The Marriage of Meldrum Strange. Talbot Mundy
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“Did you see Strange?”
“No.”
They strode down the track together, where the wheel-marks came to an end and the fire-lane took advantage of rock on which nothing would grow—then plunged out of that wide opening into a narrow lane made by wild elephants and kept from growing up again by Ommony’s patrol; out of that into a maze of criss-cross tracks, along which Jeff led with a hunter’s instinct; at last into a natural clearing entered by a dozen trails, near the end of one of which Charley sat on a fallen tree beside the two dogs.
“No sound of him,” said Charley. “But the dogs seem to think he’s in there.”
Something Charley said after that made Jeff laugh, and the deep note boomed along a glade.
“Hey! Where are you?” shouted another voice, and Ommony chuckled.
From about a hundred yards away there came a noise greater than that of ten tigers, as a heavy man thrust his way against dry branches.
“Better rescue him, hadn’t I?” asked Jeff.
“He’s in safe hands.”
“Send Diana.”
“No, he’d think she was a wild beast and shoot her. I’ll manage it.”
Ommony put two fingers to his teeth and whistled. Within the minute a jungli appeared in an opening and stood waiting without any visible emotion. Ommony spoke words unintelligible to the others and the jungli disappeared.
“Is he in there, Di?” said Ommony, and the staghound began nosing, but not growling, near the edges of the thicket, into which Jeff and Charley agreed the tiger had escaped. Diana barked once, and looked puzzled, but continued not to growl at all.
“He’s in there. I think he’s dead,” said Ommony.
“Shall we try?” asked Charley, from the depths of inexperience.
“No. Wait.”
Strange emerged into the opening, pushed by one jungli, pulled by another.
“These savages are tearing me to pieces!” he objected. “Why are you here? I thought you were to wait for me on the look-out rock.”
“We think there’s a dead tiger,” Charley piped up.
The intention was good. He meant to draw Strange’s irritation away from Ommony toward himself. He did banish the irritation. Strange’s face suddenly shone with triumph. He left off fingering his torn jacket.
“I told you I hit him!” he said, thrusting out his chin at Ommony.”
“Yes, you did say so.”
Ommony turned his back to hide a grin, winked at the other two, and began peering into the undergrowth. Jeff took twenty strides down the track behind him, picked up an empty brass shell, and obliterated traces of his own heels in the leaf-mold. Ommony sent a jungli up a sar-tree, to crawl along an overhanging branch and peer downward. The 'jungli' said two words. Ommony answered. The jungli broke off dead wood and dropped it—spoke again.
“All right,” said Ommony. “Dogs in first.”
SO DIANA led the way, with the other two yelping at her heels. The junglis hacked along behind them with the knives that were their only badge of office. In five minutes Ommony was counting the whiskers and claws of a male tiger, lest the men who would have to take the pelt off should add to their private store of talismans against the devils of the forest.
“There!” said Strange. “You said I’d kill him if I hit him from that angle.”
That was Strange’s measure of concession, magnanimous for sake of the proprieties. His voice was an unrighteous crow, and Ommony, with his finger in the bullet-hole, making note of the angle of impact, said nothing. Jeff gathered up the carcass and carried it out into the clearing, while the junglis clucked in amazement, because it takes four of them to carry a grown tiger, on a pole; and only Ommony observed how carefully Jeff laid the carcass down. Strange might otherwise have seen the hole through which the bullet emerged, after tearing straight across from rib to rib, behind the heart—out of a rifle nearly on a level with the tiger, broadside-to.
“Huh! My first tiger! Hu-humm!”
It was meant there should be others to follow this one. Acquisitiveness had its claws in. To Meldrum Strange there was no such thing as enough of anything he liked. Now he would no longer have to be satisfied to smile contemptuously at club-members, who donated big-game trophies to decorate the rooms—with their names underneath on neat brass plates—he would be one of them. After all, he wasn’t only a millionaire, he was a human being who had missed a lot of fun he was entitled to.
“You asked me to stay a month, I think?”
“Yes, at least a month,” said Ommony.
“I will.”
Three faces changed. Jeff’s and Charley’s fell; they had been confident that Strange would cut his visit short, and had hoped to be left behind him for a few days. Ommony’s rose like a barometer. His enemy had delivered himself into his hand.
“The forest is yours,” he said delightedly, but added, “for a month then,” by way of afterthought.
“It’ll suit me,” Strange announced pompously. “Do my health good. And I needn’t waste time, seeing I’ve Ramsden with me. Have you horses, Mr. Ommony?”
Jeff’s face fell lower yet. He shook his head at Ommony from behind Strange’s back. But Ommony could not deny he had three horses in the stable.
“Good. If you’ll lend me two horses, and a few of your savages to show the way, I can ride about with Ramsden and we’ll have a good look at this forest of yours. Something might come of it.”
Ommony did not care. He never did doubt Destiny when Destiny dealt him the joker. He trod homeward with a lighter step, enduring Strange’s arrogance without a twinge, indifferent to the fact that the other two were gloomy.
“And as for Charley,” Strange said suddenly, “I’ll send him home.” Perhaps some memory of how Charley had attached himself revived resentment. “You’re not cut out for this kind of thing,” he said over his shoulder. “You’d better return to New York on the next ship. I’ll give you an order on the New York office for your pay.”
“Can you beat that?” asked Charley in an overtone to the world at large.
“Keep you from bumming about India. Go home, and go to work!” Strange snorted.
Jeff’s terrific grip on Charley’s shoulder saved a hot retort, Jeff having notions of his own, and the rest of the walk home was made in silence, Strange being awkwardly aware of a great storm brewing behind him. But he was set on his purpose now. No argument from Jeff or any one was going to move him one iota. Charley should go home. Jeff and he would ride about the forest, appraising it, and killing big game. He strode up the steps of Ommony’s bungalow as if he owned the place, and Jeff intercepted Ommony.
“D’you care if I’m in there alone with him first for a minute or two?” Jeff asked.
“Very much. I object!”
“I want a minute’s talk with him. If he answers back, I’ll thrash him. He may have the tiger, but he can’t treat Charley that way, and keep me. I’m through with the brute.”
“One minute,” said Ommony. “Just how far are you and I friends?”
Jeff hesitated, looking straight into Ommony’s eyes. Each knew the other for a man worth trusting, but the big man’s anger had risen until the veins on his forehead swelled.
“This isn’t the first time