The Camp of the Snake/Chapter 5

T DID not seem as if I'd been asleep at all when someone waked me up by flashing an electric torch in my eyes. I chucked off my blankets and sat up, and Arnold Carnie whispered to me not to make so much noise.

We had bunked in the storeroom, using some of the extra blankets, and I saw by my watch that it was four Arnold cut off my questions by saying that one of his "bearers" had come up with a couple of rifles, having walked from the place where the luggage cart had parked for the night, at the fork in the trail. The Carnie's heavy stuff had been sent after them by native cart.

"That's fair enough," I told him, sitting on my fingers to warm them, "but why turn out the guard?"

"Barasang, Smithy," he grinned. "This is the hour when all good hunters arise and curse. Remember I promised to take you with me on shikar."

That godless youth meant what he said, and I crawled into pants and shoes, pulling on a sheepskin jacket that he requisitioned from somewhere. Then we had a swallow of rum and a biscuit apiece and went out to where a couple of natives stood shivering. We managed to slip by without waking the others. Dixon was breathing away in his compartment next to us, and Miss Carnie evidently had the place reserved for guests, in the front of the tent. Moorcroft's sleeping compartment was still dark and soundless.

Arnold flashed his torch over the rifles, and offered me my choice in a whisper. I selected the Enfield and left him the .25 Mannlicher that the other bearer carried. The natives shouldered the rifles and one went ahead to act as guide. Later I was sorry that we had thrown the spotlight on the guns like that.

The wind bit like a knife and my thighs ached below the sheepskin. Before we'd gone a mile I was puffing, although Carnie and the hunters pushed ahead without a stumble or a halt. I've done a bit of shooting in my time, and, if I do say so, can manage to hit what I'm aiming at now and then, though perhaps my style is somewhat my own. Some guys can figure up range by their sights and a piece of paper and a lightning calculation as to the size of trees and houses at a certain distance. Not me. I guess the range and watch where the first shot lands. I always let the other fellows worry and test the wind and change their slings a few times before the firing begins. After that I'm at home.

Maybe this will explain why I didn't guess all that was due to happen around the camp before it did. You can't tell me that any hombre ever knew anything was going to occur by putting two and two together, outside of the mob of Sherlock Holmes's in books.

We hiked for about an hour, when we reached a high plateau and halted in a nest of boulders that we could see in the half light that comes before the dawn. Arnold told me to watch the mists clear away from the line of trees about two hundred yards distant. Between the trees and our rocks was a level clearing and he explained that deer were apt to feed along the edge of the brush at sunrise. I knew that at this hour game is easiest to stalk. By now the peaks on our right were standing out, black against a long glow of green and scarlet. The wind developed a new kick and the white mist began to thin.

Then trees began to take shape and look natural. We stepped back, deeper into the shadow of the rocks, and one of the natives pushed the Enfield into my hand. I had seen nothing stirring around the trees, but he pointed down into a depression.

Several doe were getting up, grazing toward the brush, and a big buck was just entering the shadows where we were sure to lose sight of him. I sighted and whispered to Arnold to shoot first. His gun cracked almost as I spoke, and the deer stood absolutely still for a second, every head up.

I pressed the trigger and the Enfield kicked back. The buck had been stung by one of our shots—my fingers were chilled and I think I pulled down, missing him entirely. The last shreds of mist hid him as he started off along the line of the trees. When he was nearly opposite us I took a chance and fired again. This time he gave a long bound and went down in a heap.

"Shabash! Well done, Smithy!" cried Arnold.

The two natives hustled over and met us half way across the clearing, grinning and staring at me admiringly. Carnie forgot his own disappointment as he measured the spread of the horns with a tape and counted the points, and complimented me generously.

"Never saw it done before, Smithy old boy, on my word. Two hundred and twelve yards—I paced it—a running deer and a poor light. Hullo, here's where I creased his flank."

"Which is more than I did with one shot," I assured him.

