Kim
“He says ‘No, sar,’” the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no
more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop
would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of
cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well
as a wealthy Abbot in his own place.
“Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the Sahib
is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him another.
But _this_ was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him so,
_hakim_.”
“He wishes it now—for money.”
The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The
Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling over
a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched
half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama’s grip. A low
murmur of horror went up from the coolies—some of whom were Spiti men
and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult; his
hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest’s weapon, and
the Babu danced in agony.
“Now you see—you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly
unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You must _not_ hit holyman!”
“_Chela!_ He has defiled the Written Word!”
It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck the
old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and over
downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every unknown Irish
devil in the boy’s blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did the
rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the coolies under
their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run aross the level.
They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get away
before the Gods and devils of the hills took vengeance. The Frenchman
ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some notion of
making him a hostage for his companion. A shower of cutting
stones—hillmen are very straight shots—drove him away, and a coolie
from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the stampede. All came about as
swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness.
“They have taken the baggage and all the guns,” yelled the Frenchman,
firing blindly into the twilight.
“All right, sar! All right! Don’t shoot. I go to rescue,” and Hurree,
pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted and
astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe’s head against a
boulder.
“Go back to the coolies,” whispered the Babu in his ear. “They have the
baggage. The papers are in the _kilta_ with the red top, but look
through all. Take their papers, and specially the _murasla_ (King’s
letter). Go! The other man comes!”
Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he
cowered partridge-wise.
“If you shoot,” shouted Hurree, “they will descend and annihilate us. I
have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is par_tic_ularly dangerous.”
“By Jove!” Kim was thinking hard in English. “This is dam’-tight place,
but _I_ think it is self-defence.” He felt in his bosom for Mahbub’s
gift, and uncertainly—save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir
desert, he had never used the little gun—pulled the trigger.
“What did I say, sar!” The Babu seemed to be in tears. “Come down here
and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you.”
The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim hurried
upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat—or a country-bred.
“Did they wound thee, _chela?_” called the lama above him.
“No. And thou?” He dived into a clump of stunted firs.
“Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.”
“But not before we have done justice,” a voice cried. “I have got the
Sahibs’ guns—all four. Let us go down.”
“He struck the Holy One—we saw it! Our cattle will be barren—our wives
will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go home... Atop
of all other oppression too!”
The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies—panic-stricken, and
in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked the
breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill.
“Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,” said
he.
“It is this person who has suffered wrong,” said the lama, his hand
over his brow.
“For that very reason,” was the reply.
“If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye
acquire merit by obedience.”
“Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,” the man insisted.
For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a
breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and laid a
finger on the man’s shoulder.
“Hast thou heard? _I_ say there shall be no killing—I who was Abbot of
Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake
under the eaves—a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy
wish to—”
The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a
Tibetan devil-gong.
“Ai! ai!” cried the Spiti men. “Do not curse us—do not curse him. It
was but his zeal, Holy One! ... Put down the rifle, fool!”
“Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the
priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the
Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times—in torment.”
His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim’s shoulder.
“I have come near to great evil, _chela_,” he whispered in that dead
hush under the pines. “I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in
Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He
struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...” He slid to the
ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart
bump and check.
“Have they hurt him to the death?” said the Ao-chung man, while the
others stood mute.
Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. “Nay,” he cried passionately,
“this is only a weakness.” Then he remembered that he was a white man,
with a white man’s camp-fittings at his service. “Open the _kiltas!_
The Sahibs may have a medicine.”
“Oho! Then I know it,” said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. “Not for
five years was I Yankling Sahib’s _shikarri_ without knowing that
medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!”
He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky—such as is sold to
explorers at Leh—and cleverly forced a little between the lama’s teeth.
“So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I
have already looked into their baskets—but we will make fair division
at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His
heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest.
If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this would
never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then it
would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?”
“One is paid, I think, already,” said Kim between his teeth. “I kicked
him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!”
“It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,” said one
whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah’s rickety palace. “If we
get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as _shikarris_ any
more.”
“Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs—not merry-minded men like Fostum
Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners—they cannot speak Angrezi
as do Sahibs.”
Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.
“There shall be no killing,” he murmured. “Just is the Wheel! Evil on
evil—”
“Nay, Holy One. We are all here.” The Ao-chung man timidly patted his
feet. “Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We will
make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to
Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.”
“After a blow,” said a Spiti man sententiously, “it is best to sleep.”
“There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a
pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, _chela_. I am an old
man, but not free from passion ... We must think of the Cause of
Things.”
“Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.”
“Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.”
This was the nervous Rampur man.
“I have been Fostum Sahib’s _shikarri_, and I am Yankling Sahib’s
_shikarri_. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this
cursed _beegar_ (the _corvée_). Let two men watch below with the guns
lest the Sahibs do more foolishness. _I_ shall not leave this Holy
One.”
They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening
awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and
Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from
hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese
cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle
folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic
mine—gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked, the voices
of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the night-frost
choked and clogged the runnels.
“How he stood up against us!” said a Spiti man admiring. “I remember an
old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a shoulder-shot,
seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont Sahib was a good
_shikarri_.”
“Not as good as Yankling Sahib.” The Ao-chung man took a pull at the
whisky-bottle and passed it over. “Now hear me—unless any other man
thinks he knows more.”
The challenge was not taken up.
“We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide the
baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle and all its
cartridges.”
“Are the bears only bad on thy holding? said a mate, sucking at the
pipe.
“No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can
have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We will do
all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways, remembering
that we have never seen or taken service with these Sahibs, who may,
indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.”
“That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?”
“Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the
Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will _he_ lead an army
against us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall
throw on Shamlegh-midden, where no man has yet set foot.”
“Who is at Shamlegh this summer?” The place was only a grazing centre
of three or four huts.”
“The Woman of Shamlegh. _She_ has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The
others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for us
all.” He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.
“But—but—”
“I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads were
bought in the bazar at Leh. _I_ know the marks. I showed them to ye
last march.”
“True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the moth in
them.”
That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows.
“If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who is a
man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any wrong to
any Sahibs whom we know. _They_ are priest-beaters. They frightened us.
We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do ye think Yankling
Sahib will permit down-country police to wander all over the hills,
disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to Chini, and farther
from Shamlegh to Shamlegh-midden.”
“So be it, but I carry the big _kilta_. The basket with the red top
that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.”
“Thus it is proved,” said the Shamlegh man adroitly, “that they are
Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or Yankling
Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot