Kim

little guns. Thou wilt keep it for me?'

'Son, I am wearied of that madrissah, where they take the best years of

a man to teach him what he can only learn upon the Road. The folly of

the Sahibs has neither top nor bottom. No matter. Maybe thy written

report shall save thee further bondage; and God He knows we need men

more and more in the Game.'

They marched, jaw-bound against blowing sand, across the salt desert to

Jodhpur, where Mahbub and his handsome nephew Habib Ullah did much

trading; and then sorrowfully, in European clothes, which he was fast

outgrowing, Kim went second-class to St Xavier's. Three weeks later,

Colonel Creighton, pricing Tibetan ghost-daggers at Lurgan's shop,

faced Mahbub Ali openly mutinous. Lurgan Sahib operated as support in

reserve.

'The pony is made--finished--mouthed and paced, Sahib! From now on,

day by day, he will lose his manners if he is kept at tricks. Drop the

rein on his back and let go,' said the horse-dealer. 'We need him.'

'But he is so young, Mahbub--not more than sixteen--is he?'

'When I was fifteen, I had shot my man and begot my man, Sahib.'

'You impenitent old heathen!' Creighton turned to Lurgan. The black

beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the Afghan's dyed scarlet.

'I should have used him long ago,' said Lurgan. 'The younger the

better. That is why I always have my really valuable jewels watched by

a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is

the only boy I could not make to see things.'

'In the crystal--in the ink-pool?' demanded Mahbub.

'No. Under my hand, as I told you. That has never happened before. It

means that he is strong enough--but you think it skittles, Colonel

Creighton--to make anyone do anything he wants. And that is three

years ago. I have taught him a good deal since, Colonel Creighton. I

think you waste him now.'

'Hmm! Maybe you're right. But, as you know, there is no Survey work

for him at present.'

'Let him out let him go,' Mahbub interrupted. 'Who expects any colt to

carry heavy weight at first? Let him run with the caravans--like our

white camel-colts--for luck. I would take him myself, but--'

'There is a little business where he would be most useful--in the

South,' said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy blued

eyelids.

'E.23 has that in hand,' said Creighton quickly. 'He must not go down

there. Besides, he knows no Turki.'

'Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he

will bring them back,' Lurgan insisted.

'No. That is a man's job,' said Creighton.

It was a wry-necked matter of unauthorized and incendiary

correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate

authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the

world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to

book for kidnapping women within British territory. The Moslem

Archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was

merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no

need he should continue a correspondence which might some day

compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder

was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an Arab trader, as

E.23, taking up the work, duly reported.

These facts, and a few others not to be published, made both Mahbub and

Creighton shake their heads.

'Let him go out with his Red Lama,' said the horse-dealer with visible

effort. 'He is fond of the old man. He can learn his paces by the

rosary at least.'

'I have had some dealings with the old man--by letter,' said Colonel

Creighton, smiling to himself. 'Whither goes he?'

'Up and down the land, as he has these three years. He seeks a River

of Healing. God's curse upon all--' Mahbub checked himself. 'He beds

down at the Temple of the Tirthankars or at Buddh Gaya when he is in

from the Road. Then he goes to see the boy at the madrissah, as we

know for the boy was punished for it twice or thrice. He is quite mad,

but a peaceful man. I have met him. The Babu also has had dealings

with him. We have watched him for three years. Red Lamas are not so

common in Hind that one loses track.'

'Babus are very curious,' said Lurgan meditatively. 'Do you know what

Hurree Babu really wants? He wants to be made a member of the Royal

Society by taking ethnological notes. I tell you, I tell him about the

lama everything which Mahbub and the boy have told me. Hurree Babu goes

down to Benares--at his own expense, I think.'

'I don't,' said Creighton briefly. He had paid Hurree's travelling

expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama might

be.

'And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and

devil-dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years.

Holy Virgin! I could have told him all that yeears ago. I think

Hurree Babu is getting too old for the Road. He likes better to

collect manners and customs information. Yes, he wants to be an FRS.

'Hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn't he?'

'Oh, very indeed--we have had some pleasant evenings at my little

place--but I think it would be waste to throw him away with Hurree on

the Ethnological side.'

'Not for a first experience. How does that strike you, Mahbub? Let

the boy run with the lama for six months. After that we can see. He

will get experience.'

'He has it already, Sahib--as a fish controls the water he swims in.

But for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school.'

'Very good, then,' said Creighton, half to himself. 'He can go with

the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the

better. He won't lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would.

Curious--his wish to be an F R S. Very human, too. He is best on the

Ethnological side--Hurree.'

No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on

the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write

'F R S' after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by

ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief,

nothing save work--papers representing a life of it--took a man into

the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange

Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from

a Royal Society soiree in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the

tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy

London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of

the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the

frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for

slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female

mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that

should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their

choice of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of

Hurree Babu, moved by like desire.

He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub.

'How soon can we get the colt from the stable?' said the horse-dealer,

reading his eyes.

'Hmm! If I withdraw him by order now--what will he do, think you? I

have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.'

'He will come to me,' said Mahbub promptly. 'Lurgan Sahib and I will

prepare him for the Road.'

'So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice. But who

will be his sponsor?'

Lurgan slightly inclined his head. 'He will not tell anything, if that