Prem Singh had company.  When I went in the gathering dusk to feed the cow I noticed, instead of the usual solitary figure crouched above the little camp fire in the open, two lean forms silhouetted against the dancing flames, while a flow of guttural conversation that broke occasionally into seemingly excited treble argument mingled with the fragrant smoke from burning greasewood roots.

“He probably has a letter from India,” I told the Lady of the Castle, when I went back into the little stone house, “and has rung in a chap from the gang below to read it to him.”

“From his brother, probably,” said the Lady.  “He’ll be all excited over it.  You’ll have to do the milking.”

Her surmise as to the letter was correct, though I didn’t have to do the milking.

“Letter come China country!  My brother!” Prem Singh announced exultantly, when he came for the milk pail.  “Pretty good!”  He ducked his head sideways in a delighted nod.  “I go milk now.”

We had known of this brother ever since the Hindu had become our devoted and isolated adherent.  He was Prem Singh’s family, the only relative he had in the world.

“My father, mammy, been die,” he had explained to me.  “Both.  My father, my mammy, p. 217two my sister, my little brother: all one time die.  Too much sick.  All my uncle, my auntie, everybody die.  Too many people.  Just me, my big brother, live.  Thass all.”  From which we gathered that a cholera epidemic had left the two boys orphans: Prem Singh, now our vassal, and Kala Singh, half a dozen years older, at present a British policeman at Shanghai.

It was a poor life, this brother’s, but highly treasured by the younger brother, who, curiously enough, proved to be the stable member of the family.  Kala Singh had left a bad record behind him in India, including a year’s jail sentence for knifing a co-conspirator in a bank robbery.

“My brother pretty much been marry,” Prem Singh told me one time, his face clouding over.  “One time twelve hundred, one time fifteen hundred, dollar—my country rupee.  All go.”  He snapped his fingers to illustrate the disappearance of the marriage money into thin air.  “Too much drink.  Too much gambler.”

Evidence that the black sheep had never mended his ways was furnished abundantly in the repeated requests that came for money, which Prem Singh never refused.

“Mester,” he would usually ask me on the day succeeding the arrival of a letter from “China country,” “you two hundred dollar today bank take off, mice.”  I had never been able to teach him the use of the possessive “mine”; it was invariably mice.  “I send money China country.  My brother.”  Once or twice I remonstrated with him about this, to no purpose.  After all, it was his own money: the two dollars a day which, with practically no outgo, added up month by month in the p. 218bank.  A letter from India, which he told me came from one of his brother’s deserted wives, proved equally futile, though troubling him for several days.  Its only ultimate result was to prejudice his young mind still further against womankind and the institution of marriage.

“Me?  Not any been marry!” he assured me, his eyes flashing.  “Never!  All time too much trouble!  No good.”

Yet he was engaged, one of those betrothals arranged in infancy by Hindu parents, binding till death.  It hung over Prem Singh like a sword of Damocles, exiling him forever from his native land.

“This country pretty good,” he told me often.  “Girl wait all time my country.  Twenty year old now, I guess, maybe.  I stay America!  Pretty good.  Not any go back!”  He shook his head emphatically.  “Maybe some time my brother come this country.  Thass good!”  His eyes gleamed at the pleasant vision.

It was this dream of a reunion with his beloved black sheep of a brother in the great and good land of America, far from the cloudy danger of marriage that overhung all India, that more than any other illumined his long days and lonely evenings on the California mesa.  He kept aloof from the other Hindus, from the large camps where they congregated, twenty and thirty together, for the clearing work that in time was to transform mesa into orchard land.  He preferred to remain alone, apart, as my man.

“You pretty good man, Mester,” he told me.  “I all time stay here, please.  I your man.  My life!”  Then he smiled.  “Maybe some time my brother come; then two your men!  Both.  Thass pretty good!”

p. 219And now the dream seemed likely to materialize.  When he returned with the full milk pail, Prem Singh had a question to ask.  He fidgeted awkwardly about it, remaining in the kitchen an unconscionable length of time, resting one foot and then the other.  It came out at last ............