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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, 24 November 1933, with "The Eye-Teeth Of O'Hara"
THERE was darkness drenched with starlight and the comforting sound of many horses at a picket beyond the glowing camp-fire. There was a smell that included saddles, tobacco, wood-smoke and the syces' supper. Some of the tents were dark already, but from others came talk and laughter; and there was one false note for the sake of contrast. It was written at the birth of time, presumably, that nothing human shall be perfect. Therefore Major Jones was singing, nasally off-key, a nasty song about the lights of London; nasty because it was immoral even to imagine London in that setting.
But Jones never did anything right, except to pay his bills and raise hell with the mess cook if the curry was not to his liking. Jones was due for retirement next month; this was his last ride with the tent club. He was probably trying to make himself enjoy the prospect of home and half pay.
But it was Larry O'Hara's first ride—not his first time out to "pig," but his first in distinguished company. He was the youngest present, and a lot too sensible not to know that his father's reputation was a deadly liability. The son of General O'Hara must be either a nonentity contented to be General O'Hara's son, or else he must cut such a swath for himself that even India would presently forget the proverb: "Great king's sons are little princes."
He had done well thus far. Indian native cavalry can, will, does find—swiftly and unmercifully—the weak spots in subalterns fresh from their first year's training with a British regiment. He had earned his transfer to the Guides and he had passed in languages; by grim self-discipline and study he had learned the difficult but absolutely necessary trick of being hardboiled and at the same time sympathetic; reckless, ruthless and good-humored; proud, exacting; nevertheless, so friendly that the Rajput troopers of his squadron spoke of him as Larry sahib.
But he knew that it would take more than that to overcome his handicap. By only one means may a man transcend a reputation such as General O'Hara had built up for himself and burned into the brazen rolls of time.
So he sat in the door of his tent considering—a handsome fellow, built, like so many Irish gentlemen, as if he were intended to be part and parcel with a fine horse. He had blue-gray eyes that doubted all things except such as he himself had tested. He himself was not yet tested, and he knew that. It amused him to imagine how his self-contempt would feel if he should fail in one essential. So, when shadow moved within a shadow and a slight sound stole forth from the fifty silences that are the pulse of India's night, and when a voice said, "Sahib, may I draw near?" he was in as cynical a mood as he ever permitted himself. To throw that off he welcomed interruption.
"Yes—come."
"I am Padadmaroh."
"I knew your voice. What is it?"
"It is not much. It is just a little matter. Are we alone, sahib?"
"Yes. Drag up that horse blanket, Padadmaroh. Put it there, where I can see your face against the firelight. Now sit down, ancient of days, and tell me of this little matter that is not much."
Firelight changed the shadow into a gray bearded bronze native, clad in cotton loincloth and an Englishman's old Norfolk jacket out at elbow. Padadmaroh might have sat to Rembrandt for a portrait of the least conventional Apostle. Bowed by experience, he was, and, beneath that worn look, fierce with passion for essentials. Poverty was nothing to him, and his pride might not be judged by any normal standard. Deep eyes, beneath a ragged turban, saw through surfaces and did not announce what they saw.
"So. Men tell me, sahib, that you do well. I have heard that the squadron rides behind you as a wolf pack at the heels of a seasoned leader."
"Nonsense," said O'Hara. "I have not yet cut my eye-teeth."
"That is well said. Sahib, I was head shikarri* to your father—whose father my father served as a scout in the wars up northward, in the days when death lay fifty paces off and not a mile away, as it does now. Then men shot each other. Now they shoot at nothing, and are shot from nowhere. Then, when the guns grew hot, men had at one another's throats and it was easy, sahib—easy to learn who was pukka."
* Native hunter
O'Hara paused for a moment, then said thoughtfully: "You have seen a lot of changes, Padadmaroh. Tanks, motors, airplanes—"
"Aye, and India is changing, sahib. But there is one thing that does not * Native hunter change. He who has it has it. He who has it not is not worth trouble But how shall he know that he has it?"
"No man ever can know," O'Hara answered. "No matter what's behind a man, there may be something ahead that will make him crack and act up."
"Sahib, there is also this that never changes. It is the way of the wild boar. He is the tester. He is the cutter of men's eye-teeth."
"They say the pigs are plentiful," O'Hara answered. "We are out after them at daybreak."
"Ah. He who will ride at a boar needs bowels. And within the bowels, entrails. And within the entrails, guts. But there are guts and guts, as there-are boars and boars. And it is one thing to ride in company. It is another thing, sahib, to ride alone against an old one who has slain men."
"Four of us ride tomorrow," O'Hara answered. "You know our custom."
"Sahib, listen to me. I am old. I said to General O'Hara, Sahib, bahadur, the test of a man is his courage. But the fruit of a man is the son of his loins.' And he nodded, as his way was when he was thoughtful, stroking his nose thus between thumb and finger. So I said to him then, 'Bahadur, shall I test your son when it is time?'"
"What did he say?" O'Hara answered curiously.
"He said, 'Why not? He must find out somehow. Will it matter who mistrusts him if he learns to trust himself? If he is rotten, let him know it, lest he get in good men's way.' So I answered, T will test him.' I am ready, sahib."
"To the devil with you," said O'Hara. "Do you take me for a damned fool?"
"Nay, I know not. But I know this: he slew a tiger."
"Who did?"
"That one of whom I came to speak to you. He is the father of boars—a gray boar, and a lone one. All my days what was I? A shikarri. Since I was younger than you are, sahib, there has not been one gray boar on all this countryside, but I knew where he kept himself, and guessed his weight, and knew his character. And before me my father did likewise. Not in his day nor in mine has such a boar been seen. This one is higher by my hand's breadth than that one they slew in Guzerat in '79; and that one was a wonder.
