CHAPTER XII

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_*BEATING THE KOOND.*_

As the boondee, with its two Mysore oxen, came in sight, Major Iffley, who had been watching for it at the gate of the deputy's compound, rode out to meet it.

"Come, old boy," he said to Mr. Desborough; "we are only waiting for you. Marching orders have been out an hour or more. Come in and change your coat. No use going on an errand like ours in any colour but dead-leaf brown. St. Faine has got one waiting for you. Only be quick, for the brutes have not yet left their lair, and we have a four-mile ride to reach it."

Out sprung Mr. Desborough. Dare he put so much faith in a few faint marks on a crumbling clod? Yet he was the first in the saddle as the hunting-train set forth from Runnangore. A most singular sight awaited them. As they looked down into the valleys they saw them filled with fluttering wings, and every mountain height encircled by its reddish cloud. All locusts, and nothing but locusts. Vultures and kites flew about in great disorder. A cold breeze from the hills told of the probability of a coming storm. In sheltered places the oppression in the air was awful. The locusts called off the attention of the men, but they also concealed them from the keen, bright eyes that were waking up with thoughts of evening prey.

As they drew nearer the hills, the ground became so rough and broken the horses began to stumble. There was nothing for it but to dismount, leave the horses with the grooms, and proceed on foot. Tara Ghur, the old hunter with the wonderful Tartar eye, took the lead. On, on they crept in perfect silence, until they perceived the sheen of a pool of water sparkling at their feet. It lay at the base of a projecting spur of rock, and was overlooked by the picturesque ruins of a native temple. It was small, and overgrown with tall tropical weeds. The flight of steps to the temple court was half buried in mud. The white pillars of the colonnade which surrounded it were still unbroken, but the dome above the shrine had fallen in. Yew and cypress flourished on the spot where Hindu suppliants were used to bring their offerings to Mata Devee, the dreaded goddess of destruction.

How strange Oliver felt it to be living in a land where idols abound! One by one they climbed the broken stair, and gathering round the prostrate figure of the fallen idol, arranged their plan. From this ascent they looked down upon the sombre depths of the rugged koond. Round the shoulder of the hill, on the other side, was the entrance to a similar gorge. Tara Ghur led them towards the one in which he had dug up the footprint. He sent the jogies forward one after the other, like a living ladder, until they reached the topmost height of the precipice at the back of the koond.

Another division, who were to act as scouts, climbed the trees, some of them warily venturing further and further into the leafy abyss, leaping like monkeys from bough to bough.

Mr. Desborough, the deputy, and the major took up their position where the opening was the narrowest, so that no living thing hiding within the darkest recesses could rush out unseen. Mr. Desborough and the deputy were on one side; the major, Oliver, and the old shikaree on the other. The space between them was scarcely more than fifty yards across. Old Tara had marked the trees commanding the surest outlook. Mr. Desborough was the first to mount to his post of observation. The hunter handed him up his loaded gun.

"No, no," said the father; "no firing."

"No firing!" repeated the major. "Then how do you expect to recover the child from a pack of raging wolves? Face the truth like a man, Desborough. If your boy is alive in this jungle, some wolf has adopted him, and it will guard that child with all the affectionate fidelity of a noble-hearted dog."

"Ah! but you need the true, clear eye and unerring hand of a William Tell. Not one of us possesses them. No, no; I dare not suffer a single shot to be fired," answered the father desperately.

"Well," interposed the deputy soothingly, "nothing of the sort may be necessary. We are not yet sure this child, if child there be, is yours. Trust us, we have come to save it, not to hurt it. Still, I say, we must rescue it at all risks."

"Time, sahib, time presses," urged the shikaree.

They climbed into their appointed places. The deputy and Mr. Desborough on their side commanded the better view. Then the jogies began their work at the back of the koond, hurling down fragments of rock and stones, striking and crashing among the trees, beating tomtoms and howling with all their might. The terrific row they made was repeated by the hollow echoes from the opposite side of the winding gorge, and was enough to scare even bears and tigers from their sleep.

