Skag heard a dull sound, the same
+instant with a keen cat-scream--cut short as the two bodies struck the
+earth.  When he reached them, Nels was still doubled tight over the
+cheetah's backward-bent body; his grey iron-jaws locked deep in the
+tawny throat.
+
+
+"Sahib!  Sanford _Han_--tee Sahib!"
+
+"Hi, Bhanah; this way!"
+
+Bhanah came with a rain-coat in his hand.  Stooping to examine Nels a
+moment and rising to glance at the wall, he spoke rapidly:
+
+"The Sahib has seen his Great Dane Nels kill a second cheetah in one
+day.  There are two cuts on each leg.  Also because Nels must not lose
+his strength on a fast journey to his master's place--I, Bhanah, will
+uncover mine honour in the presence of a man."
+
+And quickly casting his turban from his head, he proceeded to tear it
+down the middle.  While he worked, he talked--as if to himself--in half
+chanting tones:
+
+"Men in my country do _not_--this thing; but I do it.  Of a certainty
+Nels has accomplished that I could not, though I would.  This night two
+cheetahs remain not--the gods witness--to destroy little tender
+children of men.  And when the so-insignificant cuts of Nels shall be
+presently wrapped with the covering of mine own honour, I shall be
+exalted not less!  _The gods witness_.  Then we return swiftly into a
+safe place."
+
+This was no ordinary exultation.  Skag's ears were wide open; and he
+heard grief--and hate.
+
+"How did you know where I was?" he asked quietly.
+
+"I heard the first cheetah's death cry; and I knew he was not far from
+you, Sahib."
+
+"I thought he was pretty far, one little while."
+
+Skag had spoken, thinking of Nels.  Bhanah searched his face while the
+look of a frightened child grew in his own.  Again he stooped quickly
+and touched the man's feet.  He had done it once before--to Skag's
+acute discomfort.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?"
+
+"That a man's life is in thy breath, my Master."
+
+"Bhanah, I'll find out--how to answer you."
+
+Then Bhanah laughed a low exultant chuckle, while he finished binding
+Nels' legs with a part of his own turban.
+
+"It is well, Sahib; the _fortune which never fails_ is thine.  And now,
+if we are wise, we will run."
+
+Nels led, all the way; and they were barely under cover, when the earth
+indeed shook.  The stone walls of the building rocked; the dull thunder
+of a solid, continuous impact of dense water upon its roof, filled
+their ears.  The light of the sun was cut off.
+
+"Bhanah, you and Nels will camp with me to-night.  This has been the
+hunting cheetah-day of my life; and--Nels is responsible that he didn't
+get me."
+
+"My master is the heart of kindness."
+
+While Bhanah was busy, later, Skag laughed:
+
+"I'm remembering that you said Nels did it _soon_.  How did he do it?"
+
+"By the drive of his weight against the cheetah's body; and the
+strength of his limbs, in the action my master saw."
+
+
+They had eaten and Nels was properly cared for, when Bhanah spoke
+softly:
+
+"Shall we have tales, Sahib?"
+
+Skag roused from a moment's abstraction to answer:
+
+"Bhanah, I don't remember anything I could talk about to-night, but the
+hunting cheetah--Nels got."
+
+"The hunting cheetah is one, Sahib; _there are many_.  Telling is in
+knowledge and in speech; finding is in the man.  I will tell, if the
+Sahib pleases; but he shall find."
+
+So they had tales that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_The Monster Kabuli_
+
+Skag had learned, in finding Carlin, that it wasn't like a man in America
+finding the one particular and inimitable girl, not even if she were the
+_laurus nobilis_ and he the eagle of the same coin.  In India, where
+people have pride of race, and time to keep it shining, there are
+formalities. . . .  The two had arranged to meet in the jungle--not deep
+in the glen where the tiger had coughed, but at the edge toward Hurda,
+when Skag returned from Poona.  He was to go straight into the jungle
+from the railway station.  Carlin would be watching and follow
+there. . . .
+
+Sanford Hantee of the Natural Research Department, after much opportunity
+to wrestle with the subtle and gritty and hard-testing demon of delay,
+came at last to Hurda again, and stepped out of the coach with a throb in
+his chest and a knot in his throat which only the best and bravest
+soldiers have brought in from the field.  As the moments of waiting at
+the edge of the jungle passed, it dawned upon him that something had
+happened, or Carlin already would be with him, at least crossing the big
+sun-shot area from the walled city. . . .  What had happened is this
+story of the monster Kabuli, which is an animal story even without the
+entrance of the racing elephant, Gunpat Rao.
+
+
+Many months before, five merchants came in from far Kabul and sat down in
+the market-place at Hurda, day by day unfolding more of their packs.
+They brought nuts from High Himalaya, foot-hill raisins and the long
+white Kabuli grapes themselves, packed in cotton, a dozen to fifteen in
+the box.  Then there were dried figs and dates, pomegranates picked up
+far this side of the Hills, Kabuli weaves of cloth, and silks inwoven
+with gold thread.  They were small packs, but worth a great price; which
+is important to relate in any company.
+
+Now these five Kabulies were usually together (not too far from the
+kadamba tree where Ratna Ram sat); and their turbans were of different
+colours, but their hearts were mainly of one kind of hell.  Sometimes
+they stood and sometimes they moved one by one among the bazaars; but
+Hurda thought of them as one alien presence, and signified that the
+hugest of them, the monster himself, was also the most hateful and
+dangerous, which he was.
+
+If I should tell how tall he was exactly, and this in the midst of Sikhs
+and other of the tallest people of the world, you would think it one of
+the high lights of a writer-man, and if I should tell you of the face of
+this monster; the soft folds of fury resting there in the main; the bulk
+of loose greyish lids over the whites of eyes flecked with brown
+pigments; of the sunken upper lip and the nose drooping against it, you
+would say long before I had finished, "Let up on the poor beast--"
+
+And this was a rich man, this Kabuli; richer than any of these brothers,
+and deeper-minded; so that he could think with keener power to make his
+thought come true.  Also, life was more full to him than to the others,
+so that he could look over the world of his packs; and when he slept in
+the midst of his packs, all his treasure was not there.  You really
+should have seen him smile as the head-missionary, Mr. Maurice,
+approached, and you should have seen the smile change to a sneer, without
+a flick of difference in the expression of the eyes.  And perhaps it is
+just as well that you missed the look that came into the eyes of the
+monster Kabuli when the beautiful English missionary, Margaret Annesley,
+passed.
+
+Miss Annesley was Carlin's closest friend in Hurda.  They worked together
+among the women and children, among the sick and hungry, and found much
+to do, without entering the deeper concerns of soul-wellbeing which Mr.
+Maurice attended.  These last were rather reticent concerns of Carlin,
+especially.  Mr. Maurice protested against their moving through certain
+parts of the city, against entering Mohammedan households, or the
+quarters of the bazaar women--all of which talk was well-listened to.
+Miss Annesley had no fear, because she was essentially clean.  She was
+effective and tireless, a thrilling sort of saint; but she could see no
+evil, not even in the monster Kabuli.  Carlin had no fear because she was
+Carlin; but she had a clear eye for jungle shadows--for beasts, saints,
+and men.  As for the Kabuli, she quietly remarked:
+
+"Why, Margaret, can't you see he's a mad dog?"
+
+In other words, Carlin used the optic nerve as well as the vision said to
+be of the soul.
+
+"But, my dear, he seemed really stirred," Miss Annesley protested.
+
+"I do not doubt he was stirred," Carlin replied.  Her mind was the mind
+of India, with Western contrasts; also it was familiar from both angles
+with the various attractive attributes of her friend. . . .  But Margaret
+Annesley continued to greet the monster Kabuli from time to time.  Having
+great means and worldly goods and riotous health, he had nothing to
+discuss but his soul--which few beside Margaret would have found
+ostensible.
+
+"I tell you he has _rabies_," Carlin once repeated.
+
+This did no good; so she went to Deenah who was Miss Annesley's servant,
+a Hindu of the Hindus and priceless.  Deenah declared that he was already
+aware of the danger; that he missed nothing; also that he was watchful as
+one who feared the worst.
+
+Deenah was a small man, swift and noiseless.  He had an invincible
+equilibrium and authority in his own world, which was a considerable
+establishment back of the dining-room, including a most delectable little
+creature even smaller than Deenah, but quite as important, and sharing
+all light and shadow by his side.  Deenah had a look of forked lightning
+and a mellow voice.  The more angry he became, the more caressing his
+tones.
+
+One day while he was down in the bazaars buying provisions, the monster
+Kabuli beckoned Deenah to come closer.  They stood together--terrier and
+blood-hound--and Deenah listened while the form and colour of better
+conditions was outlined for his sake. . . .  The Kabuli had heard that
+Deenah was a great servant; he had heard it from many sources, even that
+Deenah was favourably compared with the chief commissioner's favourite
+servant--who was a picked man of ten thousand.
+
+Deenah inclined his head, hearkening for the tone within the tone, but
+gravely acknowledged that he had heard much in this life harder to listen
+to.
+
+The Kabuli continued that Deenah was no doubt appreciated on a small
+scale in the house of Annesley Sahiba; but the establishment itself, as
+well as the people, was inadequate to offer scope for the talents of such
+a man as Deenah; also that Deenah was remiss in making no better
+provision for the future of his own household; also, the gifts should be
+considered--and now the Kabuli was opening his packs.
+
+Deenah granted that life was not all sumptuous as he might wish, but he
+had been given to understand no man's life was so in this world; he would
+be glad now, to hear the plan by which all that he lacked could appear
+and all that he hoped for, come to pass.
+
+The Kabuli opened wider his treasures.  Deenah's narrow-lidded eyes
+feasted upon the wealths and crafts of many men. . . .  And the plan had
+to do, not with this night nor with the next, but with the night after
+these two nights were passed, and Deenah's Sahiba and the Hakima
+(literally, the physician, which meant Carlin) were to be brought for the
+evening to the house of the Kabuli's friend, one Mirza Khan, a
+Mohammedan, whose soul also was in great need.
+
+Deenah's voice was gentle as he enquired how he was to be used--why
+riches accrued to him, since it was the life of the life of his mistress
+to serve those ill or in need, body or soul.  The Kabuli replied that he
+was not sure that the Sahiba would go to a Mohammedan house, even with
+her friend the Hakima, unless Deenah could assure his mistress that the
+Mohammedan was well known to him and honourable, his house an abode of
+fellowship and peace.
+
+Deenah considered well, in soft tones saying presently that he could not
+accomplish this thing alone, but must advise with his fellow-servants who
+were trustworthy.  In fact, if the Kabuli could come this afternoon--when
+the Sahiba and the Hakima would be away--and tell his story once more, in
+the presence of the utterly reliable among the servants--all might be
+brought to pass.
+
+The Kabuli did not care for the plan, but Deenah repeated that he could
+not do this thing alone; his voice admirably gentle, as he reiterated his
+own helplessness. . . .  Still he granted with hesitation that the Sahiba
+deigned to trust him to a degree. . . .  At this moment the Kabuli saw
+Deenah's eyes forking at the treasure-pack.  There was longing in them
+that was pain.  The face of Deenah was the face of one struck and
+crippled with his own needs, which point helped the Kabuli to decision.
+
+The terms of the agreement were made straight and fixed.  Deenah went
+back to his house where he made the monster's plan known to the servants.
+In the afternoon, when the house was empty, the monster Kabuli called and
+opened a small pack in the quiet shade of the compound, before the eyes
+of six men and one woman, as much Deenah as himself. . . .  When the time
+in the story came that Deenah was to use his influence upon the mind of
+his mistress, there seemed a slowness of understanding among the other
+servants; so that the Kabuli had to speak again and very clearly.
+
+Just now the head of Deenah bent low over the open pack, the movement of
+his hand instantly drawing and filling the eye of the trader from Kabul;
+and then it was that the Sahiba's _syce_, who was a huge man,
+materialised a _lakri_ from under his long cotton tunic--the _lakri_
+being a stick of olive-wood from High Himalaya and very hard.  This he
+brought down with great force upon the hugest and ugliest head in all
+Central Provinces at that time.
+
+Merely a beginning.  Six other _lakris_ were drawn from five other
+tunics--the extra one for Deenah.
+
+The great body was dragged farther back toward the servants' quarters.
+Here Deenah officiated.  With each blow he enunciated in caressing tones,
+some term of the agreement . . . until he heard the protest of the mother
+of his little son:
+
+"Shall you, Deenah, who are only her man-servant, have all the privilege
+of defending the Sahiba--to whom I, Shanti, am as her own child?"
+
+And Deenah, not missing a count, cried:
+
+"Come and defend!"
+
+So Deenah's wife and the other women came, bringing the smooth hand
+stones with which they ground the spices into curry powder. . . .  And
+when the beating was over, they carefully tied up the pack of the Kabuli
+and sealed it without a single article missing.  Then they carried the
+body out of the compound, across the main highway, beyond the parallel
+bridle-road, and let it slide softly down into the little _khud_ beyond,
+deeper and deeper each year from erosion.
+
+
+A little afterward, that same afternoon, Margaret Annesley and Carlin
+Deal were walking along the bridle-path.  Hearing a moan they looked over
+into the khud, where the monster Kabuli was coming to.  He managed to
+raise one hand, but the movement of the fingers somehow struck the pity
+from Carlin's heart.  It was not a clean gesture of a chastened man.
+Even though his body was terribly bruised and broken, the face was that
+of Ravage in person.  Carlin pulled her companion on.  They hastened to
+the bungalow where the tied pack was in evidence and strange sounds
+reached them from the servants' compound.
+
+It was the picture of a tranced group that they saw--Deenah sitting upon
+the ground, uttering frightful low curses securely coupled together--in
+the language of all languages for this ancient art.  The others were
+around him, even two or three of the women.
+
+"Deenah!" Miss Annesley called.
+
+The concentration was not to be broken.
+
+"Deenah--is a madness come to this place?"
+
+The head of her priceless servant was bowing close to the ground, but his
+mind was still away; and in high concord to his tones, were the tones of
+the small delectable one, whose eyes, dark and vivid, were the eyes of
+Jael singing her song after slaying Sisera.  Margaret turned to her
+_syce_.  There were tears and sweat in his eyes, but no answering human
+gleam.
+
+"Carlin--" she said.  "Help me carry the _daik-ji_--"
+
+It was a huge vessel containing several gallons of cool water; and this
+was lifted by four hands and poured upon Deenah, whose eyes met them at
+once with the light of reason.
+
+"Bear witness, I am cursing softly," he said.
+
+"Are you my head servant?"
+
+"I am thy servant."
+
+"And you permit this bazaar-tamasha in your compound?"
+
+Deenah observed that this was not an affair upon which he could speak to
+the Sahiba, his mistress.  Meanwhile Carlin watched Deenah's eyes fill
+with the keen reds of bloody memory.
+
+"Go away, Margaret," Carlin said.  "He will talk to me.  Please go now.
+In six breaths he will be back in his trance again--"
+
+
+So it happened.  Deenah watched his mistress depart, then he raised his
+eyes to Carlin, saying:
+
+"The Hakima will understand.  These things are not for the Sahiba--"
+
+"Speak--"
+
+Deenah arose, saying: "It is not good for you to set foot in my house,
+but come to the threshold; then neither my voice nor the voices of these
+shall enter her understanding--"
+
+Deenah pointed to the rest of the servants who gathered around.
+
+The tale of the monster Kabuli was unfolded to Carlin without a single
+interruption for several moments; in fact, until Margaret Annesley came
+running forth, crying:
+
+"Are you never going to cease talk and carry help to the Kabuli--who is
+hurt?"
+
+Carlin beckoned her back.  "Not hurt, dear.  He is ill.  He has
+hydrophobia."
+
+
+"Our protection depends upon you," Deenah concluded, to Carlin.  "We
+commit ourselves to you; we render our lives and honour into your care.
+You alone, Hakima-ji, can present the story of these doings to the chief
+commissioner, whose name we hold in honour above other men.  Will you see
+that it be known--not one thread has been taken or changed from the pack
+of the Kabuli; also, the chief commissioner--out of his equity which has
+never failed--shall judge us, _knowing_ that we did the beating for the
+Sahiba's sake."
+
+The chief commissioner at Hurda was a good and a just man.  He listened
+seriously and spoke to Carlin of the value of good Indian servants in the
+houses of the English; of the dangers of the tiger in the grass and the
+serpent upon the rock and the Kabuli in the khud--to whom he would attend
+at once.
+
+It was many weeks after that when the case was called, and Deenah's eyes
+grew red-rimmed like a pit-terrier's as he told the story again, but his
+voice fondled the ears of those present in the court-room. . . .  One by
+one, the other four Kabulies left the market-place in Hurda; and when the
+monster himself had been made to pay and his healing had been
+uninterrupted for many weeks, there came, a day when the unwalled city of
+Hurda knew him no more.
+
+He was not forgotten, even though months sped by; for in Miss Annesley's
+heart was a pang over the big man who had been horribly hurt. . . .
+Meanwhile for Carlin all life was changed--as the magic of swift
+afterglow changes every twig and leaf and stem.  Then came her hard days,
+watching for Skag's return--the weeks passing while he waited in Poona.
+Every morning from a distance, she observed the train come in from the
+South.  When Skag did not appear, sometimes she would go alone for a
+while to the edge of the jungle, but never deep, because he had asked her
+not to.  Sometimes it was an hour or two before she was ready to look out
+at the world or the light again. . . .
+
+One early morning as she crossed the market-place, Carlin saw a strange
+elephant there with his mahout; and a messenger approached deferentially,
+asking if she were the Hakima, and if she could lead the way to Annesley
+Sahiba. . . .  Four hours' journey away--this was the messenger's
+story--a native prince whose dignity included the keeping of one
+elephant, an honourable dispensation from Indian Government, had called
+in great need for the ministration of the Hakima, and that of her friend,
+Annesley Sahiba--for lo, unto him a child was to be born.
+
+Carlin asked if she were needed at once--thinking of the many days and
+the train at noontime.  The messenger said that within four hours he was
+told to deliver the Hakima and Annesley Sahiba at the palace door.  He
+followed along, and the elephant came behind him, as she walked toward
+Margaret's bungalow. . . .  If Skag were to come this day, she
+thought! . . .  Deenah was away, but Carlin left word with his wife that
+she would be back that night, or early the next day.  Margaret was ready.
+Carlin was in the howdah beside her, before there was really a chance to
+think.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_The Monster Kabuli (Continued)_
+
+Skag did arrive from Poona that day.  When Carlin did not come to the
+jungle-edge, and the vivid open area between him and the city showed no
+movement, he did not linger many minutes.  Power had come to him from
+the waiting days, and this hour was the acid test.  All his life he had
+refused to look back or look ahead, making the _Now_--the present
+moving point, his world--wasting no energy otherwise.
+
+In the long waiting days, he had learned what many a man afield had
+been forced to learn in loneliness, that when he was very still, and
+feeling _high_, not too tired--in fact, when he could forget
+himself--something of Carlin came to him, over the miles.
+
+But in spite of all he knew, much force of his life had strained
+forward to this moment of meeting.  The shock of disappointment dazed
+him.  His first thought was that there was some good reason; but after
+that, the misery of faint-heartedness stole in, and he wondered the old
+sad wonder--if love had changed.
+
+Skag hurried back to the station where he had left the Great Dane,
+Nels, with Bhanah, who would have to find quarters for himself.  Nels
+stood between the two, waiting for his orders; and wheeled with a dip
+of the head almost puppy-like when the man decided.  So Skag walked on
+toward the road where Carlin lived; and at his heels, with dignity,
+strode one of the four great hunting dogs in India.  Presently he saw
+Miss Annesley's head-servant, Deenah, running toward him--face grey
+with calamity.
+
+And now Skag heard of the coming of the messenger with the strange
+elephant; and the black edging began to run about Deenah's tale, as he
+revealed the ugly possibilities in his own mind that the Monster Kabuli
+had his part in this sending:
+
+". . . Now Hantee Sahib must learn," Deenah finished, "that not within
+four hours' journey from Hurda; nay, not within six hours' journey from
+Hurda, is there any native prince with the dignity of one elephant."
+
+. . . They were walking rapidly toward the house of the chief
+commissioner whom Deenah said was away in the villages.  Their hope of
+life and death fell upon the Deputy Commissioner-Sahib.  Always as he
+spoke, Deenah's face steadily grew more grey, the rims of his eyes more
+red.  His memories of the monster were flooding in like the rains over
+old river-beds, and there was no mercy for Skag in anything he said.
+
+The Deputy Commissioner, a perfectly groomed man, leisurely appeared.
+He did not wear spectacle or glass; still there was a glisten about his
+eyes, as if one were there.  He came out into the verandah opening a
+heavy cigarette-case of soft Indian gold.  His head tilted back as if
+sipping from a cup, as he lit and inbreathed the cigarette.  To Skag he
+seemed so utterly aloof, so irreparably out of touch with a man's needs
+at a moment like this, that he could not have asked a favour or
+adequately stated his case.  Deenah took this part, however.  If there
+were drama or any interest in the tale, there was no sign from the
+Deputy, whose eyes now cooled upon Nels, and widened.  Presently he
+interrupted Deenah to inquire who owned this dog.
+
+The servant signified the American, and Skag took the straight glisten
+of the Englishman's glance for the first time.
+
+"May I inquire?  From whom?"
+
+Skag coldly told him that the dog had been owned by Police Commissioner
+Hichens of Bombay. . . .  The deputy regretfully ordered Deenah to
+continue his narrative, and in the silence afterward, presently spoke
+the name:
+
+"Neela Deo, of course--"
+
+This meant the Blue God, the leader of the caravan; and signified the
+lordliest elephant in all India. . . .  The Deputy, after a slight
+pause, answered himself:
+
+"But Neela Deo is away with the chief commissioner. . . .  Mitha Baba--"
+
+There was another lilting pause.  This referred to a female elephant,
+the meaning of whose name was "Sweet Baby." The Deputy capitulated:
+
+"Mitha Baba, yes; especially since she knows the Hakima--and oh, I say,
+that's a strange tale, you know--"
+
+He glanced from Deenah to Nels, to Skag; but received no encouragement
+to narrate same.  Not in the least unbalanced, he tipped back his head
+and took another drink from between his smoky fingers; then his
+glassless eye glittered out through the white burning of the noon, as
+he added:
+
+"But Mitha Baba would not chase a strange elephant, unless she
+positively knew the creature was running off with her own Gul
+Moti. . . .  She's discriminating, is Mitha Baba.  But I say, Gunpat
+Rao came from the Vindhas, you know."
+
+It dawned upon Skag that this wasn't monologue, but conversation; also
+that it had some vague bearing upon his own affairs.  The pause was
+very slight, when the Deputy resumed:
+
+"Yes, Gunpat Rao is from the Vindha Hills, within the life-time of one
+man. . . .  Mitha Baba is as fast, but she won't do it; so there's an
+end.  Gunpat Rao. . . .  Gunpat Rao.  The mahouts say young male
+elephants will follow a strange male for the chance of a fight.  It's
+consistent enough.  Yes, we'll call in Chakkra. . . .  Are you ready to
+travel, sir?"
+
+This was to Skag.
+
+No array of terms could express how ready to travel was Sanford Hantee.
+The Bengali mahout, Chakkra, appeared; a sturdy little man with blue
+turban, red kummerband, and a scarf and tunic of white.
+
+The Deputy flicked away his cigarette and now spoke fast--talk having
+to do with Nels, with the Hakima, with Gunpat Rao, who was his
+particular mahout's master, and of the strange elephant who had carried
+the two Sahibas away.
+
+Chakkra reported at this point that he had seen this elephant in the
+market place, an old male--with a woman's howdah, covering too few of
+his wrinkles--and a mahout who would ruin the disposition of anything
+but a man-killer.  Chakkra appeared to have an actual hatred toward
+this man, for he enquired of the Deputy:
+
+"Have I your permission to deal with the mahout of this thief elephant?"
+
+"Out of your own blood-lust--no.  Out of necessity--yes."
+
+A queer moment.  It was as if one supposed only to crawl, had suddenly
+revealed wings.  Not until this instant did Skag realise that a Chief
+Commissioner had the flower of England to pick his deputies from, and
+had made no mistake in this man. . . .  A moment later, Nels had been
+given preliminary instruction, and Skag was lifted, with a playful
+flourish of the trunk, by Gunpat Rao himself, into the light hunting
+howdah.  Chakkra was also in place, when the Deputy waved his hand with
+the remark:
+
+"Oh, I say, I'd be glad of the chase, myself, but an official, you
+know, . . . and Lord, what a dog!"
+
+The last was as Nels swung around in front of Gunpat Rao's trunk as if
+formally to remark: "You see we are to travel together to-day."
+
+The Deputy detained them a second or two longer, while he brought his
+gun-case and a pair of pistols, to save the time of Skag procuring his
+own at the station.  They heard him call, after the start:
+
+"It might be a running fight, you know. . . ."
+
+A little out, Nels was given the scent of the strange elephant and
+Deenah left them, with nothing to mitigate the evil discovery that
+Carlin and her friend had been carried straight through the open jungle
+country, toward the Vindhas; not at all in the direction the messenger
+had stated within hearing of the other servants.
+
+
+A steady beat through Skag's tortured mind--was Deenah's story of the
+monster Kabuli; no softness nor mercy in those details.  He had
+watched, in the Deputy, a man unfold, after the mysterious manner of
+the English.  He had entered suddenly, abruptly into one of the most
+enthralling centres of fascination in Indian life--the elephant
+service.  He had seen the exalted and complicated mechanism of a Chief
+Commissioner's Headquarters get down to individual business with
+remarkable speed and not the loss of an ounce of dignity.  But under
+every feeling and thought--was the slow bass beat of Deenah's story
+about the monster Kabuli.
+
+Nels had been called to the trail in the very hour of his arrival.
+Skag would have supposed their movement leisurely, except that he saw
+Nels steadily at work.  Gunpat Rao, the most magnificent elephant in
+the Chief Commissioner's stockades--excepting Neela Deo and Mitha
+Baba--was making speed under him, at this moment.  (Gunpat Rao had
+approved of him instantly, swinging him up into the howdah with a glad
+grace and a touch that would not unfreshen evening wear.)
+
+Chakkra, the mahout, was singing the praises of Gunpat Rao, his master,
+as they rolled forward; flapping an ear to keep time and waving his
+ankas--the steel hook of which was never used.
+
+"Kin to Neela Deo, is Gunpat Rao; liege-son to Neela Deo, the King!" he
+repeated.
+
+It appeared that he was reminding Gunpat Rao, rather than informing the
+American, of this honour.
+
+"Did I not hear the Deputy Commissioner Sahib say that he came from the
+Vindhas, and that Neela Deo is from High Himalaya?" Skag asked.
+
+The mahout's face turned back; his trailing lids did not widen in the
+fierce sunlight.  It was the face of a man still singing.
+
+"The kinship is of honour, not of blood, Sahib," he answered.
+
+Then Chakkra informed Skag that Kudrat Sharif, Neela Deo's mahout, was
+the third of his line to serve the Blue God, who was not yet nearly in
+the ictus of his power and beauty; while he, Chakkra, was the only
+mahout Gunpat Rao had known--since he came down from the Vindhian
+trap-stockades, where he was snared.  He was about thirty years younger
+than Neela Deo, the King.  Would the Sahib bear in mind that an
+elephant continues to increase in strength and wisdom for an hundred
+years?  And now would he consider Gunpat Rao's size--the perfection of
+his shape?  Might not such a Prince claim relationship to such a King?
+
+. . . Chakkra then pointed out that when the grandson of his own little
+son should sit just here, behind the incomparable ears of his
+beloved--the ears with linings like flower-petals--so, looking out upon
+the world from a greater height than this--then doubtless people would
+have learned that another mighty elephant had come into the world.
+
+Skag missed nothing of the talk.  Another time it would have filled him
+with deep delight.  It belonged to his own craft.  A man might use all
+the words, of all the languages in all their flexibilities and never
+tell the whole truth of his own craft.  In fact, a man can only drop a
+point here and there about his life work.  One never comes to the end.
+
+Also before his eyes was the joy of Nels in action--the big fellow
+leaping to his task, steadily drawing them on, it appeared; and always
+a breath of ease would blow across Skag's being as he noted the
+quickening; but when that was merely sustained for a while, the hope of
+it wore away, and he wanted more and more speed--past any giving of man
+or beast. . . .  The old drum of the Kabuli tale constantly recurred,
+as if a trap door to the deeps were often lifted.  Skag would brush his
+hand across his brow, shading his head with his helmet lifted apart for
+a moment, to let the sunless air circulate.
+
+They passed through the open jungle merging into a country of low hills
+and frequent villages.  The rains that had broken in Poona had not yet
+reached this country. . . .  The sun went down and the afterglow
+changed the world.  Carlin's afterglow, it was to Skag, from their
+moment at the edge of the jungle--on the evening of the troth; there
+was pain about it now.  India had a different look to him--alien,
+sinister, of a depth of suffering undreamed of, because of the beating
+bass of the Kabuli tale, intensified by the sense that falling night
+would slacken the chase. . . .
+
+Skag had lost the magic of externals, the drift of his great interest.
+All his lights were around Carlin, and powers of hatred, altogether
+foreign to his faculties, pressed upon him in the threat of the
+hour. . . .  Yes, Chakkra remembered the five Kabuli men who had sat in
+the market-place.  Yes, he remembered the story of the beating of the
+monster, the long slow healing after that; and his last look, as he
+left Hurda for the last time. . . .
+
+It was well, Chakkra said, that they had open country for the chase.
+It was well that the Kabuli did not call to the Sahibas, and hide them
+in one of the great Mohammedan households of Hurda--where even Indian
+Government might not search.  It was well that the Kabuli did not dare
+to come closer to Hurda than this, so that they had a chance to
+overtake his elephant afield, before the walls of the _purdah_
+closed. . . .
