gun of god

Chapter Twenty-One

The king sent his army and said, "Lo, I did it. Consider my prowess and my strategy!" But the gods laughed. —Eastern proverb

"The guns of the gods!"

Very shortly after dawn on the morning of the polo game Yasmini left the Blaines' house on business of her own. The news of Gungadhura's abdication was abroad already, many times multiplied by each mouth until two batteries of guns had become an army corps. But what caused the greatest excitement was the news, first of all whispered, then confirmed, that Gungadhura himself was missing.

That disturbing knowledge was the factor that prevented Yasmini from returning to her own rifled palace and making the best of it; for it would take time to hedge the place about properly with guards. There was simply no knowing what Gungadhura might be up to. She judged it probable that he had seen through her whole plot in the drear light of revelation that so often comes to stricken men, and in that case her own life was likely in danger every second he was still at liberty. But she sent word to Utirupa, too, to be on the alert. And she saw him herself that morning, in her favorite disguise of a rangar zemindari, which is a Rajput landowner turned Muhammadan. The disguise precluded any Hindu interference, and Muhammadans on that country-side, who might have questioned her, were scarce.

The polo did not take place until late afternoon, because of the heat, but the grounds were crowded long before the time by a multi-colored swarm in gala mood, whom the artillerymen, pressed into service as line-keepers, had hard work to keep back of the line. There was a rope around three sides of the field, but it broke repeatedly, and in the end the gunners had to be stationed a few feet apart all down the side opposite the grand-stand to keep the crowd from breaking through.

There were carriages in swarms, ranging from the spider-wheel gig of a British subaltern to the four-in-hand of Rajput nobility—kept pretty carefully apart, though. The conquerors of India don't mix with the conquered, as a rule, except officially. And there were half a dozen shuttered carriages that might have contained ladies, and might not; none knew.

It was a crowd that knew polo from the inside outward, and when the ponies were brought at last and stood in line below the grand-stand, each in charge of his sais, there grew a great murmur of critical approval; for the points of a horse in Rajputana are as the lines of a yacht at Marblehead, and the marks of a dog in Yorkshire; the very urchins know them. The Bombay side of India had been scoured pretty thoroughly for mounts for that event. The Rajputs had on the whole the weight of money, and perhaps the showiest ponies, but the English team, nearly all darker in color as it happened, except for one pie-bald, looked trained up to the last notch and bore the air of knowing just what to expect, that is as unmistakable in horses as in men.

Tom Tripe was there with his dog. Trotters had the self-imposed and wholly agreeable task of chasing all unattached dogs off the premises. But Tom Tripe himself was keeping rather in the background, because technically, as a servant of Gungadhura, he was in a delicate position. A voice that he could swear he almost recognized whispered to him in the crowd that the English were going to forbid the next maharajah to have any but employees of his own race. And a laugh that he could pick out of a million greeted his change of countenance. But though he turned very swiftly, and had had no brandy since morning to becloud his vision, he failed to see his tormentor.

Tess and Dick drove down in ample time, as they had imagined, and found hard work to squeeze the dog-cart in between the phalanxes of wheels already massed on the ground. When they went to the grand-stand it was to find not a seat left in the rows reserved for ordinary folk; so Samson, who arrived late too, magnificent in brand-new riding-boots, invited them to sit next him in front.

The ground was in perfect condition—a trifle hard, because of the season, but flat as a billiard table and as fast as even Rajputs could desire. A committee of them had been going over it daily for a week past, recommending touches here, suggesting something there, neglecting not an inch, because the finer stick-work of the Rajput team would be lost on uneven ground; and the English had been sportsmen enough to accommodate them without a murmur.

When a little bell rang and the teams turned out for the first chukker in deathly-silence, it was evident at once what the Rajput strategy would be. They had brought out their fastest ponies to begin with, determined to take the lead at the start and hold it.

