Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (26 page)

"Think you he's near?" Ram whispered restlessly.

"No, lord. The monkeys' chatter will still when he comes."

The moon was waning and Ram dozing when the sergeant pressed his wrist warningly. At once he became aware of an eerie stillness, broken only by the nervous bleating of the goat.

"There, in the shadow." Nur Mohammed breathed.

There came a blur of movement across the clearing and an almost human scream from the goat. The Moslem fired; Ram followed suit.

"Again!" He took up his second gun.

Nur Mohammed aimed, but only a hollow click resulted, "The flint fell out!" he groaned.

"Here!" Ram thrust his own piece at him and took the useless one. "Give fire!"

Instead, the other leaped to ground, waving the weapon and shouting. As he fumbled for a new flint, Ram yelled for him to come back, but the havildar ran toward the beast, which snarled and spat over the dead goat. Halting at close range, he fired.

A soul-shaking roar answered, and Ram expected the tiger to leap. Instead, it turned and ran.

"Swiftly, raj, I struck him hard!" Leaping and yelling, Nur Mohammed bolted across the clearing in pursuit.

The new flint now in place, Ram followed. The eastern sky was brightening as he entered a treacherously dim pathway, guided only by the Moslem's crashing ahead. He cursed his encumbering European clothes and boots. Vines whipped his face, tall grass tangled his feet. A shot sounded. He ran on, but as the path wound sharply around a tree he tripped and fell, his gun discharging.

Though half stunned, he knew he had fallen over something yielding and warmly wet. The tiger? Nerves crawling, he leaped up and saw—Nur Mohammed! The havildars face was gone and his chest ripped open. Ram looked about wildly for his musket. There were two; his own intact, the other with its barrel bent and the stock snapped off. Shakily he drew his pistols. They could kill men, but could they serve against a tiger?

He listened tautly for sounds of the man-eater. There were none, but along the path ahead the growing light showed dark splashes, as if something bleeding had been dragged off. He looked down at the dead man again, half expecting to find a limb gone. No. What then was the brute carrying—the goat?

Shivering, he reloaded his gun and began following the bloody trail. Here it had been smeared over a stone, there it had left a red runnel in the dust. By the time the sun was up, the path curved upward and the vegetation thinned out to coarse grass, thorn and cacti. Then the red trail ended. Ram halted warily. Ah! The bagh had left the path, there, where the grass flattened. Heart thumping, he followed, a pace at a time. The ground kept rising and showed out-croppings of eroded rock.

He froze. Twenty paces ahead, at the base of a sheer rock face, was the tiger! He wanted to run, but his legs refused him. In desperation he aimed at the great striped form, behind the left shoulder. He fired, threw down the flintlock and drew his pistols. But why was the beast lying turned away from him? It should be facing him, ready to spring.

He swore. He'd shot a thing already dead! The bagh's intestines were half out of its belly and dragging behind. Nur Mohammed had done that. When the tiger had turned on him, the havildar must have hit it point-blank before it had crushed him and his gun.

Ram measured it from nose to tail tip. Over twelve feet! The broken, rotted teeth showed its great age. He also noticed that its head was in the opening of a cave in the rock face. Startled, he moved backward. What if its mate and cubs were within?

He twisted dry grass into a rough torch, lighted it with his rinder-box, then warily thrust its flaming end within the opening. When there were no growls, he felt sure only the dead male had laired there. But the torch did reveal a broken earthenware pot. The tale of the

neglected hermit who had entered into the tiger came to his mind. His spine turned to ice.

Yet curiosity sent him stooping through the low entrance. Inside, surprisingly, he could stand upright, but at once he was overcome by a nauseating stench. His foot touched a gnawed human head, with some hair still adhering. Gagging, he saw bones everywhere, some obviously animal, but here was a human pelvis, there a crushed forearm and hand. But the walls, they were hewn. The hermit's cave!

He was about to back out from the ghastly smell, when an unusual angle on the far wall made him look closer—a stone door, standing ajar. He peered through the crack and gave a yell. Two baleful eyes glittered at him—the tiger's mate! In panic, he fired; but when the smoke cleared, the eyes still glared. He fired his second pistol, then raced back into the daylight.

