he beating
bass of the Kabuli tale, intensified by the sense that falling night
would slacken the chase. . . .

Skag had lost the magic of externals, the drift of his great interest.
All his lights were around Carlin, and powers of hatred, altogether
foreign to his faculties, pressed upon him in the threat of the
hour. . . . Yes, Chakkra remembered the five Kabuli men who had sat in
the market-place. Yes, he remembered the story of the beating of the
monster, the long slow healing after that; and his last look, as he
left Hurda for the last time. . . .

It was well, Chakkra said, that they had open country for the chase.
It was well that the Kabuli did not call to the Sahibas, and hide them
in one of the great Mohammedan households of Hurda--where even Indian
Government might not search. It was well that the Kabuli did not dare
to come closer to Hurda than this, so that they had a chance to
overtake his elephant afield, before the walls of the _purdah_
closed. . . .

Such was the burden of Chakkra's ramble, and there was no balm in it
for Skag. The weight settled heavier and heavier upon him with the
ending of the day. Nels was a phantom of grey before them in the
shadows, leisurely showing his powers. At times, while he ranged far
ahead, they would not hear him for several minutes; then possibly a
half-humorous sniff in the immediate dark, and they knew the big fellow
waited for Gunpat Rao to catch up. Once he was lost ahead so long that
Skag spoke:

"Nels--"

The answer was a bound of feet and a whine below that pulled the man's
hand over the rim of the howdah, as if to reach and touch his good
friend.

"Take it, Nels--good work, old man," Skag said.

They passed through zones of coolness as the trail sank into hollows
between the hills, and Gunpat Rao rolled forward. Pitch and roll,
pitch and roll--as many movements as a solar system and the painful
illusion of slowness over all. Often in Skag's nostrils one of the
subtlest of all scents made itself known, but most elusively--a
suggestion of shocking power--like an instant's glimpse into another
dimension. If you answer at all to an expression which at best only
intimates--_the smell of living dust_--you will have something of the
thing that Skag sensed in the emanation of Gunpat Rao, warming to
action.

Occasionally as they crossed the streams there was delay in finding the
trail on the other side. Once in the dark after a ford, when Nels had