The Ruby Sword Part 17

Now, the said Political was a staff corps man who had seen some service, and, moreover a very energetic and zealous official; consequently, he allowed the fugitive no more start than he could help, with the result that the latter had no time to collect any following so as to afford him the satisfaction of selling his life dearly. So day and night fled Umar Khan; but turn and double as he would, the avenging force pressed him hard, for the Levy sowars were men of the country, and knew all the twists and turns of the mountains as well as he did; and their commander was a seasoned campaigner, and as hard as nails. However, fortune favoured him, and the hunted man succeeded in reaching a place of refuge and of safety--as he thought.

As he thought! For, persistent as bloodhounds, that avenging band held steadily upon his track. Finally they came up with him. Umar Khan was in a tent asleep. Stealthily the pursuers drew up in crescent formation, and their commander summoned Umar to come forth. For a moment there was dead silence. Then swift as thought, a rifle muzzle was poked through the flap of the tent. A loud report, and a bullet sang past the official's ear. The latter, more than ever bent on securing his prisoner alive, reiterated the summons, with the alternative in the event of noncompliance, of ordering a volley to be fired into the tent. The reply came as before, in the shape of another bullet, which this time killed the horse of one of the sowars. The order was given to fire.

The rattle and smoke of the volley rolled away--and lo! the sides of the tent were riddled like a sieve. There was a moment or two of silence, and again the officer challenged any who might be left alive to come forth. There emerged from the tent door, a figure clad in the full voluminous draperies and close veil of an Afghan woman.

She did not even look at the troop. She fled away over the plain as fast as her legs could carry her, uttering shrill screams. Those who looked on were filled with wild amaze. How could any living thing have escaped that volley? A movement made to pursue her was simultaneously checked, and then the Political Agent and some of the sowars entered the tent, but cautiously.

Their caution in this instance was unnecessary. One human being alone was in that tent--lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Such rude furniture and utensils as there were had been riddled, and the ground itself ploughed up with bullets. The human figure was limp and lifeless, and--it was that of another woman.

An idea struck the official. He leaped outside the tent; his gaze directed at the fast fleeing figure, now some distance away. He--and those present--saw it drag out a horse from among the rocks and stones of a dry nullah, and, flinging off the female attire, spring upon the animal's back. Then darting forth a hand with defiant gesture, and hurling back a final curse and menace, the fugitive--a wiry, muscular male--flogged his steed into a furious gallop, and was speedily out of range of the hurried volley sent after him.

The officer stared, and, we fear, cursed. The Levy sowars stared, and certainly invoked Allah and his Prophet; while laughing at both, yet storing up deeper vengeance for the slaughter of one of his most faithful wives--who had shared and aided his flight, and eventually laid down her life for him--fled Umar Khan far over the plains of Afghanistan--further and further into that welcome land of refuge.

There lay the rub. They dare not pursue him further. Already a violation of international law had been committed in carrying the pursuit thus far. Well might the official feel foolish. That their bird should be allowed to skip off right under their very noses in the garb of the supposed female whom they had so very humanely spared was enough to make him feel foolish. But he was destined to feel more so subsequently, when an acrid representation from the Amir of Kabul entailed upon him a Departmental wigging, although but a technical one.

After all, a man may be too zealous.

After that Umar Khan disappeared for a while. The Amir of Kabul, when mildly requested to hand him over, declined crustily, on the ground that an armed force had pursued a fugitive over his border without so much as a by-your-leave. If the English attempted to police his country and failed, he was not going to step in where they left off.

So the years went by, and Umar Khan was lost sight of and forgotten.

Then, suddenly, he reappeared in his old haunts.

Changes of administration had supervened. The Government did not care to bother itself over a man who had been a desperate outlaw under its predecessors, as long as he behaved himself and showed a disposition to amend the error of his ways. Moreover, he was a member of one of the most powerful and turbulent tribes in Baluchistan. The _Sirkar_ concluded to let sleeping dogs lie. So it shut its eyes, and Umar Khan was left in peace.

In peace? Yes, so far as he was concerned. But he fixed his dwelling among the wildest and most impracticable of mountain deserts--always ensuring for himself a safe retreat--and thence he began to prey upon all and any who had the wherewithal to pay up smartly for further immunity.

Then complaints began to reach Shalalai. Peaceable _banyas_ had been plundered of all the gains they had made during a travelling trade.