When his nerves steadied, he remembered that animals fear fire. Making and lighting two more torches, he went back in and tugged at the door. It opened, the ease of its swing showing it was well counterbalanced, and there was revealed an inner room. He laughed weakly. The eyes belonged to Ganesha, the Elephant god! He had seen many facsimiles of it, though they had been in clay, whereas this one was of metal, with eyes and a necklace of glass.

His nerves jumped again. Beside the door jamb squatted a man with thick, matted hair, pipestem arms and legs. He must have been the hermit, dead so long that his leathery skin alone held his bones together. Doubtless he had been trapped inside by the tiger and had left the door open just a little for air; but then had died, probably from starvation.

The Ganesha stood on a rock ledge. About thirty inches high, one of the pistol balls had gouged a bright furrow, revealing it had been cast in brass. Ram grinned at its dust-encrusted shape. Only Hindus could have designed anything so bizarre as a god with a chubby baby-boy body, four arms, an elephant's high-domed head and trunk and mocking little glass eyes. But could mere glass sparkle so, throwing off countless faceted glints?

He remembered the gems in the rajah's treasury and his blood raced. The necklace? He snapped the thin metal chain that linked the clamped stones, each fiery in the torchlight. In size some

ranged as large as his thumbnail. Pocketing them, he worked his knife point under one eye. Ecod, it was a diamond!

The metal of the socket was strangely soft. His hand shook as he worked deeper. The eye dropped to the ground. Scooping it up, he turned it in his fingers, admiring its beauty, its great size. Now for its fellow! This, too, came free, and however deeply his knife gouged the metal's color remained the same. He tried to lift the idol from the ledge, but it was too heavy. His brain reeled and he was soaked with sweat. Could it be gold?

But, now the tiger was dead, suppose the villagers came to the cave and found the gold? Backing out, he swung the door closed. It fitted so well it was hard to tell it was there at all.

Outside, he sank down weakly, realizing that if the stones were real and the idol of solid gold, he could go home, buy a dozen more Dales views and a colonelcy as well. "No more agues! No more monsoons!" he cried aloud at the burning noon sun.

He worked back along his own tracks to the path. As he struck out along it, he was too excited to worry about other jungle beasts. But why should a golden Ganesha with diamond eyes be hidden in an obscure cave? Fool! It was only brass and its eyes glass! Still, Baja would know. If the eyes were gems, he'd give him one. Chanda must, of course, have the necklace. Comforted, he hurried on.

At last he saw men ahead, standing over Nur Mohammed's corpse; Rowati Shikari and three dragoons. Good, they would bury the body decently. Suddenly weary, he hoped the men had brought Chota with them. Seeing him in turn, they shouted and waved.

"Wah, Lord, we feared the Evil One had carried you off, after he had killed the Moslem!" Rowati hailed.

"The bagh is slain." Ram hoped to discourage questions, but in their joy the men demanded to know how the Evil One had died.

"Did I not say the hermit's spirit was in it?" the shikari boasted, when Ram had told them. "Arre, we must give generous donations lest it enter into the body of another bagh."

Ram suggested they go and skin the tiger at once, so that he could divert their attention from the door. But Rowati shuddered at such desecration, and even the three dragoons looked uneasy.

"Raj, did not the Evil One, dying, regain his lair? It is a place accursed and none should approach it—never! Jackals may feast on the bagh's flesh, but the gosseins spirit still lingers there."

The burial of Nur Mohammed became a problem for Ram; his three dragoons were Brahmins, not to be defiled by touching a dead Moslem, and even Rowati claimed to be of too high a caste. So, fuming, he made them dig a grave beside the pat' and he dragged the corpse into it, its shattered head lying toward Mecca.

Leaving the senior soldier in command at Chirawali, he rode back to his own bungalow, arriving before nightfall. There, Chanda greeted him joyously, as ever. After he had bathed and eaten and the servants had gone, she kneaded and anointed his tired body until new vigor flowed, and they renewed their love passionately.

Later, as they lay on a silken divan, with only the starlight peeping through the half-closed chicks, he lit a lamp and took the necklace from his discarded breeches. She'd know. Lud, she knew everything, this glorious lass that Fate had given him! He dropped the stones beside her, his heart pounding.

"A gift for my Soul's Delight," he breathed. "Is it worthy?"

With a cry of pleasure, she cascaded them from hand to hand. Then she gasped and held them closer to the light. "Aie, lord, I cannot have these! They are the ransom of a prince!"

