Part 30 (1/2)
The grim face was before him, two steady hands at work on him, pulling back his collar, taking one of Skag's hands after another--looking even between the fingers, feeling his thighs.
”I can't find that he cut you, Lad,” he said gently.
Skag pushed him away. Carlin was moaning.
”I'm thinking your lad's sound, deerie,” M'Cord called to her. ”A minute more, to be sure.” . . .
He kept a trailing hold of Skag's wrist, staring a last minute in his eyes.
No break anywhere in the younger man's flesh.
The afterglow was thickening. A servant came down the path to call them to dinner. The servant had never seen such a spectacle--the Hakima sitting with Hand-of-a-G.o.d and Son-of-Power, together--on the lawn already wet with dew--their knees almost touching. . . .
”The like's not been known before, Lad--even of a man with a sword,”
Malcolm M'Cord was saying. ”You must have stood up to him two minutes.
No swordsman has done as much. . . . And it was only a _lakri_ you had--and a swordsman's blade goes soft and flat against a cobra's scales! . . . You see, they take wings when the fighting rage flows into them. It's like wings, sir. . . . Yes, you'll have a lame arm where the hood grazed. It couldn't have been the drive of the head or he would have bitten through--”
Even Skag, as he glanced into Carlin's face from time to time, forgot that Hand-of-a-G.o.d had done it again--one more king cobra with a patched |head and a life and death story to be added to the sunny cabinet in the bungalow. . . . Carlin rose to lead them to dinner at last, but Malcolm shook his head.
”On you go, you two. I'll sit out a bit in the lamplight, just here by the playhouse door. . . . She'll be looking for him soon. . . . She won't be far. She won't be long coming--to look for him. . . . She'd find him and then set out to look for you, Lad.”
The lights of the bungalow windows were like vague cloths upon the lawn. . . . Carlin and Skag hadn't thought of dinner. They were in the shadow of the deep verandah. Once Carlin whispered:
”I loved the way he said 'Lad' to you.”
It was hours afterwards that the shot was heard. . . . Carlin was closer. He felt her s.h.i.+vering. He could not be sure of the words, yet the spirit of them never left his heart:
”If I were she--and I had found you so--upon the lawn--I should want Hand-of-a-G.o.d to wait for me--like that!”
CHAPTER XI
_Elephant Concerns_
”Only the altogether ignorant do not know that the women of my line have been chaste.”
It was the youngest mahout of the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades of Hurda, who spoke.
They sat in comfort under the feathery branches of tall tamarisk trees, smoking their water-pipes, after the sunset meal. It was the time for talk.
”A good beginning,” said a very old man near by, ”it being wise, in case of doubt, to stop the mouth of--who might speak afterward.”
”And the men of my line,” proceeded the youngest mahout, without embarra.s.sment, ”have been ill.u.s.trious--save those who are forgotten.
They all have been of High Himalaya; yet I am the least among you. I render homage of Hill blood, hot and full, to every one of you--my elders--because you are all mahouts of High Himalaya, even as my fathers were.”
The men of the stockades bowed their heads in grave acknowledgment.