Little lost lambs, p.23
Little Lost Lambs, page 23
“The man is mad,” he announced. “Yes, that ees it. It has been too much the cannon “
“Harken, Captain Marceau,” explained McKechnie, “ye know not the canny islander. The bombardment was a great event for the heathen. They ha’ never seen the like. ‘Twill be a grrand story for them to tell. And the bits o’ shell in the ground arre worth a sma’ fortune——”
But the huts——”
“Arre grass. They can be rigged up again in a day. Tahorai says the only damage was twa pigs slain, and a dog.”
“Then he will not give up the gold. I thought it was for that he came——”
Tahorai shook his bedecked head emphatically. He informed Marceau that he knew nothing of any gold. The naval officer stared at the grinning chief, at the throng in the village, and slowly conviction dawned on him. For a moment he thought of turning the guns of the vessel on the canoe: but being a humane man, dismissed the idea.
Faced with the puzzle of the Polynesian Islander, Marceau did what many others had done before him, and have done since he swore, shrugged his shoulders, and gave orders to get under way for Ranan. After all, he had done his duty.
The disappointed Tahorai returned to the beach, and McKechnie to his schooner. There he found Gordon. “Ha’ ye the clock?” he demanded.
“Yes,” admitted Gordon grimly. “I have it. I got into Tahorai’s hut right enough when the niggers were down at the beach, and broke the clock from its moorings. Some of the beggars saw me, and Tahorai ‘ll hear of it——”
“No doot he will. The heathen arre gathering on the shore. Arm the boat-boys, Mr. Gordon, and put them along the rail. Tahorai ‘ll visit us, I’m thinking.”
McKechnie himself took up the battered clock that had hung for years in the hut of Tahorai, and inspected it curiously. A strange thing, he thought to be venerated by an island. But the ways of the Polynesian are strange, and McKechnie was well versed in them.
As he had said, the gunboat was no sooner hull down at sea when the whole fleet of war-canoes emerged from the Aoha beach. This time the tom-toms struck an angry note. Gordon saw that the men in the canoes were fully armed with spears and bows and rifles. He fingered his revolver uneasily as the canoe of Tahorai came within range. But McKechnie gripped his arm warningly. The skipper himself had no weapon.
“You white fellow man,” the harsh voice of Tahorai reached them over the stretch of water, “you fetch ‘em devil-devil back along Tahorai plenty quick. Tahorai shoot ‘em bullet along you—my word!”
There was no mistaking the angry note in the chief’s voice, or the menace of the spears and rifles in the canoes. The boat-boys of the schooner glanced at McKechnie uneasily, and fingered their rifles. The skipper leaned over the rail, holding the precious clock near the water.
A howl broke from the Aohans at this. Tahorai’s dusky face turned a sickly gray. The clock was his devil-devil, the charm that gave him power over the witch doctors and his enemies. If McKechnie should drop it ——
“You fetch ‘em twa boxes o’ gold, Tahorai,” demanded the Scot sternly, “and I’ll gi’ ye the clock. If ye shoot one bullet, I’ll drop this sma’ fellow clock along the water, plenty quick.”
Tahorai hesitated. But he yearned for the clock. It was his totem, his devil-devil.
From long experience, he knew it was no use to try to outwit McKechnie. Also, that the Scot was a man of his word. If Tahorai gave McKechnie the gold, he knew he would get back the clock. Not otherwise. He ordered his canoes back to the beach.
That afternoon the Auld Alfred stood out of Aoha Bay, under a fair breeze, with every sail set, and white under her bow. McKechnie had no desire to linger, after his business was completed. In the cabin, he watched Gordon counting over gold sovereigns which the mate had taken from one of the chests.
“Ye were saying, Mr. Gordon,” he observed argumentatively, “I mind ye were saying something about the whim o’ a senile Scotchman. Ha’ yer sentiments changed?”
Gordon eyed a glittering coin and hesitated. He was rather at a loss for what to say. But he was not the man to abandon an argument, even in the face of heavy odds. Then he brightened.
