Cumners Son and Other South Sea Folk | Page 8

men?"
"For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone
and safe," answered Tang-a-Dahit.
"To thrust your head in the tiger's jaw," said Cumner's Son. "Did you
ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?"
"A man will ride for a face that he loves, even to the Dreadful Gates,"
answered Tang-a-Dahit. "But what is this of the men of my clan?"
Then the lad told him of those whose heads hung on the rear Palace
wall, where the Dakoon lay dying, and why he rode to Pango Dooni.
"It is fighting and fighting, naught but fighting," said Tang-a-Dahit
after a pause; "and there is no peace. It is fighting and fighting, for
honour, and glory, and houses and cattle, but naught for love, and
naught that there may be peace."
Cumner's Son turned round in his saddle as if to read the face of the
man, but it was too dark.
"And naught that there maybe peace." Those were the words of a
hillsman who had followed him furiously in the night ready to kill, who
had cloven the head of a man like a piece of soap, and had been riding
even into Mandakan where a price was set on his head.

For long they rode silently, and in that time Cumner's Son found new
thoughts; and these thoughts made him love the brown hillsman as he
had never loved any save his own father.
"When there is peace in Mandakan," said he at last, "when Boonda
Broke is snapped in two like a pencil, when Pango Dooni sits as
Dakoon in the Palace of Mandakan--"
"There is a maid in Mandakan," interrupted Tanga-Dahit, "and these
two years she has lain upon her bed, and she may not be moved, for the
bones of her body are as the soft stems of the lily, but her face is a
perfect face, and her tongue has the wisdom of God."
"You ride to her through the teeth of danger?"
"She may not come to me, and I must go to her," answered the
hillsman.
There was silence again for a long time, for Cumner's Son was turning
things over in his mind; and all at once he felt that each man's acts must
be judged by the blood that is in him and the trail by which he has
come.
The sorrel and the chestnut mare travelled together as on one snaffle-
bar, step by step, for they were foaled in the same stable. Through
stretches of reed-beds and wastes of osiers they passed, and again by a
path through the jungle where the briar-vines caught at them like eager
fingers, and a tiger crossed their track, disturbed in his night's rest. At
length out of the dank distance they saw the first colour of dawn.
"Ten miles," said Tang-a-Dahit, "and we shall come to the Bar of
Balmud. Then we shall be in my own country. See, the dawn comes up!
'Twixt here and the Bar of Balmud our danger lies. A hundred men may
ambush there, for Boonda Broke's thieves have scattered all the way
from Mandakan to our borders."
Cumner's Son looked round. There were hills and defiles everywhere,
and a thousand places where foes could hide. The quickest way, but the

most perilous, lay through the long defile between the hills, flanked by
boulders and rank scrub. Tang-a-Dahit pointed out the ways that they
might go--by the path to the left along the hills, or through the green
defile; and Cumner's Son instantly chose the latter way.
"If the fight were fair," said the hillsman, "and it were man to man, the
defile is the better way; but these be dogs of cowards who strike from
behind rocks. No one of them has a heart truer than Boonda Broke's,
the master of the carrion. We will go by the hills. The way is harder but
more open, and if we be prospered we will rest awhile at the Bar of
Balmud, and at noon we will tether and eat in the Neck of Baroob."
They made their way through the medlar trees and scrub to the plateau
above, and, the height gained, they turned to look back. The sun was up,
and trailing rose and amber garments across the great Eastern arch.
Their path lay towards it, for Pango Dooni hid in the hills, where the
sun hung a roof of gold above his stronghold.
"Forty to one!" said Tang-a-Dahit suddenly. "Now indeed we ride for
our lives!"
Looking down the track of the hillsman's glance Cumner's Son saw a
bunch of horsemen galloping up the slope. Boonda Broke's men!
The sorrel and the mare were fagged, the horses of their foes were fresh;
and forty to