Rung Ho! A Novel - Talbot Mundy

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a man each time at one blow from shoulder-joint to ribs, severing the backbone. A woman of his own race would have been singing songs in praise of him and his skill in swordsman-ship already; but no woman of his own race would have looked him in the eye like that and dared him, nor have done what she did next. She leaned over and swished his charger with her little whip, and slipped past him.

      He swore, deep and fiercely, as he spurred and wheeled, and cantered after her. His great stallion could overhaul her pony in a minute, going stride for stride; the wall was more than two miles long with no break in it other than locked gates; there was no hurry. He watched her through half-closed, glowering, appraising eyes as he cantered in her wake, admiring the frail, slight figure in the gray cotton habit, and bridling his desire to make her—seize her reins, and halt, and make her—admit him master of the situation.

      As he reached her stirrup, she reined in and faced him, after a hurried glance that told her her duenna had failed her. The old woman was invisible.

      “Will you leave that body to lie there in the dust and sun?” she asked indignantly.

      “I am no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!” he smiled. “I do not eat carrion!” He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for he showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the epitome of self-satisfied amusement. His horse blocked the way again, and all retreat was cut off, for his escort were behind her, and three of them had ridden to the right, outside the row of trees, to cut off possible escape in that direction. “Was it not well that I was near, sahiba? Would it have been better to die at the hands of a Maharati of no caste—?”

      “Than to see blood spilt—than to be beholden to a murderer? Infinitely better! There was no need to kill that man—I could have quieted him. Let me pass, please, Jaimihr-sahib!”

      He reined aside; but if she thought that cold scorn or hot anger would either of them quell his ardor, she had things reversed. The less she behaved as a native woman would have done—the more she flouted him—the more enthusiastic he became.

      “Sahiba!”—he trotted beside her, his great horse keeping up easily with her pony's canter—“I have told you oftener than once that I make a good friend and a bad enemy!”

      “And I have answered oftener than once that I do not need your friendship, and am not afraid of you! You forget that the British Government will hold your royal brother liable for my safety and my father's!”

      “You, too, overlook certain things, sahiba.” He spoke evenly, with a little space between each word. With the dark look that accompanied it, with the blood barely dry yet on the dusty road behind, his speech was not calculated to reassure a slip of a girl, gray-eyed or not, stiff-chinned or not, borne up or not by Scots enthusiasm for a cause. “This is a native state. My brother rules. The British—”

      “Are near enough, and strong enough, to strike and to bring you and your brother to your knees if you harm a British woman!” she retorted. “You forget—when the British Government gives leave to missionaries to go into a native state, it backs them up with a strong arm!”

      “You build too much on the British and my brother, sahiba! Listen—Howrah is as strong as I am, and no stronger. Had he been stronger, he would have slain me long ago. The British are—” He checked himself and trotted beside her in silence for a minute. She affected complete indifference; it was as though she had not heard him; if she could not be rid of him, she at least knew how to show him his utter unimportance in her estimation.

      “Have you heard, sahiba, of the Howrah treasure? Of the rubies? Of the pearls? Of the emeralds? Of the bars of gold? It is foolishness, of course; we who are modern-minded see the crime of hoarding all that wealth, and adding to it, for twenty generations. Have you heard of it, sahiba?”

      “Yes!” she answered savagely, swishing at his charger again to make him keep his distance. “You have told me of it twice. You have told me that you know where it is, and you have offered to show it to me. You have told me that you and your brother Maharajah Howrah and the priests of Siva are the only men who know where it is, and you lust for that treasure! I can see you lust! You think that I lust too, and you make a great mistake Jaimihr-sahib! You see, I remember what you have told me. Now, go away and remember what I tell you. I care for you and for your treasure exactly that!” She hit his charger with all her might, and at the sting of the little whip he shied clear of the road before the Rajah's brother could rein him in.

      Again her effort to destroy his admiration for her had directly the opposite effect. He swore, and he swore vengeance; but he swore, too, that there was no woman in the East so worth a prince's while as this one, who dared flout him with her riding-whip before his men!

      “Sahiba!” he said, sidling close to her again, and bowing in the saddle in mock cavalier humility. “The time will come when your government and my brother, who—at present—is Maharajah Howrah—will be of little service to you. Then, perhaps, you may care to recall my promise to load all the jewels you can choose out of the treasure-house on you. Then, perhaps, you may, remember that I said 'a throne is better than a grave, sahiba.' Or else—”

      “Or else what, Jaimihr-sahib?” She reined again and wheeled about and faced him—pale-trembling a little—looking very small and frail beside him on his great war-horse, but not flinching under his gaze for a single second.

      “Or else, sahiba—I think you saw me slay the Maharati? Do you think that I would stop at anything to accomplish what I had set out to do? See, sahiba—there is a little blood there on your jacket! Let that be for a pledge between us—for a sign—or a token of my oath that on the day I am Maharajah Howrah, you are Maharanee—mistress of all the jewels in the treasure-house!”

      She shuddered. She did not look to find the blood; she took his word for that, if for nothing else.

      “I wonder you dare tell me that you plot against your brother!” That was more a spoken thought than a statement or a question.

      “I would be very glad if you would warn my brother!” he answered her; and she knew like a flash, and on the instant, that what he said was true. She had been warned before she came to bear no tales to any one. No Oriental would believe the tale, coming from her; the Maharajah would arrest her promptly, glad of the excuse to vent his hatred of Christian missionaries. Jaimihr would attempt a rescue; it was common knowledge that he plotted for the throne. There would be instant civil war, in which the British Government would perforce back up the alleged protector of a defenseless woman. There would be a new Maharajah; then, in a little while, and in all likelihood, she would have disappeared forever while the war raged. There would be, no doubt, a circumstantial story of her death from natural causes.

      She did not answer. She stared back at him, and he smiled down at her, twisting at his mustache.

      “Think!” he said, nodding. “A throne, sahiba, is considerably better than a grave!” Then he wheeled like a sudden dust-devil and decamped in a cloud of dust, followed at full pelt by his clattering escort. She watched their horses leap one after the other the corpse of the Maharati that lay by the corner where it fell, and she saw the last of them go clattering, whirling up the street through the bazaar. The old hag rose out of a shadow and trotted after her again as she turned and rode on, pale-faced and crying now a little, to the little begged school place where her father tried to din the alphabet into a dozen low-caste fosterlings.

      “Father!” she cried, and she all but fell out of the saddle into his arms as the tall, lean Scotsman came to the door to meet her and stood blinking in the sunlight. “Father, I've seen another man killed! I've had another scene with Jaimihr! I can't endure it! I—I—Oh, why did I ever come?”

      “I don't know, dear,” he answered. “But you would come, wouldn't you?”

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