152 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



and rounded up a skittishly inclined young doe, driving her 

 back to us, his sharp horns lowered in feigned attack. "Thus 

 my first lord died. He left us to fasten a quarrel on a 

 stranger, but in some inexplicable manner their horns 

 seemed to interlace, and in a twinkling three Pdrdis sprang 

 from hiding, and captured him while madly struggling to 

 break the mysterious bonds." 



" And the stranger, mother ? " I bleated. 



" Beware of such strangers," grunted she. 



We were a large community at that time, and, when on 

 the move to the evening feeding-grounds, our scattered line 

 might have stretched over the breadth of two fields. As 

 for the cries of the night watchers, perched on their tall 

 machdns, they fell on deaf ears for who yet denied us 

 our bellyful save to move us on to some neighbour's 

 field? 



The high crops fell, and were gathered ; the great stacks 

 of kadhi rose round every village ; and we roamed over wide 

 plains, stretching uninterrupted save for some round-topped 

 mango grove, or the dark line of trees marking the place 

 where a village rose round its ancient mud gharri. Chill 

 dawn would find us grouped in some gram field, the sharp 

 acid rime of which appeals to the salt-craving inherent 

 in us ; or belly deep in the broad belts of pale green 

 wheat. 



And so the seasons passed. 



The dry weather came with its fiery sun, when we ante- 

 lope collected nearer the sandy bed of the river, winding 

 its now thin stream from pool to pool. Then the rainy 

 season, when other herds joined ours from the level black 

 cotton-soil tracts, and we ranged in our gathered hundreds 

 on the drier rising grounds, all save the bucks standing out 

 conspicuously against the dark wet earth, as some gleam 

 of sunlight caught our yellow skins. 



Never shall I forget a day succeeding a heavy fall of 

 rain, when I had lingered behind my mother (I was not 



