"And did sahib put down the ball gun and take up the one that is for birds and shoot over Pundit's head because he, too, thinks that it is the spirit of a man?"
"It is not good to offend the gods, Mahadua, if one is to live with them, so we will save the killing of the pundit for the young sahib who soon goes back to Inglistan, where the anger of the gods cannot follow him," Finnerty answered solemnly.
In the other howdah, Lord Victor, in whose mind rankled the dog's shooting, brought up in extenuation this same matter of Finnerty's confessed blunder, for he had not caught the chivalry of the major's lie. "I didn't miss like the major, anyway," he began.
"No, you didn't--unfortunately." Swinton was holding a cheroot to a lighted match.
"Really, captain, I wasn't so bad. Fancy an old hunter like him getting fuzzled and banging at a tiger with bird shot."
Swinton shot a furtive look at the thin, long-nosed face that was still piebald with patches of caked lava; then he turned his eyes away and gazed out over the plain with its coloured grass and wild indigo scrub. A pair of swooping jheel birds cut across, piping shrilly: "Did you do it, did you do it!"
"That'll be a corking fine yarn for the club when I get back," Lord Victor added.
"And will you tell them about the dog you shot?"
"Rather! I didn't miss, and the major did."
Swinton turned his brown eyes on the cheerful egoist. "Gilfain, you're young, therefore not hopeless."
"I say, old chap, what's the sequel to that moralising?"
"That probably before you get out of India you'll understand just how good a sportsman Major Finnerty is."
Their elephant had been traversing a well-worn path along the bottom of a hollow, and where it left the _nala_ to reach the plain they suddenly came upon the Banjara's encampment. It was a tiny village of dark-coloured tents; to one side of this was a herd of buffalo that had come in from the plain to be milked. They could see the herdsman sitting moodily on his black blanket, and beside him lay the dead dog.
The young Englishman viewed not without alarm the women who wore belts beneath which were stuck old-fashioned pistols and knives. This was the Banjara custom, but the guilty man feared it was a special course of punishment for him.