Part 14

‘The tiger that killed,’ he began, without any salute, ‘has gone to drink, and now he is asleep under a rock beyond that hill.’ His voice was clear and bell-like, utterly different from the usual whine of the native, and his face as he lifted it in the sunshine might have been that of an angel strayed among the woods. The widow ceased wailing above the corpse and looked round-eyed at the stranger, returning to her duty with double strength.

‘Shall I show the Sahib?’ he said simply.

‘If thou art sure--’ Gisborne began.

‘Sure indeed. I saw him only an hour ago--the dog. It is before his time to eat man’s flesh. He has yet a dozen sound teeth in his evil head.’

The men kneeling above the footprints slunk off quietly, for fear that Gisborne should ask them to go with him, and the young man laughed a little to himself.

‘Come, Sahib,’ he cried, and turned on his heel, walking before his companion.

‘Not so fast. I cannot keep that pace,’ said the white man. ‘Halt there. Thy face is new to me.’

‘That may be. I am but newly come into this forest.’

‘From what village?’

‘I am without a village. I came from over there.’ He flung out his arm towards the north.

‘A gipsy then?’

‘No, Sahib. I am a man without caste, and for matter of that without a father.’

‘What do men call thee?’

‘Mowgli, Sahib. And what is the Sahib’s name?’

‘I am the warden of this _rukh_--Gisborne is my name.’

‘How? Do they number the trees and the blades of grass here?’

‘Even so; lest such gipsy fellows as thou set them afire.’

‘I! I would not hurt the jungle for any gift. That is my home.’

He turned to Gisborne with a smile that was irresistible, and held up a warning hand.

‘Now, Sahib, we must go a little quietly. There is no need to wake the dog, though he sleeps heavily enough. Perhaps it were better if I went forward alone and drove him down wind to the Sahib.’

‘Allah! Since when have tigers been driven to and fro like cattle by naked men?’ said Gisborne, aghast at the man’s audacity.

He laughed again softly. ‘Nay, then, come along with me and shoot him in thy own way with the big English rifle.’

Gisborne stepped in his guide’s track, twisted, crawled, and clomb and stooped and suffered through all the many agonies of a jungle-stalk. He was purple and dripping with sweat when Mowgli at the last bade him raise his head and peer over a blue baked rock near a tiny hill pool. By the water-side lay the tiger extended and at ease, lazily licking clean again an enormous elbow and fore paw. He was old, yellow-toothed, and not a little mangy, but in that setting and sunshine, imposing enough.

Gisborne had no false ideas of sport where the man-eater was concerned. This thing was vermin, to be killed as speedily as possible. He waited to recover his breath, rested the rifle on the rock and whistled. The brute’s head turned slowly not twenty feet from the rifle-mouth, and Gisborne planted his shots, business-like, one behind the shoulder and the other a little below the eye. At that range the heavy bones were no guard against the rending bullets.

‘Well, the skin was not worth keeping at any rate,’ said he as the smoke cleared away and the beast lay kicking and gasping in the last agony.

‘A dog’s death for a dog,’ said Mowgli quietly. ‘Indeed there is nothing in that carrion worth taking away.’

‘The whiskers. Dost thou not take the whiskers?’ said Gisborne, who knew how the rangers valued such things.

‘I? Am I a lousy _shikarri_ of the jungle to paddle with a tiger’s muzzle? Let him lie. Here come his friends already.’

A dropping kite whistled shrilly overhead, as Gisborne snapped out the empty shells, and wiped his face.

‘And if thou art not a _shikarri_, where didst thou learn thy knowledge of the tiger-folk?’ said he. ‘No tracker could have done better.’

‘I hate all tigers,’ said Mowgli curtly. ‘Let the Sahib give me his gun to carry. Arré, it is a very fine one. And where does the Sahib go now?’

‘To my house.’

‘May I come? I have never yet looked within a white man’s house.’

Gisborne returned to his bungalow, Mowgli striding noiselessly before him, his brown skin glistening in the sunlight.

He stared curiously at the verandah and the two chairs there, fingered the split bamboo shade curtains with suspicion, and entered, looking always behind him. Gisborne loosed a curtain to keep out the sun. It dropped with a clatter, but almost before it touched the flagging of the verandah Mowgli had leaped clear and was standing with heaving chest in the open.

‘It is a trap,’ he said quickly.

Gisborne laughed. ‘White men do not trap men. Indeed thou art altogether of the jungle.’

‘I see,’ said Mowgli, ‘it has neither catch nor fall. I--I never beheld these things till to-day.’