One could hear the crowd breathe when the whistle blew; for in India polo is a game to watch, not an opportunity for small talk. Instantly the ball went clipping toward the English goal, to be checked by Topham at full-back, who sent it out rattling to the right wing. But the Rajput left-wing man, a young cousin of Utirupa, cut in like an arrow. The ball crossed over to the right wing, where Utirupa took it, galloping down the line on a chestnut mare that had the speed of wind. Topham, racing to intercept the ball, missed badly; a second later the Rajput center thundered past both men and scored the goal, amid a roar from the spectators, less than a minute from the start.

"Dick!" Tess exclaimed. "You ought to be ashamed of me! I'm rooting for the Rajputs against my own color!"

"So'm I!" he answered. "I wish to glory there was some one here to bet with!"

Samson overheard.

"Which way do you want to bet?" he asked.

"A thousand on the Rajputs."

"Thousand what?"

"Dollars. Three thousand rupees."

"Confound it, you Americans are all too rich! Never mind, I'll take you."

"A bet!" Dick answered, and both men wrote it down.

About nine words were said by the captain of the English team as they rode back to the center of the field, and when the ball was in play again there was no more of the scattering open play that suited the other side, but a close, short-hitting, chop-and-follow method that tried ponies' tempers, and a scrimmage every ten yards that made all unavailing the Rajputs' speed and dash. Whenever a stroke of lightning wrist-work sent the ball clipping down-field Topham returned it to the center and the scrimmage began all over again. The first chukker ended in mid-field, with the score 1—0.

Both sides brought out fresh ponies for the second, and the Rajputs tried again to score with their favorite tactics of long-hitting and tremendous speed. But the English were playing dogged-does-it, and Topham on the pie-bald at full back was invincible. Nothing passed him. Nor were the English slow. Three times they seized opportunity in mid-field and rode with a burst of fiery hitting toward the Rajput goal. Three times the gunners down the line began to yell. The English team were getting together, and the Rajputs a little wild. But the chukker ended with the same score, 1—0.

"How d'you feel about it now?" asked Samson, looking as calm as the English habitually do whenever their pulse beats furiously.

"I'd like to bet too!" Tess laughed, leaning across.

"What—the same sized bet?"

"No, a hundred."

"Dollars ?"

"Rupees!" she laughed. "I'm not so rich as my husband."

"Can't refuse a lady!" Samson answered, noting the bet down. "I shall be a rich man tonight. They play a brilliant game, those fellows, but we always beat them in the end."

"How do you account for that?" Dick asked, suspecting what was coming.

"Oh, in a number of ways, but chiefly because they lack team-loyalty among themselves. They're all jealous of one another, whereas our fellows play as a unit."

As if in confirmation of Samson's words the Rajput team seemed rather to go to pieces in the third chukker. There was the same brilliant individual hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there. In vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it. He was not backed up in the nick of time, and before the end of the third minute the English scored.

"You'd better go and hedge those bets," laughed Samson when the chukker ended. "There are plenty of the native gentry over yonder who'd be delighted to gamble a fortune with you yet!"

Dick scarcely heard. He was watching Utirupa, who stood by the pony-line where a sais was doing something to a saddle girth. A rangar came up to the prince and spoke to him—a slim, young-looking man, a head the shorter of the two, with a turban rather low over his eyes, and the loose end of it, for some reason, across the lower half of his face. Dick nudged Tess, and she nodded. After that Utirupa appeared to speak in low tones to each member of his own team.

"I beg your pardon. What was that you said?" asked Dick.

"I say you'd better hedge those bets."

"I'll double with you, if you like!"

"Good heavens, man! I've wagered a month's pay already! Go and bet with Willoughby de Wing or one of the gunner officers."

The rangar disappeared into the crowd before the teams rode out for the fourth encounter, and Tess, who had made up her mind to watch the shuttered carriages that stood in line together in a roped enclosure of their own, became too busy with the game. Something had happened to the Rajputs. They no longer played with the gallery-appealing smash-and-gallop fury that won them the first goal, although their speed held good and the stick-work was marvelous. But they seemed more willing now to mix it in the middle of the field, and to ride off an opponent instead of racing for the chance to shine individually. It became the English turn to drive to the wings and try to clear the ball for a hurricane race down-field; and they were not quite so good at those tactics as the other side were.