Weak with relief, he lay back, laughing. "They are of value?"

"Diamonds of the finest water, my raj. Never have I seen such beauty!" she said, awed. "May I know whence they came?"

After he had told her, he showed her the two "eyes," which set her gasping. "Ganesha!" she cried. "Many donate great wealth that He Who Is Consulted at The Outset of Every Enterprise may be represented in the purest metals and the finest gems. But not even in the Temple of Juggernaut is there one such as this."

"Then you think he's made of gold?"

"Heart of Mine, who would give such eyes to a brass god? The hermit must have been most holy—or else a very great thief."

He put the necklace around her throat and watched, fascinated, as her every breath drew shafts of fire from it. Then, impishly, he ran caressing fingers over her swelling breasts. "You eat too much," he smiled fondly. "Soon you'll be as fat as a Moslem girl."

She clung to him. "O my raj, Siva has blessed me! Thy seed quickens within me. Vishnu grant I may bear thee a man child."

When he had descended to the lower foothills, Ram used his spyglass, Baja's message had told that one of the company's Europeans would deliver the cargo. Who? he wondered. Telling Jakes to bring on the column, he spurred Battle. Soon he was cantering across dried-up rice paddies toward the riverside camp and a figure in European dress.

"Fred!" he recognized. "Fred Morgan!" Dismounting, he pumped the Welshman's hand. "Lud, 'tis fine to see ye! How's all at the factory? What news from Ostend? Am I court-martialed?"

"Grand to see you too!" the other returned cordially. "No, all's well and I've no firing party to shoot ye. Come out of this cursed heat."

As they walked toward a double skinned tent, Ram looked around. "Is Baja Rao with you? I don't see him."

"The glass-eyed Maratha? Aye, and he's as arrogant as a rajah."

"Bajaji!" Ram bawled. "Idhar ao\ Juldi haro!" As Baja came from a tent, he thought: Wait till he hears of the Ganesha!

"Bhaeer Baja welcomed. "You've brought laborers and carts? There'll be much sweat, getting our goods over the mountains."

"They're just behind," Ram pointed. "Have cooking fires ready. We've marched swiftly these past five days."

He turned back to Morgan, noting how fever had yellowed him. Yet he seemed jovial as they entered his tent and he poured wine.

"Drink deep," he urged. "I brought plenty to last till I get back. We must toast our re-meeting, hey?"

"WTiy did you have to come all this way?" Ram wanted to know. "Surely Baja could have brought the stuff himself—not that I'm not cursedly glad to see ye."

"That one-eyed soor twists Hume around his finger," Fred shrugged. "Showed him enough gold for a king's ransom, but swore he'd not pay a pice till you'd passed on the goods. So here I am, after near wrecking in Bengal Bay, transshipping the cargo into light craft to work two hundred miles up this nightmare river that's so shallow half the time we were overside pushing the boats."

Ram chuckled. "Tell me about the factory."

"Making rupees for most." Morgan looked sour. "Hume says he's watching my interest, but half the time I'm drilling sepoys. Miiller, from Coblom, commands now, look ye. Ecod, I owe ye one for trepanning me from the H.E.I.C! I thought I'd make a fortune, but

likely I'll leave my bones in this cursed land," Yet he admitted that, thanks to Hume, he had already made a thousand guineas by trade.

"How's McNeil?" Ram really wanted to hear about Annie and Bea; he was no longer interested in them, of course—Chanda was worth a dozen such—but he'd be glad to know how they fared.

"That Scotch heather-eater gets all the plums!" Fred growled. "He's always at the mansion, with Bea making sheep's eyes at him."

Inconstant Bea, Ram thought, cynically. "And what of Annie?"

"Bah, she's not half the beauty Bea is, but if I'd a brain in my head I'd wed her and get my hands on that dowry she's always boasting of." Fred drained his glass and ordered tifEn brought in.

The meal set him grumbling again. "The way a man pigs it, traveling! Always kid or tough mutton. Oh, for a good sirloin! What a land, where they worship a cow, instead of eating it."

Ram made no comment, feeling awkward, after all these months, to eat at a table European style; besides, the unaccustomed wine was making him feel muzzy, Fred, however, had turned to brandy to wash down the distasteful mutton. At last he belched gustily.

"Remember Red-Belly Rale? He has been transferred as major to Madras, Heard it the last time I was at Fort William,"