Books: Hira Singh
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Talbot Mundy >> Hira Singh
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After two seconds, that seemed two hours, he said to the Kurd, "Very
well. We are agreed. I will give you one of my officers against ten
of your men. I will give you Gooja Singh!" said he.
Sahib, I could have rolled among the rocks and laughed. The look of
rage mingled with amazement on Gooja Singh's fat face was payment
enough for all the insults I had received from him. I could not
conceal all my merriment. Doubtless my eyes betrayed me. I doubt not
they blazed. Gooja Singh was sitting on the other side of Ranjoor
Singh, partly facing me, so that he missed nothing of what passed
over my face--as I scarcely intended that he should. And in a moment
my mirth was checked by sight of his awful wrath. His face had
turned many shades darker.
"I am to be hostage?" he said in a voice like grinding stone.
"Aye," said Ranjoor Singh. "Be a proud one! They have had to give
ten men to weigh against you in the scale!"
"And I am to go away with them all by myself into the mountains?"
"Aye," said Ranjoor Singh. "Why not? We hold ten of theirs against
your safe return."
"Good! Then I will go!" he answered, and I knew by the black look on
his face and by the dull rage in his voice that he would harm us if
he could. But there was no time just then to try to dissuade Ranjoor
Singh from his purpose, even had I dared. There began to be great
argument about the ten hostages the Kurd should give, Ranjoor Singh
examining each one with the aid of Abraham, rejecting one man after
another as not sufficiently important, and it was two hours before
ten Kurds that satisfied him stood unarmed in our midst. Then he
gave up Gooja Singh in exchange for them; and Gooja Singh walked
away among the Kurds without so much as a backward look, or a word
of good-by, or a salute.
"He should be punished for not saluting you," said I, going to
Ranjoor Singh's side. "It is a bad example to the troopers."
"KUCH--KUCH--," said he. "No trouble. Black hearts beget black
deeds. White hearts, good deeds. Maybe we all misjudged him. Let him
prove whether he is true at heart or not."
Observe, sahib, how he identified himself with us, although he knew
well that all except I until recently had denied him title to any
other name than traitor. "Maybe we all misjudged," said he, as much
as to say, "What my men have done, I did." So you may tell the
difference between a great man and a mean one.
"Better have hanged him long ago!" said I. "He will be the ruin of
us yet!" But he laughed.
"Sahib," I said. "Suppose he should get to see this Wassmuss?"
"I have thought of that," he answered. "Why should the Kurds let him
go near Wassmuss? Unless they return him safely to us we can execute
their tages; they will run no risk of Wassmuss playing tricks with
Gooja Singh. Besides, from what I can learn and guess from what the
Kurds say, this Wassmuss is to all intents and purposes a prisoner.
Another tribe of Kurds, pretending, to protect him, keep him very
closely guarded. The best he can do is to play off one tribe against
another. Our friend said Wassmuss holds his brother for hostage, but
I think the fact is the other tribe holds him and Wassmuss gets the
blame. I suspect they held our friend's brother as security for the
gold he is to meet and escort back. There is much politics working
in these mountains."
"Much politics and little hope for us!" said I, and at that he
turned on me as he never had done yet. No, sahib, I never saw him
turn on any man, nor speak as savagely as he did to me then. It was
as if the floodgates of his weariness were down at last and I got a
glimpse of what he suffered--he who dared trust no one all these
months and miles.
"Did I not say months ago," he mocked, "that if I told you half my
plan you would quail? And that if I told the whole, you would pick
it to pieces like hens round a scrap of meat? Man without thought!
Can I not see the dangers? Have I no eyes--no ears? Do I need a frog
to croak to me of risks whichever way I turn? Do I need men to hang
back, or men to lend me courage?"
"Who hangs back?" said I. "Nay, forward! I will die beside you,
sahib!"
"I seek life for you all, not death," he answered, but he spoke so
sadly that I think in that minute his hope and faith were at lowest
ebb.
"Nevertheless," I answered, "if need be, I will die beside you. I
will not hang back. Order, and I obey!" But he looked at me as if he
doubted.
"Boasting," he said, "is the noise fools make to conceal from
themselves their failings!"
