The high-caste who had bid 3,000 rupees salaamed also.
"Highness, she is yours," he said. "I can not bid against my regent."
It was the custom to mark a purchased slave with the caste of her purchaser. Umballa, still not recognizing her, waved her aside toward the Brahmin caste markers, one of whom daubed her forehead with a yellow triangle. Her blue eyes pierced the curious brown ones.
"The sahib at the river," she whispered in broken Hindustani. "Many rupees. Bring him to the house of Durga Ram." This in case Ali failed.
The Brahmin's eyes twinkled. Her Hindustani was execrable, but "sahib" and "river" were plain to his understanding. There was but one sahib by the river, and he was the white hunter who had rescued the vanished queen from the ordeals. He nodded almost imperceptibly. Inwardly he smiled. He was not above giving the haughty upstart a Thuggee's twist. He spoke to his neighbor quietly, assigned to him his bowls and brushes, rose, and made off.
"Follow me," said Umballa to the happy mahout. Presently he would have his bags of silver, bright and twinkling.
Fate overtook Ali, who in his mad race to Hare's camp fell and badly sprained his ankle. Moaning, less from the pain than from the attendant helplessness, he was carried into the hut of a kindly ryot and there ministered to.
The Brahmin, however, filled with greed and a sly humor, reached his destination in safety. Naturally cunning, double tongued, sly, ingratiating, after the manner of all Brahmins, who will sink to any base level in order to attain their equivocal ends his actions were unhampered by any sense of treachery toward Umballa. A Thuggee's twist to the schemes of the street rat Umballa, who wore the Brahmin string, to which he had no right! The Brahmin chuckled as he paused at the edge of Bruce's camp. A fat purse lay yonder. He approached, his outward demeanor a mixture of pride and humility.
Bruce had returned but half an hour before, mind weary, bone tired. He sat with his head in his hands, his elbows propped upon his knees. His young heart was heavy. He had searched the bewildering jungle as one might search a plot of grass before one's door, blade by blade. A hundred times he had found traces of her; a hundred times he had called out her name, only to be mocked and gibbered at by apes. She had vanished like a perfume, like a cloud shadow in the wind.
His soul was bitter; for he had built many dreams, and always this fair haired girl had ridden upon them. So straight she stood, so calm in the eyes, mannered with that gentleness, known of the brave.… Gone, and skilled as he was in jungle lore, he could not find her.