The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [371]
He returned to the bungalow in high spirits, and that night he wrote several letters before he went to bed. A long one to Wally, full of plans for their leave, a brief one to Zarin, sending messages to Koda Dad whom he said he hoped to see again before long, and another to Mahdoo, telling him the good news and urging him to stay where he was until further notice and to be prepared to come to Mardan in two to three months' time – Gul Baz, who would also be going on leave, would come and fetch him when the time was ripe.
‘The old one will be pleased,’ beamed Gul Baz, collecting the finished letters. ‘I will see that Gokal takes these at once to the dâk-khana (post office) so that they go out with the morning dâk and there is no delay.’
Wally's telegraphed reply arrived a few days later. It read: Unable get
leave before end May owing unforeseen circumstances can meet you Lahore thirtieth three rousing cheers writing.
Coming on top of the station-master's gloomy assessment of the time needed to complete travelling arrangements for Dagobaz, this was not as disappointing as it might have been, for at most it meant delaying his departure for a few more weeks – unless he left as soon as possible and made straight for Mardan, from where he could reach Koda Dad's village in a day and put in the extra time there until Wally's leave was due.
The prospect was an alluring one, but on consideration he discarded it – largely because it occurred to him that in view of the reason for his four-year exile from the North-West Frontier Province, it would hardly be diplomatic to celebrate the lifting of the ban by spending the first few days of his leave on the wrong side of the Border. Besides, it would also entail a lot of extra travelling, as Lahore was the obvious starting-point for the trek he had in mind.
On both these counts his reasoning was sound; but the decision proved to be a vital one, though at the time he did not realize this. It was only long afterwards, on looking back, that he recognized how much had hung upon it. Had he chosen to leave for the Punjab at the first possible date, he would not have received Gobind's message, and if he had not had that… But in the event he elected to stay and having been given permission to take a month's local leave ‘pending departure' in addition to the three he had already put in for, he went off to shoot a lioness in the Gir Forest with Sarji and Sarji's wise, wizened, little shikari, Bukta, leaving Gul Baz to deal with packing up the bungalow.
The lioness they were after was a notorious man-eater who for two years had terrorized an area larger than the Isle of Wight, and was reported to have killed more than fifty people. A price had been put on her head and a score of sportsmen and shikaris had gone after her, but the man-eater had grown too cunning, and so far the only hunter to lay eyes on her had not lived to tell the tale.
That Ash succeeded where so many had failed was due in part to beginners' luck, but even more to the genius of Bukta, who – so Sarji averred – had more knowledge of shikar in his little finger than any other ten shikaris between the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay. In recognition of this, and remembering his services to Gobind and Manilal, Ash had presented the little man with a Lee Enfield rifle, the first that Bukta had ever seen, and on which he had cast covetous eyes.
Bukta's delight in the rifle and its performance more than equalled Ash's satisfaction in bringing down the man-eater, though his pleasure in this success would have been keener if it had not been that on the very day before they were to leave for the forest, one of the pigeons that Manilal had taken with him to Bhithor returned.
Sarji