“It was our luck changed, Skipper McKechnie,” he said. “You mind how I whistled for a change of luck? Well, it came.”
Chapter I
When Health Failed
IT was a motor-car that took me to India. Not that I crossed the Pacific in one; but I was sent there to sell motor-cars—-the Robles roadster. And it was the Robles Roadster that brought me to John Coyle, at the Koh-i-Darband house—the house outside the back door of India. I didn't know it was there until I saw it, sliding around the base of a gray cliff. But then there were a good many things I didn’t know.
The Robles sale went through several dozen roadsters and trucks—at the Calcutta agency, and when the signatures were blotted on the contract forms and the specifications agreed on, I cabled the good news to Dayton, Ohio, and thought pretty well of myself.
The trip to India with the handsome demonstrating machine had tickled my vanity. It was my first big sale—although the Calcutta agency had sent Dayton a pretty specific and urgent inquiry for our cars. Later it developed there was a matter of minimum tariff my Calcutta friends had not mentioned, and the contract wasn’t such a splendid thing as I'd pictured it. Not knowing this, I was congratulating myself over again when I heard of another prospect for the Robles truck. One of our consular trade reports mentioned a reclamation enterprise near Lahore that needed trucks. That was what sent me to upper India—that and the heat. It was midsummer then, and midsummer in Calcutta is a sizzling proposition. Likewise, that city is a trade seaport without much in the way of sightseeing. I never learned whether the Lahore tip was straight or not: because I never got there.
As for the sightseeing—before I had finished with India I’d seen more than any of the guide-books mention; more than Baedeker ever dreamed of. I’d gone through the back door of India and lived in the valley under the Roof of the World. Yes, that’s what the natives call the Himalayas.
Mind you, at the time I cabled Dayton I was going to hunt up a prospect, between steamers, and asked the company to put more funds to my credit at the Calcutta bank. I knew as much about the inside of India as the average native of that country knew about the inside of my Robles. At that, I wasn't in the ignoramus class, because I'd read more than the average young fellow of twenty-four, trying to acquire a self-starter in the way of an education.
But, outside a vague idea of temples and a battle or two, I'd only the memory of some Indian movies to go by; a snake-charmer gazing into a crystal, and a Hindu yogi doing a sword-dance—or maybe the other way around. No, the movies gave me a bad idea of India.
I saw that as soon as the Punjab Mail pulled out of the narrow Calcutta streets. The roadster had been shipped ahead to a station called Julundur. This was where I’d been told to hop off for the reclamation plant.
The car was waiting for me—the Calcutta-Peshawur Railway is efficient—at the freight warehouse; so also was a crowd of about half a thousand natives. The sight of a motor-car was no novelty in Julundur, since some thousand machines are registered at Lahore, near by; but in one way or another the rumor had got around that a young American sahib with money was the owner of the roadster. It wasn’t my car, and it wasn’t my money; they didn’t know that.
About half the beggars in town were there; also every coolie from a day’s run; also self-appointed guides, money-changers, porters, interpreters, and what not. The sight of a tall man in moderately clean duck and sun-helmet—I’m a trifle under six feet and weighed in at one hundred and seventy before the heat got to work on me—started the whole gang to jabbering and grabbing for my bag.
It was a modest valise, bearing the initials F. B. W.—Frank Brownley Weston. But it took all the strength left me after that heat-blessed train ride to keep the bag in my hand.
I’d thought, back in Dayton, that all natives were about the same; they weren’t and aren’t. At least in India there are two dozen races—from swaggering Sikhs who won’t touch baggage, to dwarf Swati who’ll steal the nails from your boots—and two dozen religions, and twice that many kinds of graft.
Julundur was pretty well up into the northern hills, and cooler than Calcutta; but by the time I’d redeemed my car from a bored station-agent, stocked it with a triple supply of gas, gulped down a hasty lunch of rice curry, and shaken off most of the native pack, the sweat was dripping off my coat.
And still the home volunteers carried on their offensive. I started the Robles through the mob, and turned out into a highway that I thought would lead to the reclamation field.
