Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/124

102 know a little of the customs of white soldiers, though I have never seen them make a city in the flash of an eye.' 'What dost thou not know of this world?' The lama squatted obediently in a little hollow of the ground not a hundred yards from the hump of the mango trees dark against the star-powdered sky.

'Stay till I call.' Kim flitted into the dusk. He knew that in all probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to himself as he heard the thick boots of one. A boy who can dodge across the roofs of Lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little patch and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be checked by a line of unsuspecting soldiers. He did them the compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting, crouching and dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted mess-tent where, close pressed behind the mango tree, he waited till some chance word should give him a returnable lead.

The one thing now in his mind was further information as to the Red Bull. For aught he knew, and Kim's limitations were as curious and sudden as his knowledges, the men, the nine hundred pukka shaitans of his father's prophecy, might pray to the beast after dark, as Hindus pray to the image of the Holy Cow. That, at least would be entirely right and logical, and the padre with the gold cross would be therefore the man to consult in the matter. On the other hand, remembering equally sober-faced padres whom he had avoided in Lahore city, the priest might be an inquisitive nuisance who would bid him work. But again, had it not been written in the dust at Umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended war and armed men? Was he not, too, the Friend of the Stars as well as of all the world, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? Lastly,and firstly as the undercurrent of all his