Free The Faraway Drums by Jon Cleary Page A

couches covered in red silk; three of them, the younger ones, kept their veils up across their faces, but the three older ones sat and watched us with bare-faced curiosity. I looked for some resentment in their stares, but there was either none or I was not sharp-eyed enough. The Nawab seemed oblivious of them, which, I suppose, is a good defence when you have six of them.
    Though it was only 65 miles down to Kalka, the journey was going to take us at least five hours. The railroad track wound its way in a series of loops down through the hills, with never a stretch of straight track longer than a hundred yards; coming up, I had been struck by the number of tunnels we passed through and then had seen the numbers painted at the entrance to each one; the final number had been 103. The train went round its first long curve and I looked back through the window and saw the open wagons and the flat-cars at the tail. The elephants and horses stood swaying in the wagons, backs to the smoke from the locomotive blowing back over them. On the last flat-car, their backs also to the smoke, were the dozen soldiers who were our escort. That, I guessed, was the order of precedence, the British Tommy right back there behind the elephants and horses.
    I turned back and looked at Major Farnol. The Nawab and Lady Westbrook had got up and moved to the front of the car where a bearer was serving them tea and biscuits. “Still nothing on Major Savanna?”
    “He’s disappeared completely.”
    “Are the telephone and telegraph wires still cut?”
    “I checked just before we got aboard. The wires are still dead. Captain Weyman is now worried about what has happened to the men he sent down the line.” He looked out at the hillside dropping away like a cliff right beside us. The tops of the pines and cedars were just below us and it was as if we were riding on a rattling magic carpet above the forest. Monkeys swung along the tree-tops, keeping pace with us like urchins, and the children in the train hung out of the windows and screamed encouragement at them. “ We have just two stops, at Solan Brewery and Bangu. Don’t get out, stay here in the carriage.”
    “Is that an order?” I said with a smile.
    “Yes.” But he didn’t return my smile.
    We had been travelling for no more than half an hour, had gone perhaps no more than five or six miles, when the train abruptly began to slow, the wheels screeching on the rails and the cars battering each other with a loud jangling of iron buffers. I put out a hand to steady myself and it fell on Major Farnol’s knee opposite me. He put his hand on mine, pressed it, then rose quickly and went to the door that led out on to the rear platform. I saw that he had taken his pistol from its holster as he stepped out the door.
    “Damned trains!” Lady Westbrook was on her second cup of tea; or rather it was on her. She wiped herself down where the liquid had spilled on her. “Never a journey without something going wrong!”
    “They are still better than making that dreadful journey up here by tonga , all those painful weeks by cart. You don’t really want the old days to come back, Viola.” But the Nawab was not paying any real attention to her. He handed his cup to a servant, brushed past his wives, snapping something at them in Hindi that stopped their chattering in an instant and went out on to the rear platform to join Major Farnol.
    I stood up to follow him, but felt Lady Westbrook’s hand on my knee. I was surprised at the strength of it; it was like a claw. “Stay here, m’dear. Leave it to the men.”
    I sank back on my seat. “What’s going on?”
    She let go of my knee, sat back, rattled her cup and saucer and handed them to the servant as he jumped forward. “I don’t know. But in these hills, when the unexpected happens, you learn it is better for women to stay out of the way.”
    Then the Nawab came back, no longer genial, looking decidedly worried. “I’m afraid this is as far as