Benefit of Doubt/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
“Fear and the heart of a fool are one!”
Roughly speaking Ommony's forest is fan-shape, with his bungalow in a clearing near the handle of the fan. The jungle is hilly and in many places impenetrable, but fire-lanes have been cut through and through it, and the local villagers' main source of revenue is laboring to keep those clear. They are also the best feeding ground for the village goats, which is the reason why Ommony set forth to interview Shere Ali.
None of the lanes went straight, because of the conformation of the ground. They could seldom look back two hundred yards and see anything but solid jungle with heat shimmering up from it toward a brassy sky. Except the two white men, followed by Mahommed Babar and trailed by the naked jungli, the only moving objects were kites circling above the trees, who followed the view of two rifles on general principles. The jungli displayed scant interest, his bronze head was like a gladiator's, too familiar with fanged death to treat it seriously until face to face—unintelligent, perhaps, in some ways.
On the other hand, Mahommed Babar's manly northern features—rather hawk-eyed he was, rather hook-nosed, and the corners of his mouth, scarcely suggested under the dark beard, were rather cynical—appeared preoccupied. Not nervous. Not in the least nervous. Bent on something—perhaps arguing with himself.
“We may have to execute Shere Ali,” said Ommony. “I hope not. He shall have fair trial. His dam came down from Khalsa ghaut and hunted the forest for nine years before she killed a woman at the water-hole, and I had to do my bit. That's her skin on the wall in my sitting-room. I had this fellow in my arms when he was about the size of a family cat. Huh! He'd purr when you stroked him and claw and bite you the moment you stopped. The jungli found him, and we fed him chickens and mice until he was old enough to take his own chance in the jungle.”
“Pity to kill him,” King agreed. “What does he get away with?”
“A full-grown buck or a doe about every other day. If it weren't for him they'd graze in one place until the ground was sick of them. But what with him and the wolves they keep moving and the young stuff has a chance. However, he's taking to goats, apparently, and that's the first step on the road to murder.”
“What's the reason?” King wondered.
“Another tiger probably. Shere Ali may have a yellow streak. If another male tiger has elected to hunt this forest Shere Ali may be afraid to challenge him. No wild animal is dangerous to man until fear gets its work in. I hope he proves himself not guilty. Magnificent beast. Too good for a viceroy. I was hoping to keep him for the Prince.”
They might have been strolling in the Botanical Gardens for all the apparent precaution they took. But Ommony knew his men, as well as his forest. At the end of a hour's steady tramping the jungli took the lead uninvited, armed with nothing but a small flat tom-tom and a stick. Ommony said something to him in a language that sounded hardly human, and he disappeared immediately like a shadow among the trees.
Two minutes after that they emerged into a clearing of several acres with an almost dry stream winding through it. There were occasional bushes, but the open space sloped southward and from where King and Ommony stood they had a clear view of the whole of it with the light on their left hand.
“He'll come that way,” said Ommony, nodding toward the right front.
As if in answer to him there came a short, sharp rattling noise three or four times repeated. It was almost like a woodpecker's note.
“What the devil is that?” demanded King.
“The jungli's tom-tom. It's made of tortoiseshell and lizard-skin. He can drive anything with it—even pig.”
Mahommed Babar announced his presence with a cough and came closer. Ommony looked at him and then up at the kites, and laughed.
“The Romans used to call the birds good prophets. What do you think of them?” he asked. “They expect you to die. Will you oblige them, Mahommed?”
“Inshallah, sahib.” (If God wills.)
The tom-tom rattled again two or three times, and Ommony seemed familiar with its code, for he motioned to King to take his stand on the far side of the lane by which they had entered the clearing. He took the near side and stood with legs apart and his rifle balanced loosely in the crook of his right arm.
“Shere Ali will be here in a minute,” he said. “I want to try him out, Mahommed. Will you go and stand fifty yards away—not on rising ground—the lower you are the more helpless you'll look. See if he'll kill man without being attacked.”
Mahommed Babar glanced at King, who detected the northerner's look of unfinished argument. It was not fear. It might be doubt.
“Take my rifle, if you like, and I'll go instead,” King volunteered.
Mahommed Babar smiled. So did Ommony. The rattle of the tom-tom was repeated five or six times.
“Better be quick, whichever's going,” said Ommony, and if there had been any doubt that ended it. Mahommed's face cleared. Those five words of Ommony's, added to King's offer had established him as an equal as far as essentials were concerned. He moved his hand cavalierly and strode forward to play in the presence of death, unarmed. The tom-tom rattled again, three times, more loudly. King opened his breech to make sure, being an army man. Ommony knew. His rifle lay along his forearm and he never once glanced at it.
