The Faraway Drums. Jon Cleary
worth at least.’
‘I can’t understand why they haven’t already put in an appearance, or fired on us.’ Farnol looked around him, puzzled. ‘At least one shot, just to let us know they’re here.’
There was no sound but the hissing of steam from the engine’s boiler. A chill breeze blew up the narrow tree-shrouded valley below them; an eagle hung in the air like an ominous leaf; clouds seemed to form out of nothing to cover the sun and turn the green pines black. Then Farnol caught a glimpse of movement and round the next bend up ahead came a small flat-bed trolley-car, two men working the seesaw lever that propelled it and a third man sitting on the front of the trolley. The two men suddenly stopped pumping as soon as they saw the landslide and the trolley slid to a stop just short of it.
‘Stay here!’
Farnol left the Nawab and the others still sheltered beside the engine and scrambled across the slide, expecting a bullet at any moment to hit him or slap into the dirt beside him. Twice he missed his footing and he had to grab at a fallen tree as the earth slipped away beneath him; once he just managed to jump ahead as the tree he had grabbed also slid down; out of the corner of his eye he saw it plunge over the edge and a moment later heard it crash into the trees below. He had just reached the far side of the slide when there was a rumble behind him. He turned to see the rocks and earth and trees slipping away, taking a section of the track with it. The rumbling deepened, then faded; dust rose up in a brown cloud and when it cleared there was a wide gap in the ledge that carried the railway line. It was going to take a month of Sundays, as the driver had said, before any train would be running on this part of the track again.
The three men on the trolley were Post and Telegraph workers. Two of them were Indians, the two who had been doing the hard work on the lever handles, and the other was a chee-chee, one who might have passed for European but for his slightly bluish gums and the blue marks in his finger-nails. He was grey-haired and in his fifties, his gullied face a network of lines and pockmarks.
‘No, sir, we didn’t see no soldiers down the line. Nobody. We been looking for breaks in the telegraph line, I dunno nothing about the telephone wires. We found four breaks between here and Solan, sir, cut by snips. I don’t like the looks of it. These buggers here wanted to go home right away.’ He nodded to the two Indians standing in the background; then he winked at Farnol, man to man, us whites sticking together. ‘You know what they’re like soon’s they get a sniff of trouble.’
Who can blame them? thought Farnol; but he said, ‘Gibson, I want you to go back to Solan, get on the telegraph and ask the Railway Superintendent at Kalka to send up another train immediately. You can leave your two fellows here and I’ll send two soldiers with you. It’s all downhill so you should make pretty quick time.’
The sergeant brought up two soldiers, who cautiously made their way across the slide above the gap. Farnol gave them instructions; they looked at him dubiously but scrambled aboard the trolley. They took up their positions on the front of the trolley, their rifles at the ready, and Gibson got up behind them.
‘It could be midnight before they get a train up here, sir.’
‘Just so long as they get here. I may have to take this train back up the line, but I’ll leave someone here to meet the Kalka train. Good luck.’
The two soldiers looked sourly over their shoulders at him when he said that, but Farnol had given the trolley a push and it went rolling down the track, gathering speed on the slight decline that led to the next bend. It disappeared round the bend and Farnol stood for a moment wondering why the dacoits, or whoever had caused the landslide, still had not shot at him and the train. He felt that eyes were watching him, but there was no way of guessing how close the watchers were. He clambered up the slope into the trees above the slide and worked his way across through the thick forest. He was stiff with tension, his breath hissing as he forgot to breathe steadily in the high thin air; for a moment he seemed to have lost all the animal skills that had been natural to him for so long. He was no stranger to danger, but he had never before been responsible for a train-load of civilian men, women and children. He watched every tree as if it hid an assassin, but no one jumped out at him with gun or knife and at last he slid down on to the railway line.
‘Driver, could you reverse the train as far back as Simla?’
‘Not with all these carriages and wagons, sir. If they was empty, yes, but not with all them elephants and horses. It’s a pretty heavy load for an old engine like this one.’
Farnol nodded, glancing up at the ancient engine that looked as if it had had trouble getting the train this far downhill. Then the Nawab said, ‘There’s the trolley, across there on that far bend. I say, they’re going fast!’
Farnol looked beyond the near bend round which the trolley had disappeared a few minutes ago, saw it now in view on a far shoulder of the mountain that towered above the railway line. The foreman was working the driving lever up and down as fast as he could, speeding the trolley along, as if once he was out of range of Farnol he was as determined as the soldiers with him to get out of the danger zone as soon as possible. The trolley was a hundred yards short of the far bend when the foreman fell forward over the see-sawing arm of the lever. It swung up, lifting him sideways, and he toppled off the trolley and went hurtling down the sheer cliff-face below the track. One of the soldiers straightened up, then he, too, fell off the trolley, hit the permanent way and rolled over the edge of the cliff and followed the foreman down into the green surf of trees far below. The other soldier just lay back as if going to sleep and as the sound of the three rifle shots reached the watchers beside the engine, the trolley disappeared round the far bend, its see-sawing driving lever still going up and down in a stiff-armed farewell.
Farnol acted at once. ‘Back into the train! Get us back as far as you can, driver! Hop to it!’
But the driver couldn’t budge the old engine. It gasped and wheezed and its wheels spun with a thin screech on the rails; but none of the carriages or wagons behind it moved even a yard.
‘Ain’t no use, sir. She’ll just bust her boiler.’
Farnol, still standing beside the track, looked at the Nawab. ‘I’m afraid all your animals have to come off, Bertie. Mala’s too. Will you organize it while I tell the passengers what’s happening? I’m going to have to send them all back up to Simla. They’ll be safer there than down here.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think I’ll try to get down to Kalka somehow. I have to get on the telegraph to Delhi. Now hop to it, will you?’
The Nawab went hurrying down the train and Farnol followed him, stopping beside each carriage and telling the curious passengers what he intended doing. They had heard the echoes of the shots and most of the faces that hung out of the windows and doors were frightened and puzzled. One didn’t expect this sort of thing in the hills south of Simla, this wasn’t the Khyber Pass or the North-West Frontier.
There was also chagrin and disappointment. ‘But we may never get to the Durbar in time! We can’t possibly go back up to Simla!’ She was a formidable woman who filled a window of her own, like an oversized portrait in a too-small frame. ‘We shall wait here till they send up another train!’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, madam. I can’t be responsible for the lives of all of you. I’ll have a man stay here and bring a message up to Simla when a relief train arrives.’
But he had no faith that that would happen. When the Durbar Train did not arrive down in Kalka on time there would be worried questions, especially since it was known that the telephone and telegraph lines had been cut. He could imagine the argument and indecision that would occur as to whether another train should be risked.
He left the woman and went on down the train.
‘I’m not going back up to Simla,’ said the Ranee. ‘Have them take my elephants and horses and coach down to the cart road down there. I’ll go down to Kalka by road.’
‘Mala,