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<h3 class="chapter">Chapter Twenty Two.</h3> <h4 class="event">The Sniper.</h4> Overhead the gloomy rock walls reared up on either side for many hundred feet, seeming in places well nigh to meet, in others, leaning outward so as completely to obliterate the narrow blue thread of sky. Loose stones, round stones, every conceivable shape of stone, large and small, constituted the natural paving of the natural roadway, and slipped and rattled under the tired, stumbling hoofs of the two horsemen; the three rather, for the rear was brought up at a respectful distance by a mounted syce. It was cool in the depths of the great chasm, cool but strangely stuffy. Both Europeans were in khaki suits, quite looking like having seen service, and wore Terai hats. Each carried a business-like magazine rifle—and, incidentally, knew thoroughly well how to use it when occasion demanded. And each had been so using it, but for peaceful purpose, for they were returning from a fairly successful markhôr stalk in the craggy range, of which this chasm, cleaving the heart of an otherwise unbroken mass of rock, formed a natural roadway. “I tell you what it is, Helston,” the older of the two men was saying. “This is no sort of place to go through during the rainy season. The water rushes down it as through a spout. I’ve had a narrow squeak or two in just such a tube as this before.” “Yes. You can see that. There’s high watermark.” The other followed his upward glance. Just a few scarcely perceptible bits of stick and dry grass quite twenty feet overhead. “By Jove, Helston, but what an eye you’ve got. And you’re new to this end of the country too.” “Yes. I’ve got an eye—for trifles—as you say, Coates,” returned Helston Varne. “But I only wish some of the things I’ve got to—I’ve had to—clear up, were as easy to deduce as that—only I don’t, because it would eliminate the sporting element altogether. By the way, there’s some one coming from the opposite direction. We shall meet directly, but I hope it isn’t a lot of beastly loaded camels, or Heaven only knows how we are going to pass each other.” “What? Why you’ve got an ear as well as an eye. Blest if I can hear anything.” “Not, eh?” Then, after a moment of listening—“By Jingo, yes—it is camels.” Now the sound grew audible to all, that of deep toned voices and the roll and rattle of loose stones, and soon, round a bend of the rock wall appeared a characteristic and extremely picturesque group. There might have been ten or a dozen men. The one who led was mounted on a fine camel, but the rest were afoot. Another camel brought up the rear, loaded with baggage. They were tall, hook-nosed, copper coloured men, with jetty beards and an equally jetty tress flowing down in front over each shoulder. They were clad in loose white garments, and their heads surmounted by the ample turban wound round the conical kulla—and all were armed with the inevitable and razor-edged tulwar, three or four indeed carrying rifles besides. At sight of the Europeans they halted, and their looks were not friendly. In point of fact these expressed distinct suspiciousness, partly dashed with a restrained combination of fanatical and racial hatred. But the whole group was splendidly in keeping with the stern wildness of its background. “Now how the devil are we going to pass each other, and who’s going to give way?” mused Varne Coates in an undertone. Helston said nothing. His mind was absorbed entirely with taking in and thoroughly appreciating the effect of the picture. “Salaam, brothers,” began Coates, speaking Hindustani: “This tangi is over narrow for two parties to pass each other. Is it not wider a little back, the way you have come?” The look of hostility on the dark faces seemed to deepen ever so slightly. To Helston’s acute observation it deepened more than slightly. “Or the way you have come,” came the answer from more than one voice. But the man on the camel said nothing, perhaps because he did not understand—or as a freeborn mountaineer, did not choose to understand—the language of servants—of slaves. But he did not look friendly. Things were at a decided deadlock. There was just barely room to pass, but only then by floundering up the most rugged part of the dry watercourse. But Varne Coates, Commissioner of Baghnagar, and temporarily quartered on leave at the frontier station of Mazaran for the purposes chiefly of markhôr stalking, was temperamentally a peppery man, and traditionally entirely opposed to the idea of giving way to natives whoever they might be. And it looked uncommonly as though he would have to do so now. “Here, Gholam Ali,” he called back over his shoulder to the syce. “You talk to these people. They don’t seem to understand me.” The man came forward, and Helston was not slow to notice that his tones, as he talked, were respectful, not to say deferential. The face of the camel rider the while was that of a mask. He uttered a few laconic words in a deep toned voice, and in Pushtu. “Hazûr, it is a sirdar of the Gularzai,” translated the syce, “His name Allah-din Khan. He does not know the Hazûr, and this is his country. Hazûr, he says, does not belong to the Sirkar here (the Government, or administration), but is a stranger. Further down the tangi is a wide space where all can pass one another. ‘Let those who come up then make way for those who come down.’ Those are the words of the sirdar.” Here was an impasse. Helston Varne noticed on his kinsman’s face a sort of apoplectic tendency to grow purple. He realised that the situation was critical—very. He noticed likewise that the expression on the faces of the opposite party was one of scowling determination, but he further noticed that there was nothing insolent or provocative in it. This seemed to save the situation. His keen brain saw a way out. It was rather a funny one, but it might answer. “See now, Gholam Ali,” he said, in Hindustani, of which he had a thorough knowledge. “When we sportsmen have a difference we throw up a coin, and decide according to choice whether the King’s head is uppermost or not. The Gularzai are sportsmen like ourselves. So we can toss up for who shall give way.” He produced a rupee, and watched the face of the chief while this was put to him. The latter gave a slight nod, and said a word or two to his followers. They crowded forward. “What does the sirdar say?” went on Helston. “The King’s head or the other side?” “The King’s head,” was the answer. “Good. Let one of them throw up the rupee,” said Helston, handing it over. A tall, hook-nosed barbarian came forward, and taking the coin, sent it spinning high in the air. It came down with a clink, rebounded, and settled. The King’s head was undermost. “‘Tails.’ We’ve won,” said Helston, looking up. “But if they’d like two out of three, we can call again.” But the sirdar shook his head. “It is child’s play,” he said. “Still—a test is a test—and a game a game. We keep to it.” And to the intense relief of at any rate two of them, he turned his camel round, and retraced his way up the tangi, followed by his retinue. “Well I’m damned!” was all that Coates could muster. “No you’re not. We’ve got round that hobble,” answered his kinsman placidly. “It was rather a funny situation though, wasn’t it. Fancy tossing for priority of way, bang, so to speak, in the heart of the earth. Well, Allah-din Khan is a sportsman anyhow.” “Is he? Wait a bit. We haven’t passed him yet.” And the answer carried a potential suggestiveness, which, under the circumstances, was unpleasant. However, such was not borne out by events. A few hundred yards higher up, the tangi widened out considerably, and here they found the sirdar and his following awaiting them. Helston said a few pleasant and courteous words as they passed, which were gravely but not sullenly, received. But the hostile stare on the faces of the chief’s following, there was no mistaking. “That’s what comes of sending the escort on ahead,” said Varne Coates. “If they’d been along we needn’t have stood any nonsense from Mr Allah-din Khan. It would have been man for man then, or very nearly, and a good deal more than rifle for rifle.” “Don’t know it isn’t a good thing that we did,” answered the other with some conviction. “The evenness of numbers would probably have brought on a row. And I’m perfectly certain any one of those chaps is equal to any two of ours, if not three.” “But the rifles?” “Even then, they wouldn’t have given us time to use them. No. I think we’re well out of that racket, Coates.” “All right. I shall be glad to see camp anyhow. I’m yearning for a long, stiff, cool peg. Wrangling and getting into a wax is very dry work. Well, we’re not far off now, thank the Lord.” The tangi was widening out considerably. The cliffs no longer rose sheer and facing each other, but had changed into tumbling crags and pinnacles, and terraced ledges, while beyond lay a glimpse of more open country. But on one hand the mouth of the pass was dominated by a huge, magnificent cliff wall. “Look there,” cried Coates, glancing at a point halfway up this where some objects were moving. “Markhôr—three of them! But they are wild. At that height they ought to be standing calmly staring at us, and they’re off already as if the devil was after them.” And as the words left his mouth, the answer—the explanation—came, startlingly, unpleasantly. For an echoing roar broke from the cliff front just below the point they had been scanning, and something heavy and vicious and convincing thudded hard with a “klopf” against a boulder just to the right of Helston. The rock face was marked as with the splatter of blue lead. “We’re being sniped, by God?” exclaimed Coates, reining in. The syce had instinctively drawn behind the nearest boulder, and had dismounted. Again came the crash, together with a score of bellowing reverberations as the echoes tossed from crag to crag. This time the missile shaved the neck of Helston’s horse so close as to set that noble animal snorting and curvetting in such wise that the rider was put to some trouble to keep his seat. “This is damn silly,” growled Coates. “Well, there’s nothing for it but to take cover and think it out. If we could only get a glimpse of the soor.” There were