LITMIR.BIZ

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Beluchi made haste to translate, trembling as he spoke, and wilting visibly when the baleful eyes of the fakir rested on him for a second. The fakir answered something in a guttural undertone.

      “What does he say?”

      “That he will curse you, sahib!”

      “Sentry!” shouted Brown.

      “Sir!” came the ready answer, and the sling-swivels of a rifle clicked as the man on guard at the crossroads shouldered it. There are some men who are called “sir” without any title to it, just as there are some sergeants who receive a colonel's share of deference when out on a non-commissioned officer's command. Bill Brown was one of them.

      “Come here, will you!”

      There came the sound of heavy footfalls, and a thud as a rifle-butt descended to the earth again. Brown moved the lamp, and its beams fell on a rifleman who stood close beside him at attention—like a jinnee formed suddenly from empty blackness.

      “Arrest this fakir. Cram him in the clink.”

      “Very good, sir!”

      The sentry took one step forward, with his fixed bayonet at the “charge,” and the fakir sat still and eyed him.

      “Oh, have a care, sahib!” wailed the Beluchi. “This is very holy man!”

      “Silence!” ordered Brown. “Here. Hold the lamp.”

      The bayonet-point pressed against the fakir's ribs, and he drew back an inch or two to get away from it. He was evidently able to feel pain when it was inflicted by any other than himself.

      “Come on,” growled the sentry. “Forward. Quick march. If you don't want two inches in you!”

      “Don't use the point!” commanded Brown. “You might do him an injury. Treat him to a sample of the butt!”

      The sentry swung his rifle round with an under-handed motion that all riflemen used to practise in the short-range-rifle days. The fakir winced, and gabbled something in a hurry to the man who held the lamp.

      “He says that he will speak, sahib!”

      “Halt, then,” commanded Brown. “Order arms. Tell him to hurry up!”

      The Beluchi translated, and the fakir answered him, in a voice that sounded hard and distant and emotionless.

      “He says that he, too, is here to watch the crossroads, sahib! He says that he will curse you if you touch him!”

      “Tell him to curse away!”

      “He says not unless you touch him, sahib.”

      “Prog him off his perch!” commanded Brown.

      The rifle leaped up at the word, and its butt landed neatly on the fakir's ribs, sending him reeling backward off his balance, but not upsetting him completely. He recovered his poise with quite astonishing activity, and shuffled himself back again to the center of the dais. His eyes blazed with hate and indignation, and his breath came now in sharp gasps that sounded like escaping steam. He needed no further invitation to commence his cursing. It burst out with a rush, and paused for better effect, and burst out again in a torrent. The Beluchi hid his face between his hands.

      “Now translate that!” commanded Brown, when the fakir stopped for lack of breath.

      “Sahib, I dare not! Sahib—”

      Brown took a threatening step toward him, and the Beluchi changed his mind. Brown's disciplining methods were a too recently encountered fact to be outdone by a fakir's promise of any kind of not-yet-met damnation.

      “Sahib, he says that because your man has touched him, both you and your man shall lie within a week helpless upon an anthill, still living, while the ants run in and out among your wounds. He says that the ants shall eat your eyes, sahib, and that you shall cry for water, and there shall be no water within reach—only the sound of water just beyond you. He says that first you shall be beaten, both of you, until your backs and the soles of your feet run blood, in order that the ants may have an entrance!”

      “Is he going to do all this?”

      The Beluchi passed the question on, and the fakir tossed him an answer to it.

      “He says, sahib, that the gods will see to it.”

      “So the gods obey his orders, do they. Well, they've a queer sense of duty! What else does he prophesy?”

      “About your soul, sahib, and the sentry's soul.”

      “That's interesting! Translate!”

      “He says, sahib, that for countless centuries you and your man shall inhabit the carcasses of snakes, to eat dirt and be trodden on and crushed, until you learn to have respect for very holy persons!”

      “Is he going to have the ordering of that?”

      “He says that the gods have already ordered it.”

      “It won't make much difference, then, what I do now. If that's in store for me in any case, I may as well get my money's worth before the fun begins! Tell him that unless he can give me a satisfactory reason for being here I shall treat him to a little more rifle-butt, and something else afterward that he will like even less!”

      “He says,” explained the Beluchi, after a moment's conversation with the fakir, “that he is here to see what the gods have prophesied. He says that India will presently be whelmed in blood!”

      “Whose blood?”

      “Yours and that of others. He says, did you not see the sunset?”

      “What of the sunset?”

      Brown looked about him and, save where the lantern cast a fitful light on the fakir and the sentry and the native servant, and threw into faint relief the shadowy, snake-like tendrils of the baobab, his eyes failed to pierce the gloom. The sunset was a memory. In that heavy, death-darkness silence it seemed almost as though there had never been a sun.

      “'A blot of blood,' he says. He says the order has been given. He says that half of India shall run blood within a day, and the whole of it within a week!”

      “Who gave the order?”

      “He answers 'Hookum hai!'—which means 'It is an order!' Nothing more does the holy fakir say.”

      “To the clink with him!” commanded Brown. “I'm tired of these Old Mother Shipton babblings. That's the third useless Hindu fanatic within a week who has talked about India being drenched in blood. Let him go in to the depot under guard, and do his prophesying there! Bring him along.”

      The sentry's rifle-butt rose again and threatened business. The Beluchi gave a warning cry, and the fakir tumbled off his dais. Then, with the trembling Beluchi walking on ahead with the lantern, and Brown and the sentry urging from behind, the fakir jumped and squirmed and wabbled on his all but useless feet toward the guardroom. When they reached the tree where the goat had bleated, the Punjabi skin-buyer rose up, took one long look at the fakir and ran.

      “Well, I'll be!” exclaimed the sentry.

      “You'll be worse than that,” said Brown, “if you use that language anywhere where I'm about! I'll not have it, d'you hear? Get on ahead, and open the door of the clink!”

      The sentry obeyed him, and a moment later the fakir was thrust into a four-square mud-walled room, and the door was locked on him.

      “Back to your post,” commanded Brown. “And next time I hear you swearing, I'll treat you to a double-trick, my man! About turn. Quick march.”

      The sentry trudged off without daring to answer him, and Brown took a good look at the fakir through the iron bars that protected the top half of the door. Then he went off to see about his supper, of newly slaughtered goat-chops and chupatties baked in ghee.

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