The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [258]
His expression suggested that he had never seen the thing before and could not understand how it had got there, and he stared at it, frowning, sniffed it and made a face of disgust, and without troubling to inspect it further, rolled it into a ball and tossed it away among the scattered clumps of pampas grass.
He did not even glance at Biju Ram until he had finished the sentence and hunted through his pockets for the conventional square of white linen that he had (supposedly) expected to find. Discovering this in an inner pocket of his riding coat, he dabbed his forehead with it, draped it over the back of his helmet to keep the sun off his neck, and continued the conversation, taking particular care to include Biju Ram in it so that there would be no chance of his turning back to retrieve that tattered piece of cloth before they reached the camp. Once there, it would be easy enough to see that he did not go in search of it too soon, for Ash had instructed Gul Baz to site his tent on this side of the perimeter, and facing this way, so that if Biju Ram went back to look for his late property by daylight he would have to do so in full view of Ash, who intended to sit out under an awning, ostensibly scanning the plain for black-buck with a pair of field glasses. Under these circumstances, it was unlikely that Biju Ram would risk it. Yet one thing at least was certain. Provided he had recognized that piece of material (and he had certainly been given every opportunity to do so) he would go back to look for it.
They reached the outskirts of the camp some fifteen minutes later, and the rest of the day passed uneventfully. The heat discouraged any unnecessary form of activity, and men and animals sought what shade they could find and drowsed away the slow hours until the sun was low in the sky and the temperature became more tolerable. Ash had kept a desultory watch on the plain where the solitary palm tree showed small as a toothpick against the bleached sky, but except that the landscape quivered continually to the waves of heat, nothing alive moved there. And when at length the camp aroused itself and set about its evening chores, the grass-cutters did not go that way, but avoiding the well-trodden route along which they had marched that morning, fanned out to left and right where the grass would be less thickly smothered in dust and sand.
As usual Ash ate in the open, though this evening he did not sit out late, but moved back into his tent as soon as the first stars showed, and having dismissed Gul Baz, waited until darkness fell and then turned out his lamp so that anyone who might happen to be interested in his movements would imagine that he had retired to bed. He had plenty of time at his disposal, for the moon was on the wane and would not be rising for another hour and more, but he was taking no chances. He preferred to be on the ground too early rather than risk being late, and the glass of the hurricane lamp had barely had time to cool before he slid out under the side of his tent, and lying flat on his stomach, wriggled across the open to the shelter of the grass clumps with a silence and celerity that even Malik Shah – who had taught him that trick – could not have bettered. Behind him the glow and glitter of lamps, torches and camp fires lit up the sky and turned night into day, but the plain ahead was a chartless sea of shadow dotted with rustling islands of grass, and even the nearest kikar trees were barely visible against the stars.
He paused for a while to make sure that he had not been seen or followed, and then set off into