Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very
fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended. Many of
them could hardly be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers;
but in the south, where John Chinn the First was buried, the
wildest still clung to the Satpura ranges, cherishing a legend
that some day Jan Chinn, as they called him, would return to his
own. In the mean time they mistrusted the white man and his ways.
The least excitement would stampede them, plundering, at random,
and now and then killing; but if they were handled discreetly they
grieved like children, and promised never to do it again.
The Bhils of the regiment - the uniformed men - were virtuous in
many ways, but they needed humouring. They felt bored and
homesick unless taken after tiger as beaters; and their
cold-blooded daring - all Wuddars shoot tigers on foot: it is
their caste-mark - made even the officers wonder. They would
follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as though it were a
sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country full of
caves and rifts and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen
men at his mercy. Now and then some little man was brought to
barracks with his head smashed in or his ribs torn away; but his
companions never learned caution; they contented themselves with
settling the tiger.
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