The Ruby Sword Part 20

She laughed, but the colour had not yet come back to her cheeks.

"I predicted something was going to happen, didn't I?" she said.

"And it has happened--and now there's another thing going to happen, and that is dinner, so we'd better go inside and begin to think about it.

What? Is it safe? Of course, though, my dear, I don't wonder at it if you were a little scared. It's an experience that is apt to be alarming at first."

The while the speaker was chuckling to himself. He had been a witness both by ear and eye to the foregoing scene, having overheard Vivien's alarmed apostrophe.

"So? It has come to that, has it?" he was saying to himself.

"'Howard,' indeed? But how dark they've kept it. Well, well. They're both of them old enough to look after themselves. 'Howard,' indeed!"

and the jolly Colonel chuckled to himself, as with kindly eyes he watched the pair that evening, reading their easy unrestrained intercourse in an entirely new light.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE TRAGEDY AT MEHRIAB.

Mehriab station, on the Shalalai line of railway, was situated amid about as wild, desolate and depressing surroundings as the human mind could possibly conceive.

A narrow treeless plain--along which the track lay, straight as a wall-- shut in by towering arid mountains, rising to a great height, cleft here and there by a chasm overhung by beetling cliffs--black, frowning and forbidding. At the lower end of the plain rose sad-hued mud humps, streaked with gypsum. There was nothing to relieve the eye, no speck of vivid green standing out from the parched aridity prevailing; but on the other hand all was on a vast scale, and the little station and rest-house looked but a tiny toy planted there beneath the stupendous sweep of those towering hills.

In the latter of the buildings aforesaid, a tolerably lively party was a.s.sembled, discussing tiffin, or rather having just finished discussion of the same. It had been done picnic fas.h.i.+on, and the room was littered with plates, and knives and forks, and lunch baskets, and paper, and all the accompaniments of an itinerant repast.

"Have another 'peg,' Campian," Upward was saying. "No? Sure? You will, Colonel? That's right. We've plenty of time. No hurry whatever.

Hazel, don't kick up such a row, or you'll have to go outside. Miss Wymer, don't let them bother you. What was I saying just now?"

He took up the thread of what he had been saying, and in a moment he and the Colonel were deep in reminiscences of _s.h.i.+kar_. Vivien and Nesta had risen and were strolling outside, and there Campian joined them.

The _dak_ bungalow extended its accommodation to travelling natives, for whom there was a department opposite. Camels--some standing, some kneeling, but all snarling--filled the open s.p.a.ce in front of this, and wild looking Baluchis in their great white turbans and loose garments were squatting around in groups, placidly chatting, or standing alone in melancholy silence.

"Look at this!" said Campian. "It makes quite a picture, taken against the background of that loop-holed mud wall, with the great sweep of mountain rising behind."

Several camels, some ready laden, some not, were kneeling. On one a man was adjusting its load. He was a tall, s.h.a.ggy, hook-nosed black bearded ruffian, who from time to time cast a sidelong, malevolent glance at the lookers on as he continued his work. In business-like manner he proceeded to adjust each bale and package, then when all was complete, he lifted from the ground a Snider carbine and hung it by its ring to a hook on the high wooden pack saddle. Then he took up his curved sword; but this he secured to the broad sabretache over his shoulder.

"Isn't that a picture in itself?" went on Campian. "Why, adequately reproduced it would bring back the whole scene--the roaring of the camels, the midday glow, the burning heat of this arid hole. I wonder who they are by the way"--for others who had similarly accoutred their camels were jerking the animals up, and preparing for the start.

Vivien turned to Bhallu Khan who was just behind, and translated his answer.

"He says they are Brahuis from the Bolan side, going further in."

"Why are they all armed like that? Don't they trust their own people?"

"He says they may have heard that Umar Khan is on the warpath, and they are not of his tribe. n.o.body knows who anybody is who is not of his tribe--meaning that he doesn't trust them."

It was something of a contrast to turn from these scowling, brigandish looking wayfarers, to the beaming, benevolent, handsome countenance of the old forest guard. They strolled around a little more, then voted it too hot, and returned to the welcome coolness of the _dak_ bungalow.

Campian, always a.n.a.lytical, was conscious of a change, or rather was it a development? Now that they were together--in a crowd--as he put it to himself, there was a certain feeling of proprietary right that seemed to a.s.sert itself in his relations with Vivien. It was something akin to the feeling which was over him in the old time when they moved about together. And yet, why? Well, the close intimate intercourse of the last ten days or so had not been without its effect. Not without an inward thrill either, could he recognise that this intercourse had but begun. They were returning together, and to be candid with himself that hot stifling arid afternoon here on one of the wildest spots on earth's surface, he could not but recognise that this elation was very real, very exhilarating indeed.

"I think we'd better stroll quietly up to the station," said Upward, as they re-entered. "We may as well have plenty of time to get all this luggage weighed and put right." Then relapsing into the vernacular: "Khola, you know what goes in and what has to be weighed."

"_Ha, Huzoor_," a.s.sented the bearer.

"Then get away on ahead and do it."

The rest-house was about half a mile distant from the station. On the way to the latter Campian found himself riding beside Nesta Cheriton.

"You don't seem elated over the prospect of returning to Shalalai," he said. "Five thousand of the British Army--horse, foot, and artillery!