The shouts redoubled. A tiny white flag, waving on the top of a long bamboo, fluttered above the tree-tops. It was the signal from the jogies on the heights. Something had been viewed. All the father's life seemed centring in his eye and ear. The cry of the jackals was beginning. The scream of the owls was echoed back from the temple ruins, where the bats were wheeling in endless circles. Then up rose the moon, flooding the temple hill with its silvery radiance, and giving an exaggerated profundity to the depths of the ravine. The pool, or jheel, below the overhanging rock shone like a burnished shield. In the open ground between, which the beasts must cross as they were driven out of the koond, any object could be clearly seen. Then the scouts who were posted in the trees by the sides, each with his matchlock, blazed away with powder only, to prevent any of the beasts rushing up the steep, and turn them back towards the watchers by the entrance. There was a crashing and heaving in the thick underwood. A tiger showed and hid again in the jow.

Oliver's heart gave a great bound. Oh no, it was not fear! But he felt the presence of danger, and his cheek grew pale with excitement. Not a shot was fired; not a sound escaped them. There must be nothing to intimidate the other inmates of the koond which might be following. The dead silence was broken only by the tiger's grunting. Did it scent its foes in the trees around? It did what nothing but a tiger could ever do--sent its innocent young cub before it into the danger. What a contrast between the tiger and the wolf! But for once the unsuspecting young one did not fall a sacrifice to its mother's selfishness. It ran towards the water, crouching in the moonje grass which tigers love so well. Another furious onslaught from the jogies, and the mother flashed past like lightning, rearing up and roaring as it plunged into the jheel. The scouts came down from the trees and began to talk. They were half afraid the tiger was the only game that would show that night. Should they move on to the second koond to seek for the wolves? Then Tara Ghur bade all be still. His ear detected a movement in the distance--a tremor among the leaves, which no one else would have perceived. The scouts changed their places, flying back to the trees, and blazed away as before.

They were near to that korinda bush, but they did not know it. The tiger had started, and the patriarch of the wolves gave tongue from the other koond.

Mr. Desborough turned away from the darkness of the koond to watch the gaunt, lean, savage forms that were gathering on the moonlit ground to follow the track of the tiger. A movement in the tangle around escaped him. But Tara Ghur was aware of it. Oliver saw him bend forward, and his eye was quick to follow the hunter's. Tara knew that something was coming along the track where he dug up the footprint.

That footprint! The father was thinking of it. The trace was so slight, yet it was exactly like Horace's. His heart was sickening with suspense. Were they on a wrong scent, after all? thought the major, when out leaped the family from the korinda, with answering cries to the leader of the pack, who was rushing down the slope. The appalling howls of his following, as they gathered from brake and bush, might have chilled the stoutest heart. No child was there. The tall grass bent and swayed about the tree; then a small white form bounded from the midst of it like a kangaroo, but the old gray wolf was beside it.

Shouts from opposite sides of the ravine gave warning that something had been sighted. The small white thing dropped in the towering grass. A gun was fired. It was Major Iffley's. The wolf had pounced upon her nursling. The gun was loaded with small shot for the purpose. The major fired along the ground. The wolf received the charge in her shoulder. They could see her clawing the earth as she felt the pain, and then dropped down as if she were dead in the tufted grass. They could hear the screams of the terrified child.

"Carl! Carl!" Mr. Desborough called in coaxing tones of fatherly endearment, which rose to command as he met with no reply. The scouts were darting from point to point, as far as ground and jungle permitted. The three friends sprang down from the trees, only charging Oliver to stay were he was. They loaded their guns with ball, and advanced cautiously to within a yard or so of the giant grass tuft. They stationed themselves at even distances, that whichever way the wolf leaped out they might be ready to shoot him sideways through the head, so that the ball should not enter the tuft of grass. Their first object was to rouse the wolf and make it show. They trusted that terror would prevent the child leaving the shelter in which it lay concealed.

Tara Ghur had broken off a tall branch from the tree in which he had remained, and creeping along one of its mighty arms, peered down into the grass, but could see nothing. He stirred it up with the broken branch, but roused nothing except a screaming pea-hen.

