Barclay of the Guides Page 2

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  The Making of a Pathan

  Eight years before this raid of Minghal's on Shagpur, a small boy, dark,bright-eyed, happy-looking, was sitting on the grass at some littledistance from an open tent, nursing a wooden sword, and trying to makeconversation in babbling Urdu with a big, swarthy, bearded Pathan whosquatted opposite him, and smiled as he tried to understand and answerthe little fellow's questions. From the tent came the sound of voices,and the Pathan would now and then lift his eyes from the child and darta keen glance towards the spot where Mr. George Barclay,deputy-commissioner of the district, was engaged in dealing with one ofthe troublesome cases that came before him for settlement.

  For many years the dwellers in the plains of the Panjab had sufferedfrom the encroachments of their neighbours in the hills. At first thesehill-men only came to the plains in the winter-time, when their own barelands became uninhabitable from frost and snow, and returned in thesummer, when they might find sustenance for their flocks, and goodhunting. But seeing the weakness of the plain-dwellers and the fertilityof their soil, the hill-men had not been satisfied with paying thesewinter visits, and, after remaining as uninvited guests, returning totheir own place without having made a domicile in the plains. They beganto regard the land on which they temporarily settled as theirs, and byand by exacted tribute from the rightful owners. Thus they becamepossessed of two homes, one for the winter, one for the summer.Naturally this seizure of property was little to the liking of theplain-dwellers. They made some resistance and fought the oppressors, butwere no match in arms for the more warlike hill-men. When, however, thePanjab was incorporated in the dominions of John Company, some of thedispossessed land-owners took advantage of the well-known respect of theBritish for law to make an attempt to recover their property through theagency of their new rulers; and it was to show cause why he should notyield the lands he held in the plain that Minghal Khan, one of the hillchieftains, had been summoned before the deputy-commissioner.

  Minghal obeyed the summons grudgingly. In the hills he was free, andowned no master save God; it irked him that any one, least of all thesahib-log, infidels, eaters of pigs, should question his rights in theplains; for though he knew that the lands in dispute were not his byinheritance, yet might was right, and if the plain-men were not strongenough to hold them--why, so much the worse for them. And when he camedown from the hills to argue the case before the British commissioner,he begged his nearest neighbour, Rahmut Khan of Shagpur, to accompanyhim and give him at least moral support. Rahmut did not refuse thisrequest; but he was above all things a warrior; he had no skill inreasoning, like his more wily neighbour Minghal; and while the latterwas using all his eloquence, every trick and artifice of which he wascapable, to persuade Mr. Barclay that forcible possession was of moreaccount than title-deeds, Rahmut amused himself by talking to andplaying with the deputy-commissioner's little son. The boy's mother haddied in Lahore some little while before, and his father kept himconstantly in his company, even when his duties called him into remoteparts of his district.

  Rahmut, like all his race, was passionately fond of children; thefearlessness of the bright-eyed boy appealed to him, and day after day,while Minghal was waiting his turn, and when he was trying Mr. Barclay'spatience inside the tent, Rahmut spent hours with the boy, giving himrides on his horse, laughing as he strutted by with a wooden sword,allowing him to fire a shot or two from his pistol. And so, by the timeMinghal's case was decided Rahmut and Jim Barclay--the big, beardedPathan warrior of near sixty years, and the English boy of eight--werefast friends.

  Minghal lost his case. The deputy-commissioner decided against him, andgave judgment that he must quit the lands he had usurped. Minghal leftthe tent in a rage, muttering curses on the infidel dog who hadrejected, quietly but firmly, all his pleas, and declaring to Rahmutthat he would one day have his revenge. Rahmut was not a whit morefriendly disposed to the new rulers than was Minghal himself; but he wasa man of few words, and never threatened what he could not at onceperform. Moreover, he had never thought much of his neighbour's case,and was not surprised at its failure. Minghal found him less sympatheticthan he considered to be his due, and returned to his home in the hillsin a very ill humour.

  The opportunity for vengeance came sooner than he could have expected.In the spring of the next year, when a civil servant named Vans Agnewand Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay army were escorting a new diwan orgovernor to the city of Multan, they were treacherously attacked, andtheir murder was the signal for a general uprising of the Sikh soldiery.News of the rebellion was carried through the country with wonderfulspeed; it came to the ears of Rahmut and Minghal, and, fretting as theywere under the restraints imposed upon them by the proximity of theBritish, they resolved at once to make common cause with the revoltedSikhs. It happened that Mr. Barclay had lately "gone into camp" at aspot very near the place where he had given his decision againstMinghal. The Pathan chiefs set off with their armed followers, rushedMr. Barclay's almost unprotected camp, for he had as yet heard nothingof the revolt at Multan, and the deputy-commissioner, without a moment'swarning, was shot through the heart. His little son would have sufferedthe same fate, so bitter was the tribesmen's enmity against all theFeringhis, but for Rahmut, who remembered how much he had been attractedby the boy, and saw an opportunity for which he had yearned--ofproviding himself with an heir. One of his wives, now dead, had bornehim two sons, but both had died fighting against Ranjit Singh, and histwo living wives had given him only daughters. In such cases it wascommon for a chief to adopt a son and make him his heir. Rahmut, nowgetting on in years, had envied the English sahib who was blessed with aboy so sturdy and frank and fearless. While Minghal, therefore, waswreaking his vengeance on the father, Rahmut caught up the son, set himon his saddlebow, and forbade any of his men to lay hands on him. He hadresolved to take the boy back with him by and by to Shagpur, to bringhim up as a Pathan, and if he proved worthy, to proclaim him his heir.