Even then a fat robber, with a turban askew over one ear and one slipper missing, jumped onto the running-board and shoved a letter in my face.
“ Sahib,” he mouthed from bulbous lips, “ sahib, I offer you my services! I am, indeed, priceless. I have waited long for your coming. Sahib, I have guide Americans who came to see the wonders of our hills. I am a cook without merit. I am competent syce for automobile.” According to his statement, there wasn’t much my fat friend couldn’t do.
He hung to the running-board, grunting when we hit a stone, and informed me that the letter was from the local babu—a kind of superrobber. Being busy in avoiding the native children and buffalo-carts—no easy task in that interminable curtain of dust—I didn’t catch more than one line of the letter: “ An excellent, honest man. His honesty is unbleachable.”
I had to laugh at that, and my tormentor interpreted this as a favorable omen, and slid his greasy bulk into the seat beside me with a grin. I questioned him as to the reclamation area. He said he had been there only the other day, and his brother was servant-in-chief to the sahib engineer. He directed me along a road running nearly due east.
That letter was part right, anyway. My fat friend’s honesty was of the unbleachable variety. As a matter of fact, he didn’t know the first thing about the engineering field—had never been there—and had no brother.
Late in the afternoon, when the road petered out into a dirty mud village, he admitted as much, under close questioning. Naturally I was mad.
I stopped the Robles in a nest of half-naked urchins and told the turbaned liar to get out and count the extra tires clamped behind the luggage. He did so, grinning all over.
Then I started the Robles on high. The machine left the village in a cloud of dust, through which I dimly perceived my former guide running after me and wailing. It turned out to be a mistake, leaving him like that.
At the worst, he could speak English, and I couldn’t speak anything else. So I had no means of asking my way.
The cart-trail up which I headed led to a highroad of sorts, thick with red day dust, that wound into a line of foot-hills. Of course, I should have gone back to Julundur; but the return route was uncertain, and I’d have made a hundred-mile circuit rather than run into my unbleachable pirate. Likewise, the red clay road must lead somewhere, and—I was sick. It was a combination of heat, change of food, and dysentery. My head was throbbing, and my pulse was ’way ahead of the Robles speedometer.
By that time it was near evening. The sun dipped out of sight somewhere without relieving the heat haze that seemed to be wrapped around my temples. The road stretched ahead, with fewer mud villages and more forest. I switched on the lights, rumbled across a bridge which creaked dangerously under the weight of the car—and shut off the gas.
A road-house, or what looked like one, came into view. It was one of those dak bungalows—wayside resting-places which provide a cot, kitchen, and cook for the traveler. It looked good to me, with its whitewashed walls, nestling under a grove of poplars.
That was how I met up with John Coyle. He came out of the bungalow and watched me walk up with my bag, feeling dizzy.
“ Sick, aren’t you?” he asked, adding: “ You’re not English.”
“ American,” I informed him, glad enough to set eyes on a white man. " Can I sleep here?”
He took my bag, hefted it, and went inside. In one room stood two cots. John Coyle tossed the bag down on one.
“ Right here, American,” he said shortly. “ It’s nearer the window, I hunk in the other one. My name’s John Coyle. I live hereabouts.”
“ American?” I inquired, sitting down, because I was weak.
“ You can say so: I've my papers. I live out here, though, most generally. Travel’s my weakness. You’re new to the country, and due for a spell—or I’m a liar. Kallick!”
He clapped his hands, and a short, swarthy servant appeared in the doorway.
“ Bath-water for the sahib, Kallick,” he ordered carelessly, “ and my medicine-kit.”
So far as I know or have been able to find out, John Coyle spoke the truth when he said he was American. He had been to my country, but had stayed only long enough to take out his papers. He might have been born anywhere in Europe; spoke Turki, Persian, and Hindustani fluently: had plainly lived for some time in England, Egypt, and South Africa; and understood many of the secrets and all the knavery of the Eastern corners of the earth.
He was taller than I, with the build of a man who had been an athlete; a broad brow, gray eyes usually bloodshot; a well-trimmed yellow heard, and blond-brown hair—the kind of man newspapers describe as leonine. Also, he was taciturn, quick-tempered, gifted with excellent manners when he chose to use them, and a domineering personality that showed itself in a hard, thin-lipped mouth.