Merchants on a larger scale trading with Kabul had been relieved on a proportionate scale, or even held to ransom. Umar Khan adopted a method of his own for putting a stop to the complaints of such. It was the method best expressed by the saw, "Dead men tell no tales"--and by way of doing the thing thoroughly, he seized the whole of the plunder instead of merely the half as heretofore, but took care that the owner should not be on hand to lay any complaint. And leaving out many other unchronicled misdeeds, we think we have said enough to establish our opening statement, viz: that Umar Khan was a Baluchi who bore a very bad record indeed.

He was not a sirdar, nor even a malik. He was, in fact, a n.o.body, who-- as not unfrequently happens among barbarian races--had raised himself to a sort of sinister eminence by a daring fearlessness and a combination of shrewdness and luck in evading the consequences of his countless acts of aggression. Added to this, his enforced outlawry and the exploits, half mythical, wherewith rumour credited him during that period, had thrown a kind of halo around him in the eyes of his wild, predatory fellow-tribesmen. Nominally he lived under and was responsible to the Sirdar Yar Hussain Khan, who was chief over a large section of the powerful Marri tribe; actually he was responsible to n.o.body in the wide world. His own particular following was made up of all the "tough"

characters of the tribe, which is saying much, for the Marris bore the reputation of numbering in their midst some very "tough" characters.

The saw relative to the endowment of anybody with a sufficiency of rope was beginning to hold good in the matter of Umar Khan. Things were going badly with him. He had been obliged to be more than liberal with his ill-gotten gains in order to retain the adherence of his following, and the shoe was beginning to pinch. Then his tribal chief had given him a hint to sit tight; in short, had given him two alternatives-- either to behave himself or clear out.

He had about concluded to embrace the latter of these--and the motive which had led him up to this conclusion was dual--and akin to that which tells with like effect upon men far more civilised than the Baluchi ex-outlaw. Umar Khan was hard up; likewise he was hipped. He was perfectly sick of sitting still. Times were too peaceful altogether.

So he sold what few possessions he had left, and with the proceeds laid in a stock of Snider rifles and ammunition.

Umar Khan sat in his village at sunrise. It was the hour of prayer, and several of the faithful, dotted about, were devoutly prostrating themselves, in the most approved fas.h.i.+on; indeed Umar himself had only just finished the performance of his devotions, for your Moslem is a logician in such matters, and has no idea of heaping up great d.a.m.nation to himself by committing two sins instead of one, as would be the case were he to omit the prescribed devotion simply because he had just cut somebody's throat. The low, flat, mud-walled houses were in keeping with the surroundings--looking indeed as if they had but been dumped down and left to dry, like other piles of earth and stones which had rolled down the arid slopes and remained where they fell. A flock of black goats and fat-tailed sheep, mingled together, was scattered over the plain, though where they could find sustenance in such a desert, Heaven alone knew. Camels, too, were stalking around, also making what seemed an ironical attempt at browsing.

The sun had just risen beyond the far off limit of the desert plain, tinging blood-red the line of jagged peaks shooting skyward behind the village. Umar Khan sat in gloomy silence, smoking a narghileh, and, like most Orientals, indulging in much expectoration. His grim, hawk-like face, with the s.h.a.ggy hanging brows meeting over his hooked nose, looked more cruel and repulsive than ever, as he stroked his beard, or pulled at the long black tresses, which hung down on each side of his face. Then he looked up. A fellow-tribesman was coming towards him. Umar Khan's glance now lit up with animation. The man came to him and sat down. Their talk was short, but the ex-outlaw's expression of countenance grew positively radiant, as the new arrival went on unfolding his tidings.

Umar Khan rose and ordered his best horse to be saddled. As he rose, it might have been noticed that he suffered from a slight limp. Then taking with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself--if that were possible--he rode forth.

For many hours they fared onward, avoiding the more frequented ways, and travelling over precipitous mountain path and through wild _tangi_, by routes well known to themselves, halting at convenient places to rest and water their horses. All had rifles, as well as their curved tulwars, and this savage band of hook-nosed, scowling copper-coloured ruffians, armed to the teeth, looked about as forbidding, even terror striking a crew as the peaceable wayfarer would _not_ wish to meet--say half way through a _tangi_ where there was precious little room to pa.s.s each other.

The sun was now considerably past the meridian, and at length the band, at a word from Ihalil Mohammed--the man who had brought the news which had led to this undertaking--halted amid some rock overlooking a broad high-road.

