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Updated: June 17, 2025
Only on certain nights of the year, when the tuskers called from the jungles, and the spirit of the wild was abroad, would their love of liberty return to them. But to all this little Muztagh was distinctly an exception. Even though he had been born in captivity, his desire for liberty was with him just as constantly as his trunk or his ears. He had no love for the mahout that rode his mother.
He sold Muztagh's mother to an elephant-breeder from a distant province. Little Muztagh saw her march away between two tuskers down the long elephant trail into the valley and the shadow. "Watch the little one closely to-night," Dugan Sahib said to his mahout. So when they had led him back and forth along the lines, they saw that the ends of his ropes were pegged down tightly.
Not only the jungle folk marvelled at the sound. At an encampment three miles distant Ahmad Din and his men heard the wild call, and looked with wondering eyes upon each other. Then out of the silence spoke Langur Dass. "My lord Muztagh has come back to his herd that is his salute," he said. Ahmad Din looked darkly about the circle. "And how long shall he stay?" he asked.
They were horsehair ropes, far beyond the strength of any normal nine-year-old elephant to break. Then they went to the huts and to their women and left him to shift restlessly from foot to foot, and think. Probably he would have been satisfied with thinking, for Muztagh did not know his strength, and thought he was securely tied.
He was an able hunter and, after the manner of the elephant-trackers, the scared little man followed Muztagh through jungle and river, over hill and into dale, for countless days, and at last, as Muztagh slept, he crept up within a half-dozen feet of him. He intended to loop a horsehair rope about his great feet one of the oldest and most hazardous methods of elephant-catching.
We are of the same womb, thou and I. Can I not understand? These are not my people these brown men about the fire. I have not thy strength, Muztagh, or I would be out there with thee! Yet is not the saying that brother shall serve brother?" He turned slowly back to the circle of the firelight. Then his brown, scrawny fingers clenched. "Am I to desert my brother in his hour of need?
But Muztagh wakened just in time. And then a curious thing happened. The native could never entirely believe it, and it was one of his best stories to the day he died. Any other wild tusker would have charged in furious wrath, and there would have been a quick and certain death beneath his great knees. Muztagh started out as if he had intended to charge.
Just as a pugilist will invite a blow to draw his opponent within range, Muztagh pretended to leave his great shoulder exposed. The old bull failed to see the plot. He bore down, and Muztagh was ready with flashing tusk. What happened thereafter occurred too quickly for the eyes of the elephants to follow. They saw the great bull go down and Muztagh stand lunging above him.
Langur Dass's face lit suddenly. "Then it could be none but Muztagh, escaped from Dugan Sahib fifteen years ago. That calf was also white. He was also overgrown for his years." One of the trackers suddenly gasped. "Then that is why he spared Khusru!" he cried. "He remembered men." The others nodded gravely. "They never forget," said Langur Dass.
Muztagh was a long way from being an albino, yet a tendency in that direction had bleached his hide. And the man knew that on the morrow Dugan Sahib would pay him a lifetime's earnings for the little wabbly calf, whose welcome had been the wild cries of the tuskers in the jungle. He was born with the memory of jungle kingdoms, and the life in the elephant lines almost killed him with dulness.
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