+
+Such was the burden of Chakkra's ramble, and there was no balm in it
+for Skag.  The weight settled heavier and heavier upon him with the
+ending of the day.  Nels was a phantom of grey before them in the
+shadows, leisurely showing his powers.  At times, while he ranged far
+ahead, they would not hear him for several minutes; then possibly a
+half-humorous sniff in the immediate dark, and they knew the big fellow
+waited for Gunpat Rao to catch up.  Once he was lost ahead so long that
+Skag spoke:
+
+"Nels--"
+
+The answer was a bound of feet and a whine below that pulled the man's
+hand over the rim of the howdah, as if to reach and touch his good
+friend.
+
+"Take it, Nels--good work, old man," Skag said.
+
+They passed through zones of coolness as the trail sank into hollows
+between the hills, and Gunpat Rao rolled forward.  Pitch and roll,
+pitch and roll--as many movements as a solar system and the painful
+illusion of slowness over all.  Often in Skag's nostrils one of the
+subtlest of all scents made itself known, but most elusively--a
+suggestion of shocking power--like an instant's glimpse into another
+dimension.  If you answer at all to an expression which at best only
+intimates--_the smell of living dust_--you will have something of the
+thing that Skag sensed in the emanation of Gunpat Rao, warming to
+action.
+
+Occasionally as they crossed the streams there was delay in finding the
+trail on the other side.  Once in the dark after a ford, when Nels had
+rushed along the left bank to find the scent, Gunpat Rao plunged
+straight on to the right without waiting; and the mahout sang his
+praises with low but fiery intensity:
+
+"He is coming.  He is coming into his own!"
+
+"What do you mean, Chakkra?  Make it clear to me who have not many
+words of Hindi--"
+
+"The meaning of our journey appears to him, Sahib; from our minds, from
+the thief ahead and from the great dog,--the thing that we do is
+appearing to him.  He knows the way--see--"
+
+Nels had come in from the lateral and found that Gunpat Rao was right.
+An amazing point to Skag, this.  The great head before him, with
+Chakkra's legs dangling behind the ears, had grasped something of the
+urge of their chase.  A vast and mysterious mechanism was locked in the
+great grey skull.  Actually Gunpat Rao seemed to laugh that he had
+shown the way to Nels.
+
+"You don't mean, Chakkra, that he goes into the silence like a holy
+man?"
+
+"It is like."
+
+Skag had seen something of this in his India--the yogi men shutting
+their eyes and bowing their heads and seeming to sink their
+consciousness into themselves, in order to ascertain some fact
+_without_ and afar off.
+
+"Our lord gives his mind to the matter and the truth unfolds--" Chakkra
+added.
+
+"Will the other elephant travel through the night so steadily?"
+
+(The sense of his own powerlessness was in him like a spear.)
+
+"Not like this, Sahib," said Chakkra.
+
+The hint, however, was that the thief elephant would make all speed;
+that the lead of the four hours would be conserved as carefully as
+possible by the other mahout.
+
+"But he has a woman's howdah," Chakkra invariably added.  "Two Sahibas,
+as well as the mahout himself. . . .  To-morrow will tell--hai,
+to-morrow will tell, if they go that far!"
+
+That was always the point of the blackest fear--that the elephant ahead
+should come to some Mohammedan household, and leave Carlin where no one
+could pass the veil.
+
+"But what of the messenger who brought word to the Sahibas?" Skag asked.
+
+"He would slip away.  Some hiding place for him--possibly back at
+Hurda."
+
+Chakkra seemed sure of this.
+
+That was Skag's long night.  He tried to think of the Kabuli as if he
+were an animal.  A man might have a destroying enmity against a cobra
+or a tiger or a python; but it was not black and self-defiling like
+this thing which crept over him, out of the miasma of Deenah's tale.
+
+In the dawn they reached a small river.  Skag saw Nels lose his tread
+in the deepening centre, swing down with the current an instant and
+then strike his balance, swimming.  Here was coolness and silence.
+To-night he would know.  To-night, if he did not have Carlin--
+
+. . . Gunpat Rao stood shoulder-deep in the stream.  Skag fancied a
+gleam of deep massive humour under the tilt of the great ear below him,
+as the elephant, none too delicately, set his foot forward into the
+deeper part of the stream.  His trunk and Chakkra's voice were raised
+together--for Chakkra was slipping:
+
+"Hai, my Prince, would you go without me?  Would you leave the Sahib
+alone in his proving-time?  Would you leave my children
+fatherless? . . .  There is none other--"
+
+
+They stood in the lifting day overlooking a broad sloping country--the
+Vindha peaks faintly outlined in the far distance.
+
+"It is the broad valley of Nerbudda," Chakkra said, "full of milk and
+wine against the seasons.  One good day of travel ahead to the bank of
+Holy Nerbudda, Sahib, before the fall of night--if the chase holds so
+long."
+
+Skag did not eat this day.  It was not until high noon that they halted
+by a spring of sweet water, and the American thought of his thirst.
+Nels was leaner.  He plunged to the water; then back to the scent again
+with a far challenge call.  (It was like the echo of his challenge to
+the cheetah as the wall of the waters loomed across the hills, above
+Poona.)  On he went, seriously; his mouth open in the great heat, his
+tongue rocking on its centre like nothing else.
+
+Gunpat Rao seemed gradually overcoming obstructions; as if his great
+idea mounted and cleared, his body requiring time to strike its rhythm.
+Chakkra sang to him.  The sun became hotter and higher--until it hung
+at the very top of the universe and forgot nothing.  There was a
+stillness in the hills that would frighten anything but a fever bird to
+silence.  To Skag it was a weight against speech and he sat rigidly for
+many moments at a time--all his life of forest and city, of man and
+creature, passing before his tortured eyes. . . .  And the words Carlin
+had spoken; all the mysteries of his nights near Poona when she had
+seemed to draw near as he fell asleep--seemed to be there as he came
+forth from a dream.  Always he had thought he could never forget the
+dreams--only to find them gone utterly, before he stood upon his feet.
+Past all, was the marvel of the hunting cheetah day, when he looked at
+the beast that gave no answer to his force; only murder in its savage
+heart--and Carlin's name was his very breath in that peril, something
+of her spirit like a whisper from within his own heart.
+
+All that afternoon Skag's eyes strained ahead, and his respect grew for
+the thief elephant with his greater burden, and his wonder increased
+for Nels and Gunpat Rao.  One dim far peak held his eyes from time to
+time; but Skag lived in the low beat of India's misery--the fever and
+famine; the world of veils and the miseries beyond knowledge of the
+world.  He sank and sank until he was chilled, even though the sweat of
+the day's fierce burning was upon him.  He understood hate and death,
+the thirst to kill; the slow ruin that comes at first to the human
+mind, suddenly cut off from the one held more dear than life.  It
+seemed all boyish dazzle that he had ever found loveliness in this
+place.  That boyishness had passed.  In this hour he saw only hatred
+ahead and mockery, if Carlin--. . .  but the far dim peak of misty
+light held his aching eyes.
+
+"Go on, Nels--on, old man," he would call.
+
+And Chakkra would turn with protest that could not find words--his
+tongue silenced by the lean terrible face in the howdah behind him.
+Presently Chakkra would fall to talking to his master, muttering in a
+kind of thrall at the thing he saw in the countenance of the American
+who had touched bottom.
+
+Sanford Hantee was facing the worst of the past and an impossible
+future, having neither hate nor pity, now.  Yet from time to time with
+a glance at the gun-case at his feet, he spoke with cold clearness:
+
+"We must overtake them before night."
+
+Chakkra, who had ceased singing, would bow, saying:
+
+"The trail is hot, Sahib.  They are not far."
+
+Steadily beneath them, Gunpat Rao straightened out, lengthening his
+roll, softening his pitch.  Nels was not trotting now, but in a long
+low run.  Skag was aghast at himself, that his heart did not go out to
+these magnificent servants.  There was not _feeling_ within him to
+answer these verities of courage and endurance; yet he could remember
+the human that had been in his heart.
+
+The low hills had broken away behind them; the first veil of twilight
+in the air.  A shelving dip opened, showing the bottom of the valley.
+Skag could see nothing ahead--but Nels lying closer to the trail.
+Chakkra's shoulder was suddenly within reach of Skag's hand, for the
+head of his master was lifted.
+
+As the great curve of Gunpat Rao's trumpet arched before his face--two
+things happened to Skag.  A full blast of hot breath drove through him;
+and a keen high vibrant tone pierced every nerve.  Then Chakkra shouted:
+
+"Gunpat Rao, prince of Vindha--declares the chase is on!  Hold fast,
+Sahib,--we go!"
+
+The earth rose up and the heavens tipped.  There was no foundation; the
+bulwarks of earth's crust had given away.  The landscape was racing
+past--but backward--and Nels, yet ahead, was a still, whirring streak.
+The thing hardly believed and never seen in America--that the elephant
+is speed-king of the world--was revelation now!  No pitch or roll; a
+long curving sweep this--seeming scarcely to touch the ground.  This
+was the going Skag had called for--a night and a day.  And Nels was
+labouring beside them now, but seeming to miss his tread--seeming to
+run on ice.
+
+"Hai!" yelled Chakkra.  "Who says there is none other than Neela Deo?"
+
+A thread of silver stretched before them, crossing the line of their
+course.  It broadened in a man's breath.  They turned the curve of the
+last slope, and heard the shout of the mahout far ahead.  The thief
+elephant was running along Nerbudda's margin to a ford.
+
+A roar was about Skag's head and shoulders like a storm--Gunpat Rao
+trumpeting again!  The landscape blurred.  The forward beast was
+growing large . . . two standing figures above him--the fling of a
+white arm!
+
+The huge red howdah rocked as the thief elephant entered the river; a
+moment more, only the howdah showing.  Distantly like the hum of
+furious insects, Skag heard Chakkra's chant:
+
+"The thief is snared!  Holy Nerbudda herself weaved the snare. . . .
+The hand of destiny is ours, Sahib.  Nay, mine, not thine!  Did not the
+Deputy Commissioner Sahib say _by necessity_? . . .  Plunge in! . . .
+Hai, but softly.  Prince of thy kind, take the water softly, I say--"
+
+And Gunpat Rao entered the river at a swimming stroke.  Skag's eyes had
+hardly turned from the great red howdah.  There was a keen squeal from
+ahead, answered by a fiery hissing intake of Chakkra's breath:
+
+"That, Sahib, is the murderous mahout using his steel hook. . . .  Yes,
+it was _by necessity_, the Deputy Sahib said.  Certainly it was _by
+necessity_!"
+
+The fling of a white arm again.  Sanford Hantee was standing.
+
+"Carlin!" he called.
+
+The answer came back to him in some mystery of imperishable vibration.
+
+"I am here."
+
+The two great beasts were moiled together against the stream. . . .
+The man and woman, whose eyes still held, might have missed the flash
+of steel that Chakkra parried with his ankas.  In fact, it was the
+sound of a quick gasp of Margaret Annesley that made them turn, just as
+Chakkra shouted:
+
+"_By necessity_, Sahib! . . .  It is accomplished!"
+
+The other's blade had whirled into the water.  They had heard the welt
+as Chakkra's ankas came down.  The strange mahout looked drunken and
+spineless for a second; then there was a red gush under his white cloth
+as he pitched into the stream.
+
+The Great Dane had just caught up.  He was in the river below them--not
+doubting his part had come.
+
+"Nels, steady!  Let him go!" Skag called.  "Don't touch, old man!"
+
+
+And then, after the thief elephant, having no fight in him, was made
+fast, they heard Chakkra singing his song, but paid no attention. . . .
+
+It was a longer journey back to Hurda, for they came slowly, but there
+was no haste; and two, at least, in the hunting howdah could transcend
+passing time, each by the grace of the other.  Gunpat Rao was returned
+to the Deputy Sahib with an amulet to add to his trophy-winnings; and a
+sentence or two that might have been taken from the record of Neela Deo
+himself.  The thief elephant was found to be a runaway that had fallen
+into native hands.  And Nels was restored to Bhanah by the way of the
+heart of Carlin Deal. . . .
+
+They never found out how far the two women would have been taken beyond
+the Nerbudda.  After they had first mounted into the red howdah at
+Hurda, the messenger of the Kabuli had disappeared into the crowd and
+was not seen again. . . .  As for the monster himself, he had suffered
+enough to plan craftily.  (The Nerbudda took his mahout and covered him
+quite as deeply as the crowd had covered his messenger at Hurda.)
+
+Much in his silence afterward, and in the great still joy that had come
+to him, Sanford Hantee chose to reflect upon the mystery of pain he had
+known on the lonely out-journey--the spiritless incapacity to cope with
+life--the loss even of his mastercraft with animals.  He would look
+toward Carlin in such moments and then look away, or possibly look
+within.  By her, the meanings of all life were sharpened--jungle and
+jungle-beast, monster, saint and man--the breath of all life more keen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_Hand-of-a-God_
+
+Skag and Carlin had come back from Poona where five of Carlin's seven
+brothers had been present at her marriage.  There were weeks in Hurda
+now, while Skag's equipment for jungle work arrived bit by bit.  They
+lived some distance from the city and back from the great
+Highway-of-all-India, in Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow, a house to remember
+for several reasons.
+
+
+The Indian jungles were showing Skag deep secrets about wild
+animals--knowledge beyond his hopes.  Some things that he thought he
+knew in the old days as a circus-trainer were beginning to look curious
+and obsolete, but much still held good, even became more and more
+significant.  The things he had known intuitively did not diminish.
+These had to do with mysterious talents of his own, and dated back to
+the moment he stood for the first time before one of the "big cat"
+cages at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.  That was his initiation-day
+in a craft in which he had since gone very far as white men go--even
+into the endless fascination of the cobra-craft.
+
+Skag was meeting now from time to time in his jungle work some of the
+big hunters of India, men whose lives were a-seethe with tales of
+adventure.  When they talked, however, Skag slowly but surely grasped
+the fact that what they had was "outside stuff."  They knew trails,
+defensive and fighting habits, species and calls; they knew a great
+collection of detached facts about animals but it was all like what one
+would see in a strange city--watching from outside its wall.  There was
+a certain boundary of observation which they never passed.  All that
+Skag cared to know was across, on the inner side of the wall.
+
+As for the many little hunters, they were tame; only their bags were
+"wild."  They never even approached the boundary.  Skag reflected much
+on these affairs.  It dawned on him at last, that when you go out with
+the idea of killing a creature, you may get its attitude toward death,
+but you won't learn about how it regards life.
+
+The more you give, the more you get from any relation.  This is not
+only common knowledge among school-teachers, but among stock-raisers
+and rose-growers.  Almost every man has had experience with a real
+teacher, at least once in his life--possibly only a few weeks or even
+days, but a bit of real teaching--when something within opened and
+answered as never before.  It was like an extension of consciousness.
+If you look back you'll find that you loved that teacher--at least,
+liked that one differently, very deep.
+
+Skag wanted a great deal.  He wanted more from the jungle doubtless
+than was ever formulated in a white man's mind before.  He wanted to
+know what certain holy men know; men who dare to walk to and fro in the
+jungles without arms, apparently without fear.  He wanted to know what
+the priests of Hanuman know about monkeys; and what _mahouts_ of famous
+elephants like Neela Deo and Mithi Baba and Gunpat Rao of the Chief
+Commissioner's stockades, know about elephants.
+
+At this point one reflection was irresistible.  The priests of Hanuman
+gave all they had--care, patience, tenderness, even their lives, to the
+monkey people.  There were no two ways about the _mahouts_; they loved
+the elephants reverently; even regarding them as beings more exalted
+than men.  As for the holy men--the sign manual of their order was love
+for all creatures.  No, there was no getting away from the fact that
+you must give yourself to a thing if you want to know it. . . .  Skag
+would come up breathless out of this contemplation--only to find it was
+the easiest thing he did--to love wild animals. . . .
+
+Skag had reason to hold high his trust in animals.  He had entered the
+big cat cages countless times and always had himself and the animals in
+hand.  He had made good in the tiger pit-trap and certainly the loose
+tiger near the monkey glen didn't charge.  All this might have
+established the idea that all animals were bound to answer his love for
+them.
+
+But India was teaching him otherwise.
+
+In the hills back of Poona he had met a murderer.  That cat-scream at
+the last chilled him to the very centre of things.  Cheetahs were
+malignant; no two ways about that.  Skag hadn't failed.  He never was
+better.  There was no fear nor any lack of concentration in his work
+upon the cheetah beast.  Any tiger he knew would have answered to his
+cool force, but the cheetah didn't.
+
+It was the same with the big snake in the grass jungle.  Skag had met
+fear there--something of monstrous proportion, more powerful than will,
+harder to deal with by a wide margin than any plain adjustment to
+death.  It stayed with him.  It was more formidable than pain.  He had
+talked with Cadman about a peculiar inadequacy he felt in dealing with
+the snake--as if his force did not penetrate.  Cadman knew too much to
+hoot at Skag's dilemma.  The more a man knows, the more he can believe.
+
+"It would be easier with a cobra than a constrictor," Cadman had said.
+"You'd have to strike just the right key, son.  This is what I mean:
+The wireless instruments of the Swastika Line answer to one pitch; the
+ships of the Blue Toll to another. . . .  But I've seen things
+done--yes, I've seen things done in this man's India. . . .  I saw a
+man from one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas breathe a nest
+of cobras into repose; also I have seen other brothers pass through
+places where the deadly little karait is supposed to watch and wait and
+turn red-eyed."
+
+The more Skag listened and learned and watched in India, the more he
+realised that if he knew all there was to know about the different
+orders of holy men, all the rest of knowledge would be included, even
+the lore of the jungle animals.  He had come into his own considerable
+awe through what he had seen in the forest with the priests of Hanuman,
+but things-to-learn stretched away and away before him like range upon
+range of High Himalaya.
+
+
+Malcolm M'Cord was the best rifle-shot in India.  The natives called
+him Hand-of-a-God.  As usual they meant a lot more than a mere
+decoration.  M'Cord was one of the big master mechanics--especially
+serving Indian Government in engine building--a Scot nearing fifty now.
+For many years he had answered the cries of the natives for help
+against the destroyers of human life.  Sometimes it was a mugger,
+sometimes a cobra, a cheetah, often a man-eating tiger that terrorised
+the countryside.  There are many sizeable Indian villages where there
+is not a single rifle or short piece in the place; repeated instances
+where one pampered beast has taken his tolls of cattle and children of
+men, for several years.
+
+The natives are slow to take life of any creature.  They are suspicious
+toward anyone who does it thoughtlessly, or for pastime; but the Hindu
+also believes that one is within the equity of preservation in doing
+away with those ravagers that learn to hunt men.
+
+In the early days M'Cord began to take the famous shoot trophies.  Time
+came when this sort of thing was no longer a gamesome event, but a
+foregone conclusion.  His rifle work was a revelation of genius--like
+the work of a prodigious young pianist or billiardist in the midst of
+mere natural excellence.
+
+He had wearied of the game-bag end of shooting, even before his prowess
+in the tournaments became a bore. . . .  So there was only the big
+philanthropy left.  The silent steady Scot gave himself more and more
+to this work for the hunted villagers as the years went on.  It
+sufficed.  Many a man has stopped riding or walking for mere exercise,
+but joyously, and with much profit, taken it up again as a means to get
+somewhere.
+
+It was Carlin who helped Skag to a deep understanding of her old
+friend, the Scot, and the famous bungalow in which he lived.
+
+"It is 'papered' and carpeted and curtained with the skins of animals,
+but you would have to know what the taking of those skins has meant to
+the natives and how different it is from the usual hunter-man's house.
+The M'Cord bungalow is a book of man-eater tales--with leather leaves."
+
+Carlin, who had been one of M'Cord's favourites since she was a child,
+saw the man with the magic of the native standpoint upon him. . . .
+With all its richness there was nothing of the effect of the
+taxidermist's shop about the place.  Altogether the finest private set
+of gun-racks Skag had looked upon was in the dim front hall.  Bhanah
+and Nels had a comfortable lodge to themselves, and there was a tiny
+summerhouse at the far end of the lawn that had been an ideal of
+Carlin's when she was small.  The playhouse had but one door, which was
+turned modestly away from the great Highway.  It was vined and partly
+sequestered in garden growths, its threshold to the west.  The Scottish
+bachelor had turned this little house over to the child Carlin years
+ago, as eagerly as his entire establishment now.  Yet the woman was no
+less partial to the playhouse than the child had been.
+
+. . . They hardly saw the Scot.  In fact it was only a moment in the
+station oval.  Skag looked into a grey eye that seemed so steady as to
+have a life all its own and apart, in the midst of a weathered
+countenance both kindly and grim. . . .  There was a tiny locked room
+on the south side of the bungalow, vividly sunlit--a room which in
+itself formed a cabinet for mounted cobras--eight or ten specimens with
+marvellous bodies and patchy-looking heads. . . .  The place was
+heavily glazed, but not with windows that opened.  Skag caught the hint
+before Carlin spoke--that the display might have a queer attraction for
+cobras that had not suffered the art of the taxidermist.
+
+Skag turned to the girl as they stood together at the low heavy door,
+leading into the library.  Something in her face held him
+utterly--something of wisdom, something of dread--if one could, imagine
+a fear founded on knowledge. . . .  A brilliant mid-afternoon.  Bhanah
+and Nels had gone to the stockades.  Since the chase and rescue of
+Carlin, Nels and the young elephant Gunpat Rao were becoming
+friends--peculiar dignities and untellable reservations between
+them--but undoubtedly friends.
+
+There was a kind of stillness in the place and hour, as they stood
+together, that made it seem they had never been alone before.  Deep awe
+had come to Skag.  As he looked now upon her beauty and health and
+courage, with eyes that saw another loveliness weaving all wonders
+together--he knew a kind of bewildered revolt that life was actually
+bounded by a mere few years; that it could be subject to change and
+chance.  Thus he learned what has come to many a man in the first hours
+after bringing his great comrade home--that there must be some inner
+fold of romance to make straight the insistent torture at the thought
+of illness and accident and death itself--something somehow to enable a
+man to transcend all three-score and ten affairs and know that birth
+and death are mere hurdles for the runners of real romance.
+
+. . . The sunlight brought out faint but marvellous gleamings from the
+serpents.  It was as if every scale had been a jewel. . . .  Skag
+looked closer.  It wasn't bad mounting.  It was really marvellous
+mounting.  His eye ran from one to another.  Every cobra's head had
+been shattered by a bullet.  The broken tissues had been gathered
+together, pieced and sewn--the art of the workman not covering the
+dramatic effect entirely, yet smoothing the excess of the horror away.
+
+". . . I've heard of cobras always, yet I never tire and never seem any
+nearer them," Carlin was saying.  "I remember the word _cobra_ when I
+heard it the first time--almost the first memory.  It never becomes
+familiar.  They are mysterious.  One can never tell the why or when
+about _them_.  One never gets beyond the fascination.  The more you
+know the more you prepare for them in India.  It's like this--any other
+room would have windows that open. . . .  Cobras have much fidelity.
+We think of them as reptiles; and yet they are life-and-death-mates,
+like the best of tiger pairs.  One who kills a cobra must kill two or
+look out--"
+
+Carlin had strange lore about mated pairs; about moths and birds and
+other creatures (as well as men-things) finding each other and living
+and working together; about a tiger that had mourned for many seasons
+alone, after some sportsman had killed his female; about another
+rollicking young tiger pair that leaped an eight foot wall into a
+native yard in early evening, made their kill together of a plump young
+cow, and passed it up and over the wall between them.
+
+"The cubs were hungry," Carlin had said.
+
+Still they did not leave the door-way of the cobra room.  Skag saw that
+something more was coming.  Once more he was drawn to the mystery of
+the holy men by her tale:
+
+". . . I was a little girl.  It was here in Hurda. . . .  I had strayed
+away into the open jungle, not toward our monkey glen, but farther
+south where the trees were scarce. . . .  Of course I shouldn't have
+been alone--"
+
+Skag was staring straight at one of the cobras.  Carlin turned and
+placed her hand upon his sleeve.  She knew that he was fighting that
+old dread that had come upon him on the day of the elephant pursuit--a
+dread well enough founded, grounded upon many tragedies--of the
+pitfalls and menaces and miasmas of old Mother India; the infinite
+variety, craft, swiftness and violence of her deaths.  (White hands
+were certainly clinging to Skag.)  One's vast careless attitudes to
+life are fearfully complicated when life means two and not the self
+alone.
+
+"This isn't a horrible story--" she said.
+
+He cleared his throat; then laughed.
+
+"I'll get past all this," he muttered.  "Go on, Carlin--"
+
+"I heard a step behind," she said.  "It was my uncle--the most
+wonderful of many uncles.  I have not seen him since that day.  He is a
+little older than my eldest brother--possibly thirty at that
+time--tall, dark, silent; a frowning man, but not to me.  Even then he
+belonged to one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas--lesser, you
+know, in relation to the great brotherhoods of the Himalayas.  In fact
+it is from the Vindha Hills that they move on when they are called--up
+the great way and beyond--"
+
+Another of Carlin's themes--always the dream in her mind of climbing to
+the heights.
+
+"We walked on together through one of the paths--some time I will show
+you.  It was not like anyone else coming to find a child, or coming to
+take it back.  A most memorable thing to a little one, this elaborate
+consideration from a great man.  He did not suggest that I turn.  He
+made himself over to my adventure."
+
+She waited for Skag to see more of the picture from her mind than her
+words suggested:
+
+"Ahead on the path--leisurely, like nothing else, a cobra reared, a
+king cobra, as great as any of these.  He barred our way.  There comes
+a penetrating cold from the first glance.  It's like an icy lance to
+the centre of consciousness.  Then I felt the man's presence beside me.
+My confidence was that which only a child can give.  What the mind
+knows and fears has too much dominion afterward. . . .  The appalling
+power and beauty of the cobra fascinated me.  I have never quite
+forgotten.  There was a lolling trailing grace about the lifted length,
+the head slightly inclined to us, the hood but partly spread--something
+winged in the undulation, a suggestion of that which we could not see,
+faintly like the whir of a humming bird's wings.  That is it--an
+intimation of forces we had not senses to register--also colours and
+sounds! . . .  My hand was lost in the great hand.  My uncle did not
+turn back.  He was speaking.  There was that about his tones which you
+had to listen for--a low softness that you had to listen to get.  Yes,
+it was to the cobra that he spoke.
+
+". . . There was never a poem to me like those words, but they did not
+leave themselves in continuity.  I could not say the sentences again.
+I seem to remember the vibration--some sense of the mysterious, kindred
+with all creatures--and a vast flung scroll of wisdom and poetry, as if
+the serpents had been a great and glorious people of blinding,
+incredible knowledges--never like us--but all the more marvellous for
+their difference! . . .  And the cobra hung there, his eyes darkening
+under the gentleness of the voice--then reddening again like fanned
+embers. . . .
+
+"Then I heard my uncle ask to be permitted to pass, saying that he
+brought no harm to the mother, undoubtedly near, nor to the baby
+cobras--only good-will; but that it was not well for a man and a little
+girl to be prevented from passing along a man-path. . . .  It was only
+a moment more that the way was held from us.  There was no rising at
+all, to fighting anger.  A cobra doesn't, you know, until actual
+attack.  In leisurely undulations, he turned and entered the deeper
+growths.  A moment later my uncle pointed to the lifted head in the
+shadows.  One had need to be magic-eyed to see.  We went on a little
+way and walked back.  It was not that we had to pass--but that we must
+not be obstructed." . . .
+
+
+This was the India that astonished Skag more than all hunter tales,
+more than any hunter prowess; but there were always two sides. . . .
+The weeks were unlike any others he had ever known.  The mystery
+deepened between him and Carlin.  Almost the first he had heard of her
+was that she was "unattainable"--yet _they_ had known each other at
+once. . . .  Still Carlin _was_ unattainable; forever above and beyond.
+Such a woman is no sooner comprehended on one problem than she unfolds
+another; much of man's growth is from one to another of her mysteries.
+And always when he has passed one, he thinks all is known; and always
+as another looms, he realises how little he knows after all. . . .
+
+A thousand times Skag recalled the words of the learned man who had
+spoken to Cadman and himself on their way to the grass jungle.  "You
+will acknowledge love, but you will not know love until it is revealed
+by supreme danger.  The way of your feet is in the ascending path.
+Hold fast to the purposes of your own heart and you will come into the
+heights."
+
+Could Carlin be more to him than now? . . .  Yes, she was more to-day
+than yesterday.  It would always be so.  Love is always love, but it is
+always different. . . .  Sometimes he would stay away from the bungalow
+for several hours.  He was of a nature that could not be pleased with
+himself when he gave way tumultuously to the thing he wanted--which was
+continually to be in Carlin's presence.  His every step in the
+market-place, or in the bazaar, had its own twitch back toward Malcolm
+M'Cord's bungalow; his every thought encountering a pressure of weight
+to hurry home.
+
+Carlin was full of deep joys of understanding.  One did not have to
+finish sentences for her.  She meant India--its hidden wisdom.  She had
+the thing called education in great tiers and folds.  Skag's education
+was of the kind that accumulates when a man does not know he is being
+educated. . . .  Certainly Carlin was unattainable--this was an often
+recurring thought as he learned Hindi from her and something of Urdu;
+the usages of her world, its castes and cults.
+
+Down in the unwalled city one mid-afternoon, he finished certain
+errands and started for the bungalow.  Had he let himself go, his feet
+would have stormed along.  He laughed at the joy of the thing; and he
+had only been away since tiffin.  Yet there was tension too--the old
+mystery.  A man cannot feel all still and calm and powerful, when there
+has suddenly descended upon him realisation of all that can possibly
+happen to take away one so much more important than one's own life as
+to make contrast absurd.  Skag was looking ahead into stark days, when
+he would be called upon to take big journeys alone into the jungle for
+the service.  It was very clear there might be many weeks of separation
+. . . and now it was only a matter of hours.  He was nearing the little
+gate. . . .
+
+These are affairs men seldom speak about--seldom write; yet his
+experience was one that a multitude of men have felt vaguely at least.
+There was a laugh about it, a sense of self-deprecation; but above all,
+Skag knew for the sake of the future that he must get himself better in
+hand against this incredible pull to the place where she was.  It
+seemed quite enough to reach the compound or the grass plot and hear
+her step.
