Books: Hira Singh
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Talbot Mundy >> Hira Singh
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"Is there trouble?" they asked, and he answered "Aye!"
"Tell our sahib we stand behind him!" they answered, and Chatar
Singh brought that message and I think it did Ranjoor Singh's heart
good,--not that he would not have done his best in any case.
"You have lost my hostage, and I hold yours," he told the Kurd, "so
now, if you want yours back you must pay whatever price I name for
them!"
"Who am I to pay a price?" the Kurd demanded. "I have neither gold
nor goods, nor anything but three hundred men!"
"Where are thy men?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"Within an hour's ride," said the Kurd, "watching for the men who
come from Wassmuss."
"You shall have back your hostages," said Ranjoor Singh, "when I and
my men set foot in Persia!"
"How shall you reach Persia?" laughed the Kurd. "A thousand men ride
now to shut you off! Nay, give me the gold and my men, and ride back
whence you came!"
Then it was Ranjoor Singh's turn to laugh. "Sikhs who are facing
homeward turn back for nothing less than duty!" he answered. "I
shall fight the thousand men that Wassmuss sends. If they conquer me
they will take the gold and your hostages as well."
The Kurd looked amazed. Then he looked thoughtful. Then acquisitive-
-very acquisitive indeed. It seemed to me that he contemplated
fighting us first, before the Wassmuss men could come. But Ranjoor
Singh understood him better. That Kurd was no fool--only a savage,
with a great hunger in him to become powerful.
"My men are seasoned warriors," said Ranjoor Singh, "and being men
of our word first and last, we are good allies. Has my brother a
suggestion?"
"What if I help you into Persia?" said the Kurd.
But Ranjoor Singh was wary. "Help me in what way?" he asked, and the
Kurd saw it was no use to try trickery.
"What if I and my men fight beside you and yours, and so you win
through to Persia?" asked the Kurd.
"As I said," said Ranjoor Singh, "you shall have back your hostages
on the day we set foot in Persia."
"But the gold!" said the Kurd. "But the gold!"
"Half of the gold you shall have on the third day after we reach
Persia," said Ranjoor Singh.
Well, sahib, as to that they higgled and bargained for another hour,
Ranjoor Singh yielding little by little until at last the bargain
stood that the Kurd should have all the gold except one chest on the
seventh day after we reached Persia. Thus, the Kurds would be
obliged to give us escort well on our way. But the bargaining was
not over yet. It was finally agreed that after we reached Persia,
provided the Kurds helped us bravely and with good faith, on the
first day we would give them back their hostages; on the third day
we would give them Tugendheim, to trade with Wassmuss against the
Kurd's brother (thus keeping Ranjoor Singh's promise to Tugendheim
to provide for him in the end); on the fifth day we would give them
our Turkish officer prisoners, to trade with the Turks against
Kurdish prisoners; and on the seventh day we would give them the
gold and leave to go. We ate more bread and salt on that, and then I
went to tell the men.
But I scarcely had time to tell them. Ranjoor Singh had out his map
when I left him, and he and the Kurd were poring over it, he tracing
with a finger and asking swift questions, and the Kurd with the aid
of Abraham trying to understand. Yet I had hardly told the half of
what I meant to say when Ranjoor Singh strode past me, and the Kurd
went galloping away between the boulders to warn his own men,
leaving us not only the hostages but the ten guides also.
"Make ready to march at once--immediately--ek dum!" Ranjoor Singh
growled to me as he passed, and from that minute until we were away
and well among the hills I was kept too busy with details to do much
conjecturing. A body of soldiers with transport and prisoners,
wounded and sick, need nearly as much herding as a flock of sheep,
even after months of campaigning when each man's place and duty
should be second nature. Yet oh, it was different now. There was no
need now to listen for whisperings of treason! Now we knew who the
traitor had been all along--not Ranjoor Singh, who had done his best
from first to last, but Gooja Singh, who had let no opportunity go
by for defaming him and making trouble!
"This for Gooja Singh when I set eyes on him!" said not one trooper
but every living man, licking a cartridge and slipping it into the
breech chamber as we started.
We did not take the track up which the Kurdish chief had galloped,
but the ten guides led us by a dreadful route round almost the half
of a circle, ever mounting upward. When night fell we camped without
fires in a hollow among crags, and about midnight when the moon rose
there was a challenge, and a short parley, and a Kurd rode in with a
message from his chief for Ranjoor Singh. The message was verbal,
and had to be translated by Abraham, but I did not get to hear the
wording of it. I was on guard.