What could I answer to that? I sat down and considered the rebuff,
while he went and made great preparation for an execution and a
Turkish funeral. So that there was little extra argument required to
induce one of our Turkish officer prisoners--the bimbashi himself,
in fact--to write the letter to Wassmuss that Ranjoor Singh
required. And that he gave to the Kurdish chief, and the Kurd rode
away with his men, not looking once back at the hostages he had left
with us, but making a great show of guarding Gooja Singh, who rode
unarmed in the center of a group of horsemen. That instant I began
to feel sorry for Gooja Singh, and later, when we advanced through
those blood-curdling mountains I was sorrier yet to think of him
borne away alone amid savages whose tongue he could not speak. The
men all felt sorry for him too, but Ranjoor Singh gave them little
time for talk about it, setting them at once to various tasks, not
least of which was cleaning rifles for inspection.
I took Abraham to interpret for me and went to talk with our ten
hostages, who were herded together apart from the other ten armed
Kurds. They seemed to regard themselves as in worse plight than
prisoners and awaited with resignation whatever might be their
kismet. So I asked them were they afraid lest Gooja Singh might meet
with violence, and they replied they were afraid of nothing. They
added, however, that no man could say in those mountains what this
day or the next might bring forth.
Then I asked them about Wassmuss, and they rather confirmed Ranjoor
Singh's guess about his being practically a prisoner. They said he
was ever on the move, surrounded and very closely watched by the
particular tribe of Kurds that had possession of him for the moment.
"First it is one tribe, then another," they told me. "If you keep
your bargain with our chief and he gets this gold, we shall have
Wassmuss, too, within a week, for we shall buy the allegiance of one
or two more tribes to join with us and oust those Kurds who hold him
now. Hitherto the bulk of his gold has been going into Persia to
bribe the Bakhtiari Khans and such like, but that day is gone by.
Now we Kurds will grow rich. But as for us"--they shrugged their
shoulders like this, sahib, meaning to say that perhaps their day
had gone by also. I left them with the impression they are very
fatalistic folk.
There was no means of knowing how long we might have to wait there,
so Ranjoor Singh gave orders for the best shelter possible to be
prepared, and what with the cave at the rear, and plundered
blankets, and one thing and another we contrived a camp that was
almost comfortable. What troubled us most was shortage of fire-wood,
and we had to send out foraging parties in every direction at no
small risk. The Kurds, like our mountain men of northern India,
leave such matters to their women-folk, and there was more than one
voice raised in anger at Ranjoor Singh because he had not allowed us
to capture women as well as food and horses. Our Turkish prisoners
laughed at us for not having stolen women, and Tugendheim vowed he
had never seen such fools.
But as it turned out, we had not long to wait. That very evening, as
I watched from between two great boulders, I beheld a Turkish convoy
of about six hundred infantry, led by a bimbashi on a gray horse,
with a string of pack-mules trailing out behind them, and five
loaded donkeys led by soldiers in the midst. They were heading
toward the hills, and I sent a man running to bring Ranjoor Singh to
watch them.
It soon became evident that they meant to camp on the plains for
that night. They had tents with them, and they pitched a camp three-
quarters of a mile, or perhaps a mile away from the mouth of our
defile, at a place where a little stream ran between rocks. It was
clear they suspected no treachery, or they would never have chosen
that place, they being but six hundred and the hills full of Kurds
so close at hand. Nevertheless, they were very careful to set
sentries on all the rocks all about, and they gave us no ground for
thinking we might take them by surprise. Seeing they outnumbered us,
and we had to spare a guard for our prisoners and hostages, and that
fifty of our force were Syrians and therefore not much use, I felt
doubtful. I thought Ranjoor Singh felt doubtful, too, until I saw
him glance repeatedly behind and study the sky. Then I began to hope
as furiously as he.
The Turks down on the plain were studying the sky, too. We could see
them fix bayonets and make little trenches about the tents. Another
party of them gathered stones with which to re-enforce the tent
pegs, and in every other way possible they made ready against one of
those swift, sudden storms that so often burst down the sides of
mountains. Most of us had experienced such storms a dozen times or
more in the foot-hills of our Himalayas, and all of us knew the
signs. As evening fell the sky to our rear grew blacker than night
itself and a chill swept down the defile like the finger of death.
"Repack the camp," commanded Ranjoor Singh. "Stow everything in the
cave."
There was grumbling, for we had all looked forward to a warm night's
rest.