Far away along its dusty length a speck appeared, growing larger as it drew rapidly nearer, until it took the shape of a vehicle, containing but one man, and he the driver. It was an ordinary "gharri," or hackney cab. To meet this Ihalil and four others now rode down.

"Salaam, brother," they exclaimed, drawing up across the road.

"Salaam, Sirdar sahib," returned the driver, in tremulous tones, turning pale at the sight of these fierce armed figures barring his way. The man was an ordinary specimen of the low caste Hindu, and as such held in utter contempt by these stalwart sons of the desert, and in repulsion as a heathen and an idolater.

"Who art thou, brother; and whither faring?" queried Ihalil.

The man replied, in quaking tones, that he was but a poor "gharri-wallah" hired to meet a certain holy _mullah_ who was travelling from Shalalai to a village away far out in the desert. He was to bring him on a stage of his journey, and expected to meet him not far from that point.

"Good. Now turn thine old box on wheels out of the road and follow to where we shall lead thee," commanded Ihalil.

The poor wretch dared not so much as hesitate, and presently the rickety old rattle trap was drawn up behind the rocks. At sight of the rest of the band the miserable Hindu gave himself up for dead.

"Salaam, Sirdar sahib," he faltered, cowering before the grim stare of Umar Khan.

The latter then questioned him, in process of which one of the freebooters stole up behind, his tulwar raised. The badly scared "gharri-wallah," his eyes starting from his head, had no attention to spare from the threatening scowl and searching questions of Umar Khan; and of danger from behind was utterly unconscious. Then, at a nod from Umar Khan, down came the tulwar upon the neck of the doomed Hindu.

It was badly aimed and did not sever the head, but cut far and deep into the neck and shoulder. The miserable wretch fell to the ground, deluged with a great spout of blood, but yet wailing dismally in agony and terror. In a moment two more tulwars swung through the air, and the sufferings of the murdered man--literally cut to pieces--were over, though his limbs still beat the ground in convulsive struggles.

Umar Khan spat in derision, while the other barbarians laughed like demons over this atrocious deed. The murderers wiped their swords on the garments of their victim, and examined the keenly-ground edges solicitously, lest they should be in any way notched or turned. But now their attention was diverted. Another speck was growing larger and larger on the road, this time advancing from the direction in which their late victim had been proceeding. Drawing nearer it soon took shape. Another "gharri" similar to the one whose driver they had slaughtered.

The whole band rode down to meet it. Besides the driver it contained another man.

"Peace, my sons," said the latter as they drew up.

"And on you peace," returned Umar Khan. "But first--for this dog.

Hold--Alight, both of ye."

There was that about the aspect of these armed brigands that would admit of no hesitation. Both obeyed. This driver, too, was a low caste Hindu. His "fare" was an old man, white-bearded, and wearing a green turban.

No sooner were both fairly out of the "gharri," than Ihalil Mohammed rode at the Hindu and cut him down. Others fell upon him with their tulwars, and the miserable wretch, like his fellow-craftsman, was literally hewn to pieces then and there. With savage shouts the murderers waved their bloodstained weapons aloft, curvetting their steeds around the survivor.

The latter turned pale. Quick as thought, however, he had drawn a volume of the Koran from beneath his garments, and placed it upon his head.

"La illah il Allah"--he began.

"--Mohammed er rasool Allah," [Note 2] chorused the blood thirsty savages, as though in one fierce war shout, turning to hack once more at the mangled carcase of the miserable Hindu.

"Hearken, my father," said Umar Khan, pointing his rifle at the traveller. "A true believer is safe at the hands of other believers.

But, father, delay not to deliver over the seven hundred rupees which are in thy sash."

The other turned paler still.

"Seven hundred rupees?" he exclaimed, holding up his hands. "What should a poor _mullah_ do with such a sum?"

"Thou hast said it, my father. What indeed?" sneered Umar Khan. "What indeed, save as alms for the poor, and the debtors and the insolvent, as enjoins the holy Koran? And such thou seest before thee. Wherefore we will receive them, father, and pray the blessing of Allah, and a rich place in the seventh heaven for thee and thine."

"Do ye not fear G.o.d, O impious ones, that ye would rob His servant?"

said the _mullah_, waxing wroth in his desperation.

"We fear n.o.body," returned Umar Khan, with an evil sneer. "Yet, my father, delay not any longer, lest this gun should go off by accident."