rode up fast, and the falcon rose from its prey. Chingiz, without drawing rein, leaned from his saddle and picked up the partridge: he smoothed its feathers and passed it to Derrick. It was a fine cock bird, beautifully marked and plump.
The falcon hovered above their heads, staring from side to side. Chingiz whistled, called and held up his arm; the fierce bird floated gently down and sat there preening until Chingiz slipped the hood over its head.
Derrick looked at it with admiration; he felt the ill-temper draining out of him, and he was sure that next time he had a shot he would do better. They rode on until they came to a little dip in the plain. ‘You stay there,’ said Chingiz, ‘and I will go there.’ He made a sweeping motion with his arm.
Derrick stood in the hollow and watched Chingiz gallop out in a wide curve: then he understood that Chingiz meant to drive the birds over him. He crouched in the hollow, with his gun ready. His pony stood grazing twenty yards behind him. He watched one covey rise and go away in the wrong direction, and then he saw Chingiz rise in his stirrups and wave his arm. The partridges rose almost at his feet – Derrick saw his pony shy – and came straight towards the hollow. Derrick picked his birds carefully, picked them with the greatest care as they veered away in easy shot to his left; he waited, waited, and then pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. He had forgotten the unfamiliar safety-catch on the new gun. The partridges saw him, rose again with a sudden whirr and vanished over the plain.
He was still staring after them when Chingiz rejoined him. Derrick gave him a forced smile, and before Chingiz could say anything he handed him the gun, with the safety-catch off, and ran over to his pony, shouting that he would see if he could drive some birds over the hollow for Chingiz to try for.
Derrick rode out: the plain was full of birds; they were so very rarely shot here that they were not at all shy, but it was some time before he started a covey that went in the right direction. However, he did succeed in the end, although he was rather far from the hidden dip. He watched the birds go. They stopped whirring and glided on and on towards the hollow; but they did not quite clear it. They pitched just this side of it, landed and regrouped. They were walking about, quite calm and unconcerned, within five yards of Chingiz as he crouched there. He waited until they were well bunched together and then blazed both barrels right down the middle of them. Only two birds flew away: the remaining nine lay slaughtered on the ground.
‘Good shot?’ said Chingiz, as Derrick returned.
‘It was the most unsporting thing I have ever seen in my life,’ said Derrick in English; but Chingiz understood very well from the tone of his voice that he was angry. Chingiz shrugged his shoulders, let the gun fall carelessly and walked over to the partridges. He threw them one by one over to Derrick, counting them as they came. Suddenly Derrick let them drop. ‘Why should I carry them?’ he asked, with an ugly oath he had learnt at sea. ‘You murdered them, so you might as well carry them.’
Chingiz turned a baleful look upon him. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked.
Derrick searched for a Mongol word that might mean unsporting, but he could not think of one, and the best he could do was to use some expressions that he had heard in the serai. He was not sure of their meaning, but he was pretty sure that they were unpleasant, and he was not surprised to see Chingiz frowning heavily.
Derrick was already feeling rather sorry that he had let his bad temper get the better of him, but when he saw Chingiz give his new gun a contemptuous kick as he stalked past it, he could not resist saying still another word, which for all he knew was ruder still. It was hardly out of his mouth before the Mongol was on him, hitting right and left and kicking for his stomach. Derrick stopped him with a short jab to the nose and they backed away. Chingiz drew his knife with one lightning movement, hesitated for a second, struck it into the ground, and came in again. Derrick was ready for him and let out a straight left which stopped him short, and then a swinging right to the ear. The Mongol had no sort of guard, and for a moment it was easy to keep him at a distance, smashing in a quick succession of blows. One caught him on the point of his jaw and he fell flat on his back: he lay there for a second, spitting blood, and then he was up. Derrick never knew what hit him, but he had a vague impression of being gripped by both ears while his head was battered against the ground like the hammer of an alarm clock. At some time, too, a head or a knee had hit him in the stomach, and teeth had met in his forearm; but that was all lost in the swirl of darkness, and when he came slowly out of it he had a faint notion of having been run over by a steam-roller.
He was lying on his back, staring at the sky: for a moment he did not move, and then, between him and the sky he saw Chingiz, standing over him with his long knife in his hand.
‘Better?’ asked Chingiz.
Derrick did not reply, but gathered himself to spring.
Chingiz shook his head and smiled. He waved his head, said something in Mongol and pointed to Derrick’s arm. Derrick looked, and saw that his sleeve was already rolled up: Chingiz squatted down, squeezed Derrick’s arm so that the veins stood out and made as if to cut one gently with his knife.
‘No,’ said Derrick, getting to his feet. ‘I’m better now.’ He understood, with immense relief, that Chingiz had meant to let some blood, as the Mongols did for horses, so that he should recover; but still, he did not much care for the operation.
‘Better?’ asked Chingiz again.
‘Yes, quite better, thank you very much,’ said Derrick, and after a moment he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He was, indeed: he felt ashamed of himself, and he knew that he had got what he deserved. He had got a good deal, he discovered: his left eye was already so swollen that he could hardly see out of it, and it was swelling still; his ears felt as if they had been wrenched off and roughly sewn on again, and he had parted company with one of his eye-teeth. Furthermore, there was no hair left at all over quite a large area of his scalp.
He was feeling his head when he caught Chingiz’s eye, and laughed. He pointed to the gap in his teeth, and Chingiz showed his ear, now swollen to the size of a muffin, and standing out at right angles to his head. They were both in very bad shape: Derrick lent Chingiz his handkerchief for his bloody nose, and Chingiz held his cold knife-blade against Derrick’s purple eye; they patched one another up as well as they could, and walked slowly over to the unmoved ponies. Suddenly Derrick noticed that although Chingiz had brought the gun, he had left the partridges. Derrick ran back for them, meaning to show that he had been in the wrong, but Chingiz was there before him, and as they bent to gather the birds they cracked their heads together with such force that Derrick went over again, half stunned. This really amused Chingiz, and almost for the first time Derrick heard him laugh; he stood there rubbing his head, wheezing and doubled up with laughter, pointing first to his own head, then to Derrick’s and then to the partridges. Derrick was sure that it was very funny, but for the moment his head was so battered and reeling with the shock that he could not see the point of the joke.
As they rode slowly back, Derrick tried to explain why it was so dreadful to shoot sitting birds, but Chingiz could not understand.
‘You want to eat them?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Derrick.
‘So you kill them?’
‘Yes,’ said Derrick, ‘but not on the ground.’
‘Why not?’ asked Chingiz, amazed, ‘it is easier, and you kill more. So you eat more, and waste no powder.’
Derrick tried again, and finally Chingiz jumped to the conclusion that it was something to do with Derrick’s religion. He knew that Christians did many strange things,
