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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rung Ho!, by Talbot Mundy
+(#2 in our series by Talbot Mundy)
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+Title: Rung Ho!
+
+Author: Talbot Mundy
+
+Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5153]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 16, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RUNG HO! ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was transcribed by M.R.J.
+
+
+
+RUNG HO!
+           A Novel by Talbot Mundy
+
+
+
+RUNG HO!
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+    Howrah City bows the knee
+    More or less to masters three,
+            King, and Prince, and Siva.
+    Howrah City pays in pain
+    Taxes which the royal twain
+    Give to priests, to give again
+            (More or less) to Siva.
+
+THAT was no time or place for any girl of twenty to be wandering
+unprotected.  Rosemary McClean knew it;  the old woman, of the sweeper
+caste, that is no caste at all,--the hag with the flat breasts and
+wrinkled skin, who followed her dogwise, and was no more protection
+than a toothless dog,--knew it well, and growled about it in
+incessant undertones that met with neither comment nor response.
+
+"Leave a pearl of price to glisten on the street, yes!" she grumbled.
+"Perhaps none might notice it--perhaps!  But her--here--at this
+time--"  She would continue in a rumbling growl of half-prophetic
+catalogues of evil--some that she had seen to happen, some that she
+imagined, and not any part of which was in the least improbable.
+
+As the girl passed through the stenching, many-hued bazaar, the roar
+would cease for a second and then rise again.  Turbaned and pugreed--
+Mohammedan and Hindoo--men of all grades of color, language, and
+belief, but with only one theory on women, would stare first at the
+pony that she rode, then at her, and then at the ancient grandmother
+who trotted in her wake.  Low jests would greet the grandmother, and
+then the trading and the gambling would resume, together with the
+under-thread of restlessness that was so evidently there and yet so
+hard to lay a finger on.
+
+The sun beat down pitilessly--brass--like the din of cymbals.
+Beneath the sun helmet that sat so squarely and straightforwardly on
+the tidy chestnut curls, her face was pale.  She smiled as she guided
+her pony in and out amid the roaring throng, and carefully refused to
+see the scowls, her brave little shoulders seconded a pair of quiet,
+brave gray eyes in showing an unconquerable courage to the world, and
+her clean, neat cotton riding-habit gave the lie and the laugh in one
+to poverty;  but, as the crowd had its atmosphere of secret murmuring,
+she had another of secret anxiety.
+
+Neither had fear.  She did not believe in it.  She was there to help
+her father fight inhuman wrong, and die, if need be, in the last ditch.
+ The crowd had none, for it had begun to realize that it was part a of
+a two-hundred-million crowd, held down and compelled by less than a
+hundred thousand aliens.  And, least of all, had the man who followed
+her at a little distance the slightest sense of fear.  He was far more
+conversant with it than she, but--unlike her, and far more than the
+seething crowd--he knew the trend of events, and just what likelihood
+there was of insult or injury to Rosemary McClean being avenged in a
+generation.
+
+He caused more comment than she, and of a different kind.  His
+rose-pink pugree, with the egret and the diamond brooch to hold the
+egret in its place--his jeweled sabre--his swaggering, almost
+ruffianly air--were no more meant to escape attention than his
+charger that clattered and kicked among the crowd, or his following,
+who cleared a way for him with the butt ends of their lances.  He rode
+ahead, but every other minute a mounted sepoy would reach out past him
+and drive his lance-end into the ribs of some one in the way.
+
+There would follow much deep salaaming;  more than one head would bow
+very low indeed;  and in many languages, by the names of many gods, he
+would be cursed in undertones.  Aloud, they would bless him and call
+him "Heaven-born!"
+
+But he took no interest whatever in the crowd.  His dark-brown eyes
+were fixed incessantly on Rosemary McClean's back.  Whenever she turned
+a corner in the crowded maze of streets, he would spur on in a hurry
+until she was in sight again, and then his handsome, swarthy face would
+light with pleasure--wicked pleasure--self-assertive, certain,
+cruel.  He would rein in again to let her draw once more ahead.
+
+Rosemary McClean knew quite well who was following her, and knew, too,
+that she could do nothing to prevent him.  Once, as she passed a
+species of caravansary--low-roofed, divided into many lockable
+partitions, and packed tight with babbling humanity--she caught sight
+of a pair of long, black thigh boots, silver-spurred, and of a polished
+scabbard that moved spasmodically, as though its owner were impatient.
+
+"Mahommed Gunga!" she muttered to herself.  "I wonder whether he would
+come to my assistance if I needed him.  He fought once--or so he says
+--for the British;  he might be loyal still.  I wonder what he is
+doing here, and what--Oh, I wonder!"
+
+She was very careful not to seem to look sideways, or seek acquaintance
+with the wearer of the boots;  had she done so, she would have gained
+nothing, for the moment that he caught sight of her through the opened
+door he drew back into a shadow, and swore lustily.  What he said to
+himself would have been little comfort to her.
+
+"By the breath of God!" he growled.  "These preachers of new creeds are
+the last straw, if one were wanting!  They choose the one soft place
+where Mohammedan and Hindoo think alike, and smite!  If I wanted to
+raise hell from end to end of Hind, I too would preach a new creed, and
+turn good-looking women loose to wander on the country-side!--Ah!"
+He drew back even further, as he spied the egret and the sabre and the
+stallion cavorting down the street--then thought better of it and
+strode swaggering to the doorway, and stood, crimson-coated, in the
+sunlight, stroking upward insolently at his black, fierce-barbered
+beard.  There was a row of medal ribbons on his left breast that bore
+out something at least of his contention;  he had been loyal to the
+British once, whether he was so now or not.
+
+The man on the charger eyed him sideways and passed on.  Mahommed Gunga
+waited.  One of the prince's followers rode close to him--leaned low
+from the saddle--and leered into his face.
+
+"Knowest not enough to salute thy betters?" he demanded.
+
+Mahommed Gunga made a movement with his right hand in the direction of
+his left hip--one that needed no explanation;  the other legged his
+horse away, and rode on, grinning nastily.  To reassure himself of his
+superiority over everybody but his master, he spun his horse presently
+so that its rump struck against a tented stall, and upset tent and
+goods.  Then he spent two full minutes in outrageous execration of the
+men who struggled underneath the gaudy cloth, before cantering away,
+looking, feeling, riding like a fearless man again. Mahommed Gunga
+sneered after him, and spat, and turned his back on the sunshine and
+the street.
+
+"I had a mind to teach that Hindoo who his betters are!" he growled.
+
+"Come in, risaldar-sahib!" said a voice persuasively.  "By your own
+showing the hour is not yet--why spill blood before the hour?"
+
+The Rajput swaggered to the dark door, spurs jingling, looking back
+across his shoulder once or twice, as though he half-regretted leaving
+the Hindoo horseman's head upon his shoulders.
+
+"Come in, sahib," advised the voice again.  "They be many.  We are few.
+And, who knows--our roads may lie together yet."
+
+Mahommed Gunga kicked his scabbard clear, and strode through the door.
+The shadows inside and the hum of voices swallowed him as though he
+were a big, red, black-legged devil reassimilated in the brewing broth
+of trouble;  but his voice boomed deep and loud after he had
+disappeared from view.
+
+"When their road and my road lie together, we will travel all feet
+foremost!" he asserted.
+
+Ten turnings further away by that time, Rosemary McClean pressed on
+through the hot, dinning swarm of humanity, missing no opportunity to
+slip her pony through an opening, but trying, too, to seem unaware that
+she was followed.  She chose narrow, winding ways, where the awnings
+almost met above the middle of the street, and where a cavalcade of
+horsemen would not be likely to follow her--only to hear a roar
+behind her, as the prince's escort started slashing at the awnings with
+their swords.
+
+There was a rush and a din of shouting beside her and ahead, as the
+frightened merchants scurried to pull down their awnings before the
+ruthless horse-men could ride down on them;  the narrow street
+transformed itself almost on the instant into a undraped, cleared
+defile between two walls.  And after that she kept to the broader
+streets, where there was room in the middle for a troop to follow, four
+abreast, should it choose.  She had no mind to seek her own safety at
+the expense of men whose souls her father was laboring so hard to save.
+
+She got no credit, though, for consideration--only blame for what the
+swordsmen had already done.  One man--a Maharati trader--
+half-naked, his black hair coiled into a shaggy rope and twisted up
+above his neck--followed her, side-tracking through the mazy byways
+of the bewildering mart, and coming out ahead of her--or lurking
+beside bales of merchandise and waiting his opportunity to leap from
+shadow into shadow unobserved.
+
+He followed her until she reached the open, where a double row of trees
+on each side marked the edge of a big square, large enough for the
+drilling of an army.  Along one side of the square there ran the high
+brick wall, topped with a kind of battlement, that guarded the
+Maharajah's palace grounds from the eyes of men.
+
+Just as she turned, just as she was starting to canter her pony beside
+the long wall, he leaped out at her and seized her reins.  The old
+woman screamed, and ran to the wall and cowered there.
+
+Very likely the man only meant to frighten her and heap insults on her,
+for in '56, though wrath ran deep and strong, men waited.  There was to
+be sudden, swift whelming when the time came, not intermittent outrage.
+But he had no time to do more than rein her pony back onto its
+haunches.
+
+There came a clatter of scurrying hoofs behind, and from a whirl of
+dust, topped by a rose-pink pugree, a steel blade swooped down on her
+and him.  A surge of brown and pink and cream, and a dozen rainbow
+tints flashed past her;  a long boot brushed her saddle on the off
+side.  There was a sickening sound, as something hard swished and
+whicked home;  her pony reeled from the shock of a horse's shoulder,
+and--none too gently--none too modestly--the prince with the
+egret and the handsome face reined in on his horse's haunches and
+saluted her.
+
+There was blood, becoming dull-brown in the dust between them.  He
+shook his sabre, and the blood dripped from it then he held it
+outstretched, and a horseman wiped it, before he returned it with a
+clang.
+
+"The sahiba's servant!" he said magnificently, making no motion to let
+her pass, but twisting with his sword-hand at his waxed mustache and
+smiling darkly.
+
+She looked down between them at the thing that but a minute since had
+lived, and loved perhaps as well as hated.
+
+"Shame on you, Jaimihr-sahib!" she said, shuddering.  A year ago she
+would have fallen from her pony in a swoon, but one year of Howrah and
+its daily horrors had so hardened her that she could look and loathe
+without the saving grace of losing consciousness.
+
+"The shame would have been easier to realize, had I taken more than one
+stroke!" he answered irritably, still blocking the way on his great
+horse, still twisting at his mustache point, still looking down at her
+through eyes that blazed a dozen accumulated centuries' store of
+lawless ambition.  He was proud of that back-handed swipe of his that
+would cleave a man each time at one blow from shoulder-joint to ribs,
+severing the backbone.  A woman of his own race would have been singing
+songs in praise of him and his skill in swordsman-ship already;  but no
+woman of his own race would have looked him in the eye like that and
+dared him, nor have done what she did next.  She leaned over and
+swished his charger with her little whip, and slipped past him.
+
+He swore, deep and fiercely, as he spurred and wheeled, and cantered
+after her.  His great stallion could overhaul her pony in a minute,
+going stride for stride;  the wall was more than two miles long with no
+break in it other than locked gates;  there was no hurry.  He watched
+her through half-closed, glowering, appraising eyes as he cantered in
+her wake, admiring the frail, slight figure in the gray cotton habit,
+and bridling his desire to make her--seize her reins, and halt, and
+make her--admit him master of the situation.
+
+As he reached her stirrup, she reined in and faced him, after a hurried
+glance that told her her duenna had failed her.  The old woman was
+invisible.
+
+"Will you leave that body to lie there in the dust and sun?" she asked
+indignantly.
+
+"I am no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!" he smiled.  "I do not
+eat carrion!"  He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for
+he showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the
+epitome of self-satisfied amusement.  His horse blocked the way again,
+and all retreat was cut off, for his escort were behind her, and three
+of them had ridden to the right, outside the row of trees, to cut off
+possible escape in that direction.  "Was it not well that I was near,
+sahiba?  Would it have been better to die at the hands of a Maharati of
+no caste--?"
+
+"Than to see blood spilt--than to be beholden to a murderer?
+Infinitely better!  There was no need to kill that man--I could have
+quieted him.  Let me pass, please, Jaimihr-sahib!"
+
+He reined aside;  but if she thought that cold scorn or hot anger would
+either of them quell his ardor, she had things reversed.  The less she
+behaved as a native woman would have done--the more she flouted him
+--the more enthusiastic he became.
+
+"Sahiba!"--he trotted beside her, his great horse keeping up easily
+with her pony's canter--"I have told you oftener than once that I
+make a good friend and a bad enemy!"
+
+"And I have answered oftener than once that I do not need your
+friendship, and am not afraid of you!  You forget that the British
+Government will hold your royal brother liable for my safety and my
+father's!"
+
+"You, too, overlook certain things, sahiba."  He spoke evenly, with a
+little space between each word.  With the dark look that accompanied
+it, with the blood barely dry yet on the dusty road behind, his speech
+was not calculated to reassure a slip of a girl, gray-eyed or not,
+stiff-chinned or not, borne up or not by Scots enthusiasm for a cause.
+"This is a native state.  My brother rules.  The British--"
+
+"Are near enough, and strong enough, to strike and to bring you and
+your brother to your knees if you harm a British woman!" she retorted.
+"You forget--when the British Government gives leave to missionaries
+to go into a native state, it backs them up with a strong arm!"
+
+"You build too much on the British and my brother, sahiba!  Listen--
+Howrah is as strong as I am, and no stronger.  Had he been stronger, he
+would have slain me long ago.  The British are--"  He checked himself
+and trotted beside her in silence for a minute.  She affected complete
+indifference;  it was as though she had not heard him;  if she could
+not be rid of him, she at least knew how to show him his utter
+unimportance in her estimation.
+
+"Have you heard, sahiba, of the Howrah treasure?  Of the rubies?  Of
+the pearls?  Of the emeralds?  Of the bars of gold?  It is foolishness,
+of course;  we who are modern-minded see the crime of hoarding all that
+wealth, and adding to it, for twenty generations.  Have you heard of
+it, sahiba?"
+
+"Yes!"  she answered savagely, swishing at his charger again to make
+him keep his distance.  "You have told me of it twice.  You have told
+me that you know where it is, and you have offered to show it to me.
+You have told me that you and your brother Maharajah Howrah and the
+priests of Siva are the only men who know where it is, and you lust for
+that treasure!  I can see you lust!  You think that I lust too, and you
+make a great mistake Jaimihr-sahib!  You see, I remember what you have
+told me.  Now, go away and remember what I tell you.  I care for you
+and for your treasure exactly that!"  She hit his charger with all her
+might, and at the sting of the little whip he shied clear of the road
+before the Rajah's brother could rein him in.
+
+Again her effort to destroy his admiration for her had directly the
+opposite effect.  He swore, and he swore vengeance;  but he swore, too,
+that there was no woman in the East so worth a prince's while as this
+one, who dared flout him with her riding-whip before his men!
+
+"Sahiba!" he said, sidling close to her again, and bowing in the saddle
+in mock cavalier humility.  "The time will come when your government
+and my brother, who--at present--is Maharajah Howrah--will be of
+little service to you.  Then, perhaps, you may care to recall my
+promise to load all the jewels you can choose out of the treasure-house
+on you.  Then, perhaps, you may, remember that I said 'a throne is
+better than a grave, sahiba.'  Or else--"
+
+"Or else what, Jaimihr-sahib?"  She reined again and wheeled about and
+faced him--pale-trembling a little--looking very small and frail
+beside him on his great war-horse, but not flinching under his gaze for
+a single second.
+
+"Or else, sahiba--I think you saw me slay the Maharati?  Do you think
+that I would stop at anything to accomplish what I had set out to do?
+See, sahiba--there is a little blood there on your jacket!  Let that
+be for a pledge between us--for a sign--or a token of my oath that
+on the day I am Maharajah Howrah, you are Maharanee--mistress of all
+the jewels in the treasure-house!"
+
+She shuddered.  She did not look to find the blood;  she took his word
+for that, if for nothing else.
+
+"I wonder you dare tell me that you plot against your brother!"  That
+was more a spoken thought than a statement or a question.
+
+"I would be very glad if you would warn my brother!" he answered her;
+and she knew like a flash, and on the instant, that what he said was
+true.  She had been warned before she came to bear no tales to any one.
+No Oriental would believe the tale, coming from her;  the Maharajah
+would arrest her promptly, glad of the excuse to vent his hatred of
+Christian missionaries.  Jaimihr would attempt a rescue;  it was common
+knowledge that he plotted for the throne.  There would be instant civil
+war, in which the British Government would perforce back up the alleged
+protector of a defenseless woman.  There would be a new Maharajah;
+then, in a little while, and in all likelihood, she would have
+disappeared forever while the war raged.  There would be, no doubt, a
+circumstantial story of her death from natural causes.
+
+She did not answer. She stared back at him, and he smiled down at her,
+twisting at his mustache.
+
+"Think!" he said, nodding.  "A throne, sahiba, is considerably better
+than a grave!"  Then he wheeled like a sudden dust-devil and decamped
+in a cloud of dust, followed at full pelt by his clattering escort.
+She watched their horses leap one after the other the corpse of the
+Maharati that lay by the corner where it fell, and she saw the last of
+them go clattering, whirling up the street through the bazaar.  The old
+hag rose out of a shadow and trotted after her again as she turned and
+rode on, pale-faced and crying now a little, to the little begged
+school place where her father tried to din the alphabet into a dozen
+low-caste fosterlings.
+
+"Father!" she cried, and she all but fell out of the saddle into his
+arms as the tall, lean Scotsman came to the door to meet her and stood
+blinking in the sunlight. "Father, I've seen another man killed!  I've
+had another scene with Jaimihr!  I can't endure it!  I--I--Oh, why
+did I ever come?"
+
+"I don't know, dear," he answered.  "But you would come, wouldn't you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+    'Twixt loot and law--'tween creed and caste--
+    Through slough this people wallows,
+    To where we choose our road at last.
+    I choose the RIGHT! Who follows?
+
+HEMMED in amid the stifling stench and babel of the caravansary,
+secluded by the very denseness of the many-minded swarm, five other
+Rajputs and Mahommed Gunga--all six, according to their turbans,
+followers of Islam--discussed matters that appeared to bring them
+little satisfaction.
+
+They sat together in a dark, low-ceilinged room;  its open door--it
+was far too hot to close anything that admitted air--gave straight
+onto the street, and the one big window opened on a courtyard, where a
+pair of game-cocks fought in and out between the restless legs of
+horses, while a yelling horde betted on them.  On a heap of grass
+fodder in a corner of the yard an all-but-naked expert in inharmony
+thumped a skin tom-tom with his knuckles, while at his feet the
+own-blood brother to the screech-owls wailed of hell's torments on a
+wind instrument.
+
+Din--glamour--stink--incessant movement--interblended poverty
+and riches rubbing shoulders--noisy self-interest side by side with
+introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,
+--many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and
+through the passage to the overflowing street;  changeable and
+unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative in spite of
+it than the very rocks she rests on--India who is sister to Aholibah
+and mother of all fascination.
+
+In that room with the long window, low-growled, the one thin thread of
+clear-sighted unselfishness was reeling out to very slight approval.
+Mahommed Gunga paced the floor and kicked his toes against the walls,
+as he turned at either end, until his spurs jingled, and looked with
+blazing dark-brown eyes from one man to the other.
+
+"What good ever came of listening to priests?" he asked. "All priests
+are alike--ours, and theirs, and padre-sahibs!  They all preach peace
+and goad the lust that breeds war and massacre!  Does a priest serve
+any but himself?  Since when?  There will come this rising that the
+priests speak of--yes!  Of a truth, there will, for the priests will
+see to it!  There is a padre-sahib here in Howrah now for the Hindoo
+priests to whet their hate on.  You saw the woman ride past here a
+half-hour gone?  There is a pile of tinder ready here, and any fool of
+a priest can make a spark!  There will be a rising, and a big one!"
+
+"There will!  Of a truth, there will!"  Alwa, his cousin, crossed one
+leg above the other with a clink of spurs and scabbard.  He had no
+objection to betraying interest, but declined for the present to betray
+his hand.
+
+"There will be a blood-letting that will do no harm to us Rajputs!"
+said another man, whose eyes gleamed from the darkest corner;  he, too,
+clanked his scabbard as though the sound were an obbligato to his
+thoughts.  "Sit still and say nothing is my advice;  we will be all
+ready to help ourselves when the hour comes!"
+
+"It is this way," said Mahommed Gunga, standing straddle-legged to face
+all five of them, with his back to the window.  He stroked his black
+beard upward with one hand and fingered with the other at his
+sabre-hilt.  "Without aid when the hour does come, the English will be
+smashed--worn down--starved out--surrounded--stamped out--
+annihilated--so!"  He stamped with his heel descriptively on the hard
+earth floor.  "And then, what?"
+
+"Then, the plunder!" said Alwa, showing a double row of wonderful white
+teeth.  The other four grinned like his reflections.  "Ay, there will
+be plunder--for the priests!   And we Rajputs will have new masters
+over us!  Now, as things are, we have honorable men.  They are fools,
+for any man is a fool who will not see and understand the signs.  But
+they are honest.  They ride straight!  They look us straight between
+the eyes, and speak truth, and fear nobody!  Will the Hindoo  priests,
+who will rule India afterward, be thus?  Nay!  Here is one sword for
+the British when the hour comes!"
+
+"I have yet to see a Hindoo priest rule me or plunder me!" said Alwa
+with a grin.
+
+"You will live to see it!" said Mahommed Gunga.  "Truly, you will live
+to see it, unless you throw your weight into the other scale!  What are
+we Rajputs without a leader whom we all trust?  What have we ever
+been?"  He swung on his heels suddenly--angrily--and began to pace
+the floor again--then stopped.
+
+"Divided, and again subdivided--one-fifth Mohammedan and four-fifths
+Hindoo--clan within clan, and each against the other.  Do we own
+Rajputana?  Nay!  Do we rule it?  Nay!  What were we until
+Cunnigan-bahadur came?"
