Read Ebook: The Ruby Sword: A Romance of Baluchistan by Mitford Bertram Piffard Harold Illustrator

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Ebook has 1157 lines and 66180 words, and 24 pages

"Well, I don't know. I think I do. But I left my shot gun down at Chotiali with my other things."

"You'd much better sit still and keep yourself quiet for the rest of the day, Mr Campian," warned Mrs Upward. "A nasty fall on the head isn't a thing to be trifled with, especially in hot climates. I've seen too much of that sort of thing in my time."

But the warning was overruled. Campian declared himself sufficiently recovered, provided there was no hard climbing to be done. Tiffin had set him up entirely.

"Do just as you like, old chap," said Upward. "You can use my gun. I don't care about chikor. They are the rottenest form of game bird I know. Won't rise, for one thing."

"Let's all go," suggested Lily. "We can keep behind. And we shall see how many misses Mr Campian makes," she added, with her natural cheekiness.

"It's hardly fair," objected the proposed victim--"I, the only gunner, too--Why, all this `gallery' is bound to get on my nerves."

"Never mind--you can put it down to your fall, if you do miss a lot," suggested Nesta.

"Well, we'd better start soon, and not go too far either, for I shouldn't wonder if this evening turned out as bad as last," said Upward, rising from table. "Khola--Call Bhallu Khan."

The bearer replied that he was in front of the tent.

"So this is the man whose sharp hearing was the saving of my life?" said Campian, as the head forester extended his salaam to him--And he put out his hand.

The forester, a middle-aged Pathan of the Kakar tribe, was a fine specimen of his race. He looked picturesque enough in his white loose garments, his head crowned with the "Kulla," or conical cap, round which was wound a snowy turban. He had eyes and teeth which a woman might have envied, and as he grasped the hand extended to him, the expression of his face was pleasing and attractive in the extreme.

"Oh, he has. Still, with Mohamedans you never can be absolutely certain. Any question of fanaticism or semi-religious war, and they're all alike. We've had too many instances of that."

"Oh, come now, Ernest. You mustn't class good old Bhallu Khan with that sort of native," struck in his wife. "If there was any sort of rising I believe he'd stand by us with his life."

"I believe so too. Still, as I say, with Mohamedans you can never tell. Look, Campian, this is where we found you last night. Here's where you were lying, and here's where the water came up to during the night."

Campian looked somewhat grave as he contemplated the jagged edge of sticks and straws which demarcated the water-line, and remembered that awful advancing wave bellowing down upon him.

"Yes--It was a near thing," he said--"a very near thing."

But a word from the forester dispelled all such weighty reflections, and that word was "Chikor!"

This was repeated again and again. All the shots were long shots, and there were as many misses as birds. There were plenty of birds, but they persistently forebore to rise.

"Now you see why I'm not keen on chikor shooting, old chap," said Upward, as after a couple of hours this sport was voted hardly worth while. And subsequently Bhallu Khan expressed the opinion to his master that the strange sahib did not seem much of a shikari. He might have made quite a heavy bag--there were the birds, right under his feet, but he would not shoot--he would wait for them to rise--and they invariably rose much too far off to fire at with any chance of bringing them down.

INCIDENTAL.

"I'm afraid, Nesta, my child, that your soldier friends will have to alight somewhere else if they want any chikor," pronounced Campian, subsiding upon a boulder to light his pipe. "We've railroaded them around this valley to such purpose that you can't get within a couple of hundred yards. When are they due, by the way--the sodgers, not the chikor?"

"To-day, I think. They have been threatening for the last fortnight."

"Threatening! Ingrate! Only think what a blessing their arrival will shed. You will hear all the latest `gup' from Shalalai, and have a couple of devoted poodles, all eagerness to frisk, and fetch and carry-- wagging their tails for approving pats, and all that sort of thing. And you must be tired of this very quiet life, unrelieved save by a couple of old fogies like yours truly and Upward?"

"Ah, I'm tired of the `gup' of Shalalai. I'm not sure I'm not quite tired of soldiers."

"That begins to look brisk for me, my dear girl, I being--bar Upward-- nearly the only civilian in Baluchistan. The only flaw in this to me alluring vista now opened out is--how long will it last? First of all, sit down. There's no fun in standing unnecessarily."

Some fifty yards off, Bhallu Khan, having spread his chuddah on the ground, and put the shoes from off his feet--was devoutly performing the prescribed prostrations in the direction of the Holy City, repeating the while the aspirations and ascriptions wherewith the Faithful--good, bad and indifferent--are careful to hallow the opening of another day.

"You were asserting yourself tired of the garrison," went on Campian. "Yes? And wherefore this--caprice, since but the other day you were sworn to the sabre?"

"Was I? Well perhaps I've changed my mind. I may do that, you know. But I don't like any of those at Shalalai. And--the nice ones are all married."

This escaped her so spontaneously, so genuinely, that Campian burst out laughing.

"Oh that's the grievance, is it?" he said. "And what about the others who are--not nice?"

"Oh, I just fool them. Some of them think they're fooling me. I let it go far enough, and then they suddenly find out I've been fooling them. It's rather a joke."

"Ever taken anyone seriously?"

"That's telling."

"All right, then. Don't tell."

She looked up at him quickly. Her eyes seemed to be trying to read his face, which, beyond a slightly amused elevation of one eyebrow, was absolutely expressionless.

"Well, I have then," she said, with a half laugh.

"So? Tell us all about it, Nessita."

She looked up quickly--"I say, that's rather a good name--I like it. It sounds pretty. No one ever called me that before."

"Accept it from me, then."

"Yes, I will. But, do you know--it's awful cheek of you to call me by my name at all. When did you first begin doing it, by the way?"

"Don't know. I suppose it came so natural as not to mark an epoch. Couldn't locate the exact day or hour to save my life. Shall I return to `Miss Cheriton?'"

"You never did say that. You never called me anything--until--"

"Likely. It's a little way I have. I say--It's rather fun chikor shooting in the early morning. What?"

"That means, I suppose, that you're tired of talking, and would like to go on." And she rose from her seat.

"Not at all. Sit down again. That's right. For present purposes it means that you won't go out with me any more like this of a morning after those two Johnnies come."

"You won't want me then. You can all go out together. I should only be in the way."

"Thanks."

"Eh--what is it?" whispered Campian, looking eagerly in the direction pointed at by the other.

The forester shook his head, and continued to gesticulate. Then he put both forefingers to his head, one on each side above the ears, pointing upwards.

"Does he mean he has seen the devil?" said Campian wonderingly. "I guess he's trying to make us understand `horns.'"

Nesta exploded in a peal of laughter, which, though melodious enough to human ears, must have had a terrifying effect on whatever had been designated by Bhallu Khan. He ceased to point eagerly through the scrub, but his new gesticulations meant unmistakably that the thing, whatever it might be, was gone.

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