"His first name is Nut Kut!" said Ram Yaksahn with decision. "But his last name is Pyar-awaz."
All the mahouts laughed; translating the double name in their own minds—-Mischief, the Voice-of-Love.
"We have no violent men in these stockades," said Kudrat Sharif, speaking to them all. "And we do not find that Ram Yaksahn was lacking in courage. We will prove the nature of Nut Kut with kindness."
His decision was conclusive; and they proceeded to encourage the mighty black into his own enclosure.
This was the coming of Nut Kut to the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades at Hurda. As time went by, the attraction of his mysterious nature inflamed the mahouts with interest; and also with concern—for he was a fearsome fighter.
Carlin had gone to a sick sister-in-law for a few days; and as soon as he heard of it, Dickson Sahib had driven to the M'Cord bungalow—realising that without her it would be desolate to his young American friend. Protesting that he needed someone to come and break his own loneliness, he carried Skag home.
So just now Skag was smoking his after-tiffin cigarette in the verandah of Dickson Sahib's big bungalow. The great Highway-of-all-India, with its triple avenue, its monarch trees, swept past the front of the grounds. Several times from here, he had seen a big elephant go joyously rolling by. He could tell it was joyous; and the man on its neck was usually singing.
The very smell of elephants had always stirred Skag—like all clean good earth-smells in one. When he was animal trainer in the circus, the elephants had not been his special charge; but he had seen a good deal of them. They looked to him like convicts; or manikins—moving to the pull of the hour-string. They were incessantly being loaded, unloaded, made to march; cooped in small, stuffy places—chained.
He wanted to see elephants—herds of them! He wanted to see them in multitudes, working for men in their own way; using their own intelligence. He wanted to see them in their own jungles—living their own lives.
Sooner or later he meant to see them, all ways. He had come to India, the land of elephants, partly for that reason; but in the Mahadeo mountains he had found none—nor in the great Grass Jungle. Yet he had learned that when he wanted anything—way back in the inside of himself—he was due to get it. To-day this thing was gnawing more than ever before; he wanted elephants—hard.