He leaped to the ground. "The wolf is gone!"

"But the child--the child!" gasped Mr. Desborough, laying down his gun and forcing his way into the tangled mass. No child was there. The wolf had doubled upon them so swiftly and so stealthily, it seemed as if the ground had opened to swallow it up. The scouts jumped down from their trees, and all separated, taking different paths, to try and find which way the wolf had gone,--all but the old shikaree and Oliver, who was still aloft. Mr. Desborough was foremost; he no longer waited for the hunter's guidance. Yes, he had seen his child. He believed now it was his fair-haired boy. He had seen him and lost him again. The thought was madness. The major, gun in hand, kept close beside him.

Tara Ghur, who seemed, like the owl, to possess the power of seeing in the dark, was tracing the way the wolf had come, not the path by which it had fled from them.

Oliver, beginning to be afraid of being left behind in so wild a spot, climbed down again and followed the hunter, who was the last to leave it. The sailor-boy had climbed so high into his tree, thinking to gain a more commanding view, that he had not seen all that was taking place at its foot. Having first met Oliver in the company of the Rana's son, old Tara Ghur regarded him with something of the devotion and respect he felt for his native chief. He knew the boy was safest by his side, and invited him by gesture to follow. So the two crept on through the pathless wild no foot but theirs had ever penetrated.

If Oliver had found it hard work forcing his way with Gobur through the grass clump by the river, it was nothing to the task before him now. There were sudden drops into unseen nullahs, or watercourses, and a dangerous climb in the darkness up the steep bank, facing rolling stones from the jagged heights above. Now and again their only course was to climb the trees, and swing themselves from bough to bough. But through it all the hunter traced out the path of the wolf with an unerring dexterity that was perfectly marvellous to Oliver, tracking its course to the sweeping boughs of the deserted korinda bush.

The bones about the gray wolf's home were gnawed and dry. It was evident the hungry mother had suppered her young family on snails and field-mice; and she must have gone far afield for these, for the hunting-grounds about the hairy nest had been clearing fast of late. Old Tara tried to explain his purpose, but Oliver did not half understand. He could only watch what the hunter was doing, and second his efforts whenever he could.

"Child been here, sahib!" exclaimed Tara Ghur suddenly, after carefully groping round and round the well-made lair.

But their object was to capture, not to kill, and Oliver began to wonder more and more how this could ever be effected.

The shikaree paused in perplexity. He had passed his life among the wildest fastnesses of the district. He had watched the ways of the living creatures who lorded it there. He had studied the tastes, habits, and disposition of every creature in the forest. He was well aware the wolves would draw to their lair with the return of day, and prepared to watch the night out by the korinda bush. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. He sprang up and began anew to examine the ground around the path the wolf had chosen. A deep hole, the burrow of some wild animal, gave him intense satisfaction. He heaved aside the decaying arm of a tree which had fallen across it. Oliver came to his help, and adding his strength to that of the wiry hunter, they dislodged it altogether, and laid the burrow open.

Oliver saw that it was a dangerous pitfall, and wondered what was to be done with it.

Tara leaped down and began to enlarge it with the hunting-knife he carried in his belt. Then he tore off a huge piece of bark from a neighbouring tree, and pulled up a shrub by the roots. With this impromptu shovel and broom he set himself to clear out the loose earth and stones which had collected in the bottom of the hole.

Oliver meanwhile was keeping guard over the shikaree's skin of meal and the earthen pot, which on this particular occasion did not contain water. What it did contain he could not imagine, for the edge was sticky in the extreme. Before the moon began to wane the burrow was enlarged to a good-sized pit. The shikaree grew exultant. He beckoned to Oliver to follow him, and the two wandered about among the trees until they found some giant leaves of a bauhinia creeper.

They stripped the stem as far as they could reach, and returned with their load of leaves to the edge of the pit.

The shikaree spread them on the ground before it. Then he smeared them over with the contents of his jar.

"What is it?" thought Oliver--"bird lime?"

Then he saw what the clever old man was about--making a wolf-trap.

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