+
+She was not at the gate.  He halted.  Malcolm M'Cord was expected home
+this day.  He might have come.  Surely he might give two such rare good
+friends a chance to have a chat together . . . in Malcolm's own house,
+too.  Besides there was no better chance than now for a bit of moral
+calisthenics.  Skag turned back.  No one was very near to note that he
+was a bit pale.  Still he was laughing.  Even Nels, his Great Dane,
+would have thought him weird, he reflected.  Had Bhanah been along,
+there could have been no possible explanation. . . .  He was walking
+toward the city, but his eyes were called back again.  Carlin had come
+to the gate.  She held up her right arm full and straight--her signal
+always, such an impulse of joy in it.
+
+He waved and made a broken sort of gesture toward Hurda, as if he had
+forgotten something.  Minute by minute he fought them out after
+that--sixty of them, ninety of them, good measure, sixty seconds each,
+before he started at last to the bungalow again.  The sun was low.  The
+bazaars were but a little distance back, when he met Bhanah and Nels
+out for their evening exercise. . . .  No, M'Cord-Sahib had not yet
+come. . . .  Yes, all was quite well with the Hakima, Hantee-Sahiba,
+who was reading in the playhouse. . . .
+
+Quite alone.  Skag quickened, but repressed himself again.  It was
+business for contemplation--the way Bhanah had spoken of Carlin as
+Hantee Sahiba, after her usual title. . . .  He heard the birds.  The
+great Highway was deserted; the noise of the city all behind. . . .  If
+he had merely "acknowledged love" so far, as the learned man had
+said--what must be the nature of the emotion that would reveal the full
+secret to him?  Always when his thoughts fled away like this, his steps
+seized the advantage and he would find himself in full stride like a
+man doing road-work for the ring.
+
+She wasn't at the gate this time.  Just now Skag felt the first
+coolness of evening, the shadow of the great trees. . . .  She did not
+come to the gate.  His hand touched its latch and still he had not
+heard her voice.  On the lawn path--in that strange lovely wash of
+light--he stood, as the sun sank and the afterglow mounted.  This was
+always Carlin's hour to him--the magic moment of the afterglow.  In
+such an hour in the outer paths of the tree jungle, they had spoken
+life to life.
+
+"Malcolm M'Cord--is that you, Malcolm?"
+
+Her voice was from the playhouse.  It was steady but startling.
+Something cold in it--very weary.  Still he did not see her.  The door
+was on the western side.
+
+Skag answered.
+
+"Oh--" came from Carlin.
+
+There was an instant intense silence; then he heard:
+
+"Go into the house.  I thought it was Malcolm. . . .  I'll join you.
+Don't come here--"
+
+He turned obediently.  He had the male's absurd sense of not belonging.
+. . .  He might at least be silent and do as she said.  A keener gust
+of reality then shot through him.  His steps would not go on.  She must
+have heard his change from the gravel to the grass, for she called:
+
+"It's all right, go right in--"
+
+"But, Carlin--"
+
+"Don't come here, dear!  It's--not for you to see now!"
+
+He halted, an indescribable chill upon him.  The low threshold was in
+sight, yet Carlin did not appear in the doorway.  It was not more than
+sixty feet away, across the lawn.  It may have been something that she
+had on. . . .  A gold something.  This came because of a fallen bit of
+gold-brown tapestry on the threshold.  It had folds.  Out of the cone
+of it, was a rising sheen like thin gold smoke.  A fallen garment was
+the first thing that came to Skag's mind, keyed to the suggestion of
+some fabric which Carlin was to put on.  The thing actually before his
+eyes had not dislodged for an instant, the thought-picture in his mind.
+
+Right then Skag made a mistake.  He had not taken ten running steps
+before he knew it, and halted.  That which had been like rising gold
+smoke was a hooded head--lifting just now, dilating.  Already he knew,
+almost fully, what the running had done.  The thought of Carlin in the
+playhouse had over-balanced his own genius.  He walked forward now, for
+the time not hearing Carlin's words from within. . . .  The door was
+open; the windows were screened.  The girl was held within by the
+coiled one on the stone. . . .  She was imploring Skag to go back:
+
+". . . to the house!" he heard at last.  "Wait there--don't come!  It
+is death to come to me!"
+
+He could not see her.
+
+"Where are you standing, Carlin?"
+
+"Far back--by the sewing machine! . . .  Will you not--will you not,
+for me?"
+
+He spoke very coldly:
+
+"While he watches me from the stone--you come forward slowly and shut
+the door!"
+
+"That would anger him into flying at you--"
+
+Quite as slowly, his next words:
+
+"I do not think he is angry with me--"
+
+Yet Skag was not in utter truth right there, even in his own knowledge.
+His voice did not carry conviction of truth. . . .  The thing
+unsteadied his concentration.  The fact that he had started to run and
+thus ruffled the cobra, was still upon him like shame.  It reacted to
+divide his forces now, at least to make tardier his self-command.  Back
+of everything--Carlin's danger.  There was a quick turn of his eye for
+a weapon, even as he heard a deep tone from Carlin--something immortal
+in the resonance:
+
+". . . You might save me . . . but, don't you see--I want you more!"
+
+A _lakri_ of Bhanah's leaned against the playhouse at the side towards
+the road.
+
+The cobra had lifted himself erect upon his tail almost to the level of
+Skag's eyes, hood spread.  Carlin talked to him--low tones--no words
+which she or Skag should know again. . . .
+
+The _lakri_ was of iron-wood from the North, thick as the man's wrist
+at the top.  It pulled Skag's eye a second time.  It meant the
+surrender of his faith in his own free-handed powers to reach for the
+_lakri_; it meant the fight to death.  It meant he must disappear from
+the cobra's eye an instant behind the playhouse. . . .  Carlin's tones
+were in the air.  He could not live or breathe until the threshold was
+clear--no concentration but that. . . .  Like the last outburst before
+a breaking heart, he heard:
+
+"If you would only go--go, my dear!"
+
+He had chosen--or the weakness for him.  There was an instant--as his
+hand closed upon the _lakri_, the corner of the playhouse wall shutting
+him off from the cobra--an instant that was doom-long, age-long, long
+enough for him to picture _in his own thoughts_ the king turning upon
+the threshold--entering, rising before Carlin! . . .  The threshold was
+empty as he stepped back, but the cobra had not entered.  Perturbed
+that the man had vanished, he had slid down into the path to look.
+
+Skag breathed.  "And now if you will shut the door, Carlin--"
+
+A great cry from Carlin answered.
+
+Thick and viperine, the thing looked, as it hurled forward.  It was
+like the fling of a lash.  Four feet away, Skag looked into the hooded
+head poised to strike, the eyes flaming into an altogether different
+dimension for battle.
+
+
+The head played before him.  The breadth of the hood alone held it at
+all in the range of the human eye--so swift was the lateral vibration,
+a sparring movement.  The whole head seemed delicately veiled in a grey
+magnetic haze.  Its background was Carlin--standing on the threshold.
+
+"I won't fail--if you stay there!" he called.
+
+It was like a wraith that answered--again the old mystery, as if the
+words came up from his own heart:
+
+"I--shall--not--come--to--you--until--the--end!"
+
+Skag was back in the indefinite past--all the dear hushed moments he
+had ever known massed in her voice.
+
+"Stay there--not nearer--and I can't fail!"
+
+He was saying it like a song--his eyes not leaving the narrow veiled
+head before him.  It was like a brown sealed lily-bud of hardened
+enamel, brown yet iridescent--set off by two jewels of flaming rose.
+There was no haste.  The king's mouth was not tight with strain.  It
+was the look of one certain of victory, certain from a life that knew
+no failures--the look of one that had learned the hunt so well as to
+make it play. . . .
+
+The brown bud vanished.  Skag struck at the same time.  His _lakri_
+touched the hood.  With all his strength, though with a loose whipping
+wrist, he had struck.  The _lakri_ had touched the hood, but there was
+no violence to the impact. . . .  Carlin's love tones were in his
+heart.  Skag laughed.
+
+The head went out of sight.  Skag struck again.  It was as if his
+_lakri_ were caught in a swift hand and held for just the fraction of a
+second.  No force to the man's blow.  The cobra was no nearer; no show
+of haste.  Skag's stick was a barrier of fury, yet twice the king
+struck between . . . twice and again.  Skag felt a laming blow upon a
+muscle of his arm as from sharp knuckles.
+
+And now they were fast at it.  The man heard Carlin's cry but not the
+words:
+
+"Stay there!" he sang in answer.  "Not nearer--just there and I can't
+lose!  . . .  It isn't in the cards to lose, Carlin--"
+
+Yet his mind knew he could not win.  The cobra's head and hood recoiled
+with each blow.  It took Skag's highest speed--as an outfielder takes a
+drive bare-handed, his hands giving with the ball.  The head moved past
+all swiftness, even the speed greatest swordsmen know.  It was like
+something that laughed.  Before the whirring _lakri_, the cobra head
+played like a flung veil between and through and around.
+
+. . . So, for many seconds.  The grey magnetic haze was a dirty brown
+now.  The man was seeing through blood.  He could not make a blow tell.
+He could not see Carlin. . . .  She was not talking to him. . . .  She
+was calling upon some strange name. . . .  His arm was numbed
+again--like a blow from a leaden sling.  There was a suffocating knot
+in his throat and the smell of blood in his head . . . that old smell
+of blood he had known when his father whipped him long ago. . . .
+
+He tried to chop straight down to break in upon the king's rhythm.  It
+answered quicker than his thought. . . .  Yes, it was Malcolm M'Cord,
+she was calling. . . .  He saw her like a ghost now.  She was utterly
+tall--her arms raised!  . . .  Then he heard a rifle crack--then a
+breath of moisture upon his face--the sealed bud smashed before
+him--the rest whipping the ground.
+
+
+Skag went to Carlin who had fallen, but he was pulled off abruptly.
+
+"I say, Lad, let me have a look at you. . . .  The child's right
+enough.  Let her rest--"
+
+The grim face was before him, two steady hands at work on him, pulling
+back his collar, taking one of Skag's hands after another--looking even
+between the fingers, feeling his thighs.
+
+"I can't find that he cut you, Lad," he said gently.
+
+Skag pushed him away.  Carlin was moaning.
+
+"I'm thinking your lad's sound, deerie," M'Cord called to her.  "A
+minute more, to be sure." . . .
+
+He kept a trailing hold of Skag's wrist, staring a last minute in his
+eyes.
+
+No break anywhere in the younger man's flesh.
+
+
+The afterglow was thickening.  A servant came down the path to call
+them to dinner.  The servant had never seen such a spectacle--the
+Hakima sitting with Hand-of-a-God and Son-of-Power, together--on the
+lawn already wet with dew--their knees almost touching. . . .
+
+
+"The like's not been known before, Lad--even of a man with a sword,"
+Malcolm M'Cord was saying.  "You must have stood up to him two minutes.
+No swordsman has done as much. . . .  And it was only a _lakri_ you
+had--and a swordsman's blade goes soft and flat against a cobra's
+scales! . . .  You see, they take wings when the fighting rage flows
+into them.  It's like wings, sir. . . .  Yes, you'll have a lame arm
+where the hood grazed.  It couldn't have been the drive of the head or
+he would have bitten through--"
+
+Even Skag, as he glanced into Carlin's face from time to time, forgot
+that Hand-of-a-God had done it again--one more king cobra with a
+patched |head and a life and death story to be added to the sunny
+cabinet in the bungalow. . . .  Carlin rose to lead them to dinner at
+last, but Malcolm shook his head.
+
+"On you go, you two.  I'll sit out a bit in the lamplight, just here by
+the playhouse door. . . .  She'll be looking for him soon. . . .  She
+won't be far.  She won't be long coming--to look for him. . . .  She'd
+find him and then set out to look for you, Lad."
+
+The lights of the bungalow windows were like vague cloths upon the
+lawn. . . .  Carlin and Skag hadn't thought of dinner.  They were in
+the shadow of the deep verandah.  Once Carlin whispered:
+
+"I loved the way he said 'Lad' to you."
+
+It was hours afterwards that the shot was heard. . . .  Carlin was
+closer.  He felt her shivering.  He could not be sure of the words, yet
+the spirit of them never left his heart:
+
+"If I were she--and I had found you so--upon the lawn--I should want
+Hand-of-a-God to wait for me--like that!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_Elephant Concerns_
+
+"Only the altogether ignorant do not know that the women of my line
+have been chaste."
+
+It was the youngest mahout of the Chief Commissioner's elephant
+stockades of Hurda, who spoke.
+
+They sat in comfort under the feathery branches of tall tamarisk trees,
+smoking their water-pipes, after the sunset meal.  It was the time for
+talk.
+
+"A good beginning," said a very old man near by, "it being wise, in
+case of doubt, to stop the mouth of--who might speak afterward."
+
+"And the men of my line," proceeded the youngest mahout, without
+embarrassment, "have been illustrious--save those who are forgotten.
+They all have been of High Himalaya; yet I am the least among you.  I
+render homage of Hill blood, hot and full, to every one of you--my
+elders--because you are all mahouts of High Himalaya, even as my
+fathers were."
+
+The men of the stockades bowed their heads in grave acknowledgment.
+
+"Then by what curse of what gods falls this calamity," the boy went on,
+"that we of the Chief Commissioner's stockades are forced to receive a
+mahout from the Vindha Hills; and an unreputed elephant--from the hills
+without repute?"
+
+"Softly, young one, softly!" a mahout in his full prime made swift
+answer.  "Truly it is well the young are not permitted to use that
+untamed strength in speech, which is best governed by the waste of
+sinew!"
+
+The youngest mahout bent his head in humility and said with soft
+reverence:
+
+"Will he who is most wise among us, enlighten the darkness of him who
+is most foolish?"
+
+"It is that elephants of great repute have come from the Vindha Hills;
+and mahouts of great learning.  Also, there is a luminous tradition
+that the most exalted creatures of their kind--those who travelled far
+from the high lands of Persia long ago--chose place for their future
+generations in the Vindha Hills; and not in High Himalaya."
+
+This man who had first rebuked sternly and afterward explained with
+extreme gentleness, was Kudrat Sharif, the mahout of Neela Deo--mighty
+leader of their caravan.  He was malik--which is to say, governing
+mahout--over them all; and best qualified among them.  Therefore a
+clamour rose for more.  The youngest mahout went from his place and sat
+near, as Kudrat Sharif continued:
+
+"The black elephants are all but gone.  Not more than one in a
+generation of men is seen any more.  They are seldom toiled into the
+trap-stockades, in which the less wary are taken.  The natures of those
+who have been snared are strange to us of the High Hills.  They
+sometimes destroy men in their anger; they sometimes destroy themselves
+in their grief."
+
+"What is the heart of this knowledge?" asked a man who had not spoken
+before.
+
+"That these stockades are distinguished by Government," Kudrat Sharif
+replied.  "The elephant who is to reach us this evening, is a black
+elephant--descended from the lines of ancient Persia."
+
+A chorus of exclamations swept the circle, before the gurgle of hookahs
+took the moment, as the mahouts gave themselves to meditation and
+water-winnowed smoke.
+
+Then the trumpet tones of an elephant were heard from far out in the
+gathering gloom.
+
+"May Vishnu, the great Preserver, save us from a killer!"
+
+The man who said these words was not less than magical in his power to
+control the unruly; but he never took credit to himself.  "That is the
+voice of a fighter--smooth as curds of cream--and it reaches from far
+out; very far out."
+
+The challenge-call sounded again; and the big males of the stockade
+answered without hesitation.
+
+These mahouts had trained ears; and they listened--computing the
+stranger's rate of speed.  The fullness of tone increased; and
+presently one said:
+
+"He comes fast."
+
+But they were not prepared to see the elephant that rolled into the
+glare of their torches out of the night.
+
+He came to pause in the centre of the exercise arena--a vast sanded
+disk just front of the stockade buildings--and stood rocking his huge
+body, tamping the ground with his feet as if still travelling.  The
+mahout on his neck spoke to him patiently:
+
+"Now will my master use his intelligence to understand that we have
+arrived?"
+
+Then turning to the men on the ground, the strange mahout said
+wistfully:
+
+"Look on me with compassion, oh men of honour and of fame!  I have
+heard of you, but you have not heard of me."
+
+"We have heard of you, that you are the making of a master-mahout, in
+due time," answered Kudrat Sharif.
+
+"Then the gods who preserved my fathers to old age, have not forgotten
+that I learned patience in my extreme youth," sighed the man.
+
+Seeing that the elephant was not quieting, Kudrat Sharif spoke now in
+pacifying tones--to the mahout:
+
+"Come down among us who are your brothers; we have prepared all things
+for your refreshment."
+
+"I will come down with a full heart and an empty stomach, most
+beneficent, when this Majesty will permit," the strange mahout assented
+wearily.
+
+"Is he rough, son--to sit?" asked the very old man, coming closer.
+
+The elephant shied a step and his mahout cuddled one ear with his
+fingers, as he replied:
+
+"He is the smoothest thing that ever moved upon the surface of the
+earth--like a wind driven by fiends.  But he never stops."
+
+The elephant was rolling more widely if anything, than at first; so the
+mahouts stood back a little and considered him.
+
+His blackness was like very old bronze, with certain metallic gleams in
+it--like time-veiled copper and brass.  His flawless frame was covered
+with tight-banded muscle.  There was no appearance of fat.  His skin
+was smooth--without wrinkles.  He was young; about forty years, or
+less.  But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small
+red devil in his eye.
+
+Without warning, he flicked his mahout off his neck and set him
+precisely on the ground--the movement so quick no eye could follow his
+trunk as it did it.
+
+The youngest mahout brought a sheaf of tender branches--such as are
+most desirable--and laid them near, but not too near; and when the
+elephant began to eat, they removed the burden of his mahout's
+possessions from his back.
+
+Then the man received their ministrations--keeping an eye on the
+elephant.  When he was ready to smoke, he began slowly:
+
+"Ram Yaksahn is my name; and my ancestors--from the first far breath of
+tradition--have been servants of the elephant people.  We were of High
+Himalaya till the man who was the man before my father.  Since then we
+serve in the Vindha Hills.  My twin brother was called with his master,
+to the teak jungles of the South; but I have been with the
+trap-stockades till now, when they send me down to these plains with
+the catch of all seasons."
+
+"It is a good hearing," said the very old man, as they all bent their
+heads; and the youngest mahout carefully arranged some specially good
+tobacco in Ram Yaksahn's hookah.
+
+"Now what is his record?" one asked.
+
+"First, there is a record," Ram Yaksahn replied, "which may be his or
+another's.  It is your right to know.
+
+"Four monsoons before this elephant was trapped, the body of a forest
+reserve officer was found on a mountain slope.  The head was broken;
+and the ribs.  Rains had washed away all earth-marks, but small trees
+had been uprooted near that place; therefore the thing had been done by
+an elephant.  Close by, a dead dog lay; entirely battered--and a split
+stick.  Burial was given to that man with few words.  He was not
+mourned.  May the gods render to him his due!"
+
+The mahouts assented, as Ram Yaksahn smoked a moment.
+
+"Be patient with me, most honourable," he went on, in strained tones.
+"I come to you serving a strange master.  The record I tell now, is
+truly your right to know."
+
+"Have no fear; we serve with you!" Kudrat Sharif reassured him.
+
+"Some months after this elephant was trapped," he continued, "they had
+him picketed in the working grounds--to learn the voices of men.  It
+was there, in the midst of us all, that he killed his first mahout.  No
+man could prevent.
+
+"That mahout was a violent man.  He had just struck his own child an
+unlawful blow.  She lay on the ground as the dead lie.  Then it was
+that this elephant moved before any man could move.  We heard his
+picket stakes come up, but we did not see them come up.  No man could
+prevent.
+
+"He gathered the child's dead body in his trunk and swung it back and
+forth--back and forth.  It hung like a cloth.  Slowly he came nearer to
+his mahout, while he swung the body of the child.  When he was close,
+he laid the body between his own front feet.  The violent man stood
+watching like one in a dream.
+
+"Then this elephant who is now my master, caught the man who stood
+watching--as you saw him take me down, swiftly--and swung him, but in a
+circle.  The man struck the ground on his head and it was broken; also
+his ribs."
+
+Low murmurs of appreciation swelled among the listening mahouts.  Ram
+Yaksahn bent his head.
+
+"It was determined," he said with satisfaction, "by wise men of
+authority who rule such matters at the trap-stockades, that this
+elephant had done just judgment; because the man had done murder.
+
+"But we could not come close to this elephant--to link with his
+leg-chains--for his threatening eye.  That night and the next day, he
+kept the body between his feet--the body of the little child he
+kept--save when he swung it.  No man could prevent.
+
+"Then he left it" (Ram Yaksahn's voice suddenly went husky), "and came
+to me--and put me on his neck.  For this reason I am his to him; and he
+is mine to me!"
+
+"Well done, well done!" the mellow voice of Kudrat Sharif spoke softly;
+and the mahouts of the Chief Commissioner's stockades assented.
+
+"There is yet one thing," Ram Yaksahn resumed, "and I should cover my
+face to tell it.  But if you learn that I am a fool of fools, consider
+my foolishness.  His blackness is strange; his strength is mighty--it
+took four to handle him, not two, in the beginning--and his quickness
+is more quick than a man can think.  Also, he has a red devil in his
+eye.
+
+"When my name was spoken after his name and my duty rendered me to
+serve him, I found he was indeed my master.  We consider the creatures
+of his kind are exalted above men; but I thought him a son of darkness,
+come up out of the pit.  In my fool heart I did; and I do not know yet.
+
+"At the time when he was trapped, I was in High Himalaya finding a fair
+woman of lineage as good as my own--as my fathers have done.  So when
+this last thing happened, not many weeks ago, a son of mine lay on his
+mother's breast.  She came out with the child and sat near me.  She was
+teaching me that my son laughed.  I saw only her; and knew only that
+her babe was strong.
+
+"I forgot that this elephant browsed close by, having long picket
+chains to reach the tender branches.  He came toward where we sat and
+stood looking at us; and I called on her to behold the red devil in his
+eye.  But I looked--not into his eye; and I did not see him upon
+us--till he lifted my son from her breast.  I saw the little body swing
+up, far above my head--the so very little body--and I heard her cry in
+the same breath."
+
+Ram Yaksahn laid his forehead against his fists and softly beat his
+head.  Looking up with drawn features, he went on:
+
+"My face was in the grasses when I heard her laugh.  Then I saw the
+babe--not longer than a man's arm--slowly swinging in my master's
+trunk, back and forth--back and forth.  The little one was making
+noises of content--such as babes use--when my master laid him very
+gently between his own front feet.  The child spread his hands,
+reaching up for the curling tip above his face.
+
+"Now it has been said that I am not lacking in courage; but in that
+hour I was without sense to know courage or fear.  The fingers of cold
+death felt along my veins and searched out the marrow of my bones; for
+when I leaped to take the babe--I met the red threat in my master's
+eye.  But the mother of my son went like a blown leaf and stooped
+between this elephant's feet, to lift up her first man-child.
+
+"She came away with him safe; and this elephant swayed before us, at
+the end of his picket chains, stretching his quivering trumpet-tip
+toward the babe--with flaming fires in his eyes.
+
+"The daughter of High Himalayan mahouts called this black majesty 'Nut
+Kut'; and they have added that name on the Government books.  But they
+will not take his first name away.  I have finished."
+
+And Ram Yaksahn gave himself to his hookah--still keeping his eye on
+Nut Kut.
+
+"His first name has not been told," mildly reminded the very old man.
+
+"His first name is Nut Kut!" said Ram Yaksahn with decision.  "But his
+last name is Pyar-awaz."
+
+All the mahouts laughed; translating the double name in their own
+minds---Mischief, the Voice-of-Love.
+
+"We have no violent men in these stockades," said Kudrat Sharif,
+speaking to them all.  "And we do not find that Ram Yaksahn was lacking
+in courage.  We will prove the nature of Nut Kut with kindness."
+
+His decision was conclusive; and they proceeded to encourage the mighty
+black into his own enclosure.
+
+This was the coming of Nut Kut to the Chief Commissioner's elephant
+stockades at Hurda.  As time went by, the attraction of his mysterious
+nature inflamed the mahouts with interest; and also with concern--for
+he was a fearsome fighter.
+
+
+Carlin had gone to a sick sister-in-law for a few days; and as
+soon as he heard of it, Dickson Sahib had driven to the M'Cord
+bungalow--realising that without her it would be desolate to his young
+American friend.  Protesting that he needed someone to come and break
+his own loneliness, he carried Skag home.
+
+So just now Skag was smoking his after-tiffin cigarette in the verandah
+of Dickson Sahib's big bungalow.  The great Highway-of-all-India, with
+its triple avenue, its monarch trees, swept past the front of the
+grounds.  Several times from here, he had seen a big elephant go
+joyously rolling by.  He could tell it was joyous; and the man on its
+neck was usually singing.
+
+The very smell of elephants had always stirred Skag--like all clean
+good earth-smells in one.  When he was animal trainer in the circus,
+the elephants had not been his special charge; but he had seen a good
+deal of them.  They looked to him like convicts; or manikins--moving to
+the pull of the hour-string.  They were incessantly being loaded,
+unloaded, made to march; cooped in small, stuffy places--chained.
+
+He wanted to see elephants--herds of them!  He wanted to see them in
+multitudes, working for men in their own way; using their own
+intelligence.  He wanted to see them in their own jungles--living their
+own lives.
+
+Sooner or later he meant to see them, all ways.  He had come to India,
+the land of elephants, partly for that reason; but in the Mahadeo
+mountains he had found none--nor in the great Grass Jungle.  Yet he had
+learned that when he wanted anything--way back in the inside of
+himself--he was due to get it.  To-day this thing was gnawing more than
+ever before; he wanted elephants--hard.
+
+Dickson Sahib came out on his way back to the offices and stopped to
+finish their tiffin conversation:
+
+"I'm glad you're interested in young Horace; you're going to be no end
+good for him, I can see that.  You'll find him far too mature for his
+years.  His brain's too active; but he's not abnormal.  His tutors call
+him insatiable; but from his babyhood the breath of his life has been
+elephants.  He's taken a lot from the learned natives; they talk with
+him as if he were quite grown--half of it I couldn't follow myself."
+
+"That is extraordinary to me," said Skag.
+
+"Of course it is.  But there's been nothing else for it.  My own days
+are quite tied up, and his mother--the climate, you know.  So you see
+what I mean, he's really needing--just you."
+
+Dickson's eyes turned on a little fellow who stood alone, further down
+the verandah.  Then his face shadowed, as he spoke in a lower tone:
+
+"I said he's not abnormal--that should be qualified.  Several years ago
+he was carried home from the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades by
+their governing mahout, Kudrat Sharif.  The servants said he was crying
+and fighting to go back; but otherwise seemed quite himself.  When I
+came from the offices in the evening, however, he was in a fever;
+raving about Nut Kut--raving about Nut Kut for days--always wanting to
+go back to Nut Kut.
+
+"I went after the governing mahout and he said the child had played too
+hard; and that was why they brought him home.  Kudrat Sharif is a
+graceful man, with much dignity; but I always felt he held something in
+reservation."
+
+"What about Nut Kut?" Skag asked.
+
+"Nut Kut is a great black elephant, trapped in the Vindha Hills only a
+few years ago.  He's young and I've heard he's a dangerous fighter.  My
+son likes him; but I can't get over believing he's responsible for the
+high nerve tension the boy always carries.  But don't let Horace annoy
+you."  Dickson Sahib finished hurriedly.  "You're his first love, you
+know!"
+
+Any man knows the kind of thrill when he's told that a boy has fallen
+in love with him; but the lad's interest in elephants--reminding Skag
+of his own--made him specially worth considering.  The little figure
+suggested dynamic power rather than physical strength.  The hair was
+dull brown, with an overcast of pale flame on it; the skin too white.
+But the eyes held Skag.  They were pure grey, full of smouldering
+shadows and high lights--forever contending with each other.  At this
+moment the boy was leaning his head toward the road, listening.
+
+"She's petulant to-day, the lady!" he chuckled.  "Wait till you see
+Mitha Baba, Skag Sahib."
+
+Down through the great trees a handsome female elephant approached,
+careering at a curious choppy gait.  With her trunk well up, she was
+trumpeting every third step.
+
+"What's the matter with her?" Skag asked.
+
+"She's abused, Skag Sahib."  The boy became a bit embarrassed;
+hesitating, before he went on: "The Hakima used to speak to her
+whenever she passed Miss Annesley's bungalow; and now--she's not there
+to do it."
+
+Horace waved his hand to Mitha Baba's mahout; and the mahout shouted
+something in a dialect Skag did not know.
+
+"He's awfully proud of Mitha Baba; and it's true, Skag Sahib, there
+isn't anything in grey beyond her; but--"  Horace stopped, suddenly
+gone wistful.
+
+"What's the trouble?" Skag asked, startled.
+
+"They won't let me near him--they won't let me!  I want him more than
+anything I know--"
+
+"Then you'll get him!" interrupted Skag.
+
+It must have been the sureness in Skag's voice, that made some choking
+tightness way back in the boy's soul let go; whole vistas of
+possibilities opened up.
+
+"We're going to get on, you know--I'm sure of it!" he said
+breathlessly.  "If only I were old enough to be your friend!"
+
+Skag remembered the father's words.
+
+"I've never had a friend younger than myself," he answered, "and there
+are only a few years difference--why not?"
+
+Their hands met as men.  And it was still early in the afternoon.
+
+Horace went into the house and spoke with a servant.  Coming out, he
+took a long minute to get some excitement well in hand before speaking:
+
+"I've arranged for one thing to show you, already!  My boy will be back
+from the bazaar soon, to let me know whether the time will be to-day or
+to-morrow.  It's a surprise--if you don't mind, Skag Sahib."
+
+"All right, then what is the most interesting thing you know about?"
+Skag asked.
+
+"Elephants.  No question."
+
+"Have you many here in Hurda?"
