of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. 'It is long since I have ridden this way, but thy boy's talk stirred me. See, Holy One – the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road – all hard – takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are only country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road for the heavy carts – grain and cotton and timber, bhoosa, lime and hides. A man goes in safety here – for at every few kos is a police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners (I myself would patrol it with cavalry – young recruits under a strong captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All castes and kinds of men move here. Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters – all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.'
And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles – such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed police-station opposite.
'Who bears arms against the law?' a constable called out laughingly, as he caught sight of the soldier's sword, 'Are not the police enough to destroy evil-doers?'
'It was because of the police I bought it,' was the answer. 'Does all go well in Hind?'
'Ressaldar Sahib, all goes well.'
'I am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the bank and draws it in again. Ay, this is the road of Hindustan. All men come by this way..'
'Son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to scratch thy back upon? Father of all the daughters of shame and husband of ten thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a devil, being led thereto by her mother; thy aunts have never had a nose for seven generations! Thy sister – What owl's folly told thee to draw thy carts across the road? A broken wheel? Then take a broken head and put the two together at leisure!'
The voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of dust fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. A thin, high Kattiwar mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam, snorting and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of a shouting man. He was tall and gray-bearded, sitting the almost mad beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between plunges.
The old man's face lit with pride. 'My child!' said he briefly, and strove to rein the pony's neck to a fitting arch.
'Am I to be beaten before the police?' cried the carter. 'Justice! I will have Justice – '
'Am I to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand sacks under a young horse's nose? That is the way to ruin a mare.'
'He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,' said the old man. The carter ran under the wheels of his cart and thence threatened all sorts of vengeance.
'They are strong men, thy sons,' said the policeman serenely, picking his teeth.
The horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came on at a canter.
'My father!' He reined back ten yards and dismounted.
The old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as do father and son in the East.
CHAPTER IV
Good Luck, she is never a lady,
But the cursedest quean alive.
Tricksy, wincing, and jady —
Kittle to lead or drive.
Greet her – she's hailing a stranger!
Meet her – she's busking to leave!
Let her alone for a shrew to the bone
And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!
Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!
Give or hold at your will
If I've no care for Fortune,
Fortune must follow me still!
THEN, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.
'Let us go on. The River is not here.'
'Hai mai? Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not run away. Patience, and he will give us a dole.'
'That,' said the old soldier suddenly, 'is the Friend of the Stars. He brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man Himself, in a vision, giving orders for the war.'
'Hm!' said his son, all deep in his broad chest. 'He came by a bazar-rumour and made profit of it.'
His father laughed. 'At least he did not ride to me begging for a new charger and the gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers' regiments also under orders?'
'I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case – '
'In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts all! But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is needed there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the marching. Let us see – let us see.' He thrummed on the pommel.
'This is no place to cast accounts in, my father. Let us go to thy house.'
'At least pay the boy then: I have no pice with me, and he brought auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as thou hast said.'
'Nay, as I know, the war,' returned Kim composedly.
'Eh?' said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.
'My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news – bear witness we brought the news, and now we go.' Kim half-crooked his hand at his side.
The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and would feed them well for some days. The lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned a blessing.
'Go thy way, Friend of all the World,' piped the old soldier, wheeling his scrawny mount. 'For once in all my days I have met a true prophet – who was not in the Army.'
Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as the younger.
A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road. He had seen the money pass.
'Halt!' he cried in impressive English. 'Know ye not that there is a takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter the road from this side-road. It is the order of the Sirkar, and the money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the ways.'
'And the bellies of the police,' said Kim, skipping out of arm's reach. 'Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came from the nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law. Hast thou ever heard the name of thy brother?'
'And who was he? Leave the boy alone,' cried a senior constable, immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the veranda.
'He took a label from a bottle of belaitee-pani (soda-water), and, affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who passed, saying
