Adventure stories; Boys -- Fiction; India -- Fiction; Irish -- India -- Fiction; Lamas -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Spy stories
'A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for
the trains.'
'The signal-box. Yes.'
'And upon, the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand
side--looking up the line thus. But as regards Lutuf Ullah--a tall man
with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound--Aie!'
The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman;
for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from depredations in the
goods-yard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.
'They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will
wonder why there are no faquirs. They are very clever boys--Barton Sahib
and Young Sahib.'
He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the
line girt for action. A light engine slid through the station, and he
caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab.
'I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool,' said
Mahbub Ali. 'To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!'
When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth
while to tell him any news of the night. No one, at least, but one small
horse-boy, newly advanced to the great man's service, whom Mahbub called
to his tiny tent to assist in some packing.
'It is all known to me,' whispered Kim, bending above saddle-bags. 'Two
Sahibs came up on a te-rain. I was running to and fro in the dark on
this side of the trucks as the te-rain moved up and down slowly. They
fell upon two men sitting under this truck--Hajji, what shall I do with
this lump of tobacco? Wrap it in paper and put it under the salt-bag?
Yes--and struck them down. But one man struck at a Sahib with a faquir's
buck's horn' (Kim meant the conjoined black-buck horns, which are a
faquir's sole temporal weapon)--'the blood came. So the other Sahib,
first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a short gun
which had rolled from the first man's hand. They all raged as though mad
together.'
Mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation. 'No! That is not so much
dewanee (madness, or a case for the civil court--the word can be punned
upon both ways) as nizamut (a criminal case). A gun sayest thou? Ten
good years in jail.'
'Then they both lay still, but I think they were nearly dead when they
were put on the te-rain. Their heads moved thus. And there is much blood
on the line. Come and see?'
'I have seen blood before. Jail is the sure place--and assuredly they
will give false names, and assuredly no man will find them for a long
time. They were unfriends of mine. Thy Fate and mine seem on one string.
What a tale for the healer of pearls! Now swiftly with the saddle-bags
and the cooking-platter. We will take out the horses and away to Simla.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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