Chapter Twenty Three.
Camp—and a Conversation.
The camp was pitched in open ground, and had the drawback of that—for there were no shading trees or sheltering heights, as to which Varne Coates remarked that it didn’t matter a curse about shading trees if only that any moment a swarm of locusts might happen along and feed off all the “shade” within half an hour or so, leaving them as bare as Hyde Park in January; while as for the sheltering heights, well they had just seen what those could “shelter”—and it was better to be out of range of such.
The point on which the camp was pitched could certainly boast no charm of picturesqueness. It stared out upon open plains destitute of foliage, and rendered here and there even more ugly by low humps of hill, whose mud coloured domes were relieved here and there by white streaks of gypsum. Bounding it on both sides, but at some little distance, rose craggy mountain ridges, good stalking ground for markhôr and gadh, and, from another side of the operation, the same, as we have seen, for the Gularzai sniper. But the big living tent was roomy, and as replete with such travelling comfort as only comfort-loving India somehow, seemed ever able to run to: and the sleeping tents, too, were not wanting in that much to be appreciated advantage. These, and the tents of the various servants, the khansamah tent, and those of the Levy sowars who formed the escort, made up quite a respectable sized nomad village.
“Wonder if Ford’ll turn up to-morrow,” remarked Coates, as they sat smoking their after-dinner cheroots under the stars in front of the big tent. Ford was the Conservator of Forests for the district of Mazaran—incidentally there were no “forests” worthy of the name in the said district, but Ford was Forest Officer nevertheless, and drew his pay as such all the same.
“Ford? Oh, yes, of course,” answered Helston, shooting out a big trail of smoke and pulling himself out of a big meditation in which he had been wrapped. “Yes. He’ll do. He’s all right.”
“Yes. And on this infernal frontier it’s not a bad thing to have another hard man around who can shoot straight. These soors don’t love us any too well—as you’ve seen to-day.”
It might be asked under the circumstances why the devil two men should be such fools as to go putting their heads into the lion’s mouth, by camping around here and there right in the heart of a wild country peopled by hostile and fanatical barbarians, just for the sake of shooting a few wild goats. But—there you are. They were Englishmen, and this, we suppose, is an all sufficing answer.
“What a rum thing it is, Helston,” went on Coates, jumping to another subject, “that you should have run into my old pal Seward Mervyn. I’ve often thought about it, do you know?”