They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had licked the last of the sticky sweet-stuff from his little finger did Kim note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.
“If our roads lie together,” he said roughly, “I go with thee. One does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak. But I am not altogether a reed.” He picked up his lathi —a five-foot male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron—and flourished it in the air. “The Jats are called quarrelsome, but that is not true. Except when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.”
“So be it,” said Kim. “A good stick is a good reason.”
The lama gazed placidly upstream, where in long, smudged perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the river. Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current.
“But for thee,” said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his hairy breast, “I might today have gone thither—with this one. The priests tell us that Benares is holy—which none doubt—and desirable to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink, lave, and scatter flowers—but always pay the priests. No, the Punjab for me, and the soil of the Jullundur- doab for the best soil in it.”
“I have said many times—in the Temple, I think—that if need be, the River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,” said the lama, rising. “I remember a pleasant place, set about with fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation—and the air is cooler there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.”
“What is the name?” said Kim.