"That one slew two men and half a dozen horses in his last charge. There were eight against him, and I saw it. Hah! I say he slew two; and he slew six horses. There were three spears sticking in him when he charged the last time, and the officer who killed him lost his right eye, because one of those spears struck him as the boar rose at the horse's belly. That was a boar of boars, but not as good as this one. As a man's breath to a typhoon, so was that good boar compared to this one of which I now speak."
"Trot him out then and we'll ride him," said O'Hara.
"Nay."
"Why?"
"In the first place, who am I that I should waste a gray boar who has slain men? Never was one like him—never. Sahib, I say he slew a tiger."
"Did you see that?"
"Nay. But I saw the tiger; and I sold his torn pelt for ten rupees, that should have been worth three hundred had that boar .not cut it to ribbons. And I saw the boar that same day, bloody from the tiger's claws that smote but could not conquer him."
"How long ago was that?"
"Six months and nine days, sahib. I followed that boar to a waterhole and watched him wallow until he had plastered himself with clean mud and the blood ceased flowing. Since that day he is a lone one and not even a sow dares come within a mile of him. He is a boar of boars. There are a thousand devils in him, and his is the cunning of madness."
Larry O'Hara studied the old man's silhouette against the firelight.
"So is mine," he answered. "If I were as mad as you think, I'd be a lot too cunning to let you know it. What's the idea? Want to take me in a trap of some sort? What for?"
"I am an old man, sahib. Ere I die I wish to see what would make it worthwhile to have lived. When I was your age each young sahib had to earn his spurs. They cut his eye-teeth for him on the edge of difficulty; as for instance, it was three days' ride to this place, that you come to nowadays in two hours, in a car that stinks, whose syce is a Sikh afraid of horses. It is all too easy."
"Saves time," said O'Hara.
"Even the horses came by motor truck. I saw it."
"Saves the horses," said O'Hara.
"Sahib, how are the horses?"
"Splendid. I've a nine-year-old—a mare that won the Punjab cup. She's savage. My second's a half Arab country-bred, a bit young and a trifle nervous but as game as hell when he once gets going. And my third is a flea bitten Kathiawari, about one-eighth Percheron—strong as an elephant, but clever on her feet and fairly fast."
"Sahib, ride that one."
"When? Why?"
SILENCE, as the fire died and the shadows deepened. Major Jones ceased singing and a snore came from a nearby tent. Then a horse in the picket line neighed and a syce rebuked him. Silence again, until marauding jackals suddenly began to chatter like ghouls and some one's tethered dog defied them at the top of his lungs. Presently a camp attendant heaped more fuel on the fire, so that Larry O'Hara's face glowed within the overshadowing tent and Padadmaroh's silhouette grew sharp again. But the old man still said nothing.
Then came Major Jones, long legged, striding like a stork because there might be scorpions and he was wearing slippers. O'Hara's servant stepped unsummoned out of black night and produced a chair for him.
"I hate to drink alone," said Jones. "It's rotten morals. So I told my boy to bring us both a nightcap. Everybody else has turned in. Who is this man?"
"Padadmaroh. Used to know my father. Wants to introduce me to a special pig. He swears it's bigger than an elephant and that it makes a hobby of killing tigers before breakfast. I invited him to show it to us all, but he refuses; says it's my pig, says he wants to test my guts."
Jones leaned forward and began to question Padadmaroh, but the old man drew himself into a shell of silence guarded by assumed stupidity, the everlasting native Indian refuge from the white man's hectoring. Jones struck a match and showed him money.
"Padadmaroh, next month I leave India forever. I have never killed a record boar. If you can show me one whose tushes are a fraction bigger than the record for this tent club, I will pay you a hundred rupees. I will pay another hundred if he falls to my spear."
Silence. Then the servant came with strong drink in two tall glasses. Jones drank. Larry O'Hara sipped his and, watching Major Jones' face, spilled the rest of it—as Padadmaroh noticed.
"Did you hear me?" Jones asked. 'Two hundred." Then in an undertone to Larry, "Dammit, I'd pay a thousand if I had to. I've had infernally bad luck. The only big pig that I ever rode and killed turned out to be a sow. One very big one that I actually touched got clear away; he jumped into a nullah that no horse could tackle. It's too bad to have to leave India without something decent to show for all my efforts. This looks like my opportunity."
O'Hara lighted a cigarette and answered in a low voice:
"He suggested, sir, that it was my pig. So of course I told him it's the club's—or words to that effect. It'd be a lark if we could all ride at the biggest pig on record."
Jones made a muttered remark of some kind, but when he spoke aloud his voice was well under control, although he sat bolt upright, as he did when playing cards.
"Where is this big boar, Padadmaroh?"
"Nay, nay. I was speaking with O'Hara sahib. When he was a little butcha—so big—not yet old enough to be sent oversea for his schooling, he would sit beside me and I used to tell him tales. So tonight I told him another, for the sake of my old memory—just such a tale as I used to tell him. Then I used to speak of boars as big as elephants, he being little, and all little ones enjoy big stories But tonight I only lied about a boar a little bigger than he could be, since O'Hara sahib is a grown man. Travelers have told me, sahib, that the little fishes take the big bait but that whales—whatever they are, for I never saw one—swallow only small things."
Jones stared hard at him, moving to see him better against the crimson glow of the camp-fire.
"So you were lying, eh? It is rare for a man of your race to admit he was lying."
"Maybe, sahib. But what of it? I am only an old man full of memories. When this O'Hara sahib was a butcha, and I told him tales, he used to set his chin a certain way and in his eyes was laughter like the wind at daybreak. So I wished to see if it was still there."