+
+"Ah!"  All five men rose with a clank in honor to the memory of that
+man.  "Cunnigan-bahadur!  Show us such another man as he was, and I and
+mine ride at his back!" said Alwa.  "Not all the English are like
+Cunnigan!  A Cunnigan could have five thousand men the minute that he
+asked for them!"
+
+"Am I a wizard?--Can I cast spells and bring dead men's spirits from
+the dead again?  I know of no man to take his place," said Mahommed
+Gunga sadly.
+
+He was the poorest of them, but they were all, comparatively speaking,
+poor men;  for the long peace had told its tale on a race of men who
+are first gentlemen, then soldiers, and last--least of all--and
+only as a last resource, landed proprietors.  The British, for whom
+they had often fought because that way honor seemed to lie, had
+impoverished them afterward by passing and enforcing zemindary laws
+that lifted nine-tenths of the burden from the necks of starving
+tenants.  The new law was just, as the Rajputs grudgingly admitted, but
+it pinched their pockets sadly;  like the old-time English squires,
+they would give their best blood and their last rack-rent-wrung rupee
+for the cause that they believed in, but they resented interference
+with the rack-rents!  Mahommed Gunga had had influence enough with
+these five landlord relations of his to persuade them to come and meet
+him in Howrah City to discuss matters;  the mere fact that he had
+thought it worth his while to leave his own little holding in the north
+had satisfied them that he would be well worth listening to--for no
+man rode six hundred miles on an empty errand.  But they needed
+something more than words before they pledged the word that no Rajput
+gentleman will ever break.
+
+"Find us a Cunnigan--bring him to us--prove him to us--and if a
+blade worth having from end to end of Rajputana is not at his service,
+I myself will gut the Hindoo owner of it!  That is my given word!" said
+Alwa.
+
+"He had a son," said Mahommed Gunga quietly.
+
+"True.  Are all sons like their fathers?  Take Maharajah Howrah here;
+his father was a man with whom any soldier might be proud to pick a
+quarrel.  The present man is afraid of his own shadow on the wall--
+divided between love for the treasure-chests he dare not broach and
+fear of a brother whom he dare not kill.  He is priest-ridden,
+priest-taught, and fit to be nothing but a priest.  Who knows how young
+Cunnigan will shape?  Where is he?  Overseas yet!  He must prove
+himself, as his father did, before he can hope to lead a free regiment
+of horse!"
+
+"Then Cunnigan-bahadur's watch-word 'For the peace of India,' is
+dead-died with him?" asked Mahommed Gunga.  "We are each for our own
+again?"
+
+"I have spoken!" answered Alwa.  As the biggest clan-chief left on all
+that countryside, he had a right to speak before the others, and he
+knew that what he said would carry weight when they had all ridden home
+again, and the report had gone abroad in ever-widening rings.  "If the
+English can hold India, let them!  I will not fight against them, for
+they are honest men for all their madness.  If they cannot, then I am
+for Rajputana, not India--India may burn or rot or burst to pieces,
+so long as Rajputana stands!  But--"  He paused a moment, and looked
+at each man in turn, and tapped his sabre-hilt, "--if a
+Cunnigan-bahadur were among us--a man whom I could trust to lead me
+and mine and every man--I would lend him my sword for the sheer honor
+of helping him hack truth out of corruption!  I have nothing more to
+say!"
+
+"One word more, cousin!" said Mahommed Gunga.  "I was risaldar in
+Cunnigan-bahadur's regiment of horse.  There was more than mere
+discipline between us.  I ate his salt.  Once--when he might have
+saved himself the trouble without any daring to reproach him--he
+risked his own life, and a troop, and his reputation to save a woman of
+my family from capture, and something worse.  There was never a Rajput
+or any other native woman wronged while he was with us."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I am no friend of Christian priests--of padres. But--"
+
+"She who rode by just now?  What, then?"
+
+"I ride northward now, and then very likely South again.  I can do
+nothing in the matter, yet--were he in my shoes, and she a native
+woman at the mercy of the troops--Cunnigan-bahadur would have
+assigned a guard for her."
+
+"Ho!  So I am thy sepoy?" sneered Alwa, standing sideways--looking
+sideways--and throwing out his chest.  "I am to do thy bidding,
+guarding stray padres"  (he spoke the word as though it were a bad
+taste he was spitting from his mouth),  "and herding women without
+purdah, while thou ridest on assignations Allah knows where?  Since
+when?"
+
+"I have yet to refuse to guard thy back, or thy good name, Alwa!"
+Mahommed Gunga eyed him straight, and thrust his hilt out.  "The woman
+is nothing to me--the padre-sahib less.  It is because of the debt I
+owe to Cunnigan that I ask this favor."
+
+"Oh.  It is granted!  Should she appeal to me, I will rip Howrah into
+rags and burn this city to protect her if need be!  She must first ask,
+though, even as thou didst."
+
+Mahommed Gunga saluted him, bolt-upright as a lance, and without the
+slightest change in his expression.
+
+"The word is sufficient, cousin!"
+
+Alwa returned his salute, and raised his voice in a gruff command.  A
+saice outside the window woke as though struck by a stick--sprang to
+his feet--and passed the order on.  A dozen horses clattered in the
+courtyard and filed through the arched passage to the street, and Alwa
+mounted.  The others, each with his escort, followed suit, and a moment
+later, with no further notice of one another, but with as much pomp and
+noise as though they owned the whole of India, the five rode off, each
+on his separate way, through the scattering crowd.
+
+Then Mahommed Gunga called for his own horse and the lone armed man of
+his own race who acted squire to him.
+
+"Did any overhear our talk?" he asked.
+
+"No, sahib."
+
+"Not the saice, even?"
+
+"No, sahib.  He slept."
+
+"He awoke most suddenly, and at not much noise."
+
+"For that reason I know he slept, sahib.  Had he been pretending, he
+would have wakened slowly."
+
+"Thou art no idiot!" said Mahommed Gunga.  "Wait here until I return,
+and lie a few lies if any ask thee why we six came together, and of
+what we spoke!"
+
+Then he mounted and rode off slowly, picking his way through the throng
+much more cautiously and considerately than his relatives had done,
+though not, apparently, because he loved the crowd.  He used some
+singularly biting insults to help clear the way, and frowned as though
+every other man he looked at were either an assassin or--what a good
+Mohammedan considers worse--an infidel.  He reached the long brick
+wall at last--broke into a canter--scattered the pariah dogs that
+were nosing and quarreling about the corpse of the Maharati, and drew
+rein fifteen minutes later by the door of the tiny school place that
+Miss McClean had entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+For service truly rendered, and for duty dumbly done--
+For men who neither tremble nor forget--
+There is due reward, my henchman. There is honor to be won.
+There is watch and ward and sterner duty yet.
+
+No sound came, from within the schoolhouse.  The little building,
+coaxed from a grudging Maharajah, seemed to strain for light and air
+between two overlapping, high-walled brick warehouses.  Before the
+door, in a spot where the scorching sun-rays came but fitfully between
+a mesh of fast-decaying thatch, the old hag who had followed Rosemary
+McClean lay snoozing, muttering to herself, and blinking every now and
+then as a street dog blinks at the passers-by.  She took no notice of
+Mahommed Gunga until he swore at her.
+
+"Miss-sahib hai?" he growled;  and the woman jumped up in a hurry and
+went inside.  A moment later Rosemary McClean stood framed in the
+doorway still in her cotton riding-habit, very pale--evidently
+frightened at the summons--but strangely, almost ethereally,
+beautiful.  Her wealth of chestnut hair was loosely coiled above her
+neck, as though she had been caught in the act of dressing it.  She
+looked like the wan, wasted spirit of human pity--he like a great,
+grim war-god.
+
+"Salaam, Miss Maklin-sahib!"
+
+He dismounted as he spoke and stood at attention, then stared
+truculently, too inherently chivalrous to deny her civility--he would
+have cut his throat as soon as address her from horseback while she
+stood--and too contemptuous of her father's calling to be more civil
+than he deemed in keeping with his honor.
+
+"Salaam, Mohammed Gunga!"  She seemed very much relieved, although
+doubtful yet.  "Not letters again?"
+
+"No, Miss-sahib.  I am no mail-carrier!  I brought those letters as a
+favor to Franklin-sahib at Peshawur;  I was coming hither, and he had
+no man to send.  I will take letters, since I am now going, if there
+are letters ready;  I ride to-night."
+
+"Thank you, Mahommed Gunga.  I have letters for England.  They are not
+yet sealed.  May I send them to you before you start?"
+
+"I will send my man for them.  Also, Miss Maklin-sahib"  (heavens! how
+much cleaner and better that sounded than the prince's ironical
+"sahiba"!)
+
+"If you wish it, I will escort you to Peshawur, or to any city between
+here and there."
+
+"But--but why?"
+
+"I saw Jaimihr. I know Jaimihr."
+
+"And--"
+
+"And--this is no place for a padre, or for the daughter of a padre."
+
+What he said was true, but it was also insolent, said insolently.
+
+"Mahommed Gunga-sahib, what are those ribbons on your breast?" she
+asked him.
+
+He glanced down at them, and his expression changed a trifle;  it was
+scarcely perceptible, but underneath his fierce mustache the muscles of
+his mouth stiffened.
+
+"They are medal ribbons--for campaigns," he answered.
+
+"Three-four-five!  Then, you were a soldier a long time?  Did you--
+did you desert your post when there was danger?"
+
+He flushed, and raised his hand as though about to speak.
+
+"Or did people insult you when you chose to remain on duty?"
+
+"Miss-sahib, I have not insulted you!" said Mahommed Gunga.  "I came
+here for another purpose."
+
+"You came, very kindly, to ask whether there were letters.  Thank you,
+Mahommed Gunga-sahib, for your courtesy.  There are letters, and I will
+give them to your man, if you will be good enough to send him for them."
+
+He still stood there, staring at her with eyes that did not blink.  He
+was too much of a soldier to admit himself at a loss what to say, yet
+he had no intention of leaving Howrah without saying it, for that, too,
+would have been unsoldierly.
+
+"The reason why your countrymen have found men of this land before now
+to fight for them--one reason, at least--" he said gruffly, "is that
+hitherto they have not meddled with our religions.  It is not safe!  It
+would be better to come away, Miss-sahib."
+
+"Would you like to say that to my father?  He is--"
+
+"Allah forbid that I should argue with him!  I spoke to you, on your
+account!"
+
+"You forget, I think," she answered him gently, "that we had permission
+from the British Government to come here;  it has not been withdrawn.
+We are doing no harm here--trying only to do good.  There is always
+danger when--"
+
+"I would speak of that," he interrupted--"You will not come away?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Your father could remain."
+
+She shook her head again. "I stay with him," she answered.
+
+"At present, Jaimihr is the danger, Miss-sahib;  but I think that at
+present he will dare do nothing.  The Maharajah dare do nothing either,
+yet.  Should either of them make a move to interfere with you, it would
+not be safe to appeal to the other one.  You will not understand, but
+it is so.  In that event, there is a way to safety of which I would
+warn you."
+
+"Thank you, Mahommed Gunga. What is it?"
+
+"There are men more than a day's ride away from here who are to be
+depended on--by you, at least--under all circumstances.  Is that
+old woman to be trusted?"
+
+"How should I know?" she smiled.  "I believe she is fond of me."
+
+"That should be enough.  I would like, if the Miss-sahib will permit,
+to speak with her."
+
+At a word from Miss McClean the old hag came out into the sun again and
+blinked at the Rajput, very much afraid of him.  Mahommed Gunga saluted
+Miss McClean--swore at the old woman--pointed a wordless order with
+his right arm--watched her shuffle half a hundred yards up-street--
+followed her, and growled at her for about five minutes, while she
+nodded.  Finally, he drew from the pocket of his crimson coat a small
+handful of gold mohurs--fat, dignified coins that glittered--and
+held them out toward her with an air as though they meant nothing to
+him--positively nothing--Her eyes gleamed.  He let her take a good
+look at the money before replacing it, then tossed her a silver
+quarter-rupee piece, saluted Miss McClean again--for she was watching
+the pantomime from the doorway still--and mounted and rode off, his
+back looking like the back of one who has neither care nor fear nor
+master.
+
+At the caravansary his squire came running out to hold his stirrup.
+
+"Picket the horse in the yard," said Mahommed Gunga, "then find me
+another servant and bring him to me in the room here!"
+
+"Another servant?  But, sahib--"
+
+"I said another servant!  Has deafness overcome thee?"  He used a word
+in the dialect which left no room for doubt as to his meaning;  it was
+to be a different servant--a substitute for the squire he had
+already.  The squire bowed his head in disciplined obedience and led
+the horse away.
+
+An hour later--evening was drawing on--he came back, followed by a
+somewhat ruffianly-looking half-breed Rajput-Punjaubi.  The new man was
+rather ragged and lacked one eye, but with the single eye he had he
+looked straight at his prospective master.  Mahommed Gunga glared at
+him, but the man did not quail or shrink.
+
+"This fellow wishes honorable service, sahib."  The squire spoke as
+though he were calling his master's attention to a horse that was for
+sale.  "I have seen his family;  I have inquired about him;  and I have
+explained to him that unless he serves at thee faithfully his wife and
+his man child will die at my hands in his absence."
+
+"Can he groom a horse?"
+
+"So he says, sahib, and so say others."
+
+"Can he fight?"
+
+"He slew the man with his bare hands who pricked his eye out with a
+sword."
+
+"Oh!  What payment does he ask?"
+
+"He leaves that matter to your honor's pleasure."
+
+"Good.  Instruct him, then.  Set him to cleaning my horse and then
+return here."
+
+The squire was back again within five minutes and stood before Mahommed
+Gunga in silent expectation.
+
+"I shall miss thee," said Mahommed Gunga after five minutes'
+reflection.  "It is well that I have other servants in the north."
+
+"In what have I offended, sahib?"
+
+"In nothing.  Therefore there is a trust imposed."
+
+The man salaamed.  Mahommed Gunga produced his little handful of gold
+mohurs and divided it into two equal portions;  one he handed to the
+squire.
+
+"Stay here.  Be always either in the caravansary or else at call.
+Should the old woman who serves Miss Maklin-sahib, the padre-sahib's
+daughter come and ask thy aid, then saddle swiftly the three horses I
+will leave with thee, and bear Miss Maklin-sahib and her father to my
+cousin Alwa's place.  Present two of the gold mohurs to the hag, should
+that happen."
+
+"But sahib--two mohurs?  I could buy ten such hags outright for the
+price!"
+
+"She has my word in the matter!  It is best to have her eager to win
+great reward.  The hag will stay awake, but see to it that thou
+sleepest not!"
+
+"And for how long must I stay here, sahib?"
+
+"One month--six months--a year--who knows?  Until the hag summons
+thee, or I, by writing or by word of mouth, relieve thee of thy trust."
+
+At sunset he sent the squire to Miss McClean for the letters he had
+promised to deliver;  and at one hour after sunset, when the heat of
+the earth had begun to rise and throw back a hot blast to the darkened
+sky and the little eddies of luke-warm surface wind made movement for
+horse and man less like a fight with scorching death, he rode off, with
+his new servant, on the two horses left to him of the five with which
+he came.
+
+A six-hundred-mile ride without spare horses, in the heat of northern
+India, was an undertaking to have made any strong man flinch.  The
+stronger the man, and the more soldierly, the better able he would be
+to realize the effort it would call for.  But Mahommed Gunga rode as
+though he were starting on a visit to a near-by friend;  he was not
+given to crossing bridges before he reached them, nor to letting
+prospects influence his peace of mind. He was a soldier.  He took
+precautions first, when and where such were possible, then rode and
+looked fate in the eye.
+
+He appeared to take no more notice of the glowering looks that followed
+him from stuffy balconies and dense-packed corners than of the
+mosquitoes to and the heat.  Without hurry he picked his way through
+the thronged streets, where already men lay in thousands to escape the
+breathlessness of walled interiors;  the gutters seemed like trenches
+where the dead of a devastated city had been laid;  the murmur was like
+the voice of storm-winds gathering, and the little lights along the
+housetops were for the vent-holes on the lid of a tormented underworld.
+
+But he rode on at his ease.  Ahead of him lay that which he considered
+duty.  He could feel the long-kept peace of India disintegrating all
+around him, and he knew--he was certain--as sometimes a brave man
+can see what cleverer men all overlook--that the right touch by the
+right man at the right moment, when the last taut-held thread should
+break, would very likely swing the balance in favor of peace again,
+instead of individual self seeking anarchy.
+
+He knew what "Cunnigan-bahadur" would have done.  He swore by
+Cunnigan-bahadur.  And the memory of that same dead, desperately honest
+Cunningham he swore that no personal profit or convenience or safety
+should be allowed to stand between him and what was honorable and
+right!  Mahommed Gunga had no secrets from himself;  nor lack of
+imagination.  He knew that he was riding--not to preserve the peace
+of India, for that was as good as gone--but to make possible the
+winning back of it.  And he rode with a smile on his thin lips, as the
+crusaders once rode on a less self-advertising errand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+    "You have failed!" whispered Fate, and a weary civilian
+    Threw up his task as a matter of course.
+    "Failed?" said the soldier.  He knew a million
+    Chances untackled yet. "Get me a horse!"
+
+THAT was a strange ride of Mahommed Gunga's, and a fateful one--more
+full of portent for the British Raj in India than he, or the British,
+or the men amid whose homes he rode could ever have anticipated.  He
+averaged a little less than twenty miles a day, and through an Indian
+hot-weather, and with no spare horse, none but a born horseman--a man
+of light weight and absolute control of temper--could have
+accomplished that for thirty days on end.
+
+Wherever he rode there was the same unrest.  Here and there were new
+complaints he had not yet heard of, imaginary some of them, and some
+only too well founded.  Wherever there were Rajputs--and that race of
+fighting men is scattered all about the north--there was
+ill-suppressed impatience for the bursting of the wrath to come.  They
+bore no grudge against the English, but they did bear more than grudge
+against the money-lenders and the fat, litigious traders who had
+fattened under British rule.  At least at the beginning it was evident
+that all the interest of all the Rajputs lay in letting the British get
+the worst of it;  even should the British suddenly wake up and look
+about them and take steps--or should the British hold their own with
+native aid, and so save India from anarchy, and afterward reward the
+men who helped--the Rajputs would stand to gain less individually, or
+even collectively, than if they let the English be driven to the sea,
+and then reverted to the age-old state of feudal lawlessness that once
+had made them rich.
+
+Many of the Hindoo element among them were almost openly disloyal.  The
+ryots--the little one and two acre farmers--were the least
+unsettled;  they, when he asked them--and he asked often--
+disclaimed the least desire to change a rule that gave them safe
+holdings and but one tax-collection a year;  they were frankly for
+their individual selves--not even for one another, for the ryots as a
+class.
+
+Nobody seemed to be for India, except Mahommed Gunga;  and he said
+little, but asked ever-repeated questions as he rode.  There were men
+who would like to weld Rajputana into one again, and over-ride the rest
+of India;  and there were other men who planned to do the same for the
+Punjaub;  there were plots within plots, not many of which he learned
+in anything like detail, but none of which were more than skin-deep
+below the surface.  All men looked to the sudden, swift, easy whelming
+of the British Raj, and then to the plundering of India;  each man
+expected to be rich when the whelming came, and each man waited with
+ill-controlled impatience for the priests' word that would let loose
+the hundred-million flood of anarchy.
+
+"And one man--one real man whom they trusted--one leader--one man
+who had one thousand at his back--could change the whole face of
+things!" he muttered to himself.  "Would God there we a Cunnigan!  But
+there is no Cunnigan.  And who would follow me?  They would pull my
+beard, tell me I was scheming for my own ends!--I, who was taught by
+Cunnigan, and would serve only India!"
+
+He would ride before dawn and when the evening breeze had come to cool
+the hot earth a little through the blazing afternoons he would lie in
+the place of honor by some open window, where he could watch a hireling
+flick the flies off his lean, road-hardened horse, and listen to the
+plotting and the carried tales of plots, pretending always to be
+sympathetic or else open to conviction.
+
+"A soldier?  Hah!  A soldier fights for the side that can best reward
+him!" he would grin.  "And, when there is no side, perhaps he makes
+one!  I am a soldier!"
+
+If they pressed him, he would point to his medal ribbons, that he
+always wore.  "The British gave me those for fighting against the
+northern tribes beyond the Himalayas," he would tell them.  "The
+southern tribes--Bengalis of the south and east--would give better
+picking than  mere medal ribbons!"
+
+They were not all sure of him.  They were not all satisfied why he
+should ride on to Peshawur, and decline to stay with them and talk good
+sedition.
+
+"I would see how the British are!" he told them.  And he told the
+truth.  But they were not quite satisfied;  he would have made a
+splendid leader to have kept among them, until he--too--became too
+powerful and would have to be deposed in turn.
+
+His own holding was a long way from Peshawur, and he was no rich man
+who could afford at a mere whim to ride two long days' march beyond his
+goal.  Nor was he, as he had explained to Miss McClean, a
+letter-carrier;  he would get no more than the merest thanks for
+delivering her letters to where they could be included in the
+Government mail-bag.  Yet he left the road that would have led him
+homeward to his left, and carried on--quickening his pace as he
+neared the frontier garrison town, and wasting, then, no time at all on
+seeking information.  Nobody supposed that the Pathans and the other
+frontier tribes were anything but openly rebellious, and he would have
+been an idiot to ask questions about their loyalty.
+
+Because of their disloyalty, and the ever-present danger that they
+were, the biggest British garrison in India had to be kept cooped up in
+Peshawur, to rot with fever and ague and the other ninety Indian
+plagues.
+
+He wanted to see that garrison again, and estimate it, and make up his
+mind what exactly, or probably, the garrison would do in the event of
+the rebellion blazing out.  And he wanted to try once more to warn some
+one in authority, and make him see the smouldering fire beneath the
+outer covering of sullen silence.
