They had hated each other from the very beginning.
Major Leslie, tall, blond, with a florid face and
invisible eyebrows, and an over-inflated conception of his own dignity, was the
scion of a family whose store of worldly goods was in the inverse ratio to the
blueness of its blood. This unfortunate lack of the more useful commodity
precluding his entry into a crack regiment, he had been forced to join the
Supply and Transport Corps, where, if the glory were less, the emoluments were
correspondingly greater.
He successfully offset the former deficiency by giving
strenuous publicity to his full title of Major, the Hon. Scott-Leslie, and
treating his subordinates with a proper patrician aloofness. When it is added
that he habitually looked out of only one eye, effectually closing the other
with a monocle— “'Nuff said!” Withal, after the manner of all his kind, he was
a brave man and not a bad soldier.
Dickinson—“Kite” Dickinson—was the diametrical
opposite except as to courage. He was the positive pole of the two conflicting
forces. The only point of resemblance was height; but whereas the Major was
bulky and inclined to puffiness, Dickinson was lean and angular, with the
alertness of a hawk and the ungainly joints of a camel, which carried with them
a corresponding tirelessness. The perfect dentistry he displayed when he
smiled—which was nearly all the time—was alone sufficient to proclaim him an
American: one of the pioneer type, with a natural-born and ineradicable
aptitude for being where he had no business to be.
He was there now; that is, fifteen thousand feet
above sea-level and about four thousand above the highest clouds, in the
Jalap-La pass with the Tibet expeditionary force of 1904—or rather “Mission,”
as the British Government chose to call it.
After several lively years of hunting, exploring,
prospecting, and sundry similar exciting and profitless occupations, he had
taken up a contract to provide baggage transports for the expedition, and
should have been down at the base of operations at Gantok. That is why he was
at the front: with the advance column.
It was but natural that two such opposite types
should have come into conflict. The Major, who was in charge of the transport
facilities for the expedition, thought that all underlings should concede the
deference due to a “man of blood” and the wearer of an eye-glass by addressing
him as “Sir,” and had taken occasion to express his views on the matter very
forcibly at an early stage of their dealings together. His very insistence had
aroused all the sturdy democratic independence in Dickinson, who was perfectly
willing to give him the title which his military rank carried; but he refused
to cringe; or as he himself expressed it, “he wasn't goin' to sling valet talk
at no suckling duke.”
He sat just now like a contemplative stork,
hugging a bony great knee on his cot in the tent which he shared with the
correspondent of the Statesman. His unnaturally serious countenance masked a
feeling of sublime and beatific content; he was ragging Major Leslie, and he
knew it.
Before him stood the Major, looking very flushed
and disgruntled. He had come in to give some trifling instructions about the
other's mule-drivers, and had forgotten the issue in his uncontrollable desire
to assert his dignity. Dickinson's consistent refusal to rise to his feet and
salute when addressed, as the native contractors did, had harried his little
soul ever since the beginning of the expedition, and he was now stating his
views on the matter with perfervid fluency.
“I am sorry to have to revert to this matter
again, Mr. Dickinson,” he concluded pompously. “But I consider it my duty to
state that your conduct is—er—subversive of discipline.”
Everything that did not tend to uphold Major, the
Hon. Scott-Leslie's dignity was subversive of discipline.
“Can't follow your line o' reason, Maje,” said
Dickinson cheerfully. “My drivers give a darn sight less trouble than any o'
your nigger contractors, an' I get my mules up on time; quicker than the
battery mules too, though I carry a bigger load.”
“But, Mr. Dickinson, military discipline must be
upheld.”
Dickinson unhooked his knee and carefully adjusted
the other beneath his chin before replying.
“Looks to me like military discipline ain't
figurin' in this,” he grinned maliciously. “To begin with, your Government says
that this picnic ain't no military expedition at all; it's jest a 'Mission
under armed escort.' An' to go on with, I'm a non-combatant, as you explained
to me gratuitous an' circumstantial when I asked for one or two little camp
privileges. I jest hold a plain contrac' with your Government. You're here to
look after their end of it, an'——”
“Pf-rr-rt!”
Two jagged rents appeared in the canvas above,
heralded by the sound of a far-away shot somewhere up on the mountain-side.
