The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

of her fifty thousand pounds. And the Lion will watch his for the same reason. Besides, I’m counting on that sore neck to take the pep out of him. Prospects aren’t so gloomy.

      “What do you say to our setting those camels an example? Is breakfast ready?”

      “See here, James Schuyler Grim,” I answered. You’re a darned good man, and I like you, and all that. But suppose you come across for once. Narayan Singh is a soldier; he’ll obey orders and ask no questions; but I’m neither built nor trained that way. Doesn’t it seem to you like good sense to take me into confidence?”

      “Haven’t I?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in obviously genuine surprise. “Seems to me I’ve trusted you till it’s become a kind of habit.”

      “Have I failed you,” I retorted, “that you can’t give me at least an outline of your plan now?”

      “Oh, is that the trouble?”

      He seemed suddenly relieved.

      “Why, no; that doesn’t seem like sense to me. My plan might be no good. If that’s so, I can change it. But if I tell it to you now, you’re going to bear it in mind, and if any unforeseen contingency crops up you’re going to be governed by the plan I outlined and maybe act in some way so that I shall have to follow up—which might be mighty inconvenient.

      “But as long as you don’t know what I’m contemplating you’re not limited by it, any more than I’m limited by having to consult you before making a sudden change. We’d be like two fellows trying to play one poker hand.”

      “I should think you could give me a general idea.”

      “The general idea is to get in touch with the Avenger now and bluff him.”

      “I know that, of course. But along what line? What general principle?”

      “I wonder if you’d mind not pressing that?” he answered. “Let’s have this clear. It isn’t you I don’t trust, it’s myself. The thought that I wasn’t absolutely free at any minute to turn my whole plan bottomside up, or discard it and try another one, would rattle me so I’d make mistakes.

      “I haven’t a secret you can’t know; but I hate to tell a man something I don’t know for sure; I’d feel sort of weak and helpless afterward. It’s my fault, not yours; I’m built that way. If it isn’t doing right by you, I beg pardon and ask you to be tolerant.”

      Well, I don’t know that I liked it any better at the time, but I saw his point. I have got so since that I never think of pinning him down to an outline of his plan in any undertakings; and the method works well, although—and perhaps because—it calls for every ounce of zeal. You’re on the jump the whole time. Not knowing what he’s going to do next, you’re like an infielder with three on bases.

      But he has to choose his men discreetly. There are plenty of men more useful than myself, for instance, who wouldn’t stand his reticence for a day. On the other hand, I never knew a man less prone to find fault than he is, or one more superbly tolerant of others’ shortcomings.

      * * * *

      A little more than an hour after dawn, while the desert was still cool, Narayan Singh and I set off together on the two best camels. I don’t doubt I was still humping a grouch, and Narayan Singh divined the reason of it.

      “By the bones in these hills,” he laughed, “this is better sport than serving with the army, sahib! A soldier in the ranks such as I have ever been, and such as I am like to be again, unless our fate overtakes us all on this adventure, is told nothing—knows nothing—is nothing. He obeys. If a fool of an officer marches him face first into Hell, there is not even the satisfaction of a sort of explanation.

      “Scouting for the army is rather better fun; but it is very little that a man finds out, and oftener than not that little is ignored; at the best, that one little scrap of information is but added to the mass like a grain of sand into a bushel of the stuff. Neither may a man scout as he would like to, but only as another wills. Whereas with Jimgrim—”

      “Oh, shut up!” I growled. “I’m not here to be preached at.”

      “In an army, sahib, there would be much damning and very little preaching,” he answered. “Whereas with Jimgrim, though he tells us precious little, we are free like hounds to draw the coverts for him, and there is neither leash nor whip.

      “Il hamdul illah, as these heathen say, that Jimgrim is a prince of huntsmen, who knows when a good hound bays on a true scent. But an army had too many huntsmen, who talk among themselves, saying, ‘Yes, sir, No, sir,’ and then command the pack with a: ‘Lo! The General Staff decrees that the scent lies yonder in that direction; therefore make haste to find it and bark loud!’

      “This Jimgrim would have been a king if his mother had borne him on this side of the Atlantic. Are there others like him in America?”

      Well, I grew good-tempered gradually, if for no other reason than because it was absurd to find fault with a man who could arouse such enthusiasm in a follower. Besides, I like Grim; and it’s one of my fundamental articles of marrow-bone religion that if I’m a man’s friend he may get away with anything except black treason. But leaving all that out of the reckoning, I defy any man to start off in the morning on a camel alongside Narayan Singh, with friends behind and the unknown just beyond the shimmering horizon, and retain a grouch for twenty minutes.

      The hot wind wasn’t due for an hour or two. The wound made by Ayisha’s dagger in my leg didn’t hurt more than was tolerable. The camels were feeling the effects of good corn and thorn-twigs, and went swinging along as if their legs were hung on springs. As long as you haven’t got to spend your whole life in the desert, it’s about the easiest of all earth’s wonders to admire; and the secret of contentment lies in everlastingly admiring something—or so I’ve found it.

      The Sikh began singing some sort of hymn set to minor music; and, though singing in the Jat-Punjabi dialect is one of those accomplishments that were omitted when my kit was tossed out of the great Quartermaster’s store, I’ve always found a curious satisfaction, akin to inspiration, in listening to songs in the vernacular of other lands. Indian lyrics always seem to lose the note of plaintiveness when you translate them, just as Homer’s verses lose their roll done into English, and the odes of Horace forced into another tongue come through without their humor:

      In the hot night my mother bore me,

      Knowing not who I am!

      Into the dawn I came, a man-child,

      Knowing not the life before me,

      Stranger to the folk about me.

      None knew who I am!

      Out of the book of signs and wonders,

      Knowing not who I am,

      Soothsayers read this and that thing.

      There is lightning when it thunders;

      Do they know the lightning’s karma?

      None knew who I am!

      Out of her heart my mother taught me

      (Stranger, nevertheless!)

      Fear and faith and law and legend,

      Weeping when my karma caught me

      Willing yet unwilling—tore me

      Loose from her caress.

      Smiled the Powers then at the stripling

      Facing first duress,

      Making boast of all that might be,

      Choosing pleasant ways and crippling

      Choice for sake of this or that one

      (Strangers, nevertheless!)

      Thrice and again my karma took me

      (None knew who I am!)

      Rolling