"To-night your hearts must warm you!" he said, striding to and fro
to make sure his orders were obeyed. It was dark by the time we had
finished, Then he made us fall in, in our ragged overcoats--aye,
ragged, for those German overcoats had served as coats and tents and
what-not, and were not made to stand the wear of British ones in any
case--unmounted he made us fall in, at which there was grumbling
again.
"Ye shall prove to-night," he said, "whether ye can endure what
mules and horses never could! Warmth ye shall have, if your hearts
are true, but the man who can keep dry shall be branded for a
wizard! Imagine yourselves back in Flanders!"
Most of us shuddered. I know I did. The wind had begun whimpering,
and every now and then would whistle and rise into a scream. A few
drops of heavy rain fell. Then would come a lull, while we could
feel the air grow colder. Our Flanders experience was likely to
stand us in good stead.
Tugendheim and the Syrians were left in charge of our belongings.
There was nothing else to do with them because the Syrians were in
more deathly fear of the storm than they ever had been of Turks.
Nevertheless, we did not find them despicable. Unmilitary people
though they were, they had inarched and endured and labored like
good men, but certain things they seemed to accept as being more
than men could overcome, and this sort of storm apparently was one
of them. We tied the mules and horses very carefully, because we did
not believe the Syrians would stand by when the storm began, and we
were right. Tugendheim begged hard to be allowed to come with us,
but Ranjoor Singh would not let him. I don't know why, but I think
he suspected Tugendheim of knowing something about the German
officers who were ahead of us, in which case Tugendheim was likely
to risk anything rather than continue going forward; and, having
promised him to the Kurdish chief, it would not have suited Ranjoor
Singh to let him escape into Turkey again.
The ten Kurds who had been left with us as guides and to help us
keep peace among the mountains all volunteered to lend a hand in the
fight, and Ranjoor Singh accepted gladly. The hostages, on the other
hand, were a difficult problem; for they detested being hostages.
They would have made fine allies for Tugendheim, supposing he had
meditated any action in our rear. They could have guided him among
the mountains with all our horses and mules and supplies. And
suppose he had made up his mind to start through the storm to find
Wassmuss with their aid, what could have prevented him? He might
betray us to Wassmuss as the price of his own forgiveness. So we
took the hostages with us, and when we found a place between some
rocks where they could have shelter we drove them in there, setting
four troopers to guard them. Thus Tugendheim was kept in ignorance
of their whereabouts, and with no guides to help him play us false.
As for the Greek doctor, we took him with us, too, for we were
likely to need his services that night, and in truth we did.
We started the instant the storm began--twenty minutes or more
before it settled down to rage in earnest. That enabled us to march
about two-thirds of the way toward the Turkish camp and to deploy
into proper formation before the hail came and made it impossible to
hear even a shout. Hitherto the rain had screened us splendidly,
although it drenched us to the skin, and the noise of rain and wind
prevented the noise we made from giving the alarm; but when the hail
began I could not hear my own foot-fall. Ranjoor Singh roared out
the order to double forward, but could make none hear, so he seized
a rifle from the nearest man and fired it off. Perhaps a dozen men
heard that and began to double. The remainder saw, and followed
suit.
The hail was in our backs. No man ever lived who could have charged
forward into it, and not one of the Turkish sentries made pretense
at anything but running for his life. Long before we reached their
posts they were gone, and a flash of lightning showed the tents
blown tighter than drums in the gaining wind and white with the
hailstones. When we reached the tents there was hail already half a
foot deep underfoot where the wind had blown it into drifts, and the
next flash of lightning showed one tent--the bimbashi's own--split
open and blown fluttering into strips. The bimbashi rushed out with
a blanket round his head and shoulders and tried to kick men out of
another tent to make room for him, and failing to do that he
scrambled in on top of them. Opening the tent let the wind in, and
that tent, too, split and fluttered and blew away. And so at last
they saw us coming.
They saw us when we were so close that there was no time to do much
else than run away or surrender. Quite a lot of them ran away I
imagine, for they disappeared. The bimbashi tried to pistol Ranjoor
Singh, and died for his trouble on a trooper's bayonet. Some of the
Turks tried to fight, and they were killed. Those who surrendered
were disarmed and driven away into the storm, and the last we saw of
them was when a flash of lightning showed them hurrying helter-
skelter through the hail with hands behind their defenseless heads
trying to ward off hailstones. They looked very ridiculous, and I
remember I laughed.