"Was it?" Jones asked.
"I am old. My eyes are not so keen as formerly. And it is dark," said Padadmaroh.
Jones thought a minute.
"Damn all this evasion," he said suddenly. "See here, my time's short, so I'll raise you. Five hundred rupees—that's a fortune for you—if a record boar falls to my spear within the next three days. I've heard of you. A lot of men have told me you're a wizard at finding pig where no one else can. Go ahead then, and earn five hundred rupees."
PADADMAROH showed his few remaining stained teeth in a smile that wrinkled up toward his deepset eyes. "That is a lot of money, sahib. But I do not need it." Jones looked sidewise at O'Hara. "Youngster, I believe you've already bribed him." O'Hara made no comment. "Let me tell you," Jones said sternly, "that it isn't etiquette, to put it mildly, for the youngest member of the club to do this kind of thing."
"What kind of thing?" O'Hara asked him.
"Bribing an old shikarri to reserve a big pig for your private spear."
"I just now heard you try to do it. I am sorry, sir, that good form and the regulations forbid my telling you to go to hell," said O'Hara. "This gentleman here"—he stressed the word—"is my personal friend. As soon as it's agreeable to you I'd like to talk with him alone."
"That's cheek," said Jones. "I'll make you pay for it." He got up. "It's damned impudence. I'll not forgive you for it. Good night."
There was silence until Jones had stalked away and vanished in his own tent.
"Padadmaroh, do you get the point of that?" O'Hara asked then. "What I wish you'd do is to guide the rest of them to that big pig, and I'll keep out of it. It isn't that I care a damn about the major, but I don't want it even hinted that I haven't played fair. I'll pretend I'm sick and can't ride."
"Nay, nay, sahib. Ride tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. If I know anything, I know this: that one is a badmash. Let me take his money. He will not dare not to pay me. I will bargain with him that the money shall be mine if I give him as much as a chance at such a great boar as I speak of. I will argue I know nothing of his skill, so he should pay me whether or not he is the first to prick that great boar. He will promise payment; but he will not believe me; he will watch you, thinking that you have bribed me first and therefore that I come deceiving him in order to protect your honor's honor."
"Listen, Padadmaroh. I don't give a damn what deal you drive with Major Jones. That's his lookout. I'll have nothing to do with it."
"But you will ride, sahib? Tomorrow? And the next day—and the next?"
"I'll ride, yes. But I want your promise not to flush that boar for my spear."
"Nay, indeed. Why should I? He might kill you." Padadmaroh stood up. "He has slain so many men he now thinks lightly of them. Stay with the ride, sahib. What does it matter to me who slays a gray boar?"
"Now you're talking rot," O'Hara answered. "Good night."
Padadmaroh bowed himself away into the darkness and O'Hara 'turned in, sleepless for a short time. So he saw through the open tent flap, by the candle-lantern burning in Jones' tent, the shadowy form of Padadmaroh silently approaching; and he saw Jones' tent flap open to admit him.
"Who was it said that everybody has a yellow streak?" he grumbled. "Dammit, some men can't be sportsmen, even though they've got guts. Jones has 'em. Curse him, what do I care if he steals one? Let him live with himself afterward. That's his business."
He fell asleep, and when his servant called him for the hurried breakfast before daybreak in the mess tent he had almost forgotten Jones and Padadmaroh. There was too much else to think about, and too much of the mystic madness that runs riot in the early Indian morning: wine of wonder, stirring the imagination; squeals, kicks, whinnying from the horse line; mauve and golden half-light and a wilderness emerging out of shadow; then a sunrise such as Zoroaster and the Parsees understood as symbolizing Life, full colored, golden, everlasting—splendid.
"Time, you fellows. Let's get underway before it warms up."
THERE were eight men. They divided into two rides, and the other rode off in a hurry to the southward where the beaters were already dinning in a maze of scrub to start a "sounder" of wild boar milling and preparing them for the stampede that should separate, at the right time, from their leader—reported to be a boar worth going after. Larry O'Hara was in Major Hickman's party, which included Jones and a man named Bingham, a civilian with a reputation: he had won the Guzerat Cup two years in succession. Bingham was the type of man who gets a little irritable when he finds himself in untried company: he rated Hickman as his equal, but he knew Jones for a second-rater; and since Larry O'Hara was an unknown quantity he was only barely civil to him.
"Why ride that mare?" he demanded. "She looks slower than a bullock. You'll be out of the running."
But O'Hara had chosen the Kathiawari with a trace of Percheron because he did not wish to thrust, that first day, too self-assertively. He knew that nothing under heaven is more irritating to an old hand than to have a youngster on a fast horse pass him and then bungle. Luck may favor any one, but laurels, in the long run, fall to him who bides his time and learns his game before he shows off. He forgot that Padadmaroh had advised him to select that mount. He did not think of Padadmaroh until Jones came cantering along behind him on a whaler and they trotted, side by side, behind the others. Jones was smiling. He kept stabbing with his spear at an imaginary mark, to get his eye in and his sinews limber.
"Just forget our talk last night, O'Hara," he said presently. "It'd spoil sport to remember it. I may have been a bit too ready to find fault."
O'Hara made his mare plunge, to gain a few seconds and get his face under control.
"As long as you don't think I accepted, or even thought of accepting Padadmaroh's offer," he answered.
Jones grew even more conciliatory.
