The Adventures of Kathlyn | Page 3

with
a nod toward the door. "I never showed you this before."
"Goodness gracious!" cried Winnie, reaching out her hand.
"Why, it looks like a decoration, father," said Kathlyn. "What lovely
stones! It would make a beautiful pendant."
"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," said the colonel, smiling down into their
charming faces. "Do you love your old dad?"
"Love you!" they exclaimed in unison, indignantly, too, since the
question was an imputation of the fact.
"Would you be lonesome if I took the Big Trek?" whimsically.
"Father!"
"Dad!"

They pressed about him, as vines about an oak.
"Hang it, I swear that this shall be the last hunt. I'm rich. We'll get rid
of all these brutes and spend the rest of the years seeing the show
places. I'm a bit tired myself of jungle fodder. We'll go to Paris, and
Berlin, and Rome, and Vienna. And you, Kit, shall go and tell Rodin
that you've inherited the spirit of Gerome. And you, Winnie, shall make
a stab at grand opera."
Winnie gurgled her delight, but her sister searched her father's eyes.
She did not quite like the way he said those words. His voice lacked its
usual heartiness and spontaneity.
"Where did you get this medal, father?" she asked.
[Illustration: Where did you get this medal?]
"That's what I started out to tell you."
"Were you afraid we might wish to wear it or have it made over?"
laughed Winnie, who never went below the surface of things.
"No. The truth is, I had almost forgotten it. But the preparations for
India recalled it to mind. It represents a royal title conferred on me by
the king of Allaha. You have never been to India, Kit. Allaha is the
name we hunters give that border kingdom. Some day England will
gobble it up; only waiting for a good excuse."
"What big thing did you do?" demanded Kathlyn, her eyes still filled
with scrutiny.
"What makes you think it was big?" jestingly.
"Because," she answered seriously, "you never do anything but big
things. As the lion is among beasts, you are among men."
"Good lord!" The colonel reached embarrassedly for his pipe, lighted it,
puffed a few minutes, then laid it down. "India is full of strange
tongues and strange kingdoms and principalities. Most of them are

dominated by the British Raj, some are only protected, while others do
about as they please. This state"--touching the order--"does about as it
did since the days of the first white rover who touched the shores of
Hind. It is small, but that signifies nothing; for you can brew a mighty
poison in a small pot. Well, I happened to save the old king's life."
"I knew it would be something like that," said Kathlyn. "Go on. Tell it
all."
The colonel had recourse to his pipe again. He smoked on till the coal
was dead. The girls waited patiently. They knew that his silence meant
that he was only marshaling the events in their chronological order.
"The king was a kindly old chap, simple, yet shrewd, and with that
slumbrous oriental way of accomplishing his ends, despite all obstacles.
Underneath this apparent simplicity I discovered a grim sardonic
humor. Trust the Oriental for always having that packed away under his
bewildering diplomacy. He was all alone in the world. He was one of
those rare eastern potentates who wasn't hampered by parasitical
relatives. By George, the old boy could have given his kingdom, lock,
stock and barrel, to the British government, and no one could say him
nay. There was a good deal of rumor the last time I was there that when
he died England would step in actually. The old boy gave me leave to
come and go as I pleased, to hunt where and how I would. I had a
mighty fine collection. There are tigers and leopards and bears and fat
old pythons, forty feet long. Of course, it isn't the tiger country that
Central India is, but the brutes you find are bigger. I have about sixty
beasts there now, and that's mainly why I'm going back. Want to clean
it up and ship 'em to Hamburg, where I've a large standing order. I'm
going first to Ceylon, for some elephants."
The colonel knocked the ash from his pipe. "The old boy used to do
some trapping himself, and whenever he'd catch a fine specimen he'd
turn it over to me. He had a hunting lodge not far from my quarters.
One day Ahmed came to me with a message saying that the king
commanded my presence at the lodge, where his slaves had trapped a
fine leopard. Yes, my dears, slaves. There is even a slave mart at the
capital this day. A barbaric fairy-land, with its good