"Nut Kut, old man," Skag reasoned in perfectly natural tones, "you can't bluff me. I tell you, I know you. I know you as well as if we came out of the same egg!"
Nut Kut was still backing away and Skag was following up.
"You may take me, if you want—I can't let you wear him out, you know."
And then, while Nut Kut wrapped about and drew Horace in closer, Skag laid his fingers on the great bronze trunk, gently but firmly stroking—the red eyes focused in his own. For seconds the man and the elephant looked into each other. Suddenly Nut Kut loosed Horace and laid hold on Skag.
The moaning ascended and broke—like wind going up a mountain khud. There was nothing certain to the mahouts, but that this man of courage would be dashed to death before their eyes.
Skag squirmed in the grip about his body as Nut Kut held him high. It looked as if he were being crushed. But when he got his hands on the trunk again, he laughed. Now Nut Kut lowered him quickly—holding him before his own red eyes. The touch of the elephant was the touch of a master. But the eyes of the man were mastership itself.
. . . They were just so, when Ram Yaksahn—with a ghastly haggard face—lurched from behind Nut Kut, fairly sobbing. Nut Kut jerked Skag tight (it was like a hug), released him deliberately and turning, put his own sick mahout up on his own neck, with a movement that looked like a flick of his trunk.
"Now easy, Majesty, go easy with me—indeed I am very ill!" Ram Yaksahn protested in plaintive tones, as Nut Kut wheeled away with him.
Seeing Horace in the hands of a strange native—and certainly recovering—Skag looked away toward Hurda and wonder aloud if Nut Kut would be punished. It was the master-mahout who answered him:
"Nay, Sahib. He has done no harm."