"It is well," said Ranjoor Singh to me, when he went the rounds and
found me perched on a crag like a temple minaret, "they are keeping
faith. The Wassmuss men are in the pass below us, and our friends
deny them passage. At dawn there will be a fight and our friends
will probably give ground. Two hours before dawn we will march, and
come down behind the Wassmuss men. Be ready!"
The sahib will understand now better what I meant by saying Anim
Singh has ears too big for his head. Because of his big ears, that
could detect a foot-fall in the darkness farther away than any of
us, he had been sent to share the guard with me, and now he came
looming up out of the night to share our counsels; for since the
news of Gooja Singh's defection there was no longer even a pretense
at awkwardness in approaching Ranjoor Singh. Anim Singh had been
among the first to fling distrust to the winds and to make the fact
evident.
But into those great ears, during all our days and weeks and months
of marching, Gooja Singh had whispered--whispered. The things men
whisper to each other are like deeds done in the dark--like rats
that run in holes--put to shame by daylight. So Anim Singh came now,
and Ranjoor Singh repeated to him what he had just told me. Anim
Singh laughed.
"Leave the Kurds to fight it out below, then!" said he. "While they
fight, let us eat up distance into Persia, gold and all!"
Ranjoor Singh, with the night mist sparkling like jewels on his
beard, eyed him in silence for a minute. Then:
"I give thee leave," he said, "to take as many men as share that
opinion, and to bolt for your skins into Persia or anywhither! The
rest of us will stay and keep the regiment's promise!"
That was enough for Anim Singh. I have said he is a Sikh with a
soldier's heart. He wept, there on the ledge, where we three leaned,
and begged forgiveness until Ranjoor Singh told him curtly that
forgiveness came of deeds, not words. And his deeds paid the price
that dawn. He is a very good man with the saber, and the saber he
took from a Turkish officer was, weight and heft and length, the
very image of the weapon he was used to. Nay, who was I to count the
Kurds he slew. I was busy with my own work, sahib.
The fight below us began before the earliest color of dawn flickered
along the heights. And though we started when the first rifle-shot
gave warning, hiding our plunder and mules among the crags in charge
of the Syrians, but taking Tugendheim with us, the way was so steep
and devious that morning came and found us worrying lest we come too
late to help our friends--even as once we had worried in the Red
Sea!
But as we had come in the nick of time before, even so now. We
swooped all unexpected on the rear of the Wassmuss men, taking
ourselves by surprise as much as them, for we had thought the fight
yet miles away. Echoes make great confusion in the mountains. It was
echoes that had kept the Wassmuss men from hearing us, although we
made more noise than an avalanche of fighting animals. Straightway
we all looked for Wassmuss, and none found him, for the simple
reason that he was not there; a prisoner we took told us afterward
that Wassmuss was too valuable to be trusted near the border, where
he might escape to his own folk. There is no doubt Wassmuss was
prisoner among the Kurds,--nor any doubt either that he directs all
the uprising and raiding and disaffection in Kurdistan and Persia.
As Ranjoor Singh said of him--a remarkable man, and not to be
despised.
Seeing no Wassmuss, it occurred to me at last to listen to orders!
Ranjoor Singh was shouting to me as if to burst his lungs. The Kurds
were fighting on foot, taking cover behind boulders, and he was
bidding me take my command and find their horses.
I found them, sahib, within an ace of being too late. They had left
them in a valley bottom with a guard of but twenty or thirty men,
who mistook us at first for Kurds, I suppose, for they took no
notice of us. I have spent much time wondering whence they expected
mounted Kurds to come; but it is clear they were so sure of victory
for their own side that it did not enter their heads to suspect us
until our first volley dropped about half of them.
Then the remainder began to try to loose the horses and gallop away,
and some of them succeeded; but we captured more than half the
horses and began at once to try to get them away into the hills. But
it is no easy matter to manage several hundred frightened horses
that were never more than half tamed in any case, and many of them
broke away from us and raced after their friends. Then I sent a
messenger in a hurry to Ranjoor Singh, to say the utmost had been
attempted and enough accomplished to serve his present purpose, but
the messenger was cut down by the first of a crowd of fugitive
Kurds, who seized his reins and fought among themselves to get his
horse.