+
+"Not any belonging to Hurda; but our Chief Commissioner has forty
+Government elephants in his stockades--the finest ever.  Neela Deo, the
+Blue God--who is the leader of the caravan--the mahouts say there isn't
+an elephant in the world to touch him; and Mitha Baba and Gunpat
+Rao--they're famous in all India.  And Nut Kut; indeed, Skag Sahib, you
+should see Nut Kut.  They don't allow strangers about where he is; he's
+the one--the mahouts won't let me go near him."
+
+"What's wrong with him?" Skag asked.
+
+"I don't know; I'm always wondering.  In the beginning--when I was
+little--but I don't believe it was--wrong."
+
+The boy spoke haltingly, frowning; but went on:
+
+"That's between Nut Kut and--Horace Dickson!  I like him better than
+anything I know.  The mahouts have tried every way to discourage
+me--yes, they have!"
+
+"What does he do?" Skag questioned.
+
+"You know Government does _not_ permit elephant fighting," the boy
+began solemnly, "but--Nut Kut doesn't know it!  His pet scheme is to
+break away out of his own stockades, if there are any elephants across
+the river--that's where the regiments camp--and get in among the
+military elephants.  He's a frightful fighter."
+
+"How do they handle him?" Skag asked.
+
+"It takes more than two of their best males to do it--big trained
+fellows, you understand.  Even then, usually, one of the great females
+comes with her chain--the kind they call 'mother-things'--she handles
+it with her trunk.  Just one little flick across his ears and any
+fighter will be willing to stop--even Nut Kut.  But it's to see, Skag
+Sahib; never twice the same--it can't be told."
+
+A servant came in from the highway, salaaming before Horace and
+reporting that the _tamasha_ would occur at the usual time this
+afternoon--afternoon; not evening.
+
+"Then we'll have tea, at once!" Horace interrupted him.  "Quick! tell
+the butler."
+
+After tea they walked along the great Highway-of-all-India, by the edge
+of the native town and over the low stone bridge.  Beyond the river,
+they passed acres of tenting.  A glamour of dust lay in the slanting
+sun-rays.  An intense earth-smell penetrated Skag's senses.  A feel of
+excitement was in the air.
+
+"Where are the elephants?" Skag asked.
+
+"How do you know it's elephants?" the boy countered.
+
+"Several ways; but last of all, I smell 'em."
+
+"It is elephants--much elephants.  You are to see them in one of their
+big works in the Indian elephant-military department."
+
+This announcement of the programme instantly made Skag forget that he
+had come out with a lad in need of healthy comradeship.
+
+"What work?" he asked.
+
+"This is elephant concerns, Skag Sahib," the boy replied; "they work
+with men and they work for men, but no one knows what they think about
+the man-end of it; because they are always and always doing things men
+never expect.  They do funny things and strange things and wonderful
+things.  It's the inside working of an elephant regiment, that makes it
+so different from anything else.
+
+"It's all tied up with men on the outside; but you mustn't notice the
+outside.  Inside is what I mean--the elephant concerns.  No one knows
+what it will be to-day."
+
+"Have you forgotten Nut Kut?" smiled Skag.
+
+"Not ever!" the boy answered quickly, "but even if he doesn't
+come--they almost always do something interesting.  That's why we never
+call them animals or beasts, but sometimes creatures--because they have
+a kind of intelligence we have not.  And that's why we _always_ speak
+of them as persons."
+
+"I like that," Skag put in.
+
+"From end to end of India," the boy went on, "down Bombay side and up
+Calcutta side, regiments of elephants go with regiments of men--in the
+never-ending fatigue marching that keeps them all fit.
+
+"The tenting and commissariat-stuff is carried by the elephants,
+straight from camp to camp, safe and sure and in proper time--always.
+That's the point, you understand, Skag Sahib--they never run away with
+it, or lose it, or go aside into the jungle to eat.  You're going to
+see one regiment start out to-day.
+
+"The man-regiment will go another road--a little longer, but not so
+rough.  The elephant regiment will go by themselves, just one mahout on
+each neck--like you would carry a mouse.  Really, they go on their own
+honour; because men have no power to control them--only with their
+voices.  You know Government doesn't permit elephants to be shot, for
+anything--only in case one is court-martialled and sentenced to die."
+
+"Don't the mahouts ever punish them?" Skag asked.
+
+"They're not allowed to torture them--never mind what!  And men can't
+punish elephants any other way--they're not big enough."
+
+Then a voice rolled out of the dust-glamour before them.  In quality
+and reach and power, it reminded Skag of a marvel voice that used to
+call newspapers in the big railway station in Chicago.
+
+"Whose voice?" he asked Horace.
+
+"That's the master-mahout.  He calls the elephants; you'll see.  He's
+the only kind of mahout who ever gets pay for himself."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"It's what makes the elephant-military a proper department.  Only
+elephant names on the books; the pay goes to them.  The mahout is
+always an elephant's servant; he eats from his master, of course.  From
+the outside it saves a lot of trouble, to be sure."
+
+Skag laughed.  From the elephant standpoint, a small Englishman was
+conceding a certain amount of convenience to men.
+
+"You see," the boy went on, "an elephant lives anyway more than a
+hundred years; and his name stays just like that and draws pay without
+changing.  Always a mahout's son takes his place, when he gets too old
+or dies.  I can recall when Mitha Baba's mahout was one of the most
+wonderful of them all.  Now he has gone old, as they say; and his son
+is on her neck."
+
+There was a moment when Skag would have given his soul--almost--if he
+might have grown up in India, as this child was growing up; in the
+heart of her ancient knowledges--in the breath of her mystic power.
+Then a great plain opened before them.  It appeared at first glance,
+completely full of elephants.
+
+. . . The glamour of sun-drenched dust hung over all.
+
+Looking more closely, Skag saw nothing but elephant ranks toward the
+right, and nothing but elephant ranks toward the left; but in the
+centre, a large area was covered with separate piles of dunnage, evenly
+distributed.
+
+From where he stood toward where the sun would set--a broad division
+stretched; and in the middle of this division, a single line of loaded
+elephants filed away and away to the horizon.
+
+. . . Skag became oblivious.  He was so thralled with the sight that he
+did not notice what was nearer.  The whole panorama held his breath
+till right before him a great creature rose from sitting--without a
+sound.  There was a dignity about its movement not less than majestic.
+It was a mighty load; but the huge shape slid away as smooth as flowing
+water--as easy as a drifting cloud.
+
+A deep voice said quietly:
+
+"Peace, master; go thy way.  Peace, son."
+
+"Did he speak to both of them?" Skag asked of Horace.
+
+"Yes; the first part was to the elephant and the last part was to the
+mahout.  This mahout must be one of the great ones, else the
+master-mahout would not have spoken to him.  But he will always speak
+to the elephants--something."
+
+A strange name filled the air, rolling up and away.  It was followed by
+a courteous request, in softer tones; and Skag watched another big
+elephant approach from the unpicketed lines.  It came to where the
+master-mahout stood, close to a pile of tenting, wheeled to face the
+way it should go presently, and sank down to be loaded.
+
+Men did the lifting into place and the lashing on.  There was detail in
+the process, to which the elephant adjusted his body as intelligently
+as they adjusted theirs.  When they required to reach under with the
+broad canvas bands, he rose a little without being told.  Indeed they
+seldom spoke even to each other; and then in undertones.  The
+elephant's mahout sat in his place on the neck, as if he were a part of
+the neck itself.
+
+The smoothness, the ease of it all, amazed Skag.  That every good
+night, spoken to every separate elephant, was different--peculiar to
+itself--was no less astounding.  It was never as if addressed to an
+animal, or even to a child; but always as if to a mature and
+understanding intelligence.  As when the master-mahout said to one
+female:
+
+"Fortune to thee, great Lady.  May the gods guard that foot.  And have
+a care in going down the khuds--it is that mercy should be shown us,
+thy friends."
+
+And again to a young male, whose movements were very self-conscious:
+
+"Remember there is to be no tamasha to-night, thou son of destiny.  It
+is not yet in thy head--to determine when shall be tamasha.  Fifty
+years hence, and when wisdom shall be come to thee, thou heir of
+ancient learning, then we shall have tamasha at thy bidding."
+
+. . . A monster female came at the call of her name, with a long heavy
+chain--one end securely attached to her.  The other end she handled
+with her trunk.  Advancing to within a few feet of the master-mahout,
+she stood facing him, teetering her whole body from side to side,
+swinging her chain as she rolled.
+
+Horace flashed away and ran in among the massed elephants and mahouts.
+Coming back to Skag, he said breathlessly:
+
+"A mahout says the other one went before we came!  That means, if Nut
+Kut comes--there'll be no one to manage him.  You remember, Skag Sahib,
+I told you about the 'mother-thing'--if anyone starts a fight, she
+breaks it up with her chain; better than any two or three fighting
+males.  Two tuskers just wake Nut Kut up!"
+
+Then he stood staring at the female with her chain--getting red in the
+face as he spoke:
+
+"Oh, I say!  She doesn't want to be loaded; and she knows!  Why, they
+know she knows! . . .  Master-mahout!" he called in brave tones that
+trembled, "I am Dickson Sahib's son--of the grain-foods department--"
+
+"We know you, Sahib, salaam!" interrupted the master-mahout, with a
+smile.
+
+"Is it not the unwritten-law that the great 'mother-thing' shall be
+obeyed?" the boy quavered.
+
+"It is the unwritten-law, Sahib; and we will not impose our will on
+her.  It is this, there is no sign of what she means; the masters are
+all quiet to-day--there is no warning of _tamasha_."
+
+The master-mahout spoke with grave consideration; but just as he
+finished, the "mother-thing" wheeled into place and went down to take
+her load.
+
+"Cheer up, son, I guess it's all right," comforted Skag.
+
+"It's all right--if Nut Kut doesn't come," said the boy, whimsically.
+
+"So 'tamasha' sometimes means trouble?" queried Skag, remembering the
+tamer definition he had learned.
+
+"It means anything anybody considers entertaining!" answered Horace.
+"By preference--an elephant fight!  Remember, Government doesn't allow
+'em; but sometimes they just happen anyway."
+
+Then an elephant failed to answer.  Several mahouts left their places
+and went to one spot; and Skag saw the one who had been called.  He was
+sitting low against the ground, slowly rocking his head from side to
+side.  A mahout was examining his ears--folding them back and feeling
+of them--laying his cheek against the inside surface.
+
+"Is he sick?" Skag asked.
+
+But the boy's eyes were wide upon the broad avenue before them, where
+the loaded elephants went marching away.  Then he burst out, in choking
+excitement:
+
+"Look, Skag Sahib!  See that loaded elephant coming back from the line?
+I think you are going to see one of the most wonderful things that ever
+happened.  They say it has been done; but I've never seen it--I've
+never seen it myself."
+
+Skag saw a powerful elephant coming back alongside the loaded line.  He
+did not move with the same smooth flowing motion as the others.  He
+walked as if he were coming on important business.  With a load on his
+back, he returned and sank down beside the pile of tenting intended for
+another elephant.
+
+"What's the meaning of it?" Skag asked.
+
+Little Horace Dickson answered in a hushed way--as one in the presence
+of a miracle:
+
+"It is one of the regulars, come back to take a part of what belongs to
+the sick elephant."
+
+Skag looked at the boy's face, in incredulous amazement.  It was
+lit--awe and exaltation were both there.  Then he noticed the look of
+the master-mahout--that was a revelation.
+
+. . . They were putting half as much again on top of the already loaded
+elephant.
+
+. . . Certain phrases went through Skag's brain, as he watched the
+thing done--over and over.  _No one had called this elephant back.  He
+came before they knew themselves that an elephant was sick.  When the
+mahouts first went to examine the sick one--this one was already on the
+way.  How did he know?_
+
+The extra loaded elephant rose and started again.  Then a great shout
+went up.  Tones of many voices filled the slanting sun-rays in all the
+glamour of dust.  The wonderful voice of the master-mahout loomed above
+all:
+
+"Wisdom and excellence are thy parts, oh Thou!  Justice and
+kindness--we who are poor in them--will learn of thee!  Thou son of
+strength, thou child of ancient knowledges and worth!"
+
+And the mahouts shouted again!
+
+At that moment Skag knew as well as he knew anything in life, that he
+stood somewhere in the outer courts of a great animal-cult; and he was
+convinced that it was of a mystic nature--however that could be.  He
+swore in his heart that he would never give up, till he got further in.
+
+The master-mahout's voice ascended now on a strange call.  It was a
+lift-lift-lifting tone.
+
+"What does that mean?" Skag asked.
+
+"All the elephants know that--it's the lifting call," Horace explained.
+"When an elephant is sick--unless they have an extra number in the
+regiment--they always call for two to volunteer; and they divide the
+load of the sick elephant between them.  They use these tones instead
+of a name--just for that.  There comes a male now, to take the rest of
+this load."
+
+Skag watched the added load going into place on the volunteer.  It was
+almost finished, when a trumpet blast sounded directly behind
+him--toward Hurda.  Several elephants answered from the regiment; and
+many mahouts called to each other.
+
+"Is that the bad fighter coming?" Skag asked.
+
+"Yes, Skag Sahib, that's Nut Kut.  But I don't know just what you're
+going to see--the ones who ought to handle him are all gone."
+
+The master-mahout's voice was rising up into the vault of heaven and
+falling over upon the horizon.  It seemed to Skag the like was never
+heard before.
+
+"He's calling the two big tuskers back," Horace chuckled, "but there'll
+be doings on before they get here!  Will you listen to Nut Kut's
+challenge?"
+
+Skag turned to face the looming trumpet tones.  There were no tones
+behind him like them.  Smooth and mellow, they were yet so full of
+power as to make all the others sound insignificant.  They were like
+love-tones translated into thunder.
+
+But when Nut Kut came in sight, Skag caught his breath.  The shape was
+made of gleaming bronze.  No detail showed; it was a thing that took
+the eye and the breath and the blood.  There was no look of effort in
+its inscrutable motion.
+
+They stood in the open, between this thing and the regiment behind.
+There was no obstruction.  And Skag moved to be between it and
+Horace--when it should pass them on its way.  The regiment of
+thoroughly trained elephants were standing firmly in their places; but
+they were making the welkin ring with a thousand trumpets in the air.
+
+Certainly Skag knew that this incredible thing before him--bigger every
+second--was Nut Kut.  He looked to see why the great challenge-tones
+had stopped, and revelation went through him--like an explosion.  Nut
+Kut had seen Horace and was coming straight for him.
+
+Skag leaped to meet Nut Kut first, but he couldn't catch the elephant's
+eye.  The huge shape was upon him and he was flung aside.  Recovering
+himself almost instantly, he got around in time to see--but not in time
+to prevent.
+
+Horace lifted both arms and leaned forward--his grey eyes gone
+black--as Nut Kut's trunk caught him.  A little broken cry came from
+him and his death-white face hung down an instant--from high up.
+
+Then, backing away, swaying from side to side, Nut Kut set his eyes on
+the man who followed--his red eyes, blazing with red warning.  The
+American animal trainer did not fail to understand; he paused.
+
+Slowly the great bronze trunk curled and cuddled about Horace Dickson's
+body and began to swing him.  Skag knew that elephants swing men when
+they intend to kill them; and he heard a low moaning--like wind--rise
+up from the multitude of mahouts behind.
+
+. . . Further and further the boy swung in the elephant's trunk, back
+and forth--back and forth.  Unnatural tones startled Skag--sounding
+like delirium.  Nut Kut put little Horace Dickson down, close under his
+own throat, his long trunk curling outside--always curling
+about--feeling up and down the boy's limbs, his frame, his face.  The
+small mouth was open; the little red tongue--flickering.
+
+Horace seemed oblivious; but when he laughed aloud.  Nut Kut caught him
+up again--lightning quick.  This time he swung the boy higher, till he
+rounded a perfect circle in the air; backing still further away and
+lifting his head.  Nut Kut flung him round and round and yet
+around--faster and yet faster.
+
+The moaning--like wind--still came from behind.
+
+After endless time--like perdition--Skag heard Horace gasping, choking.
+He thought there were words; but couldn't be sure.  And while this was
+going on.  Nut Kut brought the boy down--flat on the ground.  The
+impact must have broken a man.  But Horace got to his feet--staggering
+in the circle of the trunk--looking dazed.
+
+Now Skag moved forward, holding his hands out--as he came nearer to the
+big black head.
+
+"I know you now, Nut Kut," he said quietly, "you're white inside all
+right.  You're not meaning to hurt him.  You like him--so do I."
+
+But Nut Kut backed away, gathering the boy with him, looking down into
+the American's eyes--the red danger signals flaring up in his own again.
+
+"Nut Kut, old man," Skag reasoned in perfectly natural tones, "you
+can't bluff me.  I tell you, I know you.  I know you as well as if we
+came out of the same egg!"
+
+Nut Kut was still backing away and Skag was following up.
+
+"You may take me, if you want--I can't let you wear him out, you know."
+
+And then, while Nut Kut wrapped about and drew Horace in closer, Skag
+laid his fingers on the great bronze trunk, gently but firmly
+stroking--the red eyes focused in his own.  For seconds the man and the
+elephant looked into each other.  Suddenly Nut Kut loosed Horace and
+laid hold on Skag.
+
+The moaning ascended and broke--like wind going up a mountain khud.
+There was nothing certain to the mahouts, but that this man of courage
+would be dashed to death before their eyes.
+
+Skag squirmed in the grip about his body as Nut Kut held him high.  It
+looked as if he were being crushed.  But when he got his hands on the
+trunk again, he laughed.  Now Nut Kut lowered him quickly--holding him
+before his own red eyes.  The touch of the elephant was the touch of a
+master.  But the eyes of the man were mastership itself.
+
+. . . They were just so, when Ram Yaksahn--with a ghastly haggard
+face--lurched from behind Nut Kut, fairly sobbing.  Nut Kut jerked Skag
+tight (it was like a hug), released him deliberately and turning, put
+his own sick mahout up on his own neck, with a movement that looked
+like a flick of his trunk.
+
+"Now easy, Majesty, go easy with me--indeed I am very ill!" Ram Yaksahn
+protested in plaintive tones, as Nut Kut wheeled away with him.
+
+Seeing Horace in the hands of a strange native--and certainly
+recovering--Skag looked away toward Hurda and wonder aloud if Nut Kut
+would be punished.  It was the master-mahout who answered him:
+
+"Nay, Sahib.  He has done no harm."
+
+"I'd like to have a chance with him," said Skag.
+
+The master-mahout smiled--a mystic-musical smile, like his voice.
+
+"I have come from my place for a moment," he said, looking intently
+into Skag's eyes, "for a purpose.  We have heard of you, Son-of-Power.
+The wisdom of the ages is to know the instant when to act; not too
+late, not too soon.  We have seen you work this day; and the fame of it
+will go before and after you, the length and breadth of India--among
+the mahouts."
+
+He turned, pointing toward the elephant regiment.  Many mahouts were
+shouting something together; their right hands flung high.
+
+"It is right for you to know," the master-mahout went on, "that mahouts
+are a kind of men by themselves apart.  Their knowledges are of
+elephants--sealed--not open to those from without.  Yet I speak as one
+of my kind, being qualified, if in the future you have need of anything
+from us--it is yours."
+
+And without giving Skag a chance to answer him, but with a stately
+gesture of salaam, the master-mahout had returned to his place and was
+calling another elephant.
+
+Skag turned toward Horace, who was drawing a fine looking
+native forward by the hand.  The boy spoke with repressed
+excitement--otherwise showing no sign of Nut Kut's strenuous handling:
+
+"Skag Sahib, I want you to know Kudrat Sharif, the malik of the Chief
+Commissioner's elephant stockades.  It is not known, you
+understand--meaning my father--but the malik has always been very
+wonderful to me."
+
+Kudrat Sharif smiled with frank affection on the boy, as he drew his
+right hand away, to touch his forehead in the Indian salaam.  The
+gesture showed both grace and dignity--as Dickson Sahib had said.
+
+"I am exalted to carry back to my stockades the story of the manner of
+your work, Son-of-Power," he began.
+
+"My name is Sanford Hantee," Skag deprecated gently.
+
+"But you will always be known to Indians of India as Son-of-Power!"
+Kudrat Sharif protested.  "It is a lofty title, yet you have
+established it before many."
+
+Just then a great elephant came near, playfully reaching for Kudrat
+Sharif with his trunk.
+
+"And this is Neela Deo, the leader of the caravan!" laughed Horace.
+
+"It is my shame that there is no howdah on him to carry you; we came
+like flight, when Nut Kut's escape was known," Kudrat Sharif
+apologised.  "But after some days, when Nut Kut's excitement sleeps, we
+shall be distinguished if Son-of-Power chooses to come to the stockades
+and consider him.
+
+"I heard your judgment of his nature, Sahib; and I say with humility
+that I shall remember it, in what I have to do with the most strange
+elephant I have ever met.  Truly we are not sure of Nut Kut, whether he
+is a mighty being of extreme exaltation, above others of his kind in
+the world, or--a prince from the pit!"
+
+Kudrat Sharif salaamed again; and Neela Deo lifted him to his great
+neck and carried him away.
+
+
+Walking home, Horace expressed himself to his friend--as the heart of a
+boy may be expressed; and Skag dropped his arm about the slender
+shoulders, speaking softly:
+
+"Remember, son, a little more--would have been too much."
+
+"All right, Skag Sahib, because now you understand; but--isn't he
+interesting?"
+
+Knowing well what the boy meant about the great strange creature--more
+than his fighting propensities, deeper than his physical might--Skag
+assented thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes; I would like to know him better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_Blue Beast_
+
+Across the river at the military camp, the cavalry outfits were
+preparing for a jungle outing.  It isn't easy to name the thing they
+contemplated.  Pig-sticking couldn't be called a quest, yet there are
+"cracks" at the game, quite the same as at polo or billiards.
+
+Horse and man carry their lives on the outside, so to speak.  The trick
+of it all is that a man never knows what the tusker will do.  You can't
+even count on him doing the opposite.  And he does it quick.  Often he
+sniffs first, but you don't hear that until after it is done.  Men have
+heard that sniff as they lay under a horse that was kicking its life
+out; yet the sniff really sounded while they were still in the
+saddle--the horse still whole.
+
+All the words that have to do with this sport are ugly.  It's more like
+a snort than a sniff. . . .  You really must see it.  A trampled place
+in the jungle--tusker at bay---a mounted sticker on each side waiting
+for the move.  The tusker stands still.  He looks nowhere, out of eyes
+like burning cellars.  That is as near as you can come with
+words--trapdoors opening into cellars, smoke and flame below.
+
+At this moment you are like a negative, being exposed.  There is filmed
+among your enduring pictures thereafter, the raking curving snout,
+yellow tusks, blue bristling hollows from which the eyes burn.  The
+lances glint green from the creepers. . . .
+
+Then the flick of the head that goes with the snort.  The boar isn't
+there--lanced doubtless. . . .  Yes, the cavalry "cracks" get him for
+the most part and then you hear men's laughter and bits of comment and
+the strike of a match or two, for very much relished cigarettes.  But
+now and then, the scene shifts too quickly and the _other_ rider may
+see his friend's mount stand up incredibly gashed--a white horse
+possibly--and this _other_ must charge and lance true right now, for
+the boar is waiting for the man in the saddle to come down.
+
+Nobody ever thinks of the boar's part.  Queer about that.  It's the bad
+revolting curve that goes with a tusker's snout, in the sag of which
+the eye is set, that puts him out of reach of decent regard.  Only two
+other curves touch it for malignity--the curve of a hyena's shoulder
+and the curve of a shark's jaw.  Three scavengers that haven't had a
+real chance.  They weren't bred right.
+
+
+Among the visitors that came in for the jungle play was Ian Deal, one
+of the younger of Carlin's seven brothers; one of the two who hadn't
+appeared for her marriage.  The other missing brother was in Australia,
+but Ian Deal had been in India at the time of the ceremony and not the
+full-length of India away.  Skag had thought about this; Carlin had
+doubtless done more than that.  Once she had flushed, when someone had
+marked Ian's absence to the point of speaking of it.  Before that, Skag
+had only heard that Ian was one of the best-loved of all. . . .
+
+He watched the meeting of the brother and sister.  It was at the
+railway station in Hurda, and Skag couldn't very well get away.  There
+was something almost like anguish in the face of the young man as he
+hastened forward--anguish of devotion that never hoped to express
+itself; anguish by no means sure of itself, because it burned with the
+thought of Carlin being nearer to any man.  Ian didn't speak, as he
+stopped with a rush before his sister.  He merely touched her cheek,
+but his eyes were the eyes of a man whose heart was starving.  The
+English observe that this jealous affection occasionally exists between
+twins; the Hindus suggest certain mysterious spiritual relations as
+accounting for it. . . .  Finally Skag realised that Carlin's eyes were
+turned to him, something of pity in them and something of appeal.
+
+It was all very quick then.  Skag's hand was out to her brother.  Ian
+didn't see it.  Only his right elbow raised the slightest bit; his dark
+face flushed and paled that second.  The stare was refined; it wasn't
+hate so much as astonishment that any man could ever bring the thing
+about to touch Carlin's heart.  Back of it all was the matter that Ian
+Deal would have died before confessing--the pain and powerlessness of a
+brother who loves jealously.
+
+Few beings of his years would have seen so deep and kept his nerve that
+instant, but Skag had been different since his battle with the cobra.
+He had decided never to lose his nerve again.  This was the first test
+since that day. . . .  His throat tightened a second, so that he had to
+clear it.  All he knew then was that her brother was striding away,
+having muttered something about the need to see after unshipping Kala
+Khan, his Arab mount, which was aboard the train.  There was a sort of
+shimmer between Skag's eyes and Ian Deal's vanishing legs that made
+them seem lifted out of all proportion.  Then Carlin caught his arm,
+carried him forward and to her at the same time, as she whispered:
+
+"You were perfect, Skag-ji.  I never loved you so much as that moment,
+when poor Ian refused to take your hand--"
+
+Skag cleared his throat a second time. . . .  Carlin had used that name
+only once or twice before; and only in moments of her greater joy in
+him.  He had been told by Horace Dickson that "ji" used intimately was
+"nicer" than any English word.
+
+
+Something in this experience threw Skag back to the point of the cobra
+and the last experience with crippling nerves.  Of course, it was the
+thought of Carlin imprisoned in the playhouse that broke him.  Starting
+to run when he first saw the cobra on the threshold, he counted
+Failure.  That burst of speed for ten steps had put the king into
+fighting mood.  Skag had beaten thin in his own mind the possibility of
+ever committing Failure again.  A man must not lose his nerve in the
+stress of a loved one's peril.  One doesn't act so well to bring the
+event to a winning.  In fact, there is no excuse and no advantage and
+no decency in losing one's nerve, any time, any place. . . .
+
+Skag had _known_ things in certain seconds of his duel with the cobra.
+(Mostly, a man only thinks he knows.)  Carlin had stood on the
+threshold, not more than fifteen feet away, while he was engaged.  No
+one had told him at that time, that the man does not live who can
+continue to keep off a fighting cobra from striking home; but Skag
+learned in that short interval.  He faced not only the fastest thing he
+had ever seen move, but it was also the _stillest_.  It would come to a
+dead stop before him--stillness compared to which a post or a wall is
+mere squat inertia.  This lifted head and hood was sustained,
+elate--having the moveless calm one might imagine at the centre of a
+solar system.  Its outline was mysteriously clear.  Often the
+background was Carlin's own self.  The action took place in the period
+of the Indian afterglow, in which one can see better than in brilliant
+sunlight, a light that breathes soft and delicate effulgences.  The
+cobra at the point of stillness was like dark dulled jewels against
+it--dulled so that the raying of the jewels would not obscure the
+contour.
+
+And once toward the last, as he fought (the inside of his head feeling
+like a smear of opened arteries), Skag had seen Carlin over the hood of
+the cobra.  She had seemed utterly tall, utterly enfolding; his
+relation to her, one of the inevitables of creation.  Nothing could
+ever happen to take her away for long.  Matters which men call life and
+death were mere exigencies of his scheme and hers _together_.
+
+In a word, it was a breath of the thing he had been yearning for, from
+the moment he first saw her in the monkey glen; the need was the core
+of the anguish he had known in the long pursuit of the thief elephant;
+the thing that must come to a man and a maid who have found each other,
+if there is to be any equity in the romantic plan at all, unless the
+two are altogether asleep and content in the tight dimensions of
+three-score-and-ten.
+
+Skag had seen that he could not win; but he had also seen that Carlin
+was _there_--there to stay! . . .  Something in her--that no fever or
+poison or death could take away--something for him!  The thing was
+vivid to him for moments afterward; it lingered in dimmer outlines for
+hours; but as the days passed, he could only hold the vital essence of
+what he had learned that hour.
+
+Carlin was more to him every day--more dear and intimate in a hundred
+ways; yet always she held the quest of her before him; a constant
+suggestion of marvels of reserve; mysteries always unfolding, of no
+will or design of hers.  It seemed to the two that they were treading
+the paths of a larger design than they could imagine; and Skag was sure
+it was only the dullness of his faculty and the slowness of his taking,
+not Carlin's resources of magic, that limited the joy.
+
+
+Ian Deal took up his quarters across the river with the cavalry.  He
+did not come to the bungalow.
+
+"He has always been strange," Carlin said.  "In some ways he has been
+closer to me than any of the others.  Always strange--doing things one
+time that showed the tenderest feeling for me and again the harshest
+resentment.  You could not know what he suffered--remaining away when
+we were married.  He has always hoped I would stay single.  The idea
+was like a passion in him.  Some of the others have it, but not to the
+same degree. . . .  You know we have all felt the tragedy over us.  We
+are different.  The English feel it and the natives, too; yet we hold
+the respect of both, as no other half-caste line in India.  It is
+because of the austerity of our views on one subject--to keep the
+lineage above reproach as it began. . . .  No, Ian will not come here.
+He has seen his sister.  He will make that do--"
+
+"Why don't you go to him?" Skag asked.
+
+She turned her head softly.
+
+"You Americans are amazing."
+
+"Why?" he laughed.
