King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure by Talbot Mundy (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗
- Author: Talbot Mundy
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The journey to Peshawur, that ought to have been wearisome because they were everlastingly shunted into sidings to make way for roaring south-bound troop trains and kept waiting at every wayside station because the trains ahead of them were blocked three deep, was no less than a jubilee progress!
Not a packed-in regiment went by that was not howled at by King's prisoners as if they were blood-brothers of every man in it. Many an officer whom King knew waved to him from a passing train.
“Meet you in Berlin!” was a favorite greeting. And after that they would shout to him for news and be gone before King could answer.
Many a man, at stations where the sidings were all full and nothing less than miracles seemed able to release the wedged-in trains, came and paced up and down a platform side by side with King. From them he received opinions, but no sympathy to speak of.
“Got to stay in India? Hard lines!” Then the conversation would be bluntly changed, for in the height of one's enthusiasm it is not decent to hurt another fellow's feelings. Simple, simple as a little child is the clean-clipped British officer. “Look at that babu, now. Don't you think he's a marvel? Don't you think the Indian babu's a marvel? Sixty a month is more than the beggar gets, and there he goes, doing two jobs and straightening out tangled trains into the bargain! Isn't he a wonder, King?”
“India's a wonderful country,” King would answer, that being one of his stock remarks. And to his credit be it written that he never laughed at one of them. He let them think they were more fortunate than he, with manlier, bloodier work to do.
Peshawur, when they reached it at last, looked dusty and bleak in the comfortless light of Northern dawn. But the prisoners crowed and crooned it a greeting, and there was not much grumbling when King refused to unlock their compartment doors. Having waited thus long, they could endure a few more hours in patience, now that they could see and smell their “Hills” at last.
And there was the general again, not in a dog-cart this time, but furiously driven in a motor-car, roaring and clattering into the station less than two minutes after the train arrived. He was out of the car, for all his age and weight, before it had come to a stand. He took one steady look at King and then at the prisoners before he returned King's salute.
“Good!” he said. And then, as if that were not enough: “Excellent! Don't let 'em out, though, to chew the rag with people on the platform. Keep 'em in!”
“They're locked in, sir.”
“Excellent! Come and walk up and down with me.”
“Seen her?” asked the general, with his hands behind him.
“No,” said King, looking sharply sidewise at him and walking stride for stride. His hands were behind him, too, and one of them covered the gold bracelet on his other wrist.
The general looked equally sharply sidewise.
“Nor've I,” he said. “She called me up over the phone yesterday to ask for facilities for her man Rewa Gunga, and he was in here later. He's waiting for you at the foot of the Pass--camped near the fort at Jamrud with your bandobast all ready. She's on ahead--wouldn't wait.”
King listened in silence, and his prisoners, watching him through the barred compartment windows, formed new and golden opinions of him, for it is common knowledge in the “Hills” that when a burra sahib speaks to a chota sahib, the chota sahib ought to say, “Yes, sir, oh, yes!” at very short intervals. Therefore King could not be a chota sahib after all. So much the better. The “Hills” ever loved to deal with men in authority, just as they ever despised underlings.
“What made you go back for the prisoners?” the general asked. “Who gave you that cue?”
“It's a safe rule never to do what the other man expects, sir, and Rewa Gunga expected me to travel by his train.”
“Was that your only reason?”
“No, sir. I had general reasons. None of 'em specific. Where natives have a finger in the pie there's always something left undone at the last minute.”
“But what made you investigate those prisoners?”
“Couldn't imagine why thirty men should be singled out for special treatment. Rewa Gunga told me they were still at large in Delhi. Couldn't guess why. Had 'em arrested so's to be able to question 'em. That's all, sir.”
“Not nearly all!” said the general. “You realize by now, I suppose, that they're her special men--special personal following?”
“Guessed something of that sort.”
“Well--she's clever. It occurred to her that the safest way to get 'em up North was to have 'em arrested and deported. That would avoid interference and delay and would give her a chance to act deliverer at this end, and so make 'em grateful to her--you see? Rewa Gunga told me all this, you understand. He seems to think she's semi-divine. He was full of her cleverness in having thought of letting 'em all get into debt at a house of ill repute, so as to have 'em at hand when she wanted 'em.”
“She must have learned that trick from our merchant marine,” said King.
“Maybe. She's clever. She asked me over the phone whether her thirty men had started North. I sent a telegram in cypher to find out. The answer was that you had found 'em and rounded 'em up and were bringing 'em with you. When she called me up on the phone the second time I told her so, and I heard her chuckle with delight. So I emphasized the point of your having discovered 'em and saved 'em every wit whole and all that kind of thing. I asked her to come and see me, but she wouldn't,--said she was disguised and particularly did not want to be recognized, which was reasonable enough. She sent Rewa Gunga instead. Now, this seems important:
“Before I sent you down to Delhi--before I sent for you at all--I told her what I meant to do, and I never in my life knew a woman raise such terrific objections to working with a man. As it happened her objections only confirmed my determination to send for you, and before she went down to Delhi to clean up I told her flatly she would either have to work with you or else stay in India for the duration of the war.”
The general did not notice that King was licking his lips. Nor, if he had noticed King's hand that now was in front of him pressing on something under his shirt, could he have guessed that the something was a gold-hilted knife with a bronze blade. King grunted in token of attention, and the general continued.
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