Simultaneously with a single gymnastic motion,
Dickinson slid off the cot like an otter and extended himself at full length
behind some pack-saddles.
“—An' I'm here to look after my end,” he continued
unconcernedly from that position. “Better come in behind the fire-screen,
Major.”
Major Leslie had given an involuntary jump, and
his monocle had fallen out of his face; but he was of that type of officer
which considers it disgraceful to take shelter from bullets, and his fast
vanishing temper disappeared entirely at the thought of his display of
nervousness. He turned on Dickinson with a snarl:
“You can attend to your end perfectly well from
the base, Mr. Dickinson. You seem to forget that you are here only on
sufferance.”
Dickinson wagged a bony finger at him from the
floor.
“Sure on sufferance,” he admitted cheerfully. “But
with the express permission of Colonel Younghusband, so I could look after my
mules an' my men.”
The Major opened his mouth to reply, snapped lips
together again, gulped, drew himself up and strode out, eating up at least a
third of his carefully-trained mustache.
Dickinson sat up and wrinkled his nose
discontentedly as he surveyed the bullet holes above. At the same time the
other occupant of the tent emerged from behind the wholly inadequate protection
of a despatch-box, and their glances met in the keen amusement of mutual
understanding.
“Why do you rag him so unmercifully, Dick?” There
was a shade of remonstrance in the newspaper man's tone.
“Why does he try to come the Lord God Almighty
over me like that? I ain't one of his flunkies back home.”
“Oh, well, it wouldn't hurt you to call him
'Sir.'”
“See here, Sanderson,” said Dickinson seriously.:
“Where I come from I'd call my boss by his first name. But I ain't proud; I
don't do the haughty over anything that creeps or crawls or stinks; when it
comes to a show-down of humility I'm brother to a wood-louse; an' I'd call this
misfire earl the Archangel Gabriel if he'd treat me like a white man. But he
don't. He gives me a cramp in the vitals every time he opens up with his
'Er—Mistah Dickinsern.'”
Sanderson had to laugh.
“It's a mistake, Dick,” he persisted. “He can make
trouble for you. But cramp reminds me that it's about supper time.” And he
groaned dismally.
His unhappiness was explained by the fact that the
whole expedition had been on strict rations for the past two weeks.
“Bully beef and hard tack! Oh, my suffering soul!”
A new smile of benign satisfaction spread over
Dickinson's face as he laid his finger on his lips with an exaggerated display
of caution. He poked his head out of the blanket that hung over the tent-flap
and looked both ways; then he slowly dived his hand into a roll of bedding and
produced—a can of baked beans!
Sanderson leaped on it with a howl of joy.
“Where'd you get it, Dick?”
The wily man of resource clapped his hand over the
other's mouth.
“Sh-sh! You don't have to advertise it; we'd be
held up an' robbed if anybody knew.”
Sanderson was already hacking at the tin with his
pocket-knife.
“Oh, you gem! How did you do it?”
“Ain't I a wiz?” said Dickinson proudly. “That's
the first instalment of the food trust.”
“Yes, but how? When? There's nothing come up from
the base for two weeks, except despatches.”
“Despatches is right, son; you've hit it first
plunk. Despatches! That is to say, mail-bags. But I ain't takin' any credit;
it's jest an accident of nature. The immortal Bill says that a man o' my build
is 'fit for treasons, stratagems, an' spoils;' an' I does a bit o' figurin' an'
then I forms the trust with O'Loughlin, the Field Post-Office man. I puts it to
him how his babu despatcher down to the base can mix some eats surreptitious in
with the mails; an' I holds fifty per cent. stock for promotion.”
Sanderson gazed at him in undisguised admiration.
His soul was too full for words. Incidentally, so was his mouth.
At intervals a far-away shot rang out from the
lone sniper among the rocks above.
Late that night Sanderson was awakened by
Dickinson swearing softly to himself as he rummaged for something to patch the
rents in the tent with.
“Right above my head, gol darn him,” he heard him
complain. “An' it's blowin' minus a hundred in the shade outside.”
And a little later, following on a shot which had
preceded a shriek somewhere in the camp:
“Sanderson! Oh, Sandy! I'm goin' out an' get that
louse-bitten sniper in the morning.”