"I don't doubt you. Fact is, you behaved damned well. I didn't. I was tempted. For a youngster like you, a trophy doesn't mean much—or it shouldn't. Your day will come. But this is my last chance. I'll never see this scene again. I'm off to live at Cheltenham and gossip with the other has-beens. They will lie like old women. I've a tiger skin. I'd like a record pair of tushes. Then I needn't listen to their lies. However, Padadmaroh's scheme was not good sportsmanship. I'm glad I dropped it."
O'Hara doubted him. It seemed he was protesting too much. He had seen Jones draw the tent flap to admit old Padadmaroh; and he knew that Padadmaroh was a man with Eastern notions as to what is fair play, and to whom, five hundred rupees would be wealth.
"Look out for Padadmaroh. He may trick you if you listen to him," he suggested. "None of my affair, of course, but look out."
Jones flushed slightly. He resented advice from a junior. He glanced at O'Hara sharply as if, for a second, he suspected him of having seen Padadmaroh creep into his tent; but O'Hara was watching Hickman, captain of the ride; Hickman had drawn rein and was conning the landscape, choosing cover, waiting for the head shikarri to come running with information.
"Thanks, I don't think I need your advice," said Jones.
"Don't take it then," O'Hara answered. He cantered forward and drew rein by Hickman's stirrup.
The sun was well up, blazing like hot brass. Scrub, small clumps of trees, sheet-rock and dangerously broken plateau fenced and fringed with prickly pear, lay etched around a dense grass thicket that was moving as if a million snakes made war within it. Men invaded it—a hundred of them, armed with sticks and tin cans—led by nearly nude enthusiasts whose ancestors, for possibly a thousand years, had earned their living at the heels of wild pig, heading them until they broke from cover. The head shikarri, sweating as he ran to Hickman's stirrup—bearded, ragged, filthy, with a turban like a coil of twisted lamp rags—spoke excitedly, without preliminaries:
"Great big sounder, sahib—many, many. Old boar, five, six year old—good one!"
Hickman pointed with his spear "We'll take that cover downwind. Flush 'em just as soon as we're out of sight."He led to a clump of thorn trees struggling for their lives in a thirsty undergrowth—a perfect screen; and before they reached it a din went up of shouts and crashing cans, set up by the beaters waist deep in the grass patch.
Hickman rammed his helmet down and edged his horse to the corner of the group of trees, to peer around it. All four horses fretted, snatching at their bits and kicking. Hickman, taking his spear in his bridle hand, made motions with his right for silence; all four horses instantly took that for orders to lay hoof to hard earth and go like the wind. There was a minute of staggering, snorting false start and an oath or two as Bingham's horse bucked wildly beneath him.
"There he goes!" said Hickman. "Here they all come! Give him time, or he'll turn."
A sounder of at least two hundred pigs broke cover, following a big boar scarred by half a hundred fights—sows grunting for their young, the young ones squealing—and the whole lot going like the shadow of a swift cloud.
"Good!" said Hickman. "He's a whopper."
TROUBLE again with the horses; they were savage, sweating, nervous to be off. They knew their business. So did the old gray boar. He heard them—understood. His business, as great-great-grandsire of the sounder was to lead out of danger and then turn and draw the enemy away until he could fight without risk of the sounder being trampled in the melee. Well out in front, where stout old captains should be, he saw Hickman—saw the others—grunted. That grunt was his trumpet blast. The sounder wheeled and scurried out of harm's way into dense, low jungle. But the gray boar carried on, and Hickman shouted—"Ride!"
It is a good half second when the gate goes up on Epsom Downs and half a million throats on Derby Day explode exultantly "They're off!" It probably was not so bad in Rome when gladiators marched in for the "Caesar, salutamus!" There are even moments in a modern bull fight when the ultimate of tenseness almost touches infinite reality, and life and death seem mingled in emotion. Those are nothing to the great game. There is no sport like it, and no adversary, barring gods and devils, half as great as a gray boar.
All four horses stuck their toes in and were off, O'Hara leading by a full length; it had been his luck to have the left end, nearest to the boar when Hickman shouted "Ride!" But he had no chance of holding that place. Hickman on a faster horse, then Bingham, and then Jones all passed him, racing neck-and-neck for first spear; for it does not count who slew the boar; whoever pricks him first and shows blood is the winner—owns the tushes. When a gray boar dies there is neither time nor opportunity to judge whose spear it was that sent his brave soul to the pigs' Valhalla. First blood has to be the deciding issue, and that makes for reckless riding.
But the boar knows even better than a fox what sort of going punishes the horses. Warrior by instinct, he inevitably some day dies in battle; younger boars dispute his leadership; he holds it only until beaten, and he only yields it with his last breath. So he knows, too, under what conditions he can fight best—understands the value of surprise, of shock, of sudden change of tactics; and his strategy is equal to his courage.
Hickman and Bingham, neck-and-neck, rode furiously to force battle before the boar could gain the rocky, broken ground, a mile away, where the horses would be in difficulties and he at a huge advantage. One spear prick would bring him to bay. But the boar went like the wind—foam on his tushes, his angry little red eye glancing backward as he judged how much the enemy were gaining on him and selected rougher going to delay them. Prickly pear made no impression on his tough hide, so he crashed it and the horses had to make a circuit. Ledges of rock that gave a horse no foothold were an easy stairway for him, so he scampered over them; the horsemen had to ride around and waste eternities of seconds looking for a path to follow. One of those rock ledges separated Hickman and Bingham, left and right. Jones pulled out to the right-hand after Bingham, and Larry O'Hara followed Jones, he hardly knew why, except that he supposed Jones would follow the easiest route, and Larry wished to save his own horse. He had time to wonder again why Padadmaroh had advised him to ride his strongest, slowest mount.
