Told in the East by Talbot Mundy (best fiction books to read TXT) 📖

understood the orders, he has left you with a very honorable mission to fulfil!”

Brown stared hard at the half-sheet of notepaper again. Reading was not his longest suit by any means, and at that he infinitely preferred to wrestle with printed characters.

“Have you read it, Juggut Khan?” he asked.

“Nay, sahib. I can speak English, but not read it.”

“Then we're near to being in the same boat, we two!” said Brown with a grin. “I'll have another try! It looks like a good-by message to me—here's the word 'good-by' written at the end above his signature.”

“There were other matters, sahib. There was an order. I can not read, but I know what is in the message.”

“Well?”

“You, and your twelve—”

“Nine!” corrected Brown.

“Three dead?”

Brown nodded.

“Your nine, then, sahib, and you and I are to proceed immediately to Jailpore, and to gain an entrance if we can, rescue those whom I concealed there and bring them to Harumpore, or to the northward of Harumpore, wherever we can find the column.”

“Eleven men are to attempt that?”

Brown was studying out the letter word by word, and discovering to his amazement that its purport was exactly what Juggut Khan pretended.

“If there are no more than eleven of us, then yes, eleven! And, sahib, since you seem to hold at least an island here where a man may lie down unmolested, I propose to sleep for an hour or two, before proceeding. I have had no sleep since I left Jailpore.”

“Nothing of the sort!” said Brown. “If we're to march on Jailpore, off we go at once! You can sleep on the road, my son! It's time we paid a visit to that village, I'm thinking. Those treacherous brutes need a lesson. I'd have been down there before, only I wanted to be in full view of the road in case anybody came looking for me from Bholat. We'll need a wagon for the fakir. You can sleep in it too.”

“Sleep with a fakir? I? Allah! I am a Rajput, sahib! A sergeant of the Rajput Horse, retired!”

“I wouldn't want to sleep with him myself!” admitted Brown. “Come and look at him. You can smell him from here, but the sight of him's the real thing!”

The Rajput swaggered up beside Brown, after loosening his horse's girths and lifting the saddle for a moment.

“He's not the only one that needs a drink!” said Brown. “We're all dry as brick-dust here, except the fakir!”

“He must wait a while before he drinks. Show me the fakir. Why, Brown sahib, know you what you have there?”

“The father of all the smells, and all the dirt and all the evil eyes and evil tongues in Asia!” Brown hazarded.

“More than that, sahib! That is the nameless fakir—him whom they know as HE! Has there been no attempt made to rescue him?”

“They rescued him once, and murdered three of my men to get him. When they tried again, I put a halter round his neck and he and I arranged a sort of temporary compromise.”

“And the terms of it?”

“Oh, he's supposed to have performed a miracle. He made us unslip the halter, and fall down flat, and he's supposed to be keeping us by him, by a sort of spell, so's to give us something extra-special in the line of ghastly deaths at his own convenience. That way, I was able to wait for news from Bholat—see?”

“You could have captured no more important prisoner than that, sahib, let me tell you! They believe him to be almost a god; so nearly one that the gods themselves obey his orders now and then! It was he, and no other, that told the men of Jailpore that he would make them impervious to bullets. If we have him, sahib, we have the key to Jailpore!”

“We, have certainly got him,” said Brown. “You can see him, and you can smell him. I'll order one of the men to prick him with a bayonet, if you want to hear him, too! I wouldn't feel him, if I were you!”

“He must come, too, to Jailpore!”

“Of course he comes!”

“Then, sahib, let us move away from here to where there is water. There let us rest until sundown, and then march, in the cool of the evening. It will be better so. And of a truth I must sleep, or else drop dead from weariness.”

“Does that message put you in command?” asked Brown, a trifle truculently.

“No, sahib! But it orders you to listen to my advice whenever possible.”

“That means that you are under my orders?”

“That letter does not say so, sahib!”

“Very well, are you, or are you not?”

“We are supposed to act in concert, sahib.”

“It doesn't say so in the letter! Yes, or no? Are you going to obey orders, or aren't you? In other words, are you coming with me, or do you stay behind?”

“I come with you, sahib!”

“Then you obey my orders!”

“But the letter says—”

“That I'm to take your advice whenever possible! I don't need advice just at the moment, thanks! I've got orders here to march, and I'm off at once! You can please yourself whether you come with me or not, but if you come you come on my terms.”

“I go with you, sahib.”

“Under my orders?”

“Yes, sahib.”

“All right, Juggut Khan. Here's my hand on it. Now, we'll swoop down on that village, and take the fakir with us, with a halter round his neck for the sake of argument. We'll get two bullock-carts down there, and we'll stick him in one of them, with Sidiki the interpreter tied to him. Sidiki won't like it, but he's only a Beluchi anyway! You get in the other, and get all the sleep you can. You and I'll take turns sleeping all the way to Jailpore, so's to be fresh, both of us, and fit for anything by the time that we get there!”

“I am ready, sahib.”

“You two men who carried old Stinkijink before, pick him up again!” shouted Brown. “Let him feel the bayonet if he makes a noise, but carry him gently as though you loved him. The rest—'Tshun! Form two-deep—on the center—close order, march. Ri' dress. Eyes front. Ri' turn.