Title: The Hundred Days
Author: Talbot Mundy
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0606341.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: August 2006
Date most recently updated: August 2006

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Title: The Hundred Days
Author: Talbot Mundy





CONTENTS

I.    "They Said You Have a Tale for Me; and so, by Allah, I am Here to Listen"
II.   "Those Fools Will Prod a Hornet's Nest"
III.  "Thou and I are Birds Who Love the Storm, Sahiba"
IV.   "What the Hell Do You Know About Women?"
V.    "A Most Wise, Excellent Sahiba!"
VI.   "Of such Stuff are Women Made!"
VII.  "I Know a Thousand Gods Superior to Allah"
VIII. "We've One Chance in a Million, Are We All Set?"
IX.   "Sure, Lend a Hand!"
X.    "Thou Wilt Have the Blessed Prophet's Tooth, so Who Can Harm Thee?"
XI.   "So Let Us Fight"

---------------




CHAPTER I


"They said You Have a Tale for Me; and so, by Allah, I am Here to Listen."



They kept this out of the papers at the time, there being a
fine-meshed censorship in force. Enough months have elapsed
since, and enough events have happened to smoke-screen this one
as effectually as if Julius Caesar and the Gauls had played the
leading parts. The Prince went home alive. India resumed worrying
about the price of homespun cotton, the next monsoon, and whether
rupee-paper was likely to rise or fall. The _Pioneer_ found
front-page space for an account of spooks in a planter's bungalow.
And all was well again.

"Set it down, why don't you?" King said; and Grim nodded. I
demurred. Either King or Grim could have told the story better.
But as they sat on the end of my bed in the little white-washed
ward, the one cleaning spurs and the other resplicing the
wire-woven handle of a Persian scimitar, it was small use
arguing with them.

King's excuse, that he had sore fingers and could not punch a
typewriter, was possibly half-valid. It was why he was cleaning
spurs, for instance, instead of playing polo to get fit for the
next adventure Fate might hold in store for him. Grim's argument,
that he should not write the account because he had a hand in the
affair, was more ridiculous, but just as useful, since it cloaked
his incurable delight in doing lots and saying nothing, or,
rather, less than nothing. What he does say usually adds to
his obscurity.

"Write it, and omit me," Grim suggested. But you might as well
omit Hamlet from the play.

Well, here I am, with a month of convalescence still ahead
of me, sore from head to foot, sick of reading, and still
more sick of the Peshawar climate, hospital diet, the squeak
of a punkah, and the view of Allah's Slagheap from the window.
So they've set a table for me in a corner where the flap of
the punkah won't scatter the paper all over the place. My
jaw being bandaged, the sweat, in all likelihood, won't drop
down and make the ink run.  Lord knows there's paper enough;
the genial sawbones who runs this outfit (between bouts of
preaching to wounded border-thieves) seems to think I propose
to rewrite the Encyclopaedia--or one of his sermons. He has
lent me his dictionary and a big jar of tobacco. Here begins:

Joan Angela came to India. That's the prelude to anything
whatever except common-place. I believe she is twenty-six. I will
bet she has twenty-six hundred admirers, including me, who would
like to act Herod and kill off eligibles in order to destroy
beforehand the inevitable lucky, but as yet unknown, blade who
will some day persuade her to marry. And I daresay twenty-six
million dollars would look rather small beside her fortune
since they brought in oil on her land in California. (Not that
that matters; she would be Joan Angela Leich if she had only
twenty-six cents.)

She came because the Prince's visit was likely to prove spectacular,
and when we're young most of us will go a long way to see a
circus. But it soon palled. The home papers got wind of it, too,
and drew conclusions, the Prince being still a bachelor and
about her age. So she cut short the round of visits and started
to see India for herself, without so much as a by-your-leave
or a hint to the Indian Government, which was a great deal too
busy just then to notice much that wasn't obviously dangerous.

In times like that a Government falls back on odds and ends of
stray resources. Undesirables are given short shrift, with
apologies in the proper quarter later on, if called for. Men
whose courses up and down the earth will bear investigation find
surprising details forced on them, without much explanation and
no insurance. You carry unexpected overloads at your own expense
and risk, with no more prospect of reward than any decent fellow
gets who likes to know he did not grudge the gift of manliness
and muscle.

So Athelstan King, James Schuyler Grim and I--an Englishman and
two Americans--with Narayan Singh, who is a Sikh and was a sepoy
once, were under canvas by the left bank of Jumna River, swatting
flies, smoking much more than was wholesome, and wishing the
Prince were in London in the care of Scotland Yard.

There was a brigade of Indian Cavalry camped on our left hand,
about two miles away; we could hear the horses neighing, as bored
as we felt. On our right, two miles away again, was a regiment of
Bombay Infantry. And there was a rumour to the effect that the
Cavalry were there to watch the Infantry almost as much as to
keep a sharp eye on the border. But rumours are rife in these
days, and the mere fact that a Bombay regiment had been ordered
north was no proof that its loyalty had really been undermined by
agitators. The men had their rifles. There was ammunition. And
the officers looked more or less at ease, with their long legs
sticking out from under home newspapers beneath the awnings, and
all routine as usual.

To our rear, about ten miles away, was a fairly strong contingent
of the Air Force, with Cavalry and Infantry to guard them from
prowling border-thieves. Their 'planes were growling overhead all
the time, patrolling in search of a reported lashkar of Pathans.
Spies (and everyone is a potential spy for either side across the
border) had brought word that the tribes were concentrating and
admiring the notion of a row. The mullahs were said to be
haranguing them, and the women were carrying about a month's
supply of food and fuel. However, the airmen kept reporting they
could see nothing, and their cameras told the same tale; and that
meant either one of several probabilities.

It was possible the spies were deliberately arousing false
expectations of a raid in that quarter in order to cover
extensive preparations elsewhere. Or the tribes might have
learned how to conceal themselves from the airmen, which should
not be very difficult among those rocks and gorges, or even in
the open, where the harsh grass in the distance resembled sea
with wind across the tide. The other probability lay in the rear.
Raids from over that North-West Frontier have been so frequent
for a thousand years that an incursion was no more unlikely than
rain is in some lands. It would be good strategy for folk who
contemplated an uprising on the Indian side of the border to
broadcast rumours of Pathan activity and so keep the military
alert in the wrong quarter. However, danger of an uprising, and
especially of concerted action between the tribes and the
disaffected Punjab, presupposes leadership and some lines of
communication; which was how we came to be there. Athelstan King,
who was a Colonel until recently, is supposed to understand that
border better than the devils do who built it, and the devils'
offspring who brew hell there. Jim Grim knows Arabs better, but
has made himself a name in India too. I am their friend, which
sufficiently accounts for me; they rang me in on it. Narayan
Singh would rather risk his neck in Grim's company than be
a maharajah.

We looked peaceful and innocent enough, but in fact we were a
baited trap. Our servants, knowing no better, informed the world
at large that I was the leader of a party contemplating an
expedition across the border and into Persia--madness sufficient
to account for trade goods lying loose in process of repacking,
and for our incessant enquiries about camels, interpreters,
guides, and what not else.

Great hairy ruffians oiled themselves and crept along the streams
of mist at night to steal the trade-goods. One by one we caught
them; for we had pitched camp by a deep, narrow nullah up which
they were certain to come; barbed wire, broken glass, some dogs,
and two acetylene searchlights made any other approach almost
impossible. We noosed some, clubbed others, and caught a round
half-dozen in a blunted bear-trap. Narayan Singh was fertile in
new expedients; but as to the outcome, we treated all alike.

As soon as they recovered from the usually necessary man-handling
we set them on their hunkers in a tent and talked the situation
over, offering them liberty, and promising reward if they would
put us in communication with a certain Kangra Khan.

"We're Americans," King would explain, telling two-thirds of the
truth, which is plenty in that land. "We don't want our business
known." That was absolutely true, and ample, since whatever we
had said our real business was they would not have believed us.
"We have a proposal that will interest Kangra Khan. If he will
come to us here, we will talk with him alone by night. And if he
comes with no more than a two-man escort we will guarantee his
personal safety."

They believed the last implicitly. That part of the game has
always been played straight by the men who hold the border-line,
and generally, too, by the wind-weaned rascals whose profitable
sport it is to violate line, life, women, and most promises
whenever possible. A verbal promise of safe-conduct is as good as
a Chinaman's trade acceptance, flood, fire and Act of God alone
excepted from the guarantee.

So on the eleventh night after we pitched camp the dogs barked
furiously, which they would not have done if there had been
another miscreant sneaking up the nullah. This was someone taking
chances from the west, where by day we used to open a gap in the
barbed wire tangle. We turned a searchlight on, and after a curt
exchange of challenge and reply we saw him rise like a bear,
dripping wet, out of a wisp of grey mist. His boat must have
upset crossing the river.

Narayan Singh opened a gap in the wire, and he strode in with a
British Service rifle in one hand and the other held over his
eyes because the searchlight dazzled him. A fine, upstanding man
he was; and I like that sort. His dripping sheepskin jacket
increased an air of cavalierly independence; but it stank like
the deuce, and King invited him to take it off and hang it on a
stick in front of the fire to dry. He did that, but remained
standing with his back toward the river, so I motioned him to a
chair on the other side of the fire, between Grim and me.

"By Allah," he answered, opening a great gap of a grin in the
midst of his black beard, "if my men should lose sight of me I
might die with you, and I have business elsewhere! It is not so
easy aiming in the dark."

So I set the chair where his men could see him in the firelight;
and the first thing he demanded when he sat down--awkwardly,
unused to canvas chairs--was a rag and some oil for his wet rifle.

Narayan Singh, next on his left, offered to dry the rifle for
him.

"I am a soldier. I can do it properly," he said.

"I will leave my life in a Sikh's hands when I have no more use
for it!" Kangra Khan answered, and then waited, saying nothing,
until Grim fetched him oil and rags. Thereafter he cleaned while
he talked, squinting down the barrel at the firelight. I judged
him a man of forethought and determination, to be trusted
unconditionally in some ways, not at all in others, the latter
perhaps predominating.

He was nearly as heavy as I am. And he was handsome, for his nose
was not so hooked, nor his eye so cunning, as is usual along that
frontier. The edge of a coil of black hair showed beneath his
turban. His forehead was a thinker's, broad and level, with two
heavy lines across it. First and last, there was nothing about
him that suggested cowardice or even respect for heavy odds.

"They said you have a tale for me; and so, by Allah, I am here to
listen," he said simply, all eyes for me. (They like big men
where he came from, and I wore a beard at that time, which
was another point in my favour.) However, King took up the
argument--since argument there must be in the North, whatever
else happens.

"The tale is this," he said, leaning forward to knock the ashes
out of his pipe; and with his dark skin and Roman nose he looked
in the firelight like one of Julius Caesar's men: "that you,
Kangra Khan, are planning a raid while the Prince is in this part
of India; and that I am told off to prevent you." He sat back and
filled his pipe again. He might have just remarked it was a fine
night.

"Then by Allah's Prophet, thou and I are well met!" the hillman
answered, showing his yellow teeth again. King struck a match,
and it served to show his manly, unpretending smile.

"So now we understand each other," he said, puffing away at
the pipe.

"Maybe. But it is Allah who prevents!" said Kangra Khan, with his
eye on my servant, who was bringing out whisky from the tent. I
poured him a straight tumblerful, and he tossed it off at a gulp.
"The river was wet, and not warm," he remarked by way of thanks,
offering no apology for drinking in defiance of the Koran; for
which I liked him. Apology and explanation are due to one you may
have injured; otherwise they are indecent. He said nothing about
how he had managed to swim the hurrying Jumna, rifle in hand.

"Why should you choose this particular time?" King demanded,
sailing as close to the eye of the wind as he could carry way.

"It is a good time," the hillman answered simply. Neither seemed
inclined to ease his helm. They were coming at each other head
on, so at a whisper from Grim I strode among the shadows and
ordered the servants out of earshot.

"It is the worst time you could choose," King assured him.

"The eagle's opportunity--the hare's disadvantage--are one!" said
Kangra Khan.

"You are not dealing with hares," King retorted. "You are blind
if you think the eagles are not on our side."

"Aye, I have seen them. They have buzzed above us now for
half a month."

"They lay eggs on the wing, those birds!" King suggested
meaningly. "There is Cavalry and Infantry to right and left
of us, and guns at the rear."

"Aye, but this is women's talk. I know the chances," Kangra
Khan answered.

"Talk like a man, then!" growled Narayan Singh. It seemed to me
that that was what the hillman had done, but the Sikh knew what
he was doing.

"Meet me across the border, and I will show thee how a man
fights!" the other retorted.

Narayan Singh was about to answer, but Grim interrupted him.

"None will talk if the time for fighting comes. Talk like a man
first," he advised him.

"My men are restless. They lost too much in the fighting of a
year ago. The crops have been poor. There will be a hard winter
unless we rape a town or two. They look to me to lead them,"
answered Kangra Khan.

"Why not tell the whole truth?" King asked him. "You have
received offers from the Punjab. Someone has promised that if you
will lead a raid the Punjabis will rise simultaneously. Isn't
that so?"

"By Allah, little sahib, you know too much," the hillman
answered, laughing.

"I think I know the name of the man who made you that offer, but
never mind," King continued. "What did he offer you?"