Sanderson grunted a sleepy approval. Although his
occupation was strictly non-military, he was by no means devoid of that pleasant
lust for battle, murder and sudden death which actuates us all at times,
especially when the opposing side is actively engaged in displaying a similar
interest. Besides he had no fear for Dickinson. Dickinson was injury-proof—as
he himself often complained, just because he carried an accident policy for a
scandalous sum.
Early as Dickinson was the following morning, he
found active preparations in hand for a regular expedition against the sniper.
That industrious gentleman had been dropping long-range shots on and off
throughout the night into the camp, to the occasional detriment and continual
annoyance of the Queen's Own Regiment, and of the Gurkhas who lay alongside of
them.
Big, soft-nosed Snider bullets make a horrible
wound, and arriving at intervals out of the cold dark to strike no one knows
where, they will do more to edge up the nerves of a regiment than anything else
in warfare. The company commanders had been kept busy throughout the freezing
night going about among the men, and their tempers were savage. They prayed for
the morning and vengeance; and Lieutenant Wilson of the Gurkhas had bet heavily
on certain marksmen of his company in regimental rivalry with Captain Train of
the Queen's Own.
The result was a string of khaki-clad figures skirmishing
out among the boulders and snow toward the cliff where the Tibetan danced and
howled in evident delight at the honor done him. Dickinson unobtrusively
slipped in amongst them.
“Sight for five hundred, men,” sang out Wilson.
“Six hundred, Queen's Own!” corrected Train.
“You've got to allow for the clear air and the elevation, Wilson.”
“Eight hundred!” muttered Dickinson from the
extreme right, with the knowledge born of much mountain-shooting experience.
Captain Train flushed angrily, and as Wilson
grinned at him, resolved mentally to speak to “that cheeky Tommy” at a future
occasion.
One or two shots commenced to spit from behind the
rocks, and the Tibetan lay down at the edge of his cliff, from where he began
to return the fire with enthusiasm. Dickinson grunted with the hunter's inborn
scorn of the machine-made marksman.
“Don't any of 'em know enough to try a sighting
shot?”
He picked out a little lichen-covered patch on the
black cliff face and fired. A splinter of rock shaled off at the extreme upper
edge and was followed by a roar of laughter.
“You've got a fine shot there, Train,” gibed
Wilson; and the other gnashed his teeth.
Dickinson looked around in quick amazement, which
changed to a wide grin at their appalling ignorance. Then, “Seven-fifty!” he
amended to himself, and waiting his chance till the sniper's head and shoulders
appeared again, fired quickly.
The Tibetan's rifle flew from his hand and fell
like a plummet till it struck a projection several hundred feet below, where it
disintegrated like a pyrotechnic bomb, while the man sprawled forward and hung
with his head and arms swinging over the cliff-edge.
“Oh, pretty! Pretty, indeed!” shouted Train. “I'll
take the two hundred in notes, Wilson.” Then, to Dickinson: “That was a fine
shot, my man. What company are you in?”
Dickinson shuffled his big feet awkwardly. With
the modesty of true genius he hated praise, and he blew uncomfortably through
the barrel of his rifle before replying.
“No comp'ny, Cap'n. I'm jest contractin' for
transport.”
The officer gasped. He had intended to reward the
shot with a condescending present of ten rupees; but there was no precedent for
this in the whole drill-book.
“Wh—what? Why?” he spluttered. “A contractor? Why,
—— it, man, you're a non-combatant; you've got no business to be here.”
“Non-combatant. No business.” Dickinson was used
to this. His awkwardness vanished, to give place to amazed disgust.
“Well! Now wouldn't that jar you? If that don't
beat— Aw, what's the use? I pass!” He gave up wearily.
“Eh—what?”
“I mean 'Really now,' or 'My word, dontcher know,'
or somep'n like that.” And he fled incontinently.
Insult upon injury! The indignant officer was on
the verge of apoplexy; and Wilson's obvious joy goaded him to see a perfect
mirage of red carnage.
“—— it!” he snorted at length. “That's Leslie's
fault! Why the devil can't he keep his men in hand?” It was evident that the
aristocratic Major was not as highly appreciated as he might have wished. “I'll
talk to the Honorable! By Jove, I will!”
And he did—in forceful terms, loaded with
disapproval.