Mahommed Babar walked toward the apex of an isosceles triangle, of which Ommony and King were the base, and stopped at the end of fifty yards, looking up. There was a lump of ground in front of him, three or four yards high, with a tangle of dead bushes on top. Shere Ali had come silently from the direction Ommony predicted and stood looking down at all three men with his head thrust out through a clump of high grass. King's hands fidgeted with the Express. Ommony remained stock-still.
The more or less unexpected had happened, as always in tiger land. Shere Ali looked down on Mahommed Babar, measuring the distance, snarling, one ear forward and the other back, and looked altogether too long for his own reputation. A tiger whose hand was not against man would have taken the clear road to safety along the watercourse, after one swift survey.
Then Mahommed Babar did either a very bold and confident or a very afraid and foolish thing. He began retreating, backward. King swore between his teeth and raised his rifle mid-way. Ommony continued to stand still. Mahommed came very slowly, feeling his way behind him with each foot—trod in a hole, lost balance, staggered, and fell.
The rest was all instantaneous. Yellow as sunlight, in his prime, magnificent, Shere Ali launched himself like a flash to wreak murder. Both rifles spoke at once. An express bullet and a 404 went home and the tiger fell short, writhing with a smashed shoulder and paralyzed hind legs. Getting to his knees Mahommed Babar stared across a scant yard into the brute's eyes, and Shere Ali struck with the one uninjured forepaw, missing by inches and then trying to struggle nearer. Aiming very carefully King sent his second bullet exactly between the tiger's eyes.
Trial, sentence and execution were all over in less than sixty seconds, and the jungli appeared between two trees, looking about as enthusiastic as a stuffed museum specimen. His only comment was to rattle his strange little tom-tom; then he went to count the dead brute's claws and whiskers. Ommony must have moved, for it was his bullet that smashed Shere Ali's backbone and paralyzed the hind legs, but he was standing exactly as he stood at first, with the rifle lying on his forearm, legs apart.
He ejected the empty cartridge-case, reloaded and strode forward, for one thing to make sure that the jungli did not steal claws and whiskers; for the superstition is that those things are good against devils, which, as every jungli knows, are all too plentiful. King reloaded the express and followed Ommony, neither man having spoken a word since Shere Ali showed himself. It was Ommony who spoke at last. He came to a halt midway and felt for his cigar-case.
“That beats ,” he said wondering.
Mahommed had got to his feet and, glancing at the tiger once to make sure, had faced about. Presumably he was waiting for Ommony and King, but the old look of unfinished argument was on his face, with irresolution added. He glanced almost furtively from one man to the other—moved a pace or two—seemed to hesitate—and then started running. He made a circuit and disappeared at top speed down the lane they had come by.
“There's something I can't explain,” said Ommony, as King caught up with him. “No smoking in the forest. Care to chew a cigar? You see that beast? He had no excuse for killing man. He wasn't hurt. He hadn't been driven far enough to make him nervous. I think he came by a yellow streak when we raised him by hand. But where and how did Mahommed Babar come by his? In a month Shere Ali would have been killing children at the water-holes. But who'd have thought Mahommed Babar would cut and run? Can you explain it?”
King shook his head.
“Somehow I don't believe it yet,” he answered. “He and I were brats at Dera Ismail Khan. He had guts as a youngster. We gave that tiger benefit of doubt until he actually sprang. I vote the same for the rissaldar's son.”
“Why did he leave the army?” countered Ommony.
“Resigned. Suspected of politics. Nothing was proved. I sent him to you to get him as far away as possible from Peshawar. There might have been trouble up there if any one had thrown the resignation in his teeth. He was champion of the native army with the saber—ambidextrous—capable of fighting three at once. I've seen him use two swords at once for practise. Marvelous—footwork. Shifts his ground so that one opponent is always stymied, and sometimes two. Hot man in a tight place.”
Ommony checked the count of claws and whiskers, and sent the jungli for a gang to skin the tiger and bring in the hide. He and King kept guard until the gang came, talking intermittently, swiping at flies with their handkerchiefs.
“Mahommed Babar has a claim on me,” said King. “I wish I had a notion what the real matter with him is.”