+
+He received thanks for the letters.  He received an invitation to take
+tea on the veranda of an officer so high in the British service that
+many a staff major would have given a month's pay for a like
+opportunity.  But he was laughed at for the advice he had to give.
+
+"Mahommed Gunga, you're like me, you're getting old!" said the high
+official.
+
+"Not so very old, sahib.  I was a young man when Cunnigan-bahadur
+raised a regiment and licked the half of Rajputana into shape with it.
+Not too old, sahib, to wish there were another Cunnigan to ride with!"
+
+"Well, Mahommed Gunga, you're closer to your wish than you suppose!
+Young Cunningham's gazetted, and probably just about starting on his
+way out here via the Cape of Good Hope.  He should be here in three or
+four months at the outside."
+
+"You mean that, sahib?"
+
+"Wish I didn't!  The puppy will arrive here with altogether swollen
+notions of his own importance and what is due his father's son.  He's
+been captain of his college at home, and that won't lessen his sense of
+self-esteem either.  I can foresee trouble with that boy!"
+
+"Sahib, there is a service I could render!"
+
+The Rajput spoke with a strangely constrained voice all of a sudden,
+but the Commissioner did not notice it;  he was too busy pulling on a
+wool-lined jacket to ward off the evening chill.
+
+"Well, risaldar--what then?"
+
+"I think that I could teach the son of Cunnigan-bahadur to be worth his
+salt."
+
+"If you'll teach him to be properly respectful to his betters I'll be
+grateful to you, Mahommed Gunga."
+
+"Then, sahib, I shall have certain license allowed me in the matter?"
+
+"Do anything you like, in reason, risaldar!  Only keep the pup from
+cutting his eye-teeth on his seniors' convenience, that's all!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga wasted no time after that on talking, nor did he wait to
+specify the nature of the latitude he would expect to be allowed him;
+he knew better.  And he knew now that the one chance that he sought had
+been given him.
+
+Like all observant natives, he was perfectly aware that the British
+weakness mostly lay in the age of the senior officers and the slowness
+of promotion.  There were majors of over fifty years of age, and if a
+man were a general at seventy he was considered fortunate and young.
+The jealousy with which younger men were regarded would have been
+humorous had it not come already so near to plunging India into anarchy.
+
+He did not even trouble to overlook the garrison.  He took his leave,
+and rode away the long two-day ride to his own place, where a sadly
+attenuated rent-roll and a very sadly thinned-down company of servants
+waited his coming.  There, through fourteen hurried, excited days, he
+made certain arrangements about the disposition of his affairs during
+an even longer absence;  he made certain sales--pledged the rent of
+fifty acres for ten years, in return for an advance--and on the
+fifteenth day rode southward, at the head of a five-man escort that,
+for quality, was worthy of a prince.
+
+A little less than three months later he arrived at Bombay, and by dint
+of much hard bargaining and economy fitted out himself and his escort,
+so that each man looked as though he were the owner of an escort of his
+own.  Then, fretful at every added day that strained his
+fast-diminishing resources, he settled down to wait until the ship
+should come that brought young Cunningham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+    Lies home beneath a sickly sun,
+            Where humbleness was taught me?
+    Or here, where spurs my father won
+            On bended knee are brought me?
+
+HE landed, together with about a dozen other newly gazetted subalterns
+and civil officers, cramped, storm-tossed, snubbed, and then disgorged
+from a sailing-ship into a port that made no secret of its absolute
+contempt for new arrivals.
+
+There were liners of a kind on the Red Sea route, and the only seniors
+who chose the long passage round the Cape were men returning after
+sick-leave--none too sweet-tempered individuals, and none too prone
+to give the young idea a good conceit of himself.  He and the other
+youngsters landed with a crushed-in notion that India would treat them
+very cavalierly before she took them to herself.  And all, save
+Cunningham, were right.
+
+The other men, all homesick and lonely and bewildered, were met by
+bankers' agents, or, in cases, only by a hotel servant armed with a
+letter of instructions.  Here and there a bored, tired-eyed European
+had found time, for somebody-or-other's sake, to pounce on a new
+arrival and bear him away to breakfast and a tawdry imitation of the
+real hospitality of northern India;  but for the most part the
+beardless boys lounged in the red-hot customs shed (where they were to
+be mulcted for the privilege of serving their country) and envied young
+Cunningham.
+
+He--as pale as they, as unexpectant as they were of anything
+approaching welcome--was first amazed, then suspicious, then pleased,
+then proud, in turn.  The different emotions followed one another
+across his clean-lined face as plainly as a dawn vista changes;  then,
+as the dawn leaves a landscape finally, true and what it is for all to
+see, true dignity was left and the look of a man who stands in armor.
+
+"His father's son!" growled Mahommed Gunga;  and the big, black-bearded
+warriors who stood behind him echoed, "Ay!"
+
+But for four or five inches of straight stature, and a foot, perhaps,
+of chest-girth, he was a second edition of the Cunnigan-bahadur who had
+raised and led a regiment and licked peace into a warring countryside;
+and though he was that much bigger than his father had been, they
+dubbed him "Chota" Cunnigan on the instant.  And that means "Little
+Cunningham."
+
+He had yet to learn that a Rajput, be he poorest of the poor, admits no
+superior on earth.  He did not know yet that these men had come, at one
+man's private cost, all down the length of India to meet him.  Nobody
+had told him that the feudal spirit dies harder in northern Hindustan
+than it ever did in England, or that the Rajput clans cohere more
+tightly than the Scots.  The Rajput belief that honest service--
+unselfishly given--is the greatest gift that any man may bring--
+that one who has received what he considers favors will serve the
+giver's son--was an unknown creed to him as yet.
+
+But he stood and looked those six men in the eye, and liked them.  And
+they, before they had as much as heard him speak, knew him for a
+soldier and loved him as he stood.
+
+They hung sickly scented garlands round his neck, and kissed his hand
+in turn, and spoke to him thereafter as man to man.  They had found
+their goal worth while, and they bore him off to his hotel in
+clattering glee, riding before him as men who have no doubt of the
+honor that they pay themselves.  No other of the homesick subalterns
+drove away with a six-man escort to clear the way and scatter sparks!
+
+They careered round through the narrow gate of the hotel courtyard as
+though a Viceroy at least were in the trap behind them;  and Mahommed
+Gunga--six medaled, strapping feet of him--dismounted and held out
+an arm for him to take when he alighted.  The hotel people understood
+at once that Somebody from Somewhere had arrived.
+
+Young Cunningham had never yet been somebody.  The men who give their
+lives for India are nothing much at home, and their sons are even less.
+Scarcely even at school, when they had made him captain of the team,
+had he felt the feel of homage and the subtle flattery that undermines
+a bad man's character;  at schools in England they confer honors but
+take simultaneous precautions.  He was green to the dangerous influence
+of feudal loyalty, but he quitted himself well, with reserve and
+dignity.
+
+"He is good!  He will do!" swore Mahommed Gunga fiercely, for the other
+emotions are meant for women only.
+
+"He is better than the best!"
+
+"We will make a man of this one!"
+
+"Did you mark how he handed me his purse to defray expenses?" asked a
+black-bearded soldier of the five.
+
+"He is a man who knows by instinct!" said Mahommed Gunga.  "See to it
+that thy accounting is correct, and overpay no man!"
+
+Deep-throated as a bull, erect as a lance, and pleased as a little
+child, Mahommed Gunga came to him alone that evening to talk, and to
+hear him talk, and to tell him of the plans that had been made.
+
+"Thy father gave me this," he told him, producing a gold watch and
+chain of the hundred-guinea kind that nowadays are only found among the
+heirlooms.  Young Cunningham looked at it, and recognized the heavy
+old-gold case that he had been allowed to "blow open" when a little
+boy.  On the outside, deep-chiseled in the gold, was his father's
+crest, and on the inside a portrait of his mother.
+
+"Thy father died in these two arms, bahadur!  Thy father said:  'Look
+after him, Mahommed Gunga, when the time is ripe for him to be a
+soldier.'  And I said:  'Ha, huzoor!'  So!  Then here is India!"
+
+He waved one hand grandiloquently, as though he were presenting the
+throne of India to his protegé!
+
+"Here, sahib, is a servant--blood of my own blood."
+
+He clapped his hands, and a man who looked like the big, black-ended
+spirit of Aladdin's lamp stood silent, instant, in the doorway.
+
+"He speaks no English, but he may help to teach thee the Rajput tongue,
+and he will serve thee well--on my honor.  His throat shall answer
+for it!  Feed him and clothe him, sahib, but pay him very little--to
+serve well is sufficient recompense."
+
+Young Cunningham gave his keys at once to the silent servant, as a
+tacit sign that from that moment he was trusted utterly;  and Mahommed
+Gunga nodded grim approval.
+
+"Thy father saw fit to bequeath me much in the hour when death came on
+him, sahib.  I am no boaster, as he knew.  Remember, then, to tell me
+if I fail at any time in what is due.  I am at thy service!"
+
+Tact was inborn in Cunningham, as it had been in his father.  He
+realized that he ought at once to show his appreciation of the high
+plane of the service offered.
+
+"There is one way in which you could help me almost at once, Mahommed
+Gunga," he answered.
+
+"Command me, sahib."
+
+"I need your advice--the advice of a man who really knows.  I need
+horses, and--at first at least--I would rather trust your judgment
+than my own.  Will you help me buy them?"
+
+The Raiput's eyes blazed pleasure.  On war, and wine, and women, and a
+horse are the four points to ask a man's advice and win his approval by
+the asking.
+
+"Nay, sahib;  why buy horses here?  These Bombay traders have only
+crows' meat to sell to the ill-advised.  I have horses, and spare
+horses for the journey;  and in Rajputana I have horses waiting for
+thee--seven, all told--sufficient for a young officer.  Six of them
+are country-bred-sand-weaned--a little wild perhaps, but strong, and
+up to thy weight.  The seventh is a mare, got by thy father's stallion
+Aga Khan (him that made more than a hundred miles within a day under a
+fifteen-stone burden, with neither food nor water, and survived!).  A
+good mare, sahib--indeed a mare of mares--fit for thy father's son.
+That mare I give thee.  It is little, sahib, but my best;  I am a poor
+man.  The other six I bought--there is the account.  I bought them
+cheaply, paying less than half the price demanded in each case--but I
+had to borrow and must pay back."
+
+Young Cunningham was hard put to it to keep his voice steady as he
+answered.  This man was a stranger to him.  He had a hazy recollection
+of a dozen or more bearded giants who formed a moving background to his
+dreams of infancy, and he had expected some sort of welcome from one or
+two perhaps, of his father's men when he reached the north.  But to
+have men borrow money that they might serve him, and have horses ready
+for him, and to be met like this at the gate of India by a man who
+admitted he was poor, was a little more than his self-control had been
+trained as yet to stand.
+
+"I won't waste words, Mahommed Gunga," he said, half-choking.  "I'll--
+er--I'll try to prove how I feel about it."
+
+"Ha!  How said I?  Thy father's son,  I said!  He, too, was no believer
+in much promising!  I was his servant, and will serve him still by
+serving thee.  The honor is mine, sahib, and the advantage shall be
+where thy father wished it."
+
+"My father would never have had me--"
+
+"Sahib, forgive the interruption, but a mistake is better checked.  Thy
+father would have flung thee ungrudged, into a hell of bayonets, me,
+too, and would have followed after, if by so doing he could have served
+the cause he held in trust.  He bred thee, fed thee, and sent thee
+oversea to grow, that in the end India might gain!  Thou and I are but
+servants of the peace, as he was.  If I serve thee, and thou the Raj--
+though the two of us were weaned on the milk of war and get our bread
+by war--we will none the less serve peace!  Aie!  For what is honor
+if a soldier lets it rust?  Of what use is service, mouthed and ready,
+but ungiven?  It is good, Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur, that thou art come at
+last!"
+
+He saluted and backed out through the swinging door.  He had come in
+his uniform of risaldar of the elder Cunningham's now disbanded
+regiment, so he had not removed his boots as another native--and he
+himself if in mufti--would have done.  Young Cunningham heard him go
+swaggering and clanking and spur-jingling down the corridor as though
+he had half a troop of horse behind him and wanted Asia to know it!
+
+It was something of a brave beginning that, for a twenty-one-year-old!
+Something likely--and expressly calculated by Mahommed Gunga--to
+bring the real man to the surface.  He had been no Cunningham unless
+his sense of duty had been very near the surface--no Englishman, had
+he not been proud that men of a foreign, conquered race should think
+him worthy of all that honor;  and no man at all if his eye had been
+quite dry when the veteran light-horseman swaggered out at last and
+left him to his own reflections.
+
+He had not been human if he had not felt a little homesick still,
+although home to him had been a place where a man stayed with distant
+relatives between the intervals of school.  He felt lonely, in spite of
+his reception--a little like a baby on the edge of all things new and
+wonderful.  He would have been no European if he had not felt the heat,
+the hotel was like a vapor-bath.
+
+But the leaping red blood of youth ran strong in him.  He had
+imagination.  He could dream.  The good things he was tasting were a
+presage only of the better things to come, and that is a wholesome
+point of view.  He was proud--as who would not be?--to step
+straight into the tracks of such a father;  and with that thought came
+another--just as good for him, and for India, that made him feel as
+though he were a robber yet, a thief in another's cornfield, gathering
+what he did not sow.  It came over him in a flood that he must pay the
+price of all this homage.
+
+Some men pay in advance, some at the time, and some pay afterward.  All
+men, he knew, must pay.  It would be his task soon to satisfy these
+gentle-men, who took him at his face value, by proving to them that
+they had made no very great mistake.  The thought thrilled him instead
+of frightening--brought out every generous instinct that he had and
+made him thank the God of All Good Soldiers that at least he would have
+a chance to die in the attempt.  There was nothing much the matter with
+young Cunningham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+    I take no man at rumor's price,
+            Nor as the gossips cry him.
+    A son may ride, and stride, and stand;
+            His father's eye--his father's hand--
+    His father's tongue may give command;
+            But ere I trust I'll try him!
+
+BUT before young Cunningham was called upon to pay even a portion of
+the price of fealty there was more of the receiving of it still in
+store for him, and he found himself very hard put to it, indeed, to
+keep overboiling spirits from becoming exultation of the type that
+nauseates.
+
+None of the other subalterns had influence, nor had they hereditary
+anchors in the far northwest that would be likely to draw them on to
+active service early in their career.  They had already been made to
+surrender their boyhood dreams of quick promotion;  now, standing in
+little groups and asking hesitating questions, they discovered that
+their destination--Fort William--was about the least desirable of
+all the awful holes in India.
+
+They were told that a subaltern was lucky who could mount one step of
+the promotion ladder in his first ten years;  that a major at fifty, a
+colonel at sixty, and a general at seventy were quite the usual thing.
+And they realized that the pay they would receive would be a mere
+beggar's pittance in a neighborhood so expensive as Calcutta, and that
+their little private means would be eaten up by the mere, necessities
+of life.  They showed their chagrin and it was not very easy for young
+Cunningham, watching Mahommed Gunga's lordly preparations for the long
+up-country journey, to strike just the right attitude of pleasure at
+the prospect without seeming to flaunt his better fortune.
+
+Mahommed Gunga interlarded his hoarse orders to the mule-drivers with
+descriptions in stateliest English, thrown out at random to the world
+at large, of the glories of the manlier north--of the plains, where a
+man might gallop while a horse could last, and of the mountains up
+beyond the plains.  He sniffed at the fetid Bombay reek, and spoke of
+the clean air sweeping from the snow-topped Himalayas, that put life
+and courage into the lungs of men who rode like centaurs!  And the
+other subalterns looked wistful, eying the bullock-carts that would
+take their baggage by another route.
+
+Fully the half of what Mahommed Gunga said was due to pride of race and
+country.  But the rest was all deliberately calculated to rouse the
+wicked envy of those who listened.  He meant to make the son of "Pukka"
+Cunnigan feel, before he reached his heritage, that he was going up to
+something worth his while.  To quote his own north-country metaphor, he
+meant to "make the colt come up the bit."  He meant that "Chota"
+Cunnigan should have a proper sense of his own importance, and should
+chafe at restraint, to the end that when his chance did come to prove
+himself he would jump at it.  Envy, he calculated--the unrighteous
+envy of men less fortunately placed--would make a good beginning.
+And it did, though hardly in the way he calculated.
+
+Young Cunningham, tight-lipped to keep himself from grinning like a
+child, determined to prove himself worthy of the better fortune;  and
+Mahommed Gunga would have cursed into his black beard in disgust had he
+known of the private resolutions being formed to obey orders to the
+letter and obtain the good will of his seniors.  The one thing that the
+grim old Rajput wished for his protege was jealousy!  He wanted him so
+well hated by the "nabobs" who had grown crusty and incompetent in high
+command that life for him in any northern garrison would be impossible.
+
+Throughout the two months' journey to the north Mahommed Gunga never
+left a stone unturned to make Cunningham believe himself much more than
+ordinary clay.  All along the trunk road, that trails by many thousand
+towns and listens to a hundred languages, whatever good there was was
+Cunningham's.  Whichever room was best in each dak-bungalow, whichever
+chicken the kansamah least desired to kill, whoever were the stoutest
+dhoolee-bearers in the village, whichever horse had the easiest paces
+--all were Cunningham's.  Respect were his, and homage and obeisance,
+for the Rajput saw to it.
+
+Of evenings, while they rested, but before the sun went down, the old
+risaldar would come with his naked sabre and defy "Chota" Cunnigan to
+try to touch him.  For five long weeks he tried each evening, the
+Rajput never doing anything but parry,--changing his sabre often to
+the other hand and grinning at the schoolboy swordsmanship--until one
+evening, at the end of a more than usually hard-fought bout, the
+youngster pricked him, lunged, and missed slitting his jugular by the
+merest fraction of an inch.
+
+"Ho!" laughed Mahommed Gunga later, as he sluiced out the cut while his
+own adherents stood near by and chaffed him.  "The cub cuts his teeth,
+then! Soon it will be time to try his pluck."
+
+"Be gentle with him, risaldar-sahib;  a good cub dies as easily as a
+poor one, until he knows the way."
+
+"Leave him to me!  I will show him the way, and we will see what we
+will see.  If he is to disgrace his father's memory and us, he shall do
+it where there are few to see and none to talk of it.  When Alwa and
+the others ask me, as they will ask, 'Is he a man?'  I will give them a
+true answer!  I think he is a man, but I need to test him in all ways
+possible before I pledge my word on it."
+
+But after that little accident the old risaldar had sword-sticks
+fashioned at a village near the road, and ran no more risks of being
+killed by the stripling he would teach;  and before many more days of
+the road had ribboned out, young Cunningham--bareback or from the
+saddle--could beat him to the ground, and could hold his own on foot
+afterward with either hand.
+
+"The hand and eye are good!" said Mahommed Gunga. "It is time now for
+another test."
+
+So he made a plausible excuse about the horses, and they halted for
+four days at a roadside dak-bungalow about a mile from where a
+foul-mouthed fakir sat and took tribute at a crossroads.  It was a
+strangely chosen place to rest at.
+
+Deep down in a hollow, where the trunk road took advantage of a winding
+gorge between the hills--screened on nearly all sides by green jungle
+whose brown edges wilted in the heat which the inner steam defied--
+stuffy, smelly, comfortless, it stood like a last left rear-guard of a
+white-man's city, swamped by the deathless, ceaselessly advancing tide
+of green.  It was tucked between mammoth trees that had been left there
+when the space for it was cleared a hundred years before, and that now
+stood like grim giant guardians with arms out-stretched to hold the
+verdure back.
+
+The little tribe of camp-followers chased at least a dozen snakes out
+of corners, and slew them in the open, as a preliminary to further
+investigation.  There were kas-kas mats on the foursquare floors, and
+each of these, when lifted, disclosed a swarm of scorpions that had to
+be exterminated before a man dared move his possessions in.  The once
+white calico ceilings moved suggestively where rats and snakes chased
+one another, or else hunted some third species of vermin;  and there
+was a smell and a many-voiced weird whispering that hinted at
+corruption and war to the death behind skirting boards and underneath
+the floor.
+
+It had evidently not been occupied for many years;  the kansamah looked
+like a gray-bearded skeleton compressed within a tightened shroud of
+parchment skin that shone where a coffin or a tomb had touched it.  He
+seemed to have forgotten what the bungalow was for, or that a sahib
+needed things to eat, until the ex-risaldar enlightened him, and then
+he complained wheezily.
+
+The stables--rather the patch-and-hole-covered desolation that once
+had been stables--were altogether too snake-defiled and smelly to be
+worth repairing;  the string of horses was quartered cleanly and snugly
+under tents, and Mahommed Gunga went to enormous trouble in arranging a
+ring of watch-fires at even distances.
+
+"Are there thieves here, then?" asked Cunningham, and the Rajput nodded
+but said nothing.  He seemed satisfied, though, that the man he had
+brought safely thus far at so much trouble would be well enough housed
+in the creaky wreck of the bungalow, and he took no precautions of any
+kind as to guarding its approaches.
+
+Cunningham watched the preparations for his supper with ill-concealed
+disgust--saw the customary chase of a rubber-muscled chicken, heard
+its death gurgles, saw the guts removed, to make sure that the kansamah
+did not cook it with that part of its anatomy intact, as he surely
+would do unless watched--and then strolled ahead a little way along
+the road.
+
+The fakir was squatting in the distance, on a big white stone, and in
+the quiet of the gloaming Cunningham could hear his coarse, lewd voice
+tossing crumbs of abuse and mockery to the seven or eight villagers who
+squatted near him--half-amused, half-frightened, and altogether
+credulous.
+
+Even as he drew nearer Cunningham could not understand a word of what
+the fakir said, but the pantomime was obvious.  His was the voice and
+the manner of the professional beggar who has no more need to whine but
+still would ingratiate.  It was the bullying, brazen swagger and the
+voice that traffics in filth and impudence instead of wit;  and, in
+payment for his evening bellyful he was pouring out abuse of Cunningham
+that grew viler and yet viler as Cunningham came nearer and the fakir
+realized that his subject could not understand a word of it.
