The Old Man of the Mountain Part 5

"By Jinks!" Jackson cried as they came up, "you killed him!"

"I never made such a fluke in my life," Forrester replied. "Come and have a look at him."

They found that the bullet, entering behind the ear, had pa.s.sed clean through the animal's brain.

"You _must_ take his tusks," Jackson went on. "It would be simply idiotic not to carry home the trophies of your first elephant. That's a job for Sher Jang."

"Where is he?" Forrester asked.

"Ay, where?" Mackenzie echoed. "He's a queer sort of s.h.i.+kari to run from an elephant."

"We can't fling a stone at him over that," Forrester remarked, with a laugh. "Let's get back to camp, and send him up. I dare say the men would relish elephant meat for supper."

As they turned towards the camp, the Chinaman's strange words recurred to Forrester's mind.

"I say, you fellows, there _is_ something mighty queer about those Chinamen," he said. "The youngster was running with me, and after I had shot the elephant he began to tell me things--not in what Bob calls his snivelling style; he seemed a new man altogether. He said they're not political refugees at all."

"Eh! I thought as much," Mackenzie put in. "They're criminals."

"I don't know. He said the elder man was a servant in his father's house, and his father is a mandarin, governor of some place or other.

The servant has some sort of a hold over the fellow. But just as he was getting to the most interesting part of his story, he suddenly broke off, whispered that the man was calling him, and looked as terrified as if he'd seen a ghost. I asked him to go on, but he turned away, stretched out his hands like that," he ill.u.s.trated the gesture, "and began to stumble back like a blind man. Didn't you see him as you came through the copse?"

"I caught sight of him, but didn't notice him particularly," said Jackson. "What do you make of it? Is he cracked?"

"Upon my word I should have thought so, only he spoke sensibly enough.

I'll see if I can get more out of him presently. The other man doesn't know English, so the young one can tell us anything he likes without his being any the wiser."

On emerging from the copse they saw that the Nagas had collected in a group up the hill, evidently awaiting a.s.surance that all danger was past. Hamid Gul was helping Sher Jang to re-erect the flattened tent.

Near by, the elder Chinaman sat cross-legged on a rock, and the younger stood before him in the att.i.tude of a suppliant.

As the three men approached the tent, Sher Jang came to them.

"I have shot the elephant," Forrester said to him. "Go up presently and cut him up. We'll keep the tusks. Why didn't you come with me?"

"I watched, sahib," the man replied.

"But watching is not work for a s.h.i.+kari."

"Sometimes it is, sahib. Why did not the stranger yonder run with the rest?"

"What do you mean?"

"He sat on the rock where he sits now, sahib. The elephant pa.s.sed within a few feet of him, but he did not move. He sat there, and his eyes were fixed like gla.s.s. I thought: why is he so still, like a Buddha in stone? And I stayed to watch him; it seemed good to me, sahib."

"And what did you see?"

"No more than I have said, sahib, except that presently the young stranger came back like a blind beggar feeling his way through the bazar. Then the elder man smiled, and his smile was like the grin of a tiger. That is all, sahib."

"Well, get the tent up. Is the pole broken?"

"We have spliced it with rope, sahib. That simpleton," indicating Hamid, "wrung his hands and declared the pole useless, but I showed him the way."

The three men went on towards the Chinamen. At their approach the elder man rapped out a few words in a stern and peremptory tone to his companion, then rose to his feet with a respectful salutation to the white men. Forrester acknowledged it, and, turning at once to the younger man, asked him to continue the story he had so abruptly broken off. A pitiful look of distress came into the lad's eyes; his lips moved, but not a sound issued from them.

"Come, there's nothing to be afraid of," Forrester urged. "You may speak quite freely."

"Forget what I said, sir," the lad muttered. "It was false. I beg you think no evil of my kind friend."

His voice hardly rose above a whisper; every word seemed to be wrung from him.

"But surely there is something in it," Forrester persisted. "Was your friend a servant in your father's house? You did not invent that?"

The lad cast a look at his companion that might have been interpreted as terror or anxiety. The elder man did not return the glance, but stood beside him with a mien suggesting patient forbearance or even absence of mind.

"I do not know what I said," the young man replied slowly, like one talking in his sleep. "I was excited after the great peril I had escaped, my mind was troubled, and my tongue spoke foolishness. Pardon me, I pray you."

Seeing that nothing more was to be got out of the lad, Forrester turned away with his companions.

"There's some mystery here," he said, when they were out of earshot.

"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked, noticing a strange look in Jackson's face.

"I don't know: I feel as if this were all a dream--a queer sort of fuzzy feeling in my head."

"I feel puzzled enough," said Forrester. "Why should the fellow make out that he was telling lies? It looks as if he's mortally afraid of the other man, but I can't make it out, for the chap doesn't know English, and wouldn't understand, whatever was said. What do you say, Mac?"

"There's no call to say anything," Mackenzie replied.

"There's the canny Scot," Forrester said with a laugh. "You'll think all the more, I suppose."

"I'm thinking they're worth watching," was Mackenzie's answer.

Next morning a slight change was made in the order of the march.

Mackenzie asked Jackson to go ahead with Forrester, while he brought up the rear.

"I don't mind, but what's your reason?" Jackson asked.

"I just wish to contemplate the c.h.i.n.kies from the rear," was the reply.

Whatever the result of his examination was, Mackenzie said nothing about it.

Towards mid-day the snow-clad peaks of a mountain range opened up ahead of the party; although in the clear atmosphere they seemed to be only a few miles distant, the nearest was probably fifty miles away. The intervening country was a series of undulations, bare stretches of rock, here and there deeply fissured, alternating with thickly wooded valleys and dense jungle. Ever since they left Dibrugarh the party had been steadily climbing, and the higher they rose, the less their progress was impeded by undergrowth; and the lower temperature made their exertions less fatiguing. But the white men were more and more impressed with the courage and endurance which Captain Redfern had shown in traversing this wild region.

They kept a keen look-out for hills answering to the names he had given them, for they had no other landmarks by which to direct their course.

It was impossible to believe that they were peaks of the snowy range so far ahead: four days would not have sufficed for the covering of so immense a distance. Forrester was already feeling very doubtful of the possibility of distinguis.h.i.+ng the hills, when Sher Jang suddenly pointed to the eastern end of a smaller range that crossed the prospect perhaps twenty miles away. It was a precipice falling away abruptly to the general level from a height of two or three thousand feet, and the contours of the scarp bore a strong resemblance to a monkey's face.

Forrester swept his eyes along the range from east to west, and gave a cry of delight when he distinguished at the western end a rounded eminence shaped like the hump of a camel.

"We're on the right track," he said. "We shall have to round that range, then cut away northward to find the falls. Probably they won't be so easy to discover."