We left the hunters to remove the head and strip off the best of the meat while we walked back with the rifles. The sun was just coming up over the snow peaks. The big gorge, along which we headed, was still a shadowy pit with the whole world overhead flaming purple and red and a deep blue-green. I can't begin to tell what it looked like. You'll have to go to the Himalayas and watch the sun rise to know. The air was like old wine, and almost as heady. I was walking along trying to see and smell everything at once when Arnold shouted at me: "Hold up, Smithy! Steady, my lad, and watch where you are going to put your feet."

Half expecting to see a snake on the ground, I stopped short and looked down, and the part of me under the ribs began to burn and send fiery waves up under my skull. There was nothing in front of me at all.

A sort of chasm ran back here, from the edge of the cliff, a gash in the rock where a few stunted cedars clung, hiding the drop. In between the cedars I could see an almost sheer drop of several hundred feet and, far down under the cliff, the valley bed and the shine of the river a mile below. The gash was not more than twenty feet across and it ran back from the face of the cliff only a stone's throw, but two steps more would have sent me caroming down the chute.

"This is where poor Cobden died," Arnold explained as I circled back. "He was Dixon's manager, you know. He was at work here with the tree cutters a few weeks ago, just beginning the day, after sunrise. Larry says he must have been full to the scuppers, because the natives heard him shout. Then they saw him run a few steps and crash down through those cedars." He glanced down thoughtfully.

It struck me, as I listened to Arnold, that a man would need to be pretty well tanked up to run down into the chimney, as he called the hole. If this Englishman, Cobden, had been the boss of a gang of lumberjacks, he must have known the country around here pretty well. Anyone who looked down the chimney once would not be likely to forget it was there. In fact a semi-circle of pine stumps as high as a man's head stood around it, and all along here, at the edge of the main gorge, the biggest pines had been cut. Further on we saw men at work, Hindu coolies hacking away at a great pair of morinda pines, a dozen feet through at the base. I asked Arnold how the timber was sent to the sawmills.

"Floated, Smithy," he answered lightly. "The trunks are rolled or hauled by yaks to the edge of the gorge. Then they are dumped over, and floated down into India on the river."

Captain Lawrence Dixon, he explained, was part owner of this forest concession. He and a couple of others had bought out the ancestral rights of some little native rajah who needed ready cash.

The English government had put a stop to wholesale timber cutting in the Himalayas a generation ago, but had allowed the native rulers the privilege of limited cutting. The preservation of the big trees, as in California and elsewhere at home, was important to preserve the water supply of heat ridden India. The chief who had sold out to Dixon and his partners was more interested in building up a racing stable in Delhi and in buying phonographs and radios than in keeping his forests safe for autocracy.

Anyway, Dixon had come up to look over the work, which had been delayed after the death of Cobden, his manager. The tribe that had sold the big trees to him—Arnold called them Chitralis—were objecting to his felling a group of the deodars which were valuable. The rajah of the Chitralis claimed that this particular grove sheltered the grave of his gone-and-forgotten ancestors; he had forgotten the grove when the contract was drawn up and signed. The trees belonged to Dixon and his partners; but, with the Chitralis acting ugly, the Hindus who were working for Dixon had kept their distance from the grove that had caused the dispute.

"Those infernal Hindus are like sheep," Arnold told me. "With a white man to tell them what to do, they'll go ahead and tear down somebody's castle. That's why the work has been held up. A crazy white man warned them to refrain from trespassing in the sacred grove."

He pointed ahead to our camp, in a nest of the big pines that loomed up at the end of the cleared tract. It stood on a knoll, and we could see the gray canvas of the tent. "You see, Smithy," Arnold grinned, "we've wandered into the marquee of the chap who's taken a stand against Larry and his honest toilers. That's his tent."

"And he," I remarked, "is Dr. Moorcroft."

"I don't know the blighter's name. Larry keeps his mouth damnably well shut about his affairs. Hullo, there he is, with that babu."

