Blood of the Eagle/Chapter 2

worked on west into the hill country, leisurely and without hurry. His six boys, headed by Ninh Bang, had served him at intervals for some years. With them, he was equal to anything. Those six constituted an army.

Then came the meeting with Wemyss. Major Arthur Wemyss was a long-jawed Scotsman, dried up and yellowed, with a sinister lift to his eyebrows which was oddly suggestive of Mephistopheles. He had a mining concession in the hills, and had been up there off and on for years—somewhere between Burma and Yunnan and Annam, in the Shan states. He was curtly vague in all that he said, and Smith would not have tried to be polite, except for the daughter.

Florence Wemyss had been teaching school in Rangoon, and was now accompanying her father back into the hills. She was a young woman of perhaps six and twenty; quiet, a bit prim, in her manner a hint of fright or timidity. Smith felt rather sorry for her. He did not altogether like Major Wemyss.

Since they were considerably out of their direct way in this part of the country, he took for granted that they were touring a bit. It did not occur to him until long afterward that Wemyss might have been telling him lies about the mining concession and so forth. It was plain enough that the man had been up country for a long time. Smith suspected that he was more than a little tainted with the poppy, and was glad to see the last of him.

These were mere passers-by; but, in the fortnight that followed, the memory of Ardzrouni lingered much with Smith. That dark man captured the imagination, and Smith wondered if he had ever achieved his purpose. At the best of times, Ngongfu was a hard place to reach. Because of the wizards and the Chinese folk, the brown hill people refused to go near there. Just what Ardzrouni meant to do after getting to the city was a mystery.

It was a good fortnight after his meeting with the Wemyss party when Smith was overtaken by a government launch which had been following him. The launch bore a pompous colonial official, and the official carried a confidential letter from the governor general in person to Smith.

The latter was instructed to abandon his present business and to reach Ngongfu in all haste. The missive continued:

Then, as he was refolding the letter, he observed a scrawled and initialed line hurriedly written as a postscript. He perused this with amazement in his eyes.

Smith whistled over this. Ardzrouni a smuggler of cartridges? Impossible! The dark man had almost no outfit or baggage.

"Where are the nearest troops?" he asked the official. "And what force have they?"

The other told him. Smith tore a margin from the letter and borrowed a pencil. He wrote a brief note and handed it to the official.

"Give this to the commandant, and tell him to disregard these instructions at his peril. Thank you, monsieur, for your trouble and effort. Have you a French flag that you can spare me? Good! You may inform his excellency that I have received his orders, and am now on my way to Ngongfu."

The official puffed in astonishment. A scant five minutes of talk, after days and weeks of steamy river! No demand for news or gossip or men!

"Impossible, monsieur! You must obtain an armed escort!"

Smith, smiling slightly, tapped the automatic pistol at his hip.

"I have it," he said.

"But men! You must have bearers, hunters, native guides, provisions, and a baggage train—"

Smith pointed to his six Tais boys squatted by his boat.

"They are there."

"But, monsieur! This is incredible! You cannot go thus alone!"

"I do not go alone." Smith pointed to the sky. "Surely, monsieur, you are not an atheist?"

Stupefaction seized upon the official. He could barely respond to the farewell that Smith made him. He watched with bulging and incredulous eyes as the American got into his boat, and the boat vanished in the distance. Then he flung up his hands in despair.

"This man is mad!" he said helplessly. "However, it seems to me that I had better deliver his orders carefully."

A wise decision!

As for Smith, he felt rather glad over the turn events had taken. He spoke most of the native dialects, and could handle the Chinese used by the Ngong folk. The only thing that worried him was his lack of information as to what had happened in Ngongfu.

To correct this, he summoned his head boy, Ninh Bang. This intelligent hunter listened without comment to Smith's orders.

"We go to Ngong. Set out alone to-night, ahead of us. Discover what has happened in that country. You remember the dark man whom we met three weeks or so ago? See if you can learn anything of him. Rejoin me when you get the opportunity. I shall want to send you on ahead of us to Ngongfu to find that dark man again."

Ninh Bang nodded stolidly. That night he disappeared.