He came in on tiptoe and stared with large eyes at the furniture of the two rooms. Abdul Gafur, who was laying lunch, looked at him with deep disgust.

‘So much trouble to eat, and so much trouble to lie down after you have eaten!’ said Mowgli with a grin. ‘We do better in the jungle. It is very wonderful. There are very many rich things here. Is the Sahib not afraid that he may be robbed? I have never seen such wonderful things.’ He was staring at a dusty Benares brass plate on a ricketty bracket.

‘Only a thief from the jungle would rob here,’ said Abdul Gafur, setting down a plate with a clatter. Mowgli opened his eyes wide and stared at the white-bearded Mohammedan.

‘In my country when goats bleat very loud we cut their throats,’ he returned cheerfully. ‘But have no fear, thou, I am going.’

He turned and disappeared into the _rukh_. Gisborne looked after him with a laugh that ended in a little sigh. There was not much outside his regular work to interest the Forest Officer, and this son of the forest, who seemed to know tigers as other people know dogs, would have been a diversion.

‘He’s a most wonderful chap,’ thought Gisborne; ‘he’s like the illustrations in the Classical Dictionary. I wish I could have made him a gun-boy. There’s no fun in shikarring alone, and this fellow would have been a perfect _shikarri_. I wonder what in the world he is.’

That evening he sat on the verandah under the stairs smoking as he wondered. A puff of smoke curled from the pipe-bowl. As it cleared he was aware of Mowgli sitting with arms crossed on the verandah edge. A ghost could not have drifted up more noiselessly. Gisborne started and let the pipe drop.

‘There is no man to talk to out there in the _rukh_,’ said Mowgli; ‘I came here, therefore.’ He picked up the pipe and returned it to Gisborne.

‘Oh,’ said Gisborne, and after a long pause, ‘What news is there in the _rukh_? Hast thou found another tiger?’

‘The nilghai are changing their feeding-ground against the new moon, as is their custom. The pig are feeding near the Kanye river now, because they will not feed with the nilghai, and one of their sows has been killed by a leopard in the long grass at the water-head. I do not know any more.’

‘And how didst thou know all these things?’ said Gisborne, leaning forward and looking at the eyes that glittered in the starlight.

‘How should I not know? The nilghai has his custom and his use, and a child knows that pig will not feed with him.’

‘I do not know this,’ said Gisborne.

‘Tck! Tck! And thou art in charge--so the men of the huts tell me--in charge of all this _rukh_.’ He laughed to himself.

‘It is well enough to talk and to tell child’s tales,’ Gisborne retorted, nettled at the chuckle. ‘To say that this and that goes on in the _rukh_. No man can deny thee.’

‘As for the sow’s carcass, I will show thee her bones to-morrow,’ Mowgli returned, absolutely unmoved. ‘Touching the matter of the nilghai, if the Sahib will sit here very still I will drive one nilghai up to this place, and by listening to the sounds carefully, the Sahib can tell whence that nilghai has been driven.’

‘Mowgli, the jungle has made thee mad,’ said Gisborne. ‘Who can drive nilghai?’

‘Still--sit still, then. I go.’

‘Gad, the man’s a ghost!’ said Gisborne; for Mowgli had faded out into the darkness and there was no sound of feet. The _rukh_ lay out in great velvety folds in the uncertain shimmer of the star-dust--so still that the least little wandering wind among the tree-tops came up as the sigh of a child sleeping equably. Abdul Gafur in the cook-house was clicking plates together.

‘Be still there!’ shouted Gisborne, and composed himself to listen as a man can who is used to the stillness of the _rukh_. It had been his custom, to preserve his self-respect in his isolation, to dress for dinner each night, and the stiff white shirt-front creaked with his regular breathing till he shifted a little sideways. Then the tobacco of a somewhat foul pipe began to purr, and he threw the pipe from him. Now, except for the night-breath in the _rukh_, everything was dumb.

From an inconceivable distance, and drawled through immeasurable darkness, came the faint, faint echo of a wolf’s howl. Then silence again for, it seemed, long hours. At last, when his legs below the knees had lost all feeling, Gisborne heard something that might have been a crash far off through the undergrowth. He doubted till it was repeated again and yet again.

‘That’s from the west,’ he muttered; ‘there’s something on foot there.’ The noise increased--crash on crash, plunge on plunge--with the thick grunting of a hotly pressed nilghai, flying in panic terror and taking no heed to his course.

