“Never have I seen such a man.” Kim wiped the sweat from his forehead. “And now, whither go we?”
“That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger—far from my own place. But that the rêl -carriage fills my head with noises of devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now … Yet by so going we may miss the River. Let us find another river.”
Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year—through patches of sugarcane, tobacco, long white radishes, and nol-kol , all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the lama replying to the volleyed questions with an unswerving simplicity. They sought a River: a River of miraculous healing. Had anyone knowledge of such a stream?
Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the end and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a meal. The women were always kind, and the little children as children are the world over, alternately shy and venturesome.
Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day’s last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the staple crops.
He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the village priest.
Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of Lahore, of railway travel, and suchlike city things, while the men talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud.