Cumner's son and other South Sea folk

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Cumner's Son i

The Blind Beggar and the Little Red Peg . . 232

II “rest at the koongat bridge an hour”

There was no moon, and but few stars were shining. When Cumner’s Son first set out from Mandakan he could scarcely see at all, and he kept his way through the native villages more by instinct than by sight. As time passed he saw more clearly; he could make out the figures of natives lying under trees or rising from their mats to note the flying horseman. Lights flickered here and there in the houses and by the roadside. A late traveller turned a cake in the ashes or stirred some rice in a calabash; an anxious mother put some sandalwood on the coals and added incense, that the gods might be good to her ailing child on the mat; and thrice, at forges in the village, he saw the smith languidly beating iron into shape, while dark figures sat on the floor near by, and smoked and murmured to each other.

These last showed alertness at the sound of the flying sorrel’s hoofs, and all at once a tall, keeneyed horseman sprang to the broad doorway and strained his eyes into the night after Cumner’s Son. He waited a few moments; then, as if with a io sudden thought, he ran to a horse tethered near by and vaulted into the saddle. At a word his chesnut mare got away with telling stride in pursuit of the unknown rider, passing up the Gap of Mandakan like a ghost.

Cumner’s Son had a start by about half a mile, but Tang-a-Dahit rode a mare that had once belonged to Pango Dooni, and Pango Dooni had got her from Colonel Cumner the night he escaped from Mandakan. For this mare the hill-chief had returned no gift save the gold bracelet which Cumner’s Son now carried in his belt.

The mare leaned low on her bit, and travelled like a thirsty hound to water, the sorrel tugged at the snaffle, and went like a bull moose hurrying to his herd —

“That long low gallop that can tire The hounds’ deep hate or hunter’s fire.”

The pace was with the sorrel. Cumner’s Son had not looked behind after the first few miles, for then he had given up thought that he might be followed. He sat in his saddle like a plainsman ; he listened like a hillsman; he endured like an Arab water-carrier. There was not an ounce of useless flesh on his body, and every limb, bone, and sinew had been stretched and hardened by riding with the Dakoon’s horsemen, by travelling through the jungle for the tiger and the panther, by throwing the kris with Boonda Broke, fencing with McDermot, and by sabre practice with redii headed Sergeant Doolan in the barracks by the Residency Square. After twenty miles’ ride he was dry as a bone, after thirty his skin was moist but not damp, and there was not a drop of sweat on the skin-leather of his fatigue cap. When he got to Koongat Bridge he was like a racer after practice, ready for a fight from start to finish. Yet he was not foolhardy. He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke’s friendship for him, and he only found peace for his mind upon the point by remembering that he had told no secrets, had given no information of any use to the foes of the Dakoon or the haters of the English.

On this hot, long, silent ride he looked back carefully, but he could not see where he had been to blame; and, if he were, he hoped to strike a balance with his own conscience for having been friendly with Boonda Broke, and to justify himself in his father’s eyes. If he came through all right, then “the Governor” — as he called his father, with the friendly affection of a good comrade, and as all others in Mandakan called him because of his position — the Governor then would say that whatever harm he had done indirectly was now undone.

He got down at the Koongat Bridge, and his fingers were still in the sorrel’s mane when he heard the call of a bittern from the river-bank. He did not loose his fingers, but stood still and listened intently, for there was scarcely a sound of the plain, the river, the jungle he did not know, and his ear was keen to balance ’twixt the false note and the true. He waited for the sound again. From that first call he could not be sure which had startled him, the night was so still — the voice of a bird or the call between men lying in ambush. He tried the trigger of his pistol softly, and prepared to mount. As he did so the call rang out across the water again — a little louder, a little longer.

Now he was sure. It was not from a bittern; it was a human voice, of whose tribe he knew not — Pango Dooni’s, Boonda Broke’s, the Dakoon’s, or the segments of peoples that belonged to none of these — highway robbers, cattle-stealers, or the men of the jungle, those creatures as wild and secret as the beasts of the bush, and more cruel and more furtive.

The fear of the ambushed thing is the worst fear of this world — the sword or the rifle-barrel you cannot see and the poisoned wooden spear which the men of the jungle throw gives a man ten deaths instead of one.

Cumner’s Son mounted quickly, straining his eyes to see and keeping his pistol cocked. When he heard the call a second time he had for a moment a thrill of fear, not in his body, but in his brain. He had that fatal gift, imagination, which is more alive than flesh and bone, stronger than iron and steel. In his mind he saw a hundred

'3 men rise up from ambush, surround him, and cut him down. He saw himself firing a half-dozen shots, then drawing his sword and fighting till he fell; but he did fall in the end, and there was an end of it. It seemed like years while these visions passed through his mind, but it was no longer than it took to gather the snaffle-rein close to the sorrel’s neck, draw his sword, clinch it in his left hand with the rein, and gather the pistol snugly in his right. He listened again. As he touched the sorrel with his knee he thought he heard a sound ahead.

The sorrel sprang forward, sniffed the air, and threw up his head. His feet struck the resounding timbers of the bridge, and, as they did so, he shied; but Cumner’s Son, looking down sharply, could see nothing to either the right or left — no movement anywhere save the dim trees on the banks waving in the light wind which had risen. A crocodile slipped off a log into the water — he knew that sound; a rank odor came from the river-bank — he knew the smell of the hippopotamus.

These very things gave him new courage. Since he came from Eton to Mandakan he had hunted often and well, and once he had helped to quarry the Little Men of the Jungle when they carried off the wife and daughter of a soldier of the Dakoon. The smell and the sound of wild life roused all the hunter in him. He had fear no longer; the primitive emotion of fighting or self-defence was alive in him.

He had left the bridge behind by twice the horse’s length, when, all at once, the call of the red bittern rang out the third time louder than before; then again; and then the cry of a gray wolf came in response.

His peril was upon him. He put spurs to the sorrel. As he did so, dark figures sprang up on all sides of him. Without a word he drove the excited horse at his assailants. Three caught his bridle-rein, and others snatched at him to draw him from his horse.

“Hands off!” he cried, in the language of Mandakan, and levelled his pistol.

“He is English!” said a voice. “Cut him down!”

“I am the Governor’s son,” said the lad. “Let go!”

“Cut him down!” snarled the voice again.

He fired twice quickly.

Then he remembered the tribe-call given his father by Pango Dooni. Rising in his saddle and firing again, he called it out in a loud voice. His plunging horse had broken away from two of the murderers; but one still held on, and he slashed the hand free with his sword.

The natives were made furious by the call, and came on again, striking at him with their krises. He shouted the tribe-call once more, but this time it was done involuntarily. There was no response in front of him, but one came from behind. There was clattering of hoofs on Koongat Bridge.

2 15 and the password of the clan came back to the lad, even as a kris struck him in the leg and drew out again. Once again he called, and suddenly a horseman appeared beside him, who clove through a native’s head with a broadsword, and with a pistol fired at the fleeing figures ; for Boonda Broke’s men, who were thus investing the highway up to Koongat Bridge, and even beyond, up to the Bar of Balmud, hearing the new-comer shout the dreaded name of Pango Dooni, scattered for their lives, though they were yet twenty to two. One stood his ground, and it would have gone ill for Cumner’s Son, for this thief had him at fatal advantage, had it not been for the horseman who had followed the lad from the forge-fire to Koongat Bridge. He stood up in his stirrups and cut down with his broadsword, so that the blade was driven through the head and shoulders of his foe as a woodsman splits a log half through, and grunts with the power of his stroke.

Then he turned to the lad.

‘ ‘ What stranger calls by the word of our tribe ? ’ ’ he asked.

“I am Cumner’s Son,” was the answer, “and my father is brother-in-blood with Pango Dooni. I ride to Pango Dooni for the women and children’s sake.”

“Proof! Proof! If you be Cumner’s Son, another word should be yours.”

The Colonel’s Son took out the bracelet from his breast. “It is safe hid here,” said he, “and hid also under my tongue. If you be from the Neck of Baroob you will know it when I speak it,” and he spoke reverently the sacred countersign.

By a little fire kindled in the road, the bodies of their fofcs beside them, they vowed to each other, mingling their blood from dagger - pricks in the arm. Then they mounted again, and rode toward the Neck of Baroob.

In silence they rode awhile, and at last the hillsman said: “If fathers be brothers-in-blood, behold it is good that sons be also.”

By this the lad knew that he was now brother-in-blood to the son of Pango Dooni.

Ill

THE CODE OF THE HILLS

“You travel near to Mandakan!” said the lad. “Do you ride with a thousand men?”

“For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone and safe,” answered Tang-a-Dahit.

“To thrust your head in the tiger’s jaw,” said Cumner’s Son. “Did you ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?”

“A man will ride for a face that he loves, even to the Dreadful Gates,” answered Tang-a-Dahit. “But what is this of the men of my clan?”

Then the lad told him of those whose heads hung on the rear Palace wall, where the Dakoon lay dying, and why he rode to Pango Dooni.

“ It is fighting and fighting, naught but fighting,” said Tang-a-Dahit, after a pause; “and there is no peace. It is fighting and fighting, for honor and glory, and houses and cattle, but naught for love, and naught that there may be peace.”