+
+The villagers looked leery and eyed Cunningham sideways at each fresh
+sally.  The fakir grew bolder, until one of his listeners smothered an
+open laugh in both hands and rolled over sideways.  Cunningham came
+closer yet, half-enamoured of the weird scene, half-curious to discover
+what the stone could be on which the fakir sat.
+
+The fakir grew nervous.  Perhaps, after all, this was one of those
+hatefully clever sahibs who know enough to pretend they do not know!
+The abuse and vile innuendo changed to more obsequious, less obviously
+filthy references to other things than Cunningham's religion, likes,
+and pedigree, and the little crowd of men who had tacitly encouraged
+him before got ready now to stand at a distance and take sides against
+him should the white man turn out to have understood.
+
+But Cunningham happened to catch sight of a cloud of paroquets that
+swept in a screaming ellipse for a better branch to nest in and added
+the one touch of gorgeous color needed to make the whole scene utterly
+unearthly and unlike anything he had ever dreamed of, or had seen in
+pictures, or had had  described to him.  He stood at gaze--forgetful
+of the stone that had attracted him and of the fakir--spellbound by
+the wonder-blend of hues branch-backed, and framed in gloom as the
+birds' scream was framed in silence.
+
+And, seeing him at gaze, the fakir recovered confidence and jeered new
+ribaldry, until some one suddenly shot out from behind Cunningham, and
+before he had recovered from his surprise he saw the fakir sprawling on
+his back, howling for mercy, while Mahommed Gunga beat the blood out of
+him with a whalebone riding-whip.
+
+The sun went down with Indian suddenness and shut off the scene of
+upraised lash and squirming, naked, ash-smeared devil, as a
+magic-lantern picture;  disappears.  Only the creature's screams
+reverberated through the jungle, like a belated echo to the restless
+paroquets.
+
+"He will sleep less easily for a week or two!" hazarded Mahommed Gunga,
+stepping back toward Cunningham.  In the sudden darkness the white
+breeches showed and the whites of his eyes, but little else;  his voice
+growled like a rumble from the underworld.
+
+"Why did you do it, risaldar?  What did he say?"
+
+"It was enough, bahadur, that he sat on that stone;  for that alone he
+had been beaten!  What he said was but the babbling of priests.  All
+priests are alike.  They have a common jargon--a common disrespect
+for what they dare not openly defy.  These temple rats of fakirs mimic
+them.  That is all, sahib.  A whipping meets the case."
+
+"But the stone?  Why shouldn't he sit on it?"
+
+"Wait one minute, sahib, and then see."  He formed his hands into a
+trumpet and bellowed through them in a high-pitched, nasal, ululating
+order to somebody behind:
+
+"Oh-h-h--Battee-lao!"
+
+The black, dark roadside echoed it and a dot of light leapt up as a man
+came running with what gradually grew into a lamp.
+
+Mahommed Gunga seized the lamp, bent for a few seconds over the still
+sprawling fakir, whipped him again twice, cursed him and kicked him,
+until he got up and ran like a spectre for the gloom beyond the trees.
+Then, with a rather stately sweep of the lamp, and a tremble in his
+voice that was probably intentional--designed to make Cunningham at
+least aware of the existence of emotion before he looked--he let the
+light fall on the slab on which the fakir had been squatting.
+
+"Look, Cunningham-sahib!"
+
+The youngster bent down above the slab and tried, in the fitful light,
+to make out what the markings were that ran almost from side to side,
+in curves, across the stone;  but it was too dark--the light was too
+fitful;  the marks themselves were too faint from the constant
+squatting of roadside wanderers.
+
+Mahommed Gunga set the lamp down on the stone, and he and the attendant
+took little sticks, sharp-pointed, with which they began to dig
+hurriedly, scratching and scraping at what presently showed, even in
+that rising and falling light, as Roman lettering.  Soon Cunningham
+himself began to lend a hand.  He made out a date first, and he could
+feel it with his fingers before his eyes deciphered it.  Gradually,
+letter by letter--word by word--he read it off, feeling a strange
+new thrill run through him, as each line followed, like a voice from
+the haunted past.
+
+
+    A.D. 1823. A.D.
+    SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF GENERAL ROBERT FRANCIS CUNNINGHAM
+    WHO DIED ON THIS SPOT
+    AETAT 81
+    FROM
+    WOUNDS INFLICTED BY A
+    TIGER
+
+There was no sound audible except the purring of the lamp flame and the
+heavy breathing of the three as Cunningham gazed down at the very
+crudely carved, stained, often-desecrated slab below which lay the
+first of the Anglo-Indian Cunninghams.
+
+This man--these crumbled bones that lay under a forgotten piece of
+rock--had made all of their share of history.  They had begotten 
+"Pukka" Cunningham, who had hacked the name deeper yet in the
+crisscrossed annals of a land of war.  It was strange--it was queer
+--uncanny--for the third of the Cunninghams to be sitting on the
+stone.  It was unexpected, yet it seemed to have a place in the scheme
+of things, for he caught himself searching his memory backward.
+
+He received an impression that something was expected of him.  He knew,
+by instinct and reasoning he could not have explained, that neither
+Mahommed Gunga nor the other men would say a word until he spoke.  They
+were waiting--he knew they were--for a word, or a sign, or an order
+(he did not know which), on which would hang the future of all three of
+them.
+
+Yet there was no hurry--no earthly hurry.  He felt sure of it.  In
+the silence and the blackness--in the tense, steamy atmosphere of
+expectancy--he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that
+there was superstition to be reckoned with--and that is something
+which a white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, as a rule.
+
+The sweat ran down his face in little streams a the prickly heat began
+to move across his skin, like a fiery-footed centiped beneath his
+undershirt, but he noticed, neither.  He began to be unconscious
+anything except the knowledge that the bones of his grandsire lay
+underneath him and that Mahommed Gunga waited for the word that would
+fit into the scheme and solve a problem.
+
+"Are there any tigers here now?" he asked presently, in a perfectly
+normal voice.  He spoke as he had done when his servant asked him which
+suit he would wear.
+
+"Ha, sahib!  Many."
+
+"Man-eaters, by any chance?"
+
+Mahommed Gunga and the other man exchanged quick glances, but
+Cunningham did not look up.  He did not see the quick-flashed whites as
+their eyes met and looked down again.
+
+"There is one, sahib--so say the kansamah and the head man--a
+full-grown tiger, in his prime."
+
+"I will shoot him."  Four words, said quietly--not "Do you think," or
+"I would like to," or "Perhaps."  They were perfectly definite and
+without a trace of excitement;  yet this man had never seen a tiger.
+
+"Very good, sahib."  That, too, was spoken in a level voice, but
+Mahommed Gunga's eyes and the other man's met once again above his
+head.
+
+"We will stay here four days;  by the third day there will be time
+enough to have brought an elephant and--"
+
+"I will go on foot," said Cunningham, quite quietly.  "Tomorrow, at
+dawn, risaldar-sahib.  Will you be good enough to make arrangements?
+All we need to know is where he is and how to get there--will you
+attend to that?"
+
+"Ha, sahib."
+
+"Thanks.  I wonder if my supper's ready."
+
+He turned and walked away, with a little salute-like movement of his
+hand that was reminiscent of his father.  The two Rajputs watched him
+in heavy-breathing silence until the little group of lights, where the
+horse-tents faced the old dak-bungalow, swallowed him.  Then:
+
+"He is good.  He will do!" said the black-beard who had brought the
+lamp.
+
+"He is good.  But many sahibs would have acted coolly, thus.  There
+must be a greater test.  There must be no doubt--no littlest doubt.
+Alwa and the others will ask me on my honor, and I will answer on my
+honor, yes or no."
+
+It was an hour before the two of them returned, and looked the horses
+over and strolled up to bid Cunningham good night;  and in the
+meanwhile they had seen about the morrow's tiger, and another matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+    What found ye, then? Why heated ye the pot?
+            What useful metal down the channels ran?
+    Gold?  Steel for making weapons?  Iron?  What?
+            Nay. Out from the fire we kindled strode a man!
+
+THEY set the legs of Cunningham's string-woven bed into pans of water,
+to keep the scorpions and ants and snakes at bay, and then left him in
+pitch darkness to his own devices, with a parting admonition to keep
+his slippers on for the floor, in the dark, would be the prowling-place
+of venomed death.
+
+It was he who set the lamp on the little table by his bedside, for his
+servant--for the first time on that journey--was not at hand to
+execute his thoughts almost before he had spoken them.  Mahommed Gunga
+had explained that the man was sick;  and that seemed strange, for he
+had been well enough, and more than usually efficient, but an hour
+before.
+
+But there were stranger things and far more irritating ones to
+interfere with the peaceful passage of the night.  There were sounds
+that were unaccountable;  there was the memory of the wayside tombstone
+and the train of thought that it engendered.  Added to the hell-hot,
+baking stuffiness that radiated from the walls, there came the
+squeaking of a punka rope pulled out of time--the piece of piping in
+the mud-brick wall through which the rope passed had become clogged and
+rusted, and the villager pressed into service had forgotten how to
+pull;  he jerked at the cord between nods as the heat of the veranda
+and the unaccustomed night duty combined to make him sleepy.
+
+Soon the squeaking became intolerable, and Cunningham swore at him--
+in English, because he spoke little of any native language yet, and had
+not the least idea in any case what the punka-wallah's tongue might be.
+For a while after that the pulling was more even;  he lay on one
+elbow, letting the swinging mat fan just miss his ear, and examining
+his rifle and pistols for lack of anything better to keep him from
+going mad.  Then, suddenly, the pulling ceased altogether.  Silence and
+hell heat shut down on him like a coffin lid.  Even the lamp flame
+close beside him seemed to grow dim;  the weight of black night that
+was suffocating him seemed to crush light out of the flame as well.
+
+No living mortal could endure that, he imagined.  He swore aloud, but
+there was no answer, so he got up, after crashing his rifle-butt down
+on the floor to scare away anything that crawled.  For a moment he
+stood, undecided whether to take the lamp or rifle with him--then
+decided on the rifle, for the lamp might blow out in some unexpected
+night gust, whereas if he left it where it was it would go on burning
+and show him the way back to bed again.  Besides, he was too
+unaccustomed to the joy of owning the last new thing in sporting rifles
+to hesitate for long about what to keep within his grasp.
+
+Through the open door he could see nothing but pitch-blackness,
+unpunctuated even by a single star.  There were no lights where the
+tents stood, so he judged that even the accustomed natives had found
+the added heat of Mahommed Gunga's watch-fires intolerable and had
+raked them out;  but from where he imagined that the village must be
+came the dum-tu-dum-tu-dum of tom-toms, like fever blood pulsating in
+the veins of devils of the night.
+
+The punka-wallah slept.  He could just make out the man's blurred shape
+--a shadow in the shadows--dog-curled, with the punkah rope looped
+round his foot.  He kicked him gently, and the man stirred, but fell
+asleep again.  He kicked him harder.  The man sat up and stared,
+terrified;  the whites of his eyes were distinctly visible.  He seemed
+to have forgotten why he was there, and to imagine that he saw a ghost.
+
+Cunningham spoke to him--he first words that came into his head.
+
+"Go on pulling," he said in English, quite kindly.
+
+But if he had loosed his rifle off, the effect could not have been more
+instantaneous.  Clutching his twisted rag of a turban in one hand, and
+kicking his leg free, he ran for it--leaped the veranda rail, and
+vanished--a night shadow, swallowed by its mother night.
+
+"Come back!" called Cunningham.  "Iderao!  I won't hurt you!"
+
+But there was no answer, save the tom-toms' thunder, swelling now into
+a devil's chorus-coming nearer.  It seemed to be coming from the
+forest, but he reasoned that it could not be;  it must be some village
+marriage feast, or perhaps an orgy;  he had paid out what would seem to
+the villagers a lot of money, and it might be that they were
+celebrating the occasion.  It was strange, though, that he could see no
+lights where the village ought to be.
+
+For a moment he had a half-formed intention to shout for Mahommed
+Gunga;  but he checked that, reasoning that the Rajput might think he
+was afraid.  Then his eye caught sight of something blacker than the
+shadows--something long and thin and creepy that moved, and he
+remembered that bed, where the pans of water would protect him, was the
+only safe place.
+
+So he returned into the hot, black silence where the tiny lamp-flame
+guttered and threw shadows.  He wondered why it guttered.  It seemed to
+be actually short of air.  There were four rooms, he remembered, to the
+bungalow, all connected and each opening outward by a door that faced
+one of the four sides; he wondered whether the outer doors were opened
+to admit a draught, and started to investigate.
+
+Two of them were shut tight, and he could not kick them open;  the
+dried-out teak and the heavy iron bolts held as though they had been
+built to resist a siege;  the noise that he made as he rattled at them
+frightened a swarm of unseen things--unguessed-at shapes--that
+scurried away.  He thought he could see beady little eyes that looked
+and disappeared and circled round and stopped to look again.  He could
+hear creepy movements in the stillness.  It seemed better to leave
+those doors alone.
+
+One other door, which faced that of his own room, was open wide, and he
+could feel the forest through it;  there was nothing to be seen, but
+the stillness moved.  The velvet blackness was deeper by a shade, and
+the heat, uprising to get even with the sky, bore up a stench with it.
+There was no draught, no movement except upward.  Earth was panting-in
+time, it seemed, to the hellish thunder of the tom-toms.
+
+He went back and lay on the bed again, leaning the rifle against the
+cot-frame, and trying by sheer will-power to prevent the blood from
+bursting his veins.  He realized before long that he was parched with
+thirst, and reached out for the water-jar that stood beside the lamp;
+but as he started to drink he realized that a crawling evil was
+swimming round and round in rings in the water.  In a fit of horror he
+threw the thing away and smashed it into a dozen fragments in a corner.
+He saw a dozen rats, at least, scamper to drink before the water could
+evaporate or filter through the floor;  and when they were gone there
+was no half-drowned crawling thing either.  They had eaten it.
+
+He clutched his rifle to him.  The barrel was hot, but the feel of it
+gave him a sense of companionship.  And then, as he lay back on the bed
+again, the lamp went out.  He groped for it and shook it.  There was no
+oil.
+
+Now, what had been hot horror turned to fear that passed all
+understanding--to the hate that does not reason--to the cold sweat
+breaking on the roasted skin.  Where the four walls had been there was
+blackness of immeasurable space.  He could hear the thousand-footed
+cannibals of night creep nearer--driven in toward him by the dinning
+of the tom-toms.  He felt that his bed was up above a scrambling swarm
+of black-legged things that fought.
+
+He had no idea how long he lay stock-still, for fear of calling
+attention to himself, and hated his servant and Mahommed Gunga and all
+India.  Once--twice--he thought he heard another sound, almost like
+the footfall of a man on the veranda near him.  Once he thought that a
+man breathed within ten paces of him, and for a moment there was a
+distinct sensation of not being alone.  He hoped it was true;  he could
+deal with an assassin.  That would be something tangible to hate and
+hit.  Manhood came to his assistance--the spirit of the soldier that
+will bow to nothing that has shape;  but it died away again as the
+creeping silence once more shut down on him.
+
+And then the thunder of the tom-toms ceased.  Then even the venomed
+crawlers that he knew were near him faded into nothing that really
+mattered, compared to the greater, stealthy horror that he knew was
+coming, born of the shuddersome, shut silence that ensued.  There was
+neither air nor view--no sense of time or space--nothing but the
+coal-black pit of terror yawning--cold sweat in the heat, and a
+footfall--an undoubted footfall--followed by another one, too heavy
+for a man's.
+
+Where heavy feet were there was something tangible.  His veins tingled
+and the cold sweat dried.  Excitement began to reawaken all his soldier
+senses, and the wish to challenge seized him--the soldierly intent to
+warn the unaware, which is the actual opposite of cowardice.
+
+"Halt!  Who comes there?"
+
+He lipped the words, but his dry throat would not voice them.  Before
+he could clear his throat or wet his lips his eye caught something
+lighter than the night--two things--ten--twelve paces off--two
+things that glowed or sheened as though there were light inside them--
+too big and too far apart to be owl's eyes, but singularly like them.
+They moved, a little sideways and toward him;  and again he heard the
+heavy, stealthy footfall.
+
+They stayed still then for what may have been a minute, and another
+sense--smell--warned him and stirred up the man in him.  He had
+never smelled it in his life;  it must have been instinct that assured
+him of an enemy behind the strange, unpleasant, rather musky reek that
+filled the room.  His right hand brought the rifle to his shoulder
+without sound, and almost without conscious effort on his part.
+
+He forgot the heat now and the silence and discomfort.  He lay still on
+his side, squinting down the rifle barrel at a spot he judged was
+midway between a pair of eyes that glowed, and wondering where his
+foresight might be.  It struck him all at once that it was quite
+impossible to see the foresight--that he must actually touch what he
+would hit if he would be at all sure of hitting it.  He remembered,
+too, in that instant--as a born soldier does remember things--that
+in the dark an attacking enemy is probably more frightened than his
+foe.  His father had told it him when he was a little lad afraid of
+bogies;  he in turn had told it to the other boys at school, and they
+had passed it on until in that school it had become rule number one of
+school-boy lore--just as rule number two in all schools where the
+sons of soldiers go is "Take the fight to him."
+
+He leaped from the bed, with his rifle out in front of him--
+white-nightshirted and unexpected--sudden enough to scare the wits
+out of anything that had them.  He was met by a snarl.  The two eyes
+narrowed, and then blazed.  They lowered, as though their owner
+gathered up his weight to spring.  He fired between them.  The flash
+and the smoke blinded him;  the burst of the discharge within four
+echoing walls deadened his cars, and he was aware of nothing but a
+voice beside him that said quietly:  "Well done, bahadur!  Thou art thy
+father's son!"
+
+He dropped his rifle butt to the floor, and some one struck a light.
+Even then it was thirty seconds before his strained eyes grew
+accustomed to the flare and he could see the tiger at his feet, less
+than a yard away--dead, bleeding, wide-eyed, obviously taken by
+surprise and shot as he prepared to spring.  Beside him, within a yard,
+Mahommed Gunga stood, with a drawn sabre in his right hand and a pistol
+in his left, and there were three other men standing like statues by
+the walls.
+
+"How long have you been here?" demanded Cunningham.
+
+"A half-hour, sahib."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"In case of need, sahib.  That tiger killed a woman yesterday at dawn
+and was driven off his kill;  he was not likely to be an easy mark for
+an untried hunter."
+
+"Why did you enter without knocking?"
+
+The ex-risaldar said nothing.
+
+"I see that you have shoes on."
+
+"The scorpions, sahib--"
+
+"Would you be pleased, Mahommed Gunga, if I entered your house with my
+hat on and without knocking or without permission?"
+
+"Sahib, I--"
+
+"Be good enough to have that brute's carcass dragged out and skinned,
+and--ah--leave me to sleep, will you?"
+
+Mahommed Gunga bowed, and growled an order;  another man passed the
+order on, and the tom-tom thundering began again as a dozen villagers
+pattered in to take away the tiger.
+
+"Tell them, please," commanded Cunningham, "that that racket is to
+cease.  I want to sleep."
+
+Again Mahommed Gunga bowed, without a smile or a tremor on his face;
+again a growled order was echoed and re-echoed through the dark.  The
+drumming stopped.
+
+"Is there oil in the bahadur's lamp?" asked Mahommed Gunga.
+
+"Probably not," said Cunningham.
+
+"I will command that--"
+
+"You needn't trouble, thank you, risaldar-sahib.  I sleep better in the
+dark.  I'll be glad to see you after breakfast as usual--ah--
+without your shoes, unless you come in uniform. Good night."
+
+The Rajput signed to the others and withdrew with dignity.  Cunningham
+reloaded his rifle in the dark and lay down.  Within five minutes the
+swinging of the punka and the squeaking of the rope resumed, but
+regularly this time;  Mahommed Gunga had apparently unearthed a man who
+understood the business.  Reaction, the intermittent coolth, as the mat
+fan swung above his face, the steady, evenly timed squeak and movement
+--not least, the calm of well-asserted dignity--all joined to have
+one way, and Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur slept, to dream of fire-eyed tigers
+dancing on tombstones laid on the roof of hell, and of a grandfather in
+full general's uniform, who said:  "Well done, bahadur!"
+
+But outside, by a remade camp-fire, Mahommed Gunga sat and chuckled to
+himself, and every now and then grew eloquent to the bearded men who
+sat beside him.
+
+"Aie!  Did you hear him reprimand me?  By the beard of God's prophet,
+that is a man of men!  So was his father!  Now I will tell Alwa and the
+others that I bring a man to them!  By the teeth of God and my own
+honor I will swear to it!  His first tiger--he had never seen a
+tiger!--in the dark, and unexpected--caught by it, to all seeming,
+like a trapped man in a cage--no lamp--no help at hand, or so he
+thought until it was all over.  And he ran at the tiger!  And then,
+'you come with your shoes on, Mahommed Gunga--why, forsooth?'  Did
+you hear him?  By the blood of Allah, we have a man to lead us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+    Now, the gist of the thing is--Be silent.  Be calm.
+            Be awake.  Be on hand on the day.
+    Be instant to heed the first note of alarm.
+            And--precisely--exactly--Obey.
+
+AT Howrah, while Mahommed Gunga was employing each chance circumstance
+to test the pluck and decision and reliability of Cunningham at almost
+every resting-place along the Grand Trunk Road, the armed squire he had
+left behind with a little handful of gold mohurs and three horses was
+finding time heavy on his hands.
+
+Like his master, Ali Partab was a man of action, to whom the purlieus
+of a caravansary were well enough on rare occasions.  He could ruffle
+it with the best of them;  like any of his race, he could lounge with
+dignity and listen to the tales that hum wherever many horsemen
+congregate;  and he was no mean raconteur--he had a tale or two to
+tell himself, of women and the chase and of the laugh that he, too, had
+flung in the teeth of fear when opportunity arose.