"He talked like a plainsman, deceiving none but himself. He
offered me the Prince! He promised we may take him and hold
him for ransom, after they have burned his camp and done the
capturing. He said, with truth, although the fat pig lied nine
other ways, that to keep the Prince hidden in the Punjab would be
impossible, whereas, among our mountains--"

"Why talk nonsense?" King interrupted. "Isn't it clear he's just
trying to use you as a catspaw?"

"Truly. But he who uses fire may just as well be burnt, and I
like the Punjabi's money," said Kangra Khan.

"They never could take the Prince. He'll be to well guarded."

"Aye, probably...inshallah! The British are crazy, but not
so mad as to leave the boy unprotected. However, the Prince is
coming northward for a hundred days, and there will be a hundred
days of trouble, unless I am well paid to keep still."

Well, that was frank enough. There was not so much cupidity as
calm appreciation in the hillman's eye. He seemed willing enough
to barter his advantage for a fair price. As he finished cleaning
his rifle, and laid it across his knees with the sort of
affectionate slap a man bestows on a dog or a horse, he
looked at least as worthy to be dealt with as any of those
diplomatists who play the international game with marked cards.

"How much do you want?" King asked him.

"A crore, and no less," he said instantly.

A crore of rupees is a third of a million dollars, more or less,
and King laughed.

"That would pay for quite a nice campaign," he answered. "You
hillmen are like children when money is mentioned."

"India is rich. Let her pay for peace!"

"You won't get a crore. You won't get as much as a lakh.* You
won't get anything, unless you give proof in advance of good
intentions," King assured him. "You must call this raid off, and
tell the Punjabis you won't give them any assistance. If you do
that first, and give me your word of honour, then I'll promise to
get you as much money from the Government as they can be induced
to part with in return for your service in the matter. I don't
know how much. You'll have to trust me to do my best. I'll keep
faith with you." [* 100,000 rupees]

"Aye, King sahib. None doubts your _izzat;_* but what of mine?
The fat Punjabi is a pig, but I will not betray him. By Allah, if
he comes to talk with me the troops might pounce on him, and what
then?" [* honour]

"He shall have safe conduct."

"Aye, but after, you will know who he is, and--"

"I know already!"

"If thou art not a liar, name him!"

"He is no Punjabi. His name is Ali Babul," King answered
promptly. "Isn't that so?"

Kangra Khan said nothing. In the ensuing silence Grim leaned
sideways, better to study the hillman's face. It was Narayan
Singh who took up the argument, opening and shutting his right
hand so that the knuckles cracked almost like a pistol-shot.

"I, too, know Ali Babul. As thou sayest, he is fat. Better
caution him, hillman! For if I make a feud with a man he will
die. By my Guru's* honour, he shall not live; his fat shall feed
crows...unless thy wisdom forewarns him! I have made the
Prince's life my personal affair." [* Religious teacher]

"I have heard words. They are principally wind, smelling of
onions," said the hillman.

He was well aware that we would not sit there talking to him,
offering him terms, if there had been any easier or less
expensive course open to the Government just then; nothing but
business acumen prevented him from attacking the Sikh that
minute, and even that element of self-control was weakening, as
the Sikh had foreseen. He prodded it further.

"The truth is, you are afraid to refuse Ali Babul," he asserted,
with an air of absolute conviction.

"At least I am not afraid of thee, thou ---- "

"Shame that such a hairy man should fear a shaven, swag-bellied bunnia!"

"Allah!"

"See him then, and warn him, if you aren't afraid to," King
suggested intervening. There could hardly have been bloodshed
there before our fire, but the border laws of guest and host do
not preclude commencement of hostilities the minute the threshold
is left behind. Sikh and hillman love each other as dog and
jackal do...not much.

"There have first to be promises."

The hillman looked in King's eyes reading there good faith, but
not much else; for there was little King might promise without
referring to headquarters.

"I will do my best about the money for you," King said.

"I, too, then, about Ali Babul. And how much is that? Bring the
brute here. Give us both safe conduct. I will talk with him
tomorrow night, at this hour, before this fire in the Huzoor's
presence. But if the Government were not afraid for its skin it
would have scoughed up Ali Babul long ago," the hillman added.

There were elements of truth in that suggestion, and the only
plausible retort would have been a boast, which in turn might
have cut short negotiations.

"Would Ali Babul come?" Grim asked.

"Aye! For I will bring him!" said Narayan Singh.

King nodded. Whatever Narayan Singh might undertake to do would
be carried out unless he died in the attempt, and not even Kangra
Khan questioned that outcome. But I was watching the hillman's
face and questioning that, and I noticed Grim did the same thing.
There was deep, unspoken thought there, and his eyes were too
bright to mean anything but mischief.

"Hadn't we better define things more exactly?" I proposed
in English.

So we tried, but the uselessness was fairly evident at once. It
was like bargaining with a tricky lawyer; we could not possibly
foresee all the quirks and sidesteps that would certainly occur
to him, and our apparent doubt of his good faith only served to
increase his trickiness. It would have been better if I had held
my tongue.

"Enough!" King said finally, with a gesture that wiped out the
last five minutes at a stroke. "This is between thee and me,
Kangra Khan. The undertaking stands thus: here, by this fire,
tomorrow night, thou and Ali Babul are to meet and talk before
us. Both to have safe conduct. Nothing that shall be said
tomorrow night by this fire shall be held against thee or him,
unless we all reach agreement."

"That is the promise," the hillman answered, and he rose with his
right hand on the hilt of his knife to give the oath solemnity.
When he had met the eyes of each of us in turn King shook hands
with him, and he turned and strode out of the camp with more
assurance in his gait than I was altogether glad to see. There is
nothing finer than the sight of independence with its face
against the world; but there are times, and seasons.

"Somehow, before tomorrow night, he means to put one over on us,"
I said, and Grim nodded assent. But King and Narayan Singh were
both of opinion that the hillman would keep the peace strictly
until after the next conference, at any rate. They had the right
to know best.

There was peace next morning sure enough...kites wheeling
lazily, the smoke of breakfast fires rising spirally from the
camps to either hand, and a subaltern with two mounted troopers
riding an errand, who laughed as he tossed us the news:

"No shootin' last night! First time for a month! We're wonderin'
what Allah's cookin'! You fellows notice anythin' worth mentionin'?"

We reported all well, and no shots fired.

"Hell presently, I'll bet you!" he said, laughing, and rode on.

It was a reasonably safe bet that he offered. Quiet along that
border usually presages coming bloodshed. But we had reason to
believe there would be at least one more quiet night, and wished
we had betted, just to dampen down his cockiness. Then, two hours
after breakfast, there came a mounted messenger with a white
envelope tucked in his turban. He halted as if it were mounted
baseball and he sliding for the home plate. But that was merely
swagger; he had trotted until he came within a hundred yards of
us. King held his hand out, but the fellow jumped to the ground
and stood examining us each in turn.

"Ram-mis-den sahib?" he asked, staring at me.

So I took the envelope and broke the seal, aware of mixed
emotions, for I knew the handwriting...as strong and
downright as a man's, but flowing, with large spaces between
the words.

"Joan Angela!" I said, not understanding why I was not pleased;
for I would rather see her than a sunrise. Intuition sums up the
near future in a flash, giving you the total and no details; but
so does Joan Angela's correspondence.

Hello there, Jeff! she had written. Don't pretend this isn't a
surprise. I'm with the Farquharsons, but they're off on leave
today, and I've a date for dinner with the Somethingorother
Bengal Lancers. Might see you sooner. Having lots of fun. So
long. J.A.L.

The "Somethingorother" Bengal Lancers were presumably the outfit
camped over on our left hand. The Farquharsons, I think, belong
to the Civil Service; but whoever they are, they ought to have
been hanged for turning Joan Angela loose on that countryside. I
passed the note in turn to King and Grim, and they waited for
the explanation.

"One of my countrywomen. Youth, brains, ability, good looks,
heaps of money, and a sense of humour," I said, and King looked
at me steadily, reading on my face what I daresay was alarm. I
did not try to diagnose it.

"She'll be safe enough with the Lancers, but I'm surprised they
should ask her to dinner out here. I suppose there's nothing
about that in the regulations, but there's such a thing as common
sense," he answered after a long pause.

"She's pretty sure to get them to ask us to dinner too, tonight,"
I said.

"Well, we can't go. At least, you can, of course, but Grim and I
must stay here."

That was true. Narayan Singh had ridden off on his quest of Ali
Babul, and even if it had been likely that the Sikh would return
before night, it would have been out of the question to leave him
there alone to manage the conference.

"Where is she now?" I asked the messenger.

The man did not know. He said he was the son of a _thalukdar,_*
and had been asked as a favour to carry the message by Farquharson
sahib, whom he had met on his way to the railway station. He had
not even seen Joan Angela. Did not know who she was, or pretended
not to, and dropped a rather strong hint that, as someone on
that countryside, he set a good example by minding his own
business. He said he had come simply to oblige Farquharson
sahib, and would ride back home as soon as his horse was
rested. [* Land-holder]

So I offered to ride part of the way with him, and he agreed. He
seemed rather glad to have company. Even in broad daylight that
is no safe border for a solitary horseman, whose equipment is
worth powder and shot; belated prowlers lie up until the next
night affords opportunity to sneak back with their plunder to the
hills, and in their eyes it is sin and shame to overlook a chance
that Allah sends.

My purpose was to turn Joan Angela back from the border, even at
the risk of a quarrel. As King said, she would be quite safe with
the Lancers; but neither he, nor I, nor they, nor she, nor anyone
could guess how long she would remain with them. She acts on the
spur of any moment, with assurance that would make an oil-stock
salesman green with envy, and the fact that her astounding luck
had never yet deserted her was no proof there would be no end
to it.

I rode away presently in search of her, turning over in mind a
hundred arguments I might use, well aware that she would flout
them all and laugh at me. I would have to make a personal appeal
to her; I knew that, and I hated it. For friendship she will
often do what no argument of safety or convention will induce her
to consider; but I dislike dealing on those terms. Friendship is
nothing to bargain with, but a thing apart, like a man's religion
or his nationality, to be held unaffected by circumstances.
Nevertheless, I was willing to sacrifice that friendship, if by
doing so I might steer her out of danger.

Nevertheless, whatever her luck might be, mine was out that
morning. I drew the Farquharson's bungalow blank; nobody home,
not even a caretaker; not as much as a hanger-on to answer
questions. The European quarter there was a straggling line of
beastly official bungalows, and I rode to every one of them,
without result. Nobody had heard of Joan Angela. I gathered,
without being told so, that the Farquharsons had made themselves
disliked and had applied for leave in consequence.

But I stuck to it, and the _thalukdar_ stayed by to help. Failing
all trace of Joan Angela herself, we begged a change of horses
and galloped all the way to Dera Ghazi Khan, where I saw the
Commandant and warned him. He was indignant, and swore he would
twist the Lancers' tails for daring to ask a woman to dinner so
close to the border. I overheard his instructions. Joan Angela
Leich was to be found and taken to Peshawar, where the authorities
might deal with her as they should see fit.

That suited me. It was after four o'clock then, and I calculated
I had just about time to reach the Lancers' camp before dark.
That was the last card up my sleeve, and a trump of sorts. I
meant to tell them what the Commandant had said, after which it
was fairly safe to wager they would keep Joan Angela at least
well guarded until definite orders came.

So the _thalukdar's_ son and I parted company, and I begged still
another change of mounts, for my weight is no joke even for an
Army remount used to carrying all the paraphernalia a soldier
lugs around with him. That last horse was a good one, and I made
him prove it, galloping hell-bent-for-supper-time until we
reached the Jhelum, and then following the bank, with only a
short pause to let him breathe, until I could see the lights of
the Lancers' camp beginning to blink in the distance in
descending dusk.

They were still several miles away, but it was not time yet for
the border-thieves to take chances, so I reined in to a walk for
the horse's sake, conscious for the first time that I had no
weapon, but not especially nervous on that account. I was very
likely safer at slow speed than if I hurried, since a lurking
enemy would judge that if I did not seem afraid there was
probably good reason for it. On the whole, I was well enough
contented, deeming my effort in Joan Angela's behalf well made
and her as good as shipped away to safety.

It was pitch dark before I grew aware of voices somewhere on
ahead. One voice was a woman's...golden...not raised, and
yet not undisturbed. I could not hear what she said, for my horse
put his forefoot in a hole and nearly fell as I spurred him
forward. I heard a man order her in English to be silent, and
then I caught the answer, as distinctly as if it had been given
ten yards away instead of possibly a hundred.

"You'll have to ask in a different tone of voice if you expect me
to oblige you?"

"Then you die!" someone snarled--in English again.

"All right. My funeral. Nobody else need worry!"

Then I recognized her voice beyond the shadow of a doubt, but
did doubt what to do. All I could see were the camp-fires and
lanterns blinking in the distance; between them and me were
quite immeasurable miles of black night, with the Jhelum River
swirling and sucking on my left hand. The horse sensed danger,
shied toward the river, and reared as he found himself too
close to the rotten bank. Someone fired from fifty yards ahead
of me. The horse shuddered and collapsed; a ton or two of
earth gave way; earth, horse and I went plump into the river
all together.

I ought to have drowned along with the wounded horse, for the
Jhelum sweeps in a hurry around a curve at that point, with
shallows in mid-stream that send the force of water sluicing
against the bank. But there was a boat tied by the nose to a
tree-stump and pressed close against the bank by the weight of
the river rushing by, and my hand caught that as I struck out
blindly. In about a minute I was up on the bank again fumbling at
the rope that held the boat. But it was tangled, and my wet
fingers made hard work of it in the dark; so I found my clasp
knife and, opening that with my teeth, cut the rope and let the
boat go. It was better than nothing at all to cut off the
enemy's retreat.

