PAGE 13
Cumner’s Son
by
It was just at the close of the hour before dawn that the squad of troopers who rode a dozen rods before the columns, heard a cry from the dark ahead. “Halt-in the name of the Dakoon!”
V. CHOOSE YE WHOM YE WILL SERVE
The company drew rein. All they could see in the darkness was a single mounted figure in the middle of the road. The horseman rode nearer.
“Who are you?” asked the leader of the company.
“I keep the road for the Dakoon, for it is said that Cumner’s Son has ridden to the Neck of Baroob to bring Pango Dooni down.”
By this time the chief and his men had ridden up. The horseman recognised the robber chief, and raised his voice.
“Two hundred of us rode out to face Pango Dooni in this road. We had not come a mile from the Palace when we fell into an ambush, even two thousand men led by Boonda Broke, who would steal the roof and bed of the Dakoon before his death. For an hour we fought but every man was cut down save me.”
“And you?” asked Pango Dooni.
“I come to hold the road against Pango Dooni, as the Dakoon bade me.”
Pango Dooni laughed. “Your words are large,” said he. “What could you, one man, do against Pango Dooni and his hillsman?”
“I could answer the Dakoon here or elsewhere, that I kept the road till the hill-wolves dragged me down.”
“We be the wolves from the hills,” answered Pango Dooni. “You would scarce serve a scrap of flesh for one hundred, and we are seven.”
“The wolves must rend me first,” answered the man, and he spat upon the ground at Pango Dooni’s feet.
A dozen men started forward, but the chief called them back.
“You are no coward, but a fool,” said he to the horseman. “Which is it better: to die, or to turn with us and save Cumner and the English, and serve Pango Dooni in the Dakoon’s Palace?”
“No man knows that he must die till the stroke falls, and I come to fight and not to serve a robber mountaineer.”
Pango Dooni’s eyes blazed with anger. “There shall be no fighting, but a yelping cur shall be hung to a tree,” said he.
He was about to send his men upon the stubborn horseman when the fellow said:
“If you be a man you will give me a man to fight. We were two hundred. If it chance that one of a company shall do as the Dakoon hath said, then is all the company absolved; and beyond the mists we can meet the Dakoon with open eyes and unafraid when he saith, ‘Did ye keep your faith?'”
“By the word of a hillsman, but thou shalt have thy will,” said the chief. “We are seven hundred men–choose whom to fight.”
“The oldest or the youngest,” answered the man. “Pango Dooni or Cumner’s Son.”
Before the chief had time to speak, Cumner’s Son struck the man with the flat of his sword across the breast.
The man did not lift his arm, but looked at the lad steadily for a moment. “Let us speak together before we fight,” said he, and to show his good faith he threw down his sword.
“Speak,” said Cumner’s Son, and laid his sword across the pommel of his saddle.
“Does a man when he dies speak his heart to the ears of a whole tribe?”
“Then choose another ear than mine,” said Cumner’s Son. “In war I have no secrets from my friends.”
A look of satisfaction came into Pango Dooni’s face. “Speak with the man alone,” said he, and he drew back.
Cumner’s Son drew a little to one side with the man, who spoke quickly and low in English.
“I have spoken the truth,” said he. “I am Cushnan Di”–he drew himself up–“and once I had a city of my own and five thousand men, but a plague and then a war came, and the Dakoon entered upon my city. I left my people and hid, and changed myself that no one should know me, and I came to Mandakan. It was noised abroad that I was dead. Little by little I grew in favour with the Dakoon, and little by little I gathered strong men about me-two hundred in all at last. It was my purpose, when the day seemed ripe, to seize upon the Palace as the Dakoon had seized upon my little city. I knew from my father, whose father built a new portion of the Palace, of a secret way by the Aqueduct of the Failing Fountain, even into the Palace itself. An army could ride through and appear in the Palace yard like the mist-shapes from the lost legions. When I had a thousand men I would perform this thing, I thought.