“He speaks no English, but he may help to teach thee the Rajput tongue, and he will serve thee well—on my honor. His throat shall answer for it! Feed him and clothe him, sahib, but pay him very little—to serve well is sufficient recompense.”
Young Cunningham gave his keys at once to the silent servant, as a tacit sign that from that moment he was trusted utterly; and Mahommed Gunga nodded grim approval.
“Thy father saw fit to bequeath me much in the hour when death came on him, sahib. I am no boaster, as he knew. Remember, then, to tell me if I fail at any time in what is due. I am at thy service!”
Tact was inborn in Cunningham, as it had been in his father. He realized that he ought at once to show his appreciation of the high plane of the service offered.
“There is one way in which you could help me almost at once, Mahommed Gunga,” he answered.
“Command me, sahib.”
“I need your advice—the advice of a man who really knows. I need horses, and—at first at least—I would rather trust your judgment than my own. Will you help me buy them?”
The Raiput's eyes blazed pleasure. On war, and wine, and women, and a horse are the four points to ask a man's advice and win his approval by the asking.
“Nay, sahib; why buy horses here? These Bombay traders have only crows' meat to sell to the ill-advised. I have horses, and spare horses for the journey; and in Rajputana I have horses waiting for thee—seven, all told—sufficient for a young officer. Six of them are country-bred-sand-weaned—a little wild perhaps, but strong, and up to thy weight. The seventh is a mare, got by thy father's stallion Aga Khan (him that made more than a hundred miles within a day under a fifteen-stone burden, with neither food nor water, and survived!). A good mare, sahib—indeed a mare of mares—fit for thy father's son. That mare I give thee. It is little, sahib, but my best; I am a poor man. The other six I bought—there is the account. I bought them cheaply, paying less than half the price demanded in each case—but I had to borrow and must pay back.”
Young Cunningham was hard put to it to keep his voice steady as he answered. This man was a stranger to him. He had a hazy recollection of a dozen or more bearded giants who formed a moving background to his dreams of infancy, and he had expected some sort of welcome from one or two perhaps, of his father's men when he reached the north. But to have men borrow money that they might serve him, and have horses ready for him, and to be met like this at the gate of India by a man who admitted he was poor, was a little more than his self-control had been trained as yet to stand.