+
+But each new story of the paid taletellers, who squat and drone and
+reach a climax, and then pass the begging bowl before they finish it--
+each merrily related jest brought in by members of the constantly
+arriving trading parties--each neigh of his three chargers--every
+new phase of the kaleidoscopic life he watched stirred new ambition in
+him to be up, and away, and doing.  Many a dozen times he had to remind
+himself that "there had been a trust imposed."
+
+He exercised the horses daily, riding each in turn until he was as lean
+and lithe and hard beneath the skin as they were.  They were Mahommed
+Gunga's horses--he Mahommed Gunga's man;  therefore, his honor was
+involved.  He reasoned, when he took the trouble to, along the good
+clean feudal line that lays down clearly what service is:  there is no
+honor, says that argument, in serving any one who is content with half
+a service, and the honor is the only thing that counts.
+
+As day succeeded ever sultrier, ever longer-drawn-out day--as each
+night came that saw him peg the horses out wherever what little breezes
+moved might fan them--as he sat among the courtyard groups and
+listened in the heavy heat, the fact grew more apparent to him that
+this trust of his was something after all which a man of worth might
+shoulder proudly.  There was danger in it.
+
+The talk among the traders--darkly hinted, most of it, and couched in
+metaphor--was all of blood, and what would follow on the letting of
+it.  Now and then a loud-mouthed boaster would throw caution to the
+winds and speak openly of a grim day coming for the British;  he would
+be checked instantly by wiser men, but not before Ali Partab had heard
+enough to add to his private store of information.
+
+Priests came from a dozen cities to the eastward, all nominally after
+pilgrims for the sacred places, but all strangely indifferent to their
+quest.  They preferred, it would seem, to sit in rings with chance-met
+ruffians--with believers and unbelievers alike--even with men of no
+caste at all--and talk of other things than pilgrimages.
+
+"Next year, one hundred years ago the English conquered India.
+Remember ye the prophecy?  One hundred years they had!  This, then, is
+the last year.  Whom the gods would whelm they first deprive of reason;
+mark ye this!  The cartridges they serve out to the sepoys now are
+smeared with the blended fat of cows and pigs.  Knowing that we Hindoos
+hold the cow a sacred beast, they do this sacrilege--and why?  They
+would make us bite the cartridges and lose our caste.  And why again?
+Because they would make us Christians!  That is the truth!  Else why
+are the Christian missionaries here in Howrah?"
+
+The listeners would nod while the little red fires glowed and purred
+above the pipes, and others not included in the circle strained forward
+through the dark to listen.
+
+"The gods get ready now!  Are ye ready?"
+
+Elsewhere, a hadji--green-turbaned from the pilgrimage to Mecca--
+would hold out to a throng of true believers.
+
+"Ay!  Pig's fat on the cartridges!  The new drill is that the sepoy
+bites the cartridge first, to spill a little powder and make priming.
+Which true believer wishes to defile himself with pig's fat?  Why do
+they this?  Why are the Christian missionaries here?  Ask both riddles
+with one breath, for both two are one!"
+
+"Slay, then!"
+
+"Up now, and slay!"
+
+There would be an instant, eager restlessness, while Ali Partab would
+glance over to where the horses stood, and would wonder why the word
+that loosed him was so long in coming.  The hadji would calm his
+listeners and tell them to get ready, but be still and await the sign.
+
+"There were to be one hundred years, ran the prophecy;  but ninety-nine
+and a portion have yet run.  Wait for the hour!"
+
+Then, for perhaps the hundredth time, Ali Partab would pretend that
+movement alone could save one or other of his horses from heat
+apoplexy.  He would mount, and ride at a walking pace through the
+streets that seemed like a night view of a stricken battle-field, turn
+down by the palace wall, and then canter to the schoolhouse, where the
+hag--wiser than her mistress--would be sleeping in the open.
+
+"Thou!  Mother of a murrain!  Toothless one!  Is there no word yet?"
+
+The hag would leer up through the heavy darkness--make certain that
+he had no lance with him with which to prod her in the ribs--scratch
+herself a time or two like a stray dog half awakened--and then leer
+knowingly.
+
+"Hast thou the gold mohurs?" she would demand.
+
+"Am I a sieve?"
+
+"Let my old eyes see them, sahib."
+
+He would take out two gold coins and hold them out in such a way that
+she could look at them without the opportunity to snatch.
+
+"There is no word yet," she would answer, when her eyes had feasted on
+them as long as his patience would allow.
+
+"Have they no fear then?"
+
+"None. Only madness!"
+
+"See that they bite thee not!  Keep thy wits with thee, and be ready to
+bring me word in time, else--"
+
+"Patience, sahib!  Show me the coins again--one little look--again
+once!"
+
+But Ali Partab would wheel and ride away, leaving her to mumble and
+gibber in the road and curl again on to her blanket in the blackest
+corner by the door.
+
+Once, on an expedition of that kind, he encountered Duncan McClean
+himself.  The lean, tall Scotsman, gray-headed from the cares he had
+taken on himself, a little bowed from heat and hopelessness, but
+showing no least symptom of surrender in the kind, strong lines of a
+rugged face, stood, eyes upward, in the moonlight.  The moon, at least,
+looked cool.  It was at the full, like a disk of silver, and he seemed
+to drink in the beams that bathed him.
+
+"Does he worship it?" wondered Ali Partab, reining from an amble to a
+walk and watching half-reverently.  The followers of Mohammed are most
+superstitious about the moon.  The feeling that he had for this man of
+peace who could so gaze up at it was something very like respect, and,
+with the twenty-second sense that soldiers have, he knew, without a
+word spoken or a deed seen done, that this would be a wielder of cold
+steel to be reckoned should he ever slough the robes of peace and take
+it into his silvered head to fight.  The Rajput, that respects decision
+above all other virtues, perhaps because it is the one that he most
+lacks, could sense firm, unshakable, quick-seized determination on the
+instant.
+
+Duncan McClean acknowledged the fierce-seeming stare with a salute, and
+Ali Partab dismounted instantly.  He who holds a trust from such as
+Mahommed Gunga is polite in recognition of the trust.  He leaned, then,
+against the horse's withers, wondering how far he ought to let
+politeness go and whether his honor bade him show contempt for the
+Christian's creed.
+
+"Is there any way, I wonder," asked the Scotsman, the clean-clipped
+suspicion of Scots dialect betraying itself even through the
+Hindustanee that he used, "of getting letters through to some small
+station?"
+
+"I know not," said the Rajput.
+
+"You are a Mohammedan?"  The Scotsman peered at him, adjusting his
+viewpoint to the moon's rays.  "I see you are.  A Rajput, too, I think."
+
+"Ha, sahib."
+
+"There was a Rangar here not very long ago."  This man evidently knew
+the proper title to give a he true believer of the proudest race there
+is.  Ali Partab's heart began to go out to him--"an officer, I think,
+once of the Rajput Horse, who very kindly carried letters for me.
+Perhaps you know of some other gentleman of your race about to travel
+northward?  He could earn, at least, gratitude."
+
+"So-ho!" thought Ali Partab to himself. "I have known men of his race
+who would have offered money, to be spat on!--Not now, sahib,"  he
+answered aloud.
+
+"Mahommed Gunga was the officer's name.  Do you know him, or know of
+him, by any chance?"
+
+"Ha, sahib, I know him well.  It is an honor."
+
+The Scotsman smiled.  "He must be very far away by this time.  How
+many are there, I wonder, in India who have such things said of them
+when their backs are turned?"
+
+"More than a few, sahib!  I would draw steel for the good name of more
+than a hundred men whom I know, and there be many others!"
+
+"Men of your own race?"
+
+"And yours, sahib."
+
+There was no bombast in the man's voice;  it was said good-naturedly,
+as a man might say, "There are some friends to whom I would lend
+money."  No man with any insight could mistake the truth that underlay
+the boast.  The Scotsman bowed.
+
+"I am glad, indeed, to have met you.  Will you sit down a little while?"
+
+"Nay, sahib.  The hour is late.  I was but keeping the blood moving in
+this horse of mine."
+
+"Well, tell me, since you won't stay, have you any notion who the man
+was whom Mahommed Gunga sent to get my letters?  My daughter handed
+them to him one evening, late, at this door."
+
+"I am he, sahib."
+
+"Then--I understood--perhaps I was mistaken--I thought it was his
+man who came?"
+
+"Praised be Allah, I am his man, sahib!"
+
+"Oh!  I wonder whether my servants praise God for the privilege!"
+McClean made the remark only half-aloud and in English.  Ali Partab
+could not have understood the words, but he may have caught their
+meaning, for he glanced sideways at the old hag mumbling in the shadow
+and grinned into his beard.  "Are you in communication with him?  Could
+you get a letter to him?"
+
+"I have no slightest notion where he is, sahib."
+
+"If my letters could once reach him, wherever he might be, I would feel
+confident of their arriving at their destination."
+
+"I, too, sahib!"
+
+"I sent one letter--to a government official.  It cannot have reached
+him, for there should have been an answer and none has come.  It had
+reference to this terrible suttee business.  Suttee is against the law
+as well as against all dictates of reason and humanity;  yet the
+Hindoos make a constant practice of it here under our very eyes.  These
+native states are under treaty to observe the law.  I intend to do all
+in my power to put a stop to their ghoulish practices, and Maharajah
+Howrah knows what my intentions are.  It must be a Mohammedan, this
+time, to whom I intrust my correspondence on suttee!"
+
+Now, a Rangar is a man whose ancestors were Hindoos but who became
+converts to Islam.  Like all proselytes, they adhere more
+enthusiastically to their religion than do the men whose mother creed
+it is;  and the fact that the Rangars originally became converts under
+duress is often thrown in their teeth by the Hindoos, who gain nothing
+in the way of brotherly regard in the process.  A Rangar hates a Hindoo
+as enthusiastically as he loves a fight.  Ali Partab began to drum his
+fingers on his teeth and to exhibit less impatience to be off.
+
+"There is no knowing, sahib.  I, too, am no advocate of superstitious
+practices involving cruelty.  I might get a letter through.  My
+commission from the risaldar-sahib would include all honorable matters
+not obstructive to the main issue.  I have certain funds--"
+
+"I, too, have funds," smiled the missionary.
+
+"I am not allowed, sahib, to involve myself in any brawl until after my
+business is accomplished.  It would be necessary first to assure me on
+that point.  My honor is involved in that matter.  To whom, and of what
+nature, would the letter be?"
+
+"A letter to the Company's Resident at Abu, reporting to him that
+Hindoo widows are still compelled in this city to burn themselves to
+death above their husbands' funeral pyres."
+
+The Rajput grinned.  "Does the Resident sahib not know it, then?"
+
+"There will be no chance of his not knowing should my report reach him!"
+
+"I will see, sahib, what can be done, then, in the matter.  If I can
+find a man, I will bring him to you."
+
+The missionary thanked him and stood watching as the Rajput rode away.
+When the horseman's free, lean back had vanished in the inky darkness
+his eyes wandered over to a point where tongues of flame licked upward,
+casting a dull, dancing, crimson glow on the hot sky.  Here and there,
+silhouetted in the firelight, he could see the pugrees and occasional
+long poles of men who prodded at the embers.  Ululating through the din
+of tom-toms he could catch the wails of women.  He shuddered, prayed a
+little, and went in.
+
+That day even the little bazaar fosterlings, whom he had begged, and
+coaxed, and taught, had all deserted to be present at the burning of
+three widows.  Even the lepers in the tiny hospital that he had started
+had limped out for a distant view.  He had watched a year's work all
+disintegrating in a minute at the call of bestial, loathsome,
+blood-hungry superstition.
+
+And he was a man of iron, as Christian missionaries go.  He had been
+hard-bitten in his youth and trained in a hard, grim school.  In the
+Isle of Skye he had seen the little cabin where his mother lived pulled
+down to make more room for a fifty-thousand-acre deer-forest.  He had
+seen his mother beg.
+
+He had worked his way to Edinburgh, toiled at starvation wages for the
+sake of leave to learn at night, burned midnight oil, and failed at the
+end of it, through ill health, to pass for his degree.
+
+He had loved as only hard-hammered men can love, and had married after
+a struggle the very thought of which would have melted the courage of
+an ordinary man, only to see his wife die when her child was born.  And
+even then, in that awful hour, he had not felt the utterness of misery
+such as came to him when he saw that his work in Howrah was undone.  He
+had given of his best, and all his best, and it seemed that he had
+given it for nothing.
+
+"Who was that man, father?" asked a very weary voice through which
+courage seemed to live yet, as the tiniest suspicion of a sweet refrain
+still lives through melancholy bars.
+
+"The man who took your home letters to Mahommed Gunga."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"He has promised to try to find a man for me who will take my report on
+this awful business to the Resident at Abu."
+
+"Father, listen!  Listen, please!" Rosemary McClean drew a chair for
+him and knelt beside him.  Youth saved her face from being drawn as
+his, but the heat and horror had begun to undermine youth's powers of
+resistance.  She looked more beautiful than ever, but no law lays down
+that a wraith shall be unlovely.  She had tried the personal appeal
+with him a hundred times, and argument a thousand;  now, she used both
+in a concentrated, earnest effort to prevail over his stubborn will.
+Her will was as strong as his, and yielded place to nothing but her
+sense of loyalty.  There were not only Rajputs, as the Rajputs knew,
+who could be true to a high ideal.  "I am sure that whoever that man is
+he must be the link between us and the safety Mahommed Gunga spoke of.
+Otherwise, why does he stay behind?  Native officers who have servants
+take their servants with them, as a rule."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Give the word!  Let us at least get in touch with safety!"
+
+"For myself, no.  For you, yes!  I have been weak with you, dear.  I
+have let my selfish pleasure in having you near me overcome my sense of
+duty--that, and my faithless fear that you would not be properly
+provided for.  I think, too, that I have never quite induced myself to
+trust natives sufficiently--even native gentlemen.  You shall go,
+Rosemary.  You shall go as soon as I can get word to Mahommed Gunga's
+man. Call that old woman in."
+
+"Father, I will not go without you, and you know it!  My place is with
+you, and I have quite made up my mind.  If you stay, I stay!  My
+presence here has saved your life a hundred times over.  No, I don't
+mean just when you were ill;  I mean that they dare not lay a finger on
+me!  They know that a nation which respects their women would strike
+hard and swiftly to avenge a woman of its own!  If I were to go away
+and leave you they would poison you or stab you within a day, and then
+hold a mock trial and hang some innocent or other to blind the British
+Government. I would be a murderess if I left you here alone!  Come!
+Come away!"
+
+He shook his head.  "It was wrong of me to ever bring you here," he
+said sadly.  "But I did not know--I would never have believed."  Then
+wrath took hold of him--the awful, cold anger of the Puritan that
+hates evil as a concrete thing, to be ripped apart with steel.  "God's
+wrath shall burst on Howrah!" he declared.  "Sodom and Gomorrah were no
+worse!  Remember what befell them!"
+
+"Remember Lot!" said Rosemary.  "Come away!"
+
+"Lot stayed on to the last, and tried to warn them!  I will warn the
+Resident!  Here, give me my writing things--where are they?"
+
+He pushed her aside, none too gently, for the fire of a Covenanter's
+anger was blazing in his eyes.
+
+"There are forty thousand British soldiers standing still, and wrong--
+black, shameful wrong--is being done!  For a matter of gold--for
+fear of the cost in filthy lucre--they refrain from hurling
+wrong-doers in the dust!  For the sake of dishonorable peace they leave
+these native states to misgovern themselves and stink to high heaven!
+Will God allow what they do?  The shame and the sin is on England's
+head!  Her statesmen shut their eyes and cry 'Peace, peace!' where
+there is no peace.  Her queen sits idle on the throne while widows
+burn, screaming, in the flames of superstitious priests.  Men tell her,
+'All is well;  there is British rule in India!'  They are too busy
+robbing widows in the Isle of Skye to lend an ear to the cries of
+India's widows!  Corruption--superstition--murder--lies--black
+wrong--black selfishness--all growing rank beneath the shadow of
+the British rule--how long will God let that last?"
+
+He was pacing up and down like a caged lion, not looking at Rosemary,
+not speaking to her--speaking to himself, and giving rein to all the
+rankling rage at wrong that wrong had nurtured in him since his
+boyhood.  She knelt still by the chair, her eyes following him as he
+raged up and down the matted floor.  She pitied him more than she did
+India.
+
+When he took the one lamp at last and set it where the light would fall
+above his writing pad, she left the room and went to stand at the
+street-door, where the sluggish night air was a degree less stifling
+than in the mud-plastered, low-ceilinged room.  As she stood there, one
+hand on either door-post to remind her she was living in a concrete
+world, not a charred whisp swaying in the heat, a black thing rose out
+of the blackness, and the toothless hag held out a bony hand and
+touched her.
+
+"Is it not time yet for the word to go?" she asked.
+
+"No.  No word yet, Joanna."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+    Now, God give good going to master o' mine,
+            God speed him, and lead him, and nerve him;
+    God give him a lead of a length in the line,
+            And,--God let him boast that I serve him!
+
+THE dawn was barely breaking yet when things stirred in the little
+mission house.  The flea-bitten gray pony was saddled by a sleepy
+saice, and brought round from his open-sided thatch stable in the rear.
+The violet and mauve, that precede the aching yellow glare of day were
+fading; a coppersmith began his everlasting bong-bong-bong, apparently
+reverberating from every direction;  the last, almost indetectable,
+warm whiff of night wind moved and died away, and the monkeys in the
+near-by baobab chattered it a requiem.  Almost on the stroke of sunrise
+Rosemary McClean stepped out--settled her sun-helmet, with a moue
+above the chin-strap that was wasted on flat-bosomed, black
+grandmotherdom and sulky groom--and mounted.
+
+She needed no help.  The pony stood as though he knew that the hot wind
+would soon dry the life out of him;  and, though dark rings beneath
+dark eyes betrayed the work of heat and sleepless worry on a girl who
+should have graced the cool, sweet, rain-swept hills of Scotland, she
+had spirit left yet and an unspent store of youth.  The saice seemed
+more weathered than the twenty-year-old girl, for he limped back into
+the smelly shelter of the servants' quarters to cook his breakfast and
+mumble about dogs and sahibs who prefer the sun.
+
+She looked shrunk inside the riding-habit--not shrivelled, for she
+sat too straight, but as though the cotton jacket had been made for a
+larger woman.  If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have
+guessed that her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for
+it, she was still supple.  And, as she whipped the pony into an
+unwilling trot and old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind,
+revolt--no longer impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, but reckless
+rebellion--rode with her.
+
+It was there, plain for the world to see, in the firm lines of a little
+Puritan mouth, in the angle of a high-held chin in the set of a gallant
+little pair of shoulders.  The pony felt it, and leaned forward to a
+canter.  Joanna scented, smelt, or sensed in some manner known to
+Eastern old age, that purpose was afoot;  this was to be no
+early-morning canter, merely out and home again;  there was no time,
+now, for the customary tricks of corner-cutting and rest-snatching
+under eaves;  she tucked her head down and jogged forward in the dust,
+more like a dog than ever.  It was a dog's silent, striving
+determination to be there when the finish came--a dog's disregard of
+all object or objective but his master's--but a long-thrown stride,
+and a crafty, beady eye that promised more usefulness than a dog's when
+called on.
+
+The first word spoken was when Rosemary drew rein a little more than
+half-way along the palace wall.
+
+"Are you tired yet, Joanna?"
+
+"Uh-uh!" the woman answered, shaking her head violently and pointing
+at the sun that mounted every minute higher.  The argument was obvious;
+in less than twenty minutes the whole horizon would be shimmering
+again like shaken plates of brass;  wherever the other end might be, a
+rest would be better there than here!  Her mistress nodded, and rode on
+again, faster yet;  she had learned long ago that Joanna could show a
+dusty pair of heels to almost anything that ran, and she had never yet
+known distance tire her;  it had been the thought of distance and speed
+combined that made her pause and ask.
+
+She did not stop again until they had cantered up through the awakening
+bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out
+their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started
+nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat.  The sun had
+shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps;  the
+advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies,
+and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch
+of the caravansary, where Mahommed Gunga's boots and spurs had caught
+her eye once.
+
+"Now, Joanna!"  She leaned back from the saddle and spoke low, but with
+a certain thrill.  "Go in there, find me Mahommed Gunga-sahib's man,
+and bring him out here!"
+
+"And if he will not come?"  The old woman seemed half-afraid to enter.
+
+"Go in, and don't come out without him--unless you want to see me go
+in by myself!"
+
+The old woman looked at her piercingly with eyes that gleamed from amid
+a bunch of wrinkles, then motioned with a skinny arm in the direction
+of an awning where shade was to be had from the dangerous early
+sun-rays.  She made no move to enter through the arch until her
+mistress had taken shelter.
+
+Fifteen minutes later she emerged with Ali Partab, who looked sleepy,
+but still more ashamed of his unmilitary dishabille.  Rosemary McClean
+glanced left and right--forgot about the awning and the custom which
+decrees aloofness--ignored the old woman's waving arm and Ali
+Partab's frown, and rode toward him eagerly.
+
+"Did Mahommed Gunga-sahib leave you here with any orders relative to
+me?" she asked.
+
+The Rajput bowed.
+
+"Before he went away, he spoke to me of safety, and told me he would
+leave a link between me and men whom I may trust."
+
+The Rajput bowed again.  Neither of them saw an elbow laid on the
+window-ledge of a room above the arch;  it disappeared, and very
+gingerly a bared black head replaced it.  Then the head too disappeared.
+
+The girl's eyes sparkled as the reassurance came that at least one good
+fighting man was waiting to do nothing but assist her.  For the moment
+she threw caution to the winds and remembered nothing but her plight
+and her father's stubbornness.
+
+"My father will not come away, but--"
+
+Ali Partab's eyes betrayed no trace of concern.
+
+"But--I thought--Are you all alone?"
+
+"All alone, Miss-sahib, but your servant."
+
+"Oh!  I thought--perhaps that"--she checked herself, then rushed
+the words out as though ashamed of them--"that, if you had men to
+help you, you might carry him away against his will!  Where are these
+others who are to be trusted?"