Cumner’s Son turned round in his saddle as if to read the face of the man, but it was too dark.

‘ ‘ And naught that there may be peace. ” Those were the words of a hillsman who had followed him furiously in the night ready to kill, who had cloved the head of a man like a piece of soap, and had been riding even unto Mandakan, where a price was set on his head.

For long they rode silently, and in that time Cumner’s Son found new thoughts; and these thoughts made him love the brown hillsman as he had never loved any save his own father.

“When there is peace in Mandakan,” said he, at last, “when Boonda Broke is snapped in two like a pencil, when Pango Dooni sits as Dakoon in the Palace of Mandakan — ”

“There is a maid in Mandakan,” interrupted Tang-a-Dahit, “and these two years she has lain upon her bed, and she may not be moved, for the bones of her body are as the soft stems of the lily, but her face is a perfect face, and her tongue has the wisdom of God.”

“You ride to her through the teeth of danger ? ”

“She may not come to me, and I must go to her,” answered the hillsman.

There was silence again for a long time, for Cumner’s Son was turning things over in his mind ; and all at once he felt that each man’s acts must be judged by the blood that is in him and the trail by which he has come.

The sorrel and the chestnut mare travelled together as on one snaffle-bar, step by step, for they were foaled in the same stable. Through stretches of reed-beds and wastes of osiers they passed, and again by a path through the jungle where the brier-vines caught at them like eager fingers, and a tiger crossed their track, disturbed in his night’s rest. At length out of the dank distance they saw the first color of dawn.

“Ten miles,” said Tang-a-Dahit, “and we shall come to the Bar of Balmud. Then we shall be in my own country. See, the dawn comes up! ’Twixt here and the Bar of Balmud our danger lies. A hundred men may ambush there, for Boonda Broke’s thieves have scattered all the way from Mandakan to our borders.”

Cumner’s Son looked round. There were hills and defiles everywhere, and a thousand places where foes could hide. The quickest way, but the most perilous, lay through the long defile between the hills, flanked by bowlders and rank scrub. Tang-a- Dahit pointed out the ways that they might go — by the path to the left along the hills, or through the green defile 5 and Cumner’s Son instantly chose the latter way.

“If the fight were fair,” said the hillsman, “and it were man to man, the defile is the better way; but these be dogs of cowards who strike from behind rocks. No one of them has a heart truer than Boonda Broke’s, the master of the carrion. We will go by the hills. The way is harder but more open, and if we be prospered we will rest awhile at the Bar of Balmud, and at noon we will tether and eat in the Neck of Baroob.”

They made their way through the medlar-trees

CUMNER’S S©N and scrub to the plateau above, and, the height gained, they turned to look back. The sun was up, and trailing rose and amber garments across the great eastern arch. Their path lay toward it, for Pango Dooni hid in the hills, where the sun hung, a roof of gold above his stronghold.

“Forty to one!” said Tang-a-Dahit, suddenly. “Now indeed we ride for our lives!”

Looking down the track of the hillsman’s glance Cumner’s Son saw a bunch of horsemen galloping up the slope. Boonda Broke’s men!

The sorrel and the mare were fagged, the horses of their foes were fresh, and forty to one were odds that no man would care to take. It might be that some of Pango Dooni’s men lay between them and the Bar of Balmud, but the chance was faint.

“By the hand of Heaven,” said the hillsman, “if we reach to the Bar of Balmud, these dogs shall eat their own heads for dinner!”

They set their horses in the way, and gave the sorrel and mare the bit and spur. The beasts leaned again tc their work as though they had just come from a feeding-stall and knew their riders’ needs. The men rode light and free, and talked low to their horses as friend talks to friend. Five miles or more they went so, and then the mare stumbled. She got to her feet again, but her head dropped low, her nostrils gaped red and swollen, and the sorrel hung back with her, for a beast, like a man, will travel farther two by two than one by one. At another point, where they had a long view behind, they looked back. Their pursuers were gaining. Tang-a-Dahit spurred his horse on.

“There is one chance,” said he, “and only one. See where the point juts out beyond the great medlar-tree. If, by the mercy of God, we can but make it!”

The horses gallantly replied to call and spur. They rounded a curve which made a sort of apse to the side of the valley, and presently they were hid from their pursuers. Looking back from the thicket, they saw the plainsmen riding hard. All at once Tang-a-Dahit stopped.

“Give me the sorrel,” said he. “Quick — dismount!”

Cumner’s Son did as he was bid. Going a little to one side, the hillsman pushed through a thick hedge of bushes, rolled away a rock, and disclosed an opening which led down a steep and rough-hewn way to a great misty valley beneath, where was never a bridle-path or causeway over the brawling streams and bowlders.