Then I heard Joan Angela's voice again:

"Let go! I'd rather be killed than handled by a brute like you!"

I heard a slap, as if she had struck someone with her open hand,
followed by an oath that ripped the very bowels of the night
apart. But she did not scream, and there was no answering blow,
nor any sound of struggle. Footsteps began approaching, and I
crouched behind a clump of high grass.

I had been in that position about twenty seconds when a new sound
warned me I was being stalked. The enemy presumably had sent a
scout to make sure that bullet had done its work thoroughly, and
I heard the fellow crawl up to the other side of the clump,
within two yards of me. I heard, too, the clink of some kind of
weapon that he dragged along the ground. I needed a weapon more
than anything else on earth that minute.

The fellow lay still, listening and trying to peer through the
dark along the river bank. He held his breath, and let it out
silently, but I could smell him, and knew he wore a sweaty
sheepskin jacket. Then I heard what sounded like a knife-blade
striking against stone, and judged he had two weapons, of which
the knife in the dark was the more dangerous.

There was nothing after that to hesitate about. When you know the
worst, and know there is no alternative, the thing to do is to
have it over with. I jumped, and landed with both heels on the
small of the fellow's back, and maybe it was that that killed
him, but I used the butt-end of his rifle to make sure, not being
minded to have an enemy at my back as well as several in front.

I could hear them coming fast now, and had no time to reach for
the long knife. It was impossible to see, but I was trying to
count the footfalls. Joan Angela's were easily distinguishable,
and there seemed to be five or six men hurrying her along. I
crouched beside the clump of grass in readiness to do my utmost
at close quarters. However, they stopped again. Maybe they
had heard me land on the fellow's back, although he had not
cried out.

"Suliman!" called someone, twenty yards away.

I fired, and hit him, but not fatally, for he shouted to the
others. Two or three of them came charging toward me, and I
stopped the first one with the butt-end. Another one fired,
and missed.

"Joan Angela!" I shouted.

"Who's that? Jeff! Is that you?"

I started for her; but I'm too slow on my feet to pull off any
of those tip-and-run stunts. I shouldn't have tried. Before I
could reach her I was knocked on the head by a blow from behind,
and after that there was darkness and a very bad dream for a
long time.




CHAPTER II


"Those Fools Will Prod a Hornet's Nest."



I came to with a splitting headache, and lay wondering in a kind
of twilight, caused, as I discovered presently, by a guttering
candle stuck in a knothole in a board on a stamped earth floor.
Overhead there were beams made of all sorts of odds and ends,
including two telegraph poles stamped with the British Government's
broad arrow, and a length of standard railway metal.

My fingers informed me that I was lying on sheepskins or
something of the sort; and in among the singing in my ears I
could distinguish occasional sounds obviously made by someone
rather close to me; but I did not move my head for several
minutes, because it hurt too much for one reason, and for another
it seemed wise to get some information before betraying any.

It was night; that much was obvious. But I could not guess how
many nights I might have lain unconscious, and it felt like aeons
since that blow from behind had knocked me sprawling. There
seemed to be two people in the room, or hut, or whatever it was,
and one of them was crooning to herself in a language that if I
ever understood I could not then remember. It was decidedly cold,
and at last I shivered, whereat I felt agreeably soft fingers
feeling the back of my hand.

"Shall I throw a sheepskin over you?" a voice asked. So I turned
my head and saw Joan Angela in riding breeches on the ground
beside me. She looked tired, but not otherwise distressed.

"How did you get here?" I asked her stupidly.

"Don't try to talk for a while yet. Listen," she answered. "I was
afraid once or twice you were dead; and you're so heavy they had
to handle you roughly, although I think they tried to be decent
in their own fashion. There's a cut on the back of your head, but
I don't think it's deep, and I've bandaged it, so don't move."

"I don't remember much. How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Several hours. But don't talk. I'll tell you all about it if
you'll listen."

So I lay still, and presently Joan Angela began.

"I was on my way to the Lancers' camp. There were two men with
me, and I'd sent a third in advance to say I was coming, and
would be late, but was all right. My horse had gone lame, and I
was letting him take it easy. But it was later than I thought,
and I think we'd lost the way; I'm sure we covered lots of
unnecessary miles, and when it grew dark the men seemed to lose
their bearings altogether. But I knew if we reached the river
and turned along the bank we'd be all right, and it was no use
turning back, even if I'd cared to; so we rode on. The men didn't
like it much. They were Biluchis, who'd been lent to me by the
Farquharsons when they left home...supposed to be awfully
faithful and so on, but too stupid for words.

"Well, we reached the river at last, and they said to turn to the
right, but I knew better. If we had turned to the right, maybe
you and I wouldn't be here now, but I'd have missed the Lancers'
camp, and then some other brigands would have bagged me, so
what's the odds? I knew I'd taken the right direction.

"It got so dark at last you couldn't see a thing. Then some men
jumped out of a hole by the river bank and knifed my Biluchis
without a word. I had a pistol and tried to use it, but another
rascal cut my horse's throat, and grabbed me as he fell, so the
shot went wild. Then he knocked the pistol out of my hand and I
was prisoner. But he didn't see where the pistol went to, and
I've got it now. They treated me reasonably well, and while they
talked I sat down--right on the pistol.

"I wasn't worried much. The Biluchis were dead, and of course
that was horrible, but I despise a man who's so afraid he has to
have a woman show him which way to turn; and they didn't put up
any fight, they were just cowards. I was sorrier for the horse.
And I knew the Lancers would be out looking for me in two ticks,
because they expected me to dinner, and besides, that third
Biluchi had ridden on ahead to tell them I was really on the way.

"What puzzled me was that the men who'd captured me--there were
nine of them--started to lead me off in the wrong direction. We
kept along the river bank. I was even crazy enough for a minute
to think they were taking me to the Lancers' camp to hand me
over. I could see the camp lights in the distance. There was a
man in charge of the party--a chieftain I suppose--whom they all
called Kangra Khan; he was the only one who seemed to know a word
of English, but when I asked him a question or two he ordered me
to hold my tongue. He even threatened to kill me if I made a
noise, but I didn't believe him. I kept raising my voice in the
hope some of the Lancers' outposts would hear me; and at last I
really did hear someone coming. It turned out to be you.

"Kangra Khan put his hand over my mouth then, and I bit it. I
wish you'd heard him swear! But he's a gentlemanly sort of savage
and didn't hit back. They shot your horse, and they were awfully
sore because you killed one of their men, and that was why they
knocked you on the head instead of roping you. You nearly killed
Kangra Khan by the way. Your bullet seared his cheek, and would
have hit me if I'd been about a foot more to the right.

"Well, you were knocked out; but someone struck a match and I
recognized you. And you weren't dead, because I could feel your
heart beating. Then we heard what might be Lancers coming. The
party grew scared and got ready to scatter. They were about to
tie my hands, and one man folded up a bit of sheepskin for a gag.
I didn't fancy that.

"Of course, it was worse than a hundred to one chance of the
Lancers coming on you in the dark; and if they didn't stumble on
you you'd be dead before morning. So I promised them I'd come
quietly provided they took you too. If not, no. And I started in
to yell to prove it!

"Kangra Khan seems something of a sportsman in his own way, and
took me at my word. He gave orders to the gang to pick you up and
carry you gently. It seems you'd cut their boat loose, and we had
to go miles back along the bank until we found another one, and
we crossed the river at last in the craziest box of a thing you
ever saw. I thought we were sure to be drowned a dozen times. The
boat was half-full of water, and you lay on the bottom with the
water flopping over you, and me holding your head up so you
could breathe.

"They had turned loose the two horses that belonged to my
Biluchis, so that the Lancers would follow them and give Kangra
Khan a chance to slip by unobserved. He didn't cross the river
with the rest of us, but continued along the bank in the
direction of the Lancers' camp, saying he'd see me later and
that he held me to my promise to go quietly. I told him I'd
come to his funeral when the British hanged him, and he grinned
as if he thought that a good joke.

"Once we'd crossed the river the going was fairly easy for a long
time, but they hurried me and lugged you until I felt nearly as
all in as you looked. I had to remind them a good many times of
the chief's orders to treat you gently; and as they didn't know
any English, and I can't talk their language, it wasn't so easy.
But I remembered I'd heard 'em call him Kangra Khan; so I kept
saying `Kangra Khan!' and pointing to you, and frowning, and
presently they saw the point. I guess they're scared of him, and
I don't blame 'em--he looks like a top-dog.

"Then we came to these hills, and the going began to be awful.
They had to lug me up precipices by the hands. When daylight
comes I daresay it'll all look simple enough, but in the dark it
felt like climbing Everest or something. When we reached this but
they shoved me in, and threw in some sheepskins, and you on top
of them, and left us. But a little later on they opened the door
and pushed in an old woman--at least she looks old--that's her
you hear crooning. She's scared to death of us. Every once in a
while she shows me a knife about a yard long. But she brought a
candle with her, which is something. I guess it'll be dawn soon.
This hut's built of stones and mud and stolen timber, with bits
of old sacking and stuff like that in the chinks. Are you cold?
Are your clothes nearly dry? Let me feel them."

"Does the old woman know any English?" I asked.

"No. I've tried her. I think that song she's croaking is a prayer
or an exorcism. It's intended to keep us from bewitching her;
that's my guess. How does your head feel?"

Nothing obliges a man to recover so swiftly as something
particular to think about, and Lord knew I had that in plenty.
If I had my choice, for instance, between saving Joan Angela
Leich or Rheims Cathedral, the building would go without a
moment's hesitation. I managed to turn my head to look at her.

You can't change her much. Her hair was all untidy, and her
jacket and shirt-affair were stained with dirt, but she was
mighty good to look at, nevertheless. The guttering candle threw
half of her face in shadow, but made her brave eyes shine, and
the outline of her face was something that is never born outside
America, whatever fools may say about the melting-pot. There
was no nonsense there, no humbug, no claptrap, but a gallant
good-humour, and a disregard for things of no account that seems
to me better than religion.

I told her to take one of the sheepskins and throw it over her to
keep off the draught that came whimpering through the cracks;
apparently she hadn't thought of that before. She had to pull the
thing out from under me. Then, because the gods who supervise
such things were willing, I fell asleep, which in men like me,
who am nearly all physique without much brains, is a pretty sure
sign of recovery.

When I awoke it was broad daylight, as you could tell by the
light streaming in through cracks. Joan Angela was dozing, chin
on knees, with her back against a wall, and the old hag was
mixing up a mess of goat's milk and some sort of grain--our
breakfast presumably. I got up and found I could stand without
holding on to anything, but that was about all; so I copied Joan
Angela's example and sat with my back to the wall.

Five minutes after that the door opened and in strode Kangra
Khan. He stood leaning on his rifle looking at us while I blinked
at the sunshine. There were men crowding to the door behind him,
but he motioned them back angrily and slammed the door in their
faces, which did not, however, prevent them from clapping their
eyes to the cracks.

After about a minute's silence, during which the old hag stirred
away steadily at the porridge, he gave me Allah's blessing. I
assured him he needed it more than I did.

"A man," I said, "who commits such treachery as you have done
will need pity rather badly by and by."

"Inshallah!" he answered. "I am sorry you were hurt, but you
killed two of my men. What wrong had they done you?"

There was no need to answer with words. I glanced at Joan Angela,
who was studying him quietly over the top of her knees.

"Is the sahiba hurt?" he asked.

"She seems to be a prisoner," I answered.

"And a good one!" he retorted. "What of it? What treachery have
I done? Lo, I kept the promise. I was at the fire, and spoke with
Ali Babul in the sahib's presence. Moreover, I told the fat pig
Ali Babul I will not help the Punjabis. Lo, I spat at him to
prove it! Lo, I have no need to bargain with the dog!" He gestured
magnificently in Joan Angela's direction. "They tell me the
sahiba has a mint of money!"

"So we're held for a ransom?" I asked.

"Aye, a great one!"

I gestured upward with my thumb. There was the roar of two
aeroplanes overhead.

"The Lancers will come presently," I assured him.

"Aye! Those fools will prod a hornets' nest! They are across the
river now. I sent my man an hour since to warn them to turn back
again. They will make him prisoner. When they question him he
will ask whether four hundred can wisely attack us. I have twenty
thousand men."

I accepted that statement with reserve. Accuracy as to numbers
is unknown in all that North-West country. Two thousand--twenty
thousand--even two hundred thousand--might mean pretty much the
same thing. Still, his point was obvious.

"Defeat them, and you deal with the guns behind them. Beat the
guns, and comes an army," I answered.

"Comes the army, and who shall guard the Prince? Is the Punjab so
contented? Do the British want war?" he asked me. "Nay! I tell
you they will rather pay my bill! A crore of rupees, and sahiba
goes free--thou with her. Otherwise, the Melikani will send
battleships and land an army, and fight the British from
the rear!"

They have peculiar notions about the United States in some parts
of the world, and it was no use telling him how slight the
prospect was of Congress voting for a war in India. Since the
A.E.F. went to France they all believe that anything might happen.

His case looked stronger than I cared to admit to him. It would
probably take weeks, and months perhaps, before the British could
bring a force to bear sufficient for invasion of that territory.
For defence they were fairly well provided, but it is another
matter to advance across savage and supply-less hills. Besides,
as he said, there was the Prince; undoubtedly they did not want a
war while he was visiting India. About our only chance was if the
British should strike suddenly and surround the place where we
were now hidden, which could not be far from the border. But as
if he had read my thoughts, Kangra Khan deprived me of that faint
hope that minute.