+
+Ali Partab grinned and then drew himself up with a movement of polite
+dissent.  It was not for him to question the suggestions of a
+Miss-sahib;  he conveyed that much with an inimitable air.  But it was
+his business to keep strictly to the letter of his orders.
+
+"Miss-sahib, I cannot do that.  So said Mahommed Gunga:  'When the hag
+brings word, then take three horses and bear the Miss-sahib and her
+father to my cousin Alwa's place.'  I stand ready to obey, but the
+padre-sahib comes not against his will."
+
+"To whose place?"
+
+"Alwa's, Miss-sahib."
+
+"And who is he?"  She seemed bewildered.  "I had hoped to be escorted
+to some British residency."
+
+"That would be for Alwa, should he see fit.  He has men and horses, and
+a fort that is impregnable.  The Miss-sahib would be safe there under
+all circumstances."
+
+"But--but, supposing I declined to accept that invitation?  Supposing
+I preferred not to be carried off to a--er--a Mohammedan
+gentleman's fort.  What then?"
+
+"I could but wait here, Miss-sahib, until the hour came when you
+changed your mind, or until Mahommed Gunga by letter or by word of
+mouth relieved me of my trust."
+
+"Oh!  Then you will wait here until I ask?"
+
+"Surely, Miss-sahib."
+
+The head again peered through the window up above them, but disappeared
+below the ledge furtively, and none of the three were aware of it.  For
+that matter, the old woman was gazing intently at Ali Partab and
+listening eagerly;  he stood almost underneath the arch, and Miss
+McClean was staring at him frowning with the effort to translate her
+thoughts into a language that is very far from easy.  They would none
+of them have seen the roof descending on them.
+
+"And--and won't you under any circumstances take us, say, to the
+Resident at Abu instead?"
+
+"I may not, Miss-sahib."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Of a truth I know not.  I never yet knew Mahommed Gunga to give an
+order without good reason for it;  but beyond that he chose me, because
+he said the task might prove difficult and he trusted me, I know
+nothing."
+
+"Have you no idea of the reason?"
+
+"Miss-sahib, I am a soldier. To me an order is an order to be carried
+out;  suspicions, fears are nothing unless they stand in the way of
+accomplishment.  I await your word. I am ready. The horses are here--
+good horses--lean and hard.  The order is that you must ask me."
+
+"Thank you--er--Ali what?--thank you, Ali Partab." The
+disappointment in her voice was scarcely more noticeable than the
+despondency her drooping figure showed.  The little shoulders that had
+sat so square and gallantly seemed to have lost their strength, and
+there was none of the determined ring left in the words she hesitated
+for.  "I--hope you will understand that I am grateful--but--I
+cannot--er--see my way just yet to--"
+
+"In your good time, Miss-sahib.  I was ordered to have patience!"
+
+"At least I will have more confidence, knowing that you are always
+close at hand."
+
+The Rajput bowed.  She reined back.  He saluted, and she bowed again;
+then, with a glance to make sure that Joanna followed, she started back
+at little more than a walking pace--a dejected wraith of a girl on a
+dejected-looking pony, too overcome by the upsetting of her rebellious
+scheme to care or even think whether Joanna dropped out of sight or
+not.  Ali Partab watched her down the street with a face that betrayed
+no emotion and no suspicion of what his thoughts might be.  When she
+was out of sight he went back under the arch to attend to his three
+horses;  and the moment that he did so a fat but very furtive Hindoo
+took his place--glanced down the street once in the direction that
+Rosemary had taken--and then darted up-street as fast as his shaking
+paunch would let him.  He had been gone at the least ten minutes, when
+Joanna, also furtive, also in a hurry, dodged here and there among the
+commencing surge of traffic and approached the arch again.
+
+It would be useless to try to read her mind, or to translate the
+glitter of her beady eyes into thoughts intelligible to any but an
+Oriental.  It was quite clear, though, that she wished not to be
+noticed, that she feared the occupants of the caravansary, and that she
+had returned for word with Ali Partab.  He, least of all, would have
+doubted her intention of demanding the two gold mohurs, for it was she
+who had brought the word that Miss McClean wanted him.  But what
+relation that intention had to her loyalty or treachery, or whether she
+were capable of either--capable of anything except greed, and
+obedience for the sake of pay--were problems no man living could have
+guessed.
+
+She asked the lounging sweeper by the arch whether Ali Partab had
+ridden out as yet.  He jeered back outrageous improprieties, suggestive
+of impossible ambition on the hag's part.  She called him "sahib,"
+dubbed him "father of a dozen stalwart sons," returned a few of his
+immodest compliments with a flattering laugh, and learned that Ali
+Partab was still busy in the caravansary.  Then she proceeded to make
+herself very inconspicuous beside a two-wheeled wagon, up-ended in the
+gutter opposite the arch, and waited with eastern patience for the
+horseman to ride out.
+
+She saw the fat Hindoo come back, in no particular hurry now, and seat
+himself not far from her.  Later she saw eight horsemen ride down the
+street, pass the arch, wheel, and halt.  She noticed that they were not
+Maharajah Howrah's men but a portion of his brother Jaimihr's
+body-guard, then took no further notice of them.  If they chose to wait
+there, it was no affair of hers, and to appear inquisitive would be to
+invite a lance-butt, very shrewdly thrust where it would hurt.
+
+It was an hour at least before Ali Partab rode out through the arch,
+looking down anxiously at his horse's off-hind that had been showing
+symptoms of "brushing" lately.  Joanna rose instantly to cross the
+street and intercept him;  and she recoiled in the nick of time to save
+herself from being ridden down.
+
+At a sign from the fat Hindoo the eight horsemen spurred, and swooped
+up-street with the speed and certainty of sparrow-hawks and the noise
+of devastation.  They rode down Ali Partab--unhorsed him--bound him
+--threw him on his horse again--and galloped off before any but the
+Hindoo had time to realize that he was their objective.  He was gone--
+snatched like a chicken from the coop.  Noise and dust were all the
+trace or explanation that he left.  The mazy streets swallowed him;
+the Hindoo waddled over to the arch and disappeared without a smile on
+his face to show even interest.  The interrupted trading and bartering
+went on again, and no one commented or made a move to follow but Joanna.
+
+She watched the fat Hindoo, and made sure that she would recognize him
+anywhere again.  Then, by a trail that no one would have guessed at and
+few could have followed, she made her way to Jaimihr's palace--three
+miles away from Howrah's--where a dozen sulky-looking sepoys lolled,
+dismounted, by the wooden gate.  There was neither sight nor sound of
+mounted men, and the gate was shut;  but in the middle of the roadway
+there was smoking dung, and there was a suspicion of overacting about
+the indifference of the guardians of the entrance.
+
+There was no overacting, though, in what Joanna did.  Nobody would have
+dreamed that she was playing any kind of part, or interested in
+anything at all except the coppers that she begged for.  She squatted
+in the roadway, ink-black and clear-cut in the now blazing sunlight,
+alternately flattering them and pretending to a knowledge of
+unguessed-at witchcraft.
+
+She was there still at midday when they changed the guard.  She was
+there when night fell, still squatting in the roadway, still exchanging
+repartee and hints at the supernatural with armed men who shuddered now
+and then between their bursts of mockery.  The sore, suffering dogs
+that sniff through the night for worse eyesores than themselves
+whimpered and watched her.  The guard changed and the moon paled, but
+she stayed on;  and whatever her purpose, or whatever information she
+obtained in fragments amid the raillery, she did not return to the
+mission house.
+
+It was not until Rosemary McClean returned and dismounted by the door
+that she realized Joanna had not kept pace.  Even then she thought
+little of it;  the old woman often lingered on the homeward way when
+the chance of her being needed was remote.  Two or three hours passed
+before the suspicion rose that anything might have happened to Joanna,
+and even then she might not have been remembered had not Duncan McClean
+asked for her.
+
+"I have changed my mind," he said, calling Rosemary into the long, low
+living-room.  It was darkened to exclude the hot wind and the glare,
+and he looked like a ghost as he rose to meet her.  "I have decided
+that my duty is to get away from this place for your sake and for the
+sake of the cause I have at heart.  We are doing no good here.  I can
+do most by going to the Resident, or even to somebody higher up than
+he, and laying my case before him personally.  Send for Joanna, and
+tell her to go and bring Mahommed Gunga's man."
+
+It was then that they missed Joanna and began to search for her.  But
+no Joanna came.  It was then that Rosemary McClean rehearsed with her
+father her former conversation with Mahommed Gunga and part, at least,
+of her recent one with Ali Partab, and the missionary started off
+himself to find the horseman whom Mahommed Gunga had so thoughtfully
+left behind.
+
+But he very naturally found no Ali Partab.  What he did discover was
+that he was followed--that a guard, unarmed but obvious, was placed
+around the mission house--that his servants deserted one by one--
+that no more children came to the mission school.
+
+He decided to take chances and ride off with his daughter in the night.
+But the ponies went mysteriously lame, and nobody would lend or sell
+him horses on any terms at all.  He did his best to get a letter
+through to anywhere where there were British, but nobody would take it.
+And then Jaimihr came, swaggering with his escort, to offer him and
+his daughter the hospitality of his palace.
+
+He declined that offer a little testily, for the insolence behind the
+offer was less than half concealed.  Jaimihr sneered as he rode away.
+
+"Perhaps a month or two of undisturbed enjoyment will induce the
+padre-sahib to change his mind about my invitation!" he said nastily.
+And he made no secret then, as he ordered them about before he went,
+that the men who lounged and watched at every vantage-point were his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+    They looked into my eyes and laughed,--
+            But, what when I was gone?
+    Have strong men made me one of them?
+            Or do I ride alone?
+
+ON the morning after Mahommed Gunga's daring experiment with
+Cunningham's nervous system he was anxious to say the least of it;  and
+that is only another way of saying that he was irritable.  He watched
+the Englishman at breakfast, on the dak-bungalow veranda, with a
+sideways restless glance that gave the lie a dozen times over to his
+assumed air of irascible authority.
+
+"We will see now what we will see," he muttered to himself.  "These who
+know such a lot imagine that the test is made.  They forget that there
+be many brave men of whom but a few are fit to lead.  Now--now--we
+will see!"  And he kept on repeating that assurance to himself, with
+the air of a man who would like to be assured, but is not, while he
+ostentatiously found fault with every single thing on which his eyes
+lit.
+
+"One would think that the Risaldar-sahib were afraid of consequences!"
+whispered the youngest of his followers, stung to the quick by a quite
+unmerited rebuke.  "Does he fear that Chota-Cunnigan will beat him?"
+
+White men have been known--often--to do stupider things than that,
+and particularly young white men who have not yet learned to gauge
+proportions accurately;  so there was nothing really ridiculous in the
+suggestion.  A young white man who has had his temper worked up to the
+boiling-point, his nerves deliberately racked, and then has been
+subjected to the visit of a driven tiger, may be confidently expected
+to exhibit all the faults of which his character is capable.
+
+To make the situation even more ticklish, Cunningham's servant, in his
+zeal for his master's comfort, had forgotten to sham sickness, and
+instead of limping was in abominably active evidence.  He was even
+doing more than was expected of him.  Ralph Cunningham had said nothing
+to him--had not needed to;  every single thing that a pampered sahib
+could imagine that he needed was done for him in the proper order,
+without noise or awkwardness, and the Risaldar cursed as he watched the
+clockwork-perfect service.  He had hoped for a lapse that might call
+forth some pointer, either by way of irritation or amusement, as to how
+young Cunningham was taking things.
+
+But not a thing went wrong and not a sign of any sort gave Cunningham.
+The youngster did not smile either to himself darkly or at his servant.
+He lit his after-breakfast cigar and smoked it peacefully, as though
+he had spent an absolutely normal night, without even a dream to worry
+him, and if he eyed Mahommed Gunga at all, he did it so naturally, and
+with so little interest, that no deductions could be drawn from it.  He
+was neither more nor less than a sahib at his ease--which was
+disconcerting, very, to the Oriental mind.
+
+He smoked the cigar to a finish, without a word or sign that he wished
+to give audience.  Then his eyes lit for the first time on the
+tiger-skin that was pegged out tight, raw side upward, for the sun to
+sterilize;  he threw the butt of his cigar away and strolled out to
+examine the skin without a sign to Mahommed Gunga, counted the claws
+one by one to make sure that no superstitious native had purloined any
+of them, and returned to his chair on the veranda without a word.
+
+"Is he vindictive, then?" wondered Mahommed Gunga.  "Is he a mean man?
+Will he bear malice and get even with me later on?  If so--"
+
+"Present my compliments to Mahommed Gunga-sahib, and ask him to be good
+enough to--"
+
+The Risaldar heard the order, and was on his way to the veranda before
+the servant started to convey the message.  He took no chances on a
+reprimand about his shoes, for he swaggered up in riding-boots, which
+no soldier can be asked to take off before he treads on a private
+floor;  and he saluted as a soldier, all dignity.  It was the only way
+by which he could be sure to keep the muscles of his face from telling
+tales.
+
+"Huzoor?"
+
+"Morning, Mahommed Gunga.  Take a seat, won't you?"
+
+A camp-chair creaked under the descending Rajput's weight, and creaked
+again as he remembered to settle himself less stiffly--less guiltily.
+
+"I say, I'm going to ask you chaps to do me a favor.  You don't mind
+obliging me now and then, do you?"
+
+The youngster leaned forward confidentially, one elbow on his knee, and
+looked half-serious, as though what he had to ask were more important
+than the ordinary.
+
+"Sahib, there is nothing that we will not do."
+
+"Ah!  Then you won't mind my mentioning this, I'm sure.  Next time you
+want to kennel a tiger in my bedroom, d'you mind giving me notice in
+advance?  It's not the stink I mind, nor being waked up;  it's the
+deuced awful risk of hurting somebody.  Besides--look how I spoilt
+that tiger's mask!  The skins I've always admired at home had been shot
+where it didn't show so badly."
+
+There was not even the symptom of a smile on Cunningham's face.  He
+looked straight into Mahommed Gunga's eyes, and spoke as one man
+talking calm common sense to another.  He raised his hand as the Rajput
+began to stammer an apology.
+
+"No.  Don't apologize.  If you'll forgive me for shooting your pet
+tiger, I'll overlook the rest of it.  If I'd known that you kept him in
+there o' nights, I'd have chosen another room, that's all--some room
+where I couldn't smell him, and where I shouldn't run the risk of
+killing an inoffensive man.  Why, I might have shot you!  Think how
+sorry I'd have been!"
+
+The Risaldar did not quite know what to say;  so, wiser than most, he
+said nothing.
+
+"Oh, and one other matter.  I don't speak much of the language yet, so,
+would you mind translating to my servant that the next time he goes
+sick without giving me notice, and without putting oil in my lamp, I'll
+have him fed to the tiger before he's brought into my room?  Just tell
+him that quietly, will you?  Say it slowly so that it sinks in.
+Thanks."
+
+Straight-faced as Cunningham himself, the Risaldar tongue-lashed the
+servant with harsh, tooth-rasping words that brought him up to
+attention.  Whether he interpreted or not the exact meaning of what
+Cunningham had said, he at least produced the desired effect;  the
+servant mumbled apologetic nothings and slunk off the veranda backward
+--to go away and hold his sides with laughter at the back of the
+dak-bungalow.  There Mahommed Gunga found him afterward and
+administered a thrashing--not, as he was careful to explain, for
+disobedience, but for having dared to be amused at the Risaldar's
+discomfiture.
+
+But there was still one point that weighed heavily on Mahommed Gunga's
+mind as the servant shuffled off and left him alone face to face with
+Cunningham.  There is as a very general rule not more than one
+man-eating tiger in a neighborhood, and not even the greenest specimen
+of subaltern new brought from home would be likely to mistake one for
+the other kind.  The man-eater was dead, and there was an engagement to
+shoot one that very morning.  He hesitated--said nothing for the
+moment--and wondered whether his best course would be to go ahead and
+pretend to beat out the jungle and tell some lie or other about the
+tiger having got away.  But Ralph Cunningham, with serious gray eyes
+fixed full on his, saved him the trouble of deciding.
+
+"If it's all one to you, Mahommed Gunga," he said, the corner of his
+mouth just flickering, "we'll move on from here at once.  This is a
+beastly old bungalow to sleep in, and shooting tigers don't seem so
+terribly exciting to me.  Besides, the climate here must be rotten for
+the horses."
+
+"As you wish, sahib."
+
+"Very well--if the choice rests with me, I wish it.  It might--ah
+--save the villagers a lot of hard work beating through the jungle,
+mightn't it--besides, there'll be other tigers on the road."
+
+"Innumerable tigers, sahib."
+
+"Good.  Will you order a start then?"
+
+The Risaldar departed round the corner of the bungalow, and a minute or
+two later Cunningham's ears caught the sound of a riding-switch,
+lustily applied, and of muffled groans.  He suspected readily enough
+what was going on, particularly since his servant was not in evidence,
+but he dared not laugh on the veranda.  He went inside, and made
+believe to be busy with his bag before he relaxed the muscles of his
+face.
+
+"Now, I wonder whether I handled that situation rightly?"  he asked
+himself between chuckles.  "One thing I know--if that old ruffian
+plays another trick on me--one more of any kind--Ill show my teeth.
+There's a thing known as the limit!"
+
+He would not have wondered, though, if he could have overheard Mahommed
+Gunga less than an hour later.  The Risaldar had stayed behind to make
+sure nothing had been forgotten, and one of his men remained with him.
+
+"There be sahibs and then sahibs," said Mahommed Gunga.  "Two kinds are
+the worst--those who strike readily in anger and use bad language
+when annoyed, and those whose lips are thin and who save their
+vengeance to be wreaked later on.  They are worse, either of them, than
+the sahib who is usually drunk."
+
+"And Cunnigan?"
+
+"Is altogether otherwise.  As his father was, and as a few other sahibs
+I have met, he understands what is not spoken--concedes dignity to
+him who is caught napping, as one who having disarmed his adversary,
+allows him to recover his weapon--and--"
+
+"And?"
+
+"Proves himself a man worth following!  I myself will slit the throat
+of any man I catch disparaging the name of Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur!  By
+the blood of God--by my medals, my own honor, and the good name of
+Pukka-Cunnigan, his father, I swear it!"
+
+"Rung Ho!" grinned the six-foot son of war who, rode beside him.
+
+They rode on at a walk past the tombstone that--at Mahommed Gunga's
+orders--the villagers had decked with sickly scented forest flowers,
+and as they passed they both saluted it in silence.  The fakir of the
+night before, sitting not very far away from it, mimicked them.  He
+sprang on the stone as soon as they were out of sight, scattering the
+flowers all about him, and calling down the vengeance of a hundred gods
+on the heads of Christian and Mohammedan alike.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+    From lone hunt came the yearling cub
+            And brought a grown kill back;
+    With fangs aglut "'Tis nothing but
+            Presumption!" growled the pack.
+
+RALPH CUNNINGHAM reached Peshawur at last with no less than nine tigers
+to his gun, and that in itself would have been sufficient to damn him
+in the eyes of more than half of the men who held commands there.
+Jealousy in those days of slow promotion and intrenched influence had
+eaten into the very understanding of men whose only excuse for rule
+over a conquered people ought to have been understanding.
+
+It was not considered decent for a boy of twenty-one to do much more
+than dare to be alive.  For any man at all to offer advice or
+information to his senior was rank presumption.  Criticism was high
+treason.  Sport, such as tiger-shooting, was for those whose age and
+apoplectic temper rendered them least fitted for it.  Conservatism
+reigned:  "High Toryism, sir, old port, and proud Prerogative!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga grinned into his beard at the reception that awaited the
+youngster whom he had trained for months now in the belief that India
+had nothing much to do except reverence him.  He laughed aloud, when he
+could get away to do it, at the flush of indignation on his protege's
+face.  Tall, lean-limbed, full of health and spirits, he had paid his
+duty call on a General of Division;  with the boyish enthusiasm that
+says so plainly, "Laugh with me, for the world is mine!" he had boasted
+his good luck on the road, only to be snubbed thoroughly and told that
+tiger-shooting was not what he came for.
+
+He took the snub like a man and made no complaint to anybody;  he did
+not even mention it to the other subalterns, who, most of them, made no
+secret of their dissatisfaction and its hundred causes.  He listened,
+and it was not very long before it dawned on him that, had not Mahommed
+Gunga gone with him to pay a call as well, the General Division would
+not have so much as interviewed him.
+
+Mahommed Gunga soon became the bane of his existence.  The veteran
+seemed in no hurry to go back to his estate that must have been in
+serious need of management by this time, but would ride off on
+mysterious errands and return with a dozen or more black-bearded
+horsemen each time.  He would introduce them to Cunningham in public
+whenever possible under the eyes of outraged seniors who would swear
+and, fume and ride away disgust at the reverence paid to "a mere boy,
+sir--a bally, ignorant young jackanapes!"
+
+Had Cunningham been other than a born soldier with his soldier senses
+all on edge and sleepless, he would have fallen foul of disgrace within
+a month.  He was unattached as yet, and that fact gave opportunity to
+the men who looked for it to try to "take the conceit out of the cub,
+by gad."
+
+"They "--everybody spoke of them as "they"--conceived the brilliant
+idea of confronting the youngster with conditions which he lacked
+experience to cope with.  They set him to deal with circumstances which
+had long ago proved too difficult for themselves, and awaited
+confidently the outcome--the crass mistake, or oversight, or mere
+misfortune that, with the aid of a possible court martial, would reduce
+him to a proper state of humbleness.
+
+Peshawur, the greatest garrison in northern India, was there on
+sufferance, apparently.  For lack of energetic men in authority to deal
+with them, the border robbers plundered while the troops remained
+cooped up within the unhealthiest station on the list.  The government
+itself, with several thousand troops to back it up, was paying
+blackmail to the border thieves!  There was not a government bungalow
+in all Peshawur that did not have its "watchman," hired from over the
+border, well paid to sleep on the veranda lest his friends should come
+and take tribute in an even more unseemly manner.
