had got
her from Colonel Cumner the night he escaped from Mandakan.
For this mare the hill-chief had returned no gift save the gold bracelet
which Cumner's Son now carried in his belt.
The mare leaned low on her bit, and travelled like a thirsty hound to
water, the sorrel tugged at the snaffle, and went like a bullmoose
hurrying to his herd,
"That long low gallop that can tire The hounds' deep hate or hunter's
fire."
The pace was with the sorrel. Cumner's Son had not looked behind
after the first few miles, for then he had given up thought that he might
be followed. He sat in his saddle like a plainsman; he listened like a
hillsman; he endured like an Arab water-carrier. There was not an
ounce of useless flesh on his body, and every limb, bone, and sinew
had been stretched and hardened by riding with the Dakoon's horsemen,
by travelling through the jungle for the tiger and the panther, by
throwing the kris with Boonda Broke, fencing with McDermot, and by
sabre practice with red-headed Sergeant Doolan in the barracks by the
Residency Square. After twenty miles' ride he was dry as a bone, after
thirty his skin was moist but not damp, and there was not a drop of
sweat on the skin-leather of his fatigue cap. When he got to Koongat
Bridge he was like a racer after practice, ready for a fight from start to
finish. Yet he was not foolhardy. He knew the danger that beset him,
for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs
might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for
him, and he only found peace for his mind upon the point by
remembering that he had told no secrets, had given no information of
any use to the foes of the Dakoon or the haters of the English.
On this hot, long, silent ride he looked back carefully, but he could not
see where he had been to blame; and, if he were, he hoped to strike a
balance with his own conscience for having been friendly to Boonda
Broke, and to justify himself in his father's eyes. If he came through all
right, then "the Governor"--as he called his father, with the friendly
affection of a good comrade, and as all others in Mandakan called him
because of his position--the Governor then would say that whatever
harm he had done indirectly was now undone.
He got down at the Koongat Bridge, and his fingers were still in the
sorrel's mane when he heard the call of a bittern from the river bank.
He did not loose his fingers, but stood still and listened intently, for
there was scarcely a sound of the plain, the river, or jungle he did not
know, and his ear was keen to balance 'twixt the false note and the true.
He waited for the sound again. From that first call he could not be sure
which had startled him--the night was so still--the voice of a bird or the
call between men lying in ambush. He tried the trigger of his pistol
softly, and prepared to mount. As he did so, the call rang out across the
water again, a little louder, a little longer.
Now he was sure. It was not from a bittern--it was a human voice, of
whose tribe he knew not--Pango Dooni's, Boonda Broke's, the
Dakoon's, or the segments of peoples belonging to none of
these--highway robbers, cattle-stealers, or the men of the jungle, those
creatures as wild and secret as the beasts of the bush and more cruel
and more furtive.
The fear of the ambushed thing is the worst fear of this world--the
sword or the rifle-barrel you cannot see and the poisoned wooden spear
which the men of the jungle throw gives a man ten deaths, instead of
one.
Cumner's Son mounted quickly, straining his eyes to see and keeping
his pistol cocked. When he heard the call a second time he had for a
moment a thrill of fear, not in his body, but in his brain. He had that
fatal gift, imagination, which is more alive than flesh and bone,
stronger than iron and steel. In his mind he saw a hundred men rise up
from ambush, surround him, and cut him down. He saw himself firing a
half-dozen shots, then drawing his sword and fighting till he fell; but he
did fall in the end, and there was an end of it. It seemed like years while
these visions passed through his mind, but it was no longer than it took
to gather the snaffle-rein close to the sorrel's neck, draw his sword,
clinch it in his left hand with the rein, and gather the
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