Book: Son of Power

W >> Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost >> Son of Power




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."

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