“I will ride on. The mare is done, but the sorrel can make the Bar of Balmud.”

Cumner’s Son opened his mouth to question, but stopped, for the eyes of the hillsman flared up, and Tang-a-Dahit said :

“My arm in blood has touched thy arm, and thou art in my hills and not in thine own country. Thy life is my life, and thy good is my good. Speak not, but act. By the high wall of the valley where no man bides there is a path which leads to the Bar of Balmud; but leave it not, whether it go up or down or be easy or hard. If thy feet be steady, thine eyes true, and thy heart strong, thou shalt come by the Bar of Balmud among my people.”

Then he caught the hand of Cumner’s Son in his own and kissed him between the eyes, after the manner of a kinsman, and, urging him into the opening, rolled the great stone into its place again. Mounting the sorrel, he rode swiftly out into the open, rounded the green point full in view of his pursuers, and was hid from them in an instant. Then dismounting, he swiftly crept back through the long grass into the thicket again, mounted the mare, and drove her at labored gallop also around the curve, so that it seemed to the plainsmen following that both men had gone that way. He mounted the sorrel again, and loosing a long sash from his waist drew it through the mare’s bit. The mare, lightened of the weight, followed well. When the plainsmen came to the cape of green, they paused not by the secret place, for it seemed to them that two had ridden past and not one.

The Son of Pango Dooni had drawn pursuit after himself, for it is the law of the hills that a hillsman shall give his life or all that he has for a brother-in-blood.

When Cumner’s Son had gone a little way he understood it all! And he would have turned back, but he knew that the hillsman had ridden far beyond his reach. So he ran as swiftly as he could; he climbed where it might seem not even a chamois could find a hold; his eyes scarcely seeing the long, misty valley, where the haze lay like a vapor from another world. There was no sound anywhere save the brawling water or the lonely cry of the flute-bird. Here was the last refuge of the hillsmen if they should ever be driven from the Neck of Baroob. They could close up every entrance, and live unscathed; for here was land for tilling, and wood, and wild fruit, and food for cattle.

Cumner’s Son was supple and swift, and scarce an hour had passed ere he came to a steep place on the other side, with rough niches cut in the rocks, by which a strong man might lift himself up to safety. He stood a moment and ate some coffee-beans and drank some cold water from a stream at the foot of the crag, and then he began his ascent. Once or twice he trembled, for he was worn and tired; but he remembered the last words of Tang-a-Dahit, and his fingers tightened their hold. At last, with a strain and a gasp, he drew himself up, and found himself on a shelf of rock with all the great valley spread out beneath him. A moment only he looked, resting himself, and then he searched for a way into the hills; for everywhere there was a close palisade of rocks and saplings. At last he found an opening scarce bigger than might let a cat through; but he labored hard, and at last drew himself out and looked down the path which led into the Bar of Balmud — the great natural escarpment of giant rocks and monoliths and medlar-trees, where lay Pango Dooni’s men.

He ran with all his might, and presently he was inside the huge defence. There was no living being to be seen; only the rock-strewn plain and the woods beyond.

He called aloud, but nothing answered; he called again the tribe-call of Pango Dooni’s men, and a hundred armed men sprang up.

“I am a brother-in-blood of Pango Dooni’s son,” said he. “Tang-a-Dahit rides for his life to the Bar of Balmud. Ride forth if ye would save him.”

‘‘The lad speaks with the tongue of a friend,” said a scowling hillsman, advancing, ‘‘yet how know we but he lies?”

‘‘Even by this,” said Cumner’s Son, and he spoke the sacred countersign and showed again the bracelet of Pango Dooni, and told what had happened. Even as he spoke the hillsman gave the word, and twoscore men ran down behind the rocks, mounted, and were instantly away by the road that led to the Koongat Bridge.

The tall hillsman turned to the lad.

“You are beaten by travel,” said he. “Come, eat and drink, and rest.”

“I have sworn to breakfast where Pango Dooni bides, and there only will I rest and eat,” answered the lad.

“The Son of Pango Dooni knows the lion’s cub from the tame dog’s whelp. You shall keep your word. Though the sun ride fast toward noon, faster shall we ride in the Neck of Baroob,” said the hillsman.

It was half-way toward noon when the hoofbeats drummed over the Brown Hermit’s cave, and they rested not there; but it was noon and no more when they rode through Pango Dooni’s gates and into the square where he stood.