All the rest of that game until the eighth, chukker after chukker, the Rajputs managed to reverse the usual procedure, obliging the English team to wear itself out in terrific efforts to break away, tiring men and ponies in a tight scramble in which neither side could score.

"It looks like a draw after all," said Samson. "Bets off in that case, I suppose? Disappointing game in my opinion."

"'Tisn't over yet," said Dick.

The Rajputs were coming out for the last chukker with their first and fastest ponies that had rested through the game; and they were smiling. Utirupa had said something that was either a good joke or else vastly reassuring. As a matter of fact he had turned them loose at last to play their old familiar game again, and from the second that the ball went into play the crowd was on tiptoe, swaying this and that way with excitement.

In vain the English sought to return to the scrimmage play; it was too late. The Rajputs had them rattled. Topham at full-back on the pie-bald was a stone wall, swift, hard-hitting and resourceful, but in vain. Swooping down the wings, and passing with the dextrous wrist-work and amazing body-bends that they alone seem able to accomplish, they put the English team on the defensive and kept them there. Once, at about half-time, by a dash all together the English did succeed in carrying t he ball down-field, but that was their last chance, and they missed it. In the last two minutes the Rajputs scored two goals, the last one driven home by Utirupa himself, racing ahead of the field with whirling stick and the thunder of a neck-and-neck stampede behind him.

"That'll be your month's pay!" laughed Dick. "I hope you won't starve for thirty days!"

The crowd went mad with delight, and swarmed on to the ground, shouting and singing. Samson got up, looking as if he rather enjoyed to lose three thousand rupees in an afternoon.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, I'll go and shake hands with Utirupa. He deserves congratulation. It was head-work won that game."

"I wonder what she said to him at the end of the third chukker," Tess whispered to Dick.

Samson found Utirupa giving orders to the saises, and shook hands with him.

"Good game, Utirupa! Congratulate you. By the way: there's going to be a meeting on important business in my office half an hour from now. When you've had a tub and a change, I wish you'd come and join us. We want a word with you."

"Where are the gunners going to?" asked Tess. "The men who kept the line—look! They're all trooping off the ground in the same direction."

"Dunno," said her husband. "Let's make for the dog-cart and drive home. If we hang around Samson'll think we're waiting for that money!"

Half an hour after that, Utirupa presented himself at Samson's office in the usual neat Rajput dress that showed off his lithe figure and the straightness of his stature. There was quite a party there to meet him— Samson, Willoughby de Wing, Norwood, Sir Hookum Bannerjee, Topham (still looking warm and rather weary after the game)—and outside on the open ground beyond the compound wall two batteries of horse-guns were drawn up at attention. But if Utirupa felt surprise he did not show it.

"To make a short story of a long one, Prince Utirupa," Samson began at once, "as you know, Gungadhura abdicated yesterday. The throne of Sialpore is vacant, and you are invited to accept it. I have here the required authority from Simla."

Utirupa rose from his chair, and bowed.

"I am willing to accep," he answered quietly. His face showed no emotion.

"There is one stipulation, though," said Samson. "We are tired of these foolish 'islands'—our territory in yours and yours in ours. There's a contract here. As your first official act—there's no time like the present—we want you to exchange the River Palace, on this side of the river, for out fort on your side."

Utirupa said never a word.

"It's not a question of driving a bargain," Samson went on. "We don't know what the palace may be worth, or what is in it. If there is any valuable furniture you'd like removed, we'll waive that point; but on the terms of the contract we exchange the fort, with the guns and whatever else is there except the actual harness and supplies of the garrison, against the land and palace and whatever it contains except furniture."

Utirupa smiled—perhaps because the guns in that fort were known to date from before the Mutiny.

"Will you agree?"

"I will sign," said Utirupa. And he signed the contract there and then, in presence of all those witnesses. Ten minutes later, as he left the office, the waiting batteries fired him a fourteen-gun salute, that the world might know how a new maharajah occupied the throne of Sialpore.