Dixon and a big Hindu who wore European clothes and a turban were walking along the edge of the gorge toward us. He asked where we had been and Arnold told him about the stag. The babu, it seemed, was a kind of clerk and overseer and had been in charge of the lumber camp after Cobden went west. His name was Anim Dass, and he greeted us as if Arnold was the Prince of Wales and I was an ace of big game hunters.

"Oh, sahib," he grinned, "Oh, my friends, you must infallible go out to make havoc among bears if this night is clear."

Anim Dass had learned his English from textbooks, and the way he slung around big words was a caution. So were his clothes. Arnold told me later that he had got together a French navy captain's dress jacket and the pants of a pre-war Russian ensign. When Arnold questioned him the babu explained that several bears were in the habit of coming down from the higher ground to root around in the clearings, and the moon was good enough to shoot by.

"That's a lark," cried the youngster. "Want to come with us, Anim Dass?"

"Impossible, quite, sahib. My bones not being adapted to this extremely cold climate."

I wondered if the babu was not a little cautious about venturing out where the Chitralis might find him, and I asked Carnie if he thought it was all right to leave his sister in the camp when the natives were acting ugly.

"My dear chap," he laughed, "she's safer here than in Calcutta or New York, for that matter. These Chitralis wouldn't think of scragging a feringhi."

He meant a white man. But, remembering Dr. Moorcroft and the train thief, I wondered if Arnold was right and the doctor wrong, or the other way around.

FTER breakfast—and it was a meal fit for the gods, superintended by Gordon Carnie under one of the giant deodars—the luggage of Dixon's party came up and Arnold set to work bossing the natives who were pitching the three tents near the big pavilion. I hung around, hoping that Gordon Carnie might want to try her hand at deer shooting, but she went off to join Dixon, and I strolled into the grove to inspect it.

The trees covered more ground than I thought, running back from the tents to a small, round clearing, where there was a kind of hillock. On the top of this loose stones had been piled. It looked as if the ground had been cleared a long time ago, because vines, and briers overgrew the boulders.

I did not go near it because it had all the signs of a snake colony, and just then Dr. Paul Moorcroft was standing with his back to me, looking at it. About a dozen strange natives were squatting at his heels. They were slender men with thin faces, and all wore a kind of peaked woolen cap instead of turbans, and carried knives and short, curved swords in their belts. I suspected these were the Chitralis Arnold had been talking about and it turned out I was right.

The doctor might have, been praying to the stone heap, with the gang for a congregation. I stayed where I was, behind some shrubs, until another peaked cap came running up, and Moorcroft gabbled with the natives for a moment. They were frowning and fingering their knives, and when Moorcroft turned away they scattered among the trees. They were out of sight in a second, and I kept an eye on the bushes, heading after the doctor. He went too fast for me to catch up before he left the big trees and struck out into the open.

Dixon and a half dozen Hindus were forming around the furthest of the deodars, at the edge of the grove by the brink of the gorge. As Moorcroft came up, four axes began to ring on the trunk.

"Captain Dixon! Captain Dixon!" The doctor waved his arms and shouted. "This will never do!"

Coming to the tree he said something sharply to the natives and they lowered their axes, looking at the captain. Dixon glanced at me, then at Moorcroft and raised one eyebrow.

"The deodars are not to be touched," Moorcroft panted. "Great Scott, man, haven't you wood enough without cutting into the grove over the Chitral tomb?"

Miss Carnie seemed surprised by the man's objection, and Moorcroft's nervous face was whitish, his dark eyes blazing.

"I have been over the grove pretty thoroughly, sir," replied Dixon in his quiet way, "and I have failed to discover any sign of a tomb. Where is it? And what is it?"

Moorcroft grew red, and stopped a second to think.

"The point is, Captain Dixon; by cutting these trees you are enraging the Chitrali tribesmen and laying up trouble for the government."

I noticed that he avoided the matter of the tomb, but Dixon brought him back to it quickly enough. "If the grave is empty," Dixon began, "I fail to see"

"It is not empty!" cried the doctor. "There is a body in it, and"

"And what?"