A shadow blundered out from between the tree-trunks, wheeled back, turned again grunting, and with a clatter on the bare ground dashed up almost within reach of his hand. It was a bull nilghai, dripping with dew--his withers hung with a torn trail of creeper, his eyes shining in the light from the house. The creature checked at sight of the man, and fled along the edge of the _rukh_ till he melted in the darkness. The first idea in Gisborne’s bewildered mind was the indecency of thus dragging out for inspection the big blue bull of the _rukh_--the putting him through his paces in the night which should have been his own.

Then said a smooth voice at his ear as he stood staring:

‘He came from the water-head where he was leading the herd. From the west he came. Does the Sahib believe now, or shall I bring up the herd to be counted? The Sahib is in charge of this _rukh_.’

Mowgli had reseated himself on the verandah, breathing a little quickly. Gisborne looked at him with open mouth. ‘How was that accomplished?’ he said.

‘The Sahib saw. The bull was driven--driven as a buffalo is. Ho! ho! He will have a fine tale to tell when he returns to the herd.’

‘That is a new trick to me. Canst thou run as swiftly as the nilghai, then?’

‘The Sahib has seen. If the Sahib needs more knowledge at any time of the movings of the game, I, Mowgli, am here. This is a good _rukh_, and I shall stay.’

‘Stay then, and if thou hast need of a meal at any time my servants shall give thee one.’

‘Yes, indeed, I am fond of cooked food,’ Mowgli answered quickly. ‘No man may say that I do not eat boiled and roast as much as any other man. I will come for that meal. Now, on my part, I promise that the Sahib shall sleep safely in his house by night, and no thief shall break in to carry away his so rich treasures.’

The conversation ended itself on Mowgli’s abrupt departure. Gisborne sat long smoking, and the upshot of his thoughts was that in Mowgli he had found at last that ideal ranger and forest-guard for whom he and the Department were always looking.

‘I must get him into the Government service somehow. A man who can drive nilghai would know more about the _rukh_ than fifty men. He’s a miracle--a _lusus naturæ_--but a forest-guard he must be if he’ll only settle down in one place,’ said Gisborne.

Abdul Gafur’s opinion was less favourable. He confided to Gisborne at bedtime that strangers from God-knew-where were more than likely to be professional thieves, and that he personally did not approve of naked outcastes who had not the proper manner of addressing white people. Gisborne laughed and bade him go to his quarters, and Abdul Gafur retreated growling. Later in the night he found occasion to rise up and beat his thirteen-year-old daughter. Nobody knew the cause of dispute, but Gisborne heard the cry.

Through the days that followed Mowgli came and went like a shadow. He had established himself and his wild house-keeping close to the bungalow, but on the edge of the _rukh_, where Gisborne, going out on to the verandah for a breath of cool air, would see him sometimes sitting in the moonlight, his forehead on his knees, or lying out along the fling of a branch, closely pressed to it as some beast of the night. Thence Mowgli would throw him a salutation and bid him sleep at ease, or descending would weave prodigious stories of the manners of the beasts in the _rukh_. Once he wandered into the stables and was found looking at the horses with deep interest.

‘That,’ said Abdul Gafur pointedly, ‘is sure sign that some day he will steal one. Why, if he lives about this house, does he not take an honest employment? But no, he must wander up and down like a loose camel, turning the heads of fools and opening the jaws of the unwise to folly.’ So Abdul Gafur would give harsh orders to Mowgli when they met, would bid him fetch water and pluck fowls, and Mowgli, laughing unconcernedly, would obey.

‘He has no caste,’ said Abdul Gafur. ‘He will do anything. Look to it, Sahib, that he does not do too much. A snake is a snake, and a jungle-gipsy is a thief till the death.’

‘Be silent, then,’ said Gisborne. ‘I allow thee to correct thy own household if there is not too much noise, because I know thy customs and use. My custom thou dost not know. The man is without doubt a little mad.’

‘Very little mad indeed,’ said Abdul Gafur. ‘But we shall see what comes thereof.’

A few days later on his business took Gisborne into the _rukh_ for three days. Abdul Gafur being old and fat was left at home. He did not approve of lying up in rangers’ huts, and was inclined to levy contributions in his master’s name of grain and oil and milk from those who could ill afford such benevolences. Gisborne rode off early one dawn a little vexed that his man of the woods was not at the verandah to accompany him. He liked him--liked his strength, fleetness, and silence of foot, and his ever-ready open smile; his ignorance of all forms of ceremony and salutations, and the child-like tales that he would tell (and Gisborne would credit now) of what the game was doing in the _rukh_. After an hour’s riding through the greenery, he heard a rustle behind him, and Mowgli trotted at his stirrup.

