"It would be easier with a cobra than a constrictor," Cadman had said. "You'd have to strike just the right key, son. This is what I mean: The wireless instruments of the Swastika Line answer to one pitch; the ships of the Blue Toll to another. . . . But I've seen things done—yes, I've seen things done in this man's India. . . . I saw a man from one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas breathe a nest of cobras into repose; also I have seen other brothers pass through places where the deadly little karait is supposed to watch and wait and turn red-eyed."
The more Skag listened and learned and watched in India, the more he realised that if he knew all there was to know about the different orders of holy men, all the rest of knowledge would be included, even the lore of the jungle animals. He had come into his own considerable awe through what he had seen in the forest with the priests of Hanuman, but things-to-learn stretched away and away before him like range upon range of High Himalaya.
Malcolm M'Cord was the best rifle-shot in India. The natives called him Hand-of-a-God. As usual they meant a lot more than a mere decoration. M'Cord was one of the big master mechanics—especially serving Indian Government in engine building—a Scot nearing fifty now. For many years he had answered the cries of the natives for help against the destroyers of human life. Sometimes it was a mugger, sometimes a cobra, a cheetah, often a man-eating tiger that terrorised the countryside. There are many sizeable Indian villages where there is not a single rifle or short piece in the place; repeated instances where one pampered beast has taken his tolls of cattle and children of men, for several years.
The natives are slow to take life of any creature. They are suspicious toward anyone who does it thoughtlessly, or for pastime; but the Hindu also believes that one is within the equity of preservation in doing away with those ravagers that learn to hunt men.
In the early days M'Cord began to take the famous shoot trophies. Time came when this sort of thing was no longer a gamesome event, but a foregone conclusion. His rifle work was a revelation of genius—like the work of a prodigious young pianist or billiardist in the midst of mere natural excellence.
He had wearied of the game-bag end of shooting, even before his prowess in the tournaments became a bore. . . . So there was only the big philanthropy left. The silent steady Scot gave himself more and more to this work for the hunted villagers as the years went on. It sufficed. Many a man has stopped riding or walking for mere exercise, but joyously, and with much profit, taken it up again as a means to get somewhere.
It was Carlin who helped Skag to a deep understanding of her old friend, the Scot, and the famous bungalow in which he lived.
"It is 'papered' and carpeted and curtained with the skins of animals, but you would have to know what the taking of those skins has meant to the natives and how different it is from the usual hunter-man's house. The M'Cord bungalow is a book of man-eater tales—with leather leaves."
Carlin, who had been one of M'Cord's favourites since she was a child, saw the man with the magic of the native standpoint upon him. . . . With all its richness there was nothing of the effect of the taxidermist's shop about the place. Altogether the finest private set of gun-racks Skag had looked upon was in the dim front hall. Bhanah and Nels had a comfortable lodge to themselves, and there was a tiny summerhouse at the far end of the lawn that had been an ideal of Carlin's when she was small. The playhouse had but one door, which was turned modestly away from the great Highway. It was vined and partly sequestered in garden growths, its threshold to the west. The Scottish bachelor had turned this little house over to the child Carlin years ago, as eagerly as his entire establishment now. Yet the woman was no less partial to the playhouse than the child had been.
. . . They hardly saw the Scot. In fact it was only a moment in the station oval. Skag looked into a grey eye that seemed so steady as to have a life all its own and apart, in the midst of a weathered countenance both kindly and grim. . . . There was a tiny locked room on the south side of the bungalow, vividly sunlit—a room which in itself formed a cabinet for mounted cobras—eight or ten specimens with marvellous bodies and patchy-looking heads. . . . The place was heavily glazed, but not with windows that opened. Skag caught the hint before Carlin spoke—that the display might have a queer attraction for cobras that had not suffered the art of the taxidermist.