+
+"An Englishman or any of my brothers in your place, wouldn't think
+India could contain Ian Deal and himself."
+
+"It wouldn't do any good to fight that sort of feeling," Skag said.
+
+"Only a man whose courage is proven would dare to say that."
+
+"If I were on the right side, it would not be my part to leave India."
+
+Carlin liked this so well that she decided Skag deserved to hear of a
+certain matter.
+
+". . . Ian has something on his side.  You see I had almost decided not
+to marry--almost promised him.  He always said he would never marry if
+I didn't; that our people would do better forgotten--so much hid sorrow
+in the heart of us. . . .  Something always kept me from making the
+covenant with him; yet I have been closer and closer up the years to
+the point of giving my life to the natives altogether. . . .  That day
+in the monkey glen, after the work was done . . .  I looked into your
+face! . . .  You went away and came again.  I had heard your voice.
+The old tiger down by the river had made _you_ forget everything--but
+your power"--
+
+Carlin laughed.  The last phrases had been spoken low and rapidly.
+
+"I didn't forget everything, dear," she went on.  "I didn't forget
+anything!  Everything meant _you_--all else tentative and preparatory.
+I knew then that the plan was for joy, as soon as we knew enough to
+take it--"
+
+
+On the third morning of the pig-sticking Ian Deal rode by the elephant
+stockades in Hurda just as the American passed.  The hands were long
+that held the bridle-rein, the narrowest Skag had ever seen on a man.
+The boots were narrow like a poster drawing.  It was plainly an
+advantage for this man to ship his own horse from the south for the few
+days of sport.  The black Arab, Kala Khan, seemed built on the same
+frame as its rider--speed and power done into delicacy, utter balance
+of show and stamina.  When the Arab is black, he is a keener black than
+a man could think.  His eyes were fierce, but it was the fierceness of
+fidelity; of that darkness which intimates light; no red burning of
+violence within.
+
+Ian's face was darker from the saddle; the body superb in its high
+tension and slender grace.  Was this the brother that Roderick Deal,
+the eldest, had spoken of as being darker than the average native?  Yet
+the caste-mark was not apparent; the two bloods perfectly blent.
+
+The depth of Skag's feeling was called to pity as well as admiration.
+The rift in this Deal's nature was emotional not physical--some mad
+poetic thing, forever struggling in the tight matrices of a hard-set
+world.  India was rising clearer to Skag; even certain of her profound
+complexities.  He knew that instant how the fertilising pollen of the
+West was needed here, and how the West needed the enfolding spiritual
+culture which is the breath within the breath of the East.  This swift
+realisation had something to do with his own real work.  It was filmy,
+yet memorable--like the first glimpse of one's sealed orders, carried
+long, to be opened at maturity.  Also Skag had the dim impulse of a
+thought that he had something for Ian Deal.  He meant to speak to
+Carlin of this at the right time.
+
+
+"Pig-sticking no-end," the cavalry officers had promised and they were
+making good.
+
+That third afternoon Carlin and Skag took Nels out toward the open
+jungle, which thrust a narrow triangular strip in toward the town.  At
+intervals they heard shouts, far deeper in.  The Great Dane was in his
+highest form, after weeks of care and training by Bhanah.  He could
+well carry his poise in a walk like this; having his full exercise
+night and morning.  A marvel thing, like nothing else--this dignity of
+Nels. . . .  The two neared their own magic place--not the monkey glen;
+that was deeper in the jungle--the place where they had really found
+each other as belonging, in the moment of afterglow.
+
+"It was wonderful then," he said, "but I think--it is even more
+wonderful now."
+
+That was about as much as Sanford Hantee had ever put into a sentence.
+Carlin looked at him steadily.  They were getting past the need of
+words.  She saw that he was fulfilling her dream.  Their story loomed
+higher and more gleaming to him with the days.  He had touched the
+secret of all--that love is Quest; that love means on and on, means not
+to stay; love from the first moment, but always lovelier, range on
+range.  It could only burn continually with higher power and whiter
+light, through steady giving to others.
+
+A woman knows this first, but she must bide her time until the man
+catches up; until he enters into the working knowledge that the farther
+vistas of perfection only open as two pull together with all their art
+and power; that the intimate and ineffable between man and woman is
+only accomplished by their united bestowal to the world.
+
+They walked long in silence and deeper into the jungle before halting
+again.  Nels brushed the man's thigh and stood close.  Skag's hand
+dropped and he felt the rising hackles, before his eyes left Carlin's.
+They heard the Dane's rumble and the world came back to them--the
+shouting nearer.
+
+For a moment they stood, a sense of languor stealing between them.
+Without a word, their thoughts formed the same possibility, as two who
+have a child that is vaguely threatened.  They were deeper in the
+jungle than they thought. . . .  The cordon of native beaters was still
+a mile away in its nearest arc, but there is never any telling what a
+pig will do. . . .  They turned back, walking together without haste,
+Nels behind.  They heard the thudding of a mount that runs and swerves
+and runs again.  It was nearer. . . .  Their hands touched, but they
+did not hasten.
+
+When Carlin turned to him, Skag saw what he had seen on the cobra
+day--weariness, but courage perfect.  A kind of vague revolt rose in
+him, that it should ever be called again to her eyes--more, that it
+should come so soon.  _He_ was ready, but not for Carlin to enter the
+vortex again.
+
+This foreboding they knew, together.  Love made them sentient.  Not
+merely a possibility, but almost a glimpse had come--as if an ominous
+presence had stolen in with the languor.
+
+"Let's hurry, Carlin--"
+
+She was smiling in a child's delicate way, as their steps quickened.
+The thrash of the chase was nearer; the jungle was clearing as they
+made their way to the border near Hurda.  The low rumbling was from
+Nels.  He would stand, turning back an instant, then trot to overtake
+them. . . .  No question now.  One pig at least, was clear of the
+beaters, coming this way, someone in chase.
+
+The great trees were far apart.  They were near _their_ place, after
+many minutes.  They had caught a glimpse of a mounted man through the
+trees--playing his game alone--the pig, but a crash in the
+undergrowth. . . .  There was silence, as if the hunter were
+listening--then a cutting squeal, a laugh from the absorbed horseman,
+and it was all before their eyes!
+
+The tusker halted at the border of their little clearing.  He had just
+seen them and the dog--more enemies. . . .  Hideous bone-rack--long as
+a pony, tapering to the absurd piggy haunches--head as long as a pony's
+head, with a look of decay round the yellow tusks--dripping gash from a
+lance-wound under one ear--standing stock just now, at the end of all
+flight!
+
+Nels seemed to slide forward two feet, like a shoved statue.  It was a
+penetrating silence before the voice of Ian Deal:
+
+"You two--what in God's name--"
+
+That was all of words.
+
+His black Arab, Kala Khan, had come to halt twice a lance-length from
+the tusker.  Carlin and Skag and Nels stood half the circle away from
+the man and mount, a little farther from the still beast, the red right
+eye of which made the central point of the whole tableau.
+
+Ian looked hunched.  He seemed suddenly ungainly--as if all sport like
+this were mockery and he had merely been carried on in these lower
+currents for a price.  His lance wobbled across his bridle-arm which
+was too rigid, the curb checking the perfect spring of the Arab's
+action.
+
+The tusker was bone-still, with that cocked look which means anything
+but flight.  Skag moved a step forward.  His knees touched Nels; his
+left hand was stretched back to hold Carlin in her place.  There was no
+word, no sound--and that was the last second of the tableau.
+
+The tusker broke the picture.  Flick of the head, a snort--and he
+wasn't there.  He wasn't on the lance!  His side-charge, with no turn
+which the eye could follow, carried him under the point of Ian's thrust
+in direct drive at the black Arab's belly.
+
+Kala Khan was standing straight up, yet they heard his scream.  The
+boar's head seemed on a swivel as he passed beneath.  Ian Deal standing
+in the stirrups swung forward, one arm round his mount's neck, but
+badly out of the saddle. . . .  The tusker turned to do it again.
+
+Skag spoke.  That was the instant Nels charged.  In the same second,
+the Arab, still on his hind legs, made a teetering plunge back, to
+dodge the second drive of the beast, and Ian Deal fell, head-long on
+the far side, his narrow boot locked in the steel stirrup.
+
+Skag spoke again.  It was to Kala Khan this time.  Nels' smashing drive
+at the throat had carried the tusker from under the Arab's feet.  His
+rumbling challenge had seemed to take up the scream of the horse; it
+ended in the piercing squeal of the throated boar.
+
+Skag still talked to Kala Khan, as he moved forward.  The Arab stood
+braced, facing him now--the tumbled head-down thing to the left, arms
+sprawled, face turned away.  A thousand to one, among the best mounts,
+would have broken before the second charge and thrashed the hanging
+head against the ground.
+
+Skag's tones were continuous, his empty hand held out.  There was never
+a glance of his eye to the battle of the Dane and the beast.  Four feet
+from his hand was the hanging rein, his eyes to the eyes of the black,
+his tones steadily lower, never rising, never ceasing.  His loose
+fingers closed upon the bridle rein; his free hand pressed the Arab's
+cheek.
+
+He felt Carlin beside him and turned--one of the tremendous moments of
+life to find her there.  (It was like the last instant of the cobra
+fight, when he had seen her over the hood--utterly white, utterly
+tall.)  She took the rein from his hand.  Her face turned to Nels'
+struggle--but her eyes pressed shut.
+
+Skag stepped to Kala Khan's side, lifted the leather fender, slipped
+the cinch, and let the light hunting saddle slide over, releasing Ian
+Deal.  Then he sprang to Nels, calling as he caught up the fallen lance:
+
+"Coming, old man--coming to you!"
+
+Nels on his feet was bent to the task--the tusker sprawling, the piggy
+haunches settling flat.
+
+". . . So, it's all done, son," the man said softly.  "You're the best
+of them all to-day."
+
+He laughed.  Nels looked up at him in a bored way, but he still held.
+Skag went back to Carlin.  Ian Deal had partly risen.  The American did
+not catch his eye, and now Kala Khan stood between them, Carlin still
+holding the rein.  Skag's hand rested upon the wet trembling withers,
+where the saddle had covered.  There was a blue glisten to the
+moisture.  Skag loved the Arab very hard that moment, and no less
+afterward.  Kala Khan needed care at once.  His wound was long and
+deep, from the hock on the inside, up to the stifle-joint.
+
+
+Ian Deal was on his feet, the Arab still between him and Skag's eyes.
+But now her brother drew off, back turned, walking away, his arms and
+hands fumbling queerly about his head, as he staggered a little.
+
+"He will come back!" Carlin whispered.
+
+Nels loosed now, but sat by his game--sat upon his haunches, bringing
+first-aid cleansing to his shoulders and chest, where the pinned tusker
+had worn against him in the battle. . . .  All in astonishingly few
+seconds--the blue beast still with an isolated kick or two.
+
+It was as Carlin said.  They had scarcely started toward Hurda before
+they saw Ian Deal following.  His pace quickened as he neared--his
+first words queerly shocking:
+
+"Is he hurt--oh, I say--is the Arab hurt?"
+
+Skag answered: "A bad cut, but he'll be sound in a week or two."
+
+"One might ask first, you know.  He's rather a fine thing--"
+
+Carlin seemed paler, as she held her brother with curious eyes.  Ian
+didn't see her.  He was slowly taking in Skag, full-length.
+
+"One might ask, you know," he repeated presently.  "One couldn't make a
+gift of a damaged thing.  Oh, yes, you're to have him, Hantee.  Things
+of Kala Khan's quality gravitate to you--I was thinking of the dog, you
+know--"
+
+Skag shook his head.
+
+"Don't make it harder for me!" Ian said fiercely.  "He belongs to
+you--Carlin, too, of course--no resistance of mine left.  A man sees
+differently--toes up."
+
+Carlin pressed Skag's arm.
+
+The American bowed.  Ian Deal straightened.
+
+"That's better," he breathed.  "You'll see to the mount?  I'd do it for
+you, but I need an hour--in here among the trees, you know,
+alone. . . .  If it isn't quite clear to me, I'll cock one foot up in
+the crotch of a tree--until it's straight again. . . .  But it's clear,
+Hantee," he added.  "I'm seeing now--the man she sees--or something
+like!"
+
+Ian turned toward the deeper growths. . . .  They walked in silence.
+The untellable thing--for Skag alone--lingered in Carlin's eyes, in the
+pallor of her face.  She was the one who spoke:
+
+"It is terrible--terribly dear, like a blending of two souls in a white
+heat together--those moments at the play-house and now--as you held
+Kala Khan--"
+
+"It was not one alone," he answered strangely.  "Something from you was
+with me--half, with mine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_Neela Deo, King of All Elephants_
+
+This is the story of Neela Deo, King of all elephants!  Protector of
+the Innocent!  Defender of Defenders!  Equitable King!
+
+For his sake, knowledge of the place where he was known and of those
+who looked upon his person, shall go down from generation to generation
+into the future and shall be continued forever, under the illumination
+of his name.
+
+How he preserved the great judge and how he fought that mightiest of
+all battles, for the honour of his kind and for the preservation of his
+liege-son, must be told in order.
+
+The fortune of the season, the features of the town, and the chief
+names must be established.
+
+See that nothing shall be added.  See that no part be left unspoken.
+It is the law.
+
+
+The great rains had passed on their way north; and they had been good
+to the Central Provinces country.  The water-courses were even yet but
+a line below flood; the tanks were full, the wells abrim.  The earth
+was clothed with new garmenture.  Jungle creatures were all in their
+annual high-carnival.  Life-forces were driving to full speed.
+
+The town of Hurda, on the great triple Highway-of-all-India, clung to
+the side of her little river leaning against the massive buttressed
+walls of her old grey stone terraces, where--on their wide
+step-landings--at all seasons, she burned her human dead by the tide's
+margin.
+
+The great Highway spanned the river on a broad low stone bridge and
+turned--just south of the burning ghats--with a majestic sweep
+northward, between its four lines of sacred, flowering, perfumed and
+shade trees.  Remember, those trees were planted by the forgotten
+peoples of dead kings, for each within his own realm; they were all
+nourished under the unfailing rivalry that the highway of each king
+should be more excellent in beneficence and in beauty than the highway
+of his neighbour kings.
+
+But from High Himalaya to the beaches of Madras, from sea to sea, the
+triple Highway-of-all-India was nowhere more august than here, where
+Neela Deo lived.  The exalted splendours of those so ancient and
+imperial trees rendered distinction to the town, in passing through it,
+like a procession of the radiant gods.
+
+Beyond the hill and well outside the town--which would be called a city
+if it were walled, which would be walled if a wall would not separate
+it from the great Highway--was the station Oval, where railway people
+lived in European bungalows of many colours, round about the
+_gymkhana_--a building made to contain music and strange games; but
+from the arches of all its verandahs the railway people saw.
+
+On the other side from the Oval and toward Hurda, was the little old
+bungalow where Margaret Annesley--of the tender heart--out of her
+lonely garden, looked that day and saw.
+
+Across the great Highway from the temple of Manu, the bungalow of
+Dickson Sahib sheltered under the mighty sweep of full bearing mango
+trees.  His small son stood between two teachers in the deep verandah
+and beat his hands together while he saw.
+
+At the top of the hill, the bare bungalow of the old missionary Sahib
+made protest against the perfume-drunken orient and the colour-mad
+European world of India with its carbolic-acid whitewash and chaste
+lines.  Down the driveway his children ran away from their teachers and
+saw.
+
+But in sight of the town--as should be--and beside the courts--as
+should be--stood the austere home of the Chief Commissioner, most high
+civil judge of Hurda and all surrounding villages.  One of his deputies
+leaned from an upper balcony and saw.
+
+Back of his park, more than three quarters of a mile away, were the
+stockades of the Chief Commissioner's elephants.  A round parade ground
+spread its almost level disk straight away front of the stockade
+buildings.  Perfectly rimmed by a variety of low jungle growths,
+nesting thick at the feet of a circle of tall tamarisk trees, its
+effect was satisfying to the eye beyond anything seen about the homes
+of men.  Nay, the avenues which led up to the palaces of ancient kings
+were not so good!
+
+Now all is established concerning the time and the place and those who
+saw; and it will not be questioned by any save the very ignorant--who
+are not considered in the telling of tales.
+
+So in the day of Neela Deo, most exalted King of all elephants, came a
+runner at the end of his last strength.  Stripped naked, but for his
+meagre loincloth, the oils of his body ran thick down all his limbs and
+his splitting veins shed blood from his nostrils and from his mouth.
+In the market-place he fell and with his last breaths coughed out a
+broken message.
+
+Many gathered to discover his meaning.  Spread a swift excitement.  The
+shops were emptied, the doorways and alleys opened, and streams of
+people poured out into a common tide.
+
+Perfume dealers brought copper flasks of priceless oils.  Flower
+merchants gathered up their entire stock of freshly prepared garlands
+of marigold and tuberose and jasmine and champak blooms--banked masses
+of garlands were hung on scores of scores of reaching arms, lifted to
+carry them.  Sixty full pieces of white turban-cloth were caught from
+the shelves of cloth sellers.
+
+Companies and companies of nautch-girls, with their men-servants and
+instruments to accompany them--even the most costly of these, who were
+also singing women--poured out of the districts where the towns-women
+lived and blended in their groups as individual units, in the
+increasing surge that flowed out along the great Highway, like a river
+which had broken its dam.
+
+The multitude followed the great highway past the station oval and
+turned aside into the open jungle--deepening, thickening, swelling,
+teeming forward.  Twenty thousand voices, lifted in all pitches of the
+human compass, were caught by tom-toms and the impelling cadence of the
+singing nautch-girls--like drift-wood in a swift current--and driven
+into rhythmic pulsation.
+
+So the people of Hurda went out to meet Neela Deo, King of all
+elephants.
+
+
+When the front of the throng went by his place, Hand-of-a-God enquired
+of running men from his own gateway.  By his side the Gul Moti stood
+with Son of Power.  When they understood, she pushed her chosen of all
+men through the vine-made arch and he sprang away and ran with the
+people.
+
+They shared their garlands with him, that he should not come into Neela
+Deo's presence with empty hands; and they exulted because he ran with
+them, for the fame of Son-of-Power was already established.
+
+At the margins of the true jungle, a high-tenor voice came out to meet
+them.  The feeling in it chained Skag's ear; it was like a strong man
+contending bravely with his tongue, but calling on the gods for help,
+with his heart.  Listening intently, the American began to get the
+words:
+
+"What are we before thee--oh thou most Exalted!  Children of men, our
+generations pass before thee as the seasons.  But thou, oh mighty
+King--thou Destroyer of the devastator, thou Protector of our wise
+judge, blessed among men is he for whom thou hast spilled thy blood!
+We will send his name down from generation to generation under the
+light of thy name!  Thou most Glorious!"
+
+The next words were more difficult to catch:
+
+"Nay, nay! but my beloved, it is a little hurt!  Do I not know, who
+serve thee?  I whose father served thee before me--whose father served
+thee before him?  I whose son shall serve thee after me?  As my small
+son lives, he shall serve thee--being come a man--in his day, even as I
+serve thee in this my day!"
+
+This was evidently enticing the great creature to live.  But the voice
+winged away again:
+
+"Ah, thou heart of my heart, thou life of my life!  Hear me, the milk
+of a thousand goats shall cool thee.  The petals of a thousand blooms
+shall comfort thee.  Tuberose and jasmine and champak shall comfort
+thee, thou Lover of rare things!  Nay, it is not enough, but the
+offerings of the heart's core of love shall satisfy thee--the blood of
+a million-million blooms shall anoint thee, to thy refreshment!"
+
+The words were lost for a moment, before they rang again:
+
+"Are not the coverings of our heads upon thy wounds?  Thou, most
+excellent in majesty!  Have we not laid the symbols of our honour upon
+thy wounds?  Thou, with the wisdom of all ages in thy head and the
+tenderness of all women in thy heart!  We have seen thee suffer, that
+he who is worthy might live!  Thou Discerner of men!  We have seen thee
+destroy the killer, without hurt to him who is kind!  Thou Equitable
+King!"
+
+And slowly out of the shadows of forest trees, came the Chief
+Commissioner's elephant caravan, trailing in very dejected formation,
+behind Neela Deo, who showed naked as to his back--for his housings had
+been stripped off him; and as to his neck, for Kudrat Sharif was not on
+it but on the ground--walking backward step by step, enticing him with
+the adoration and sympathy of his voice.
+
+Sanford Hantee saw Neela Deo stop to receive the first garlands on his
+trunk.  From there on, the great elephant paused deliberately after
+every step to take the offerings of homage from hundreds of reaching
+hands.
+
+When the American had laid his garlands over Neela Deo's trunk and was
+about to make his turn in the press, he saw the Chief Commissioner
+himself, walking behind the wounded elephant with uncovered head.
+After a keen glance, the great judge motioned Skag to close in by his
+side.  His strong face was shadowed by deep concern; and for some time
+he did not speak.  This was the man of whom Skag had heard that his
+name was one to conjure with.  His fame was for unfailing equity,
+which--together with strange powers of discernment and bewildering
+kindness--had won for him the profound devotion of the people.  Skag's
+thoughts were on these matters when he heard, on a low explosive breath:
+
+"Most extraordinary thing I've ever seen!"
+
+The Englishman's eye scarcely left the huge figure swaying before him
+and the distress in his face was obvious.
+
+"I see you're greatly concerned," Skag said gently.
+
+"Well, you understand, I've jolly good right to be--he saved my life!
+And he's got a hole in his neck you can put your head into--only it's
+filled up and covered up with twenty dirty turbans!  And by the way,
+you may not know, but it's unwritten law--past touching--the man in
+this country never uncovers his head excepting in the presence of his
+own women.  It's more than a man's life is worth to knock another's
+turban off, even by accident.  But look, yonder are the turbans of my
+caravan--deputies, law-clerks and servants together--on Neela Deo's
+neck!  Their heads are bare before this multitude and without shame.
+What's one to make of it?  There's no knowing these people!"
+
+Skag's eye quite unconsciously dropped to the white helmet, carried
+ceremonially in the hand; and glancing away quickly, he caught a
+mounting flush on the stern countenance.
+
+Presently the Chief Commissioner spoke again:
+
+"We were coming in on the best trail through a steady bit of really old
+tree-jungle--Neela Deo leading, as always.  We've been out nine weeks
+from home, among the villages.  It's not supposed to be spoken, but a
+stretch like that is rather a grind.  The elephants wanted their own
+stockades; they were tired of pickets.  You understand, they're all
+thoroughly trained.  They answer their individual mahouts like a man's
+own fingers.  Neela Deo is the only elephant I've heard of who has been
+known to run; I mean, to really run--and then only when he's coming in
+from too many weeks out.
+
+"Few European men have ever seen an elephant run.  Nothing alive can
+pass him on the ground but the great snake.  I stayed on top of Neela
+Deo once when he ran home.  It was not good sitting.  I've never cared
+for the experience again.
+
+"As the jungle began to open toward Hurda, he was nervous.  Of course I
+should have been more alive to his behaviour--should have made out what
+was disturbing him.  If we lose him, I shall feel very much
+responsible.  But his mahout was easing him with low chants--made of a
+thousand love-words.  They're not bad to think by.  I was clear away
+off in an adjustment of old Hindu and British law--you know we have to
+use both together; and sometimes they're hard to fit.
+
+"I know no more about how it happened than you do.  I was knocked well
+up out of my abstraction by a most unmerciful jolt.  Kudrat Sharif had
+been raked off Neela Deo's neck and was scrambling to his feet on the
+ground.  In one glimpse I saw his _dothi_ was torn and a long dripping
+cut on one thigh.  He shouted, but I couldn't make it out, because all
+the elephants were trumpeting to the universe.
+
+"There are always four hunting pieces in the howdah and I reached for
+the heaviest automatically, leaning over to see whatever it was.  There
+was nothing intelligible in the hell of noise and nothing in sight.  I
+tell you, I could not see a hair of any creature under me--but Neela
+Deo.  And don't fancy Neela Deo was quiet this while.  My howdah was
+pitching me to the four quarters of heaven--with no one to tell which
+next.  Six of the hunters had rifles trained on us, but I knew they
+dared not fire for the fear of hitting me or him.  And I'm confident
+they would be as ready to do the one as the other.
+
+"Then he began swaying from side to side with me.  It was a frightful
+jog at first, but he went more and more evenly, further and further
+every swing, till I kept myself from spilling out by the sheer grip of
+my hands.  The rifles were knocking about loose.
+
+"At last I was up-ended cornerwise and I thought, on my word, I thought
+my elephant had turned upside down.  A shriek fairly split my head open
+and Neela Deo was dancing straight up and down on one spot.  It was a
+thorough churning, but it was a change.
+
+"I should say his dance had lasted sixty seconds or more, before he
+himself spoke; then he put up his trunk and uttered a long strong
+blast.  I've never heard anything like it; in eighteen years among
+elephants, I've never heard anything like it.
+
+"After that he slowed down and they closed in on him, with weeping and
+laughter and pandemonium of demonstrations, mostly without meaning to
+me, till I climbed down and saw the remains of what must have been a
+prime Bengali tiger--under his feet.
+
+"It had charged his neck and gotten a hold and eaten in for the big
+blood-drink.  It had gripped and clung with its four feet--there are
+ghastly enough wounds--but the hole it chewed in his neck is hideous.
+
+"He poured blood in a shocking stream till they checked it with some
+kind of jungle leaves and their turbans.  And you see--he's groggy.
+He's quite liable to stagger to his knees any moment.  If he gets in to
+his own stockades, there may be a chance for him; but he doesn't look
+it just now.  Still, I fancy they're keeping him up rather.  Eh?  Oh
+yes, quite so."
+
+The Chief Commissioner wiped his forehead patiently, before he went on:
+
+"You're an extraordinary young man, Sir.  I've heard about you; the
+people call you Son-of-Power.  You haven't interrupted me once--not one
+in twenty could have done it.  I'm glad to know you."
+
+This was spoken very rapidly and Skag smiled:
+
+"I'm interested."
+
+The Chief Commissioner's eyes bored into Skag with almost impersonal
+penetration, till the young American knew why this big Englishman's
+name was one to conjure with.  Then he went on:
+
+"Yes, we'll have much in common.  You see, I'm working it out in my own
+mind. . . .  The curious part of it all is, they say an elephant has
+never been known to behave in this manner before.  The mahouts seem to
+understand; I don't.  This I do know: When a tiger charges an
+elephant's neck, the elephant's way is--if the tiger has gotten in past
+the thrust of his head--to plunge dead weight against a big tree, an
+upstanding rock, or lacking these--the ground.  In that case he always
+rolls.  You see where I would have been very much mixed with the tiger.
+
+"In this case, Neela Deo measured his balance on a swing and when he
+found how far he dare go, he took his chance and struck the cat off
+with his own front leg.  It's past belief if you know an elephant's
+anatomy."
+
+The Chief Commissioner broke off.  Neela Deo had lurched and was
+wavering, as if about to go down.  The sense of tears was in Kudrat
+Sharif's voice; but it loomed into courage, as it chanted the superior
+excellence of Neela Deo's attributes.
+
+Then Neela Deo braced himself and went on, but more slowly.  The big
+Englishman smiled tenderly:
+
+"He's a white-wizard, is Kudrat Sharif--that mahout!  He does beautiful
+magic, with his passion and with his pain.  It's practically worship,
+you understand; but the point is, it works!
+
+"The mahouts say Neela Deo did the thing for me; stood up and took it,
+till he could kill the beast without killing me.  Oh, you'll never
+convince them otherwise.  They'll make much of it.  They're already
+pledged to establish it in tradition--which means more than one would
+think.  These mahouts come of lines that know the elephant from before
+our ancestors were named.  They know him as entirely as men can.  All
+his customs are common knowledge to them--in all ordinary and in all
+extraordinary circumstances.  They say that once in many generations an
+elephant appears who is superior to his fellows--he's the one who
+sometimes surprises them."
+
+The Chief Commissioner stopped, looking into Skag's eyes for a minute,
+before he finished:
+
+"I'm a Briton, you understand; stubborn to a degree--positively require
+demonstration.  I'm not qualified to open the elephant-cult to
+you--it's as sealed as anything--but I've had bits; and I recommend
+you--if you'll permit me--to give courtesy to whatever the mahouts may
+choose to tell you.  You'll find it more than interesting."
+
+"I'm very grateful to you," Skag answered.  "I've had a promise of
+something and I mean to know more about the mahouts and about
+elephants."
+
+It was well on in the night when the elephants turned down out of the
+great highway into their own stockades.  Neela Deo staggered and swayed
+ever so slowly forward, with his head low and his trunk resting heavy
+and inert on Kudrat Sharif's shoulder; but he got in.
+
+After that no man saw him for sixteen weeks--save the mahouts of his
+own stockades.  But every morning the flower merchants sent huge mounds
+of flower garlands to comfort him.
+
+Then a proclamation was shouted in the marketplace--in the name of the
+Chief Commissioner--calling all to come and sit in seats which had been
+prepared around the parade ground before his elephant stockades--to
+witness the celebration of Neela Deo's recovery.  Great was the
+rejoicing.
+
+Many Europeans of distinction answered the Chief Commissioner's
+invitation--from as far as Bombay.  But all the Europeans together
+looked very few; for from the surrounding villages and towns and
+cities, a vast multitude had been flooding in for days.  Sixty-two
+thousand people found places in good sight of the arena, in prepared
+seats.  That number had been reckoned for; but half as many more
+thronged the roofs of the stockade buildings and hung--multicoloured
+density--from their parapets.  And above all, a few tall tamarisk trees
+drooped long branches under hundreds of small boys.
+
+Famous nautch-girls had come from distant cities and trained with those
+of Hurda for an important part in the celebration.  They were all
+staged on twelve Persian-carpeted platforms, ranged on the ground
+within the outer edge of the arena and close against the foot of the
+circular tier of seats.  Artists of the world had wrought to clothe
+these women.  Artists in fabric-weaving, in living singing dyes; in
+cloths of gold, in pure wrought-gold and in the setting of gems.
