THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard KiplingЧитать онлайн книгу.
have told you he isn't quite strong. But there's nothing the matter with him that Miss Sheriff can't put right.'
'Is that the truth?' demanded the King. 'Remember, he has my throne after me.'
'If I know Miss Sheriff, he'll have that throne. Don't you fret, Maharajah Sahib.'
'You are great friend of hers?' pursued his companion. 'You both come from one country?'
'Yes,' assented Tarvin; 'and one town.'
'Tell me about that town,' said the King curiously.
Tarvin, nothing loth, told him--told him at length, in detail, and with his own touches of verisimilitude, forgetting in the heat of admiration and affection that the King could understand, at best, not more than one word in ten of his vigorous Western colloquialisms. Half way through his rhapsody the King interrupted.
'If it was so good, why did you not stay there?'
'I came to see you,' said Tarvin quickly. 'I heard about you there.'
'Then it is true, what my poets sing to me, that my fame is known in the four corners of the earth? I will fill Bussant Rao's mouth with gold if it is so.'
'You can bet your life. Would you like me to go away, though? Say the word!' Tarvin made as if to check his horse.
The Maharajah remained sunk in deep thought, and when he spoke it was slowly and distinctly, that Tarvin might catch every word. 'I hate all the English,' he said. 'Their ways are not my ways, and they make such trouble over the killing of a man here and there. Your ways are not my ways; but, you do not give so much trouble, and you are a friend of the doctor lady.'
'Well, I hope I'm a friend of the Maharaj Kunwar's too,' said Tarvin.
'Are you a true friend to him?' asked the King, eyeing him closely.
'That's all right. I'd like to see the man who tried to lay a hand on the little one. He'd vanish, King; he'd disappear; he wouldn't be. I'd mop up Gokral Seetarun with him.'
'I have seen you hit that rupee. Do it again.'
Without thinking for a moment of the Foxhall colt, Tarvin drew his revolver, tossed a coin into the air, and fired. The coin fell beside them--a fresh one this time-marked squarely in the centre. The colt plunged furiously, and the Cutch mare curveted. There was a thunder of hoofs behind him. The escort, which, till now, had waited respectfully a quarter of a mile behind, were racing up at full speed, with levelled lances. The King laughed a little contemptuously.
'They are thinking you have shot me,' he said. 'So they will kill you, unless I stop them. Shall I stop them?'
Tarvin thrust out his under jaw with a motion peculiar to himself, wheeled the colt, and waited without answering, his empty hands folded on the pommel of his saddle. The troop swept down in an irregular mob, each man crouching, lance in rest, over his saddle-bow, and the captain of the troop flourishing a long, straight Rajput sword. Tarvin felt rather than saw the lean, venomous lance-heads converging on the breast of the colt. The King drew off a few yards, and watched him where he stood alone in the centre of the plain, waiting. For that single moment, in which he faced death, Tarvin thought to himself that he preferred any customer to a Maharajah.
Suddenly his Highness shouted once, the lance-butts fell as though they had been smitten down, and the troop, opening out, whirled by on each side of Tarvin, each man striving as nearly as might be to brush the white man's boot.
The white man stared in front of him without turning his head, and the King gave a little grunt of approval.
'Would you have done that for the Maharaj Kunwar?' he asked, wheeling his mare in again beside him, .after a pause.
'No,' said Tarvin placidly. 'I should have begun shooting long before.'
'What! Fifty men?'
'No; the captain.'
The King shook in his saddle with laughter, and held up his hand. The commandant of the troop trotted up.
'Ohé, Pertab Singh-Ji, he says he would have shot thee.' Then, turning to Tarvin, smiling, 'That is my cousin.'
The burly Rajput captain grinned from ear to ear, and, to Tarvin's surprise, answered in perfect English--'That would do for irregular cavalry--to kill the subalterns, you understand--but we are drilled exclusively on English model, and I have my commission from the Queen. Now, in the German army----'
Tarvin looked at him in blank amazement.
'But you are not connected with the military,' said Pertab Singh-Ji politely. 'I have heard how you shoot, and I saw what you were doing. But you must please excuse. When a shot is fired near his Highness it is our order always to come up.'
He saluted, and withdrew to his troop.
The sun was growing unpleasantly hot, and the King and Tarvin trotted back toward the city.
'How many convicts can you lend me?' asked Tarvin, as they went,
'All my jails full, if you want them,' was the enthusiastic answer. 'By God, sahib, I never saw anything like that. I would give you anything.'
Tarvin took off his hat, and mopped his forehead, laughing.
'Very good, then. I'll ask for something that will cost you nothing.'
The Maharajah grunted doubtfully. People generally demanded of him things he was not willing to part with.
'That talk is new to me, Tarvin Sahib,' said he.
'You'll see I'm in earnest when I say I only want to look at the Naulahka. I've seen all your State diamonds and gold carriages, but I haven't seen that.'
The Maharajah trotted fifty yards without replying. Then--
'Do they speak of it where you come from?'
'Of course. All Americans know that it's the biggest thing in India. It's in all the guide-books,' said Tarvin brazenly.
'Do the books say where it is? The English people are so wise.' The Maharajah stared straight in front of him, and almost smiled.
'No; but they say you know, and I'd like to see it.'
'You must understand, Tarvin Sahib'--the Maharajah spoke meditatively that this is not a State jewel, but the State jewel--the jewel of the State. It is a holy thing. Even I do not keep it, and I cannot give you any order to see it.'
Tarvin's heart sank.
'But,' the Maharajah continued, 'if I say where it is, you can go at your own risk, without Government interfering. I have seen you are not afraid of risk, and I am a very grateful man. Perhaps the priests will show you; perhaps they will not. Or perhaps you will not find the priests at all. Oh, I forgot; it is not in that temple that I was thinking of. No; it must be in the Gye-Mukh--the Cow's Mouth. But there are no priests there, and nobody goes. Of course it is in the Cow's Mouth. I thought it was in this city,' resumed the Maharajah. He spoke as if he were talking of a dropped horse-shoe or a mislaid turban.
'Oh, of course. The Cow's Mouth,' repeated Tarvin, as if this also were in the guide-books.
Chuckling with renewed animation, the King went on--'By God, only a very brave man would go to the Gye-Mukh; such a brave man as yourself, Tarvin Sahib,' he added, giving his companion a shrewd look. 'Ho, ho! Pertab Singh-Ji would not go. No; not with all his troops that you conquered to-day.'
'Keep your praise until I've earned it, Maharajah Sahib,' said Tarvin. 'Wait until I've dammed that river.' He was silent for a while, as if digesting this newest piece of information.
'Now, you have a city like this city, I suppose?' said the Maharajah interrogatively, pointing to Rhatore.
Tarvin had overcome, in a measure, his first feeling of contempt for the State of Gokral Seetarun and the city of Rhatore. He had begun to look upon them both, as was his nature in the case of people and things with