"I'll gamble with you—who goes first."
"You said that you were taking orders," Skag said coldly.
"That's a fact. But this isn't to my relish, son—"
"We do not need more words."
Cadman Sahib had reached safety. The natives were around him, feeling his arms and limbs, stuttering questions. He bade them be silent, caught up his rifle and covered the tiger, while Skag made the tilted pole, beckoning the rifle back.
"It's been a hard night for him," he said.
The two men stood together in the morning light. Cadman's face was deeply shaded by the big helmet again, but his eyes bored into the young one's as he offered his cigarette-case. Skag took one, lit it carelessly. Cadman was watching his hands.
"You've got it, son," he said.
"Got what?"
"The good grey nerve. … Not a flicker in your hand. I wanted to know. … Say, cheer up—"
Skag was looking toward the tiger trap.
"Ah, I see," said Cadman Sahib.
"The circus is a hard life," Skag said.
That was a kind of a feast day. … At noon the natives had the tiger up in sunlight, caged in bamboo. Skag presently came into a startling kind of joy to hear his friend make an offer to buy the beast. Negotiations moved slowly, but the thing was done. That afternoon the journey toward Coldwater Ruins was continued with eight carriers, the tiger swung between them. Skag was mystified. What could Cadman mean? What could he do with a tiger at the Ruins or in the Monkey Forest? The natives apparently had not been told the destination, but they must know soon. It was all strange. Skag liked it better alone with his friend. Halt was called that afternoon, the sun still in the sky. The two white men walked apart.
"You get the drift, my son?"
Skag shook his head.
"Of course, the natives won't like it; they won't understand. But we're sure he isn't a man-eater—"
Skag's chest heaved.
"I never knew a more decent tiger—" Cadman went on. "Besides, he's a friend of yours, and not too expensive—"
"You bought him to—"
"I bought him for you, son—a tribute to the nerviest white man I ever stepped with—"
That evening a great whine went up from the bearers. It appears that while some were cutting wood, others preparing supper and others gathering dry grass for beds, the younger white man, who had made magic with the tiger in the pit, suddenly failed in his powers. The natives were sure it was not their fault that the cover had not been securely fastened. The bearers repeated they were all at work and could find no fault with themselves. They were used to dealing with white men who did not permit bungling. Their wailing was very loud. … To lose such a tiger was worth more than many natives, some white men would say. … But Cadman Sahib was rich. He fumed but little; being of all white men most miraculously compassionate. … Also it was true the beast, though full grown, was not a man-eater. …
"And to-morrow we shall go on alone—it is much pleasanter," said Skag, after all was still and they lay down together.
CHAPTER II
Son of Power
His Indian name was given to Skag in the great Grass Jungle; but he did not know the meaning of the words when they first fell upon his ear. There India herself first opened for him the magic gates that seal her mystery. But he did not know it was her glamour that made him utterly forget outside things, in the unbelievable loveliness of Grass Jungle days; did not know it was just as much her spell that made him forget his own birthright, in the paralysis of perfect fear.
A part of her mystery is this forgetting—while she reveals canvas after canvas of life—uncovers layer beneath layer of her deeper marvels. Skag was involved with his animals—and interests peculiarly personal—till it all came to seem like a dream. Yet underneath his surface consciousness it was working in him, as the glamour of India always does, to colour his entire future—as the magic of India always will.
After their night in the tiger pit-trap, Cadman and Skag had wandered southeast-ward—still searching for the Monkey Forest and the Coldwater Ruins—and had become lost to the world and the ways of civilisation in the mazes of the Mahadeo mountains. They had found a dozen jungles full of monkeys, but none of them looked to Cadman like his dream. The monkeys were all so melted-in to everything else; and there was so much too much of everything else.
As for Ruins, the thing they found was too old. It was like an exposure of the sins of first men—alive with bats and smaller vermin. The monkeys there had preserved from age to age the germs of all depravity. Without words the two Americans turned away from that spot, to forget it.
Skag was learning that his training in the circus had been but a mere beginning in the study of wild animals. It seemed impossible that there could be a jungle anywhere with more beasts or greater variety, than they heard at night.
It was as hard to come in good view of any wild creature—excepting monkeys—as it had been hard at first to sleep, on account of the voices of all creation after sundown. To approach undiscovered, and to lie out and watch undiscovered, taxed and developed all their faculties; the fascination and excitement of it stretched their powers; and their successes enriched them both for a life-time.
After the first eagerness to get twenty different positions of a tigress playing with her kittens, Cadman had become a miser of material and an adept in noiseless movement. Finding that he was in danger of going short on sketching paper, he used it more and more as if it were fine gold, till his outlines were not larger than miniatures. Also, he learned to glance for the flash of approval in Skag's eye.
The two men had grown into a rare comradeship. This time of year, sleeping in the open was luxury. They had not suffered for food, excepting in the memory of such things as had once been most common. Well above fever-line, no ailment had touched them. So, eating simply, sleeping deeply and working hard, they toughened in body and keened in mind—the days all full of quickening interests, every next minute due to develop surprise.
It was by a little headlong mountain stream, that the revelation came. Skag was looking to see which was the business-end of his tooth-brush that morning when Cadman broke his sheath knife. The accident was a calamity, because Skag's was already worn out cutting step-way to climb out of khuds, and this was all they had left to serve such a purpose.
"That settles it, we must go," said Cadman, looking ruefully at the stump of his old blade. "Our nearest kin wouldn't know us, but we are still recognisable to each other, and I'm not exactly ready to quit—are you?"
"No," Skag answered absently—unwilling to realise the necessity.
Cadman studied the crestfallen face—they had loved this life together and equally.
"But do you realise, my son," he asked, "that others will have to see us, before we can ever again be clothed and groomed properly?"
Now Skag looked at his friend with seeing eyes and blushed.
"It's not the clothes, so much as—" Skag stopped.
Cadman focused on Skag's face through his queer spectacles, then he laughed as only Cadman could laugh.
So they climbed down and took train for Bombay. Like fugitives they dodged the sight of correctly dressed Englishmen all the way; stopping over more than seven hours at Kullian—so as to reach the great city at night.
Next morning two clean-faced and very much