Kim by Rudyard Kipling (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📖

a piece of soft native paper. From Balkh to Bombay men know that rough-ridged print with the old scar running diagonally across it.

‘That is enough to show my headman. I come in the morning.’

‘By which road?’ said Kim.

‘By the road from the city. There is but one, and then we return to Creighton Sahib. I have saved thee a beating.’

‘Allah! What is a beating when the very head is loose on the shoulders?’

Kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house, keeping close to the walls, and headed away from the station for a mile or so. Then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at leisure, for he needed time to invent a story if any of Mahbub’s retainers asked questions.

They were camped on a piece of waste ground beside the railway, and, being natives, had not, of course, unloaded the two trucks in which Mahbub’s animals stood among a consignment of country-breds bought by the Bombay tram-company. The headman, a broken-down, consumptive-looking Mohammedan, promptly challenged Kim, but was pacified at sight of Mahbub’s sign-manual.

‘The Hajji has of his favour given me service,’ said Kim testily. ‘If this be doubted, wait till he comes in the morning. Meantime, a place by the fire.’

Followed the usual aimless babble that every lowcaste native must raise on every occasion. It died down, and Kim lay out behind the little knot of Mahbub’s followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St Xavier’s all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication-table in English.

‘I am very old,’ he thought sleepily. ‘Every month I become a year more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub’s message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white Regiment I was very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses’ pedigrees, or maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to Benares.’

The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. He was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble round the fire. It came from behind the iron-skinned horse-truck.

‘He is not here, then?’

‘Where should he be but roystering in the city. Who looks for a rat in a frog-pond? Come away. He is not our man.’

‘He must not go back beyond the Passes a second time. It is the order.’

‘Hire some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.’

‘Except the woman. It must be more certain; and remember the price upon his head.’

‘Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border. If it were in Peshawur, now!’

‘Yes - in Peshawur,’ the second voice sneered. ‘Peshawur, full of his blood-kin - full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will hide. Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well.’

‘Then what is the plan?’

‘O fool, have I not told it a hundred times? Wait till he comes to lie down, and then one sure shot. The trucks are between us and pursuit. We have but to run back over the lines and go our way. They will not see whence the shot came. Wait here at least till the dawn. What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?’

‘Oho!’ thought Kim, behind close-shut eyes. ‘Once again it is Mahbub. Indeed a white stallion’s pedigree is not a good thing to peddle to Sahibs! Or maybe Mahbub has been selling other news. Now what is to do, Kim? I know not where Mahbub houses, and if he comes here before the dawn they will shoot him. That would be no profit for thee, Kim. And this is not a matter for the police. That would be no profit for Mahbub; and’ - he giggled almost aloud - ‘I do not remember any lesson at Nucklao which will help me. Allah! Here is Kim and yonder are they. First, then, Kim must wake and go away, so that they shall not suspect. A bad dream wakes a man - thus -‘

He threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly with the terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of the Asiatic roused by nightmare.

‘Urr-urr-urr-urr! Ya-la-la-la-la! Narain! The churel! The churel!’

A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment.

Louder rose Kim’s quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet and staggered off sleepily, while the camp cursed him for waking them. Some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care that the whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed himself. After a few minutes he rolled towards the road and stole away into the thick darkness.

He paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped behind it, his chin on a level with the coping-stone. Here he could command all the night-traffic, himself unseen.

Two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off evil spirits. Then rapped the shod feet of a horse.

‘Ah! This is more like Mahbub,’ thought Kim, as the beast shied at the little head above the culvert.

‘Ohe’, Mahbub Ali,’ he whispered, ‘have a care!’

The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards the culvert.

‘Never again,’ said Mahbub, ‘will I take a shod horse for night-work. They pick up all the bones and nails in the city.’ He stooped to lift its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim’s.

‘Down - keep down,’ he muttered. ‘The night is full of eyes.’

‘Two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks. They will shoot thee at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head. I heard, sleeping near the horses.’

‘Didst thou see them? … Hold still, Sire of Devils!’ This furiously to the horse.

‘No.’

‘Was one dressed belike as a fakir?’

‘One said to the other, “What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?”’

‘Good. Go back to the camp and lie down. I do not die tonight.’

Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the ditch till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place, slipped across the road like a weasel, and recoiled himself in the blanket.

‘At least Mahbub knows,’ he thought contentedly. ‘And certainly he spoke as one expecting it. I do not think those two men will profit by tonight’s watch.’

An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake all night, he slept deeply. Now and again a night train roared along the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental’s indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream through his slumber.

Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that people outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should pursue him for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross the line lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers from behind, summarily slay them. Here, he reflected with sorrow, another branch of the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel Creighton, might demand explanations which would be hard to supply; and he knew that south of the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is made about a corpse or so. He had not been troubled in this way since he sent Kim to Umballa with the message, and hoped that suspicion had been finally diverted.

Then a most brilliant notion struck him.

‘The English do eternally tell the truth,’ he said, ‘therefore we of this country are eternally made foolish. By Allah, I will tell the truth to an Englishman! Of what use is the Government police if a poor Kabuli be robbed of his horses in their very trucks. This is as bad as Peshawur! I should lay a complaint at the station. Better still, some young Sahib on the Railway! They are zealous, and if they catch thieves it is remembered to their honour.’

He tied up his horse outside the station, and strode on to the platform.

‘Hullo, Mahbub Ali’ said a young Assistant District Traffic Superintendent who was waiting to go down the line - a tall, tow-haired, horsey youth in dingy white linen. ‘What are you doing here? Selling weeds - eh?’

‘No; I am not troubled for my horses. I come to look for Lutuf Ullah. I have a truckload up the line. Could anyone take them out without the Railway’s knowledge?’

‘Shouldn’t think so, Mahbub. You can claim against us if they do.’

‘I have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks nearly all night. Fakirs do not steal horses, so I gave them no more thought. I would find Lutuf Ullah, my partner.’

‘The deuce you did? And you didn’t bother your head about it? ‘Pon my word, it’s just almost as well that I met you. What were they like, eh?’

‘They were only fakirs. They will no more than take a little grain, perhaps, from one of the trucks. There are many up the line. The State will never miss the dole. I came here seeking for my partner, Lutuf Ullah.’

‘Never mind your partner. Where are your horse-trucks?’

‘A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for the trains.’

‘The signal-box! Yes.’

‘And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand side - looking up the line thus. But as regards Lutuf Ullah - a tall man with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound Aie!’

The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman; for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from depredations in the goods-yard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.

‘They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will wonder why there are no fakirs. They are very clever boys — Barton Sahib and Young Sahib.’

He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the line girt for action. A light engine slid through the station, and he caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab.

‘I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool,’ said Mahbub Ali. ‘To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!’

When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth while to tell him any news of the night. No one, at least, but one small horseboy, newly advanced to the great man’s service, whom Mahbub called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing.

‘It is all known to me,’ whispered Kim, bending above saddlebags. ‘Two Sahibs came up on a te-train. I was running to and fro in the dark on this side of the trucks as the te-train moved up and down slowly. They fell upon two men sitting under this