  Minghal was very indignant when the old chief announced his intention.The boy, he protested, was an infidel dog: it was shame to a Pathan anda follower of the Prophet to show kindness to any of the hated race whohad laid their hands on this land, claiming tribute from the free-men ofthe hills, deposing and setting up governors at their will. But Rahmutwould not be denied. Minghal dared not cross the old warrior; for themoment he appeared to acquiesce, but in his heart he hated his neighbourchief, and resolved from that time to set himself in rivalry againsthim. If he could not remove the boy, he could at least bide his time,and when Rahmut's time came to die, it should be seen whether he couldnot rely on racial and religious prejudice to prevent the scandal of atribe being ruled by an infidel Feringhi.

  Rahmut kept the boy with him in the Panjab through the campaign. Hejoined forces with the troops sent by the king of Kabul to theassistance of the Sikhs. He fought in the terrible battle ofChilianwala, and when Gough signally routed his brave enemy at Gujarat,he fled with the Afghans and Pathans to their inaccessible hills,escaped the pursuit of the Company's troops, and reached in safety hismountain home at Shagpur.

  Then he carried out his intention. He called the boy Ahmed, and had himtrained in the Mohammedan faith by the mullah of his village, who taughthim to read the Koran (though, being in Arabic, he never understood aword of it). Ahmed wore a white turban, kept the Musalman fasts andfeasts, and though he was at first very miserable, and wept often forthe father he had lost, he gradually forgot his early life, anddelighted his new father's heart as he grew up a straight, sturdy Pathanboy. Rahmut was wonderfully kind to him. His wives were at first jealousof the boy, and there were some in the village who never lost theirfirst distrust and envy of him; but as years passed by, and Ahmed provedhimself to be as bold and daring as he was sunny-tempered, as good athunting and warlike exercises as he was in the ritual of religion, hebecame a favourite with most. The chief visited with heavy punishmentsome who dared to give expression to their resentment at his adoption ofa Feringhi boy,
and after that the ill-feeling died down, and if anyremained it found an outlet only in murmurs which the envious ones werecareful to keep from their chief's ears.

  Ahmed was now sixteen. He was his adoptive father's constant companionat home; but the old chief, while he allowed the boy to take part in hishunting expeditions, would never permit him to share in the raids whichhe sometimes made on the villages of his neighbours, nor in thehorse-stealing enterprises he ventured in the British lines. He seemedto be beset by a fear lest the boy should be snatched from him, and inparticular he dreaded lest any contact with the British should awakedormant recollections in his mind and be the means of carrying him backto his own people. The only experience Ahmed had of contests with menhad been gained in occasional attacks on caravans of merchants as theypassed between Persia and Afghanistan. But now that the boy was sixteen,Rahmut thought it was high time, he should be married in accordance withthe customs of his country, and was looking about for a suitable bride.The old chief argued that when Ahmed was married there would be lesslikelihood of his ever wishing to leave his tribe, and he might then begiven a greater freedom and take a full share in all their activities.

  Though Ahmed thus had few enemies in Shagpur itself, there was one inMinghal's village of Mandan who caused Rahmut Khan some anxiety. Thiswas his nephew Dilasah, a man near forty years old. Dilasah had expectedto succeed his uncle in the chiefship, but he was an idle,ill-conditioned fellow, not without a certain fierce bravery whenroused, but little inclined to bestir himself without great cause,exceedingly fond of eating, and very fat. For him Rahmut had the deepestcontempt. There was a stormy scene between uncle and nephew when theFeringhi boy was brought to the village and formally adopted by the oldchief; Rahmut poured out his scorn upon Dilasah, and the latter withdrewin high wrath and indignation from the village and joined himself toMinghal's folk. Rahmut was at first glad to be rid of him, but as yearspassed, and Minghal, by cunning wiles and stealthy diplomacy, increasedhis influence in the country and drew more and more men into his tribe,the chief of Shagpur foresaw that one day he might have serious troublewith his rival, and that the succession of Ahmed would be disputed. Buthe hoped that he would live long enough to see the boy develop into afull-grown warrior, able to hold his own by force of arms if the needshould arise.

  If he had guessed that his absence on the horse-stealing expeditionwould be taken advantage of by his enemy, he would without doubt haveremained at home. But he had heard that Minghal had gone westward tointercept a caravan of cloth merchants on the road to Kabul; it was atrick of Minghal's to draw the old man out of the way; and thus ithappened that the village was so poorly defended when Minghal made hisattack.