Meanwhile, up at the house on the hill Tess and Dick found Yasmini already there ahead of them, lying at her ease, dressed as a woman of women, and smoking a cigarette in the window-seat of the bedroom Tess had surrendered to her.

"What was it you said to him after the third chukker?" was the first question Tess asked.

"You recognized me?"

"Sure. So did my husband. What did you say to him?"

"Oh, I just said that if he hoped to win he must play the game of the English, and play it better, that was all. He won, didn't he? I didn't stay to the end. I knew he would win."

Almost as they spoke the fourteen-gun salute boomed out from across the river, and echoed from the hills.

"Ah!" said Yasmini. "Listen! The guns of the gods! He is maharajah now."

"But what of the treasure?" Tess asked her. "Dick told me this morning that the English have a guard all round the River Palace, and expect to dig the treasure up themselves."

"Perhaps the English need it more than he and I do," Yasmini answered.

That evening Tom Tripe turned up, and Yasmini came down-stairs to talk with him, Trotters remaining outside the window with his ash-colored hair on end and a succession of volcanic growls rumbling between flashed teeth.

"What's the matter with the dog, that he won't come in?" asked Tess.

"Nothing, ma'arm He's just encouraging himself. He stays here tonight."

"Trotters does? Why?"

"It's known all over Sialpore that her ladyship's staying here, and Gungadhura's at large somewhere.

You're well guarded; that's been seen to, but Trotters stays for double inner-guard. One or two men might go to sleep. Gungadhura might pass them a poisoned drink, or physic their rations in some way. And then, they're what you might call fixed point men here, one there, with instructions they'll be skinned alive and burned if they leave their exact position. Trotters has a roving commission, to nose and snarl whenever he's minded. You can't poison him, for he won't eat from strangers. You can't see to knife him in the dark, because he's ash-colored and moves too swift. And if Gungadhura comes an' shoots at where Trotters' eyes gleam—well—Mr. Dick Blaine is liable to wake up an' show his highness how Buffalo Billy imitates a Gatling gun! The house is safe, but I thought I'd come and mention it."

"When will my palace be ready?" Yasmini asked.

"Tomorrow or the next day, Your Ladyship. There wasn't so much taken out after all, though a certain amount was stolen. The first orders the new maharajah gave were to have your palace attended to; and some of the stolen stuff is coming in already; word went out that if stuff was returned there'd be nothing said, but if it weren't returned there'd be something brand-new in the line of trouble for all concerned. The priests have been told to pass the word along. 'No obedience from priests, no priests at the coronation ceremony!—It's my belief from about two hours' observation that we've got a maharajah now with guts, if you'll excuse my bad French, please, ma'am."

"What does it matter to you, Tom, whether he is good or not?" Yasmini asked mischievously. Isn't there a rumor that the English won't allow any but the native-born instructors after this?"

"Ah, naughty, naughty!" he laughed, shaking a gnarled forefinger. "I thought it was your voice in the crowd. Your Ladyship 'ud like to have me all nervous, wouldn't you? Well—if Tom Tripe was out of a job tomorrow, the very first person he'd apply to for a new one would be the Princess Yasmini; and she'd give it him!"

"What have you in your hand?" Yasmini asked.

"Gungadhura's turban that he wore the night when Akbar chased him down the street."

Yasmini nodded, understanding instantly.

Five minutes later, after a rousing stiff night-cap, Tom took his leave. They heard his voice outside the window:

"Trotters!"

The dog's tail beat three times on the veranda.

"Take a smell o' this!"

There was silence, followed by a growl.

"If he comes,—kill him! D'ye understand? Kill him! There—there's the turban for you to lie on an' memorize the smell! Kill him! Ye understand?"

A deep growl was the answer, and Tom Tripe marched off toward the stables for his horse, whistling Annie Rooney, lest some too enthusiastic watcher knife him out of a shadow.

"When I am maharanee," said Yasmini, "Tom Tripe shall have the title of sirdar, whether the English approve of it or not!"