Seeing themselves taken in the rear, the Kurds had begun to fall
back in disorder, and had actually burst through our mounted ranks
in a wild effort to get to their own horses; for like ourselves, the
Kurds prefer to fight mounted and have far less confidence in
themselves on foot. Ranjoor Singh, with our men, all mounted, and
our Kurdish friends, were after them--although our friends were too
busy burdening themselves with the rifles and other belongings of
the fallen to render as much aid as they ought. to help, and glad I
was to have him. A brave good daffadar is Chatar Singh, and now that
all suspicion of our leader was weaned out of him, I could ask for
no better comrade on a dark night. Night did I say? That was a night
like death itself, when a man could scarcely see his own hand held
thus before his face--cold and rainy to make matters worse.
We had two Kurds to show us the way, and, I suppose because our
enemies had had enough of it, we were not fired on once, going or
coming. Our train of mules clattered and stumbled and our Syrians
kept losing themselves and yelling to be found again. Weary men and
animals ever make more noise than fresh ones; frightened men more
than either, and we were so dead weary by the time we got back that
my horse fell under me by Ranjoor Singh's side.
Of all the nights I ever lived through, except those last we spent
in the trench in Flanders before our surrender, that was the worst.
Hunger and cold and fear and weariness all wrought their worst with
me; yet I had to set an example to the men. My horse, as I have
told, fell beside Ranjoor Singh; he dragged me to my feet, and I
fell again, dizzy with misery and aching bones. Yet it was beginning
to be dawn then, and we had to be up and off again. Our dead were
buried; our wounded were bound up; the Kurds would be likely to
begin on us again at any minute; there was nothing to wait there
for. We left little fires burning above the long grave (for our men
had brought all our dead along with them, although our Kurdish
friends left theirs behind them) and I took one of the captured
horses, and Ranjoor Singh although we captured one apiece--which is
all a man can manage besides his own and a rifle.
By that time it was three in the afternoon already and the pass
forked about a dozen different ways, so that we lost the Kurds at
last, they scattering to right and left and shooting at us at long
range from the crags higher up. We were all dead beat, and the
horses, too, so we rested, the Kurds continuing to fire at us, but
doing no damage. They fired until dusk.
Our own three hundred Kurdish friends were not very far behind
Ranjoor Singh, and I observed when they came up with us presently
that he took up position down the pass behind them. They were too
fond of loot to be trusted between us and that gold! They were so
burdened with plunder that some of them could scarcely ride their
horses. Several had as many as three rifles each, and they had found
great bundles of food and blankets where the enemy's horses had been
tethered. Their plundering had cost them dear, for they had exposed
themselves recklessly to get what their eyes lusted for. They had
lost more than fifty men. But we had lost more than twenty killed,
and there was a very long tale of wounded, so that Ranjoor Singh
looked serious as he called the roll. The Greek doctor had to work
that night as if his own life depended on it--as in fact it did! We
made Tugendheim help him, for, like all German soldiers, he knew
something of first aid.
Then, because the Kurds could not be trusted on such an errand,
Ranjoor Singh sent me back with fifty men to bring on the Syrians
and our mules and belongings, and the gold. He gave me Chatar Singh
I left my horse, and climbed a rock, and looked for half a minute.
Then I knew what to do; and I wonder whether ever in the world was
such a running fight before. I had only lost one man; and it was
quite another matter driving the Kurds' horses up the valley in the
direction they wished to take, to attempting to drive them
elsewhere. Being mounted ourselves, we could keep ahead of the
retreating Kurds very easily, so we adopted the same tactics again
and again and again.
First we drove the horses helter-skelter up the valley a mile or
two. Then we halted, and hid our own horses, and took cover behind
the rocks to wait for the Kurds; and as they came, making a good
running fight of it, dodging hither and thither behind the boulders
to try to pick off Ranjoor Singh's men, we would open fire on their
rear unexpectedly, thus throwing them into confusion again,--and
again,--and again.
We opened fire always at too great distance to do much material
damage, I thinking it more important to preserve my own men's lives
and so to continue able to demoralize the Kurds, and afterward
Ranjoor Singh commended me for that. But I was also acutely aware of
the risk that our bullets might go past the Kurds and kill our own
Sikhs. I am not at all sure some accidents of that nature did not
happen.
So when we had fired at the Kurds enough to make them face about and
so expose their rear to Ranjoor Singh, we would get to horse again
and send the Kurdish horses galloping up the pass in front of us.
