Kim

Eight thousand should be enough.'

'What about artillery, sir?'

'I must consult Macklin.'

'Then it means war?'

'No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his

predecessor--'

'But C25 may have lied.'

'He bears out the other's information. Practically, they showed their

hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was a chance of

peace. Of course they used it to make themselves stronger. Send off

those telegrams at once--the new code, not the old--mine and Wharton's.

I don't think we need keep the ladies waiting any longer. We can

settle the rest over the cigars. I thought it was coming. It's

punishment--not war.'

As the trooper cantered off, Kim crawled round to the back of the

house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there would be

food--and information. The kitchen was crowded with excited scullions,

one of whom kicked him.

'Aie,' said Kim, feigning tears. 'I came only to wash dishes in return

for a bellyful.'

'All Umballa is on the same errand. Get hence. They go in now with

the soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need strange

scullions to help us through a big dinner?'

'It is a very big dinner,' said Kim, looking at the plates.

'Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-Lat

Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief].'

'Ho!' said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had

learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.

'And all that trouble,' said he to himself, thinking as usual in

Hindustani, 'for a horse's pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come to me

to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have borne a message

it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The tall man said that

they will loose a great army to punish someone--somewhere--the news

goes to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also guns. Would I had crept

nearer. It is big news!'

He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother

discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the cultivator

and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. After the evening

meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim felt very much of a man

as he pulled at the smooth coconut-shell, his legs spread abroad in the

moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from time to time. His hosts

were most polite; for the cultivator's wife had told them of his vision

of the Red Bull, and of his probable descent from another world.

Moreover, the lama was a great and venerable curiosity.

The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut Brahmin, dropped in later,

and naturally started a theological argument to impress the family. By

creed, of course, they were all on their priest's side, but the lama

was the guest and the novelty. His gentle kindliness, and his

impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded like spells, delighted them

hugely; and in this sympathetic, simple air, he expanded like the

Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking of his life in the great hills of

Such-zen, before, as he said, 'I rose up to seek enlightenment.'

Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-hand

at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest led him on

to describe his methods; each giving the planets names that the other

could not understand, and pointing upwards as the big stars sailed

across the dark. The children of the house tugged unrebuked at his

rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids looking at women as

he talked of enduring snows, landslips, blocked passes, the remote

cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful

upland road that leads at last into Great China itself.

'How thinkest thou of this one?' said the cultivator aside to the

priest.

'A holy man--a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his

feet are upon the Way,' was the answer. 'And his methods of

nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.'

'Tell me,' said Kim lazily, 'whether I find my Red Bull on a green

field, as was promised me.'

'What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?' the priest asked,

swelling with importance.

'Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May.'

'Of what year?'

'I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the great

earthquake in Srinagar which is in Kashmir.' This Kim had from the

woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball O'Hara. The

earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood a leading date in

the Punjab.

'Ai!' said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's supernatural

origin more certain. 'Was not such an one's daughter born then--'

'And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years all likely

boys,' cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the circle in the

shadow.

'None reared in the knowledge,' said the family priest, 'forget how the

planets stood in their Houses upon that night.' He began to draw in

the dust of the courtyard. 'At least thou hast good claim to a half of

the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?'

'Upon a day,' said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was creating, 'I

shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a green field, but first

there will enter two men making all things ready.'

'Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that

clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place.

Then begins the Sight. Two men--thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun,

leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two

men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, little

one.'

He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in

the dust mysterious signs--to the wonder of all save the lama, who,

with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.

'Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to make

all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign over

against him is the sign of War and armed men.'

'There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage from

Lahore,' said the cultivator's wife hopefully.

'Tck! Armed men--many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?'

said the priest to Kim. 'Thine is a red and an angry sign of War to be

loosed very soon.'

'None--none.' said the lama earnestly. 'We seek only peace and our

River.'

Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-room.

Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. 'More than this I

cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy.'

'And my River, my River,' pleaded the lama. 'I had hoped his Bull

would lead us both to the River.'

'Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother,' the priest replied. 'Such

things are not common.'

Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on

departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly three

annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many

blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

'Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from--'

'Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would

give us meat and shelter?' quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his

burden.

'Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,' said the lama, and he led

from the white road across the fields; walking into a very hornets'