many loose boulders at the entrance to the chasm, and only in the nick of time did they get behind two of these. For a third bullet hummed over the very spot, now in empty air, a fraction of a second ago occupied by Helston and his horse. “He’s getting our range now, and no mistake,” went on Coates. “Now we must try and get his. Just about halfway up the khud there, below where we sighted the markhôr.” For some minutes there was no further sign. The sniper seeing now nothing to snipe at, did not snipe. Meanwhile he was enjoying the fun of keeping two of the ruling race crouching behind rocks for their lives. He had the best part of the day before him to enjoy it in, for it was quite early afternoon, and his time was all his own. When they came out into the open, as sooner or later they would be sure to do—for they were but scantily endowed with the saving grace of patience, these infidels—then he would have them; the whole three, with good fortune; only he would spare the syce perhaps, because he was a believer. “This is a nice cheerful country, Coates, and a fairly eventful day of it,” remarked Helston. “First, we as nearly as possible have a hand to hand scrap for the right to pass an exceedingly cut-throat looking gang of ruffians, then no sooner are we clear of that than we have to slink behind stones like scared rabbits, because some sportsman unknown takes it into his head that we make very good moving targets at a given distance. And I don’t quite see the way out, that’s the worst of it. Do you?” “Not unless we can get a sight on the budmash,” was the reply. “I’ve put mine at four hundred yards.” “Yes. That would do it,” agreed Helston. “Stop. I’ve got an idea—give me a leg up to the top of this boulder. There are several loose stones there that I can get behind, and use as sort of loopholes.” “Better not. He’ll have you there to a dead cert,” warned the other. “I’ll chance that. So. That’s it.” Whether the sniper had seen this move, or whether he himself was tired of inaction, another bullet now pinged hard and viciously against the boulder itself. This just suited Helston Varne. He was able in that moment’s flash to locate the lurking place of their enemy, and himself, lying flat, was able to get his piece forward, and cover it. With the aid of a loophole-like formation of the stones he felt that he could not miss. “Work the dummy trick, Coates,” he called back, in a low voice. “Draw his fire somehow. I’ve got the spot exactly covered, and—I think we shall soon be on our road again.” “All right,” came back the answer. “I’ll give a cough when I’m all ready to show the lure.” It was a strange drama this duel between hidden foes, and for its setting one of the wildest scenes of wild Nature. The mountain side opposite, rising in huge terraced cliffs, the ledges affording sparse hold for a scanty growth of pistachio shrub. Beneath, the stones and boulders of the now dry watercourse, and behind, the craggy entrance to the great tangi. No vegetation either, save coarse dry grass, no sign of life, unless a cloud of kites, wheeling in circles high overhead, against the blue. And, facing each other, unseen, two units of humanity lay there, each bent on relieving the human race of one. Then Varne Coates coughed. But simultaneously, with the echoing roar from the cliff face, Helston pressed trigger. The sound from opposite was not that of a missile striking a hard substance. “Got him,” he said, quietly. “Yes. He’s done. I could see it plainly. He got it just under the chin, as he was watching the effect of his pull-off.” “The effect of his pull-off,” said Coates, “is that he’s got the range plumb by now, and if anything had been inside the boot I stuck out, its owner would have gone very lame for life. Look hereat it.” And he held it up showing a hole neatly drilled just above the ankle. “Sure you’ve got him though?” “So sure that—Well, look.” Helston had slid down from his coign of vantage, and now deliberately walked forth into the open. Here he stood for a few moments, gazing up at the cliff. “That’s practical faith at any rate,” said Coates, grimly. “Yes, you certainly must have ‘got him,’ or he’d have got you by this. Still, it’s risky. There might have been two of them.” “There might, but there weren’t.” “How the deuce could you tell that?” “By the systematic way the one was getting the range.” “Oh, good old Sherlock Holmes again!” laughed Coates. “Now we can head for that ‘peg’ I was yearning for just now, and in dry fact—devilish dry—have been ever since.” “What are we going to do about—that?” said Helston, with a nod in the direction of their late menace. “Do? Why, not say a damn thing about it to anybody. Gholam Ali won’t for his own sake. He’s half a Pathan himself and knows better than to advertise trouble. Yes, as you were saying—it’s a nice cheerful country this, not dull by any means.” The other laughed significantly. “No,” he said. “But this time it’s a case of the sniper sniped.” And then they both laughed. <hr /> <div class="page-break"></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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