+
+People were looking to find the concealed lights which revealed this
+scene of amazing splendour, when thirty-nine of the Chief
+Commissioner's elephants came out through the stockade gates, single
+file.  Many drums of different kinds, together with a thousand voices,
+beat a slow double pulse.  The elephants, setting their feet precisely
+to the steady rhythm of it, marched around the entire arena three
+times.  Those elephants were perfect enough--and they knew it!  They
+were freshly bathed and groomed.  Their ears showed rose-tinted
+linings, when they flapped.  Their ivories were smooth and pure.  Their
+howdahs--new-lacquered--gleamed rose and orange and blue, with crimson
+and green silk curtains.  Their caparisons of rich velvets, hung heavy
+with new gold fringes.
+
+Every elephant turned toward the centre of the arena, coming to pause
+at his own appointed station, evenly spaced around the circle.  Then
+every mahout straightened, freezing to a fixed position that did not
+differ by a line from the position of his neighbour on either side.
+Now the people saw that this celebration for Neela Deo, King of all
+elephants, was to show as much pomp as is prepared for kings of
+men--and they were deeply content.
+
+The strings of one sitar began to breathe delicate tones.  Other sitars
+came in illusively, till they snared the current of human blood in a
+golden mesh and measured its flow to the time of mounting emotion.
+Then Neela Deo himself--Neela Deo, the Blue God!--appeared at the
+stockade gates alone, with Kudrat Sharif on his neck.  His caparison
+was of crimson velvet, all over-wrought with gold thread.  The gold
+fringes were a yard deep.  The howdah was lacquered in raw gold--its
+curtains were imperial blue.  Kudrat Sharif was clothed in pure thin
+white--like the son of a prince--but he was very frail; and ninety-odd
+thousand people sent his name, with the name of Neela Deo, up into the
+Indian night--for the Indian gods to hear.
+
+Neela Deo was barely in on the sanded disk, when the elephants lifted
+their heads as one and saluted him with an earth-rocking blast; again
+and yet again.  Then he thrust his head forward, reached his
+trumpet-tip--quivering before him--and made speed till he came close to
+the Chief Commissioner's place, where he rendered one soft salute and
+wheeled into position by the stand.  This was a movement no one had
+anticipated.  Nothing like it was in the plan; the Chief Commissioner
+had not intended to ride!  But Neela Deo demanded him and there was
+nothing for it but to go; so with a very white face, he stepped into
+the howdah.
+
+Waves upon waves of enthusiasm swept the multitude.  They shouted to
+heaven--for all time it was established.  No man could ever deny
+it--Neela Deo himself had made his meaning perfectly plain, that he had
+done the marvel thing sixteen weeks before, to save the life of his
+friend--their friend!  They stood up and flung their flower-garlands on
+both of them--as Neela Deo, with a stately tread, carried the Chief
+Commissioner around the circle.  The nautch-girls sprang from their
+platforms into the middle of the arena and danced their most wonderful
+dances--tossing the fallen garlands, like forest fairies at play.
+
+Then a thousand voices lifted upon the great chorus of laudation, which
+had been prepared in high-processional time; the drums and the sitars
+furnishing a dim background for the volume of sound.  The elephants
+turned out of their stations as Neela Deo passed them and came into
+their accustomed formation behind him.  The tread of four times forty
+such ponderous feet, in perfect time with the music, shook the earth.
+
+The chorus told the story of the incredible manner of their Chief
+Commissioner's deliverance; it exalted his record and his character; it
+pledged the preservation of his fame.  Then a master-mahout from High
+Himalaya went alone to the centre of the disk and in incomparable
+tones--such as master-mahouts use--having no accompaniment at all, told
+the story of Neela Deo's birthright.  The people were utterly hushed;
+but the elephants kept their even pace--as if listening.  Then the
+great chorus came back, rendering the acknowledgment of a human race.
+
+At last the multitude rose up and loosed its strangling exultation in
+mighty shouts.  The elephants raised their big heads, threw high their
+trumpets and rent the leagues of outer night--as if calling to their
+brothers in the Vindha Hills.
+
+The next part of the celebration was to happen suddenly.  The mahouts
+had planned it in sheer boyishness; and to their mountain hearts it
+meant something like the clown-play in a western circus.  Its success
+depended on whether Neela Deo had enough foolishness in him--to play
+the game.  So now they wheeled the elephants into their stations again,
+just in time before one section of the enclosure folded down flat on
+the ground.  This left that part open to the outside world; for the
+shrubs that used to grow thick at the feet of the tamarisk trees had
+been rooted up and green tenting-cloth stretched in their place.  One
+shrub still grew in the midst of that opening.
+
+Neela Deo stopped short one moment--frozen so still that he looked like
+a granite image--then, feeling toward the shrub with his trumpet tip an
+instant only, flung up his head with a joyous squeal and was upon it
+before a man could think.  The shrub melted to pulp under his tramping
+feet.  Then they saw the black and yellow stripes of the tiger he had
+killed in this same way--tramping, tramping.  He was doing it over
+again, for them.
+
+The mahouts laughed, calling their strange mountain calls; and the
+people went quite mad.  Even the English taxidermist who had taken the
+trouble to sew and roughly stuff that mangled tiger-skin for the
+mahouts--even he shouted with them.  Every time Neela Deo put that
+little quirk into his trunk and slanted his head in that absurd
+angle--Neela Deo, whose smooth dignity had never shown a wrinkle
+before--they broke out afresh.
+
+This clown-play certainly brought the people back to earth; but it did
+something queer to the elephants.  Having learned to know human voices,
+they had already felt the mounting excitement; they had already been
+tamping the ground with hard driving strokes, as if making speed on the
+open highway--for some time.  But in this abandonment to amusement,
+this joyous unrestraint, they must have found some reminder.  They did
+not have Neela Deo's sense of humour.  But they must have remembered
+the unwalled distances of their own Hills--the hedge of shrubs had been
+taken away; the tall slender tamarisk trees still standing, made no
+obstruction.  Beyond the waning torches they must have looked and seen
+the quenchless glory of the same old Indian stars.
+
+It was Nut Kut, the great black elephant not long down from his own
+wilds among the Vindha Hills, who left his station first and moved on
+out into the night.  Gunpat Rao followed him. . . .  One by one they
+filed away.  Indeed, there was not one shrub left to bar their path.
+But in this falling of calamity upon their so successful foolish plan,
+the mahouts were stricken--desperate.  There was something grotesque
+about their hands, as they disappeared.  With wild gestures and
+twisted-back faces many of them went out of sight.  The elephants were
+surely their masters, in that hour.
+
+They all passed quite close to where the Chief Commissioner sat in
+Neela Deo's howdah.  Neela Deo had regained his dignity; he was gravely
+driving fragments of black and yellow stripes into the sand--patiently
+finishing his job.  But Kudrat Sharif's voice had no effect upon the
+others; and the Chief Commissioner was entirely helpless.  No one could
+prevent their going.  Then it appeared that one had not gone--one
+other, beside Neela Deo.
+
+Mitha Baba, the greatest female of the caravan, under her pale rose
+caparison and gold lacquered howdah with its curtains of frost-green,
+was beating the ground with angry feet and thrusting her head aside
+impatiently.  Something was holding her.  When he saw, the Chief
+Commissioner made haste to reach her--leaving Kudrat Sharif, who was
+confident of keeping Neela Deo.
+
+Mitha Baba's station in the circle was close to where the Gul Moti sat;
+her new housings had been specially designed to recognise her devotion
+to the Gul Moti, whose low 'cello tones were now soothing the great
+creature and restraining her.  But when the Chief Commissioner
+approached, Mitha Baba started, flinging herself forward--and the Gul
+Moti was suddenly at the edge of the stand.  Just as the elephant
+lunged out to take her stride, the colourful voice that she had never
+refused to obey said:
+
+"Come near, Mitha Baba, come near!"
+
+Mitha Baba was not sure about it; she struck the voice aside with her
+head.  But the voice was saying:
+
+"Mitha Baba, you may take me with you!"
+
+Then Son-of-Power was on his feet, but it was too late--Mitha Baba
+decided quickly and she acted soon--he could not reach the edge in time
+to go himself, but on an impulse he threw his great-coat into the Gul
+Moti's hands and she laughed as she caught it from the howdah.
+
+In swerving suddenly to pass close by the stand, the elephant had
+unbalanced her boy-mahout from her neck; but his father--the very old
+mahout--was coming as fast as he could across the space before them,
+calling to her--like the lover of wild creatures that he was.
+
+Carlin bent from her howdah and spoke joyously:
+
+"Put him up, Mitha Baba, put him up!"
+
+And Mitha Baba scarcely broke her stride, which was lengthening every
+step, as she obediently circled the old man with her trunk and
+carelessly flung him on her neck.
+
+"We'll fetch them all home!" the Gul Moti's voice floated back, as they
+melted away into the night.
+
+The Chief Commissioner gave Son-of-Power his hand--being without words,
+for the moment.
+
+"Is she safe?" Skag asked.
+
+"Absolutely safe!" the Chief Commissioner assured him.  "The caparisons
+may be doused in the Nerbudda, but the howdahs will not be in the least
+wet."
+
+"What did she mean--that she'd fetch them all back?"
+
+"She meant that Mitha Baba has been used in the High Hills--for years
+before she was sent down--to decoy wild elephants into the
+trap-stockades.  She's entirely competent, is Mitha Baba; she's the
+leader of my caravan--next to Neela Deo.  Of course Neela Deo is our
+only hope of overtaking them; he's fast enough, but this is rather soon
+after his injury, and he'll have to rest a bit.  In the meantime, come
+away up to the house; we'll talk there."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_Neela Deo, King of All Elephants (Continued)_
+
+To possess one white elephant is calamity.  But if Evil--the nameless
+one--could possess a pair, he would breed an army able to break down the
+very walls of Equity.
+
+Indra--supreme hypocrite--fathered the first two, who were brother and
+sister.  Kali--wife of Shiva, the great destroyer--Kali--goddess of
+plague and famine and fear and death--was their mother.
+
+Beware the white elephant--who is never white.  The stain of Indra is on
+his skin; the shadow of Kali on his hair.  Honour is not in him!
+
+
+The Gul Moti had always loved adventures; and she had been in the throat
+of several.  But this was no lark; it was more serious than funny.
+Thirty-eight of the most valuable elephants in India were rolling away
+before her toward the Vindha Hills.  If they once arrived there, no man
+could say how many of them, or if any of them, would ever be recovered.
+The Nerbudda River crossed their path mid-way--almost at flood.  If they
+entered that tide--deep and wide and muddy--state-housings of great value
+would be hopelessly damaged.
+
+Mitha Baba was beginning to show that she did not like the old mahout's
+urging--but Mitha Baba was always willful.  Indeed, the Gul Moti was
+depending much on this same willfulness.  The splendid female was still
+young, but she had been for years a celebrated toiler of wild elephants;
+and it was well known she had loved the game.  Had she forgotten it?
+Could she be reminded?  First, it was supremely important to overtake all
+the others this side the Nerbudda.
+
+The old mahout gasped a broken cry, as Mitha Baba lifted him and set him
+not too gently on the ground; she was in a hurry herself and she was
+making speed on her own account--she objected to being urged.  The Gul
+Moti, understanding in a flash, cried quickly:
+
+"No, no!  Mitha Baba, I want him!  Put him up to me--put him up to
+me--soon!"
+
+Mitha Baba wavered in her long stride.
+
+"Mitha Baba, I want him--I want him!"
+
+And the elephant turned on a circle and caught him up, throwing him far
+enough back, so the Gul Moti could help him into the howdah.
+
+"My day is done!" he said bitterly.
+
+"Nay, father!" the girl physician answered him.  "She knew you were not
+safe there."
+
+"Is it so?" the old man marvelled.  "Indeed, she always loved me!  Now I
+am satisfied!"
+
+Then, in the white fire of what men call genius, the Gul Moti stood up to
+meet this new emergency--leaning toward Mitha Baba's head--and called in
+ringing tones:
+
+"Now come, Mitha Baba, we're away!  We're going out to fetch them in!
+Away, away, awa-a-ay!"
+
+So long as he lived, the old mahout told of the intoxicating splendour of
+that young voice--the golden beauty of those tones; of how Mitha Baba
+reached out further and further every stride, to its rhythm, till the
+earth rose up and the stars began to swing.
+
+"We'll fetch them in, Mitha Baba, we'll fetch them in! . . .  Away, away,
+awa-a-ay!"
+
+But the toiler of wild elephants had remembered the game she loved.
+
+
+As they topped the crest of a low hill, the Gul Moti scanned the country
+declining before her toward the Nerbudda.  A string of jewels
+appeared--incredibly gorgeous in mid-day light.  It was thirty-eight
+full-caparisoned elephants--going fast.  Mitha Baba called on them to
+wait for her; but they remained in sight only a few minutes.  The Gul
+Moti's high courage sank; the caravan was too near the river to be
+delayed by Mitha Baba's calls--the river too far ahead.
+
+"Do they ever obey her, Laka Din?" the Gul Moti asked.
+
+"They always used to," the old man replied dubiously.
+
+Finally Mitha Baba came out into the straight descent toward the river.
+No elephants were in sight, but a blotch of colour showed on the bank.
+
+"Well done for those mahouts!" the Gul Moti cried out in relief.  "The
+caparisons at least are safe.  How did they do it?"
+
+"It was well done, Hakima-ji," the old man exulted.  "The masters were
+listening to Mitha Baba, delaying between her and the river--space
+of six breaths; then those men became like monkeys!  It is no
+easiness--unfastening everything from top of an elephant.  (I who am old
+have done it!)  Also, some went down to loosen underneath buckles.  You
+shall see."
+
+They found four very disconsolate mahouts on the bank of the river beside
+the great pile of nicely arranged stuff.
+
+"I want the smallest howdah you have!" called the Gul Moti, as the men
+sprang in front of Mitha Baba.
+
+"But, Hakima-ji," they protested, "by getting down--we were left behind!"
+
+"I must not be left--and yet you must take these clothes from her!" the
+Gul Moti said, while they helped the old man to the ground.
+
+"Then go to her neck--oh, Thou Healer-without-fear!  She will not wait
+long--she follows Nut Kut, the demon! and Gunpat Rao, who both got away
+with everything on!"
+
+Still hoping, the Gul Moti slipped over the edge of the big howdah and
+climbed toward Mitha Baba's neck.  The mahouts worked fast stripping her.
+Then Mitha Baba flung her head, striding away from their puny fingers,
+and plunged into the river.  Sinking at first enough to wet the Gul Moti
+a little, she rose beautifully as she found her swimming stroke.
+
+
+Day went by--and no elephants in sight.  Night came on--and no elephants
+in sight.  Mitha Baba rolled across the Nerbudda valley, as confident of
+her way as if she travelled the great Highway-of-all-India.  She began to
+climb into the rising country beyond, as certain of her steps as if she
+were coming in to her own stockades.  The Gul Moti took up her call
+again--thinking of the caravan they were following.  But Mitha Baba was
+not thinking of the caravan.  It had happened that the Gul Moti's tones
+had fallen upon those intonations used in High Himalaya, to send the
+toilers out to toil wild elephants in.
+
+It was night-time, before the moon came up, when a strange elephant
+crashed past them--lunging in the opposite direction.  It reeled as it
+ran and went down on its knees; evidently having been done to death in a
+fight.  But the outline of it, in the shadows, appeared too lean to be
+one of her own.
+
+Soon after that, Mitha Baba trumpeted in a new tone of voice--one the Gul
+Moti had never heard before.  It sounded very wild, very desolate.
+
+"In the name of all the gods, Mitha Baba, what's the meaning of that?"
+the Gul Moti enquired with a little tension--it being one of those
+moments when one gains assurance by speech.
+
+But Mitha Baba's reply was in the very oldest language of India--one even
+the mahouts know only a very little of.  It rose in wild, wistful
+tones--higher and higher.  It was repeated from time to time; the sense
+of it strangely thrilling to the girl on her neck.
+
+. . . They were well up in the mountains, so far that the trees had
+become massive of body and heavy and dense of top--the moon only just
+showing through--when they heard the trumpeting of elephants, off toward
+the east.  Mitha Baba answered at once, turning abruptly toward the east.
+
+"Mitha Baba!" the Gul Moti protested, "our people have never gone off in
+this direction--where are we, anyway?"
+
+Mitha Baba's calling was just as wild as before; but it had become wild
+exultation.
+
+. . . They were coming up into what reminded the Gul Moti of something
+she had heard--that the really old jungle is always dark; that the light
+of day never touches earth there.  This was almost dark, the moon
+glinting through black shadows--only at intervals.
+
+The sense of this place was strange.  It might be on another planet.  And
+that thought touched the root of the difference--this was not on, this
+was in.  Everything felt in--deep in.
+
+Here Mitha Baba changed her voice again.  (Nothing had ever happened to
+the Gul Moti like it.)  It was still wild, still wistful--quite as much
+so as before.  But there was a cooing roll in it--away and away the most
+enticing thing human ears ever listened to.  It sounded like
+Nature--weaving all spells of all glamour, in tone; soft-flaming gold, in
+tone; soft-flaming rose, in tone; and on and on--the very softest,
+deepest magics of life-perpetual!
+
+. . . The trumpeting ahead was fuller and nearer, distinctly nearer;
+almost as if they were coming into it.  Then, without warning, the mighty
+mountain trees cut off the moon-lit sky.  It had been dark before--now it
+was utterly dark!
+
+Suddenly the Gul Moti was aware of a strong earth-smell.  There was no
+stench about.  It had a quality of incense made of tree-gums and
+sandalwood and perfume-barks, all together.  Then a dull thudding caught
+her ear--almost rhythmic.
+
+. . . The earth-smells deepened and the thudding thickened.  Mitha Baba
+was not climbing any more; moving smoothly, on what felt like firm soil,
+she seemed to turn and turn again.  It was fathoms deep in rayless
+night--the place that never knew the light of day!
+
+Carlin clung tight to Mitha Baba's neck and remembered everything actual,
+everything definite, everything sound and sensible she knew.  The
+earth-smells filled her nostrils, her lungs, her blood; tree-gums,
+sandal-wood, perfume-bark, body-warmth--charging the air.
+
+And over all--wild, and wistful, and pulsing-tender--the weaving of Mitha
+Baba's enchantment through the dark.
+
+The thudding all about her on the ground--must be the sound of many wild
+feet!  This must be--the "toiling in."
+
+. . . A rending, tearing noise broke in on Mitha Baba's voice; and at
+once a great crash among the trees, high up.  (Someone had torn a sapling
+from its place and flung it far.)
+
+. . . The keen squeal of a very little elephant--right near--and the
+angry protest of a strange voice.  (Some mother's baby had been pinched,
+in the crowd!)
+
+. . . It must be imagination--this strong nearness!  The Gul Moti,
+putting out her hand, touched--skin!  And within the same breath, on both
+sides of Mitha Baba--first this side and then that side--two great
+elephants challenged each other.  They were both long, rocking blasts, a
+little above and almost against the Gul Moti's quickened ears.  She
+shivered under the shock.
+
+Mitha Baba, without breaking her step, backed away from between them; and
+the impact of frightful blow meeting frightful blow, bruised through the
+outbreak of much trumpeting.
+
+As Mitha Baba went further and further from the fighters, the Gul Moti
+was amazed at the sounds of their meeting--like explosions.  She
+remembered their tonnage; and recalled having heard that an elephant
+fight is not the sort of thing civilised men call sport.
+
+. . . A soft, _feeling_ thing crept from the Gul Moti's shoulder along
+down her back!  With convulsive fingers she clung tighter to Mitha Baba's
+neck.  Instantly Mitha Baba turned a bit, driving sidewise at the
+stranger with her head.  The Gul Moti's confidence in the great female's
+intention to protect her, was established!
+
+At last, lifting her head sharply to utter a different call, Mitha Baba
+developed a peculiar drive in her motion; a queer drive in the whole huge
+body that had something to do with a wide swinging of the head.  It made
+them both touch the strange elephants, every few minutes; and always
+there was a storm of trumpeting all about.  Gradually these outbreaks
+began to sound toward one side; but the direction kept changing--so the
+Gul Moti made out that Mitha Baba was moving round and round on the
+outside of the mass.
+
+After a while they came again into the vicinity where the big males were
+still fighting.  Mitha Baba rocked on her feet a moment, calling a
+curious low call--a question, softly spoken.  At once there was the sound
+of rapid movement in front.  Then Mitha Baba literally whirled--plunging
+away at incredible speed--almost exactly in the opposite direction from
+the one she had been facing.
+
+Doctor Carlin Deal Hantee tried to remember Skag--tried to remember her
+own name.  She locked herself about that neck with her strength--she
+clung with her might.  She flattened her body and gripped with her
+fingers and with her toes--long since having kicked off her low shoes.
+Away and away they went, coming out into the moonlight--long enough to
+see a mass of dun shadows rising and falling, lurching and rolling, on
+all sides.  Surely the Gul Moti had known that this was a wild elephant
+herd--these hours.  Surely the Gul Moti had heard the "toiling" of them
+in!  But what was Mitha Baba going to do with them--now that she had them?
+
+Down the long slopes and up the steep inclines--the two big elephants
+close on either side of Mitha Baba--plunging into khuds and out
+again--most of the time up-ended, one way or the other, at astounding
+angles--the wild herd raced with Mitha Baba toward whatever destination
+she might choose.
+
+Dawn broke upon them while they were still in the very rugged hills; and
+as the mountain outlines cleared of mist, the Gul Moti saw that Mitha
+Baba was leading her catch straight away back to Hurda.  True to her
+training--there being no trap-stockades near--the toiler was taking them
+home!  The situation was absurd; but it roused the Gul Moti--like one out
+of a dream--to actual joy.
+
+
+Through grey avenues of forest trees--rolling down khuds, ringing up
+crags--the voice of Nut Kut went on out beyond the mountain peaks, to
+meet approaching day.  Nut Kut, the great black elephant who had been
+trapped in these same Vindha Hills only a few years ago, was rejoicing in
+freedom again.  Nut Kut, who had already made his reputation as the most
+deadly fighter known to the mahouts, was exulting in strength.  It was
+his joy-song.  It came from straight ahead.  Mitha Baba answered with a
+rollicking squeal.  But the wild herd voices were savage--chaotic.  Now
+Nut Kut's challenge came back--looming.  The situation was no longer
+absurd.
+
+It meant a fight--an open fight--between the wild herd and the caravan.
+The wild herd would never give Mitha Baba over to her own--they would
+surely fight to keep her.  Everything tightened in the Gul Moti and
+locked--hard.  She had known most of the caravan elephants all her
+life--what would happen to them?  They had lived among men these many and
+many years--never permitted to fight--they could not be equally
+fighting-fit.  The herd would be much leaner--it must be much tougher.
+So she bruised her head and her heart between the things that were due to
+happen to her caravan--horrible punishments and almost certain deaths.
+
+When the caravan appeared, the males were leading; the four females well
+in the rear.  Nut Kut's flaming orange and imperial-blue trappings
+covered and cumbered him; and young Gunpat Rao's gorgeous saffron and
+old-rose burned through the Gul Moti's eyes to the hard lump in her
+throat--it was the one time in their lives when they should be free.
+
+At once the wild females gathered their youngsters--and some who seemed
+almost mature--cutting them out from the herd and driving them back.
+This revealed the wild fighters--many more in number than those of the
+caravan.  The approaching challenges, from both sides, were thundering
+thick and fast now.  The two bodies of elephants were plunging down the
+opposite sides of a deep khud and would meet in the broad bottom.  Mitha
+Baba--the big males on each side of her--was setting the pace for this
+side, as if everything depended on time.  But when they were quite close,
+she rushed ahead--straight through the caravan and beyond.
+
+Mitha Baba had been leading her catch to her own stockades--being in no
+wise responsible that they were not trap-stockades!  Now, the home
+elephants having come to receive it, she had rushed it in--exactly as she
+would have rushed it into a trap.  But Mitha Baba was not satisfied.
+With a curious little call she wheeled, coming back to face the wild herd
+from her own side.
+
+It was a turmoil that looked and sounded like nothing imaginable.  The
+fighting pairs were choosing each other and taking place.  They had
+plenty of room.  When it was settled between them, Nut Kut was facing the
+most powerful-looking of the wild fighters; and Gunpat Rao, another who
+looked almost as dangerous.  The extra males of the wild herd--every one
+formidable--were  skirmishing about, watching for a chance to interfere.
+It looked bad for the caravan.
+
+The mahouts--the Gul Moti had scarcely remembered them till now--were
+calling back and forth about a bad one, a "tricky elephant."  Following
+their gestures, she saw a pale shape moving around in the open.  They
+left no doubt that he represented the worst of all danger.  They were
+charging each other to watch him--never mind what.
+
+. . . The fight was on.  Plainly--in every tone, every action--the wild
+went in with wild enthusiasm, the tame with grave determination.  Mitha
+Baba, having come in closer than any of the other females, did not
+move,--save for a constant turning of her head under the Gul Moti's icy
+fingers--seeming to keep an eye on all the separate fights at once.
+
+Her fear for the caravan elephants was anguish, her fatigue extreme; but
+excitement held the Gul Moti in a vise.  She saw the fighters meet, skull
+to skull.  (Those were the frightful blows she had heard in the dark,
+through the trumpeting of a whole herd!)  How could any living thing
+endure the impact of such weight?  She looked to see the skin break away
+and fall apart at once.  She expected to see an elephant's head split
+open.  It was nerve-wrecking--an arena of giant violence.
+
+"Pray the gods to send Neela Deo!" one of the mahouts shouted.
+
+"Pray the gods to send Neela Deo!" others called back.
+
+The Gul Moti knew that Neela Deo did not fight; that it was his
+leadership they needed.  Soon she heard a muffled cry from the same
+mahout:
+
+"Men of the Hills, mourn with me!"
+
+(A low wind of tone replied.)
+
+His elephant seemed slower than the one against him; slower in getting
+back--in coming on. . . .  Now he was wavering--shaken through his whole
+bulk by every meeting. . . .  He was not running--he was dazed--he was
+down!  Staring wide-eyed at the horror--the way a barbarian elephant
+kills--the Gul Moti was glad Skag did not see! . . .  The mahout had
+managed to reach a tree in time to save his own life and was crouching on
+a branch, with his head buried in his arms.
+
+Nut Kut was finishing with the leader of the wild herd--more mercifully
+than the wild was of doing it--when two of the extras charged him
+together.  Ram Yaksahn, his mahout--whose voice had not been heard
+before--cried out; and Mitha Baba went in like a thunder-bolt.  How it
+happened no one could tell, but one of the wild elephants--before Mitha
+Baba's rush, or in the instant when she reached him--caught his tusk
+under Nut Kut's side-bands.  They were made of heavy canvas, with chains
+on top.  As Mitha Baba drove at him and Nut Kut turned--his tusk ripped
+out sidewise.  With a frantic scream he got away, running up into the
+jungle--still screaming so far as they could hear.
+
+The Gul Moti, numb with weariness, had held on with her last ounce of
+strength.  Now she sat amazed at her escape--while a tumult of trumpeting
+shattered the air about her.  There was disturbance among the fighting
+pairs; some staying with each other, some changing--running to and
+fro--charging at odd angles.  But when the confusion cleared--more fresh
+ones had come in!
+
+Now Nut Kut was a whirl-wind--he was unbelievable.  One broke away from
+him and ran--demoralised.  One died--fairly defeated.  Still others came
+to meet him; yet his challenges were triumphant to the point of frenzy.
+
+"Call on the gods!  The devil is in!" rang out.
+
+Gunpat Rao was now fighting for his life.  The "tricky elephant" had
+charged him from the open.  This was the bad one whom the mahouts had
+recognised on sight--had feared from the beginning.  Gunpat Rao was one
+of the finest young elephants in captivity; one of the swiftest in the
+caravan; but the mahouts knew he could not think a trick!  The sense of
+his danger swept them.
+
+The Gul Moti knew that "white elephants" are always feared--being almost
+always bad.  This one was not white; nor grey, nor yellow.  He was
+whitish-grey--dull-tawny overcast--unclean looking.  He was larger in
+frame than Gunpat Rao; but very lean--long, loose-jointed.  He moved like
+a suckling trying to caper.  But there was a rakish look about him.
+
+In spite of all their own stress--every one of their elephants being in
+some degree of jeopardy--the mahouts gave as much attention to Gunpat Rao
+as they could.  It was foregone conclusion--he was doomed.  Bracing
+themselves to witness his defeat, expecting to see his bitter death in
+the end, yet the bad one's method at the start maddened them beyond
+control.
+
+"He was bred in the Pit!" one mahout called.
+
+"His father was Depravity!" another called back.
+
+And they cursed him with the curses of the Hills.
+
+Chakkra, who was Gunpat Rao's mahout, was a plucky little man; but his
+face had gone old.
+
+The pale one's behaviour was entirely different from any the Gul Moti had
+seen.  He was doing nothing regular--not using the common methods at all.
+He was giving Gunpat Rao no chance to get back--to put his body-weight
+into his drive.  He was staying too close.  He was circling--starting to
+rush in and veering away--round and round, in and out.  Then the Gul Moti
+saw!  He was manoeuvring to strike Gunpat Rao back of his ear!  He was
+trying to "hit below the belt!"
+
+So Gunpat Rao was kept pivoting in his own tracks to face the danger,
+with scant room to meet a rush when it came.  And always it came when
+least suggested by the other's manner.  Then the pale one squealed--a
+succession of thin, cutting tones--and Gunpat Rao answered with a charge.
+The pale one raced away from him, wheeling suddenly and coming in behind
+his head.  (An instant before, it looked as if they would meet fairly.)
+But Gunpat Rao, being in full drive and not on guard against such a
+manoeuvre, could not stop quickly; yet he swerved just enough to clear
+that yellow tusk--with a long slash in his flank! . . .  Gunpat Rao began
+to show that he was baffled.  His trunk came around--feeling of Chakkra!
+
+"He wants Neela Deo!  His heart is alone!" Chakkra cried out.