The day's march was an awful grind. Road, of
course, there was none. An icy torrent zigzagged down the pass, which had to be
forded about twenty times as the column progressed, slipping and scrambling
over the drifted snow and piled boulders. The military sweated and swore; and
the transport drivers, according to immemorial custom, developed all the ills
known to science, and with startling Oriental ingenuity discovered several new
ones.
When Captain Train finally found himself in the
vicinity of Major Leslie, the souls of both men yearned for murder as a
pleasant diversion and slight relief. There ensued an acrimonious conversation
in which “discipline” and “impertinent interference” figured largely on both
sides. Bloodshed was avoided by the Captain suddenly disappearing in a
seven-foot drift hole.
Major, the Hon. Scott-Leslie, prayed for his
immediate death and passed on, communing with his lacerated soul in a series of
explosive snorts, which finally terminated in swearing a mighty oath that he
would interview Colonel Younghusband that very evening and get Dickinson
ordered back to the base of operations.
As he reflected on the long list of indignities to
which he had been subjected at the hands of that cheerful malefactor he almost
rejoiced to think that such a course would inevitably inflict serious loss on the
latter; for native Dorabis without the restraining humanitarian influence of
white supervision will kill off transport animals as fast as anthrax.
But his amiable intentions did not materialize in
just the way he had proposed. Late that afternoon the sweating column came upon
the first and only real resistance during the whole expedition—the sangar at
Rangpo. Here the Tibetans had piled a rude barricade of rocks, and exhorted by
the militant: lamas were prepared to resist the advance toward the sacred city
with a fearsome assortment of archaic guns, and weird cannon made of
fire-hardened bamboo bound with brass wire, and obsolete lacquered armor, and
here and there a semi-modern rifle.
The interpreter sent forward by Colonel
Younghusband to try to negotiate for peace was shot down by a frenzied lama,
and then the engagement began.
“Engagement” is inadequate. It was a massacre. In
half an hour the remnant was swarming over the ridges to disappear like blown
mist. For the rest of the advance the country was deserted as if a pestilence
had swept it.
The men were nearly dead with the day's work, but
it was imperative to send a detachment forward to occupy the farther end of the
pass about ten miles beyond. It was equally imperative, in that climate, that
they should have shelter when they got there.
Colonel Younghusband sent for Major Leslie. The
Major said it was impossible. Such a day's march in such a country had been
even harder on the pack-animals than on the men, and they couldn't stand it.
Colonel Younghusband said it was absolutely
necessary; and the Major was grudgingly forced to admit that if any man in his
train could drive his men any farther in the present circumstances it was
Dickinson; further, that Dickinson's mules were the best-fed and strongest in
the whole camp.
Colonel Younghusband sent for Dickinson. Dickinson
calmly went into figures. He accurately detailed a mule's full load and the
limit of its endurance, and explained that if forced to go farther at least
half of them would die on the march.
The Colonel repeated that it was necessary;
Dickinson pointed out the injustice of it, when it had been admitted that the
battery mules carrying the screw-guns could go no farther.
“It is a necessity of war, Mr. Dickinson,”
insisted the Colonel not unkindly. “I'm sorry for you; but it is the risk of
warfare, and the men must have food and shelter.”
Dickinson's lean jaw set as he saw before him the
complete financial failure of his venture; but he had taken chances all his
life, and this was by no means the first time that luck had run against him.
“Very well, Colonel,” he said. “I'll drive 'em;
but it'll bust me higher'n a kite.”
He was unwontedly serious when he rushed into his
tent to snatch a mouthful of food before setting out—so much so that Sanderson
asked him what was wrong. Dickinson explained.
“Ah-h!” said Sanderson. “I told you he could make
trouble for you.”
“Nope! Guess you're wrong, Sandy. This pin-head
lord don't love me any, an' he's got the brains of a Silurian fish; but Ill
give him the credit for not putting this thing over on me with malice an'
aforethought.”
“Does it break you very bad, Dick?” inquired
Sanderson solicitously.
Dickinson threw back his wide shoulders and
laughed. The first shock of his disappointment was over; and he had always
taken the lean years with the same cheerful inconsequence as he did the fat
ones.
“Well, not so bad that I'll never be able to crawl
up again. Y'see, it's this way. This contrac' don't amount to a whole lot, but
I figured if I could sell my mules agen after the whole picnic was over I'd
clear a good an' fair profit. So I traded for the best there was, an' I got
some sixty-odd at two hundred apiece. Now, that's big money for mules, an' if
they takes an' dies off on me, the contrac' don't begin to cover it.”