I? My share of it? A Turkish soldier tried to drive a bayonet
through me. I think he was the last one left in camp (the whole
business can only have lasted three or four minutes, once we were
among them). I shot him with the repeating pistol that had once been
Tugendheim's--this one, see, sahib--and believing the camp was now
ours and the fighting over, I lay down and dragged his body over me
to save me from hailstones, that had made me ache already in every
inch of my body. I rolled under and pulled the body over in one
movement; and seeing the body and thinking a Turk was crawling up to
attack him, one of our troopers thrust his bayonet clean through it.
It was a goodly thrust, delivered by a man who prided himself on
being workmanlike. If the Turk had not been a fat one I should not
be here. Luckily, I had chosen one whose weight made me grunt, and
because of his thickness the bayonet only pierced an inch or two of
my thigh.
I yelled and kicked the body off me. The trooper made as if to use
the steel again, thinking we were two Turks, and my pointing a
pistol at him only served to confirm the belief. But next minute the
lightning showed the true facts, and he came and sat beside me with
his back to the hail, grinning like an ape.
"That was a good thrust of mine!" he bellowed in my ear. "But for me
that Turk would have had your life!"
When I had cursed his mother's ancestors for a dozen generations in
some detail the truth dawned on him at last. I took his weapon away
from him while he bound a strip of cloth about my thigh, for I knew
the thought had come into his thick skull to finish me off and so
save explanation afterward. I would gladly have let him go with
nothing further said, for I knew the man's first intention had been
honest enough, but did not dare do that because he would certainly
suppose me to be meditating vengeance. So I flew into a great rage
with him, and drove him in front of me until we found a dead mule--
whether killed by hail or bullet I don't know--and he and I lay
between the mule's legs, snuggling under its belly, until the storm
should cease and I could take him before Ranjoor Singh.
I did not know where the gold was, nor where anything or anybody
was. I could see about three yards, except when the lightning
flashed; and then I could see only stricken plain, with dead animals
lying about, and fallen tents lumpy with the men who huddled
underneath, and here and there a live animal with his rump to the
hail and head between his forelegs.
When the storm ceased, suddenly, as all such mountain hail-storms
do, I ordered my trooper in front of me and went limping through the
darkness shouting for Ranjoor Singh, and I found him at last,
sitting on the rump of a dead donkey with the ten boxes of gold coin
beside him--quite little boxes, yet only two to a donkey load.
"I have the gold," he said. "What have you?"
"A stab," said I, "and the fool who gave it me!" And I showed my
leg, with the blood trickling down. "I had killed a Turk," said I,
"and this muddlehead with no discernment had the impudence to try to
finish the job. Behold the result!"
He was one great bruise from head to foot from hailstones, yet with
all he had to think about and all his aches, he had understanding
enough to spare for my little problem. He saw at once that he must
punish the man in order to convince him his account with me was
settled.
"Be driver of asses," he ordered, "until we reach Persia! There were
five asses. One is dead. It is good we have another to replace the
fifth!"
There goes the trooper, sahib--he yonder with the limp. He and I are
as good friends to-day as daffadar and trooper can be, but he would
have slain me to save himself from vengeance unless Ranjoor Singh
had punished him that night. But my tale is not of that trooper, nor
of myself. I tell of Ranjoor Singh. Consider him, sahib, seated on
the dead ass beside ten chests of captured gold, with scarcely a man
of us fit to help him or obey an order, and himself bleeding in
fifty places where the hail had pierced his skin. We were drenched
and numbed, with the spirit beaten out of us; yet I tell you he
wiped the blood from his nose and beard and made us save ourselves!
CHAPTER VIII
Once in a lifetime. Once is enough!
--HIRA SINGH.
Well, sahib, our journey was not nearly at an end, but my tale is; I
can finish it by sundown. After that fight there was no more doubt
of us; we were one again--one in our faith in our leader, and with
men so minded such a man as Ranjoor Singh can make miracles seem
like details of a day's work.
Turks who had been bayoneted and Turks slain by hailstones lay all
about us, and we should have been dead, too, only that the hail was
in our backs. As it was, ten of our men lay killed and more than
thirty stunned, some of whom did not recover. Our little Greek
doctor announced himself too badly injured to help any one, but when
Ranjoor Singh began to choose a firing party for him, he changed his
mind.
