Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/498

120 "That was not the way I killed my first tiger," said Chirm. "I did not think that Bukta would run. I had no second gun."

"It—it is the Clouded Tiger," said Bukta, unheeding the taunt. "He is dead."

Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the Satpuras had lain by to see the kill, Chinn could not say; but the whole hill's flank rustled with little men, shouting, singing, and stamping. And yet, till he had made the first cut in the splendid skin, not a man would take a knife; and, when the shadows fell, they ran from the red-stained tomb, and no persuasion would bring them back till dawn. So Chinn spent a second night in the open, guarding the carcass from jackals, and thinking about his ancestor.

He returned to the lowlands to the triumphal chant of an escorting army three hundred strong, the Mahratta vaccinator close at his elbow, and the rudely dried skin, a trophy, before him. When that army suddenly and noiselessly disappeared, as quail in high corn, he argued he was near civilization, and a turn in the road brought him upon the camp of a wing of his own corps. He left the skin on a cart-tail for the world to see, and sought the Colonel.

"They're perfectly right," he explained earnestly. "There isn't an ounce of vice in 'em. They were only frightened. I've vaccinated the whole boiling, and they like it awfully. What are—what are we doing here, sir?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," said the Colonel. "I don't know yet whether we're a piece of a brigade or a police force. However, I think we'll call ourselves a police force. How did you manage to get a Bhil vaccinated?"

"Well, sir," said Chinn, "I've been thinking it over, and, as far as I can make out, I've got a sort of hereditary pull over 'em."

"So I know, or I wouldn't have sent you; but what exactly?"

"It's rather rummy. It seems, from what I can make out, that I'm my own grandfather reincarnated, and I've been disturbing the peace of the country by riding a pad-tiger of nights. If I hadn't done that I don't think they'd have objected to the vaccination; but the two together were more than they could stand. And so, sir, I've vaccinated 'em and shot my tiger-horse as a sort o' proof of good faith. You never saw such a skin in your life."

The Colonel tugged his mustache thoughtfully. "Now, how the deuce," said he, "am I to include that in my report?"

And, indeed, the official version of the Bhils' anti-vaccination stampede said nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn his godship. But Bukta knew, and the corps knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura hills knew. And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn should swiftly be wedded and impart his powers to a son, for if the Chinn succession fails and the little Bhils are left to their own imaginings, there will be fresh trouble in the Satpuras.