There came a moment when the boar was lost to view. The leaders checked to look for him, and Larry caught up. It was thirty seconds before Hickman saw the boar's back hurrying away beyond a low ridge. Hickman spurred off in pursuit with thirty lengths' advantage, and it looked like Hickman's pig so certainly that even Bingham granted it and slowed down, reserving his mare's strength and speed for the inevitable battle when the boar should turn at bay for the finish.
It was then, as he responded to Bingham's signal and took position, as the junior, in the worst place on the right flank, with Jones on Bingham's left, so that somebody could charge the boar whichever way he turned, that Larry saw Padadmaroh. The old man was beyond the boar, between two big rocks. There was no time to see what he did.
THE boar jinked suddenly to the right, took higher ground and vanished for a moment in a maze of low scrub. That put Larry in the lead, and Hickman out of it. So Larry's spurs went home as Jones and Bingham spread to either side and raced to overtake him. Hickman shouted, but no one could hear what he said. The boar burst suddenly from cover with his whole strength gathered under him and came at Larry, downhill—fifty feet to go, and all the fury of a red-hot cannon ball.
Then man and horse were one, there being that which links them when the warhorse ancestry of one responds to exultation in the other. Neither horse nor man flinched. Larry's spear, held steady, met the boar midway. It took him full and fair between the shoulders as he rose to slash the horse's belly with his tushes. The mare reared and lashed out with her forefeet. The spear broke. The dying boar—no whit discouraged—charged the mare's hind legs, knocked them out from under her and set her reeling over backward. Larry rolled free just as Bingham's spear skewered the boar and finished him. Then Jones rode up and drew rein.
"Damn these Irishmen's luck!" he remarked.
"Three and three-quarter inch tushes is my guess. Damned good spear, O'Hara. Are you hurt at all?" asked Bingham.
Larry had caught his horse and was examining her hind legs.
"Nothing wrong with either of us. Not a scratch on the Begum. Knocked her wind out, that's all; she'll be all right in a minute." Hickman rode up.
"Neatly done, O'Hara! Good spear!"
Hickman examined Larry's mare and gave his verdict.
"Nothing wrong with her. Is she slow, or did you take it easy? Care to sell her? I'll buy, but I wouldn't part with her if I were you. A mare that fights back that way with her forefeet is a gem as long as she can gallop. Well—we've time for another pig before the heat glare sets in."
Padadmaroh came up on an old gray donkey, grinning. Hickman recognized him.
"Did you see that, Padadmaroh?"
"Not bad, sahib. It was not bad. But it was no test. I have seen a thousand sahibs who would not have failed then. This boar was a good one, but he had no cunning—none to speak of."
Hickman stared at Padadmaroh, then at Larry.
"Did you turn him?" he demanded.
"Nay, nay, sahib. Who could turn a boar like that one?"
"How did you come to be here, at the finish?"
"Sahib, I know all this countryside. And I know pig. There was no other way that he would take, seeing how the wind blow sand the way they drove his sounder out of cover. Come more horses? I took thought to bring spears in case any should break."
"Horses and spears should be here in a minute," said Hickman. "However, that was thoughtful of you. Where are the spears? O'Hara sahib needs one."
Padadmaroh gestured toward the two great rocks behind which Larry had seen him lurking. Larry eyed him curiously. Then he mounted.
"Let me see the spears."
So Padadmaroh climbed up on his old gray donkey and Larry followed him, walking his mare for the sake of her slowly recovering wind. Padadmaroh kept the donkey's rump beneath the mare's nose, talking over his shoulder.
"It was the spear that I dreaded, sahib. I have brought a stout one. Those that I saw in camp last night are no good."
"Damn you, did you turn that boar?" asked Larry.
"Nay, nay, sahib. Who could turn him? But he smelled the burning undergrowth beyond him that the sun set fire to."
"Sun isn't strong enough yet," O'Hara answered.
"It has burned since yesterday."
"You liar."
"Just a little burning; not a big one, sahib. Had that boar been cunning—but he was not, and I knew it—he would have tried to set that fire between him and pursuit. Look yonder—I have men who beat the fire out."
There were twenty men, hard at it, shoveling dust and beating down the fire with strips of kashas matting. It was an irregular patch of thorns and coarse grass, isolated by a quarter-mile of sheet rock. Let alone, it would have burned itself out in an hour or two.
"Here are the spears," said Padadmaroh. "Try their weight and choose one. They are all sharp. They are all strong."
"Twenty men at work, and all that smoke, would turn a dozen boars," said Larry. He was angry, but he chose a spear because he liked the heft of it. "If I prove you set that fire—"
"Yes, sahib—then what?"
LARRY O'HARA held his tongue. He knew he would do nothing. He suspected Jones of having made a bargain with Padadmaroh. He suspected Padadmaroh of deliberate intention to deceive Jones and to take his money. But to go to Hickman and accuse either of them was out of the question. Even given proof, it would be better to let the problem work itself out than to spoil a morning's sport by making a scene. If Jones were guilty of bad sportsmanship, as he suspected, in attempting to reserve, by trickery, the best boar for his own spear, let Jones carry on. Then let him clear his conduct—if, as, and how he could. If he could not, who cared? Jones was leaving India, to be forgotten.
"Let me alone, do you hear?' he commanded. "I don't want your interference."
Padadmaroh grinned back.
"That the sahib will not ride unfairly is a good sign. But the signs are nothing when the trial comes."
"Confound you! What damned right have you to try.me, as you call it?"
Padadmaroh kept on grinning and his old eyes glittered.
