Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/485

Rh not spoil the skin. I said there would be no need of these, but they came in case."

Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta's people—a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had Chinn's shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as interested beaters; some five or six waiting the word to skin, the Bukta watched the life fade from the eyes, lifted one hand, and turned on his heel.

"No need to show we care," said he. "Now, after this, we can kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib."

Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. "That also was your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to cantonments. Will the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and, perhaps, forget I am his officer?"

"But those men the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps—"

"Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In the lines I am one thing. Here I am another."

This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilization of drill in the next world. That night, after a little talk with his subjects, he devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not to be safely written about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in the thick of it, but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden. Wild folk came and pressed about his knees with offerings, He gave his flask to the elders of the village. They grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with flowers: gifts and loans, not all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music rolled and maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the ancient times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but, unless the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to waken late the next day—half a march from the village?

"The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to sleep," Bukta explained. "My people carried him here, and now it is time we should go back to cantonments."

The voice, smooth and deferential, the step steady and silent, made it hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.

"My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget. When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and they will give him as many men as we need."

Chinn kept his own counsel except as to the shooting of the tiger, and Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was certainly one of finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of many. If Bukta could not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took care to put him in good hands, and Chinn learned more of the mind and desire of the wild Bhil in his marches and campings; by talks at twilight or at wayside pools; than an uninstructed man could have come at in a lifetime.

Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their relatives—mostly in trouble—and to lay cases of tribal custom before him. They would say, squatting in his veranda at twilight, after the easy, confidential style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor had run away with such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how many cows would Chinn Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written order came from the Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the plains to give evidence in a law court, would it be wise to disregard that order? On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would the rash voyager return alive?

"But what have I to do with these things?" Chinn demanded of Bukta impatiently. "I am a soldier. I do not know the law."

"Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order, and they will abide by it. Thou art their law."

"But wherefore?"

Every trace of expression left Bukta's countenance. The idea might have smitten him for the first time. "How can I say?" he replied. "Perhaps it is on account of the name. A Bhil does not love strange things. Give them orders, Sahib—two, three, four words at a time such as they can carry away in their heads. That is enough."

Chinn gave orders, then, valiantly; not realizing that a word spoken in haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages beyond the smoky hills—was in truth no less than the Law of Jan Chinn the First; and who, so the whispered legend ran, had come back to earth, to oversee the third generation, in the body and bones of his grandson.