The tall hillsman dropped to the ground, and Cumner’s Son made to do the same. Yet he staggered, and would have fallen, but the hillsman ran an arm around his shoulder. The lad put by the arm, and drew himself up. He was most pale. Pango Dooni stood looking at him without a word, and Cumner’s Son doffed his cap. There was no blood in his lips, and his face was white and drawn.

“Since last night what time the bugle blows in the Palace yard I have ridden,” said he.

At the sound of his voice the great chief started.

“The voice I know, but not the face,” said he.

“I am Cumner’s Son,” replied the lad, and once more he spoke the sacred countersign.

IV By The Old Well Of Jahar

To Cumner’s Son when all was told, Pango Dooni said: “If my son be dead where those jackals swarm, it is well he died for his friend. If he be living, then it is also well. If he be saved, we will march to Mandakan, with all our men, he and I, and it shall be as Cumner wills, if I stay in Mandakan or if I return to my hills.”

“My father said in the council-room, ‘Better the strong robber than the weak coward,’ and my father never lied,” said the lad, dauntlessly. The strong, tall chief, with the dark face and fierce eyes, roused in him the regard of youth for strong manhood.

“A hundred years ago they stole from my fathers the State of Mandakan,” answered the chief, “and all that is here and all that is there is mine. If I drive the kine of thieves from the plains to my hills, the cattle were mine ere I drove them. If I harry the rich in the midst of the Dakoon’s men, it is gaining my own over naked swords. If I save your tribe and Cumner’s men from the half-bred jackal Boonda Broke, and hoist your flag on the Palace wall, it is only I who should do it.”

Then he took the lad inside the house, with the great wooden pillars and the high gates, and the dark windows all barred up and down with iron, and he led him to a court-yard where was a pool of clear water. He made him bathe in it, and dark-skinned natives brought him bread dipped in wine, and when he had eaten they laid him on skins and rubbed him dry, and rolled him in soft linen, and he drank the coffee they gave him, and they sat by and fanned him until he fell asleep.

The red birds on the window-sill sang through his sleep into his dreams. In his dreams he thought he was in the Dakoon’s Palace at Mandakan with a thousand men before him, and three men came forward and gave him a sword. And a bird came flying through the great chambers and hung over him, singing in a voice that he understood, and he spoke to the three and to the thousand, in the words of the bird, and said:

“It is fighting, and fighting for honor and glory and houses and kine, but naught for love, and naught that there may be peace.”

And the men said in reply: “It is all for love and it is all for peace,” and they still held out the sword to him. And he took it and buckled it to his side, and the bird, flying away out of the great window of the chamber, sang, “Peace! Peace!

Peace!” And Pango Dooni’s Son, standing by with a shining face, said, ‘‘Peace! Peace!” and the great Cumner said, “ Peace!” and a woman’s voice, not louder than a bee’s, but clear above all others, said, “Peace!”

He awoke, and knew it was a dream ; and there beside him stood Pango Dooni, in his dress of scarlet and gold and brown, his broadsword buckled on, a kris at his belt, and a rich jewel in his cap.

“Ten of my captains and three of my kinsmen are come to break bread with Cumner’s Son,” said he. “They would hear the tale of our kinsmen who died against the Palace wall, by the will of the sick Dakoon.”

The lad sprang to his feet fresh and well, the linen and skins falling away from his lithe, clean body and limbs, and he took from the slaves his clothes. The eye of the chief ran up and down his form, from his keen blue eyes to his small strong ankle.

“It is the body of a perfect man,” said he. “In the days when our State was powerful and great, when men and not dogs ruled at Mandakan, nc man might be Dakoon save him who was clear of mote or beam; of true bone and body, like a high-bred yearling got from a perfect stud. But two such are there that I have seen in Mandakan to-day, and they are thyself and mine own son.”

The lad laughed. “I have eaten good meat,” said he, “and I have no muddy blood.”

When they came to the dining-hall, the lad at first was abashed, for twenty men stood up to meet him, and each held out his hand and spoke the vow of a brother-in-blood, for the ride he had made and his honest face together acted on them. Moreover, whom the head of their clan honored - they also willed to honor. They were tall, barbaric-looking men, and some had a truculent look, but most were of a daring open manner, and careless in speech and gay at heart.

Cumner’s Son told them of his ride and of Tang-a-Dahit, and, at last, of the men of their tribe who died by the Palace wall. With one accord they rose in their places and swore over bread and a drop of blood of their chief that they would not sheathe their swords again till a thousand of Boonda Broke’s and the Dakoon’s men lay where their own kinsmen had fallen. If it chanced that Tang-a-Dahit was dead, then they would never rest until Boonda Broke and all his clan were blotted out. Only Pango Dooni himself was silent, for he was thinking much of what should be done at Mandakan.