+
+"Pray the gods to send Neela Deo!" the mahouts answered together.
+
+And from the khud-wall behind them, a thundering challenge rolled down.
+It was like an avalanche of dynamic power.
+
+Now the elephants of the Chief Commissioner's stockades gave account of
+themselves.  Youth had returned to them--courage had been restored.  They
+clamoured to heaven that they were doing well.  They shouted to the
+universe that they belonged to him--to Neela Deo, their King!
+
+Sanford Hantee scarcely saw--an impossible thing--Carlin on Mitha Baba's
+neck!  Her face was actually strange--the awful pallor--the fire.  It
+left his brain a blank to other impressions, for minutes.
+
+The Gul Moti only glimpsed the stone-white face of her American, beside
+the Chief Commissioner, as Neela Deo charged past, on his way to take
+over the fight that was taxing Gunpat Rao to the last breath before
+defeat.  Neela Deo had seen at once where he was needed most.  He went in
+with a charging challenge that was intoxication to those who heard--all
+the assurance of ancient mastership in it.
+
+No one had ever seen Neela Deo fight before.  Kudrat Sharif was so
+astonished that he barely got back from his neck in time to be out of the
+way.  The mahouts were amazed--Neela Deo did not fight!  Neela Deo was
+the Lord of peaceful rule!
+
+Many of the fighting pairs broke away from each other, when they heard
+Neela Deo's charging challenge, as if agreeing that the destiny of all
+hung on the issue of his contest.  This left most of the mahouts free to
+watch.  With passionate distress they saw the King--wounded almost to
+death less than four months since--carrying a heavy howdah and three
+men--going in to fight with a bad elephant who was all but fresh.  They
+cursed the wild elephant with every inward breath, seeing as little hope
+for Neela Deo as they had seen for Gunpat Rao.
+
+The Gul Moti watched--appalled.  It seemed to her that the pale one had
+been playing--before he engaged with Neela Deo.  But he did not play any
+more.  He manoeuvred so fast that his body appeared to glance in and out.
+But Neela Deo foiled him with still greater speed.  Her eye could not
+follow all--the maze, the glamour, the incredible spectacle.
+
+Neela Deo's first blow had shaken the pale one, carrying a different
+dimension of force from any in himself.  He gave way--backing from it
+with an angry scream, showing surprise and rage in every movement.  When
+he circled round, trying to get in on Neela Deo's side, the King was too
+quick for him--forcing him out, forcing him further out; not permitting
+him to follow his chosen course, whatever direction he took.  He came in
+with his peculiar art of approaches--the jarring blow was there!  He
+played all his lightning feints--the shock that rocked him was a flash
+quicker!  Neela Deo met him squarely, whatever curve he made--whatever
+tangent he turned upon.  This, every time, in spite of himself; for he
+always meant to avoid that crash!
+
+He tried his falsetto squeals--all aggravation in them.  But Neela Deo
+refused to accept taunts.  This caused an instant's pause--the pale one
+seeming to consider.  Then he raced away and came back on a full drive,
+as if meaning to meet the King in a legitimate encounter--after all.  But
+Neela Deo only lowered his head a fraction, leaning a bit forward; and
+the pale one, instead of finishing straight, or passing alongside close
+enough to strike--swerved out.  This was the moment when Neela Deo
+charged him and he ran, dodging--far beyond the range of the fighting
+arena--down the khud valley.  Everyone followed; the wild elephants
+running by themselves--screaming in harsh tones; the caravan--trumpeting
+in clear, full tones; the mahouts, calling the name of the King--beside
+themselves with delight.
+
+But Neela Deo was at the pale one's heels--his tusks not dangerous,
+having been shortened and banded.  Yet they were sharp enough to make the
+pale one turn and defend himself.  And desperately he fought, using every
+faculty of his nature--every value of his wild fitness.  Still the crook
+in him showed.  It was all faster now than in the beginning, but he was
+not exhausted, he was not broken; only a bit less certain, a breath less
+quick, when he tried the same old trick--to get in back of Neela Deo's
+ear.  And it was on that false turn that Neela Deo caught him fairly in
+the throat--caught him and finished him in one thrust--with the blunt
+point of a banded tusk.  (That was the miracle of it all--the banded
+tusk!)
+
+Then Neela Deo stood back, put up his trunk and uttered a long, strong
+blast.  They were ringing tones--mounting clarion tones, with tremendous
+volume at the top.  They were the King's proclamation of victory.
+
+The mahouts answered him in High Himalayan voices--full of unleashed
+devotion.  The caravan made announcement of that allegiance the heart of
+an elephant gives--sometimes.  But the wild herd broke away and ran
+shrieking up into the Vindha Hills.
+
+Coming down from Mitha Baba's neck between Skag's hands, the Gul Moti
+smiled into his anguished eyes.
+
+"Carlin!  Are you--safe?" he asked.
+
+"Safe--now!" she answered.
+
+The tone of that low "now" startled him.
+
+"Where have you been?" he breathed.
+
+"Far--" she said, "very far!"
+
+"But where?" he questioned.
+
+"It was not in _our_ world, Skag," she said.  "It was--dark!"
+
+The Chief Commissioner had come close, to hear; was stroking her
+shoulder, in fact--in an absent-minded way--shaking his head.
+
+"You can't mean--_the dark_?" he broke in.
+
+"I mean it was utterly dark, sir," she said.  "It was absolutely dark!"
+
+"But--I'm not able to understand!" her old friend protested.
+
+"It was there Mitha Baba found them," the Gul Moti explained.  "It was
+there she did the '_toiling in_.'  Then, she was leading them home to
+Hurda, when we met the caravan--at dawn."
+
+Some of the mahouts had gathered about.  The Chief Commissioner spoke to
+them in their speech and they answered him--calling others.  Soon the men
+of High Himalaya drew near with grave deference, slowly stooping to touch
+the ground at her feet.
+
+"No human has ever been in _that_ before," said Kudrat Sharif.  "We will
+prepare rest for her--Chosen-of-Vishnu, the Great Preserver!"
+
+It was after they had cared for the Gul Moti with the best they
+had--water from a mountain stream and food Neela Deo had carried, in a
+shelter made of tender deodar tips, where she now slept on a bed made of
+the same--that the mahouts told the Chief Commissioner and Skag, all they
+themselves had seen.
+
+By this time concern had spread from Hurda throughout the country.  Neela
+Deo had gone out to find the Gul Moti, carrying the Chief Commissioner
+and Son of Power.  No one had come back.  Calamity must have fallen.  Men
+went out on horses to trace them.  But it was certain priests of Hanuman
+who found the caravan first.  (The Gul Moti having saved the life of a
+monkey king once, her safety was their concern also.)  Without being seen
+or heard themselves, they went close enough to learn that she was making
+recovery from great exhaustion; and that the mahouts were caring for an
+elephant unable to travel by reason of a bad wound.  They overheard talk
+of strange happenings; but more about Neela Deo's undreamed-of
+achievement.
+
+Before any of the searchers from Hurda reached the caravan, mysterious
+gifts of provisions--much needed--were found by the mahouts, with a crude
+writing beside them: "For the Healer-without-fear."  And those same
+priests of Hanuman--preparing a signal-system as they came--brought the
+good word back to the anxious people, who became joyous at once.  Their
+Gul Moti was safe!  Neela Deo was safe--everyone was safe.  (But that was
+a strange saying--that Neela Deo had fought!)
+
+Bonfires blazed up in every village within sight of the caravan's way
+home--from so far away as watchers on Hurda's highest hill could
+see--burning night and day.  At last the one furthest from Hurda went
+out.  The watchers raced in--Neela Deo's caravan was coming!  One by one,
+the bonfires went out--till it was this side the Nerbudda.  Then the
+people made ready.
+
+They thronged out the great Highway-of-all-India, meeting the caravan
+where the slow-moving elephants turned in from open jungle.  Eagerly
+striving to see the Gul Moti's face, eagerly pointing at Neela Deo, yet
+it was a stranger silent multitude.  Only many tears on many tears showed
+their feeling.
+
+The Gul Moti sat in Neela Deo's howdah, with the Chief Commissioner and
+Son-of-Power.  Two men came close, carrying a long slender shape covered
+with pure white cloth--dripping wet.
+
+"We be poor men," one said, "but our hands bring to thee, oh Healer--from
+the people of Hurda, oh Healer--" and breaking off, because his lips
+could speak no more, he stooped reverently to lay aside the covering.
+
+A great folded leaf appeared; a long heavy stalk; then the flawless
+splendour of one bloom--immaculate! a sacred lotus, brought from far
+lakes.  The Gul Moti received its ineffable loveliness and rose to
+stretch her fingers toward the multitude.  Then their shouts swept the
+horizon.
+
+Still, their concept of Neela Deo's character must be either shattered or
+restored--and soon; they would not wait.  Ominously quiet questions went
+up to the mahouts; and the mahouts were full-ready to answer!  In the
+end, it sounded like a wild Himalayan chant about Neela Deo's great fight
+to save Gunpat Rao.  The people listened patiently, till an inward
+meaning enlightened them.  Then they exulted:
+
+"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"
+
+"Exalted in majesty, Defender of honour, protecting his own with
+strength!  We will remember him!"
+
+"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"
+
+"He with the wisdom of ages.  Destroyer of devastators, preserving his
+friend with blood!  Our children shall not forget!"
+
+"He the Discerner of men, Equitable King!  He the Discerner of evil,
+Invincible King!  All generations after us shall hear of him; but we have
+looked upon his face!"
+
+"Neela Deo, Neela Deo, King of all elephants!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_The Lair_
+
+Carlin appeared to get right again in a few days of quiet after her
+terrific experience on Mitha Baba.  There were a few more wonderful
+weeks for Skag and herself in the Malcolm M'Cord bungalow in
+Hurda--weeks always remembered.  Then Skag undertook a little adventure
+of his own that had to do with Tiger.  He was away seven days in all
+and made no report of the thing he had done to his department.  He came
+back with a deeper quiet in his eyes and told no one but Carlin what
+the days had shown him.  Skag never was at his best in trying to make
+words work.  He was slow to explain.  He had been hurt two or three
+times in earlier days, trying to tell something of peculiar interest to
+his work and finding incredulity and uncertain comment afterward.  This
+made the animal trainer more wary than ever about talk.
+
+But Carlin required few words.  Carlin always understood.  She didn't
+praise or fall into excesses of admiration, but she understood, and the
+older one gets the dearer that becomes.  Carlin didn't advise with Skag
+whether she should speak of the matter.  She merely decided that her
+old friend, Malcolm M'Cord, Hand-of-a-God, deserved to be told.  The
+silent Scot knew much about animals and this was an affair that would
+stand high in his collection of musings and memories.  M'Cord observed,
+in a Scotch that had suffered no thinning in thirty years of India,
+that if he hadn't known Hantee Sahib he would be forced to pass by
+Carlin's report as an invention, though a "fertile" one.  It was M'Cord
+who decided that Government should get at least a private account of
+the affair.
+
+A remarkable tiger pair had operated for several years in the broken
+cliff country stretching away toward the valley of the Nerbudda beyond
+the open jungle round Hurda.  As mates they had pulled together so
+efficiently that the natives had started the interminable process of
+making a tradition concerning them.  These were superb young
+individuals and not man-eaters, for which reason Hand-of-a-God had not
+been called out to deliver the natives; also on this account Skag had
+been interested from the beginning.
+
+Their lair had never been found, but they had been seen together and
+singly over a ranging ground that covered seventy miles and contained
+several dejected villages.  Once, hard pressed for game, the male tiger
+had entered a village grazing ground and made a quick kill--on the
+run--of one of the little sacred cows--a tan heifer much loved by the
+people.  The point of comment was that the tiger had spared the boy; in
+fact, the young herder had been unable to run so rapidly as his little
+drove, which was lost in a dust cloud ahead of him.  The tiger had
+actually passed him by, entered the drove, knocked the heifer down and
+stood over it as the boy circled past.
+
+There were no firearms in the village, so that the natives did not
+venture close in the falling darkness.  It was evident next day,
+however, that the tiger had not fed on the spot of the kill.  It was
+supposed that the female had come to help him carry away the game.
+
+Also, this was the same tiger pair that had leaped an eight-foot wall
+surrounding another village, made their choice of a sizable bullock in
+a herd of ordinary cattle, and actually helped each other drag the
+carcass over the wall and away--a daylight raid, this, witnessed from
+the shadows of several village huts.
+
+So the stories went, but nothing monotonous about them.  Often for
+months at a time no villager would sight the tiger mates.  It was
+positively stated that there were no other mature tigers within the
+vicinity: that is, within the seventy-miles range.  The pair had been
+known to bring up at least three litters; but the young had been driven
+at the approach of maturity to outlying hunting grounds, as had been
+all the weaker tigers of the vicinity.
+
+Now the report came into Hurda that an English hunter had wounded the
+big female.  Another report followed that the Englishman had killed the
+male and wounded the female.  The hunter himself did not appear in
+Hurda; nor was a trophy hide recorded anywhere.  Skag heard the two
+stories.  Thinking over the affair, he called Nels for a stroll in the
+open jungle toward the Monkey Glen.
+
+To the American there was a pang about the hunter's story.  He was
+altogether unsentimental, but wild animals had to do with his reason
+for being and there was his fixed partiality for tigers.  The
+uncertainty about the story troubled him.  This was the time of year
+for kittens and it was seldom far from his mind that these parents were
+not man-eaters.  The stories of the hunter were indefinite.  The thing
+worked upon Skag as he walked.  The thought of finding the motherless
+lair and bringing in a hamper of starving young occurred to him as a
+sane performance, but not one to speak about.  Also his servant,
+Bhanah, reported Nels superbly fit for travel and adventure.
+
+The animal trainer rode the elephant, Nut Kut, into one of the villages
+in the tiger-ranging grounds and left him in charge of the mahout,
+saying that he might be gone two or three days and that he was out for
+a ramble among the waste places of the valley.  Skag took merely a
+haversack, a canteen, light blanket and a hunting belt, carrying a
+knife and a six-shooter but no rifle.  Nels actually lost his dignity
+in enthusiasm for the excursion, and they were miles away from a
+village and hours deep in an apparently leisurely journey before he
+subsided into that observant calm which was his notable characteristic.
+
+This light travelling, with none other than the great hunting dog,
+brought him back a keen zest of appreciation and memories of early days
+among the circus animals, and his first adventures in India with
+Cadman.  Moreover, there was a fresh mystery that had to do with Carlin
+after Skag's first supper fire afield.  He had always resented the fact
+that it was straight out-and-out pain for him to be away from the place
+she had made in Hurda.  Suffering of any kind to Skag was a sign of
+weakness.  He had dwelt long on the subject.
+
+The mystery of that first night out had to do with the fact that Carlin
+seemed to be near.  He had known something of this before, a flash at
+least, but nothing like this.  There wasn't the pain about separation
+he had known aforetime.  It was as if the miracle he had longed for had
+come--some awakening of life within himself that was quick to her
+presence even at a distance and cognisant that absence was illusion.
+Carlin's uncle, the mystic of the Vindhas, had told him that there were
+mysteries of romance that had to do with separation as well as with
+together, and that real mates learn this mystery through the years.
+To-night Skag found to his wonder that the mystic had spoken the truth.
+
+He cooked the supper joyously and shared it with Nels, talking to him
+often and answering himself for the Dane.  The camp was in the open and
+the night was presently lustrous with stars.  There was a sense of
+well-being, together with his fresh delight in the unfolding secret of
+Carlin's nearness, that made him enjoy staying awake.  Nels was wakeful
+also--as if these moments were altogether too keen with life to waste
+in sleep.
+
+"It's just a ramble, old man.  We'll be about it early," Skag said
+toward the last.  "We may find what we're after and we may not.  In any
+case we'll live on the way."
+
+That was Skag's old picture of the Now; making the most of the
+ever-moving point named the Present.
+
+"And I'm expecting great things from you, my son--an altogether new
+brand of self-control--if we find what we're out after.  I don't mind
+telling you that it's Tiger, Nels--tiger babies possibly--little
+orphans just grown enough to be demons and just knowing enough not to
+behave."
+
+Nels woofed.
+
+"Half-grown tiger cubs are apt to be a whole lot meaner than their
+parents," Skag went on.  "Wild--that's the word.  They haven't sense
+enough to be careful or mind enough to be appealed to.  I think that's
+something of what I mean to say."
+
+Skag was taking more pains to explain than he would to a man.  Nels
+didn't get it--didn't even make a pretense.  He knew what Tiger meant,
+but so far as he was concerned that subject had been dropped some
+moments since.  He had listened intently to the point in which Tiger
+ceased to be the topic--sitting on his haunches.  Then he dropped to
+his front elbows, and as Skag's voice trailed away he rolled quietly to
+his side, keeping himself courteously awake.
+
+There was silence.  Skag's eyes were far off among the blazing Indian
+stars.
+
+"We'll manage 'em together," he added sleepily.  The next day they
+wandered--rough desolate country in burning sunlight.  It gave the
+impression that the whole surface crust of earth had been burned to a
+white heat ages ago.  Low hills with clifflike faces; shallow nullahs
+used only a month or two a year to carry the monsoon deluges to the
+Nerbudda; the stones of the river bottoms bone-white--everywhere sparse
+and scrubby foliage with dust-covered leaves.  There was no turf in
+this stony world except the sand of the hollows and the wind eddied
+most of these spaces like water, quickly covering all tracks.  It was
+toward the end of the afternoon that Nels first intimated a scent.
+
+Tiger of course--that was Nels' orders--but it wasn't fresh.  Skag gave
+the Dane word to do the best he could and followed leisurely.  The big
+fellow worked with painful care for more than an hour before he became
+sure of himself; then his speed quickened, following a dry nullah at
+last, for several miles.  The dark was creeping in before they came to
+a deep fissure among the rocks where the empty waterway sunk into a
+pool which was not yet dry.  Skag and the Dane drank deep; then the man
+filled his canteen, with the remark:
+
+"We'll camp a little back, not to obstruct the water hole.  All trails
+end here.  To-morrow morning we'll get fresh tiger scent if we're in
+luck.  But I wonder what we're trailing?"
+
+It was a fact of long establishment among the villages that only the
+one mated pair worked this section of the country.  According to one of
+the stories of the English hunter, the male tiger had been killed and
+the female wounded--in which case what was this?  Certainly there was
+nothing to indicate that the scent was left by a wounded tiger.  Others
+might have doubted Nels' discrimination, but Skag scouted that in his
+own mind.  The Dane knew Tiger.  It was as distinct and individual to
+him from the other big cats as the voices of friends one from another.
+
+Nels was said to have met Tiger in battle before he came to Skag, but
+it was no purpose of his present master to give him a chance now.  It
+was established that several of the great Indian hunting dogs had
+survived such meetings.  Malcolm M'Cord declared that a veteran in the
+cheetah game would show himself master in any ordinary tiger affair.
+
+They were tired and sun drained.  Skag laid down his blankets in the
+early dusk and there were hours of sleep before he was awakened by the
+different activities at the water hole.  Nels apparently had been awake
+for some time, studying the separate noises in a moveless calm.  Skag
+touched his chest affectionately.  A panther or some smaller cat had
+just made a kill among the rocks above the pool, yet Nels' hackles had
+not lifted in answer to the bawl of the stricken beast.
+
+"Spotted deer possibly," Skag muttered.  Then he added to the Dane:
+
+"You're an all-right chap to camp with, son.  You'd sit it out alone
+until they brought the fracas to our doorstep rather than disturb a
+friend's sleep.  That's what I call being a white man."
+
+Skag always thought of Cadman as the unparallelled comrade for field
+work.  In fact, he had learned many of the little niceties of the open
+from the much-travelled American artist and writer--finished
+performances of comradeship, a regard for the unwritten things,
+reverence for those rights which never could be brought to the point of
+words, but which give delicacy and delectation to hours together
+between men.  Skag never ceased to delight in the silence and
+self-control of the Dane.  The dog rippled and thrilled with all the
+fundamental elements of friendship and fidelity, but his big body
+seemed able to contain them with a dignity that endeared him to the one
+who understood.  Bhanah's work in the training of this fellow was
+nothing short of consummate art.
+
+Breakfasting together, Skag refreshed Nels' mind with the work of the
+day--that it meant Tiger, that all lesser affairs might come and go.
+The big fellow was up and eager to be off, before Skag finished
+strapping his blanket roll.  There was rather a memorable moment of
+sentiency just there.  Skag was on one knee as he glanced into Nels'
+face.  His own powers were highly awake that minute, so that he
+actually sensed what was in the dog's mind--that they must go down to
+the pool for a look before moving on.  The thing was verified a moment
+later when Nels led the way down into the dim ravine to the margin of
+the water.
+
+Tiger tracks--full four feet on the soft black margin of the pool--a
+huge beast, unmarked by any toe scar or eccentricity.  Long body,
+heavy, a perfect thing of his kind.  It was as if the tiger had stood
+some moments listening.  Yet the natives declared that only the mated
+pair operated in this range and the hunter was said to have killed the
+male.  If these were the tracks of the tigress she certainly was not
+badly hurt.  There wasn't the overpressure of a single pad to indicate
+her favouring a muscle anywhere.  And this couldn't have been the track
+of anything but a mature beast--the finished print of a perfect
+specimen.
+
+"That hunter didn't tell it all, Nels, or else he didn't do it all,"
+Skag remarked.  "We started out to find a sick tigress and a hamper of
+neglected babies.  I'm not saying we won't find that much.  The thing
+is, we may find more."
+
+Nels was already five yards away across the pebbly hollow, waiting for
+Skag to follow along the ravine.  Not a sign of a track that human eye
+could detect after that--straight, dry, stony nullah bed, deeply
+shadowed from the narrow walls and stretching ahead apparently for
+miles.  At least it was cool work; the sun would not touch the floor of
+the fissure for hours yet.  Nels never faltered.  His pace gradually
+quickened until Skag softly called.  The Dane would remember for
+fifteen or twenty minutes, when Skag, again finding that he had to step
+uncomfortably fast to keep up, would laughingly call a check.  The man
+was watching the walls and the coverts of broken rock, and Nels' speed,
+if left alone, altogether occupied his outer faculties.
+
+It was eleven in the forenoon and Skag reckoned they must be close to
+the Nerbudda when Nels halted--even bristled a bit, his broad black
+muzzle quivering and held aloft.  Skag came up softly and stood close.
+He touched his finger to his tongue and drew a moist line under his
+nostrils, trying to get the message that Nels was working with so
+obviously.  Presently an almost noiseless chuckle came from the man,
+and he touched Nels' shoulder as if to say that he had it too.  The
+thing had come unexpectedly--the faintest possible taint of a lair.
+
+They would have passed it a hundred times if it had not been for the
+scent.  The silence was absolute and the walls of the fissure
+apparently as unbroken as usual.  No human eyes would have noted the
+wear of pads upon the stones, and one had to pass and look back to see
+the cleft in the walls of the ravine, far above the high-water mark,
+which formed the door of significant meaning for the man.  Nels hadn't
+seen this much, but he couldn't miss now.  He nosed the pebbles again
+and made an abrupt turn to the right.  They climbed to the rocks near
+the entrance.  The taint was unmistakable now--past doubt a bone pile
+of some kind in there--and Nels had followed Tiger to the door.
+
+Skag sat down upon a stone a little below and mopped his forehead, with
+a smile at the Dane.  For ten minutes he sat there.  He thought of the
+first time he had ever entered a tiger cage as a mere boy, way back in
+the Middle West of the States, travelling with the circus.  A bored
+show tiger in that cage, and he had blinked unconcernedly at the boy.
+Years of circus life had atrophied that tiger's organs of resentment.
+Miles and miles of the public stream had passed his cage with awe,
+speculating upon the great cat's ferocity.  Skag had merely to learn
+after that, the trick of it all--that one's perfect self-control not
+only soothes but disarms most normal beasts.  Skag had cultivated such
+self-control in recent years to a degree that made him the astonishment
+of many Hindu minds.  India had shown him that the attainment of this
+sort of poise is a stage of the same mastery that the mystics are out
+after--to gain complete command of the menagerie in one's own insides.
+Hundreds of times after that, night and day, in storm, in sultry
+weather, Skag had entered the cages of all kinds of animals in all
+their moods.
+
+His first adventure in India came back, when with his friend Cadman he
+had fallen into the pit trap and the grand young male tiger had tumbled
+after them.  Skag had prevailed upon the nervy Cadman to sit tight and
+not to shoot, against all that the writer man knew; also he had
+appeared to prevail upon the tiger to keep his side of the pit until
+they were rescued.  And now Skag recalled the big tiger that had lain
+on the river margin near the Monkey Glen while he had told Carlin that
+he had never really seen what a woman was like before.  The presence of
+the big sleepy cat down among the wet foliage had nerved him and called
+out all his strength for that romantic crisis.
+
+He thought of the moment under the poised head of the great serpent in
+the place of fear in the grass jungle; and of the coming of Nut Kut,
+the incomparable black elephant, whom he had forced to listen in spite
+of the red hell in the untamable eyes.  Always between and in and
+round, his thoughts were of Carlin--her voice, her presence, the
+curious art of her ministration and the utterly wise lure of her heart.
+Even now he couldn't quite be calm under the whip of memory of the
+afternoon of the cobra fight.  The whole panorama might have been named
+Carlin so far as Skag was concerned.
+
+He didn't think of his own danger now.  It wasn't that he ignored it;
+rather that he had entered upon a new dimension of his power.  He had
+no thought of failure.  No thought came to him that Carlin would have
+prevented his entering had she been near.  This was different from
+anything he had ever been called to do, but his power was different.
+The thing that engaged his mind was utterly clear from every angle.  He
+couldn't have missed the novelty from the unusual stress of Nels'
+manner.  The big Dane was actually burning with excitement.  His eyes
+were filled with firelight and back of the smoky burning was a dumb
+appeal turned to his chief.  Hyenas alone had been able to break Nels'
+nerve for himself, but he was frightened now for the man.  The big bony
+jowl was steadily pressed like a knuckled hand against Skag's knee, the
+body only half lifted from the dry stones and cramped with tension.
+
+Skag's eyes were turned up toward the mouth of the lair and his left
+hand fell to the Dane's head.  The beast actually shook because his
+eyes were covered a second.
+
+"Of course you're to stay outside, Nels," he said softly as he rose.
+
+The dog lowered his breast to the stones.  It was like a blow to
+him--the one thing he had feared most.
+
+"Don't, Nels!" the man muttered.  "You're to stand at the mouth of the
+lair and watch there.  I need you there--outside, of course."
+
+The dog followed him heavily up the slope past the high-water mark.
+Skag turned with a cheering whisper, shielding his eyes from the light
+for a moment before peering in.  There was a sound like blown paper
+across a marble floor and then another sound--low, soft, prolonged,
+like the hiss of escaping steam.
+
+Skag shoved himself into the narrow, rocky aperture.  He could see
+nothing for the moment.  The taint was oppressive at the first breath
+of the still air.  There were kittens--no doubt of that.  He heard
+their scurrying; he felt their eyes and the sort of melting panic in
+the place that would have utterly unstrung any but a perfectly keyed
+set of nerves.
+
+It was a cave, the mouth higher than the floor.  The way down was
+jagged and precipitous.  Skag, advancing softly, had to feel for each
+step and yet give no distracting attention to keep his footing, for the
+full energy of his faculties was directed ahead.
+
+The sound of blown paper was from the kittens--that was clear enough.
+Yet the hissing continued and this was the mystery of it all--that
+there appeared to be no movement besides.  If this sound came from the
+tigress, at least, she had not stirred to meet him.
+
+The hiss sunk to a low guttural grating.  No cub had a cavernous
+profundity of sound such as that.  Still there was not the stir of a
+muscle, so far as his senses had detected.
+
+Skag was puzzled.  Big game before him, possibly nerved to spring, and
+yet the tensity was not like that.  The man stood still, waiting for
+his eyes to adjust to the darkness--waiting for the mystery to clear.
+Then to the right, like a little constellation suddenly pricking
+through the twilight, Skag saw a cluster of young stars.  His heart
+warmed--kittens hunched there in a bundle and watching him.  Their
+pricked ears presently shadowed somewhat from the blacker background;
+then he saw the little party suddenly swept and overturned, as if a
+long thin arm had brushed them back out of reach of the intruder.
+
+Now his eyes turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest--the
+great levelled creature upon the darkened floor.  Skag kept his
+imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the
+picture.  The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not
+crouched.  Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him.  She lay
+upon her side.
+
+Thus it was that he was rounded back to the original proposition.  He
+had found the lair of the wounded tigress and her young.  For fully two
+minutes Skag stood quiet before her, working softly--her hiss changing
+at slow intervals to the cavernous growl.  The kittens were too young
+to organise attack--the tigress was too maimed for resistance, even
+though at bay in lair with her kittens to defend.
+
+Now the man saw the gleam of her eyes.  She had followed his movements
+and was holding him now, but half vacantly.  The pity of it all touched
+him; the rest of the story cleared.  Her tongue was like a blown bag,
+the blackness of it apparent even in the dark.  She was dying of
+thirst, the bullet wound in the shoulder turned up to him.  The little
+ones were still active, for the tigress had fed them until her whole
+body was drained.  He saw how her breast had been torn by the thirsty
+little ones--the open sores against the soft grey of her nether parts.
+Skag backed out.  Nels pressed him--half lifted his great body in
+silent welcome.
+
+"Oh, yes," Skag was saying, "we got the call, all right, my son.  Four
+little duds in there eating their mother alive, and she full of fever
+from a wound--no water for days.  I'm just after the canteen, Nels."
+
+Skag entered again.  His movements were deliberate, but not stealthy.
+He spoke softly to the creature on the floor--his voice lower than the
+usual pitch, yet sinking often deeper still.  The words were mere
+nothings, but they carried the man's purpose of kindness--carried it
+steadily, tirelessly.  The great beast tried to rise as he stepped
+closer.  Skag waited, still talking.  He had uncorked the canteen and
+held it forward--his idea being not only that she would smell the water
+but become accustomed to the thing in his hand.  Each time he pressed a
+bit nearer she struggled to rise toward him--Skag standing just out of
+reach, tirelessly working with his mind and voice.  He keenly
+registered her pain and helplessness in his own consciousness and was
+unwilling to prolong it, yet at the same time he had a very clear
+understanding of the patience required to bring help to her.