Finally, we lost sight of most of the Kurdish horses, led on. I
slept on the march. Nay, I had no eyes for scenery just then!
After that the unexpected, amazing, happened as it so often does in
war. We were at the mercy of any handful who cared to waylay us, for
the hillsides shut us in, and there was cover enough among the
boulders to have hidden a great army. It was true we had worsted the
Wassmuss men utterly; I think we slew at least half of them, and
doubtless that, and the loss of their horses, must have taken much
heart out of the rest. But we expected at least to be attacked by
friends of the men we had worsted--by mountain cutthroats, thieves,
and plunderers, any fifty of whom could have made our march
impossible by sniping us from the flanks.
But nothing happened, and nobody attacked us. As we marched our
spirit grew. We began to laugh and make jokes about the enemy
hunting for lost horses and letting us go free. For two days we
rode, and camped, and slept a little, and rode on unmolested,
climbing ever forward to where we could see the peaks that our
friendly chief assured us were in Persia. For miles and miles and
everlasting miles it seemed the passes all led upward; but there
came a noon at last when we were able to feel, and even see--when at
least we knew in our hearts that the uphill work was over. We could
see other ranges, running in other directions, and mountains with
tree-draped sides. But chiefly it was our hearts that told us we
were really in sight of Persia at last.
Then wounded and all gathered together, with Ranjoor Singh in the
midst of us, and sang the Anand, our Sikh hymn of joy, our Kurdish
friends standing by and wondering (not forgetting nevertheless to
watch for opportunity to snatch that gold and run!)
And there, on the very ridge dividing Persia from Asiatic Turkey, it
was given to us to understand at last a little of the why and
wherefore of our marching unmolested. We came to a crack in a rock
by the wayside. And in the crack had been thrust, so that it stood
upright, a gnarled tree-trunk, carried from who knows how far. And
there, crucified to the dry wood was our daffadar Gooja Singh, with
his flesh all tortured and torture written in his open eyes--not
very long dead, for his flesh was scarcely cold--although the birds
had already begun on him. Who could explain that? We sat our horses
in a crowd, and gaped like fools!
At last I said, "Leave him to the birds'." but Ranjoor Singh said
"Nay!" Ramnarain Singh, who had ever hated Gooja Singh for reasons
of his own, joined his voice to mine; and because they had no wish
to offend me the other daffadars agreed. But Ranjoor Singh rose into
a towering passion over what we said, naming me and Ramnarain Singh
in one breath as men too self-righteous to be trusted!
"What proof have we against him?" he demanded.
"Try him by court martial!" Ramnarain Singh screwed up courage to
answer. "Call for witnesses against him and hear them!"
"Who can try a dead man by court martial?" Ranjoor Singh thundered
back. "He left us to go and be our hostage, for our safety--for the
safety of your ungrateful skins! He died a hostage, given by us to
savages. They killed him. Are ye worse savages than they? Which of
our dead lie dishonored anywhere? Have they not all had burning or
else burial? Are ye judges of the dead? Or are ye content to live
like men? Take him down, and lay him out for burial! His brother
daffadars shall dig his grave!"
Aye, sahib. So he gave the order, and so we obeyed, saying no more,
but digging a trench for Gooja Singh with bayonets, working two
together turn and turn about, I, who had been all along his enemy,
doing the lion's share of the work and thinking of the talks he and
I had had, and the disputes. And here was the outcome! Aye.
It was not a very deep trench but it served, and we laid him in it
with his feet toward India, and covered him, and packed the earth
down tight. Then we burned on the grave the tree to which he had
been crucified, and piled a great cairn of stone above him. There we
left him, on the roof of a great mountain that looks down on Persia.
It was perhaps two hours, or it may have been three, after burying
Gooja Singh (we rode on in silence, thinking of him, our wounded
groaning now and then, but even the words of command being given by
sign instead of speech because none cared to speak) that we learned
the explanation, and more with it.
We found a good place to camp, and proceeded to make it defensible
and to gather fuel. Then some of the women belonging to our Kurdish
friends overtook us, and with them a few of our Kurdish wounded and
some unwounded ones who had returned to glean again on the battle-
field. These brought with them two prisoners whom we set in the
midst, and then Abraham was set to work translating until his tongue
must have almost fallen out with weariness. Bit by bit, we pieced a
tale together that had reason in it and so brought us understanding.