"They hunt on a false scent," he said, grinning. "Today we lie
here. Tonight we move on. By tomorrow they may hunt a year and
never find you. In a week you will be further from them than the
mountain was from Mahommed, on whom Allah's blessing! Shall they
come to you then?"

He could only have one object in telling me his plans. The much
more usual method is to keep a prisoner in the dark as to his
destiny. He was talking to me, but at Joan Angela, hoping she
would offer to pay the demanded ransom. But ignorance is a great
fortifier of courage; and inborn love of adventure is no weak
straw to blow away with argument.

"I won't pay!" Joan Angela said simply, looking up and straight
into his eyes. I think she was rather enjoying herself.

For a moment a look of cruelty crossed his face. The hills--the
spirit of the hills--the barren, cruel heart of Allah's Slag-heap,
as they call it, that compels and curses and deprives the weakest,
hardening the hardest, reminded him he might compel too. There
are ways and means; and there are women who are more expert
than men in inventing agony for prisoners--all at his beck
and call. But something manly in him seemed to fight that
suggestion down. He laughed, showing yellow, irregular teeth.

"I have seen men's hearts fail. Is a woman's resolution greater?"
he asked ironically. Then, with bitter meaning: "Eat while you
have the chance!"

He motioned to the hag, who brought the bowl of porridge and set
it down between Joan Angela and me, together with two old rusty
spoons. The stuff was smoky and nearly cold, nor any too clean,
and we preferred our fingers to the spoons. There was grit, too,
in the stuff. But I think Joan Angela enjoyed it, partly because
almost any food was good after a long fast and a wetting; mainly
because of the adventure and the novelty.

Kangra Khan stood watching us, smiling rather grimly. We might
have been two strange animals being fed in a cage. On the whole,
he seemed rather pleased with us, but I thought I detected a
trace of anxiety underlying his cavalierly air, as if perhaps all
were not so well with him as he pretended. There were the eyes to
the cracks, for instance, and the voices of his men outside,
suggesting neither discipline nor over-confidence in their
leader. Their eagerness to get a glimpse of Joan Angela, and some
of the comments I overheard, brought another thought, and it was
just as well Joan Angela did not understand the language.

"You know this woman's honor is in your keeping?" I said, looking
straight at him. He did not answer; so I added to the hint: "You
will be held answerable. If harm should befall her the British
would never rest until they hanged you in a pigskin. They would
burn your carcase afterwards."

He showed his teeth again. No Moslem enjoys that threat.

"Let her beware of herself!" he answered surlily. "By Allah, who
am I that you should say such words to me?"

"Let's hope you're a man of discretion," I answered; and at that
he turned his back on us and went outside to snarl and argue with
his men. Whereat Joan Angela nudged me and touched her jacket
pocket in which the little automatic pistol lay; which was all
very well as a last resource, but none too comforting at that.

Meanwhile my head ached damnably, and if we were to be moved on
somewhere that night it behoved me to get in fit condition for
the march, or otherwise I would be unfit to snatch opportunity.
It may have been fever--a man's brain after a severe blow is
seldom in shape to judge sensibly--but the only line of action
that appealed at all to me just then was to escape by some means
as we threaded the hills by night, and work our way back to the
Jhelum River. I began to talk it over with Joan Angela.

I have often wondered since why I did not advise her there and
then to agree to pay the ransom. Then they could have sent a
messenger to make the necessary stipulations with the military;
bankers, or the Government, would doubtless have advanced the
money on Joan Angela's note, and even a third of a million
dollars would hardly have inconvenienced her much. But the truth
is, it hardly occurred to me.

Courage is more contagious than disease. If she had dallied with
the notion I might have urged it. But the indomitable spirit was
so strong in her that there was lots to spare, and some of it
conveyed itself to me. It was likely enough she would have
despised me if I had ventured to propose surrender--not that I
would have let that prevent, if I had thought it best to yield.
But you can't consider yielding--not in Joan Angela's company. As
an abstract proposition, failure is incomprehensible to her; and
as a concrete fact it never seems to have been part of her
experience. Men have called me an idiot for not insisting on her
handing over the ransom money; but neither King, nor Grim, nor
Narayan Singh found fault with me in that respect; and I know
that as I sat there in the hut beside her (admiring her, I
admit), the only line of thought I followed was how to escape by
subtlety or violence. And I am not a subtle person.

"Let's take turns sleeping," I proposed. "Whichever of us is
awake should pocket any kind of food obtainable and any weapon
that comes within reach. I might hide a long knife, for instance,
inside my breeches. Above all, don't give them any idea that
we're thinking of escape. Now you go to sleep first."

She has grit, that girl. She did not argue, but went and lay down
on the sheepskins that had been my bed, and I kept watch while
she dropped off to sleep like a two-year-old. The old woman
started her crooning again, as if sleep were something dangerous,
productive of evil spirits to be exorcised. But after a while it
occurred to me she was trying to work magic to cast a spell over
us; so I pretended to doze off too, sitting up, and surprised her
in the act of searching Joan Angela's jacket pocket.

That put me in possession of a knife. She flashed the weapon the
instant she saw I was awake, and I took it from her, twisting her
wrist until she gasped; but she did not scream, and she was at
such pains to make no noise that I could not help noticing the
circumstance. She seemed much more anxious than I was to avoid
being heard by the watchers on guard outside.

What is it that makes a man act when his own judgment has nothing
definite on which to base itself. Intuition? Stored-up experience?
I don't know. I only do know that scores of times I have acted
swiftly in the face of facts that have seemed to suggest the
opposite course, and in the outcome have scored heavily.

I shoved that long knife down my breeches-leg, took the old woman
by the scruff of her wrinkled neck, opened the door, which was
only fastened with a leather thong, and kicked her out into the
midst of an astonished circle of Pathans, who were sitting around
a six-stick fire discussing prospects. She landed almost in the
fire. Two of them pointed their rifles at me and the rest kicked
her further on her way, she screaming and cursing, they laughing,
throwing stones after her as she slid out of sight down a
shoulder of rock.

Then I stood in the doorway, not particularly nervous on account
of rifles, since I argued they would hardly shoot a prisoner
worth money if they could avoid it; but curious. Four of the men
were playing a game with a wooden board and pebbles--a sort of
prehistoric form of checkers. I sat down between two of them and
looked on, remembering to bless them in the name of the Prophet
of God, and they returned the blessing civilly enough, although
one great hairy ruffian standing on the look-out near by slapped
his rifle meaningly. I nodded to him and he seemed to accept that
as a satisfactory promise of good conduct. His principal business
seemed to be to watch the British aeroplanes and give warning if
they should turn in our direction.

One of the players asked me if I had any money to gamble with,
but I was not fool enough to say yes. I always carry money. There
were four five-hundred-rupee notes tucked away in a pocket inside
my waistband, and I suspected Joan Angela of having more than
that in some fairly safe hiding-place; but the sight of money
would have acted like blood on wolves. However, the question gave
me an idea, and there are better ways than bribery to win the
friendship of a savage. Admire a horseman's horse, a musician's
music, a politician's politics, and he is your man.

I singled out the strongest-looking of them and admired his
muscle. He began to brag immediately and to show off, picking up
a piece of wood about the thickness of an axe-handle. He brake it
with a jerk. I entered into competition with him, breaking one of
the pieces, which was more than twice as difficult. It made my
head ache, but aroused the excited interest of all of them. The
fellow came back at me with an offer to try hand-grips, elbows to
the ground; so we lay down face to face, each with his right
elbow on the rock, and gripped fingers; he chose a tricky grip
that gave him an advantage, but I let him have it, and rapped his
knuckles on the rock so sharply that he shouted, and they all
laughed. He refused to try that a second time, so to put him in
good temper I let him beat me at pulling against each other, foot
to foot, and after that we were all on excellent terms. He told
me his name was Akbar bin Mahommed.

I asked him why they had been so glad to see the old hag kicked
out from the hut, but instead of answering the question they all
became suddenly interested in their rifles, and pretended to hear
sounds among the rocks below that called for investigation; so
when they had quit that foolishness I began to tell them stories,
remembering how Grim was used to managing wild Arabs in that way.
They became like children almost instantly, and one man turned
his back so that I might rest my head against his while I talked.
I told about magic I had witnessed in Benares, and about
imaginary old women who could turn a man into a crow, the crow
into an alligator, the alligator into a fish, and the fish into
an insect, after which the insect could be trodden on and
squashed by the first hoof that happened along--evolution vice
versa, as it were. They voted that a splendid story, and began to
brag about their own witches. The hag whom I had kicked so
cavalierly turned out to be one of them.

Her principal virtue, or demerit, according as a man employed her
or became her victim, was that she could see in the dark what a
man would do by daylight; and by mixing incantations with his
food could prevent his doing this or that thing and oblige him to
do something else. That, they said, was why Kangra Khan had sent
her into the but with us; and they added that now no doubt I
would have to do as Kangra Khan wished. But they all claimed to
have suffered under the old harridan in some way or another. She
had made this man's cow abortive, that man's wife barren, and the
other's child had died of smallpox. One fellow vowed he had spent
nine months in Peshawar gaol, all because, for spite, she had
given him the wrong magic when he set forth to rob soldiers at
the guard-post.

"But she will bewitch your foot for having kicked her!" Akbar bin
Mahommed added by way of afterthought. "And that is a pity, for
the foot is a good strong man's. Better kill her next time, lest
a worse evil befall. By Allah, I myself would kill her if I
dared; but my son is only two years old and at that age men
die easily."

"Is she devoted to Kangra Khan?" I asked him.

"Devoted to none but the devils! She supports him. None dares
refuse to obey him for fear of her."

It seemed likely Kangra Khan would resent my having kicked the
hag, if that was the state of local politics. I suggested
something of the sort, but they all laughed.

"Nay! He, too, is afraid of her. The next time she refuses him a
request he will bring her back to thee to be kicked and choked!
None of us dares wring her neck, but who cares whether she
bewitches thee?"

I asked where the British Lancers were, and with considerable
glee they pointed out a sort of amphitheatre in the foot-hills
about twenty miles away. After a while I made out an extended
string of dots, like insects, and they told me those were the
Lancers vainly searching in the wrong direction for Joan Angela
and me.

"And, by Allah, there will be some on this side who get boots and
new weapons!" they added. "Kangra Khan has set an ambush."

I asked about Kangra Khan, and they all agreed he was a good
strategist but a domineering fellow who could not brook rivalry
or even argument.

"He thinks that when he speaks his word is Allah's, and the
mullah must stand aside, praying backwards under his breath! In
time of fighting Kangra Khan is best; in peace, the mullah; so we
play the one against the other; but by the Prophet, on whom
blessings, a man can hardly call his life his own in any event."

Presently a party of Lancers began scouting in our direction, and
we could see the machine-gun ready to search out nooks and
crannies so I was ordered back into the hut, whose roof I noticed
then was hidden from above on three sides by an over-leaning crag
and camouflaged by the rock's shadow. It would probably be
impossible for a flyer to see the hut at all until late afternoon.
I stood in the doorway and watched the guard take cover as
skillfully as if they had had a course in Flanders; then went
in and took my turn on the sheepskins, while Joan Angela
stood watch.

They brought us meat and stolen rice at noon, with curry in
it--pretty evil stuff. I cached a little of the rice in a
handkerchief and went to sleep again, we taking turn and turn
about until evening, when they brought us more food, this time
bread of a sort made in the form of flat cakes like chupatties. I
cached quite a lot of that.

Then Kangra Khan came looking tired and none too well satisfied.
He omitted the customary blessing as he filled the doorway and
stood glaring in at us with his rifle slung behind his back.

"You have a last chance now to pay the ransom," he said angrily.
"The mullah has paper and pen. Will you sign a letter for us
to send?"

Joan Angela laughed at him, which is not a wise course to take
toward a chieftain in those savage hills.

"No," she said, "I've promised to attend your funeral."




CHAPTER III


"Thou and I are Birds Who Love the Storm, Sahiba."



The sun went down in an angry glare behind the hills at Kangra
Khan's back as he stood in the doorway muttering oaths into his
beard. He did not choose to be laughed at by a woman.  Nevertheless,
he postponed reprisals, and the reason appeared presently.

"See that!" he snarled, tossing an envelope to me. So, as it was
dark inside the hut, I went to the door and walked out past him
holding the letter toward the last red rays of sunshine. It was
written in Persian.

To Kangra Khan of the Orakzai (it ran), from Athelstan King.

Take notice. This affair is between you and me. You have
prisoners a woman and one of my friends. Their honor and their
lives are in your keeping. If ill-treatment should be offered
either of them then you and I will have a bone to pick and the
jackals shall tell the answer to the night. Settle your own
quarrel with the Raj, but look to me to hold you answerable for
the proper treatment of my friends.

I began to read the message aloud to Joan Angela, but Kangra Khan
snatched it from my hand.

"Mashallah! Does he think I am a wild beast?" he demanded. "Curse
his impudence! Those Lancers have slain a dozen of my men this
afternoon, and the fliers have finished off another score. Shall
I not play tit-for-tat on you two?"

I could have smashed him where he stood, for a well-aimed blow
would have cracked his head against the doorpost, but there were
too many men in the dark behind him to make that chance worth
taking. Besides, it was decidedly unlikely he would kill such
valuable prisoners as he calculated us to be.