“What is a man that thou are mindful of him?” quoted Ommony. “I know a little. He had been pestered out of his senses by the Moplah malcontents, who lack nothing but military training to make them almost invincible among these wooded hills. Mahommed Babar's a bit of a fanatic, and they've fed him the Koran until his blood boils. On top of that some of these gentry have been to Peshawar, and one of them heard a story of some insult offered to Mahommed's father by an Englishman. Not sure the Englishman isn't supposed to have killed his father. Anyhow, he spread the yarn hereabouts, of course, and they've been rubbing that into Mahommed Babar along with the Koran. I told 'em in Calcutta a year ago that the Moplahs would cut loose at the first opportunity. Maybe Mahommed Babar is opportunity. Was he a good soldier?”
“First rate,” King answered. “Two campaigns. Promoted for gallantry. Nothing wrong with him except a cursed bent for politics. He never could understand that a soldier mustn't touch that stuff.”
“Soldier or any other wise man!” Ommony answered. “'Specially in India. Well, I'm afraid Mahommed Babar's lien on your friendship won't help him much. Did you see his eyes just now, before he took to his heels? We'd pulled a thorn out of him a minute or two before. He walked out like a man and a brother to meet Shere Ali. Then he and the tiger both had a yellow fit. Mahommed Babar knew we saw him flinch. Thought we'd be scornful.”
Ommony got off the rock he was sitting on, saw the jungli gang coming in the distance, and turned to meet King's eyes.
“I'm afraid we've found him out,” he said. “He's an enemy, or if not the next Moplah he meets will convert him.”
He gave instructions about the skinning and he and King walked back, not saying much, nor exactly aware of the forest in the way they had been. The gold had gone out of the morning. Something drab had entered in—nothing a man could explain, even to himself. Very soon another tiger would find his way into that part of the forest and Ommony would have the delight of discovering his lair, and of knowing where he hunted day by day. North, south, east and west there were loads of men as fit to make friends of as Mahommed Babar, and for that matter King had friends everywhere. Nevertheless, the day was changed. News did not improve it.
They were met about a half-mile from the house by two of Ommony's servants, who came running to report that Mahommed Babar had packed his bedding roll and ridden away at a gallop on his own gray pony. Furthermore, that certain chiefs of the Moplahs had come for a conference and were awaiting Ommony on his front veranda.
“Any men with them?” he asked.
“Nay, sahib. Three chiefs without followers. But they act boldly, as if their followers are not far off. Moreover, since when did a Moplah chief go unattended? Therefore, being afraid, we sent the kamal and two gardeners to discover where their followers are hiding. They have not come back, and we are more afraid.”
“Fear and the heart of a fool are one,” said Ommony, quickening his pace.
As they neared the house the third gardener met them with a message from the butler.
“The three men from Malapuram entered the house to help themselves to guns and ammunition, sahib. The butler forbade, but they threatened him. They were prevented by the dogs.”
The dogs were still on duty when King and Ommony came in view of the veranda, the terrier standing gamely between the legs of the other two and making most of the noise. The Moplah chiefs, with the fanatical Moslem's loathing for dogs, showed their teeth almost as prominently as the beasts did and were standing herded together at one end of the veranda with hands on the hilts of most un-Indian looking swords. Their sword-belts, rather like Sam Browns, were surely never made in India.
Ommony called the dogs off, rewarded them with curt approval, and sat down on a sort of garden seat between the sitting-room window and the front door. King took a seat beside him, crossed his long legs, lighted a cigar and proceeded to look indifferent. The Moplahs approached, slowly recovering their poise.
They looked nearly as un-Indian as the swords they wore. They had the long, Semitic Arab nose and the ineradicable Arab stealthiness added to truculence, inherited from Aram ancestors. One of them had red dye in his beard, which increased the Semitic suggestion.
Nobody knows what Moplah really means, or exactly whence the turbulent fanatics came, but they invaded India three centuries after the prophet Mahommed's flight from Mecca and ever since have been Moslems in the middle of a Hindu land. Moreover in that impenetrable mountain jungle they have increased to a million strong—a million thorns in the side of Brahma and the Indian government—rebels to a man in every generation.
Their approach to Ommony was after the manner of their kind—not deferent. On the other hand, it was not insolent, although there are men in the East who call everything insolence that does not include obsequiousness. Theirs was rather the approach of peacemakers, who come to reason with a weaker adversary to save him from his own mistakes, and Ommony, who knows men as understandingly as he knows animals, chuckled as he signed to them to sit down.