Our first guess had been right; the Turks had already sent (some
said a full division) to wreak vengeance for our plundering of the
gold. The Kurds of those parts, who fight among themselves like wild
beasts, nevertheless will always stand together to fight Turks;
therefore those who had been attacking us were now behind us with
thousands of other Kurds from the tribes all about, waiting to
dispute the passes with the common enemy. They considered us an
insignificant handful, to be dealt with later on. The women said the
battle had not begun; and the prisoners bade our Kurds swallow
tribal enmity and hurry to do their share! The chief listened to
them, saying nothing. Has the sahib ever watched a savage thinking
while lust drew him one way and pride another? Truly an interesting
sight!
But the rest of the men were too interested to learn the reason of
Gooja Singh's torture and death to care for the workings of a
Kurdish chief's conscience. They crowded closer and closer,
interrupting with shouted questions and bidding each other be still.
So Ranjoor Singh said a word to Abraham and he changed the line of
questioning. The truth was soon out.
Gooja Singh, it seemed, probably not believing we had one chance in
a million, decided to contrive safety for himself. So with one Kurd
to help him, he escaped in the night, and went and found Wassmuss in
a Kurdish village in the mountains. He told Wassmuss who we were,
and whence we were, and what we intended. So Wassmuss (who must be a
very remarkable man indeed), although a prisoner, exerted so much
persuasion forthwith that three hundred Kurds consented to escort
the party of Germans there and then to Afghanistan. He promised them
I know not what reward, but the point is they consented, and within
eight hours of Gooja Singh's arrival the German party was on its
way.
Then Wassmuss sent the thousand Kurds to deal with us; but, as I
have told, we beat them. And that made the Kurds who held Wassmuss
prisoner extremely angry with Gooja Singh; so they made him
prisoner, too. And then, by signal and galloper and shouts from crag
to crag came word that the Turks were marching in force to invade
the mountains, and instantly they turned on Gooja Singh and would
have torn him in pieces for being a spy of the Turks, sent on ahead
to prepare the way. But some cooler head than the rest urged to put
him to the torture, and they agreed.
Whether or not Gooja Singh declared under torture that we were Turks
we could not get to know, but it is certain that the Kurds decided
we were Turks, whatever Wassmuss swore to the contrary; and
doubtless he swore furiously! And because they believed us to be
Turks, they let us be for the present, sure that we would try to
make our way back if they could keep the main Turkish forces from
regaining touch with us. And Gooja Singh they presently crucified in
a place where we would almost surely see him, thinking thus to
surprise us with the information that all was known, and to frighten
us into a state of comparative harmlessness--a favorite Kurdish
trick.
That did not account for everything. It did not account for our
victory over Turks in the hail-storm and our plunder of the Turks'
camp and capture of the gold. But none had seen that raid because of
the storm, and the spies who had said they talked with our men in
the night were now disbelieved. Our presence in the hills and Gooja
Singh's escape was all set down to Turkish trickery; and doubtless
they did not believe we truly had gold with us, or they would have
detached at least a party to follow us up and keep in touch.
The clearest thing of all that the disjointed scraps of tale
betrayed was that we were in luck! If the Kurds believed us to be
Turks, they were likely to let us wander at will, if only for the
very humor and sport of hunting us down when we should try to break
back. "No need to waste more labor setting this camp to rights!"
said I. "We shall rest a little and be up and away again!" And the
wounded groaned, and some objected, but I proved right. Ranjoor
Singh was no man to study comfort when opportunity showed itself. We
rested two hours, and during those two hours our friend the Kurdish
chief made tip his mind, and he and Ranjoor Singh struck a new
bargain.
"Give me the gold!" said he. "Keep the hostages and ten of my men to
guide you, and send them back when you are two days into Persia. I
go to fight against the Turks!"
Well, they bargained, and bargained. Ranjoor Singh offered him his
choice of a chest of gold then and there, or four-fifths of the
whole in Persia; and in the end he agreed to take three chests of
gold then and there, and to leave us the hostages and thirty men to
see us on our way. "For," said Ranjoor Singh, "how should the
hostages and my prisoners return to you safely otherwise?"
So we kept two chests of gold, and found them right useful
presently. And we said good-by to him and his men, and put out our
own fires and rode eastward. And of the next few days there is
nothing to tell except furious marching and very little sleep--nor
much to eat either.
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