+
+The younger men, whose sense of fitness had not yet been rotted by
+climate and system and prerogative, swore at the condition;  there were
+one or two men higher up, destined to make history, whose voices,
+raised in emphatic protest, were drowned in the drone of "Peace!  Peace
+is the thing to work for.  Compromise, consideration, courtesy, these
+three are the keys of rule."  They failed to realize that cowardice was
+their real keynote, and that the threefold method that they vaunted was
+quite useless without a stiffening of courage.
+
+So brave men, who had more courtesy in each of their fingers than most
+of the seniors had all put together, had to bow to a scandalous
+condition that made England's rule a laughing-stock within a stone's
+throw of the city limits.  And they had to submit to the indecency of
+seeing a new, inexperienced arrival picked for the task of commanding a
+body of irregulars, for no other reason than because it was considered
+wise to make an exhibition of him.
+
+Cunningham became half policeman, half soldier, in charge of a small
+special force of mounted men engaged for the purpose of patrol.  He had
+nothing to do with the selection of them;  that business was attended
+to perfunctorily by a man very high up in departmental service, who
+considered Cunningham a nuisance.  He was a gentleman who did not know
+Mahommed Gunga;  another thing he did not know was the comfortable feel
+of work well done;  so he was more than pleased when Mahommed Gunga
+dropped in from nowhere in particular--paid him scandalously untrue
+compliments without a blush or a smile and offered to produce the
+required number of men at once.
+
+Only fifty were required.  Mahommed Gunga brought three hundred to
+select from, and, when asked to do so in order to save time and
+trouble, picked out the fifty best.
+
+"There are your men!" said the Personage off-handedly, when they had
+been sworn in in a group.  "Be good enough to remember, Mr. Cunningham,
+that you are now responsible for their behavior, and for the proper
+night patrolling of the city limits."
+
+That was a tall order, and in spite of all of youth's enthusiasm was
+enough to make any young fellow nervous.  But Mahommed Gunga met him in
+the street, saluted him with almost sacrilegious ceremony, and drew him
+to one side.
+
+"Have courage, now, bahadur!  I ride away to visit my estates (he spoke
+of them always in the plural, as though he owned a county or two).  You
+have under you the best eyes and the keenest blades along the border
+for I attended to it!  Be ruthless!  Use them, work them--sweat them
+to death!  Keep away from messes and parades;  seek no praise, for you
+will get none in any case!  Work!  Work for what is coming!"
+
+"You speak as though the fate of a continent were hanging in the
+balance," laughed Cunningham, shaking hands with him.
+
+"I speak truth!" said Mahommed Gunga, riding off and leaving the
+youngster wondering.
+
+Now, there was nothing much the matter with the men on either side,
+taken in the main, who hated one another on that far-pushed frontier.
+Even the insufferable incompetents who held the rotting reins of
+control were such because circumstance had blinded them.  There was not
+a man among the highly placed ones even who would have deliberately
+placed his own importance or his own opinion in the scale against
+India's welfare.  There was not a border thief but was ready to respect
+what he could recognize as strong-armed justice.
+
+The root of the trouble lay in centralization of authority, and rigid
+adherence to the rule of seniority.  Combined, these two processes had
+served to bring about a state of things that is nearly unbelievable
+when viewed in the light of modern love for efficiency.  Young men,
+with the fire of ambition burning in them and a proper scorn for mere
+superficial ceremony, had to sweat their tempers and bow down beneath
+the yoke of senile pompousness.
+
+Strong, savage, powder-weaned Hill-tribesmen--inheritors of egoistic
+independence and a love of loot--laughed loud and long and openly at
+System that prevented officers from taking arms against them until
+authority could come by delegate from somebody who slept.  By that time
+they would be across the border, quarrelling among themselves about
+division of the plunder!
+
+They had respect in plenty for the youth and virile middle age that
+dealt with them on the rare occasions when a timely blow was loosed.
+Then they had proof that from that strange, mad country overseas there
+came men who could lead men--men who could strike, and who knew
+enough to hold their hands when the sudden blow had told--just men,
+who could keep their plighted word.  No border thief pretended that the
+British could not rule him;  to a man, they laughed because the
+possible was not imposed.  And to the last bold, ruffianly iconoclast
+they stole when, where, and what they dared.
+
+Things altered strangely soon after Ralph Cunningham, with the
+diffidence of youth but the blood of a line of soldiers leaping in him,
+took charge of his tiny force of nondescripts.  They were neither
+soldiers nor police.  Nominally, he was everybody's dog, and so were
+they;  actually he found himself at the head of a tiny department of
+his own, because it was nobody's affair to give him orders.  They had
+deliberately turned him loose "to hang himself," and their hope that he
+might get his head into a noose of trouble as soon as possible--the
+very liberty they gave him, on purpose for his quick damnation--was
+the means of making reputation for him.
+
+Nobody advised him;  so with singularly British phlegm and not more
+than ordinary common sense he devised a method of his own for scotching
+night-prowlers.  He stationed his men at well-considered
+vantage-points, and trusted them.  With a party of ten, he patrolled
+the city ceaselessly himself and whipped every "watchman" he caught
+sleeping.  One by one, the blackmailing brigade began to see the
+discomfort of a job that called for real wakefulness, and deserted over
+the Hills to urge the resumption of raids in force.  One by one, the
+night-prowling fraternity were shot as they sneaked past sentries.  One
+by one, the tale of robberies diminished.  It was merely a question of
+one man, and he awake, having power to act without first submitting a
+request to somebody in triplicate on blue-form B.
+
+The time came, after a month or two, when even natives dared to leave
+their houses after dark.  The time came very soon, indeed, when the
+nearest tribes began to hold war councils and inveigh against the
+falling off of the supply of plunder.  Cunningham was complimented
+openly.  He was even praised by one of "Them."  So it was perfectly
+natural, and quite in keeping with tradition, that he should shortly be
+relieved, and that a senior to him should be placed in charge of his
+little force, with orders to "organize" it.
+
+The organization process lasted about twelve hours;  at the end of that
+time every single man had deserted, horse and arms!  Two nights later,
+the prowling and plundering was once more in full swing, and Cunningham
+was blamed for it;  it was obvious to any man of curry-and-port-wine
+proclivities that his method, or lack of it, had completely undermined
+his men's loyalty!
+
+A whole committee of gray-headed gentlemen took trouble to point out to
+him his utter failure;  but a brigadier, who was not a member of that
+committee, and who was considered something of an upstart, asked that
+he might be appointed to a troop of irregular cavalry that had recently
+been raised.  With glee--with a sigh of relief so heartfelt and
+unanimous that it could be heard across the street--the committee
+leaped at the suggestion.  The proper person was induced without
+difficulty to put his signature to the required paper, and Cunningham
+found himself transferred to irregular oblivion.  Incidentally he found
+himself commanding few less than a hundred men, so many of whose first
+names were Mahommed or Mohammed that the muster-roll looked like a list
+of Allah's prophets.
+
+Cunningham was more than a little bit astonished, on the day he joined,
+in camp, a long way from Peshawur, to find his friend Mahommed Gunga,
+seated in a bell tent with the Brigadier.  He caught sight of the long
+black military boot and silver spur, and half-recognized the
+up-and-down movement of the crossed leg long before he reached the
+tent.  It was like father and son meeting, almost, as the Rajput rose
+to greet him and waited respectfully until he had paid his compliments
+to his new commander.  Cunningham felt throat-bound, and could scarcely
+more than stammer his introduction of himself.
+
+"I know who you are and all about you," said the Brigadier.  "Used to
+know your father well.  I applied to have you in my command partly for
+your father's sake, but principally because Risaldar Mahommed Gunga
+spake so highly of you.  He tells me he has had an eye on you from the
+start, and that you shape well.  Remember, this is irregular cavalry,
+and in many respects quite unlike regulars.  You'll need tact and a
+firm hand combined, and you mustn't ever forget that the men whom you
+will lead are gentlemen."
+
+Cunningham reported to his Colonel, only to discover that he, too, knew
+all about him.  The Colonel was less inclined to be restricted as to
+topic, and less mindful of discretion than the Brigadier.
+
+"I hear they couldn't stand you in Peshawur.  That's hopeful!  If you'd
+come with a recommendation from that quarter, I'd have packed you off
+back again.  I never in my life would have believed that a dozen men
+could all shut their eyes so tightly to the signs--never!"
+
+"The signs, sir?"
+
+"Yes, the signs!  Come and look your troop over."
+
+Cunningham found that the troop, too, had heard about his coming.  He
+did not look them over.  When he reached the lines, they came out in a
+swarm--passed him one by one, eyed him, as traders eye a horse--and
+then saluted him a second time, with the greeting:
+
+"Salaam, Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur!"
+
+"Yes!  You're in disgrace!" said his Colonel, noticing the color rising
+to the youngster's cheeks.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+    Sons of the sons of war we be,
+    Sabred and horsed, and whole and free;
+    One is the caste, and one degree,--
+            One law,--one code decreed us.
+    Who heads wolves in the dawning day?
+    Who leaps in when the bull's at bay?
+    He who dare is he who may!
+            Now, rede ye who shall lead us!
+
+THE check that Ralph Cunningham's management of his police had caused,
+and the subsequent resumption of night looting, served to whet the
+appetites of the hungry crowd beyond the border.  Those closest to
+Peshawur, who had always done the looting, were not the ultimate
+consignees by any means;  there were other tribes who bought from them
+--others yet to whom they paid tribute in the shape of stolen rifles.
+Cunningham's administration had upset the whole modus vivendi of the
+lower Himalayas!
+
+Though it all began again the moment he was superseded, there had been,
+none the less, a three-month interregnum, and that had to be
+compensated for.  The tribes at the rear were clamorous and would not
+listen to argument or explanation;  they had collected in hundreds, led
+by the notorious Khumel Khan, preparatory to raiding in real earnest
+and with sufficient force to carry all before them at the first
+surprise attack.
+
+They were disappointed when the pilfering resumed, for a tribal Hillman
+would generally rather fight than eat, and would always prefer his
+dinner from a dead enemy's cooking-pot.  They sat about for a long
+time, considering whether there were not excuse enough for war in any
+case and listening to the intricately detailed information brought by
+the deserting watchmen.  And as they discussed things, but before they
+had time to decide on any plan, the Brigadier commanding the Irregulars
+got wind of them.
+
+He was a man who did not worry about the feelings of senile heads of
+red-tape-bound departments;  nor was he particularly hidebound by
+respect for the laws of evidence.  When he knew a thing, he knew it;
+then he either acted or did not act, as the circumstances might
+dictate.  And when the deed was done or left undone, and was quite
+beyond the reach of criticism, he would send in a verbose, voluminous
+report, written out in several colored inks, on all the special forms
+be could get hold of.  The heads of departments would be too busy for
+the next twelvemonth trying to get the form of the report straightened
+out to be able to give any attention to the details of it;  and then it
+would be too late.  But he was a brigadier, and what he could do with
+impunity and quiet amusement would have brought down the whole
+Anglo-Indian Government in awful wrath on the head of a subordinate.
+
+He heard of the tribesmen under Khumel Khan one evening.  At dawn his
+tents stood empty and the horse-lines were long bands of brown on the
+green grass.  The pegs were up;  only the burying beetles labored where
+the stamping chargers had neighed overnight.
+
+The hunger-making wind that sweeps down, snow-sweetened, from the
+Himalayas bore with it intermittent thunder from four thousand hoofs
+as, split in three and swooping from three different directions, the
+squadrons viewed, gave tongue, and launched themselves, roaring, at the
+half-awakened plotters of the night before.
+
+There was a battle, of a kind, in a bowlder-lined valley where the
+early morning sun had not yet reached to lift the chill.  Long lances
+--devils' antennae--searched out the crevices where rock-bred
+mountain-men sought cover; too suddenly for clumsy-fingered Hillmen to
+reload, the reformed troops charged wedgewise into rallying
+detachments.  In an hour, or less, there were prisoners being herded
+like cattle in the valley bottom, and a sting had been drawn from the
+border wasp that would not grow again for a year or two to come.
+
+But Khumel Khan was missing.  Khumel Khan, the tulwar man--he whose
+boast it was that he could hew through two men's necks at one whistling
+sweep of his notched, curved cimeter--had broken through with a dozen
+at his back.  He had burst through the half-troop guarding the upper
+end of the defile, had left them red and reeling to count their dead,
+and the overfolding hill-spurs swallowed him.
+
+"Mr. Cunningham!  Take your troop, please, and find their chief!  Hunt
+him out, ride him down, and get him!  Don't come back until you do!"
+
+The real thing!  The real red thing within a year!  A lone command--
+and that is the only thing a subaltern of spunk may pray for!--
+eighty-and-eight hawk-eyed troopers asking only for the opportunity to
+show their worth--lean, hungry hills to hunt in, no commissariat,
+fair law to the quarry, and a fight--as sure as God made mountains, a
+fight at the other end!  There are men here and there who think that
+the day when they pass down a crowded aisle with Her is the great one,
+other great days are all as gas-jets to the sun.  And there are others.
+There are men, like Cunningham, who have heard the drumming of the
+hoofs behind them as they led their first un-apron-stringed unit out
+into the unknown.  The one kind of man has tasted honey, but the other
+knows what fed, and feeds, the roaring sportsmen in Valhalla.
+
+There were crisscross trails, where low-hung clouds swept curtainwise
+to make the compass seem like a lie-begotten trick.  There were gorges,
+hewn when the Titans needed dirt to build the awful Himalayas--
+shadow-darkened--sheer as the edge of Nemesis.  Long-reaching, pile
+on pile, the over-lapping spurs leaned over them.  The wind blew
+through them amid silence that swallowed and made nothing of the din
+which rides with armed men.
+
+But, with eyes that were made for hunting, on horses that seemed part
+of them, they tracked and trailed--and viewed at last.  Their shout
+gave Khumel Khan his notice that the price of a hundred murders was
+overdue, and he chose to make payment where a V-shaped cliff enclosed a
+small, flat plateau and not more than a dozen could ride at him at a
+time.  His companions scattered much as a charge of shrapnel shrieks
+through the rocks, but Khumel Khan knew well enough that he was the
+quarry--his was the head that by no conceivable chance would be
+allowed to plan fresh villainies.  He might have run yet a little way,
+but he saw the uselessness, and stood.
+
+The troop, lined out knee to knee, could come within a hundred paces of
+him without breaking;  it formed a base, then, to a triangle from which
+the man at bay could no more escape than a fire-ringed scorpion.
+
+"Call on him to surrender!" ordered Cunningham.
+
+A chevroned black-beard half a horse-length behind him translated the
+demand into stately Pashtu, and for answer the hill chieftain mounted
+his stolen horse and shook his tulwar.  He had pistols at his belt, but
+he did not draw them;  across his shoulder swung a five-foot-long
+jezail, but he loosed it and flung it to the ground.
+
+"Is there any here dare take me single-handed?" he demanded with a grin.
+
+Of the eight-and-eighty, there were eighty-eight who dared;  but there
+was an eighty-ninth, a lad of not yet twenty-two, whom Indian chivalry
+desired to honor.  The troop had heard but the troop had not yet seen.
+
+"Ride in and take him!" ordered Cunningham and there was a thoroughly
+well acted make-believe of fear, while every eye watched
+"Cunnigan-bahadur,"  and the horses, spurred and reined at once,
+pranced at their bits for just so long as a good man needs to make his
+mind up.  And Cunningham rode in.
+
+He rode in as a Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a
+silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself.  Green though he
+was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him--had rounded up for
+him--had made him his opportunity;  so he took it, right under their
+eyes, straight in the teeth of the stoutest tulwar man of the lower
+Himalayas.
+
+He, too, had pistols at his belt, but there was no shot fired.  There
+was nothing but a spur-loosed rush and a shock--a spark-lit,
+swirling, slashing, stamping, snorting melee--a stallion and a mare
+up-ended--two strips of lightning steel that slit the wind--and a
+thud, as a lifeless border robber took the turf.
+
+There was silence then--the grim, good silence of Mohammedan approval
+--while a native officer closed up a sword-cut with his fingers and
+tore ten-yard strips from his own turban to bind the youngster's head.
+They rode back without boast or noise and camped without advertisement.
+There was no demonstration made;  only-a colonel said, "I like things
+done that way, quickly, without fuss," and a brigadier remarked,
+"Hrrrumph!  'Gratulate you, Mr. Cunningham!"
+
+Later, when they camped again outside Peshawur, a reward of three
+thousand rupees that had been offered on the border outlaw's head was
+paid to Cunningham in person--a very appreciable sum to a subaltern,
+whose pay is barely sufficient for his mess bills.  So, although no
+public comment was made on the matter, it was considered "decent of
+him" to contribute the whole amount to a pension fund for the
+dependents of the regiment's dead.
+
+"You know, that's your money," said his Colonel.  "You can keep every
+anna of it if you choose."
+
+"I suppose I needn't be an officer unless I choose?" suggested
+Cunningham.
+
+"I don't know, youngster!  I can't guess what your troop would do if
+you tried to desert it!"
+
+That was, of course, merely a diplomatic recognition of the fact that
+Cunningham had done his duty in making his men like him, and was not
+intended seriously.  Nobody--not even the Brigadier--had any notion
+that the troop would very shortly have to dispense with its leader's
+services whether it wanted to or not.
+
+But it so happened that one troop at a time was requisitioned to be
+ornamental body-guard to such as were entitled to one in the frontier
+city;  and the turn arrived when Cunningham was sent.  None liked the
+duty.  No soldier, and particularly no irregular, likes to consider
+himself a pipe-clayed ornament;  but Cunningham would have "gone sick"
+had he had the least idea of what was in store for him.
+
+It was bad enough to be obliged to act as body-guard to men who had
+jockeyed him away because they were jealous of him.  The white scar
+that ran now like a chin-strap mark from the corner of his eye to the
+angle of his jaw would blaze red often at some deliberately
+thought-out, not fancied, insult from men who should have been too big
+to more than notice him.  And that, again, was nothing to the climax.
+
+Mahommed Gunga chose to polish up his silver spurs and ride in from his
+"estates" on a protracted visit to Peshawur, and with an escort that
+must have included half the zemindars on the countryside as well as his
+own small retinue.  Glittering on his own account like a regiment of
+horse, and with all but a regiment clattering behind him, he chose the
+occasion to meet Cunningham when the youngster was fuming with
+impatience opposite the club veranda, waiting to escort a general.
+
+On the veranda sat a dozen men who had been at considerable pains to
+put and keep the officer of the escort in his place.  If the jingle and
+glitter of the approaching cavalcade had not been sufficient to attract
+their notice, they could have stopped their cars and yet have been
+forced to hear the greeting.
+
+"Aha! Salaam sahib!  Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur, bohut salaam!  Thy
+father's son!  Sahib, I am much honored!"
+
+The white scar blazed, but Mahommed Gunga affected not to notice the
+discomfort of his victim.  Many more than a hundred sabred gentlemen
+pressed round to "do themselves the honor," as they expressed it, of
+paying Cunningham a compliment.  They rode up like knights in armor in
+the lists, and saluted like heralds bringing tribute and allegiance.
+
+"Salaam, Chota-Cunnigan!"
+
+"Salaam, sahib!"
+
+"Bohut salaam, bahadur!"
+
+The Generals, the High-Court judges, and Commissioners on the club
+veranda sat unhonored, while a boy of twenty-two received obeisance
+from men whose respect a king might envy.  No Rajput ever lived who was
+not sure that his salute was worth more than tribute;  he can be polite
+on all occasions, and what he thinks mere politeness would be
+considered overacting in the West, but his respect and his salute he
+keeps for his equals or his betters--and they must be men indeed.
+
+The coterie of high officials sat indignation-bound for ten palpitating
+minutes, until the General remembered that it was his escort that was
+waiting for him.  He had ordered it an hour too soon, for the express
+sweet purpose of keeping Cunningham waiting in the sun, but it dawned
+now on his apoplectic consciousness that his engagement was most
+urgent.  He descended in a pompous hurry, mounted and demanded why--
+by all the gods of India--the escort was not lined up to receive him.
+A minute later, after a loudly administered reprimand that was meant
+as much for the swarm of Rajputs as for  the indignant Cunningham, he
+rode off with the escort clattering behind him.
+
+But on the club veranda, when the Rajputs with Mahommed Gunga had
+dispersed, the big wigs sat and talked the matter over very thoroughly.
+
+"It's no use blinking matters," said the senior man present, using a
+huge handkerchief to wave the flies away from the polished dome which
+rose between two side wisps of gray hair.  "They're going to lionize
+him while he's here, so we'd better move him on."
+
+"But where?"
+
+"I've got it!  There's a letter in from Everton at Abu, saying he needs
+a man badly to go to Howrah and act resident there--says he hasn't
+heard from the missionaries and isn't satisfied--wants a man without
+too much authority to go there and keep an eye on things in general.
+Howrah's a hell of a place from all accounts."
+
+"But that 'ud be promotion!"
+
+"Can't be helped.  No excuse for reducing him, so far as I've heard.
+The trouble is the cub has done too dashed well.  We've got to promote
+him if we want to be rid of him."
+
+They talked it over for an hour, and at the end of it decided
+Cunningham should go to Howrah, provided a brigadier could be induced
+without too much argument to see reason.
+
+"The Brigadier probably wants to keep him, and his Colonel will raise
+all the different kinds of Cain there are!" suggested the man who had
+begun the discussion.
+
+"I've seen brigadiers before now reduced to a proper sense of their own
+unimportance!" remarked another man.  And he was connected with the
+Treasury.  He knew.
+
+But a week later, when the papers were sent to the Brigadier for
+signature, he amazed everybody by consenting without the least
+objection.  Nobody but he knew who his visitor had been the night
+before.
+
+"How did you know about it, Mahommed Gunga?" he demanded, as the
+veteran sat and faced him over the tent candle, his one lean leg
+swaying up and down, as usual, above the other.
+
+"Have club servants not got ears, sahib?"
+
+"And you--?"
+
+"I, too, have ears--good ones!"
+
+The Brigadier drummed his fingers on the table, hesitating.  No
+officer, however high up in the service, likes to lose even a subaltern
+from his command when that subaltern is worth his salt.
