“Does she? Finds it dull, perhaps, now, without those two jokers. She’s never happy without a lot of them strung around her.”
“So? These blue-eyed, fluffy headed girls usually are that way, I have observed. They are wonderfully taking, but—lacking in depth.”
“Thought at one time she was rather stringing yours on to her collection of scalps, old chap,” said Upward, with a sly chuckle.
“Because we went out chikór shooting together once or twice?” replied Campian tranquilly. “Talk of the devil—there are some chikór.” And the next few minutes were spent in dismounting—a rapid fifty paces through the sparse herbage—a whirr of wings—the triple crack of guns—and a brace and a half of birds retrieved by the attendant forest guard; while the remainder of the covey, having gained the mountain side, was crawling up the rock slopes like spiders on a wall.
“See that hole, Campian?” said Upward, soon after they had resumed their way. “That’s the markhôr cave. There’s always a markhôr there, the people say.”
“Let’s go and see if he’s at home now, except that we’ve only got shot guns,” replied Campian, looking up at the black fissure pointed out, and which cleft the rock face some distance overhead, seeming to start from a grassy ledge. It looked by no means an inaccessible sort of place.
“Bhallu Khan says he wouldn’t be in now,” said Upward, who had been talking in Hindustani to the old Pathân. “He only sleeps there.”
“So? Well, I don’t believe in his markhôr then, Upward. If the brute was so regular in his habits as all that, he’d have been shot long ago.”
“Very likely. But Bhallu Khan says the people are afraid of him. They don’t believe he is a real markhôr, but a spirit that takes the form of one. He is guarding some buried treasure, and it’s unlucky to go near the place.”
“It wouldn’t be unlucky if they found the treasure, by Jove! What does it consist of?”