Son of Power | Page 3

Khand, until Skag couldn't wait any longer. He had to go to India. He told Alec, who wanted to go along, but couldn't leave old Phedra.
"I've been with her too long," he said. "She's delicate, Skagee. I'm young, but she couldn't stand it for me to go. Times are hard for her on the road, and the little herd needs her as she needs me. . . ."
Skag understood that. In fact, he loved it well. It belonged to his world--to be straight with the animals. Gradually as the distance increased between them, the memory of old Alec began to smell as sweet as the sandal-wood chest in Skag's nostrils--the chest and the rose-jar that never could die and the old friend became one identity. . . .
India didn't excite Skag, who was twenty-five by this time. In fact, some aspects of India were more natural to him than his own country. Many people did a lot of walking and they lived while they walked, instead of pushing forward in a tension to get somewhere. Skag approved emphatically of the Now. The present moving point was the best he had at any given time. He thought a man should forget himself in the Now like the animals.
Besides they didn't regulate dress in India; in fact, they dressed in so many different ways that a man could wear what he pleased without being stared at. Skag hated to be stared at above all things. You are beginning to get a picture of him now--unobtrusive, silent, strong in understanding, swift, actually in pain as the point of many eyes, altogether interested in his own unheard-of things.
Alec told him how to reach the jungle of all jungles, ever old, ever new, ever innocent on the outside, ever deadly within--the Grass Jungle country around Hattah and Bigawar--the Bund el Khand. The Cloud Brothers had paid him well for his years; there was still script in his clothes for travel, but Skag had a queer relation to money, only using it when the law required. Not a tight-wad, far from that, though he preferred to work for a meal than pay for it; much preferred to walk or ride than to purchase other people's energy, having much of his own.
He came at last to a village called Butthighur, near Makrai, north of the Mahadeo Mountains in the Central Provinces. On the first day, on the main road near the rest-house, there passed him on the street, a slim, slightly-stooped and spectacled young white man. The face under the huge cork helmet, Skag looked at twice, not knowing why altogether; then he followed leisurely to a bungalow, walked up the path to the steps and knocked. The stranger himself answered, before the servant could come. He looked Skag over, through spectacles that made his eyes appear insane, at times, and sometimes merely absurd. Finally he questioned with soft cheer:
"And what sort of a highbinder are you?"
Skag answered that he was an American, acquainted with wild animals in captivity, and that he had come to this place to know wild animals in the open.
"But why to me?" the white man asked.
"It seemed well. I have looked into many faces without asking anyone. There is no chance of working for the native people here. They are too many, and too poor."
"You do not talk like an American--"
"I do not like to talk."
The white man was puzzled by Skag's careful and exact statements and remarked presently:
"An American asking for work would say that he knew about everything, instead of just animals in captivity."
"I have not asked for work before. I can do without it. I like it here near the forests."
"You mean the jungles--"
"I thought jungles were wet."
"In the wet season."
"Thank you--"
The slim one suddenly laughed aloud though not off-key:
"But I haven't any wild animals in captivity for you--"
Skag did not mind the mirth. He appreciated the smell of the house. It was like a hot earthen tea-pot that had been well-used.
"I will come again?" he asked tentatively.
"Just do that--at the rest-house. I drop in there after dinner--about nine."
That afternoon Skag went into the edge of the jungle. It was a breath of promised land to him. He was almost frightened with the joy of it--the deep leaf-etched shadows, the separate, almost reverent bird-notes; all spaciousness and age and dignity; leaves strange, dry paths, scents new to his nostrils, but having to do with joys and fears and restlessness his brain didn't know. Skag was glad deep. He took off his boots and then strode in deeper and deeper past the maze of paths. He stayed there until the yellow light was out of the sky. At the clearing again, he laughed--looked down at the turf and laughed. He had come out to the paths again at the exact