Just think what that represents in the shape of its heroic leaders, Nessita--and yet you are just as _chup_ as if you were coming away from it all."

"Oh, don't bother--just at the last, too," retorted the girl, almost petulantly. "Besides--that joke is becoming rather stale."

"Is it? So it is. So sorry. What about that other joke--is it stale too? The one time you ever took anybody seriously. Won't you tell me now, Nessie?"

"No, I won't," she said, this time quite petulantly. "Come along. We are a long way behind."

"Then you will tell me when next we meet, in Shalalai in a week or two."

"No, I won't. And look here--I don't want to hear any more about it."

Then, with apparent inconsequence--"It was mean of you to desert us like that. You might just as well have put off your stay up there until now."

They had reached the station and were in the crowd again by now. And there was somewhat of a crowd on the platform. Long-haired Baluchis, all wearing their curved swords, stood about in threes and fours; chattering Hindus with their womenkind, squatting around upon their bundles and packages; a native policeman in Khaki uniform armed with a Snider rifle--with which he probably could not have hit the traditional haystack--and the joint party with their servants and two or three of the forest guard, const.i.tuted quite a crowd on the ordinarily deserted platform; for the arrival of the train--of which there was but one daily each way--was something of an event.

Having arranged for the luggage and tickets, Upward was chatting with the stationmaster--a particularly civil, but very ugly Babu from down country--as to the state of the country. The man grinned all over his pockmarked countenance. What would the Sahib have? A Government berth was not one to throw up because it was now and then dangerous, and so many only too eager to jump into it. Umar Khan was not likely to trouble him. Why should he? No defences? No. There was an iron door to the waiting room, loop-holed, but the policeman was the only man armed. Upward proceeded to inspect the said iron door.

"Look at this, Colonel," he said. "Just look, and tell me if ever you saw anything more idiotic in all your life. Here's a thick iron door, carefully set up for an emergency, loop-holed and all, but the window is utterly unprotected. Just look at it. And there's no one armed enough to fire through either, except one policeman, who'd be cut down on the first outbreak of disturbance."

"You're right, Upward. Why, the window is as open as any English drawing room window. There's a loft though, and an iron ladder. Well, you'd be hard put to it if you were reduced to that."

"Rather. That's how we British do things. I'll answer for it the Russians wouldn't. Why, every one of these stations ought to be a young fort in itself. It would be if the Russians had this line. And they'll have it too, one of these days at this rate."

And now a vehement ringing of the bell announced the train. On it came, looking, as it slowed down, like a long black centipede, in contrast to the open vastness of Nature; the engine with its cup shaped chimney, vomiting white smoke, its pointed cow-catcher seeming as a living head of the monster. The chattering Hindus were loading up their bundles and hastening to follow; heads of all sorts and colours protruded from the windows, but Mehriab was not a station where pa.s.sengers often alighted, so none got out now. The Upwards were busy looking after their multifold luggage--and good-byes were being exchanged.

"Now, Ernest, get in," called out Mrs Upward. "We are just off."

"No hurry. Where's Tinkles? Got her on board?"

"Yes, here she is," answered Hazel--hoisting up the little terrier to the window, from which point of vantage it proceeded to snarl valorously at a wretched pariah cur, slinking along the platform.

"All right. Well, good-bye, Colonel. Good-bye, Miss Wymer. Campian, old chap, I suppose we'll see you at Shalalai in a week or two. Ta-ta."

The train rumbled slowly away, quickening its pace. Our trio stood looking after it, Vivien responding to the frantic waving of handkerchiefs from Lily and Hazel.

The train had just disappeared within a deep rift which cut it off from the Mehriab valley like a door. The station master had retired within his office. The Colonel and his niece were in the waiting room collecting their things. Campian, standing outside on the platform, was s.h.i.+elding a match to light a cheroot, when--Heavens! What did this mean?

A band of savage looking hors.e.m.e.n came clattering up--ten or a dozen, perhaps--advancing from the open country the other side of the line.

They seemed to have sprung out of the earth itself, so sudden was their appearance. All brandished rifles. They dashed straight for the station, springing from their horses at the end of the platform. Then they opened fire on the armed policeman, who was immediately shot dead.

The stationmaster ran outside to see what the disturbance was about. He received a couple of bullets the moment he showed himself, and fell, still groaning. Three coolies walking unsuspectingly along the line were the next. A volley laid them low. Then, with wild yells, expressive of mingled fanaticism and blood thirst, the savage Ghazis rushed along the platform waving their naked swords, and looking for more victims. They slashed the wretched Babu to pieces where he lay-- and then seeing that their other victims were not quite dead--rushed upon them, and cut and hacked until there seemed not a semblance of humanity left. Whirling their dripping weapons on high in the bright sun, they looked heavenward, and yelled again in sheer mania as they tore back on to the platform.

The whole of this appalling tragedy had been enacted in a mere flash of time; with such lightning celerity indeed, that Campian, standing outside, could hardly realise that it had actually happened. It was a fortunate thing that three or four tall Marris, standing together in a group, happened to be between him and the a.s.sa.s.sins or he would have received the first volley. Quick to profit by the circ.u.mstance, he sprang within the waiting room.