India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
"Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees
and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told
Dravot in dumb show what it was about. 'That's just the beginning,' says
Dravot. 'They think we're Gods.' He and Carnehan picks out twenty good men
and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in
line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of
it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one
village and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be
done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village
there, and Carnehan says,--'Send 'em to the old valley to plant,' and
takes 'em there and gives 'em some land that wasn't took before. They were
a poor lot, and we blooded 'em with a kid before letting 'em into the new
Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they settled down quiet,
and Carnehan went back to Dravot who had got into another valley, all snow
and ice and most mountaineous. There was no people there and the Army got
afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some
people in a village, and the Army explains that unless the people wants to
be killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had
matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest and I stays there alone with
two of the Army, teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief
comes across the snow with kettle-drums and horns twanging, because he
heard there was a new God kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown of
the men half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a
message to the Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and
shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The chief comes alone
first, and Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about, same
as Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes my
eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb show
if he had an enemy he hated. 'I have,' says the Chief. So Carnehan weeds
out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill
and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as
Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top
of a mountain, and the Chief's men rushes into a village and takes it; we
three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that village
too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat and says, 'Occupy till I
come:' which was scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me and the Army
was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing on the
snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then I sends a letter
to Dravot, wherever he be by land or by sea."
At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted,--"How
could you write a letter up yonder?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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