to show my headman. I come in the morning.’
‘By which road?’ said Kim.
‘By the road from the City. There is but one, and then we return to Creighton Sahib. I have saved thee a beating.’
‘Allah! What is a beating when the very head is loose on the shoulders?’
Kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house, keeping close to the walls, and headed away from the station for a mile or so. Then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at leisure, for he needed time to invent a story if any of Mahbub’s retainers asked questions.
They were camped on a piece of waste ground beside the railway, and, being natives, had not, of course, unloaded the two trucks in which Mahbub’s animals stood among a consignment of country-breds bought by the Bombay tram-company. The headman, a broken-down, consumptive-looking Mohammedan, promptly challenged Kim, but was pacified at sight of Mahbub’s sign-manual.
‘The Hajji has of his favour given me service,’ said Kim testily. ‘If this be doubted, wait till he comes in the morning. Meantime, a place by the fire.’
Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must raise on every occasion. It died down, and Kim lay out behind the little knot of Mahbub’s followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashen Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St. Xavier’s all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication-table in English.
‘I am very old,’ he thought sleepily. ‘Every month I become a year more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub’s message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white regiment I was very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses’ pedigrees, or maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to Benares.’ The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. He was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble round the fire. It came from behind the iron-skinned horse-truck.
‘He is not here then?’
‘Where should he be but roystering in the City. Who looks for a rat in a frog-pond? Come away. He is not our man.’
‘He must not go back beyond the Passes a second time. It is the order.’
‘Hire some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.’
‘Except the woman. It must be more certain; and remember the price upon his head.’
‘Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border. If it were in Peshawur now!’
‘Yes—in Peshawur,’ the second voice sneered. ‘Peshawur, full of his blood-kin—full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will hide. Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well.’
‘Then what is the plan?’
‘O fool, have I not told it a hundred times. Wait till he comes to lie down, and then one sure shot. The trucks are between us and pursuit. We have but to run back over the lines and go our way. They will not see whence the shot came. Wait here at least till the dawn. What manner of faquir art thou to shiver at a little watching?’
‘Oho!’ thought Kim, behind close-shut eyes. ‘Once again it is Mahbub. Indeed a white stallion’s pedigree is not a good thing to peddle to Sahibs! Or maybe Mahbub has been selling other news. Now what is to do, Kim? I know not where Mahbub houses, and if he comes here before the dawn they will shoot him. That would be no profit for thee, Kim. And this is not a matter for the police. That would be no profit for Mahbub; and,’ he giggled almost aloud, ‘I do not remember any lesson at Nucklao which will help me. Allah! Here is Kim and yonder are they. First then, Kim must wake and go away, so that they shall not suspect. A bad dream wakes a man—thus——’
He threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly with the terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of the Asiatic roused by nightmare.
‘Urr-urr-urr-urr! Ya-la-la-la-la! Narain! The churel! The churel!’
A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment.
Louder rose Kim’s quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet and staggered off sleepily, while the camp cursed him for waking them. Some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care that the whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed himself. After a few minutes he rolled towards the road and stole away into the thick darkness.
He paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped behind it, his chin on a level with the coping-stone. Here he could command all the night-traffic, himself unseen.
Two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off evil spirits. Then rapped the shod feet of a horse.
‘Ah! This is more like Mahbub,’ thought Kim, as the beast shied at the little head above the culvert.
‘Ohé, Mahbub Ali,’ he whispered, ‘have a care!’
The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards the culvert.
‘Never again,’ said Mahbub, ‘will I take a shod horse for night-work. They pick up all the bones and nails in the city.’ He stooped to lift its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim’s. ‘Down—keep down,’ he muttered. ‘The night is full of eyes.’
‘Two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks. They will shoot thee at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head. I heard, sleeping near the horses.’
‘Didst thou see them? … Hold still, Sire of Devils!’ This furiously to the horse.
‘No.’
‘Was one dressed belike as a faquir?’
‘One said to the other, “What manner of a faquir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?”’
‘Good. Go back to the camp and lie down. I do not die to-night.’
Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the ditch till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place, slipped across the road like a weasel, and re-coiled himself in the blanket.
‘At least Mahbub knows,’ he thought contentedly. ‘And certainly he spoke as one expecting it. I do not think those two men will profit by to-night’s watch.’
An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake all night, he slept deeply. Now and again a night train roared along the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental’s indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream through his slumber.
Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that people outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should pursue him for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross the line lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers from behind, summarily slay them. Here, he reflected with sorrow, another branch of the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel Creighton, might demand explanations which would be hard to supply; and he knew that south the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is made about a corpse or so. He had not been troubled in this way since he sent Kim to Umballa with the message, and hoped that suspicion had been finally diverted.
Then