The Marriage of Meldrum Strange. Talbot Mundy
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to give me a concession to exploit this forest. If it comes off, look to me for help in the other matter. Think what it would mean.”
“I’m thinking.”
Diana the staghound was growling in a sort of subterranean undertone, not more than loud enough for Ommony to hear. He glanced to his right, where an enormous teak-tree, mother of the grove around her, reached three-quarters as high as the rock. An almost naked jungli in a gap among the lower branches caught his eye and signaled. Ommony’s eye followed the line of the jungli’s arm.
“That might be your|tiger,” he said quietly.
“Where? Show me!”
Strange clutched his rifle that he had leaned against a corner of the rock, and looked over Ommony’s shoulder, trying to get the line.
“You see a rock about a hundred yards from the base of this one—shaped roughly like an egg at this end. Carry your eye to the right from that. Now: d’you see a patch of brown leaves with light and shadow playing on them. Part’s lighter than the rest—more gold in it. You get that? That’s your tiger. He’s looking up at us. It’s a very difficult shot indeed from here.”
“I used to shoot well once. I’ll have a crack at him.”
Strange aimed, and hesitated. The light played tricks with his unaccustomed eye. It was almost as if the shadow were limpid water, with little patches of sunlight dancing on it. The angle was awkward and the rifle heavy. He stepped back behind the rock and rested the weapon on a projecting corner.
“Now!” he said, and began to aim again. “Is he still there? I’ve lost sight of him.”
“Still there, looking up at you.”
“Curse that dog! She’ll scare the brute away!”
“Better shoot then.”
“He’s moving, isn’t he?”
“That was his head that moved. He’s standing head-on toward you. He’s heard us talking. His tail’s twitching now. Can you see it? He’ll make his mind up in a minute. Better be quick. You’ll likely kill him if you hit him at this angle.”
Strange fired.
“Too late, and a yard wide—to the right and beyond him,” said Ommony. “Well, perhaps he’ll take the hint. Some do.”
“I wonder if this foresight’s any good,” said Strange, battling with irritation. “Was that the man-eater?”
“No. One at a time. That was only a greedy brute that kills more than he needs. Too bad you missed, but he gets another chance.”
“You don’t tell me you can recognize one tiger from another in that light, through the branches! How d’you know he isn’t hit, and hiding down there?”
“It’s part of my business to know that sort of thing,” said Ommony, and glanced at Diana. She was lying down licking herself. “That tiger’s a quarter of a mile away by now, and still going.”
“I’d like to look,” said Strange. “I didn’t see him go. I don’t believe he did.”
“All right. Go down and look. You’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll sit here and smoke while you hunt for him,” said Ommony.
But he made a signal to the jungli, who dropped from a lower branch and kept an eye on Meldrum Strange as one would watch a new unusual animal.
1 ↑ “Pickings.”
3. "Perhaps a hundred years from now——"
CHAPTER III
“Perhaps a hundred years from now——”
OMMONY sat smoking and smiling to himself, but he was dreadfully afraid. The smile was hard at the corners. No woman feared for her child, or fought on occasion more shiftingly for it, than he for that forest. His heart was in it. He would have said his soul was in it, too. Several times he had had to counter-sap and mine against the assault of British capitalists. This American was likely to be more resourceful, that was all. He knew the blindness of the money-giant, and its cruelty; its over-riding tactics, and the almost insignificance of ordinary honesty opposed to it.
He had not told Meldrum Strange that nearly all the mother-trees were teak. He had not dared. But Strange would find that out. And he had a notion that it would be better to inform a wolf that there were lambs in a certain valley.
True, Strange was supposed to have retired from the ranks of industry. But there are said-to-be-tamed wolves. Who trusts them? King, Grim, Ramsden were as good men as there are. But so is fire good, until employed by an incendiary. Strange’s eleventh hour resolution to reform the world by the weight of his maneuvered money was only wolf-eat-wolf at best; to judge from Charley’s and Jeff Ramsden’s accounts, the again-to-be-protected people had preferred to protect themselves in the ancient way from uninvited interference.
Strange was bitter with ingrowing disappointment. Nothing in the circumstances was likelier, thought Ommony, than that in the twinkling of an eye, his new internationally interwoven system of bureaus of impertinent information should be changed into the thousand fanged heads of an industrial monster. A wolf is a wolf. A man who is afraid imagines things.
In one sense Ommony’s mood was mischievous. It amused him to see a “money baron” stripped of his pretensions, naked, as it were, to an observing eye. In less than a month he thought he could have fun with Meldrum Strange—quiet fun, that would do Strange no harm, possibly some good, and certainly amuse himself, But fear for his forest overcame all other emotions.
He knew how sensitive the Government would be to suggestions. Already one of the main planks of the revolutionary agitators’ platform was the British Government’s alleged neglect of Indian industry. The Western disease of exploitation for exploitation’s sake had its spores in, and was spreading. Big Business had its eye on three hundred millions of possible “wage-earners.” The first thing to go would be the trees. They always go first.
You may much more safely bum a decent fellow’s house and take his money than undo the work he has laid his hand to. Whatever is indecent in him comes to the surface then. There was a change in Ommony’s eye. His teeth bit deeper into the notch on the horn mouthpiece of his pipe, and Diana, dumb but all-observing, came closer to lay a shaggy head on his knee and wonder what next?
Ommony did not move when he heard a rifle-shot. He was surprized that Meldrum Strange should have gone so far in so few minutes, but supposed the man’s enthusiasm for the chase, or his rage at having missed, was making a fool of him. Now, no doubt, he was shooting at rustling undergrowth. Next, he would lose himself. But there was more than one jungli on the job to hunt him back, and it would be rather amusing afterwards to compare Strange’s version of it all with theirs. A man who is lost in the jungle, too, imagines things.
Ten minutes later he did not even look up when Diana pricked her ears, and he heard Jeff Ramsden’s unmistakable heavy footsteps clambering the look-out rock. He was not afraid of anything Jeff might do, without Strange to persuade him and direct.
“Sorry, old man,” said Jeff from behind him, leaning on a rifle, “I’ve made a bloomer. Charley and I found what we supposed were leopard tracks and followed them to about half a mile from here. I fired at a glimpse in the thicket. Hit a tiger, and he got away into the undergrowth. Charley’s watching the place, and I came to make my peace with you.”
Ommony got to his feet.
“Did you call the