"Do you see this, sahib?" He produced a boar's tush from within the folds of a filthy loin cloth. It was a very old one, carved into the semblance of a local godlet such as old shikarris sometimes carry for the sake of good luck. "I said to the general bahadur I will send this to him when his son shall have cut his eye-teeth. See—" he produced a metal box and opened it—"behold his writing."
On a stamped and folded strong brown envelope was written General O'Hara's name and his address in Ireland.
"It was two boars—two at once—that tried your father, sahib; and my father saw it."
"See here—" Larry O'Hara's Irish temper changed to laughter suddenly, as the weather does in Ireland. "Damn your impudence, I don't mind being tested, as you call it, but I won't have other fellows' sport spoiled."
"Do they matter, sahib?"
"Yes, dammit. Bring those other spears along. Today, tomorrow and the next day we ride four in company. If you want to, on the fourth day, you may raise hell."
Padadmaroh nodded.
"Does the sahib think that troubles come like the ter-r-rain by signal? It is the unexpected that discovers weakness. It is only weakness that betrays a man. All other qualities are good, in one way or another."
"Wait until I'm free to go alone with you."
No answer. Larry turned his mare and trotted back to his companions. He found them fuming. There were no spare horses in sight, although runners had come to cut the tushes from the dead boar, so that evidently some one knew which way to take.
"I'd ride this horse again," said Hickman, "but he's split a hoof. It's nothing serious, but—"
Bingham nodded.
"It's against all the law and the prophets to stick a lame horse into it. This isn't a bull fight. I'll wait with you."
"Anything wrong with your horse?" Hickman answered. "Would you care to go and look for the remounts? Probably they're not far off. If you hurry them we might have time to get a second pig."
Bingham rode off. Hickman turned to Padadmaroh.
"Where are the beaters? What's the matter with them? Which cover do they draw next?"
"God knows, sahib."
Jones spoke up then. He avoided Larry's eyes, or seemed to. And to Larry, who suspected him, it seemed he spoke for Padadmaroh's ears as much as any one's:
"It's late already. Remounts must have gone off in the wrong direction. It'll be noon before they get here. Do you care if I go on alone? My last chance, don't you know. You other fellows'll have scores of opportunities."
"Won't you be here tomorrow?" Hickman asked him.,
"No, I'm leaving by the night train. Too bad, but I have to."
Hickman pulled his helmet off and wiped his forehead.
"All right. You and O'Hara go together. I'll wait here for Bingham. Padadmaroh probably can show you where some pig are. Good luck."
"Thanks, I'm staying," said O'Hara.
"Oh, all right," said Jones, and rode off. "Come on, Padadmaroh."
Padadmaroh followed on his old gray donkey, glancing backward. He was holding three spears and he looked like Don Quixote's servant.
"That's a damned strange thing," said Hickman. "Looks like prearrangement. Jones leads off—guide following—Jones in a hurry and guide apparently reluctant. Dammit, that man Jones is not notorious for sportsmanship. I've heard of men who won't play cards with him. Do you suppose he's bribed that damned old scoundrel Padadmaroh to provide him with a pig all to himself?"
"I couldn't say," O'Hara answered. "Would you care to ride my mare, sir, and go after him? I'll hold your horse and wait for Major Bingham."
"No, no. Go and bring Padadmaroh back here."
PADADMAROH made no trouble about turning back. He seemed to .have expected it. He made his donkey trot behind O'Hara's mare, and when he drew rein he saluted Hickman with a soldierly sideswipe of the right hand that was almost impudent.
"See here," said Hickman, "was it you who sent our remounts in the wrong direction?"
"Sahib, what have I to do with remounts?"
"Where are you taking Major Jones?"
"He takes me—into danger, sahib. He has ground his eye-teeth into powder on the mess cook's chicken bones. And now he looks for false ones for his old age."
"That'll do," said Hickman. He, no more than Larry, cared to inquire too deeply. "What did you look back for just now, when the major ordered you to follow?"
"Sahib, I looked back for what might be. My plans have gone wrong. I am too old; I no longer plan well."
"Tell us."
Padadmaroh for a moment watched the brown kites circling tirelessly above the carcass of the slain boar.
"Yonder, below, in the ghat," he said then, "near where the ancient ruins lie in jungle that is difficult to enter, is a boar of boars. He learned of it."
"You meant that boar for us?" asked Hickman.
"Not I, sahib. But for this one. And he would not."
Hickman stared hard at O'Hara. Padadmaroh talked on, shrewdly eyeing both men.
"Now my trouble is that he—that other one—it was he, sahib, who sent the remounts to the wrong place—"
"Did he give the order?"
"Nay, he ordered me to give it. Now my trouble is that he will find that boar; for I have told him where to find it. I am an old man and my plans creak louder than my old bones! I would have cut this sahib's eye-teeth. But instead, I send a man who does not matter to a man's death that he never earned!"
Then Hickman laughed into O'Hara's eyes.
"Go on, O'Hara. Follow Jones," he ordered. "I'll stay here. As soon as Bingham comes we'll be hard at your heels." He laughed at Padadmaroh. "You go with O'Hara sahib. Lead him to that boar ahead of Major Jones if you can do it."
So O'Hara rode off, slowly because the donkey had to follow. Fifteen minutes passed, and it was hotter than the hinges of the lid of Tophet when he came to the edge of the ghat and stared down into what appeared to be impenetrable jungle. It was a well known ghat, where once a temple stood that archaeologists dispute about in terms of baffled bigotry because it fits no period. Three hundred feet below, a mile wide, lay a dark green jungle, and no entrance to it save the winding narrow track on which the hoof-prints of Jones' horse showed distinctly. Padadmaroh halted his donkey at O'Hara's stirrup.
"Looks like tiger country," said O'Hara, surveying the valley.