“D'you think they'll die?”
“Sure,” said Dickinson with conviction. “Most of
'em. I'm durn sorry for the beasts; it sure looks like their last lap.”
Then he went out to drive them according to “the
necessity of war.”
A few days later the remnant was strung out in a
long plodding line on the great Tibetan plateau. Dickinson trudged along by
Sanderson's side and assisted him whole-heartedly in anathematizing the entire
country, the while his eyes swept the landscape like a predatory hawk. Their
discontent was heightened by the fact that the food trust was not yielding
dividends. The intervals of communication with the base were getting longer and
longer, and the weight of the mail-bags was a matter of much moment.
“When I was a kid,” complained Dickinson, “teacher
useter tell me that this was a table-land infested with Tibetans, turquoises
an' tea trees. Now, 'cept'n we ain't climbin' through a hole in the sky no
longer, this here don't meet my requirements for a tea table; it looks like
sections of the Grand Cañon cut up an' left lyin' around promiscuous. I ain't
seen a turquoise, an' there ain't been a leaf in sight for three weeks. I
always did think I knew more'n that teacher anyhow.”
“Yes,” chimed in Sanderson. “And the Tibetans are
as scarce as the rest of the list.”
“Aw, shucks! The landscape is fairly crawlin' with
Tibetans; only they ain't feelin' like comin' in an' say how-do.”
Sanderson laughed.
“Wrong that time, Dick! The Colonel says he only
wishes they could catch some prisoners to get some information out of; but the
scouts always report the country is deserted.”
“Huh!” grunted Dickinson. “Scouts? Them town-bred
Tommies? There ain't a scout in the whole outfit. I seen signs all the while;
an' you jest ask some o' them Gurkha fellers.”
“Impossible, Dick! There can't be any population
here, because there's nothing for them to eat.”
Dickinson halted with an explosive exclamation,
and brought his hand down on Sanderson's shoulder with a delighted smack which
sent him sprawling into a ready snow drift. The indignant newspaper man crawled
out and launched forth on a luridly earnest peroration; but the other cut him
short with a voice of dramatic intensity.
“Son, d'you think these Tibetans really eat?”
“Of course they do, you blighted idiot!”
“Then it follows natcherly that they carry their
commissariat around with them.”
“Oh, Hades! I suppose so—if there are any.”
“Sandy, boy, I'm goin' out an' collect a
prisoner.”
“Oh, you're crazy! No one's allowed to leave the
line of march, and there's not a live thing within a hundred miles. And if
there were you'd get knocked on the head, and— Oh, what's the use?”
Dickinson was grinning expansively and quietly
helping himself to cartridges from the other's belt.
“If you treat a nigger to a dose o' cleanin' rod,
he's like to show you everything he owns,” he quoted softly. “Just order your
supper, son. What'll you have? Call early an' avoid the rush.”
Half an hour later the rear guard came up with
Dickinson limping painfully along. One of the men sympathetically handed him a
priceless stub of tallow candle.
“Feet guv out?” he inquired. “'Ere y'are. Shave a
bit int' yer socks; that'll set 'em right.”
Dickinson gratefully complied, and for a while
kept up bravely; but presently he began to fall behind again.
“Guess I got a frozen toe, fellers. I gotta take
my boot off.”
He sat down on a rock and the column plodded on.
Two hundred yards separated them when the same
soldier sang out:
“Arf a mo', Sergeant. That Yankee beggar ain't
caught up yet, an 'e's got me taller.”
“All right!” yelled Dickinson. “I'm a-comin',
fellers.”
The column swung 'round a bend; and Dickinson
raced off up the mountain side with a silent chuckle.
Three hours passed. The Sergeant was frantic; he
had let a man fall behind, and he was now lost, cut off perhaps. The owner of
the candle goaded him further by complaining loudly about his irretrievable
loss.
A loud hail from behind relieved the tension. Two
hundred men turned like one and behind the spectacle of an angular scarecrow
holding his nose with one hand, and with the other leading an indignant,
unwilling Tibetan by the pigtail.
The captor handed his prisoner over with deep
relief.