+
+It was fully a quarter of an hour before he bent close, without
+starting a convulsion of fear and revolt in the huge fevered body upon
+the rocky floor.  Skag poured a gurgle of water upon the swollen
+tongue, watching the single baleful tortured eye that held his face.
+The water was not wasted, though not drunk, for it washed away some of
+the poison formed of the fever and the thirst.  Skag poured again and
+for a second the great holding eye was lost to him and the tongue moved.
+
+Thus he worked, permitting her fear and rage to rouse no answer in kind
+from himself; talking to her softly, luring her out of fury into the
+enveloping madness of her own great need.
+
+He waited a moment and her tongue stretched thickly to draw to itself
+the water on the rock; then he turned toward the cubs.  They scurried
+back deeper into the cave.  He poured a gill or two of water into a
+hollow of the rock and returned to the mother.  Presently as he
+moistened her tongue again, one of the little ones crept forward and
+began to lap the puddle on the rock.
+
+Skag smiled in the gloom.  The others were presently beside the baby
+leader.  A few moments later Skag interrupted his ministrations to the
+mother to fill the hollow for the kittens again.  All this with less
+than three pints of water--the work of a full half hour as he found
+when he emerged to Nels and the light.
+
+"It's only a beginning, old man.  We've got to get more water.  It's
+five hours' march back to the pool where we camped.  I'm gambling that
+we're a lot nearer than that to the Nerbudda."
+
+Nels' jubilation was stayed by the unfolding of fresh plans that were
+not slow to dawn upon his eager mind.  They hastened along the river
+bed, continuing in the direction they had come.  Skag was in a queer
+elation, dropping a sentence from time to time.  Suddenly he halted.
+It had occurred to him to recall something his mind had merely noted
+during the work in the cave.  There was fresh meat there.  He had not
+looked close, but at least two partly devoured carcasses had lain in
+the shadows.
+
+"They were mighty thirsty, Nels," he muttered.  "The mother dying of
+thirst, but the little ones were only sultry compared.  Yes, they're
+old enough to tear at fresh meat.  They weren't so bad off and there
+was plenty of meat there.  Only thirsty," he added thoughtfully.
+
+It was clear to his mind that the tigress had been helpless at least
+three days, possibly four.  She could not have brought the game.  There
+was one conclusive reason--that the meat was in an altogether too fresh
+condition to have been brought by the mother before she gave up.  Skag
+walked rapidly.  They did not reach the Nerbudda, but sighted a village
+back Horn the river bed after nearly two hours' walk.
+
+They refilled the canteens and procured two water skins besides; also a
+broad deep gourd which Skag carried empty.  The man's difficulty was to
+escape without assistance.  A white man in his position was not
+supposed to carry goatskin water bags over his shoulders.  The boys of
+the village followed him after the elders had given up, and Skag halted
+at last to explain that this was an affair that would interest them
+very much--when a teller came back to tell the story; but that this was
+the doing part of the story and must be carried to its conclusion alone.
+
+A little later in the nullah bed he fastened the canteen and the gourd
+to Nels' collar, but continued to pack the two skins himself--a rather
+arduous journey in full Indian daylight with between forty and fifty
+pounds of water on his shoulders.  It was four in the afternoon when
+they neared the mouth of the lair and Nels was drooping again.
+
+"Buck up, old man!" Skag said.  "I'll go in for a while with the
+thirsty ones.  Then we'll make a camp and have some supper together."
+
+Skag heard the hiss again as he entered the darkness, and the kittens
+were not so still as before.  Only a trifle less leisurely he
+approached the mother.  He knew that any strength that had come would
+only feed her hostility so far; that a man was not to win the
+confidence of a great mammal thing like this in a day.  His first
+impulse was to silence the kittens with a gourd of water, but he could
+not bear to make the mother wait.
+
+She raised her head against him as before, but the smell of the water
+caught and altered her fury more swiftly this time.  Skag saw the glare
+go out from the great eye as the tortured mouth was cooled; and now the
+hope grew within him that the tigress might actually be saved.  He
+talked softly to her as he poured drop by drop upon her tongue from the
+side--the little ones pressing closer and closer.  Even in the
+convulsive trembling that took her body from time to time there was an
+inflowing rather than the ebb of strength.
+
+Presently he left her long enough partly to fill the big gourd for the
+babies.  He had scarcely drawn back before the first was at the edge.
+Lapping was not enough for this infant.  He wanted to cover himself;
+apparently to overturn the dish upon himself.  The others helped to
+balance the gourd for a moment or two, but the massed effort became too
+furious and over it went among them.  Skag laughed.  Only a portion was
+wasted, for the kittens followed the little streams on the rock,
+tonguing them as they moved and filled.  He tried them again, only
+covering the bottom of the gourd, but it was as swiftly overturned.
+Still the young had drunk enough presently and went to tearing at the
+meat in the deeper shadows.
+
+Skag went back to the mother, still using the canteen for her.
+Alternately now he dropped the water upon the wound in her shoulder.
+There were hours of work here to soften the fever crust and establish
+drainage.  Some time afterward this work was stopped abruptly by the
+warning of Nels at the door.  Skag stood his canteen against a rock and
+hurried forth.  Nels stood at the mouth of the lair, his head turned up
+the river bed.  His eyes did not alter from their look of fixity as the
+man emerged.  The shoulder nearest Skag merely twitched a trifle, the
+left paw lifting to the toes.  Skag followed the Dane's eyes.
+
+The great male himself stood stock-still in the centre of the river
+bed, the carcass of a lamb having dropped from his mouth.  So strange,
+so vast and still, the picture, that it seemed dreamlike; the great,
+round, sunny eyes unwinking--serious rather than savage--a dark-banded
+thing of gold in the ruddy gold of late afternoon.
+
+Skag was silent, the magic of the moment flowing into him.  Nels had
+not moved.  Skag had been forced to walk round him to find room to
+stand.  They faced the big Bengali together for an instant, the man's
+hand dropping softly to the dog's shoulder.
+
+"The king himself, son," Skag whispered raptly.  "He's the loveliest
+thing in stripes.  We'll have to look out for this fellow, Nels.
+There's no fear in him.  We're on his premises and the missus is sick
+and needs quiet.  He's apt to charge, and I can see his point of view.
+We'll back down, son, and not obstruct the gentleman's door."
+
+They couldn't have been three seconds clambering down the rocks to the
+nullah bed, yet the male tiger was twenty feet nearer when they looked
+up.  Moreover, he had brought the lamb with him, and this time he kept
+it in his mouth as he watched.
+
+"We mustn't let him see our dark side again, Nels," Skag muttered.
+"See if we can't stare as straight as he does.  God, what a picture!
+Yet I'm rather glad he's got that lamb.  He must have brought it far.
+Carrying out her orders doubtless.  Only a great male would do that.
+Oh, it's not that he cares for the babies, Nels.  It's to please her
+that he does it!  And she's down and done, but running the lair!"
+
+So Skag talked, hardly knowing what he said, keeping in touch with Nels
+with his hand and holding the eyes of the royal beast that seemed to be
+made of patience and poise and gilded beauty.  Skag didn't step back,
+but presently to the side, away from the mouth of the lair.  The
+tiger's counter movement was not to lessen the distance between them
+this time, but to drop to his haunches, still holding his game.  He
+rocked a little on his hind feet, that ominous undulation which
+portends the charge.  Not more than ten seconds passed and no outward
+change was apparent, yet there was a relief of tension in Skag's voice.
+
+"It's the little lamb that saved us that time, Nels.  I think we've
+passed it--passed the crisis, my boy.  We'll just stand by now and
+measure patience with him."
+
+It was two minutes before Skag ventured a further movement to the
+right.  The tiger made absolutely no counter this time.  Skag now spoke
+to Nels:
+
+"You're doing beautifully, son."
+
+The dog had stood by like part of himself.  The droop and the quiver
+that he had known twice that day when the man disappeared into the lair
+had given way in the real test to unbreakable nerve and defiant heart.
+Yet it was less the courage than his absolute obedience that entered
+the man with a charge of feeling that instant.  A minute later Skag
+took another ten steps to the right.
+
+In the deeper shadows, less than an hour afterward, he struck a match
+to the little supper fire a hundred yards up the slope from the mouth
+of the lair.  Skag then loosened his hunting belt, dropping the weight
+from him to the blanket with a sigh of content.  The hardware had
+chafed him all day and had only been really forgotten in the stresses
+of action.
+
+"I didn't pack that gun for tiger," he said softly.  "Why, I would as
+soon have shot our good Arab, Kala Khan, or put a bullet between Nut
+Kut's eyes, as to stop that big fellow bringing young mutton home--to
+please her!  Won't Carlin love to hear that!  Oh, yes, it's been a day,
+son, one more day!  I've loved it minute by minute, and you've
+been--well, I can't think in words, when it comes to that."
+
+The big fellow drowsed in the firelight, his four paws stretched evenly
+toward the man.
+
+In the morning and afternoon of the next two days Skag brought water to
+the tigress and bathed her shoulder long.  On the third day he could
+not be sure that the male had left the lair until late afternoon, and
+when he finally ventured to the mouth and his eyes grew accustomed to
+the darkness within he saw that the tigress was watching him from the
+deeper shadows--not prone, but on three feet.
+
+He filled the gourd and weighted it with stones; then backed out.
+
+"We're starting for Hurda to-night, son," he said to Nels.  "I've left
+her a drink or two, and by the time she needs more, she'll be able to
+get to the river herself."
+
+
+Carlin must have caught the reality of that moment of crisis from
+Skag's telling--the moment when the male tiger might have charged but
+didn't, because she succeeded in making Malcolm M'Cord see it, too.
+
+"And you say there was no sign from the tiger, but that Hantee Sahib
+knew when the instant was past?" the famous marksman repeated curiously.
+
+Carlin nodded.
+
+"But how did he know?"
+
+"Ask him," she said.
+
+"Huh," he muttered.  "I might as well enquire of the Dane beastie."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+_Fever Birds_
+
+Carlin had been listless for a day or two.  This was several weeks
+after her forty-two hours on Mitha Baba.  They were still living in
+Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow.  Skag woke in the night, not with a dream,
+but rather with a memory.  He was broad awake and recalled an incident
+that had entirely escaped his day-thoughts for a long time.  It had to
+do with that hard-testing period, just after his meeting with Carlin,
+when he had journeyed to Poona to confer with the eldest brother,
+Roderick Deal, and had been forced to wait more than a month.  In that
+interval he had learned about hyenas at first hand, through the plight
+of Beatrice Hichens and the children; also his servant Bhanah had come
+to him, and the Great Dane, Nels; still it had been a vague stretch of
+days, in retrospect.
+
+It was during the return-trip to Hurda that the thing happened which
+held him now as he lay broad awake.  Toward twilight, as the train
+halted at one of the civil stations, a white-covered cot was lifted
+aboard.  There was a kind of silence about that station.  The mountains
+were near on the left hand which was to the West.  The white glare of
+Indian day had softened into delicate rose.  A haze of orange and
+bronze lay upon the lower slopes of the mountains, magically enriching
+the greens; and the blue against which the mountains were contoured,
+was pure and immense and still.  It was difficult to remember the fret
+and pain and discolouration of a world bathed in so vast a peace. . . .
+
+At first he thought that the body on the cot was in its shroud.  The
+hush about it and from the mountains touched him with a feeling that he
+had not quite known before, the depth of it having to do with Carlin.
+Then he saw, back of the natives who had lifted the cot, yet not too
+near, the figure of an Englishman of the Military--standing quietly by,
+as if casually ordering a platoon of soldiers in the duty of loading
+the train.  Now Skag looked at the man's face.  It had nothing to do
+with the lax grace of the officer's figure.  This was the face of a man
+who could endure anything without a cry--a narrow face, tanned and a
+bit hard possibly from years of self-repression--a silent man,
+doubtless loved for the _feeling_ around him, rather than because of
+what he was accustomed to say or do--a face stricken now to the verge
+of chaos--unchanging anguish of fear and loneliness and sorrow
+imprinted from within.  A strange white glow, that had nothing to do
+with the tan, shone forth from the skin--etheric disruption, subtler
+than the breakdown of mere cells.  This man would put a bullet in his
+brain if pressed too far, but he would not cry out.  Just now he was
+close to his limit.
+
+Skag knew something of what passed in the English officer's heart,
+because he himself was learning what love means.  Before his hour with
+Carlin in the afterglow, on their way back from the monkey glen, he
+would never have dreamed that there was such feeling in the world; in
+fact, he would have been unable to read the vivid story of it in the
+officer's face. . . .  So much in a second or two.
+
+The cot had been partly lifted into the coach.  The face now was
+uncovered--the white wasted face of a lovely woman, a woman still
+living; an utterly delicate face, telling the story of one who had
+never met a rough impact from the world.  It was as if there had always
+been a strong hand between her and the grit and the grind of
+world-affairs--first her father's and then the lover's.  In the great
+silence, the eyelids opened.  It seemed that night and chill had
+suddenly come in.  The lips moved.  The most mournful and hopeless
+voice spoke straight into Skag's eyes:
+
+"Oh, won't you please stop those fever birds!"
+
+
+Skag supposed it an isolated sentence of delirium.  He didn't
+understand.  There was a drive of drama or tragedy back of it, but his
+mind did not give him details.  He did not see the English officer
+again.  He did not know if he entered the train.  One thing Skag knew:
+Deep under that narrow masculine face there was a capacity for feeling
+that this officer's men never saw; that his closest associates never
+saw.  The American reverenced the secret. . . .  Sometimes during the
+hushes of the night, when the train stopped for a moment, Skag lying
+awake, heard the voice of the woman.  There was a feeling from it
+utterly strange to him.  It carried him out of himself, as if he shared
+something of her delirium and something of the man's agony.
+
+The next day was one of the hardest that Skag ever lived, for Carlin
+was not at Hurda to meet him.  She had gone with a strange elephant
+into the country.  That was the day of the chase on the great young
+elephant Gunpat Rao, the day in which the story of the monster Kabuli
+unfolded.  The face of the man at the mountain station and the sentence
+of the woman were completely erased from his surface consciousness, as
+the memory of an illness.
+
+That was months away, and life had been very full in between. . . .
+
+
+Carlin said she was just tired, when he went to her room in the
+morning.  She looked at him long.  It suddenly came to him vaguely,
+that she wasn't thinking; rather that her eyes were merely turned to
+his face.  A queer breathlessness came to him a little later, as her
+head rolled to one side--such a sinking of weakness in the movement.
+It reminded him with a shock that she had never seemed quite tireless
+since that long ride on Mitha Baba's neck.  But never before had her
+face turned away from him.
+
+And now he saw a certain inimitable loveliness of her.  There were no
+words to describe the last--only that it was Spirit made of all the
+dusks and all the white fires.  There was something little about her
+that called an undreamed-of tenderness; and something superb and
+mysterious, so vast that he could be held in it like a toy in the hands.
+
+Burning Indian day was walled and curtained and barred from the place
+where she lay.  White of the walls, white of her face, white of the
+pallet--the rest a breathless, ungleaming shadow that held a heat not
+from the sun, as it seemed, but from the centre of the earth.
+
+. . . Skag was away in timelessness and an unfamiliar space.  This
+space was not fixed to one dimension, but moved back and forth.  As
+Bhanah came to him, he saw more than Bhanah animate upon the
+features--like someone who had belonged always, whom he had known for
+ages, whom Carlin had always known.  So many things struck him
+differently now; as if they belonged not just to this crisis, but to a
+crisis of eons.
+
+Yet externals in the main were so trifling.  Carlin didn't eat; people
+seemed to take that as significant.  Malcolm M'Cord came.  Margaret
+Annesley came.  Horace Dickson's father came.  Skag went to the bazaars
+and back again.  He went to the monkey glen.  It was all a blur.  Once
+he caught himself walking on the great Highway-of-all-India; and once
+deep in the jungle.  He passed the civil surgeon of Hurda on his own
+verandah; and someone said that the old "family doctor" was to come
+from Poona. . . .  Now he was in Carlin's room and Carlin was looking
+at him.  He saw her face the moment he entered the room, and the fact
+that he had come in from the fierce daylight into the shadows did, not
+seem to blur his eyes, even for a second.
+
+Her people in the room--Bhanah, the ayah, the civil surgeon, Ian Deal
+and someone else--but the line from her eyes to Skag was not crossed.
+The heart of the man leaped from what he saw--the transcendent
+understanding which needed no words; the look of all looks that meant
+_herself_--a little lingering smile on the lips, the endless lure of
+her wise eyes.
+
+But all that was whipped away as he came three steps nearer her couch.
+The wonder of it was not taken, but the old pain returned; rather, the
+pain had been there all the time, but he had forgotten for a space.  He
+saw the ashen and frail face again and the inexpressible weariness of
+her eyes, too tired to tell of it, too tired to stay!  Then the face of
+the English officer appeared for his eyes--hovering back of the people,
+in a background of mountains. . . .
+
+Carlin seemed listening.  What she heard came out of a grey intolerable
+monotony; but still her eyes held his.  They seemed concentrated upon
+some weakness of his nature--some dementia that had been before her for
+years, that had confronted her in every highway of life, frightened
+away every opportunity and spoiled every day.  Her hand lifted just
+slightly, the palm turned toward him:
+
+"Oh, won't you please stop those fever birds?"
+
+
+. . . Then one day Skag, standing in the darkened library, heard
+Margaret Annesley and one of her friends speaking together in the
+verandah.
+
+"But does she really hear anything?" the friend asked.
+
+"Oh, yes; though you never hear them unless you are ill with the fever."
+
+"How strange and terrible, and is it a particular fever?"
+
+"Jungle fever, dear.  It comes to us sometimes of itself, but more
+often after a shock. . . .  Carlin's night in the dark--"
+
+Skag's arm lifted in a curve to cover his face as if from a blow. . . .
+Yet Margaret Annesley was not quite right; for he had learned to hear
+what Carlin heard:
+
+From far away very faint, curiously thin tones came to him; always
+repeating one word, with an upward inflection, like a question.  Every
+repetition sounded the fraction of a degree higher than the last, till
+they were far above the compass of any human voice:
+
+"Fee-vur? fee-vur? fee-vur? fee-vur? -- -- --" and on and on.
+
+When it began, quite low, he heard infinite patience in it; gradually,
+it grew full of fear; then it climbed into a veritable panic of terror.
+
+When it stopped at last, on a long distracted "u-u-u-r-r-r-r?"--he
+heard the male bird's answer, sounding nearer, in deep tones of utter
+hopelessness, with a prolonged descending inflection:
+
+"Bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r!"--the
+Indian word for fever, repeated only three times.  Then the female
+began again; so, day and night--night and day.
+
+After he had once heard it, he could always hear it.  So he learned
+that they never rest.  Always, by listening, he could hear it at some
+point of its maddening scale--its insane assurance of the hopelessness
+of jungle fever.
+
+
+Skag faced the ultimatum.  This was different.  It had nothing to do
+with his world of animal dangers.  This was a slow devouring which he
+could not touch nor stay.  _Carlin was melting before his eyes_. . . .
+The brothers had come in, one by one, from over India.  (Margaret
+Annesley had attended to that.)  Skag met them, moved quietly about,
+yet could not remember their faces one from another.  He answered when
+spoken to, but retained no registration as to whom he had spoken, or
+what had been said.  Sometimes he was alone for a few moments with
+Carlin; and when her eyes were open he was appalled by the growing
+sense of distance in them.  Then before she spoke, he would hear what
+she heard:
+
+"Bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r! bhoo-kha-a-a-r-r-r!"
+
+There were queer rifts of light in his mind, instants when he realised
+that all the hard moments of the past had prepared him for this.  He
+saw clearly that he could not have endured, even to the present hour,
+without every experience life had shown him--especially without the
+difficult ones.  He lived again the great moments--all the Indian
+afterglows that were identified with Carlin--perfect lessons of mercy
+she had taught him, through the very yearning of his own heart in her
+presence to be worthy of days with her.  Never useless words from
+Carlin, but always the vivid meaning.  He had been slow at first to see
+how much more magic were their days together, because she paid for them
+with a night-and-day readiness to go forth to the call of service to
+others.
+
+Yet through all, he was utterly, changelessly desolate.  Not only
+bitterness, but an icy bitterness, was upon all meaning and movement of
+life.  It was almost like a conspiracy that no part in ministration was
+demanded of him by those who were now in his house.  The doctors talked
+to Miss Annesley or to the servants; the brothers came and went with
+their fear and fidelity--but spoke to Skag of other things than the
+illness.  Still, in his heart a concept slowly formed--that he had
+something which Carlin needed now; that this something had to do,
+though it was different, with the power he used to change animals.  It
+seemed absurd even to think of this--with all these wise ones around
+him, not perceiving it.  They formed a barrier of their thoughts which
+kept him from expression.  He stood apart for hours as the days passed,
+thinking of his part; and yet the icy bitterness held him from action.
+
+Sometimes his heart seemed dying; chill already upon it.  Again he
+seemed filled with a strange vitality, other than his own.  This
+phenomenon frightened him more than the first, so that he would hurry
+to look at Carlin lest the strength had come from her.  He tried to
+_think_ the strength back to her; to think all his own besides; but
+there was no drive to his mind-work because he did not have faith in
+himself.
+
+At length came the night when the fever birds ceased for Carlin.  Out
+of a great soft depth of tone which no one but Skag had heard before
+(which he had thought no other would hear until there was a baby in her
+arms), her words came with unforgettable intensity:
+
+"Oh, the jungle shadows!  The jungle shadows!"
+
+
+After that he did not know whether it was night or day, until he heard
+the end of a sentence from the doctor from Poona:
+
+". . . only four hours left to break the fever."
+
+The room was in great still heat--heat of a burning night, a smothering
+heat to the couch from a distant lamp--the fire of the day coming up
+from the ground like flashes of anger. . . .
+
+A strange stillness was settling on everything; the silence before had
+not been so heavy.  The old family doctor from Poona came into it; and
+Margaret Annesley stood by him near the bed.
+
+"Carlin has not spoken for more than an hour," Skag heard her tell him.
+
+It seemed long before he answered:
+
+"She has passed too far down into the shadows.  She will not speak
+again."
+
+The words came to Skag as if through limitless space; but the last ones
+penetrated deep and laid hold.
+
+Margaret went out swiftly and the doctor followed.  He looked a very,
+very old man--with his head bent, like that.
+
+. . . She will not speak again!
+
+The universe was falling into disruption.
+
+It was all white where she lay.  Only the heavy masses of her dark
+hair, spread on the pillows and across one shoulder, showed any
+colour--shadowed gold, shadowed red.
+
+. . . She will not speak again!
+
+Seven tall men filed into the room before Skag's eyes, and ranged on
+either side of her.  These were her own brothers.  Skag felt the vague
+pang again, of being alien to them.
+
+Roderick Deal, the eldest--the one with the inscrutable blackness of
+eyes--leaned and kissed the white, white forehead; and a fold of the
+splendid hair.
+
+One figure had gone down at the lower end of the bed--long arms
+stretched over her feet--slender dark hands clenching and unclenching.
+The detail of it cut into Skag, like a spear of keen pain through
+chaos.  Returned away--it was intolerable.
+
+. . . An arm fell about Skag's shoulders.
+
+"Brother?"  Roderick Deal's fathomless eyes drew Skag's and held them
+while he spoke: "We are leaving you to be alone with her--at the last!"
+
+The arm gripped as he added:
+
+"You are to know this--we will not fail you, now!" and he was gone.
+They were all gone.
+
+Faint tones of the fever bird, ascending, came from far out.  Other
+tones, descending, came from greater distances within. . . .  She will
+not speak again!
+
+Bhanah touched his sleeve.
+
+"My Master!"  The man's nearness of spirit, as he spoke, vibrated into
+Skag and roused him to something different, something clearer.  "A
+mystic from the Vindha mountains has but just reached this place.  They
+are very powerful, having great knowledge.  This man is blood-kin to
+her.  Give me permission and I will call him."
+
+Skag looked into Bhanah's eyes, finding the ancient friendship there;
+then he said only one word:
+
+"Hurry!"
+
+Bhanah leaped away across the lawn and Skag turned to stand by Carlin's
+side.
+
+The silence seemed absolute now; the whiteness absolute.  He remembered
+that she had gone down into shadows.  He bent his head toward her
+breast and looked down.
+
+. . . Sense of time was gone--even the endlessness of it.  Sense of
+whiteness was gone.  His vision wakened, as he groped through deepening
+shadows, on and on--till they turned to utter blackness.  In that utter
+blackness appeared a thread of pure blue; he traced it back up till it
+entered Carlin's body.  There, it was not blue any more, but a faint
+glow of high white light centred in her breast and shed--like
+moonlight--through all her person.
+
+The heart of his heart called to her. . . .  There was no answer.
+
+. . . He became aware that a tall slender man stood at his side; but it
+did not disturb him.  The man wore long straight robes of camel's hair.
+The sense of him was strength.  At last he spoke:
+
+"Son, why do you call to her?  She cannot come back--of herself.  You
+cannot fetch her back."
+
+"Why?" breathed Skag.  "I ought to be able to."
+
+"No," the man said kindly, "you are not able to--I am not able to--no
+created being is able to."
+
+The man emphasised the word created.
+
+"What can?" Skag asked.
+
+"First you must learn not to depend on yourself; then you must know
+something of the law."
+
+The man was holding one hand out, above Carlin's head--quite still, but
+not close, while he spoke.  Skag felt his strength more than at first.
+
+"Do you want her for yourself?" he asked.
+
+Skag looked into his kind dark eyes--his own eyes speaking for him.
+
+"Do you want her for her own sake--because she loves you?  Is it that
+you have knowledge what will be best for her?  Did you create her--did
+you prepare her ultimate destiny, do you even know it?"
+
+"I know that I am in it!"
+
+Skag answered very low, but with conviction.  His eyes were agonised;
+but the man bored into them, without relenting.
+
+"Do you want her to come back from the margin of departure, for the
+sake of others--for the sake of her ministry to their need?"
+
+The answer to this last question came up in Skag--waves on waves,
+rolling into engulfing billows.
+
+"That answer may avail!" the man said conclusively.  "If it is
+accepted--if your love for her is perfect enough to forget itself--if
+you are able to make your mind altogether inactive--"
+
+"Then how shall I work--if not with my mind?" Skag interrupted.
+
+"First know that you yourself can do nothing."  The man spoke with
+soft, slow emphasis.  "No created being has power to do that kind of
+work."
+
+"What has?" Skag asked.
+
+"A Power that we are not worthy to name," the man answered, with
+reverence.  "If it accepts your reason why she should stay--if your
+love is found to be without tarnish of self--it will work her
+restoration; not otherwise.
+
+"Make yourself still.  Give your mind to the apprehension of her
+nature--till your mind has come to be _as if it were not_. . . .
+Peace!"
+
+The man dropped his head a moment, before he moved to stand at the food
+of her bed.  With his eyes on her face he leaned, laying his palms over
+her feet; then, seeming to float backward to the wall, he sank
+slowly--to sit as the Hindus do.
+
+The sense of his strength seemed to fill the whole room.  It was the
+last outward thing Skag was aware of.
+
+. . . It was as if Skag had passed through eons of ages trying to put
+away all the tender yearning anguish of his love for Carlin.  He came
+to know her as a beneficent entity of high voltage--needed in more than
+one place.
+
+It must be that he should make it possible for her to serve here, more
+potently than there--else she could not be held back.  With all his
+strength, he would try.
+
+"Son," the mystic's voice rang out, "now give yourself to your love for
+her--with your strength!"
+
+Presently a warm glow flowed up into Skag's feet, filling his person
+and extending his physical sentiency into her body.  That body was
+utterly bound in a strange vise--very heavy; as if every particle of
+every part were separately frozen.
+
+. . . It seemed to Skag as if he could not breathe.
+
+"Breathe!" the mystic said, as he rose from the floor to stand on his
+own feet.
+
+That instant an impact of force from him struck Skag like a blow; and
+the next moment his sense of strength had become like that of twenty
+men--it was hard to bear.
+
+"Steady--slow!"  It was a soft, but imperative order.
+
+Gradually the warmth increased; not in degree, but in the rate of its
+flow.  At last it was a surge, so intense that Skag could feel his own
+blood-pulse--a different kind of pulse.
+
+The need of help was very great.  There was a faintness--surely more
+terrible than any death!
+
+"Fear not!" the mystic called tenderly.  "The Supreme Power cares for
+her--more than you can!"
+
+As he heard these words, a great tide rose up into Skag, penetrating
+his body and his mind and the uttermost deeps of his consciousness.  A
+vast sweeping tide--it descended below all depths, it ascended above
+all heights, it compassed all reaches.  It was ineffable
+love--transcendent.  It was for her!  But it was for him--too!  Nay--it
+was for every living thing in this mortal condition and in all other
+conditions!
+
+. . . Carlin turned her head a little, lifted one hand a little and
+sighed deeply.  Then she moved till she lay easily on one side, just
+murmuring:
+
+"I think I'll sleep."
+
+Carlin had spoken again!
+
+
+"Son" (the mystic spoke very softly, while he drew Skag to a large
+couch in the same room), "it is finished.  She is altogether safe now.
+You should be this far away; stretch yourself here and give yourself to
+sleep also--it will be best for her if you do.
+
+"Be at perfect rest--there is no fear.  (I will give Bhanah
+directions.)  Now--Peace be on thee; and on thy house, forever!"
+
+His words permitted no answer.  He went and smiled down on Carlin.  He
+touched her forehead with his finger-tips--he even kissed her curling
+hair.
+
+"Child of my brother's love!" he said softly, as he turned away.
+
+Then Skag also slept.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SON OF POWER***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 19970.txt or 19970.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/9/7/19970
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/19970.zip b/19970.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9315d27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19970.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd765ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #19970 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19970)