"Yes, there was a tiger, sahib. But the great boar slew him, as I told you. Down there in the valley bottom there is rich earth, full of roots that pigs love. There is a wallow, where the temple pool was formerly; it is fed by cold springs."
"It's a wild boar's heaven and a madman's hunting ground," O'Hara answered. "Where's the room to ride a boar, if we should see him?"
"There are many open spaces, sahib. Some are clearings made by peasants who desired the rich earth. But they were driven away by the tiger. And then the boar came; -and they say the boar is something not of this world."
O'Hara wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt sleeve and then shielded his eyes with his right arm, gazing downward. And because the spear was in his right hand it was something like a gesture of salute toward the kites, that circled slowly, waiting for death.
"I see Jones," he said then. "Come on."
Downward, on a mare as nervous as a filly; she could feel O'Hara's tenseness, and the smell of jungle filled her nostrils full of prehistoric terrors that a horse inherits and a man, for lack of understanding, labels instinct. Downward, until trees began to make a canopy that baffled sunlight, and a dim gloom, and an eery silence, tortured senses that O'Hara had hardly guessed he owned.
Then suddenly he heard Jones—then he saw him trying angrily to govern a distracted horse that grew quiet, although it trembled, when O'Hara's mare entered the clearing. Sudden sunlight blinded O'Hara for a moment; he could not see Jones' face until Jones had spoken,
"Quite impossible to ride a pig here. I was hoping to find some open country. Why did you come?"
Then O'Hara saw him—gray gilled, mastering himself, but needing all his will, and none of it to spare.
"Hickman and Bingham are coming too," O'Hara answered.
Horse and mare rubbed noses, drawing comfort from each other. Padadmaroh on his donkey drew near. Jones snatched at a weak man's remedy and cursed him.
"Damn your eyes, you told me there was decent going down here!"
"Nay. But I said a great boar lives here and a man might ride him."
"You're a fool," Jones answered. "Let's turn back, O'Hara. What's the use of making idiots of ourselves?"
O'Hara grinned. It was the grin that signifies a number has been hoisted and it won't come down again until the winning post is passed. Then suddenly both horses reared and plunged into the jungle. There was something moving in the undergrowth that terrified them—something on the far side of the clearing. It took a minute of strenuous horsemanship to make them face it, but the donkey took no notice. Padadmaroh sat still on the donkey, staring at the thicket whence the sound of movement came.
"Pig," he said quietly when the horsemen had come close enough to hear him. "He was rooting. Now he goes back to his own place. Listen."
There were sounds of something thrusting through the jungle; no grunt—until suddenly a heavy animal went crashing away in the gloom. Padadmaroh spoke again.
"He is cunning. Here he will not show fight because he is not sure yet that a fight is necessary. But in his own place he is like a dog whose kennel is invaded."
"Where's that?" asked O'Hara.
"In the temple ruins. Follow that track, sahib."
"Come on," said O'Hara, spurring forward.
"Damned young idiot!" said Jones.
But he could hardly turn back when a younger man went forward; neither could he hold his horse, that craved company. He followed, drenched with sweat and swearing to relieve his own nerves.
LARRY O'HARA mastered his by mastering the mare. He petted her; he made her conscious of the bit; he let her feel the reassuring fact that there was some one on her back who liked, and needed her, and presently would challenge forth her strength. So, though they rode in dim gloom, in a silence that was like the solid matrix of which silences are made, that mare became a unit, once more, with her rider—no more timid, and no less, than he was.
Then another clearing. Jones overtook O'Hara and recovered more of his self-esteem by the timeworn process of rebuking a junior.
"I haven't heard," he said, "of any new rule giving subalterns the right to lead their seniors. The impudence of some of you young officers is nothing less than piggish!"
"Lead, then," said O'Hara, and he drew rein until Jones had passed him.
Jones, too, had mastered his horse; but he had done it by the iron handed method that imposes untrusting obedience. The horse went forward at the touch of Jones' spurs, but two-thirds of the rider's attention was engaged in managing his mount and when they plunged again into the jungle gloom it was a slow procession. Padadmaroh, on the nerveless donkey, trotted behind and kept up easily.
The heat was stifling. Men and horses sweated so that even the merciless flies could hardly cling and sting; they merely irritated. Larry O'Hara kept drying the palm of his hand on his riding breeches, so that the spear should not slip when he gripped it. Jones rode slowly, and more slowly as the gloom grew deeper, following an ancient road whose stones lay pulled and twisted out of place by roots of trees. Whenever his horse stumbled he swore irritably. It was vastly worse to follow him than to ride alone; he inspired no confidence, he merely drew attention to his lack of it.
O'Hara gave him ten lengths' lead.
He was at least that distance to the rear when the sunlight burst again through thinning branches and a clearing—several acres of it—showed where the archaeologists had camped and dug. Old temple ruins lay in chaos in the midst, beside a mud swamp.
"Kabadah!"
That was Padadmaroh's voice. The mare was on her toes before the warning reached O'Hara's ears. Jones' horse spun around and bolted, coming straight back, headlong. There was no room. But a gray boar—so huge he was fabulous—so swift and sudden he was like a gray ghoul glimpsed in nightmare—crashed Jones' horse and spilled his legs from under him. The fall pitched Jones into a thicket. The boar savaged at the horse and ripped his entrails—worried into him and slew him. Larry couched his spear and rammed his spurs in; charged, aiming at the boar's eye—missed it—struck his shoulder. But the boar jinked to defend himself. The spear slipped, sweat wet. Stung, infuriated, fighting mad—the gray boar skewered himself. He thrust against the spear; pain goaded him to reach and gore his adversary. And the spear kept slipping while the staggering mare reared and struck out with her forefeet.
