The Damascened Blade(66)
After an hour’s assault on the senses Joe thought he could see the end of the caravan coming into view. One or two camels brought up the rear in the company of a number of armed riders. These appeared to be mainly middle-aged men. ‘The veterans,’ Joe thought, admiring the careful deployment of protective measures throughout the caravan. As the last camel swayed by James moved closer and looked up expectantly at the rider.
‘Watch’er cobber!’ sang out a shrill voice.
‘Watch’er Maggie!’ James yelled back. ‘All well with you, Sweetheart?’
The figure on the camel, Joe now saw, had dusty grey hair which might once have been blonde. She turned a laughing face to them, as brown and folded as the hills, and shouted back, ‘All dinkie doo! Can’t complain, ducks! Can’t complain!’
‘James! Have I gone mad?’ said Joe. ‘Is this the Khyber or Koolgardie?’
‘That was Maggie,’ said James. ‘Strange place to find an Australian woman you might think until you know her story. When they discovered gold in Australia they also found they had a problem – the mines were in desert areas and the only transport that worked effectively was camels. Trouble is – camel driving is a very particular skill. They recruited dozens of young camel-handlers from this part of the world to do the job. As you’ve seen from this cavalcade, the average Powindah youth is a staggeringly good-looking chap and our Maggie fell for one . . . and she wasn’t the only one! She was a miner’s daughter and she fled the Australian outback for the Indian outback. She’s happy with them and they’re very happy with her. She’s become quite a matriarch – must be grandmother to half the tribe by now! Every year the British Government in the shape of the fort commander makes a point of checking on her welfare. Hey! What the hell! What’s this?’
He stopped in alarm as a young boy loitering behind the caravan emerged from behind a rock and with a cheeky yell of ‘Watch’er cobber!’ hurled a stone at Joe.
Joe felt the stone whiz by his left ear and land in the sand a few feet away.
Tensely James said, ‘Pick it up. Pretend to throw it back at him. He’ll slip back behind the rock and disappear. Shout something rude and put the stone in your pocket.’
Smoothly Joe slid from his horse, executing what he thought was a pretty convincing pantomime of an enraged British officer failing to get a shot at target. As they started back for the fort, Joe asked, ‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about?’
‘Think about it, Joe! If a Pathan boy wants to hit you with a stone, he most certainly will! You’ve seen a sample of their throwing skills on the cricket field! He was aiming to miss and he was obviously one of Maggie’s brood because he announced himself in Australian. Don’t touch the stone yet – eyes everywhere and I don’t want to get Maggie into trouble – but I’ll bet there’s more to it than you might think. We’ll have a closer look when we get back to the fort.’
Puzzled, intrigued and with the stone bumping tantalizingly against his hip he rode back and waited patiently while James dismissed the Mounted Infantry then walked with him to the ops room. There they found Fred Moore-Simpson and Hugh poring over the map.
‘There you are! Glad you didn’t go off with the gypsies too – we were beginning to get a bit anxious,’ Fred said cheerfully. ‘Hope you fellows have had better luck than we have. We’ve had to tuck the Bristol up for the night but we’ll fly off a dawn patrol first thing tomorrow morning. I have to say, today we’ve drawn a complete blank. We’ve marked the territory we’ve overflown if you’d care to take a look. Just a nil return, I’m afraid.’
‘Sounds as though you could all do with a reviving cup of tea,’ said Grace Holbrook entering with a large brass tray. She busied herself pouring out tea and handing round cups and, taking one for herself, she settled down in the armchair to turn the pages of Punch and listen.
‘We had no luck either,’ said James. ‘The Powindahs declared they hadn’t seen or heard any news of our target. The only thing of note was that a nomad boy threw a stone at Joe and missed. May be nothing but my imagination of course but let’s have a look, shall we, Joe?’
Feeling that an anticlimax was about to overtake them Joe fished the stone from his pocket and laid it on the map table. Hugh looked, mystified, from one to the other and said uncertainly, ‘Ah. The very stone, I take it?’
James peered closely at the triangular-shaped, unremarkable piece of shale, reached out and turned it over. The underside was flat and across it was scrawled, just distinguishable, a word in badly formed capital letters in heavy indelible pencil.