His clothes were good—far better than mine. He seemed quite at home in the dak bungalow, and played the part of a host.
In fact, John Coyle took mighty good care of me. I was pretty sick for some hours. He said I must not think of traveling the next day.
The rest-house looked good to me, after the strain and the heat of Julundur. So did John Coyle. We sat outside the next day under the poplars in our shirt-sleeves and talked. Kallick and the bungalow caretaker waited on us.
Chapter II
At India's Back Door.
JOHN COYLE asked a lot of questions. He wanted to know the speed and general qualities of the Robles: also what I was doing in the Punjab, and if I had friends expecting me.
“ How d’ye figure to get new gasoline, Weston?” he observed quizzically, puffing at a foul pipe. “ Ain’t any of the stuff east of Julundur or north of Simla.”
“ I’m pretty well stocked up,” I told him. “ The Robles is an economical user of the juice. That’s one of the reasons I made the big Calcutta sale. I’ve gas enough to go near three hundred miles, perhaps more with the spare cans. And the people I want to see aren’t far.”
“ No, not far.” He seemed to turn this over in his mind. He was the older man, and had seen much of the world. I was green. I talked a lot about my success in Calcutta, and how little I knew of the country.
“ You’d best steer clear of Julundur and the heat for a while, Weston,” he informed me judicially. “ You came within a hell’s breath of a stroke yesterday.”
“ Oh, I’ll be fit to-morrow.”
But I wasn’t. Dysentery takes some time to shake off. Coyle dosed me with whisky and quinin, and examined the Robles closely.
“ Tell you what, Weston,” he decided. “ You’ll take quite a bit of doctoring ’fore you’re in decent shape again. No use tryin’ to do business while you’re a sick man. My bungalow is just beyond here, up in the hills. Come along with me for a spell. When you’re in shape again I'll lend you a trustworthy fellow for a guide.”
“ I don’t want to bother you,” I hesitated, because I did want to do just that. John Coyle was a mine of information about the country, and I thought he could give me a valuable tip on the market for motorcars in the Punjab. Likewise, I was still rocky.
“ No trouble,” he said curtly, and ordered Kallick to pack our bags. He settled with the dak bungalow fellow and superintended stowing his luggage on the rumble while I was putting on my coat.
“ It’s the cool of the afternoon, Weston,” he said, “ and we have four hours to travel in.”
Still talking, he helped me into the front seat, instructed Kallick to follow with the horses, and slipped under the wheel himself.
“ Oh, I’ve handled autos,” he laughed as I protested. “ You can tell me about the controls, you know. Road’s rutted, and you haven’t strength in your wrist to steer out for a pebble, young un. Besides, I know the way.”
He did know how to handle a car. He pushed up the winding road at a sharp pace, turning into a trail through a pine forest, and from there back into a mountain-path that tested the Robles’s springs.
The character of the country changed. We left the mud villages and the jungle mesh, and struck into forests where we met few natives. These, too, were different, being shorter. They wore no turbans.
We came out along a river which we followed under rising mountain-peaks. In the distance the setting sun behind us shone on summits that blazed a curious crimson. It was grand scenery, but I wasn’t enjoying it overmuch.
For one thing, the car was being pushed along miserable roads that tore the tires. And we seemed to be leaving the populated part of India.
“ Don’t let that worry you, youngster,” he said indifferently. “ The thing to do is to get rested and well.”
It was cooler that night, and I slept better than for some time, but still with a slight fever. No, we had not reached Coyle’s bungalow. We stopped at another dak joint.
“ Look here, Coyle,” I objected at breakfast next morning, when we’d had our coffee, “ aren’t we getting farther away from the people I want to visit?”
“ Oh, they’re within reach.” He grinned at me amiably. “ Don’t worry yourself, Weston. Stick to me, and you won’t come to any harm. I want to show you my bungalow, my summer bungalow. You can trot back again when you’re in better shape.”