"He invites you to act like a gentleman," I suggested.

"Not he! He threatens me!"

"He says it's between you and him," I retorted. "We're only
prisoners. You can't drag us into it."

He seemed to see the force of that. A savage always is at a
disadvantage when his sense of fairness is appealed to. It is
only the civilised folk who hold ethics subject to convenience. I
think what angered him was that King should have doubted his
proper intentions.

"Ye shall eat as I eat, sleep as I sleep, march as I march,
suffer as I suffer," he growled. "By Allah, ye shall pay the
price I name or be forever prisoners!" He strode into the hut as
if to seize Joan Angela, but was satisfied when she came backing
out in front of him. "By Allah, who is Lord of all, now hear me!
Ye have a hundred days. Pay me the money before the hundred
days are up or I take this woman for a wife and shoot thee,
Ramm-is-den. That will be my answer to Attleystan King!"

He tore the letter into little bits in front of us and threw them
to the winds, then turned and strode away, tossing an order back
over his shoulder to the men who were clustered in a group
between us and the edge of the rock on which the hut stood. They
signed to us to follow him and closed in before and behind, so
that we trod on the heels of the men in front and those behind
crowded us. Escape would have been impossible, and after an
hour's hard traveling the chance grew even less, for we followed
a track that wound in and out among crags and ravines with seldom
more than room for two to go abreast, and often only room for
single file. It was impossible to see into the ravines, for the
cliffs above us cast a deep-black shadow, and only the snarling
of Jhelum's tributary streams among the boulders hinted now and
then at what might be in store for anyone who stumbled.

But Joan Angela was a long way yet from being ill-pleased with
her lot. She was getting what she had come away from home
for--excitement. Money had taught her that you can't buy anything
worth having except responsibility, and she was tired of
expensive civilization--bored to rebellion against it. This was
fun in her eyes; real risk; genuine adventure; thrilling. She
began to sing until a man turned in his tracks and ordered her
curtly to be silent.

Joan Angela was going much the stronger of the two. A blow on the
back of the head leaves effects that are not thrown off too
easily. At the end of the second hour I began to feel dizzy and
had to sit down for a rest at intervals, to the awful disgust of
our escort and the alarm of Joan Angela.

"The big bullock weakens soonest!" they quoted, sneering.

"We'd better offer to pay up if you're going to be sick," Joan
Angela argued. "I won't have your life on my conscience."

It only made it worse, of course, to have to argue with her. What
was worse still, Kangra Khan looking down from above overheard us
and joined in.

"Ye have but a hundred days to pay in any case!" he reminded us;
and though I could not see him I could almost feel him grin. "One
month for a letter to go to America. One month for the letter to
return. A month for negotiations, and ten days to make the
payment in! Be but one day late and the woman shall know what
wifing means in a village of the Orakzai! Attleystan King may
come then and make a feud for her; mayhap he will bury such bones
of thine as the jackals haven't cracked up, Ramm-is-den!"

"Better pay," said my friend Akbar bin Mahommed, with a hand on
my shoulder. "Mashallah! It would be shame to see such a corpse
as thine blistering in a nullah. Write thou the letter and go
free when the money comes. Make a feud with him thereafter and I
will join thee!"

I thought that a mighty handsome offer and it put new heart in
me. That was no time or place to write letters in; time enough to
do that in the morning, if Joan Angela should then elect to
yield. A man who offers friendship to a fellow in a tight place
ranks ace high in my esteem, whatever his friendship may be
actually worth. I struggled on again; and after a while we came
to a circular cup in the hills where a group of stone huts
surrounded a corral in which were three lean horses.

There was argument. There always is in that land when anything
whatever is to be done or left undone; but at the end of half an
hour's explosive blasphemy, in which the name of Allah mingled
with pollution and the angels were summoned to witness the mess,
two of the horses were finally "borrowed under duress" for Joan
Angela and me, and the poor old skate that fell to my lot started
on the worst, and last, adventure of his life.

I overheard Kangra Khan saying he really took the horses, not on
my account, but because the men we took them from would want them
back, and therefore would be wary about giving information about
our route to any British troops who might chance on our line of
retreat. That sounded plausible, but it may have been only his
method of keeping up a reputation with his men for iron-hearted
craftiness. It served at any rate to inform me on two points. I
bullied my sorry beast until I was knee to knee with Joan Angela.

"Our host is afraid of pursuit, and not too popular hereabouts,"
I told her. "Pathans are poor hands at sticking together. If
there's a dispute among themselves our chance to escape improves."

She nodded. "I won't pay as long as your head holds out," she
answered. "But you and I are friends, Jeff, and you know me well
enough to say so the minute you feel like it. If it weren't for
your injury I'd call it good fun."

Well, opinions differ as to what is fun. Now, looking back at it,
I can see her point of view; but just then there was nothing
except dislike for squealing (to apply no stronger term) that
kept me from counseling surrender. I made up my mind to let
things take their course until the next day, after which I would
urge her to pay the ransom unless some obvious means of escape
should present itself. You see, Joan Angela is not the type of
young woman you can treat in any way except as an equal mentally
and physically. She can endure as much as any man alive in the
way of roughing it, and about the only kind of man who doesn't
find her splendid company is the kind who can't or won't forget
the sex problem. To her mind it is no problem, anyhow, and if I
had played the part of a heavy male protecting her against a
world too dangerous for her sex she would have held it against me
all my days. I would have lost a friend I value.

Yet men who have seen her since, in evening dress at Simla and
such places, have thought me a scoundrel for not compelling her,
by force if necessary, to pay the ransom and have done with it.
There is one man in particular whose talkative head I intend to
punch as soon as I am well enough to leave this hospital.

We rode interminably up and down a winding track that would have
suited goats, I walking as often as not because my horse was too
weak to negotiate the stiffer places with my weight on him. Once
or twice, as if to prove the dissension among the Pathans that I
suspected, there were shots fired near at hand; but whether at us
or in pursuance of some regulation feud it was impossible to
guess. We were making a prodigious noise, stumbling over the
rocks and kicking loose stones that went echoing down into the
gorges. Sound travels in those hills as if through speaking
galleries, and a wakeful enemy might have heard us coming for
miles away.

The strange part was that although we saw the flash of a rifle
frequently, and our men usually fired at the spot where the flash
was seen, not a bullet sang near us. It was like a sham fight
staged for the motion-pictures, and Kangra Khan led on and on, as
if there were no fight at all.

Then the moon rose, wan and silvery, veiled like a bride in a
wreath of mist; and we came to a cliff shaped like Gibraltar. At
the angle facing us the track divided, turning to right and left.
Kangra Khan took the left hand, and we filed after him. Close
behind me walked Akbar bin Mahommed, and there were two more men
guarding our rear about fifty or a hundred yards behind--both
busy at the moment with an enemy who yelled insults and fired
wildly from between rocks practically out of range.

The wan moonlight shone on that Gibraltar-shaped cliff, and it
was impossible to pass it unseen. There was a distance of
possibly two hundred yards along which the track that Kangra Khan
had chosen wound like a glistening snake before it dipped into
gloom again. It looked like sheer, stark suicide to follow that
course under fire: the track was narrow; there were no caves, no
boulders, no shelter; a man's shape would be silhouetted against
grey cliff. An owl swooped by, and bird and shadow were as clear
as if they had been etched. The only element of safety was the
deep, dark ravine on the left hand, which was so wide that an
enemy under cover on the far side would have to sight carefully;
but, even so, the range was not more than three hundred yards.

However, Kangra Khan hurried forward, perhaps in haste to get the
danger done with, and his men hurried at his heels at two or
three yard intervals. Akbar bin Mahommed, close behind me, made
no comment, and the firing in the rear ceased. Silence fell as if
the air had suddenly refused to carry any sound except the
snarling of a waterfall a mile away.

"Wait a minute!" I said, and Joan Angela drew rein. We watched
Kangra Khan and his men step forward into the pale light.

"Allah! What now?" asked Akbar bin Mahommed.

Suddenly a hurricane of rifle-firing spilt the silence, and for
about a minute the ledge on the far side of the ravine was lit
with spurting flame. There must have been fifty men pot-shotting
out of ambush, and at one spot flashed powder enough to suggest a
machine-gun. Bullets splashed against the glistening cliff, and
whole sections of shale shuddered and slid downward. Yet Kangra
Khan continued on his way, and not even his men seemed in any
special hurry.

"You see for yourself," I said, turning to Akbar.

"Ho!" he answered. "That is nothing! Those are the Jebel Waziris.
They came to loot across the border, but they quarreled with us.
Now they think to leave a feud or two behind them on their way
home. But, by Allah, none can shoot straight against that cliff
in this light--as the British learned a year ago. By day a boy
could hold the path against a hundred men. By night--ride on
and see!"

"By Allah, no!" I answered, and I seized Joan Angela's rein to
make sure no spirit of daring should take hold of her and send
her galloping across the line of fire.

"I'm not afraid of anything those savages dare face," she said,
laughing at me, and Akbar bin Mahommed was in the act of seizing
my rein to drag the horse forward, when it suddenly occurred to
me that our chance had come. There were only two men to our rear.
If we could make those plugs of ours gallop we had a reasonably
good chance to escape.

I thought of the knife, but there was not time to pull that out
from its hiding-place. Besides, even in that crisis I doubt
whether I would have used the blade of it on Akbar--he and I had
grown too friendly (though I don't doubt he would have shot me).
I swung my fist back for a blow that should have stunned him--and
the horse shied.

Something--brown-black-heavy--slid in an avalanche of loose shale
and fell from the ledge above us plump on to Akbar's shoulders.
His rifle went spinning into the ravine. A hand that must have
had a grip of steel went to his mouth, and he lay helpless,
heaving in spasms underneath a dark-robed thing that might have
been a vampire-bat. In the shadow at our feet the outspread
sleeves of the garment looked like wings. But the bat's head
turned, and Grim's pale face glanced up at me!

"Take the right-hand track!" he snapped. "Hurry!"

But I could hear the rearguard coming. I jumped off the horse and
waited for them, trying to draw the knife while I crouched in the
shadow of a projecting spur of the rock-wall. But they came too
fast, and I failed to get my belt undone in time. So I punched
the first man in the nose, and he went over backward, rifle and
all, into the ravine, crying out to Allah as he fell. The other
fellow fired at me point-blank and singed the bandage on my head.
I wrenched the rifle away, and swung the butt-end upward,
catching him below the jaw, and he followed his friend, making no
outcry whatever. I heard the two of them fall--thump-thump--on
the rocks below.

Now the rear was open for retreat, and I didn't doubt for a
second Grim would change his plans. I hurried back to him, and
found Joan Angela helping him to lash Akbar bin Mahommed's hands
with the reins belonging to my sorry screw. Neither of them knew
Grim, and to me he seemed like an apparition in a dream. Not a
word was said until Akbar's hands were safely lashed behind him.
Then Grim said "Mount!" and we obeyed him.

It never entered my head that he would still insist on the
right-hand track in front of us. I reached for my brute's nose to
pull him round and start back along the way we had come; but Grim
slapped his rump and kicked him forward, and in a second we
were trotting straight for the great Gibraltar rock, Joan
Angela leading.

There was one great pool of light to cross before we could plunge
into darkness on the right-hand side. Just before we reached it
Grim vaulted up behind me, and the miserable horse nearly
collapsed under our joint weight. Joan Angela jockeyed her plug
into a gallop, shot through the zone of brightness, and was
swallowed in the gloom. We followed at an amble, which was our
poor beast's last broken-hearted effort. Midway through the zone
of light a bullet from I don't know what direction struck him
behind the girth and he pitched to the ground, throwing Grim and
me into a heap in front of him. Grim pulled a pistol out and
finished that business. Then we ran, each with a hand on Akbar,
and found Joan Angela dismounted waiting for us in the darkness
just round the bend.

My head was swimming, but I supposed we must hurry on. However,
Grim said "No."

"Sit down and take a cinch on things," he suggested, fingering my
bandage. "Is your head bad?"

"Who are you?" Joan Angela asked him. "Jim Grim? Who is that?
Thanks awfully for coming, anyhow!"

"Where's King?" I asked as soon as I could pull myself a
bit together.

"Lord knows! He and I took the trail the minute the Lancers said
Miss Leich was missing. They had opinions of their own, of
course, but King suspected Kangra Khan instantly. It was probable
you'd have to lie up all day, and that gave us time to overtake
you if we used our wits; and King knew of a bunch of Jebel
Waziris whom he once befriended in some border row. So he and
Narayan Singh took one side of the ravine to get their help if
possible, and I came this way picking up your trail. I'm supposed
to be Ali Ibraim, a very holy person from Arabia. They tell
things to a holy man, you know, and don't molest him--much. I
carry a tooth of the Prophet with me--found it in a dead man's
skull this side of the Jhelum. Those were the Jebel Waziris on
the far side of the ravine. It was touch and go. I was afraid
they'd shoot us all, but Allah was on our side that time."

"How on earth did you manage it?" Joan Angela asked him.

"It looked impossible. But Narayan Singh sent a woman to me to
have herself blessed for childbirth. I gave her a written amulet,
which wouldn't be any good until she'd found him again and had
him write the name of Mahommed and several angels on the back of
it. After that she'd have twins. So I guess he got my message.
But, by Gorry, if I don't sleep and eat soon I'll be no good!"

I gave him the rice and chupatties I had cached in my
handkerchief--a most disgusting mess it was.

