The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 22

"I didn't know he was your brother," I said to her.

"All Laos are brother and sister," she replied.

Well, I've found it best to keep out of native feuds and family jangles.

"Some old village quarrel back of it," I thought.

All night it rained, and in the morning the river was talking to the cliffs in a louder voice. And the water was up and coming. Bits of drift were floating.

Among the traders I found Pra Oom Bwaht settled in a little hut off by himself. He had scant store of Karen cloths, Laos baskets, some hammered bra.s.s. He was sitting on a big box, and it was covered with a mat woven of tree-cotton fiber. He arose to meet me and came to the door.

"Let us chat here," he said. "I like the sun better than the shade."

It was queer to deny me a seat beside him, I thought; but I let it pa.s.s.

I was not paying much attention to details then.

So we sat in the doorway and watched the rain and heard the river talking to Kalgai Gorge. Trade was slack and would be until the greater rains came bearing boats and rafts from above and over and beyond, from up the river and the little rivers coming into it.

I could make nothing of Pra Oom Bwaht, I say. I left him and went out to chaffer a bit.

"Who knows the Karen fool?" Ali Beg, just down from Szechuan after trading rifles to Chinese Mohammedans for opium, demanded of me from the door of his own place.

"Why?" I asked.

"He trades like a fool, letting a rupee's worth go for a pice."

"Let him," I laughed, "so long as he keeps away from me."

"And yours?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"Come in and drink of tea with me," he invited.

So I went in and we sat eye to eye, face to face, across his little teakwood table, each squatting on his heels, and drank tea and talked of many things.

"Now that we have said all the useless things, tell me what is at the bottom of thy heart," Ali demanded. Up there the important things are kept for the dessert of the talk.

He was an old friend, with his coal-black eyes, great hairy arms and rippling black beard.

"Thus it was, heart of my soul," I said, laying hold of a lock of his beard up under his green turban, in token of entire truth-telling. "Thus it was"-and I tugged at the lock of beard. So I told him the tale, from the time of my going to Karen until the time of my coming to Kalgai town and the arrival of Pra Oom Bwaht.

He sat a long time in silence.

Then he reached into his robe and drew out a fine dagger of Sikh smithy work, hammered, figured on the blade, keen, heavy of hilt; in the tip of the handle a ball of polished steel, hollow and filled with mercury. It was a throwing knife.

"Take this," Ali urged. "I taught thee how to cast it at a foe years ago when we first went up the great river together. I go from here to-night by boats toward Maulmain. It will fall out with thee as it will fall out."

I took the dagger because it was Ali's gift, not because I was afraid.

Why should I fear anything that walked on two legs or four? Even though it wore a tail or horns?

At nightfall I went back to my house on the rock spit. The stream was roaring now-like a baby lion.

Nagy N'Yang was sitting in the open doorway as I came up the path. I saw she had her chin in her hand and was thinking deeply.

"I saw him," I made answer to the question in her eyes.

"Did he receive you well?"

"Except that he did not have me to sit beside him on his big trader's box in his hut, but took me to the doorway to talk. It was not friendly."

"Aha!" Just like that-soft, thoughtful.

"But what do I care for him, with his Karen cloths or hammered bra.s.s?" I chattered at her. "Come to me, Sweet One of a Thousand Delights."

So the days and the evenings and nights went by, and the greater rains followed the lesser. The river crept up and up and up, roaring now to the cliffs, like old lions.

Then came a day when on going home at eve I stooped at the river's brim near the house we had on the rock spit, and felt of the water. It was chilled. "The flood is full," I thought. I had felt the snow-chill from the Tibetan Himalayas in h.o.a.ry Salwin's yellow flood. When that comes, the utmost sources of the world have been tapped for flood water.

"The river will begin to fall to-morrow," I told Nagy N'Yang when I came into the place. "We will go soon after, when the big trading is over."

She smiled at me. Then she patted with her soft hand the place where she had tattooed on my brow the mark of the third eye of Siva. It was healed.

"I care not where we go, or if we go or stay, so long as you are with me," she whispered, close against my side.

After the evening meal we sat in the doorway and heard the river talking. Often the big whirlpool sighed or moaned.

"It will almost cover our rock spit," I said. I knew by the lift of it by day and the noise of it by night that the flood was a mighty one and would spend its chief force that night.

She nodded and nestled closer to me.

Out of the shade before us a greater shade silently loomed.

"I greet you, my sister and brother," Pra Oom Bwaht said, standing before us.

Nagy N'Yang s.h.i.+vered against my side. I felt the dagger under my robe.

A single beam from our brazier inside struck across his twisty face. He stretched out his hand toward Nagy N'Yang.

"A gift for my sister," he said.

She half reached her hand out, took it back, reached again and took it back; then, as if impelled by a force too strong to resist, reached again. Into her palm dropped something that shone for a tiny s.p.a.ce in the yellow gleam of the brazier's ray. She shut her hand-caught it to her breast. I thought it was a tiny golden bangle-then.

"Come," said Pra Oom Bwaht. "Let us walk apart for a moment. I have family matters to talk over. Your husband will permit."