The Camp of the Snake/Chapter 3

HEN my business was attended to in Delhi I wrote that report and mailed it and tried to guess what to do next. The hotel clerks never got beyond the idea I was a tourist and kept telling me to go see the Tag-me-Hal, but when they said it was a tomb I let 'em know I was not selling hearses. After that they let me alone, especially when I reminded them they had not got back my wallet.

Of course I had looked through the Sher Bagh place the next morning, and of course I did not find my stuff. The hotel people sent a man out to look, too, and he found as much as I did. Then he asked me if I wanted to lodge a complaint against the Hindus.

I was fairly certain that the conjurer bird had lifted my wallet under the tree, probably expecting that I carried a fat roll after my display of pennies the afternoon before. Not having recognized either of the natives that evening there was not evidence enough to stir up the police. Somebody had ended the evening richer by my passport and letters that identified me. That was all.

Then I remembered the tip about Kashmir and bought a ticket for it, thinking that it might be a city with some get-up-and-go about it, being a new development. And then it became clear that I'd been treated rough by the English hombre in Calcutta, because Kashmir turned out to be a country several thousand years older than India itself. Also a place where there was not anything but mountains. When the people in the hotel spoke of going to the Hills they meant Kashmir.

But let it be here understood that it was far from being dead. In fact Alec Smith, automobile prospector, never entered into a livelier spot.

My introduction to Kashmir began in the train, which was made up of those trick English cars like all-compartment Pullmans witth [sic] doors opening on the side of the car, and two couches along either wall for the inmates to sleep on.

When I'd stripped off my coat and shoved my bags down to the foot of the couch and changed to a dry shirt I watched the dust and wooden tenements of Delhi slide past and felt better.

"I would strongly advise you to put the valises at the other end," remarked the man who was on the couch opposite. "The train thieves are very expert."

He was a short fellow, middle aged, and he wore an old suit. Nothing unusual about him except his eyes, which were deep-set and brilliant. The book he had been reading was full of printing that looked like shorthand—circles and curliques and dots instead of letters; it might have been Sanscrit or Arabic or anything else, but he turned the leaves as if it was a best seller. Letting the bags stay where they were I told him that I'd made the acquaintance of the native sons already and wanted very much to see them again. I'd bought a six shooter in the Delhi bazaar and meant to use it if another Hindu came after my roll.

My companion's name was Moorcroft, Dr. Paul Moorcroft, and he seemed to be interested in the fate of my wallet, and asked me to describe the boy and the conjurer, and the various things that were stolen. All he said, however, was that it was unusual for professional magicians to try to rob a white man near the hotel, for it spoiled their graft.

"The train thieves are quite a different fraternity, quite," he assured me. "I've known them to slip into the carriages stripped to a loin cloth, with their bodies greased. If you grasp them they slide away like eels, and if the train is stopped for the guard to investigate, they are off into the jungle at once."

"They'd stop for a bullet under the ribs," I pointed out. "And that's all they'd get from me."

He looked at me as if I was a new specimen of carnivorous animal, and turned back to his book, remarking that the native thugs were real professionals, able to lift a money belt from a sleeping passenger. I grinned at him and took out a little volume of Stevenson that always travels with me.

After we'd eaten for the last time, and the lights were touched up I slipped the revolver from my pocket to the back of the sofa and lay down; the money, being in my hip pocket, was under me, with the gun, and I was not worrying about any native turning me over without waking up.

It was about as cool in the compartment as the steam room of a Turkish bath, but it was better than Delhi, and I dozed off while Moorcroft was still turning over the pages of his book. Being a light sleeper, I wakened every time the door rattled or my companion scratched a match.

By and by it was quieter and I was dreaming of jumping into a well full of snakes, when something switched my mind back to consciousness. For a minute or so I lay without opening my eyes, beginning to think instead of dream. It seemed as if more air was coming in than usual, although the train was barely moving.

I opened my eyes a crack and shut them promptly. Moorcroft was no longer in my range of vision, but a man was standing in the center of the compartment, and this man was a native wearing two strips of cloth, one over his head and the other around his hips. His skin was shining, either from sweat or grease and he held a very slender, curved knife in his hand.

In past years sundry surgeons have removed most of the bones from my nose, and part of my jaw is sterling silver where they had to take a splice in it because of sudden collision with some lead. I can look a gun in the eye and take a share in a toe and heel mix-up without worrying any, but a knife sets my skin to creeping. Evidently the native was in the compartment to rob and meant to have something for his trouble. It would not do to let him know I was awake, and only a fool would charge into a knife. A straight-from-the-shoulder wallop will knock out most natives, because they never learn the why and wherefore of a fist. But you can't hit out when you're lying on your back with your eyes shut.

Still pretending I was wrapped in slumber, and wondering all the time what had happened to Moorcroft, I rolled over on my right side, facing the wall and snored a couple of times to reassure the brown devil. With my back to him I was facing the wall, and had edged off the six-shooter. He could not see it.

Presently I rolled on my back again, with my eyes wide open. The gun, in my right hand, covered the concave space under his ribs. He had drawn closer and the knife was about three feet from my ear.