‘We have a three days’ work toward,’ said Gisborne, ‘among the new trees.’

‘Good,’ said Mowgli. ‘It is always good to cherish young trees. They make cover if the beasts leave them alone. We must shift the pig again.’

‘Again? How?’ Gisborne smiled.

‘Oh, they were rooting and tusking among the young _sal_ last night, and I drove them off. Therefore I did not come to the verandah this morning. The pig should not be on this side of the _rukh_ at all. We must keep them below the head of the Kanye river.’

‘If a man could herd clouds he might do that thing; but, Mowgli, if as thou sayest, thou art herder in the _rukh_ for no gain and for no pay----’

‘It is the Sahib’s _rukh_,’ said Mowgli, quickly looking up. Gisborne nodded thanks and went on: ‘Would it not be better to work for pay from the Government? There is a pension at the end of long service.’

‘Of that I have thought,’ said Mowgli, ‘but the rangers live in huts with shut doors, and all that is all too much a trap to me. Yet I think----’

‘Think well then and tell me later. Here we will stay for breakfast.’

Gisborne dismounted, took his morning meal from his home-made saddle-bags, and saw the day open hot above the _rukh_. Mowgli lay in the grass at his side staring up to the sky.

Presently he said in a lazy whisper: ‘Sahib, is there any order at the bungalow to take out the white mare to-day?’

‘No, she is fat and old and a little lame beside. Why?’

‘She is being ridden now and _not_ slowly on the road that runs to the railway line.’

‘Bah, that is two _koss_ away. It is a wood-pecker.’

Mowgli put up his forearm to keep the sun out of his eyes.

‘The road curves in with a big curve from the bungalow. It is not more than a _koss_, at the farthest, as the kite goes; and sound flies with the birds. Shall we see?’

‘What folly! To run a _koss_ in this sun to see a noise in the forest.’

‘Nay, the pony is the Sahib’s pony. I meant only to bring her here. If she is not the Sahib’s pony, no matter. If she is, the Sahib can do what he wills. She is certainly being ridden hard.’

‘And how wilt thou bring her here, madman?’

‘Has the Sahib forgotten? By the road of the nilghai and no other.’

‘Up then and run if thou art so full of zeal.’

‘Oh, I do not run!’ He put out his hand to sign for silence, and still lying on his back called aloud thrice--with a deep gurgling cry that was new to Gisborne.

‘She will come,’ he said at the end. ‘Let us wait in the shade.’ The long eyelashes drooped over the wild eyes as Mowgli began to doze in the morning hush. Gisborne waited patiently: Mowgli was surely mad, but as entertaining a companion as a lonely Forest Officer could desire.

‘Ho! ho!’ said Mowgli lazily, with shut eyes. ‘He has dropped off. Well, first the mare will come and then the man.’ Then he yawned as Gisborne’s pony stallion neighed. Three minutes later Gisborne’s white mare, saddled, bridled, but riderless, tore into the glade where they were sitting, and hurried to her companion.

‘She is not very warm,’ said Mowgli, ‘but in this heat the sweat comes easily. Presently we shall see her rider, for a man goes more slowly than a horse--especially if he chance to be a fat man and old.’

‘Allah! This is the devil’s work,’ cried Gisborne leaping to his feet, for he heard a yell in the jungle.

‘Have no care, Sahib. He will not be hurt. He also will say that it is devil’s work. Ah! Listen! Who is that?’

It was the voice of Abdul Gafur in an agony of terror, crying out upon unknown things to spare him and his gray hairs.

‘Nay, I cannot move another step,’ he howled. ‘I am old and my turban is lost. Arré! Arré! But I will move. Indeed I will hasten. I will run! Oh, Devils of the Pit, I am a Mussalman!’

The undergrowth parted and gave up Abdul Gafur, turbanless, shoeless, with his waist-cloth unbound, mud and grass in his clutched hands, and his face purple. He saw Gisborne, yelled anew, and pitched forward, exhausted and quivering, at his feet. Mowgli watched him with a sweet smile.

‘This is no joke,’ said Gisborne sternly. ‘The man is like to die, Mowgli.’

‘He will not die. He is only afraid. There was no need that he should have come out of a walk.’

Abdul Gafur groaned and rose up, shaking in every limb.