The four living donkeys were too bruised by the hail to bear a load,
but the Turks had had some mules with them and we loaded our dead
and wounded on those, gathered up the plunder, told off four
troopers to each chest of gold, and dragged ourselves away. It was
essential that we get back to the hills before dawn should disclose
our predicament, for whatever Kurds should chance to spy us would
never have been restrained by promises or by ritual of friendship
from taking prompt advantage. A savage is a savage.
The moon came out from behind clouds, and we cursed it, for we did
not want to be seen. It shone on a world made white with hail--on a
stricken camp--dead animals--dead men. We who had swept down from
the hills like the very spirit of the storm itself returned like a
funeral cortege, all groaning, chilled to the bone by the searching
wind, and it was beginning to be dawn when the last man dragged
himself between the boulders into our camping ground. We looked so
little like victors that the Syrians sent up a wail and Tugendheim
began tugging at his mustaches, but Ranjoor Singh set them at once
to feeding and grooming animals and soon disillusioned them as to
the outcome of the night.
Now we began to pray for time, to recover from the effects of hail
and chill. Some of the men began to develop fevers, and if Ranjoor
Singh had not fiercely threatened the doctor, things might have gone
from bad to worse. As it was, three men died of something the matter
with their lungs, and five men died of wounds. Yet, on the other
hand, we did not desire too much time, because (surest of all
certainties) the Turks were going to send regiments in a hurry to
wreak vengeance. Before noon, somebody rallied the remnants of the
convoy we had beaten and brought them back to bury dead and look for
property, and they looked quite a formidable body as I watched them
from between the boulders. They soon went away again, having found
nothing but tents torn to rags; but I counted more than four
hundred, which rather lessened my conceit. It had been the storm
that night that did the work, not we.
We could not burn our dead, for lack of sufficient wood, although we
drove the Syrians out of camp to gather more; so we buried them in a
trench, and covered them, and laid little fires at intervals along
the new-stamped earth and set light to those. We did not bury them
very deep, because a bayonet is a fool of a weapon with which to
excavate a grave and a Syrian no expert digger in any case; so when
the fires were burned out we piled rocks on the grave to defeat
jackals.
The Kurdish chief returned on the fifth day and by that time,
although most of us still ached, some of us looked like men again,
and what with the plunder we had taken, and the chests of gold in
full view, he was well impressed. He began by demanding the gold at
once, and Ranjoor Singh surprised me by the calm courtesy with which
he refused.
"Why should my brother seek to alter the terms of our bargain?" he
asked.
For a long time the Kurd made no answer, but sat thinking for some
excuse that might deceive us. Then suddenly he abandoned hope of
argument and flew into a rage, spitting savagely and pouring out
such a flood of words that Abraham could hardly translate fast
enough.
"That pig you gave me for a hostage played a trick!" he shouted. "He
and a man of mine knew Persian. They talked together. Then in the
night they ran away, and your hostage went to Wassmuss, and has told
him all the truth and more untruth into the bargain than ten other
men could invent in a year! So Wassmuss threw in my teeth that
letter you gave me, and I was laughed out of countenance by a
heritage of spawn of Tophet! And what has Wasmuss done but persuade
three hundred Kurds of a tribe who are my enemies to accept this
duty of escort at a great price! And so your Germans are gone into
Persia already! Now give me the gold and my hostages back, and I
will leave you to your own devices!"
It was an hour before Ranjoor Singh could calm him, and another hour
again before cross-examination induced him to tell all the truth;
and the truth was not reassuring. Wassmuss, he said, probably did
not know yet that we had taken the gold, but the news was on the
way, for spies had talked in the night with the ten Kurds whom he
left with us to be guides and to help us keep peace. We had given
those ten a Turkish rifle each and various other plunder, because
they helped us in the fight, and they had promised in return to hold
their tongues. But a savage is a savage, and there is no
controverting it.
"What is Wassmuss likely to do?" Ranjoor Singh asked.
"Do?" said the Kurd. "He has done! He has set two tribes by the ears
and sent them down to surround you and hem you in and starve you to
surrender! So give me the gold, that I may get away with it before a
thousand men come to prevent, and give me back my hostages!"
If what was happening now had taken place but a week before, Ranjoor
Singh would have found himself in a fine fix, for all except I would
have there and then denounced him for a bungler, or a knave. But now
the other daffadars who clustered around him and me said one to the
other, "Let us see what our sahib makes of it!" The men sent word to
know what was being revealed through two long hours of talk, and
Chatar Singh went back to bid them have patience.
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