English fiction -- 20th century; English poetry; Short stories, English
“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; “Toot-toot-toot!”
went the driver's bugle at the dangerous places, and “yow! yow!” bayed
Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to
get away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us.
Now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again,
and he would say: “What's it like below?” and I would shout: “Hotter
than cinders. What's it like up above?” and he would shout back: “Just
perfect!” and away we would go.
Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is Solon”; and Garm
snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant
little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy.
It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby
for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir
Buksh made tea. A soldier told us we should find Stanley “out there,”
nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill.
When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley, who had given me
all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands, and his
overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and
dejected in my life as this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on
the great gray hillside.
Here Garm left me.
He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving
his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him
as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man clean over. They
rolled on the ground together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I
could not see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up and
whimpered.
He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was
very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched, both man and
dog plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell
in water. Garm was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the
same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garm--gulping,
sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could
understand, except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now
he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garm any more
to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub.
Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.
We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself
with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles,
when Garm wasn't climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on.
Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me three times, giving
me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He
further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile
down the road. Then he raced back to his own master.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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