‘It was witchcraft--witchcraft and devildom!’ he sobbed, fumbling with his hand in his breast. ‘Because of my sin I have been whipped through the woods by devils. It is all finished. I repent. Take them, Sahib!’ He held out a roll of dirty paper.

‘What is the meaning of this, Abdul Gafur?’ said Gisborne, already knowing what would come.

‘Put me in the jail-khana--the notes are all here--but lock me up safely that no devils may follow. I have sinned against the Sahib and his salt which I have eaten; and but for those accursed wood-demons, I might have bought land afar off and lived in peace all my days.’ He beat his head upon the ground in an agony of despair and mortification. Gisborne turned the roll of notes over and over. It was his accumulated back-pay for the last nine months--the roll that lay in the drawer with the home-letters and the recapping-machine. Mowgli watched Abdul Gafur, laughing noiselessly to himself. ‘There is no need to put me on the horse again. I will walk home slowly with the Sahib, and then he can send me under guard to the jail-khana. The Government gives many years for this offence,’ said the butler sullenly.

Loneliness in the _rukh_ affects very many ideas about very many things. Gisborne stared at Abdul Gafur, remembering that he was a very good servant, and that a new butler must be broken into the ways of the house from the beginning, and at the best would be a new face and a new tongue.

‘Listen, Abdul Gafur,’ he said. ‘Thou hast done great wrong, and altogether lost thy _izzat_ and thy reputation. But I think that this came upon thee suddenly.’

‘Allah! I had never desired the notes before. The Evil took me by the throat while I looked.’

‘That also I can believe. Go then back to my house, and when I return I will send the notes by a runner to the Bank, and there shall be no more said. Thou art too old for the jail-khana. Also thy household is guiltless.’

For answer Abdul Gafur sobbed between Gisborne’s cowhide riding-boots.

‘Is there no dismissal then?’ he gulped.

‘That we shall see. It hangs upon thy conduct when we return. Get upon the mare and ride slowly back.’

‘But the devils! The _rukh_ is full of devils.’

‘No matter, my father. They will do thee no more harm unless, indeed, the Sahib’s orders be not obeyed,’ said Mowgli. ‘Then, perchance, they may drive thee home--by the road of the nilghai.’

Abdul Gafur’s lower jaw dropped as he twisted up his waist-cloth, staring at Mowgli.

‘Are they _his_ devils? His devils! And I had thought to return and lay the blame upon this warlock!’

‘That was well thought of, Huzrut; but before we make a trap we see first how big the game is that may fall into it. Now I thought no more than that a man had taken one of the Sahib’s horses. I did not know that the design was to make me a thief before the Sahib, or my devils had haled thee here by the leg. It is not too late now.’

Mowgli looked inquiringly at Gisborne, but Abdul Gafur waddled hastily to the white mare, scrambled on her back and fled; the woodways crashing and echoing behind him.

‘That was well done,’ said Mowgli. ‘But he will fall again unless he holds by the mane.’

‘Now it is time to tell me what these things mean,’ said Gisborne a little sternly. ‘What is this talk of thy devils? How can men be driven up and down the _rukh_ like cattle? Give answer.’

‘Is the Sahib angry because I have saved him his money?’

‘No, but there is trick-work in this that does not please me.’

‘Very good. Now if I rose and stepped three paces into the _rukh_ there is no one, not even the Sahib, could find me till I choose. As I would not willingly do this, so I would not willingly tell. Have patience a little, Sahib, and some day I will show thee everything, for, if thou wilt, some day we will drive the buck together. There is no devil-work in the matter at all. Only ... I know the _rukh_ as a man knows the cooking-place in his house.’

Mowgli was speaking as he would speak to an impatient child. Gisborne, puzzled, baffled, and a great deal annoyed, said nothing, but stared on the ground and thought. When he looked up the man of the woods had gone.

‘It is not good,’ said a level voice from the thicket, ‘for friends to be angry. Wait till the evening, Sahib, when the air cools.’

Left to himself thus, dropped as it were in the heart of the _rukh_, Gisborne swore, then laughed, remounted his pony, and rode on. He visited a ranger’s hut, overlooked a couple of new plantations, left some orders as to the burning of a patch of dry grass, and set out for a camping-ground of his own choice, a pile of splintered rocks roughly roofed over with branches and leaves, not far from the banks of the Kanye stream. It was twilight when he came in sight of his resting-place, and the _rukh_ was waking to the hushed ravenous life of the night.

A camp-fire flickered on the knoll, and there was the smell of a very good dinner in the wind.