"And the natives have a long standing veneration for this grove. The name deodar is derived from the Sanscrit devadar, which signifies a god or the place of a deity. Hundreds of years ago this site was selected for the tomb of one of the Chitrali kings. The present rajah assumed that it would not be molested when he sold his timber rights."

Dixon had been studying the owner of the tent, and now he smiled as if he had made up his mind.

"I think we are indebted to you, Moorcroft, for your absentee hospitality last night," he said. "Please accept our thanks. As to the tomb, you are talking quite over my head, you know. We are not molesting any grave. Cutting the trees will not disturb anything under the earth. The land is the rajah's, the timber is mine."

He ordered the staring Hindus to carry on with the chopping and the axes began to ring again. I started to take him aside to explain that Moorcroft was slightly cracked on the subject of graves, when Gordon Carnie spoke up.

"Isn't Dr. Moorcroft really in the right, Lawrence?" she asked, her brown eyes thoughtful. "It's such a pity to do away with these beauties."

Dixon wasn't the kind of man that can be wheedled by a woman, and he shook his head.

"No can do, Gordon. These deodars represent a hundred thousand square feet of excellent pine, needed in India, also several hundred pounds, which my associates have paid to this rajah. I can't let my partners down, you know."

She seemed to realize the truth of this, and sighed. Then Moorcroft made a mistake. I think if Miss Carnie had been let alone she might have argued Dixon into something, because she seemed set on leaving the deodars as they were.

"Man," cried the doctor harshly, "can't you see the danger? Doesn't Cobden's death mean anything to you? Will you go on, after that? He died the morning his men started work on the grove."

For half a minute Dixon stood perfectly still, as if following out a new line of thought. His eyes narrowed and his brown face became drawn and I saw that underneath his quiet manner he had a temper to be reckoned with.

"Then Cobden's fall was not an accident, Dr. Moorcroft? Kindly explain."

"How can I explain, if you cannot understand?" He turned to the girl. "Miss Carnie, please believe that I am earnest in my warning. I advise you to move your camp away from the grove and—to return to Simla at once."

"But why, Dr. Moorcroft?" she asked frankly.

He pointed up at the trees.

"This place was selected for the grave of one of the Chitrali rulers three hundred years ago, for a reason. Perhaps you will understand me when I say that there are forces guarding it from intrusion. These forces are invisible, but their power is very great."

"Snakes?" I asked, and he laughed.

"My dear Smith, would a snake drive a sane and courageous white man over a thousand foot cliff? I refer to Cobden."

"But he was drunk," I pointed out.

"He was not. I saw him go past the grove just before sunrise, with his men. Cobden was not a drinking man and he was perfectly sober; yet half an hour later he acted as if" Moorcroft hesitated. "A delirious patient would stagger and shout like that. He seemed to be blind. His mentality must have been abnormal at that moment, because he had been subjected to an overpowering stimulant."

"What was that?" Dixon asked shortly.

"Fear."

We looked at each other, and there were shadows under the captain's eyes. Presently he smiled.

"Moorcroft, you can't expect to frighten me into leaving jthe valley. You are the rajah's friend. I understand he's helped you with your research work. I don't know how much he's offered you, to make us leave this valuable timber uncut. If you'll show me this mazar, this grave or holy place, I'll order my men to take care not to injure it."

The doctor shook his head and muttered something under his breath in Hindustani, and I saw Dixon look down at him sharply. Then, as he turned away, Moorcroft stretched out both hands toward the girl helplessly.

"Miss Carnie," he appealed, "I am trying to help you. I know the secret of this place, and I beg you for the last time to leave the valley, with your brother."

"But why?" She held back a laugh. "And what is this secret?"

Then he said a strange thing. "It would do no good to tell you."

By now I was pretty sure that Moorcroft was warped in the upper works, and this was not pleasant to think about, with him parked across the clearing from our tents.