THE COMPLETE WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard 1865-1936 Kipling
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to-day. 'Tis holiday for me. I do not go to Mrs. Estes to-day.'
The King turned on Tarvin swiftly, and spoke under his breath.
'Must he see that doctor lady every day? All my people lie to me, in the hope of winning my favour; even Colonel Nolan says that the child is very strong. Speak the truth. He is my first son.'
'He is not strong,' answered Tarvin calmly. 'Perhaps it would be better to let him see Miss Sheriff this morning. You don't lose anything by keeping your weather eye open, you know.'
'I do not understand,' said the King; 'but go to the missionary's house to-day, my son.'
'I am to come here and play,' answered the Prince petulantly.
'You don't know what Miss Sheriff's got for you to play with,' said Tarvin.
'What is it?' asked the Maharaj sharply.
'You've got a carriage and ten troopers,' replied Tarvin. 'You've only got to go there and find out.'
He drew a letter from his breast-pocket, glancing with liking at the two-cent American stamp, and scribbled a note to Kate on the envelope, which ran thus:--
'Keep the little fellow with you to-day. There's a wicked look about things this morning. Find something for him to do; get up games for him; do anything, but keep him away from the palace. I got your note. All right. I understand.'
He called the Maharaj to him, and handed him the note. 'Take this to Miss Kate, like a little man, and say I sent you,' he said.
'My son is not an orderly,' said the King surlily.
'Your son is not very well, and I'm the first to speak the truth to you about him, it seems to me,' said Tarvin. 'Gently on that colt's mouth--you.' The Foxhall colt was dancing between his grooms.
'You'll be thrown,' said the Maharaj Kunwar, in an ecstasy of delight. 'He throws all his grooms.'
At that moment a shutter in the courtyard clicked distinctly three times in the silence.
One of the grooms passed to the off side of the plunging colt deftly. Tarvin put his foot into the stirrup to spring up, when the saddle turned completely round. Some one let go of the horse's head, and Tarvin had just time to kick his foot free as the animal sprang forward.
'I've seen slicker ways of killing a man than that,' he said quietly. 'Bring my friend back,' he added to one of the grooms; and when the Foxhall colt was under his hands again he cinched him up as the beast had not been girt since he had first felt the bit. 'Now,' he said, and leaped into the saddle, as the King clattered out of the courtyard.
The colt reared on end, landed stiffly on his forefeet, and lashed out. Tarvin, sitting him with the cow-boy seat, said quietly to the child, who was still watching his movements, 'Run along, Maharaj. Don't hang around here. Let me see you started for Miss Kate.'
The boy obeyed, with a regretful glance at the prancing horse. Then the Foxhall colt devoted himself to unseating his rider. He refused to quit the courtyard, though Tarvin argued with him, first behind the saddle, and then between the indignant ears. Accustomed to grooms who slipped off at the first sign of rebellion, the Foxhall colt was wrathful. Without warning, he dashed through the archway, wheeled on his haunches, and bolted in pursuit of the Maharajah's mare. Once in the open, sandy country, he felt that he had a field worthy of his powers. Tarvin also saw his opportunity. The Maharajah, known in his youth as a hard rider among a nation of perhaps the hardest riders on earth, turned in his saddle and watched the battle with interest.
'You ride like a Rajput,' he shouted, as Tarvin flew past him. 'Breathe him on a straight course in the open.'
'Not till he's learned who's boss,' replied Tarvin, and he wrenched the colt around.
'Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done! Well done!' cried the Maharajah, as the colt answered the bit. 'Tarvin Sahib, I'll make you colonel of my regular cavalry.'
'Ten million irregular devils!' said Tarvin impolitely. 'Come back, you brute! Back!'
The horse's head was bowed on his lathering chest under the pressure of the curb; but before obeying he planted his forefeet, and bucked as viciously as one of Tarvin's own broncos. 'Both feet down and chest extended,' he murmured gaily to himself, as the creature see-sawed up and down. He was in his element, and dreamed himself back in Topaz.
'Maro! Maro!' exclaimed the King. 'Hit him hard! Hit him well!'
'Oh, let him have his little picnic,' said Tarvin easily. 'I like it.'
When the colt was tired he was forced to back for ten yards. 'Now we'll go on,' said Tarvin, and fell into a trot by the side of the Maharajah. 'That river of yours is full of gold,' he said, after a moment's silence, as if continuing an uninterrupted conversation.
'When I was a young man,' said the King, 'I rode pig here. We chased them with the sword in the springtime. That was before the English came. Over there, by that pile of rock, I broke my collar-bone.'
'Full of gold, Maharajah Sahib. How do you propose to get it out?'
Tarvin knew something already of the King's discursiveness; he did not mean to give way to it.
'What do I know?' answered the King solemnly. 'Ask the agent sahib.'
'But, look here, who does run this State, you or Colonel Nolan?'
'You know,' returned the Maharajah. 'You have seen.' He pointed north and south. 'There,' he said, 'is one railway line; yonder is another. I am a goat between two wolves.'
'Well, anyway, the country between is your own. Surely you can do what you like with that.'
They had ridden some two or three miles beyond the city, parallel with the course of the Amet River, their horses sinking fetlock-deep in the soft sand. The King looked along the chain of shining pools, the white, scrub-tipped hillocks of the desert, and the far distant line of low granite-topped hills, whence the Amet sprang. It was not a prospect to delight the heart of a King.
'Yes; I am lord of all this country,' he said. 'But look you, one-fourth of my revenue is swallowed up by those who collect it; one-fourth those black-faced camel-breeders in the sand there will not pay, and I must not march troops against them; one-fourth I myself, perhaps, receive; but the people who should pay the other fourth do not know to whom it should be sent. Yes; I am a very rich king.'
'Well, any way you look at it, the river ought to treble your income.'
The Maharajah looked at Tarvin intently.
'What would the Government say?' he asked.
'I don't quite see where the Government comes in. You can lay out orange-gardens and take canals around them.' (There was a deep-set twinkle of comprehension in his Majesty's eye.) 'Working the river would be much easier. You've tried placer-mining here, haven't you?'
'There was some washing in the bed of the river one summer. My jails were too full of convicts, and I feared rebellion. But there was nothing to see, except those black dogs digging in the sand. That year I won the Poona cup with a bay pony.'
Tarvin brought his hand down on his thigh with an unguarded smack. What was the use of talking business to this wearied man, who would pawn what the opium had left to him of soul for something to see? He shifted his ground instantly.
'Yes; that sort of mining is nothing to look at. What you want is a little dam up Gungra way.'
'Near the hills?'
'Yes.'
'No man has ever dammed the Amet,' said the King. 'It comes out of the ground, and sinks back into the ground, and when the rain falls it is as big as the Indus.'
'We'll have the whole bed of it laid bare before the rains begin--bare for twelve miles,' said Tarvin, watching the effect on his companion.
'No man has dammed the Amet,' was the stony reply.
'No