“Take him away from me, Sergeant. I'd sooner ride
herd to a flock of camels. Phe-ew! He ain't never washed since the world
began.”
A dozen men sprang forward to take the prisoner,
and deft hands swiftly explored him for possible plunder. Dickinson's face was
inscrutable as he strode forward to take his place in the center with the
transport.
Later, Sanderson saw the Sergeant hurrying the
Tibetan to the front, and pulled up in wondering admiration to wait for
Dickinson.
“What did you get?” he inquired hungrily.
Dickinson shrugged disgustedly.
“The assay don't pan out to expectations. All he
gave me was a curio, a little tin shrine with a god in it, an' about two pounds
o' cheese.”
“Gave, nothing! Catch a Tibetan giving you
anything! Let's see!”
“Well, I hadda jump on him from a cliff about a
mile high, an' I mighta been a trifle hasty an' ungentle like,” admitted
Dickinson as he produced a beautiful little silver case set with turquoise
matrix containing a bronze Buddha, and a large lump of unappetizing-looking
stuff almost black with grease and as hard as a billet of wood.
Sanderson whooped and pounced on the latter.
“Vak's milk!' he exclaimed. “Dick, you're a
gr-reat man! Golly, ain't it filthy, though. The dirty cannibal must have
carried it next to his skin for months; we'll have to scrape at least a pound
off it. Hide it away good. I've got to hurry to the front and see if there's
any copy in the information they get out of the fellow.”
When Sanderson saw Dickinson again, camp had long
since been pitched, and the latter was sitting hunched up like a dejected
flamingo, engaged in abstruse intellectual meditation.
“It ain't no use,” he announced mournfully. “I
can't wash that skunk smell outen it.”
“Skunk? Out of what?”
“That there sample o' cheese. See that mule across
there—that sick-lookin' one with his ears flopped over? Well I give him the
scrapin's. Sandy, I tell you that cuss musta been on the edge of everlastin'
dissolution from hopeless and irredeemable decay. What's all the other news?”
“You!” said Sanderson. “The whole staff is talking
about you. They're glad to get the prisoner; but Murray is sore because you put
it over on his scouts, and they all agree that you had no business to be there
at all, and——”
Dickinson expanded visibly.
“An' did they say I was a non-combatant?”
Sanderson nodded.
“An' discipline? Did they talk about discipline?”
His eagerness was almost pathetic.
“Oh, yes; they said your conduct was antagonistic
to discipline.”
Dickinson straightened up. He radiated
cheerfulness.
“Dear boys,” he murmured. “I'd 'a' been disappointed
if they'd 'a' left out discipline.”'
“But that's not all,” continued Sanderson. “The
fellow made an awful howl that you had looted him, and——”
“Looted?” exclaimed Dickinson with a look of
sorrowful reproach. “An' he gave it to me without a murmur—I was jest holdin'
him easy with his own back-hair switch around his neck. My faith in human
nature is shook. But he can have it back, every ounce but the shavin's what the
mule eat.”
“Oh, he didn't mention the cheese at all.”
“He didn't? I ain't surprised any. P'raps the man
he'd saved it for is dead already. When are they comin' for the tin tobacker
box?”
Sanderson looked mystified.
“Now that's the funny part of it, Dick,” he said.
“The beggar said he wouldn't take it back; he had an incoherent story about
it's being one of seven identical others, and about the curse of somebody
falling on him for losing it and you for robbing it, and he couldn't wipe out
his end by taking it back, and a whole lot more.”
“Aw, they usually have somep'n like that,” commented
Dickinson carelessly. “What'd the Colonel say?”
“The Colonel was very annoyed indeed. He talked
about his 'mission' and a 'policy of propitiation,' and said he was in two
minds about sending you back; only he felt sort of sorry for you about the
mules you had to lose the other day.”
“H'm! Good for him!” grunted Dickinson. “Not that
it would make much odds now, anyway; I ain't got no stock worth stayin' for.
Well, all that's mighty interesting, but it don't help out the grub proposition
any.”
He shrank into his blanket and resumed his
melancholy attitude of hugging his knees and whistling through his teeth, while
he watched the pale stars creep out above the saddleback ridge which overhung
the camp.
