The Camp of the Snake/Chapter 7

EXT morning Captain Lawrence Dixon appeared long before we expected him, in a natty gray tweed suit, and shaved immaculately. His skin looked sallow and the pupils of his eyes were dark. After listening to all we had to say he nodded, thanked us very civilly, and asked which of us, in the absence of the native cooks, was inclined to prepare breakfast.

"You're a cool hand, Larry," cried Arnold. "What do you think of this mess and what are you going to do about it?"

"I never think before breakfast, young un," remarked the captain. "It's the rajah's doing of course. And equally of course we'll keep the flag flying. After you've prepared breakfast, Arnold, you take one rifle and post yourself beyond the wood where you can watch the Chitral trail. And, Smith, if you are game, you can go down into the gorge by the lower trail and try to bury what's left of Anim Dass."

He lit a cigarette and sat in a brown study while Arnold and I pitched in and brewed black coffee, fixed up eggs and toast and opened the tin of marmalade. We felt better after that, especially when Dixon took matters so easily. He knew how to encourage a couple of youngsters, and as I started down the zigzag trail that was the only path to the river I felt all my fears vanish. After all, one native had fallen off the cliff and the others had struck in a body. They did that in the U. S. of A.

But the matter of attending to Anim Dass temporarily ended all pleasant thoughts. For a while I battled the big vultures that were descending on him and finally had to heap some rocks over the poor devil and stick a rough cross over the pile.

By the time I reached the top of the cliff I was about all in, and it was early afternoon. Coming through the deodars I heard voices and slung the Enfield, muzzle forward, over my arm. Going on quietly, I made out that Gordon Carnie and Dixon were talking within a few yards of me, although the acacia bushes hid them.

"Larry," she cried, her voice rising, "it's a foolish risk. I'll buy out your interest in the grove. Then you can satisfy your partners and we can leave."

His reply was too low to hear, but evidently he refused.

"If anything happened to Arnie or to the American we'd never forgive ourselves, Larry. You must let me buy the grove, and I'll leave the trees as they are."

Now I had not meant to listen in, but the girl's words halted me in my tracks. She seemed to be beside herself over something, and I gathered that it was because Larry would not abandon the grove. Also I learned that the Carnies had money, owned mines in South Africa and a rubber plantation in Sumatra, and when Arnold spoke of being broke he meant he had spent his income a good many months ahead.

"I'll send you and Arnie down to Simla in the car, Gordon," he said. "Smith can drive, I think. Moorcroft was correct enough in saying that this is not the place for you. If I'd suspected the rajah would try this kind of trickery I would never have"

"Nonsense! You know we will not leave you."

He began to urge Gordon to go to a kind of mission hospital station about twenty miles away—the nearest thing to civilization, I suppose. And then he pleaded with her to go with him and be married there.

After a moment or two of this, with Dixon making love to her and the girl laughing and half crying I realized that this was not the place for Alexander Smith. I didn't want Larry Dixon to marry Gordon, or anyone else to marry the girl, for that matter, except me and that was impossible. And it didn't improve my humor to think of him standing there with her in his arms, and probably kissing her. He'd be a fool not to.

I looked all over for Arnold and finally found him in Moorcroft's den. He was sitting in the only chair with papers and books scattered all over the table, and he was flushed with excitement.

"Oh, I say, Smithy!" he hailed. "Here's a merry go! A cracking good find. I've been cramming since Larry called me in, and I've learned a lot about this place. There's a tomb somewhere in the grove."

I sat down on a tiger skin and got out my pipe, borrowing some of his tobacco and remarking that his news was old.

"Wait a bit, Yankee. This tomb was built by Jahangire, one of the great Moguls, about three centuries ago. And he buried one of his wives in it."

Carnie flourished a book at me, and grinned with excitement. "It's all in Moorcroft's book on the relics of Mogul rule in Kashmir. He says that the annals of Jahangire's reign relate that this queen was a beauty and a Persian, and he built the tomb underground in a grove of high deodars on the Wurdwan River. Afterward, the site was kept a secret, so that no blighters could tear the thing to pieces."

"Sure it's this grove?" I asked, becoming interested.

"This identical place. Moorcroft quotes a legend of the Chitral ruling family—about fourth cousins of the Mogul—to prove it is hidden under a pile of rocks."

"I've seen it, then." I thought of the clearing and the heap of boulders where Moorcroft had been standing.

"Ripping! We're getting to the meat of the mystery." He turned to the loose pages of manuscript. "I ventured to dig into Moorcroft's latest, unpublished as yet. Some of these sheets have an account of the inside of the vault—marble walls, mosaic floor, bearing the inscriptions—hm! Here we are! One portion of the floor is a solid square of silver, etched with designs by—and so forth. Gordon would like to see all this grandeur."

Arnold wanted to find Dixon and his sister and hurry off to the pile of rocks to find out if the account in the book was correct. But I cooled him off by reminding him that the place was really the rajah's property. Dixon had bought only the timber rights.

He admitted that Moorcroft said in the book that the Chitrali rulers stood in awe of the place and, although they were legal owners of the ground, never ventured into the tomb.

"That must be what Moorcroft meant when he said that some invisible force or other guarded this grove," I pointed out. "He probably was thinking of the spirit of the dead queen. Or maybe the Mogul scattered poison around to discourage trespassers."

"Rot!" Carnie laughed. "I thought you said Moorcroft was balmy—mad, you know."