Those three seconds were eternity. So scarred by tiger claws that one huge tush lay naked to the roots, his ear torn and his flanks still scabby from the half healed battle wounds, his little red eyes burning with the boar lust that will yield to nothing less than death, the huge brute struggled forward, grunting. The mare lunged. The spear slipped. Suddenly the boar jinked for a flank attack, so that the spear was across the mare's throat.
There was nothing for it then but to escape. O'Hara let the spear go, shouted, spurred and rode wildly toward the clearing. And the boar came after him, the long spear sticking upward at an angle. He came as fast as the mare could gallop. Should she stumble on a loose rock, slip, meet something that she could not jump—death then, swift and savage on the froth foul tushes.
Nothing for it but to make a circuit of the ruins, full pelt, looking out for masonry half hidden amid creepers. Gallop around the ruins and then down the jungle path to Padadmaroh for another spear. But the boar took short cuts—gaining, gaining. And something was wrong with the mare; she had strained a tendon when a loose stone slipped from under her. The boar leaped on a pile of masonry. He stood there for a second frothing at the mouth. He shook himself to get rid of the spear. No escaping him now. He was in the center; he could cut that segment of a circle anywhere he pleased. And only one chance then: to snatch that spear and try to drive it home into his vitals—one chance in a billion!
THE boar charged. Battle madness blazed up in him. Larry wheeled his mare and turned back by the way he came; that gave him ten more yards' advantage because the boar shot past his mark, and stood and shook the spear again before he followed. There was one more billion-to-one chance. Padadmaroh might—
He had! The damned old rogue had chanced it! He had followed. He had stuck two spears into the ground ten paces from the track mouth. He was up a tree now, yelling, pointing. But the mare could hardly gallop. Larry spurred her, shouted to her, rode her as a jockey rides a Derby winner. He snatched a spear and spun her around to face the boar again. There was a short split-second then. He had to couch the spear like lightning; couch it short—the boar was too close, rising at the mare's off-shoulder.
But his point struck straight between the great brute's shoulder blades, and that spear did not slip. The butt of the other spear struck O'Hara on the jaw bone as the mare rose on her hind legs, frantic. That, and the shock of the boar's impact as the spear went through his lungs and down into his vitals, sent them reeling, rider and mare together, over backward. Larry scrambled to his feet and let the mare go. He was thinking of that other spear, still in the ground. He was half stunned, breathless. Sweat was in his eyes; he could not see the spear, although he could hear Padadmaroh shouting.
Then he saw Jones walk out from the jungle path and pull the spear out of the ground. He thought that Jones was coming to defend him. It was only then that he got the sweat out of his eyes, and looked, and saw the great boar lying dead.
"My first blood," Jones said calmly. "When he charged me in the jungle I thrust out behind me and just got him with the spear point. So I'll take those tushes."
"Can you show blood?" Larry asked him.
Jones was bending down examining the dead boar.
"Yes, yes. What a monster! He's a record—or I'll eat him! Five-inch tushes! Yes, you'll find my spear beside the dead horse; there's only a speck of blood on it. But look here—do you see where my point went in?"
He was standing again, prodding at the hard earth with the point of the spear he had pulled from the ground, entirely unaware that Padadmaroh had been watching him. The old man had approached as silently as death's own shadow.
Suddenly the jungle echoed to the sound of hoofbeats. Some one shouted, and another answered. Nemesis came galloping into the clearing in the form of Hickman on a fresh horse.
"Damn the luck again!" he shouted. "Whose pig? God, what a whopper!" He rode nearer.
"My O'Hara sahib's pig," said Padadmaroh.
Jones looked ugly.
"My pig."
Bingham cantered up.
"Oh, damn my rotten stars! Is that your pig, O'Hara? Good man!"
"My pig," Jones repeated. "I drew first blood."
Padadmaroh spoke then.
"But I saw the Major sahib dip his spear point in the blood that trickled from the dead horse. And I saw him just now make a spear mark on the boar's snout. After that he wiped the blood off this spear thus—by sticking it into the earth repeatedly."
Jones flared.
"I never heard such lies! If you weren't nearly old enough to die of rot, I'd thrash you."
Hickman interrupted.
"Larry O'Hara, what do you say?"
"Pig's mine," Larry answered. "Case of nerves, I think. The major isn't quite himself. I've noticed it."
Jones flared again.
"Do you mean to say that you'll take that damned shikarri's word against mine?"
"It's O'Hara's pig," said Hickman.
"But the Major sahib pays me my rupees, because the bargain was," said Padadmaroh, "that I only had to show him where the boar was."
"Damn you, you may go to hell," Jones answered.
"Are you going by tonight's train?" Hickman asked him. "You'll need time to pack your things, so don't let us detain you. Goodby."
"I have no horse."
"You will meet the syces on your way. They'll have your spare horse with them. We will send a man back to the camp with your saddle and bridle. There's a dining room at the railway station, in case you'd prefer not to dine with the mess."
"You men are cads," Jones answered. "Cads, the lot of you." He walked off, slowly, trying to look dignified.
"And so I lose my money," Padadmaroh grumbled, but his grumble's edge was meshed into wide grin. "Who cares? I have cut O'Hara sahib's eye-teeth! He is blooded. He has met death. Chota O'Hara sahib, will you mail this to the general bahadur?"
He produced his envelope, unfolded it, inserted the old carved boar's tush, sealed it, held it to his forehead, bowed, and gave it—it was something like a god to him—to Larry.
"Sahib, give the general bahadur the salaams of Padadmaroh."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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