In a sheltered cranny nestled a low, dark monastery,
the location of which could now be determined only by the tall bamboo poles of
its prayer flags, standing out in sharp silhouette against a burnt-umber sky. A
thin wind rustling among its little swinging bells carried down soft tones
plaintively suggestive of loneliness. Little fires sprang up through the camp
throwing grotesque shadows of huddled men trying to work up a semblance of
enthusiasm over their crude cooking. Sanderson was similarly engaged over his
own and Dickinson's share of rations, and groaned dismally over his occupation
from time to time.
Suddenly Dickinson rose to his feet.
“That settles it!” he announced decisively.
“Hey, what's bitten you?” inquired Sanderson with
but faint interest.
“Sandy, my son, we're goin' to have some supper
after all.”
“Yes, I know. Hard tack and bully beef, with bully
beef and hard tack for dessert.”
“Nope, not this time. I dunno what it's goin' to
be, but it's somep'n different—I gotta strike the lode some time.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
Dickinson's eyes twinkled with a resurrected
interest in life, and his whole bearing showed that his guardian angel had been
ousted for the time being by the irresponsible imp that was always leading him
into trouble.
“D'you see that old barn up there? Well, there's
some one in it, an' he's got somep'n to eat.”
“Oh, rats! It's deserted, like everything else in
this blasted country. The scouts——”
“I tell you they ain't a scout in the pack. Now
listen. Before it fell dark I set here contemplatin' on the Infinite, same as
this Dalai-Lama sharp we're goin' to call on at Lhassa does for three hundred
and sixty-five days in the year, an' I observes presently the gymnastics of a
bunch of them magpies. They circles around an' alights somewheres out o' sight
up there; then they rises with a squawk all in a flurry. That means somep'n
alive, probably man. An' jest now I hears a sharp little yelp same as when you
kick a yellow dog in the ribs for puttin' his nose in the cook-pot. That means
meat. Spelt lower case, 'cause monks has always had a habit o' corrallin' the
eats. An' I'm darn well goin' up an' roust the bloated hog out.”
“Are you sure?” whispered Sanderson with a
momentary thrill of eager anticipation. Then he shook his head with a return of
dejection. “But what's the use? The sentries will never let you out of the
camp.”
Dickinson smiled easily.
“Man, them ain't sentries; them's sheep-herders.
An' anyhow, in this kind o' ground with them rocks, sentries ain't no more use
than for somep'n for the enemy to shoot at. Now you set quiet an' keep the fire
a-goin' while I goes to market.”
Fifteen minutes later Dickinson crouched at the
edge of the artificial level on which the monastery stood. Past master in the
art of stalking as he was, he had experienced no difficulty in slipping between
the sentries and out of the camp, though he had found it necessary to leave his
rifle, which he could not keep from making an alarming clatter against the
rocks in the dark. The danger of such a proceeding never entered into his head.
Danger never seemed to figure in his irresponsible calculations; and the
mischievous imp that led him into it always seemed to bring him back in at
least repairable condition.
He listened, and was delightedly aware of
low-muttered conversation inside. Like a snake he wormed himself over the
ground and reached the door. The monastery was the typical long barrack,
consisting of a single low-roofed hall with a door at either end, entirely bare
of furniture or trappings except for a large image of the Buddha in the
attitude of meditation. There was a small fire at the foot of the image, and
before it sat two lamas, the younger of whom continually stirred something in a
pot. Beside them on a mat lay what looked like the half of a kid around which a
gaunt pie-dog circled hungrily.
Dickinson sniffed. The odor from the pot pervaded
the room and filtered out through the cracked door with a most tantalizing
invitation. He sniffed again, more deeply. And that was his undoing.
The dog burst out in the appalling clamor of
mingled fear and defiance that only a nondescript cur is capable of. Sudden
onslaught seemed Dickinson's only course now. He rushed in as if he were but
the first of a whole company.
The old lama shrieked and cowered in a corner; the
younger man leaped for the back door and wrestled with the fastenings. He tore
it open and rushed to the assistance of the old man, who seemed paralyzed with
fright; then noticing that in all this time nobody had followed Dickinson, he
hesitated — he seemed brave enough — and jerked out something in Tibetan.
Dickinson waved his hands semaphorically with
amiable intent and tried to indicate the provender.
From the camp below floated up a confused
disturbance. This seemed to worry the lama. Suddenly he darted behind the image
and emerged with a primeval wheel-lock blunderbus which he pointed
threateningly.