"Have you two eaten recently?" he asked, and then, when we told
him yes, devoured the lot as if he liked it.

"This is the best fun ever!" said Joan
Angela--truthfully--fervently. She wouldn't have changed places
with any woman in the world just then! Grim met her eyes, and
glanced at me.

"We're not through yet," he assured her curtly.

As he spoke there came the stuttering din of rifle-firing from
around the cliff behind us...angry, spasmodic stuff...and
yells of imprecation.

"That'll be Kangra Khan trying to fight his way back," said Grim.
"He hasn't a chance. But the trouble is our Waziri friends have
made themselves unpopular. They're being hounded in their turn.
Two outfits of Pathans are on their heels to scupper them before
they can reach home; so all we've got is a hundred men in a hurry
to reach the skyline with every man's hand against 'em. Retreat
to the border is cut off absolutely. Kangra Khan has bragged
about Miss Leich and her millions; he was using that yesterday as
a talking-point to rally armed men to his standard. All he
accomplished was to arouse cupidity, and now they're all on the
watch for her between here and the border. They figure she's a
prize worth bagging!"

"Won't the British troops come for us?" Joan Angela asked.

"Let's hope not!" he answered. "The tribes would stop quarreling
among themselves and make common cause. Even our friends the
Waziris would be forgiven _pro tem._ The best thing the British
can do is to withdraw across the border and pretend they don't
care a hoot. Time's the main thing. Every day that passes without
cash in sight will tend to decrease Miss Leich's market price.
Meanwhile, the more they quarrel among themselves for her
possession, the better our chance. Gee-whizz! They're hitting
her up!"

It began to be clear now why Kangra Khan had led his handful of
men so boldly along that moonlit track. He had reinforcements
waiting for him somewhere along there, and now he was leading
them back to find his prisoners, suspecting probably that the
Waziris had seized us. He seemed to have enough men with him to
force the issue, judging by the din; but the light was against
him, and the yells from the far side of the ravine were triumphant,
not discouraged.

"If King's with the Waziris, you can bet on them safely," Grim
said, listening intently. "Lord! Let's hope the noise don't bring
marauders our way! We haven't a friend to windward. The Waziris
are our one reliance--and a shifty lot at that!"

Joan Angela showed him her pistol, but he shook his head.

"Keep that for the last contingency," he advised. "Are you fit?
Can you march? Is your nerve all right? Then never show your
pistol to a soul until you have to use it on yourself. Getting
killed don't hurt. The most the best of us can ask for is to die
clean. Hide that thing away."

But he drew his own pistol, and stood leaning against the horse,
with an outcrop of the cliff on his right hand, so that he could
watch the track either way and have the best of any sudden turn
of affairs. I noticed he had two more pistols in a belt under his
dark cloak, and when I suggested he should lend me one of them he
passed it butt-first. About a second after we came within an ace
of accident.

To our right, in a momentary lull between the bursts of rifle-fire,
we heard the sound of hurrying feet and clinking weapons. I stood
up and leaned over the horse beside Grim, and we raised our
pistols to fire point-blank along the track. It was impossible
to see anything; the bulge of the cliff cut off the zone of
moonlight; one and the same thought urged both of us to stagger
the attacking force by a sudden burst of unexpected pistol-shots
and then make a bolt for it. Joan Angela guessed our intention
and stood by to jump on the horse.

But the hurrying ceased, and the thirty or forty pairs of feet we
had heard reduced themselves to three or four, who advanced at a
walk more cautiously. So much the better for our plan! I
calculated the probable level of a man's heart and managed to
pull that long knife out as well for a furious set-to before we
beat retreat. We heard a gruff voice giving orders in Pushtu.

"Careful now! We're near them. Dark and the mother of death are
one! Halt! I go forward alone!"

Something blacker than the blackness loomed around the serrated
outcrop. I fired. Grim knocked my pistol up in the very nick
of time.

"God save you, sahib, that is the only turban I have!" said a
voice I recognized, and Narayan Singh stepped up to us, showing
his teeth in a great white grin in the midst of his black beard.
He pulled the turban off and rubbed his head where the bullet had
grazed the scalp.

"I have thirty men behind me," he went on, beginning to rebind
the turban as casually as if he were in camp. "But it is difficult,
for these Waziris are not in love with Sikhs, who have slain too
many of their comrades in the border fights. King sahib bade
me bring these ruffians to hold this track, lest Kangra Khan
should fight his way round the corner yonder in spite of
everything. They are picked men, but who shall pick diamonds from
a dunghill?" he asked, giving the turban a final twist, and
adjusting the whole at last as a woman gives the final touches to
her hat. "Is the sahiba well?"

We introduced him to Joan Angela, who shook hands. She had met
him before in Egypt, and was as pleased as he was to renew
the acquaintance.

"Thou and I are birds who love the storm, sahiba!" he said
gallantly. "Better to die well than to live ill. This would look
like opportunity; yet the gods know best. These sahibs know I
speak the truth when I say I am your servant."

I did not catch her answer. Someone shouted for Narayan Singh,
and we all went hurrying back along the track to the corner,
where we piled up such loose rocks as we could find and, in the
limelight, as it were, held that point of disadvantage against
Kangra Khan's men while King worked his Waziris down into the
ravine below. Every man of ours had a rifle stolen from the
British, and they squandered ammunition as men always do waste
stolen goods; but even so, we failed in our object. Kangra Khan
detected King's purpose to join us; the Waziris made too much
noise negotiating the watercourse; to judge by their yelling some
of them reached our side, but when it came to climbing the steep
slope they were met by a sweeping fire from several hundred
rifles. Kangra Khan told off a couple of dozen men to keep us
busy and poured the rest of his nickeled lead into the ravine.
Once I heard a long, shrill whistle--King's in all likelihood--and
after that there was more or less silence below while the Waziris
beat retreat under a galling fire up the slope they had so easily
descended. Only one man reached us--a fellow with a bullet
through his arm, immensely angry.

By dint of threatening to tie her hand and foot I had persuaded
Joan Angela to keep out of sight behind the corner. The newcomer
crawled behind our barricade of stones until he reached her
hiding place, and then got to his feet. I followed him to make
sure of his intentions, but he only looked at her; he did not
seem to regard her as anything more than a curiosity. And before
he spoke to me he tore a strip of calico from his filthy shirt
and, with one end of the strip in his teeth, proceeded to bind
his arm. Joan Angela instantly offered to do it for him, but he
grinned savagely, and turned his face to me.

"Allah's wonders! We are all dead men below there!" he said,
jerking his right thumb across his shoulder. "Why not sell this
woman to the Pathans if they desire her so much? My people wish
to go home."

"How many did you lose down there in the ravine?" I asked him.

"A thousand," he answered. He presumably meant ten. "Where is
Jimgrim? I was to speak with Jimgrim. Who art thou?"

I told him I was Jimgrim, doubting whether it was safe to strip
off Grim's disguise as a holy man from Arabia.

"Well met!" he answered. "But thou art a liar none the less! I am
King sahib's friend, and he told me Jimgrim is the Hajji Ali
Ibraim, whom men call Jimgrim because he is beautiful and loved
of many women."

It is no insult to be called a liar in those raw hills--rather a
compliment. They envy those who have enough imagination to invent
an untruth on the spur of an occasion.

"What is the message?" I asked him. "I am Jimgrim's friend."

"King sahib says: `She should die, and if a youth should step
into her shoes, and he a holy man, it might be well.' But he
said: `Jimgrim is the man who will attend to it.' None the less,
if Jimgrim fights among the rocks there, thou and I might throw
her over the cliff and save him trouble. Have you the holy youth
to take her place?"

"Let Jimgrim do his own work," I answered, stepping between Joan
Angela and him. "What is the rest of the message?"

"Where is that Sikh? Is he here?"

We peered round the corner, and I pointed out Narayan Singh
crouching behind a boulder, firing into black night. "By Allah's
teeth, I have a bone to pick with that Sikh! The dog called me a
son of--"

"Pick it with me, then," I answered. "Give me the rest of the
message first."

I laid a hand on him, for he was minded to go after Narayan Singh
that minute. He tried to break away, but I jerked him round again
to face me.

"Kill him!" said a voice beside me. "It was he who set fire to
the cloth-stalls in Peshawar half a year since!" And Akbar bin
Mahommed, with his hands still lashed behind him, thrust his face
between us. "Yussuf, thou dog, I would kill thee myself if I were
not tied!"

"Trussed like a pig!" answered Yussuf, and spat into Akbar's face.

For answer Akbar ducked his head and butted the Waziri like a
ram, hitting him in the belly and sending him reeling backward
into the line of fire where a bullet drilled him through the head
from ear to ear and he lay grinning in the moonlight, twitching
his fingers, with his brains oozing out on the rock.

So we never received the latter part of King's message, and had
no means of guessing what his plan might be. I dragged a fellow
out of the line of fire and sent him to try to cross the ravine
and bring an answer back; but he never returned, and whether he
was shot or simply ran away I don't know.

When I had sent that messenger I shouted for Grim, but though he
heard me it was several minutes before he came crawling behind
the improvised barricade. Heavy firing had returned from the far
side of the ravine, but there was still a chance that Kangra
Khan's men might try to rush the corner, and Grim saw fit to give
that danger his first attention. He was moving from man to man,
encouraging each in turn. I saw him pull out the "Prophet's
tooth" and show it to several of them. Then their war-cry
went up--"Allaho Akbar!"--and there ceased to be much risk
of flinching.

Meanwhile, Akbar bin Mahommed thrust his face up close to mine
and stared into my eyes as if he could see through them to the
thought behind.

"Let my hands go, Ramm-is-den," he urged. "I swear friendship. By
Allah and the Prophet and the honor of my father; by my father's
beard and mine, and by the Holy Tomb, I swear I am thy friend!
Untie my hands. By Allah's breath I will be thy brother until
I die!"

He turned to Joan Angela, and looked into her eyes as he had
into mine.

"Sahiba, thou art this man's wife. Bid him loose me. I will be
thy man and his until Azrael summons all of us."

She did not understand a word of Pushtu, but his appeal was
obvious enough. He shook the hands behind him that were lashed
with the leather thong so tightly that the wrists were swelling,
and turned half toward her so that she might loose the knots
if I refused.

"Do you know these hills hereabouts?" I asked him.

"Aye. There is not a cranny I do not know."

"How far to the nearest village?"

"There are four villages that I could reach before the moon sets."

"Have you friends among them?"

"Nay! Who loves me hereabouts?"

He doubtless read the disappointment on my face, for his eyes
were close to mine again.

"But there are those who fear me," he added. "There is a woman
who must do my bidding lest I laugh in her husband's face, and
she die of his knife. Listen, Ramm-is-den! Inshallah, I may help
thee, for I heard what that dog of a Waziri said. If she is to
die"--he glanced at Joan Angela--"and a youth shall take her
place...by Allah am I wrong, or does it mean that she shall
not die, and that only the clothes are needed, so that she may
pass for a hairless boy? Then I am the man to manage it! Loose my
hands and give me a weapon. Give me that knife. I know a young
Afridi hereabouts who has been to Bokhara and picked up foreign
manners there, along with a way of wearing clothes that would
shame a Hindu. He teaches some new kind of politics to the
younglings, because the elders will not listen to him, and goes
unharmed because they say he is mad. I will strip him naked, and
she may wear his foppery. Loose me! Let me make haste!"

"Can you bring him here alive?" I asked.

He hesitated, looking straight into my eyes.

"Let that be the test of thy good faith," I said. "Wherever we
go, follow, and bring that youth alive to us."

"Good. I will do it. Ye will not go far among these hills," he
answered with a note of irony.

Then Grim came, and I gave him King's message.

"Shall I let this fellow go?" I asked, explaining why.

Grim nodded, and I cut the thong, then gave Akbar the knife.
He held it out for Grim and me to touch the hilt, hesitated
in front of Joan Angela, and after a moment held it out for her
to touch too--a prodigious concession, for it is not thought
manly to show a woman too much courtesy in that land. Then he
was gone, running like the wind up the track away from us.

The rifle-firing was as furious as ever. Now and again there
would come half a dozen fairly steady volleys from the far side
of the ravine, as if King was trying to instil some system into
the Waziris. Then there would be a riot of independent shots,
followed by silence, and volleys again at intervals. Kangra
Khan's men were wasting ammunition as if it were the easiest
stuff to come by in the world, instead of having to be stolen
from the British or bought for its weight in coined silver.
"We're beaten," said Grim, "and I don't know what to do." It was
the first time in all my knowledge of him that he had ever
admitted that. "King can't get to us, nor we to him. The tribes
will have heard this shindy, and when morning comes they'll
surround us all. Then goodbye!"

But Joan Angela, who should have been the most discouraged, laughed.

"Why will the tribesmen wait until the morning?" she asked, with
a woman's flair for questions.

"They dread the dark. Unless they're caught out, they stay in and
stir late," Grim answered.

"Then we've hours ahead of us. Anything might happen. Let's try
our luck. Mine's always good."

Grim was racking his brains, and it was no use my proposing
anything. I knew the language well enough, but did not know the
hills; nor did he know them nearly as well as King, who was out
of reach. Whatever we might elect to do, there would be no means
of getting word of it across that ravine in time to give King a
chance to follow up.

"If we wait until dawn we can signal," Grim said, scratching his
chin. "King and I both know the Morse code."

"How many men are hurt?" I asked him.

"Several...eight or nine. I know of four dead. We can't leave
the wounded here."

