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This request I sleepily granted, thinking that it could make little difference whether he came with us or stayed behind in camp. As things turned out, however, it made all the difference in the world, for if he had not accompanied us, my shikar would in all probability have ended disastrously next day.
Several of these elephants were so well trained that they showed no alarm when a tiger was on foot, at which time an elephant generally exhibits a tendency to nervousness, and cannot be kept motionless by his mahout. A favourite shikar animal had been badly bitten by a tiger a few days before my arrival, and it was feared that she might become shy upon the next encounter.
He was a very dusky-coloured young Pathan about twenty years of age, lithe and active, and honest and pleasant-looking, as Pathans go. He had been my "boy" for some time and was much attached to me, besides having a touching faith in my prowess in shikar: probably, indeed, this was the reason why he stuck so close to me throughout the hunt.
It is essential that the night watcher should be raised about 10 feet above the ground, otherwise the tiger would probably obtain his scent. Night shooting is not attractive to myself, and I very seldom have indulged in such wearisome shikar.
He would start just before dawn on Abdul's shikar camel, be well away from Kot Ghazi by daylight and reach the old deserted dak-bungalow, that no one ever used, by evening. There Abdul would come to him with his bhoja-oont bringing the usual supplies, and on receipt of them he would dismiss Abdul altogether and disappear again into the desert, this time for good.
Thereat Bukta propounded a theory which to a white mind would have seemed raving insanity; but the whispering, level-headed little men of war considered it from every point of view, and thought that there might be a great deal in it. At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the unfailing subject of shikar big game-shooting of every kind and under all sorts of conditions.
Where the highly "educated" was as good as the other he was so by reason of his games and sports, his shikar, or his specialized training as in the case of the engineers and other physically-trained men. Captain John Bruce, for example, Professor of Engineering, was a soldier in a few weeks and a fine one.
I'll listen next time I dweam it, and tell you. Chucko's egg was all brown not white like those cook brings from the bazaar. He's a dam-thief. Open the parcel, Major Thabib. What's in it?" "A picture-book for you, Sonny. All sorts of jolly beasts that you'll shikar some day. You'll tell me some more about the dream to-morrow, won't you?" "Yeth.
He would think of his mother, of some splendid men and women he had known, especially missionaries, medical and other, at Bannu and Poona and elsewhere, and feel that he was really a Christian at heart; and then again in Khost and Mekran Kot, when carrying his life in his hand, across the border, in equal danger from the bullet of the Border Police, Guides, or Frontier Force cavalry-outposts and from the bullet of criminal tribesmen, when a devil in his soul surged up screaming for blood and fire and slaughter; during the long stealthy crawl as he stalked the stalker; during the wild, yelling, knife-brandishing rush; as he pressed the steady trigger or guided the slashing, stabbing Khyber knife, or as he instinctively hallaled the victim of his shikar, he knew he was a Pathan and a Mussulman as were his fathers.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I left the camp at dawn, and went all over the same ground, but with no better success, only seeing a couple of bara singh, hornless now, and therefore comparatively uninteresting from a "shikar" point of view. After a delightful but bearless ramble I returned to breakfast, and then we struck camp, and completed the ascent of the pass over into the Lolab.
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