The situation had suddenly become serious.
Dickinson crouched with a vague hope of dodging,
and an infinite trust in his good angel—or rather devil.
“Now put that siege gun down,” he expostulated
with a ridiculous disregard of time and place. “I'd hate to see you blow
yourself up, an' if a splinter should hit me, I'm apt to get real vexed.”
The lama made a threatening movement, and
Dickinson leaped aside, bringing himself nearer the old man who yelped aloud.
Some one below fired a shot; and that settled it.
The blunderbus roared, and Dickinson felt a
shrapnel blast of nails, pot-leg, and hammered wire hurtle past his head.
The next instant he had dived in and gripped the
young priest around the waist.
Like all Tibetans, the man was sturdy as a tree,
and willingly grappled with the lean white man whom he expected to break with
ease; but Dickinson was of the drawn-wire type that possesses an amazing
strength when put to it. Locked together, they fought all over the floor with
cracking muscles.
Crash! They staggered against the image, which
rocked from its base with the shock. They swung away, straining chest to chest,
and fell over the old man who yelped again; but the very extremity of his fear
gave him courage to beat at the white man's head with the heavy iron pen-case
which hung at his girdle. Dickinson felt his mind slipping and gathered himself
for an effort. He managed to release a leg and drive it against his new
assailant's ribs with a force that rolled him gasping and wheezing right out at
the door.
Then they shook free and sprang to their feet.
Dickinson immediately rushed into a clinch to rest while his head cleared, and
was whirled around by his opponent.
Crash! Against the image again. He felt better
now, and put his leg back to get a purchase against his antagonist who was
trying to crush him against the figure.
Crash! The whole thing came down this time, full
over the culinary operations, and the two rolled together in a steaming
wreckage of baked-clay sherds, and straw, and bundles of dirty cloth with which
it was stuffed.
Dickinson was half stunned. The lama sprang to his
feet with a yell of dismay, groped swiftly in the faint light thrown by the
remnant of the fire for the bundles, and leaped out at the door.
When the excited storming party arrived from below
they discovered Dickinson, lighted by a fast-diminishing stub of tallow candle,
sitting among the ruins. In one hand he clasped a section of goat, and with the
other he was pressing what had once been a handkerchief to a wide gash over his
eye. The expression on his countenance was one of seraphic content.
“Gorblime! 'Enged if it ain't the bloomin' Yankee
again!” exclaimed a soldier. “Strike me pink if 'e don't need a nurse, too——”
He was interrupted by an agonized shriek from a
comrade who rushed forward and indignantly possessed himself of the candle.
“Ow, the robber! 'E's burnin' me taller dip wot 'e
swiped!”
“'Ere, come orf it! Give us a light will yer!”
An officer arrived and pushed his way to the
front. He surveyed the scene in astonishment; then he grimly assisted Dickinson
to his feet, still clutching his precious piece of meat.
In this condition he was haled before Colonel
Younghusband, to explain as best he might.
Half an hour later, his head neatly bandaged,
Dickinson returned to his own fire-side, his features split in a wide grin.
“Little Willie's been a wicked, wicked boy,” he
announced. “He has left undone those things which he ought to have done, an' he
has done those things which he ought not to have done; he's been a
non-combatant again; an' he's ruined all the discipline in the whole world. An'
he's got to go right back home with tomorrow's despatches—special delivery on
his account. The Colonel hadn't figured on sendin' for a day or two yet, but he
reckons he can put on a spurt jest to get rid of me. He sure done me up proud.”
Sanderson looked at him in amazement.
“You seem darned happy about it,” he remarked.
“Well, you are hard to please. Look at the supper
I got for us!”
“Dick, you're a genius for finding supper—and
trouble; but will that recompense you for having to leave the remnant of your
stock in charge of the Dorabis?”
The grin on Dickinson's face spread wider. He drew
Sanderson by the sleeve into the shelter of the tent.
From some ragged receptacle in his shirt he
produced a bundle of dirty cloth.
Slowly he unrolled it, and disclosed a little pile
of rough turquoise pebbles.
“Guess they'll pay for the mules,” he chuckled.
Then his eyes twinkled with a new delight. “I'll have ter tell the incipient
lordling after it's all over an' we square up accounts. Won't he be mad!”