"I'll bet you King does something clever!" said Joan Angela. "He
has the most men. He'll realize it's up to him."

"If he don't we're all done for," Grim answered gloomily.

But it did not sound as if King were being clever. His Waziris,
yelling imprecations, started suddenly to squander ammunition
more furiously than ever. The edge of the ravine along the far
side became a line of spurting flame. He seemed to have persuaded
his men to space themselves along a wider front, and perhaps a
scout or a false alarm had put them in fear of a rush by Kangra
Khan's contingent. Shot answered shot across the impenetrable
darkness, and I wondered how long the cartridges would last, when
suddenly Narayan Singh leapt up and shouted: "Ahah! See them!
Ahah! King sahib, thou art a king, a great one! Ho! A head is
worth a hundred thousand rifles! Jimgrim sahib! Rammy sahib! Come
and see!"




CHAPTER IV


"What the Hell Do You Know About Women?"



The moon had shifted to the westward far enough to uncover Kangra
Khan's position, and because of the shape of the Gibraltar rock
our corner now was more obscure. We were still exposed in a hazy
light, but the table was turning rapidly. All the advantage of
light was coming our way...and King's. Outline by outline,
Kangra Khan's predicament disclosed itself; and suddenly the
moonbeams touched with silver a long ledge, higher than the
Pathans' position, and we all knew what Narayan Singh was
exulting about.

I could see King...knew it must be he. No man on earth stands
exactly as he does when he is himself, not playing parts. His
unself-consciousness seems absolute then, so utterly absorbed in
what he sees and hears that neither danger nor convenience exist
for him. He stood like a statue beyond the ravine, on a crag that
overhung that moonlit ledge, directing his Waziris, half of whom
had crawled to the new position and were pouring a galling fire
down into the _sangar_* Kangra Khan was holding. [* A fortress of stones]

There was still the ravine between them, but at that point it
curved in Kangra Khan's direction and grew considerably narrower,
so that the utmost range was not more than two hundred yards.
Kangra Khan's men were forced to crouch close to their stone
wall, which put them almost out of action, although there was
possibly room for twenty of them in a square stone tower at one
corner, from which they were answering the Waziris fire. The
others, under the wall, had to content themselves with yelling,
and by the noise they made I judged there were several hundred of
them; but numbers don't mean much (except to increase the
problem) when the tide of fortune turns.

The moonlight track that led from us to the _sangar_ was still
covered by about a third of King's men, who had practically
ceased fire, sending only an occasional warning shot to serve
notice that the way was barred, and notifying us that it was a
"one way street." A one-eyed charwoman could have recognized
that opportunity.

Grim pulled out his Prophet's tooth and acted like a regimental
chaplain showing Irish troops a crucifix. We had about twenty men
still fit for action, and they began their chant "Allaho Akbar...
Allaho Akbar," gaining and gaining in speed and noise until
it sounded like the tumult of a hundred, and the echo went
grinding and clamoring away into the hills, cannoning back and
forth from crag to crag. We may have sounded like a thousand to
the Pathans up there in the _sangar,_ already desperate under the
slanting hail of Waziri bullets.

I shouted to Joan Angela to stay where she was, and rushed
forward to get in the front rank with Grim and Narayan Singh.
(There was no room for more than three or four abreast at any
point along that track.) In a second I was passed by half a dozen
of our Waziris, so I practically led the rearguard, stumbling
over lumps of shale that had been shot down from the cliff wall
on our right hand.

I believe we might have made the _sangar_ wall unnoticed by
Kangra Khan's men, in spite of the yelling and the noise of the
loose shale underfoot; for they, too, were yelling, and the
echoes were so confusing that our particular din might have been
coming from anywhere. But King's Waziris saw us, and opened a
supporting fire too soon, so that we rushed with a screaming
stream of bullets overhead, and the pat-pat-patter of their hail
on the _sangar_ wall preceded us.

One huge Pathan leapt up on the wall waving a tulwar and crumpled
up backwards under a hail of bullets. Another took his place, and
was run through the belly by Narayan Singh's long sabre. Half a
dozen more leapt over the wall, engaging Grim, Narayan Singh and
several of our men long before I could come on the scene, for it
was a straggling rush we made, not timed to meet the exigencies
of the slowest. Then we of the rearguard came up breathless, and
a man beside me lent me the use of his knee to leap the wall.

I was first over, yelling, I don't doubt, like two or three men.
Only Grim was silent. Narayan Singh roared for a dozen. He and
Grim were over close behind me. I stumbled over a dead Pathan and
seized his tulwar. In a second we were backed against the stone
wall in the shadow fighting for dear life, with fifty of Kangra
Khan's contingent at our throats, and our own men scrambling over
one by one to drop down and hack and thrust before their feet
touched ground.

That was a fight! One of our men was drilled clean through the
head by a Waziri bullet from over the ravine as he crossed the
wall, for King's men did not cease fire soon enough. But I think
nineteen got over unscathed, and the odds against them, and the
utter hopelessness of quarter, made them fight like devils on the
slag. To our left front King never ceased his hail of fire
against the tower and the wall on that side, so we would have
been mowed down if we had left our cover; and many of Kangra
Khan's Pathans who tried to get at us by taking a short cut
across the midst of the enclosure fell before they came half-way.

It was knife-work--butt and blade and pistol. The Pathan falls
back on his natural weapon and tactics in a tight place, and none
of us had time to load, or even to aim, for they came at us in
the shadow of the wall in a series of spurts and rushes, and when
a man was down that was not by any means the end of him. A Pathan
with hardly life left in him would crawl in close and try to
thrust his knife home before Allah beckoned him.

We lost nine of our nineteen, all dead, for there was no chance
for a wounded man except to fight on...no quarter...no
appeal for it. I broke the tulwar on a rifle-barrel thrust up by
a Pathan to guard his head, and the broken half of the blade went
half-way through his skull between the eyes. Then I emptied the
pistol, and after that I ducked to avoid a blow, and grabbed a
dead man's rifle, using butt and thrust like an old-time
quarterstaff.

Once, and then again, I was saved by a pistol-shot that flashed
up from under my arm when three Pathans attacked at once. I had
the outside berth, on the edge of the line of moonlight, where
the hail of King's Waziri bullets swept within a yard of me, and
there were men who went down under my clubbed butt who were
nearly shot to pieces as they lay; so I was easier for the
Pathans to see than any other of our party, and well for me that
singlestick and gloves have always been my favorite pastime!
Fifty times in half as many minutes I was dead but for the
training of hand and eye those sports had given me.

And more than a dozen times, from under my legs or arms, or over
my shoulder, something--someone--that I had no time to turn and
see, created a diversion. It was swift, wild, savage work, brute
instinct up, with Karma signifying who were to be slain and who
the survivors. Luck, some fellows call it. Law, say I. Neither my
time, nor Grim's, nor Narayan Singh's had come. No flinching yet
on either side. Nothing but a shambles in the dark. And King's
move next.

The firing over our heads ceased, and a yell as from the emptying
graves on judgment Day came up from the ravine, announcing that
King's Waziris were making a second attempt to cross. And this
time they came like the wind, for half of King's men kept up such
a withering hail of fire from the new position on the ledge that
none could man the walls to make the ravine impassable...and
besides, there were we who had to be dealt with before any man
dared turn his back on us. Once, from the stone tower, Kangra
Khan in desperation turned his fire in our direction; but his
riflemen, already wild and wavering, could not see us in the
shadow. They mowed down half a dozen of their own side, and then
had to turn again to rake the flanks of the ravine.

Then the show was over, with the sudden swiftness of a hailstorm.
How the word spread among the ranks of the defenders I don't
know. There was a last savage rush in our direction...a last
melee breast to breast, with long knives thrusting upward from
behind between the legs of those in front and the curses hot in
your face as a man's life winged to its account--then almost
silence! They melted. They flitted away like ghosts. They
vanished over the rear wall of the _sangar_ like a string of
shadows cast by magic-lantern rays, leaving nothing but a lot of
dead men and some broken, empty cartridge-boxes. One wounded man
sat up in the midst of the open space, laughed like a ghoul,
fired at me point-blank, missed by an inch, and fell backward
stone dead. That was the last shot fired that night.

I turned to see who stood behind me, and looked straight into
Joan Angela's grey eyes! She held an empty pistol in one hand,
and in the other a long tulwar that had blood on the end of
the blade.

"You fight like a man, Jeff!" she said with a little nervous
laugh. "I'm sorry I'm only a woman, but I was useful once
or twice."

Her overcoat was torn, and stained with blood where she had knelt
to guard my legs. Her lips were parted, and her eyes wild with
excitement. She did not seem afraid, but the hand that held the
tulwar was shaking.

"Are you hurt at all?" I asked her.

"No," she answered. "How's your head?"

I had forgotten my head. It was bleeding. The cut had opened, and
the bandage was a sticky mess. I think it was that, and the
exertion, that saved me from a protracted spell of illness, for
my brain was clear again and there was no more numbness. Joan
Angela took a dead man's turban and began to look for a clean
piece to make a new bandage. I was pulling off the old one,
turning at the same time to see where Grim and Narayan Singh
might be, when the next thing happened.

Our men were all leaning over the wall to watch King's Waziris
come climbing out of the ravine, yelling jokes at them and
boasting. I had dropped my clubbed rifle to attend to the
bandage. Suddenly two of Kangra Khan's Pathans rushed out from a
shadow, and one of them aimed a blow at me with a tulwar that
made my skin tingle as I ducked. The other seized Joan Angela
around the waist.

I yelled for help, and closed with my man, crushing the breath
out of him before he could recover and swing the tulwar a second
time. I got his wrist and twisted it until he let the weapon
fall, and that took only seconds, but it gave the other fellow
time enough. He carried Joan Angela away into the shadow, seizing
her from behind with great hairy arms like an orang-outang's. She
could not scream, but she kicked and nearly tripped him. He had
his hands full.

I shouted, and some of our men and Narayan Singh came running. I
hurled my prisoner into the midst of them backwards and don't
know what happened to him. When I saw him again he was dead. I
heard Joan Angela gasp in the darkness somewhere. There was a
struggle, for the man gasped too, and swore. We rushed for
the sound, and cornered the two of them between two inside
buttresses, and the Pathan realised the game was up, for he
spoke. You could not see anything...not even his eyes.

"By the blood of my father, I will choke her if you move another
step!" he snarled. So he had no weapon. That was something.
(Pathans don't strangle people if they have a knife available.)
Joan Angela did not speak; he had his hand over her mouth; but I
could hear her heels cracking against his shins. Then she
gurgled, and I knew he was choking her. Narayan Singh and I
rushed in simultaneously. The Pathan took to his heels, and we
missed him in the dark, cannoning into each other. We had to stop
and listen. Then we heard him dragging her body along the stones,
and he had reached the corner of the wall before we overhauled
him. Then he had to step into the moonlight, and we saw he had
her by the coat-collar. She seemed either dead or unconscious,
and he had the nerve to try to vault the wall and hoist her over
before we reached him. Narayan Singh jumped for him and I grabbed
the girl; but he kicked Narayan Singh in the jaw and slipped down
out of sight over the wall, taking the overcoat with him, minus
one sleeve.

The girl's tongue was out between her teeth, and it took several
minutes' hard rubbing before the muscles of her throat and neck
began to function properly and she opened her eyes. By that time
there was no more hope of catching the Pathan, nor for that
matter much object to be gained by it. King's Waziris were
swarming over the wall, and I helped Joan Angela along toward the
tower, meaning to carry her up the outside steps to the upper
part of it, out of harm's way; for those Waziris were allies
rather by accident than design, and there was no guessing yet
what their attitude might be toward a valuable prisoner. We were
at their mercy absolutely, and they might see fit to compensate
themselves for their heavy losses in the night's engagement. They
were savages to a man, with a savage sense of justice...honor
of a kind, and elemental decency no doubt; but elements are
unconventional. If they in their predicament should assert their
own right now to hold Joan Angela to ransom, no other argument
than force was likely to have much weight.

So I carried her up the irregular steps that formed an outside
support to the tower on two sides, and into the draughty square
chamber, pierced for rifle-fire. There was no roof--only burned
beams where a roof had once been, and most of the stones that had
formed the roof were still littered about the floor, which in one
place had broken under the weight. In the midst was a square hole
above the deep well that gave the tower its excuse for being and
made it tenable against attack. There was no windlass or rope and
bucket, but a ladder made of sticks lashed clumsily with hide, up
and down which whoever wanted water had to climb. I tested the
ladder with my own weight, and told Joan Angela to get down into
the dark hole and hide there if I should give the alarm.

Then I climbed to the crazy wooden platform at the stairhead
outside and waited, hoping nobody had missed me and that none had
seen me carrying the girl across the moonlit enclosure. It was a
wild hope, I admit, but a man throws reason overboard when it
argues only pessimism in a tight place; and besides, our small
party of Waziris were celebrating victory with their friends who
swarmed over the wall, chanting a battle-song, greeting friends,
exchanging boasts, and some searching the bodies of the dead for
loot. I could see Grim and Narayan Singh trying to persuade some
of them to mount guard on the defenses. King had not appeared
over the wall yet, and it was impossible to guess what he was
doing in the dark, but I could hear voices somewhere midway down
our flank of the ravine.