It was a fifty-fifty proposition and it looked as if both of us would bump off if either moved a finger. Did I say my hands were cold? So were my feet. Then Moorcroft spoke, saying something to the native that meant nothing to me. Without looking away from the thief's eyes I was aware of the doctor sitting up at the end of his couch with a finger marking the place in the book where he'd left off reading.

What he said in Hindustani he never explained, but the native stepped back and shoved the knife in his girdle.

"Put the revolver aside, Mr. Smith," my companion remarked to me. "It would never do to shoot this chap, you know."

"Then make him lie down and hold his hands up behind his back," I countered.

Moorcroft gabbled something, and our visitor dropped to his knees and proceeded to bump his forehead against the floor at the Englishman's feet, as if Moorcroft was a tin god.

Then he glided toward the door and was half through before I managed to grab his arm. He grinned at me good-naturedly and his bare arm slipped through my fingers like a fish's fin. It felt as if it had been oiled. When I reached the door and looked out along the running board he was gone.

The train was only crawling, and a thick mesh of forest lined the right of way like a wall. A wild pig, startled by the light and the noise, plunged away, crushing down bamboo shoots and lush grass in its path.

"Young man," observed Moorcroft, "you've had your warning."

Going back to my bunk I got out my pipe. "Let's hear it."

"That pahari could have knifed you, before or after you foolishly displayed a weapon."

"Was he a thief?"

"Most men are." Moorcroft's yellow face seemed to grow sharper as he looked at me. "We Anglo-Saxons pride ourselves on our respectability, and yet for generations we've been rambling around the world breaking open graves and carting away shrines out of Asia to sell, or set up in some dismal museum in London or Chicago. Yes, that pahari is a thief and the son of a thug. I once patched up his sire after a tiger clawed his ribs loose, and the hill people never forget a service."

His big eyes glowed queerly and his lips sneered. "I was in Pekin when the Allies broke in to loot after the Boxer show, and I saw Cossacks and British marines ripping, down ancestral tablets of gold, tablets that the Chinese believe are the incarnate spirits of their ancestors. Yet in London or New York if a man robs a grave we call him a ghoul."

"You win, Doctor," I told him. But I didn't swallow all the dose he gave me. Who would? The whole thing looked queer—the pahari bird coming into the compartment like that, and then going through a daily dozen head-bobbing. And it turned out later that my hunch was a good one. "Is there any more to the lesson?"

Moorcroft began to talk like a professor. I wished later I had paid more attention to what he said.

The main point of it was that he was warning me not to meddle with anything that turned up under my nose in India. When they wanted to, the Hindus could arm themselves with weapons that left white men no chance at all. Moorcroft named over poisons that could kill a man daily for a couple of years, and stimulants like bhang and hasheesh that could make a native give one whoop and run out and slaughter any Europeans who happened along, and feel blissful doing it.

"Must have some kick, that drink," I told him.

He went on to say magic, the real variety, was practiced by Hindus and such-like.

"I've seen their snake charmers and mango growers," I agreed, "and our vaudeville artists put it all over them. You can't tell me there are any real magicians."

Those shining eyes of his fastened on me, and he smiled. He'd seen a conjurer throw one end of a rope up into the air and the rope stay upright. And a boy climb up the rope and vanish, and a tiger come down by and by. Said it was a stunt they didn't do now except for visiting kings and a few others.

"I think it is accomplished by group hypnotism," he added. "The Hindus are adept at mesmerizing the spectators; we do not realize what they are up to, and they never explain. We have never attempted to measure their powers, because we have been too busy making money."

I thought of the mango shrub, and sniffed. The warm odor of the forest was sweeping through the train like an incense, and the prickly heat was startitng [sic] up all over me.

"Another thing, Mr. Smith, I have seen Buddhist priests thrust knives into their bodies, utterly without feeling the pain. And once a wandering lama stopped at my tent who could communicate his thoughts to kinsmen a thousand miles away. To the white men who dwell within her northern borders India is a riddle, ages old. The fascination of this—" he swept a thin hand around at the carriage windows—"gets under our skin in time. Some of us learn a very few of the mysteries, and try to forget what we know."

Moorcroft leaned forward to touch my knee, and I felt like pulling away from him.

"Mr. Smith," he said, "God help the white man who yields to the lure of the mysteries. He becomes a slave more dangerous than a drug maddened Malay."

"What about that warning?" I reminded him. "Where do I figure in this?"

"Someone wanted your papers and took them, Mr. Smith. When you did not take the hint to go away, this native was sent, either to rob you of your money or to kill you. If I were you, I would return at once to Calcutta and book a passage for home."

Now there was no reason why anybody should wish a war on me; certainly the prospects of American autos invading India was a lost hope, and why should a trade competitor want to bump me off, anyway? I laughed and got out my flask, offering it to Moorcroft.

"You can't sell me any line about magic, Doctor," I grinned. "And these mysteries died in the middle ages. But you certainly help to pass the time. I'm going to see Kashmir." He refused a drink and went back to his book, paying no more attention to me at all.