"And he may be," I insisted. "But it stands to reason that something must have kept thieves out of the place for three hundred years, because the location of the tomb was known to the natives, and Moorcroft seems to have found it untouched."

I wanted to tell him what I'd heard in the grove, and to ask him if he knew Dixon was planning to marry his sister. Arnold did not seem to consider such a possibility. I suppose Gordon had had a whole platoon of suitors. He was studying me with a frown.

"You look done up, Smithy. Let's go and tell Larry, anyway." I was beginning to feel tired and dead sleepy, for a fact. But I went with Carnie. Outside Dixon's tent we found the captain holding a small piece of paper. He handed it to Carnie, who passed it on to me. It said:

Dear Miss Carnie: If you have any regard for your brother or your own life, do not fail to take the car back to Simla and be out of the camp before sunset. .

But what held us all silent was the postscript, scribbled hastily under the neat writing of the message:

The snake will not be held back any longer.

This struck me as the warning of an insane man, who was not the less dangerous. Carnie could make nothing of it. Dixon observed that it had been folded and stuck in one of the sticks split at one end which are used by natives to carry messages. And it had been found on Miss Carnie's cot when they returned from their walk a few minutes ago.

"It means war, my dear fellows," he said grimly. "The rajah, I fancy, is inclined to make use of some of the mummery of his people, who may be snake worshippers. The cult of Nag, or the serpent, extends into the Himalayas."

"Yes," assented Carnie, "I remember my servant saying that no snake would harm you if you could see a particular snow peak among the higher ranges. Forget which one. A raid of cobras would be unpleasant, but not absolutely fatal."

A thought flashed into the thing that serves me for a brain and all my arteries felt several degrees cooler. Suppose a forty foot boa-constrictor was quartered under that heap of rocks, in the vaults? These reptiles lived to a ripe old age, I'd heard somewhere, possibly a hundred years or so.

Also they climbed trees, and I could never forget the creepy feeling I'd had walking under the deodars for the first time. And then such a snake might have frightened Cobden and Anim Dass into fleeing too close to the edge of the cliff, and it would have caused the undergrowth to sway and rustle, although, in the poor light we had not seen it on the ground.

To tell the truth, though, I felt too sleepy to think much, and wandered off to my tent meaning to doze for an hour. The sun was warm on the canvas, and I'd been thirty-six hours without sleep.

I remember hearing Captain Dixon singing somewhere outside the tent, "It's a long way to Tipperary!" Then the singing stopped and I felt the tent and everything else slipping away. It was a pleasant feeling, too, until I began to walk under thousand-foot trees, every one with a great boa coiled in the branches. And Anim Dass was skipping around, grinning at me from behind the boles of the forest, with a hat made of vultures' wings.

The wings began to flap and then to hit me on the shoulder and Anim Dass was yelling something in my ear, calling to me to wake up. The worst of it was that I couldn't move, even when the wings turned into hands and fingers gripped into my arm.

"Mr. Smith, please wake up—please!"

My eyes opened and I saw the inside of the tent, only it was half hidden by a kind of veil. So I shut my eyes again and tried to shake off the hand that was bothering me. Then my forehead felt wet and cold, and I sat up with an effort.

Gordon Carnie was standing by the cot, with the miniature bit of embroidery she calls a handkerchief in her hand, dipping it into the water pail. The light was dim, the sun must have set; but I could see her cheeks were perfectly white. She was half smiling, with a kind of wild anxiety.

"Please say something, Mr. Smith. Whatever is the matter? You, and Arnie, too!"

It was not easy to say anything, I found, and I must have slept like a dead man for four hours. But that girl could have brought me out from a dose of ether, and when I understood that something had happened and that she was calling on me for help I got up. After emptying most of the water bucket over my head I was able to think straight and to walk without staggering.

The first thing I did was to feel around the cot for the Enfield that I had left there. Then I lit a lamp and searched the tent carefully while the girl watched me as if she did not know whether I was a cure or a turn for the worse.

The thing that brought me around finally was the rifle. The Enfield was gone. I asked if she had seen it or taken it and she shook her head.

"Larry might have taken it with him. He went to look at the Chitral trail two hours ago. Arnie was sleeping and so were you. I knew you were tired, but when Larry did not come back and it was growing dark I tried to wake my brother. I couldn't, and so"

"You came for me." I thought of the state we'd found Dixon in, last night, and wondered if the same thing had happened to Arnold and me. There was no smell of whisky in the tent, but I felt as if I'd downed a quart or so in the last few hours. My hands shook, and my head was splitting.

Arnold was curled up on the ground by the dead fire, and his rifle was missing. His face was flushed and though his eyelids twitched when I rapped his fingers with a stick, his heavy breathing did not stop. Finally I scratched a match and held the flame to his wrist. After a second I took it away and carried him into the tent, laying him on the cot.

That boy had been doped, and the same thing must have happened to me, though how it had been done was a mystery. I had not taken a drink, even of water, since coming to camp. Nor anything to eat, for that matter. I had been perfectly all right until we read over those books in Moorcroft's study.

I looked at Miss Carnie, and her lip was quivering. All at once a hot flame of rage swept over me. Moorcroft and his rajah had been trying to worry the heart out of this girl by their tricks. And things had gone far enough. They'd got away with our rifles, but I had a loaded revolver tucked in my inner coat pocket that they'd overlooked. And I made up my mind that someone was going to pay for this brand of black magic.