My perch on the platform gave me a view of all of the enclosure
that was not in shadow, and of acres of darkness and moonlight to
the northward beyond the wall. Crags like glistening teeth arose
in irregular rows and curves out of silvery mist that seemed to
float on a coal-black sea. If Kangra Khan were half a leader, and
his men not more than half beaten, our position was likely to
become as untenable as his had been--and that before we should
have much time to make our dispositions. Daylight would see us
helpless. The well in all likelihood was all that had persuaded
natural warriors to fortify such an unpromising place. It was
true it overlooked the track up which we had come, but in turn it
was overlooked from three directions, and unless the surrounding
heights were held in force it would be worse than useless as a
point of vantage. But there were circumstances connected with the
well that I did not know yet, and there is always more than meets
the eye when a savage's reason for taking laborious pains is not
immediately obvious.

The Waziri women came up the ravine at last, loaded like
pack-animals with cooking-pots, fuel, the scant supplies and the
scanter remaining ammunition. The Waziris had gone to the border
on plunder bent, expecting to replenish their stocks at the
expense of Punjab villages and British outposts. Now they were
parlous short of everything except ambition, and the women,
heaving their packs over the wall, began at once to strip
whatever the men had not yet taken from the dead. Such Pathans
as yet had life in them received short shrift, and there were
mutilations not to be described. Then one by one they threw
the corpses down into the ravine and after that the widows
of Waziri dead began their wailing, keening to the night like
hopeless ghouls.

Then sudden silence. Something was about to happen...none
knew what...save Kangra Khan, who had the call on opportunity
...and King, perhaps. There were King, and possibly fifty
Waziris, still to be accounted for. Our folk within the _sangar_
began, as if instinctively, to seek the shelter of the wall, like
jackals, surprised by the dawn, slinking off to their lairs. Here
and there a woman stayed crying by her dead mate, but except for
those within sixty seconds the enclosure seemed utterly deserted,
the silence broken only by click-click-click as men opened their
magazines to make sure, and snapped them into place again.

Then the storm broke, Himalaya fashion, and the wind came with
it, as if even the elements had taken sides against us. All the
wreaths of white mist that had floated like foam among the crags
were whipped and whirled into one hurrying cloud, and out of
that came spurts of flame as Kangra Khan's men started to woo
vengeance in the name of Allah. Their yells out-dinned the
rifle-fire. The range was short. They had crept under cover of
the mist to a position on the nearest overlooking crag, not much
more than a hundred yards away. Naturally, they supposed we had
manned the tower. A hundred bullets rattled against the masonry,
and I ducked in through the door, shoving Joan Angela in front of
me, as another fusillade splintered the dry wood of the platform
at the stairhead.

Our men did not answer yet. They seemed cowed by the suddenness
of the attack. The wind shrieked, as it only can in those
infernal hills, bearing the din of the firing and imprecation
down toward us, making answering yells useless; and that is a
worse handicap in savage warfare than odds of two to one. It is
not enough to know that Allah is on your side; you must be able
to assert the fact and to make the other fellow listen, whether
he will or no. Curses must reach his ears to have effect. Taunts
must prove to him your own contempt for danger, or the danger
grows as real as he intends it shall be. Yells are as deadly as
bullets, estimated by result.

I peered through the slits in the wall, but could see nothing
except spurts of flame and hurrying white mist. But suddenly
there came an answering din, whose source I could not see.
Somewhere on the far side of Kangra Khan's men King was turning a
flanking fire on their position. The stutter of Kangra Khan's
riflemen ceased and began again as some of them turned their
attention to the unexpected enemy. It was obvious that if we
hurried we could save the night. But you have to preach, and
teach, and stir before you can change dumb disgruntlement into
an assault against wind and mist and high-perched riflemen.

"Will you stay here?" I asked Joan Angela.

"Why?" she demanded; and I cursed all women under my breath.

"Will you hide down that well at the first sign of danger?"

"No!" she said candidly.

I did not argue. I swept her up into my arms and carried her,
protesting violently, down the rickety ladder into the well-shaft,
and stood her on a platform near the bottom. It was pitch-dark
down here. You could only see a faint square patch of dimness
up above, pricked out with a pattern of abnormally bright stars.
You could hardly hear the din of fighting down there, although
it began to sound as if our men were coming into action.

"How dare you, Jeff! I'll not forgive you for this!" she
said angrily.

"We'll discuss forgiveness afterwards," I answered. "Will you
stay down here, or must I tie you to the ladder?"

Hot temper and haste are bad medicine in the dark where there
isn't room to move without contact, nor any chance to see, nor
time to explain. She misunderstood; or it may be her nerves were
over-strained. At any rate, she struck me in the face with her
open hand.

"Get up that ladder and leave me here, Jeff Ramsden!" she said
more bitterly than I had ever heard her speak. And I grew dumb
with the anger that any fellow feels when a good woman elects to
accuse him of the dirtiest kind of villainy.

We have all been cads and cowards in our day, but there are lots
of us who have proved and earned the right to be trusted to any
length with any woman anywhere. Such men need no telling what
that slap in the face with an open hand meant to me in that
predicament. I did not answer. I went up the ladder hand-over-hand,
simmering indignation like a bear driven out of his den. She
called to me out of the well, but I did not listen.

"Jeff!" I heard, booming up hollow behind me; but I paid no
attention. I stepped out on the platform, in a mood to welcome
bullets as a concrete insult that a man could fight back at. I
was mad, that minute. Nothing mattered...neither night nor
morning, nor the mist, nor odds, nor the outcome...least of
all Joan Angela's opinion of me. I had had enough of that. I
turned my back on it, and her, and went down the steps in running
jumps, six steps at a time, sprawled headlong at the bottom over
loose stones fallen from the roof, got to my feet in a greater
rage than ever, grabbed a rifle from a man who lurked in the lee
of the wall and struck him half unconscious when he protested...then
vaulted to the wall and shook the rifle in full moonlight,
with my feet in blown mist and my body bathed in silver light
above it.

"Allaho Akbar!" I roared; and I can bellow like a bull when the
mood is on me.

I daresay, seen through the mist-film from below, I looked
encouraging to those crouching Waziris; but I don't know why I
was not shot to pieces by the storm of bullets that greeted me
from Kangra Khan's position. I stood there unscathed. Rage may be
an armour after all. I saw Grim, and then Narayan Singh,
scrambling to the wall to follow my example...heard the
yelling and din of King's riflemen, and next the roar of our
men beginning at last to work themselves into a frenzy with
the battle-cry.

"Allaho Akbar! Allaho Akbar!"

Over the wall I went, brandishing the rifle; and over they came
in my wake...not pausing...not firing...swept forward
by the impulse that had surged in me and carried me on like a
crazy unreasoning bull in an arena. If I had a thought at all it
was to hack my way as far as possible from where Joan Angela and
her opinions were. I wished never to see her again, and least of
all to suffer explanation and apology. Death did not cross my
mind. I was not wooing martyrdom. Anger was the all-embracing
force that moved me, and it lent my feet wings, heavy and slow as
they are as a rule.

No Waziri--not even Grim or Narayan Singh, who are fleet of
foot--passed me on that crazy charge from our _sangar_ wall to
the ledge where Kangra Khan had deployed his men. We plunged into
darkness, and had no breath to yell with, so the roar to Allah
ceased. Maybe Kangra Khan misunderstood the silence beyond our
breastwork. Perhaps he and his men believed our first yells, if
they as much as heard them upwind, were an effort of despair,
that died away. They kept a steady fire pouring on the wall, and,
we not pausing to reply from the darkness beneath the hurrying
mist, they had no means of divining what we were up to.

So we were up there and among them before they guessed we were
coming, and that night's second shambles was staged on a ledge,
with a sheer fall of fifty feet for whoever set a foot wrong or
was forced over backwards in hand-to-hand fight.

I don't remember using the rifle as it should be used, although
when it was all over I found the magazine was empty. Perhaps the
fellow I snatched it from had emptied it and not reloaded. Maybe
I fired instinctively and forgot it as a man forgets the breath
he drew. I do know I clubbed the thing and fought Berserker
fashion all along the ledge, driving Kangra Khan's Pathans along
in front of me, myself untouched, not even in danger as I
remember it. They quailed in front of the flailing rifle-butt,
and I wake up now at night sometimes in a hot sweat, from
dreaming of their bearded faces as they fell in front of me and
toppled off the cliff. Some fell before I struck them, stepping
backward to avoid the blow.

I don't know what Grim and Narayan Singh or our Waziris did. That
was a one-man fight as far as I was conscious of it...a
delirium of anger. I'm not proud of it, although they tell me the
Waziris have composed a song about that fury of mine. I may say I
was hardly in it. It was passion--all the brute, hereditary
instincts using my strength. I don't remember how I got there,
but I found myself at last sitting heaving for breath on a rock
at the end of the ledge, with the blood-beastly rifle over my
knees, wondering stupidly why the magazine was empty.

Grim came and told me that our Waziris were scattered in all
directions in pursuit of Kangra Khan's men, and that he hoped
they would find their way back before daylight. Then King came,
and stood looking at me, with his back to the moon. I think he
understood, for he said nothing--nothing personal that is. He
turned and talked to Grim.

"All right so far," he said. "Kangra Khan has likely had enough.
But the tribes will gather now to hound the Waziris harder than
ever. They'll argue they're tired and running out of ammunition.
Tomorrow, or the next day at latest, will see us surrounded
again. Where's Miss Leich?"

Grim did not know. He asked me. I knew, or thought I knew, but
that slap in the face was as fresh in my memory as if it had
happened that instant. He had to ask me twice before I answered.

"The last I saw of her, she was in that tower," I said, jerking
my thumb in the direction of the _sangar._ Doubtless they thought
my surliness was due to the reaction after fighting. They walked
away along the ledge, and presently found Narayan Singh, and
sent him to keep an eye on me, while they started off for the
_sangar,_ keeping an eye on each other for fear of Pathan knives
lurking in the mist. Narayan Singh came and sat down on the rock
beside me, and he and I are such old friends that there was no
need to speak unless either of us felt disposed. We were silent
for perhaps five minutes, he pulling a rag through a rifle he had
picked up somewhere. Presently he took the rifle off my knees,
pitched it over the cliff, and replaced it with the one he
had cleaned.

"That is better," he said quietly.

I did not answer. I was hardly more than conscious of his
presence. Such process as was going on in my mind was hardly to
be dignified with the name of thought, but I was dimly aware of
contentment that he should be there; and because he was not of my
race I preferred him just then to either King or Grim. I felt he
might be less inclined, and less able than they, to interpret my
state of mind and draw conclusions. But I was entirely wrong.

"Sahib," he said presently, running the fingers of his right hand
upward through his beard, "all women are the devil. Of two, the
more beautiful is the worse; and of three, the youngest."

"What the hell do you know about women?" I asked.

"This: that a man's own error is reflected in their faces; his
goodness or his badness, his strength or his weakness in their
hearts. A man sees himself in a woman, and the more he loves her
the worse the vision shocks him. So he goes off and acts like the
madman that he naturally is...even as an ape making faces at
himself in a stolen looking-glass."

"You're polite!" said I.

"I am the sahib's friend. I am a man who has seen much...including
my own heart in a woman's...at which I look no longer...having no
delight in it."

I was about to answer (hotly, it may be) when we both heard
someone scrambling breathlessly up the track. In a minute Grim
came stumbling over stones along the ledge.

"Miss Leich!" he said. "Where is she?"

"In the tower," I answered, aware of an uncomfortable
premonition.

"No," Grim said, "she isn't there."

"She's down on the platform at the bottom of the shaft," said I.

"No, she's not," he answered. "We've looked everywhere. She's
gone! No trace!"




CHAPTER V


"A Most Wise, Excellent Sahiba!"



There were rifle-shots, stray for the most part, but now and then
in ragged volleys, among the crags around us as our Waziris
pursued and snipped the retreating Pathans. There was not even a
guard over the supplies within the _sangar_ wall, and even the
women had taken the trail in the mist to pounce on wounded and
strip the dead. The _sangar_ was empty of all except King, as
Grim, Narayan Singh, and I arrived breathless. King was sitting
on the bottom step outside the _sangar_ tower.

"She's gone!" he said, not getting up. "Have you shouted?"
I asked.

"Shout all you want to in this wind!" he answered. "Unless she's
lost her head and run away down-wind toward the border you
couldn't make her hear ten yards away. And if she's run off in a
panic she'll be either miles away, or dead, or a prisoner. Shout,
though, if it suits you!"

"She never was in a panic in her life," I said. And I would
have said more, but Narayan Singh interrupted--a thing he
rarely, almost never, did. His usual method is to wait until
everybody else has had his say, and then after a pause to say
extremely little.

"We might at least try down-wind, sahibs," he broke in. "So, we
would be on our way home. If we find her, we can make tracks for
the border, lying up by day."

"You fellows go," King answered. "I've a pledge to keep. I
promised these Waziris, if they'd help me tonight, I'd stand
by them until they reach their own villages."

"Damn!" muttered Grim. "I'll stay with you, of course," he added.

Narayan Singh waited for orders, and I said nothing. Mixed
emotion makes me speechless as a rule, and the notion of
describing exactly what had happened in the well had left
me--as I think Narayan Singh intended. We were all in the
deep of discouragement. Narayan Singh was plucking at his
beard irresolutely.

"Sahibs!" he exclaimed suddenly, stepping up to windward of us
to spare noise, "is it not best that Jeff sahib and I should
undertake this task?"

King eyed me and nodded. Grim was silent. I knew he hated to
be left out of any difficult or dangerous employment, but his
loyalty to King was paramount, and it was obvious that two would
be better than one on either venture. None, except possibly
Narayan Singh, had any confidence in t