They squatted before him with their backs against the veranda rail—proud, fierce-looking fellows. Change their Arab-looking garments, give them a hair-cut, and you could imagine them driving cattle in Mullingar (forgetting, of course, the telltale noses). They waited for Ommony to speak, for manners is the breath of all the East.
“Have you come to serve notice on me to quit?” he asked them in their own tongue.
The man in the midst with the red beard took up the tale at once.
“Father of Forests—that was what the one word meant—it is better that you go. Your house and your goods shall be spared. Go, and come back afterwards. Only leave the guns. We came for the guns and cartridges.”
They knew their man—not quite so well as he knew them, but broadly nevertheless. Otherwise they would have beaten about the bush for an hour first. Ommony answered without a suggestion of superiority—which is the secret*of real rule.
“The dogs would not let you take the guns.”
“True. But now you are here and have understanding.”
“Am I less than a dog?” wondered Ommony.
“Nay, sahib!”
“Then I, also, will not let you have the guns.”
That was final. All three men recognized it. If he had lorded it over them, or argued, or threatened, there would have been a false note, which would have led to dispute, hot words and quite likely murder. But he stated facts simply, and they understood.
“Father of Forests, you can not fight against all of us. We're many. We rise in honor of the Khalifate, which is being sacrificed by the British for the sake of Hindus.”
“As I've told you a score of times, you know nothing about international politics.” Ommony answered. “You've been lied to by professional agitators, whose salaries are paid by the same foreigners who sent you those swords and sword-belts. Whoever enters politics is a fool. I have told you that often.”
“You will be a fool if you fight against us, sahib.”
“I don't intend to,” said Ommony. “I shall stay here in my forest, on duty.” He said “my forest” with the unconscious arrogance that came of having served the forest faithfully for twenty years. It was really the forest that owned him.
“But—but if harm comes?”
“Then my blood will be on your heads. I have been your friend. I never harmed one of you.”
“That is true. Allah be witness, that is true. But if we take the guns and ammunition?”
“Allah will witness that also. It will be over my dead body.”
“Ommon-ee sahib, that must not be.”
“Don't try to take the guns then.”
“But we need them.”
“So do I.”
“Oh. If you need them. Ah. That is straight talk.” The three heads whispered together for a minute, looking devilish sly as they nodded, arriving at decision. “You will not give the guns to the Hindus?”
“No.”
“Nor the Brahmans? They are worse than Hindus.”
“No.”
“Good. That is satisfactory. You have always been a friend to us, Ommon-ee. You know our Koran better than our own priests do. You have known many of our secrets and have not told.”
“That isn't true,” said Ommony. “I have told the Government in Calcutta, in Otticamund and in Simla all I knew of your secrets. I have warned them of your intentions. They told me to come back here and mind my forest. I did.”
The Moplahs laughed. That was the type of joke that tickled them, for they did not doubt for a single second the deliberate truth of every word that Ommony uttered. (You can make your word worth more than Government paper at the end of twenty years if you try hard enough.) A government refusing to believe the reports of its own best forester—that was humor. They cackled. A forester knows everything, or should. If he doesn't, the trees will make him so lonely that he will go mad, and from madness to the devil is only one step.
“Will the government send troops to protect your house?” they asked.
“I hope not,” said Ommony.
“Then, sahib, we must mount a guard to make sure the Hindus do not come and take the guns away.”
“When do you begin?” asked Ommony.
They whispered again. This time they were longer reaching a decision, but they did not lower their voices much, and Ommony could easily have overheard if he had cared to. Obvious cutthroats though they were, they were rather like children playing at secrets in front of their nurse.
“Will you tell your Government?” the red-bearded one asked at last.
“Certainly,” said Ommony.
“Ah! Then we will not answer.”
“All right. My servants will give you food,” said Ommony, by way of dismissing them. But they had not quite finished.
“Will you report on this interview?”
“Of course,” said Ommony.
“We do not guarantee the messenger's life!”
“I will be the messenger. I myself will walk to the station and send a tar,”[1] answered Ommony.
Humor appealed to all three of them again simultaneously. They cackled.
“The sahib will weary himself in vain. The wire is cut!”
Ommony raised his eyebrows.
“The babu will send my message by the next train,” he answered.
“The babu, who was a Hindu and would not recant, is dead of a cut throat,” said red-beard pleasantly. “Moreover, the train will not go, because the rails are torn up.”
“Oh, all right,” answered Ommony. “No need then to tell the Government. They probably know already. Food is waiting for you. You have my leave to go.”
- ↑ Telegram.