+
+"Let him go, sahib!  You have seen how we Rangars honor him--you may
+guess what difference he might make in a crisis.  Sign, sahib--let
+him go!"
+
+"But--where do you come in?  What have you had to do with this?"
+
+"First, sahib, I tested him thoroughly.  I found him good.  Second, I
+told tales about him, making him out better than even he is.  Third, I
+made sure that all those in authority at Peshawur should hate him.
+That would have been impossible if he had been a fool, or a weak man,
+or an incompetent;  but any good man can be hated easily.  Fourth,
+sahib, I sent, by the hand of a man of mine, a message to Everton-sahib
+at Abu reporting to him that it was not in Howrah as it should be, and
+warning him that a sahib should be sent there.  I knew that he would
+listen to a hint from me, and I knew that he had no one in his office
+whom he could send.  Then, sahib, I brought matters to a head by
+bringing every man of merit whom I could raise to salute him and make
+an outrageous exhibition of him.  That is what I have done!"
+
+"One would think you were scheming for a throne, Mahommed Gunga!"
+
+"Nay, sahib, I am scheming for the peace of India!  But there will be
+war first."
+
+"I know there will be war," said the Brigadier.  "I only wish I could
+make the other sahibs realize it."
+
+"Will you sign the paper, sahib?"
+
+"Yes, I will sign the paper. But--"
+
+"But what, sahib?"
+
+"I'm not quite certain that I'm doing right."
+
+"Brigadier-sahib, when the hour comes--and that is soon--it will be
+time to answer that!  There lie the papers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+    Even in darkness lime and sand
+            Will blend to make up mortar.
+    Two by two would equal four
+            Under a bucket of water.
+
+NOW it may seem unimaginable that two Europeans could be cooped in
+Howrah, not under physical restraint, and yet not able to communicate
+with any one who could render them assistance.  It was the case,
+though, and not by any means an isolated case.  The policy of the
+British Government, once established in India, was and always has been
+not to occupy an inch of extra territory until compelled by
+circumstances.
+
+The native states, then, while forbidden to contract alliances with one
+another or the world outside, and obliged by the letter of written
+treaties to observe certain fundamental laws imposed on them by the
+Anglo-Indian Government, were left at liberty to govern themselves.
+And it was largely the fact that they could and did keep secret what
+was going on within their borders that enabled the so-called Sepoy
+Rebellion to get such a smouldering foothold before it burst into a
+blaze.  The sepoys were the tools of the men behind the movement; and
+the men behind were priests and others who were feeling nothing but
+their own ambition.
+
+No man knows even now how long the fire rebellion had been burning
+underground before showed through the surface;  but it is quite obvious
+that, in spite of the heroism shown by British and loyal native alike
+when the crash did come, the rebels must have won--and have won
+easily sheer weight of numbers--had they only used the amazing system
+solely for the broad, comprehensive purpose for which it was devised.
+
+But the sense of power that its ramifications and extent gave birth to
+also whetted the desires individuals.  Each man of any influence at all
+began to scheme to use the system for the furtherance of his individual
+ambition.  Instead of bending all their energy and craft to the one
+great object of hurling an unloved conqueror back whence he came, each
+reigning prince strove to scheme himself head and shoulders above the
+rest;  and each man who wanted to be prince began to plot harder than
+ever to be one.
+
+So in Howrah the Maharajah's brother, Jaimihr, with a large following
+and organization of his own, began to use the secret system of which he
+by right formed an integral part and to set wheels working within the
+wheels which in course of time should spew him up on the ledge which
+his brother now occupied.  Long before the rebellion was ready he had
+all his preparations made and waited only for the general conflagration
+to strike for his own hand.  And was so certain of success that he
+dared make plans as well for Rosemary McClean's fate.
+
+There is a blindness, too, quite unexplainable that comes over whole
+nations sometimes.  It is almost like a plague in its mysterious
+arrival and departure.  As before the French Revolution there were
+almost none of the ruling classes who could read the writing on the
+wall, so it was in India in the spring of '57.  Men saw the signs and
+could not read their meaning.  As in France, so in India, there were a
+few who understood, but they were scoffed at;  the rest--the vast
+majority who held the reins of power--were blind.
+
+Rosemary McClean discovered that her pony had gone lame, and was angry
+with the groom.  The groom ran away, and she put that down to native
+senselessness.  Duncan McClean sent one after another of the little
+native children to find him a man who would take a letter to Mount Abu.
+The children went and did not come back again, and he put that down to
+the devil, who would seem to have reclaimed them.
+
+Both of them saw the watchers, posted at every vantage-point,
+insolently wakeful;  both of them knew that Jaimihr had placed them
+there.  But neither of them looked one inch deeper than the surface,
+nor supposed that their presence betokened anything but the prince's
+unreachable ambition.  Neither of them thought for an instant that the
+day could possibly have come when Britain would be unable to protect a
+woman of its own race, or when a native--however powerful--would
+dare to do more than threaten.
+
+Joanna disappeared, and that led to a chain of thought which was not
+creditable to any one concerned.  They reasoned this way:  Rosemary had
+seen Mahommed Gunga hold out a handful of gold coins for the old
+woman's eyes to glitter at, therefore it was fair to presume that he
+had promised her a reward for bringing word to the man whom, it was now
+known, he had left behind.  She had brought word to him and had
+disappeared.  What more obvious than to reason that the man had gladly
+paid her, and had just as gladly ridden off, rejoicing at the thought
+that he could escape doing service?
+
+"So much," they argued, "for native constancy!  So much for Mahommed
+Gunga's boast that he knew of men who could be trusted!  And so much
+for Joanna's gratitude!"
+
+The old woman had been saved by Rosemary McClean from the
+long-drawn-out hell that is the life portion of most Indian widows,
+even of low caste;  she had had little to do, ever, beyond snooze in
+the shade and eat, and run sometimes behind the pony--a task which
+came as easily to her as did the other less active parts of her
+employment.  Her desertion, particularly at a crisis, made Rosemary
+McClean cry, and set her father to quoting Shakespeare's "King Lear."
+
+   "Blow, blow, thou winter wind!
+    Thou art not so unkind
+    As man's ingratitude!"
+
+All Scotsmen seem to have a natural proclivity for quoting the
+appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself.  The Book of Lamentations
+--Shakespeare's sadder lines--roll off their tongues majestically and
+seem to give them consolation--as it were to lay a sound, unjoyous
+basis for the proper enjoyment of the songs of Robbie Burns.
+
+The poor old king of the poet's imagining, declaiming up above the
+cliffs of Dover, could have put no more pathos into those immortal
+lines than did Duncan McClean as he paced up and down between the hot
+wars of the darkened room.  The dry air parched his throat, and his
+ambition seemed to shrivel in him as he saw the brave little woman who
+was all he had sobbing with her head between her hands.
+
+He turned to the Bible, but he could find no precedent in any of its
+pages for abandoning a quest like his in the teeth of disaster or
+adversity.  He read it for hour after crackling hour, moistening his
+throat from time to time with warm, unappetizing water from the
+improvised jar filter;  but when the oven blast that makes the Indian
+summer day a hell on earth had waned and died away, he had found
+nothing but admonishment to stand firm.  There had been women, too,
+whose deeds were worthy of record in that book, and he found no
+argument for deserting his post on his daughter's account either.  In
+the Bible account, as he read it, it had always been the devil who fled
+when things got too uncomfortable for him, and he was conscious of a
+tight-lipped, stern contempt for the devil.
+
+He had about made up his mind what line to take with his daughter, when
+she ceased her sobbing and looked up through swollen eyes to relieve
+him of the necessity for talking her over to his point view.  What she
+said amazed him, but not be cause it came to him as a new idea.  She
+said, in different words, exactly what was passing in his own mind, and
+it was as though her tears and his search of the Scriptures had brought
+them both to one clear-cut conclusion.
+
+"Why are we here, father?" she asked him suddenly;  and because she
+took him by surprise he did not answer her at once.  "We are here to do
+good aren't we?"  That was no question;  it was beginning of a line of
+argument.  Her father held his tongue, and laid his Bible down, and
+listened on.  "How much good have we done yet?"
+
+She paused, but the pause was rhetorical, and he knew it;  he could see
+the light behind her eyes that was more than visionary;  it was the
+light of practical Scots enthusiasm, unquenched and undiscouraged after
+a battle with fear itself.  She began to be beautiful again as the
+spirit of unconquerable courage won its way.
+
+"Have we won one convert?  Is there one, of those you have taught who
+is with us still?"
+
+The answer was self-evident.  There was none.  But there was no sting
+for him in what she asked.  Rather her words came as a relief, for he
+could feel the strength behind them.  He still said nothing.
+
+"Have we stopped one single suttee?  Have we once, in any least degree,
+lessened the sufferings of one of those poor widows?"
+
+"Not once," he answered her, without a trace of shame.  He knew, and
+she knew, how hard the two of them had tried.  There was nothing to
+apologize for.
+
+"Have we undermined the power of the Hindoo priests?  Have we removed
+one trace of superstition?"
+
+"No," he said quietly.
+
+"Have we given up the fight?"
+
+He looked hard at her.  Gray eyes under gray brows met gray eyes that
+shone from under dark, wet lashes, and deep spoke unto deep.  Scotsman
+recognized Scotswoman, and the bond between them tightened.
+
+"It seems to me"--there was a new thrill in her voice--"that here
+is our opportunity!  Either Jaimihr wants to frighten us away or he is
+in earnest with his impudent attentions to me.  In either case let us
+make no attempt to go away.  Let us refuse to go away.  Let us stay
+here at all costs.  If he wishes us to go away, then he must have a
+reason and will show it, or else try to force us.  If he is really
+trying to make love to me, then let him try;  if he has pluck enough,
+let him seize me.  In either case we shall force his hand.  I am
+willing to be the bait.  The moment that he harms either you or me, the
+government will have to interfere.  If he kills us so much the better,
+for that would mean swift vengeance and a British occupation.  That
+would stop suttee for all time, and we would have given our lives for
+something worth while.  As we are, we cannot communicate with our
+government, and Jaimihr thinks he has us in his grasp.  Let him think
+it!  Let him go ahead!  Sooner or later the government must find out
+that we are missing Then--!"  Her eyes blazed at the thought of what
+would happen then.
+
+Her father looked at her for about a minute, sadness and pride in her
+fighting in him for the mastery.  Then he rose and crossed the little
+space between them.
+
+"Lassie!" he said. "Lassie!"
+
+She took his hand--the one little touch of human sentiment lacking to
+disturb his emotional balance.  The Scots will talk readily enough of
+sorrow, but at showing it they are a grudging race of men.  Unless a
+Scotsman thinks he can gain something for his cause by showing what
+emotion racks him, he will swallow down the choking flood of grief, and
+keep a straight face to the world and his own as well.  Duncan McClean
+turned from her--drew his hand away--and walked to open the slit
+shutters.  A moment later he came back, once more master of himself.
+
+"As things are, dear," he said gently, "how would it be possible for us
+to get away?"
+
+"'We canna gang awa'!" she quoted, with a smile.
+
+"NO, lassie.  We must stay here and be brave.  This matter is not in
+our hands.  We must wait, and watch, and see.  If opportunity should
+come to us to make our escape, we will seize it.  Should it not come--
+should Jaimihr, or some other of them, make occasion to molest us--it
+may be--it might be that--surely the day of martyrs is not past--
+it might be that--well, well, in either case we will eventually win.
+Should they kill us, the government must send here to avenge us;
+should we get away, surely our report will be listened to.  A month or
+two--perhaps only a week or two--even a day or two, who knows?--
+and the last suttee will have been performed!"
+
+He stood and stroked her head--then stooped and kissed it--an
+unusual betrayal of emotion from him.
+
+"Ye're a brave lassie," he said, leaving the room hurriedly, to escape
+the shame of letting her see tears welling from his eyes--salt tears
+that scalded as they broke their hot-wind-wearied bounds.
+
+Five minutes later she arose, dry-eyed, and went to stand in the
+doorway, where an eddy or two of lukewarm evening breeze might possibly
+be stirring.  But a dirtily clad Hindoo, lounging on a raised, railless
+store veranda opposite, leered at her impudently, and she came inside
+again--to pass the evening and the sultry, black, breathless night
+out of sight, at least, of the brutes who shut her off from even
+exercise.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+    So, I am a dog? Hence I must come
+            To do thy bidding faster?
+    Must tell thee--Nay, a dog stays dumb!
+            A dog obeys one master!
+
+NOT many yards from where the restless elephants stood lined under big
+brick arches--in an age-old courtyard, three sides of which were
+stone-carved splendor and the fourth a typically Eastern mess of
+stables, servants' quarters, litter, stink, and noisy confusion--a
+stone door, slab-hewn, gave back the aching glitter of the sun.  Its
+only opening--a narrow slit quite near the top--was barred.  A man
+--his face close-pressed against them--peered through the interwoven
+iron rods from within.
+
+Jaimihr, in a rose-pink pugree still, but not at all the swaggering
+cavalier who pranced, high-booted, through the streets--a
+down-at-heel prince, looking slovenly and heavy-eyed from too much
+opium--sat in a long chair under the cloister which faced the barred
+stone door.  He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column
+beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who
+stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it;  he seemed to
+expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, and the thought
+seemed tantalizing.
+
+"It is not to be done," said Jaimihr, speaking in a dialect peculiar to
+Howrah.  "That--of all the idiotic notions I have listened to--is
+the least worth while!  Thy brains are in thy belly and are lost amid
+the fat!  If my brother Howrah only had such counsellors as thou--
+such monkey folk to make his plans for him--the jackals would have
+finished with him long ago."
+
+"Sahib, did I not bring word, and overhear, and trap the man?"
+
+"Truly!  Overheard whisperings, and trapped me a hyena I must feed!
+Now thou sayest, 'Torture him!'  He is a Rangar, and of good stock;
+therefore, no amount of torturing will make him speak.  He is that pig
+Mahommed Gunga's man;  therefore, there' is nothing more sure than that
+Mahommed Gunga will be here, sooner or later, to look for him--
+Mahommed Gunga, with the half of a Hindoo name, the whole of a Moslem's
+fire, and the blind friendship of the British to rely on!"
+
+"But if the man be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes?"
+
+"He will be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes, if only what we await has
+first happened.  But this rising that is planned hangs fire.  Were I
+Maharajah I would like to see the Rangar who dare flout me or ask
+questions!  I would like but to set eyes on that Rangar once!  But I am
+not yet Maharajah;  I am a prince--a younger brother--surrounded,
+counselled, impeded, hampered, rendered laughable by fat idiots!"
+
+"My belly but shows your highness's generosity.  At whose cost have I
+grown fat?"
+
+"Ay, at whose cost?  I should have kept thee slim, on prison diet, and
+saved myself a world of useless problems!  Cease prattling!  Get away
+from me!  If I have to poison this Ali Partab, or wring his casteless
+neck, I will make thee do it, and give thee to Mahommed Gunga to wreak
+vengeance on.  Leave me to think!"
+
+The fat former occupant of the room above the arch of the caravansary
+waddled to the far end of the cloister, and sat down, cross-legged, to
+grumble to himself and scratch his paunch at intervals.  His master,
+low-browed and irritable, continued to strike the stone column with his
+cane.  He was in a horrid quandary.
+
+Mahommed Gunga was one of many men he did not want, for the present, to
+offend seriously.  Given a fair cause for quarrel, that irascible
+ex-Risaldar was capable of going to any lengths, and was known,
+moreover, to be trusted by the British.  Nobody seemed to know whether
+or not Mahommed Gunga reciprocated the British regard, and nobody had
+cared to ask him except his own intimates;  and they, like he, were men
+of close counsel.
+
+The Prince had given no orders for the capture of Ali Partab;  that had
+been carried out by his men in a fit of ill-advised officiousness.  But
+the Prince had to solve the serious problem caused by the presence of
+Ali Partab within a stone-walled cell.
+
+Should he let the fellow go, a report would be certain to reach
+Mahommed Gunga by the speediest route.  Vengeance would be instantly
+decided on, for a Rajput does not merely accept service;  he repays it,
+feudal-wise, and smites hip and thigh for the honor of his men.  The
+vengeance would be sure to follow purely Eastern lines, and would be
+complicated;  it would no doubt take the form of siding in some way or
+other with his brother the Maharajah.  There would be instant, active
+doings, for that was Mahommed Gunga's style!  The fat would be in the
+fire months, perhaps, before the proper time.
+
+The prisoner's presence was maddening in a million ways.  It had been
+the Prince's plan (for he knew well enough that Mahommed Gunga had left
+a man behind) to allow the escape to start;  then it would have been an
+easy matter to arrange an ambush--to kill Ali Partab--and to
+pretend to ride to the rescue.  Once rescued, Miss McClean and her
+father would be almost completely at his mercy, for they would not be
+able to accuse him of anything but friendliness, and would be obliged
+to return to whatever haven of safety he cared to offer them.  Once in
+his palace of their own consent, they would have had to stay there
+until the rising of the whole of India put an end to any chance of
+interference from the British Government.
+
+But now there was no Ali Partab outside to try to escort them to some
+place of safety;  therefore, there was little chance that the
+missionaries would try to make a bolt.  Instead of being in the
+position of a cat that watches silently and springs when the mouse
+breaks cover, he was in the unenviable condition now of being forced to
+make the first move.  Over and over again he cursed the men who had
+made Ali Partab prisoner, and over and over again:  he wondered how--
+by all the gods of all the multitudinous Hindoo mythology--how, when,
+and by what stroke of genius he could make use of the stiff-chinned
+Rangar and convert him from being a rankling thorn into a useful aid.
+
+He dared not poison him--yet.  For the same reason he dared not put
+him to the torture, to discover, or try to discover, what Mahommed
+Gunga's real leanings were in the matter of loyalty to the Raj or
+otherwise.  He dared not let the man go, for forgiveness is not one of
+the virtues held in high esteem by men of Ali Partab's race, and
+wrongful arrest is considered ground enough for a feud to the death.
+It seemed he did not dare do anything!
+
+He racked his opium-dulled brain for a suspicion of a plan that might
+help solve the difficulty, until his eye--wandering around the
+courtyard--fell on the black shape of a woman.  She was old and bent
+and she was busied, with a handful of dry twigs, pretending to sweep
+around the stables.
+
+"Who is that mother of corruption?" demanded Jaimihr;  and a man came
+running to him.
+
+"Who is that eyesore?  I have never seen her, have I?"
+
+"Highness, she is a beggar woman.  She sat by the gate, and pretended
+to a power of telling fortunes--which it would seem she does possess
+in some degree.  It was thought better that she should use her gift in
+here, for our advantage, than outside to our disadvantage.  So she was
+brought in and set to sweeping."
+
+"By the curse of the sin of the sack of Chitor, is my palace, then, a
+midden for the crawling offal of all the Howrah streets?  First this
+Rangar--next a sweeper hag--what follows?  What bring you next?
+Go, fetch the street dogs in!"
+
+"Highness, she is useful and costs nothing but the measure or two of
+meal she eats."
+
+"A horse eats little more!" the angry Prince retorted, perfectly
+accustomed to being argued with by his own servants.  That is the
+time-honored custom of the East;  obedience is one thing--argument
+another--both in their way are good, and both have their innings.
+"Bring her to me--nay!--keep her at a decent distance--so!--am
+I dirt for her broom?"
+
+He sat and scowled at her, and the old woman tried to hide more of her
+protruding bones under the rag of clothing that she wore;  she stood,
+wriggling in evident embarrassment, well out in the sun.
+
+"What willst thou steal of mine?" the Prince demanded suddenly.
+
+"I am no thief."  Bright, beady eyes gleamed back at him, and gave the
+lie direct to her shrinking attitude of fear.  But he had taken too
+much opium overnight, and was in no mood to notice little distinctions.
+He was satisfied that she should seem properly afraid of him, and he
+scowled angrily when one of his retainers--in slovenly undress--
+crossed the courtyard to him.  The man's evident intention, made
+obvious by his manner and his leer at the old woman, was to say
+something against her;  the Prince was in a mood to quarrel with any
+one, on any ground at all, who did not cower to him.
+
+"Prince, she it is who ran ever with the white woman, as a dog runs in
+the dust."
+
+"What does she here, then?"
+
+"Ask her!" grinned the trooper.  "Unless she comes to look for Ali
+Partab, I know not."
+
+He made the last part of his remark in a hurried undertone, too low for
+the old woman to hear.
+
+"Let her earn her meal around the stables," said the Prince.  A sudden
+light dawned on him.  Here was a means, at least, of trying to make use
+of Ali Partab.  "Go--do thy sweeping!" he commanded, and the hag
+slunk off.
+
+For ten minutes longer, Jaimihr sat still and flicked at the stone
+column with his whip,--then he sent for his master of the horse,
+whose mistaken sense of loyalty had been the direct cause of Ali
+Partab's capture.  He had acted instantly when the fat Hindoo brought
+him word, and he had expected to be praised for quick decision and
+rewarded;  he was plainly in high dudgeon as he swaggered out of a dark
+door near the stables and advanced sulkily toward his master.
+
+"Remove the prisoner from that cell, taking great care that the hag
+yonder sees what you do--yes, that hag--the new one;  she is a spy.
+Bring the prisoner in to me, where I will talk with him;  afterward
+place him in a different cell--put him where we kept the bear that
+died--there is a dark comer beside it, where a man might hide;  hide
+a man there when it grows dark.  And give the hag access.  Say nothing
+to her;  let her come and go as she will;  watch, and listen."
+
+Without another word, the Prince got up and shuffled in his decorated
+slippers to a door at one end of the cloister.  Five minutes later Ali
+Partab--high-chinned, but looking miserable--was led between two
+men through the same door, while the old woman went on very
+ostentatiously with her sweeping about the yard.  She even turned her
+back, to prove how little she was interested.
+
+Ali Partab was hustled forward into a high-ceilinged room, whose light
+came filtered through a scrollwork mesh of chiselled stone where the
+wall and ceiling joined.  There were no windows, but six doors opened
+from it, and every one of them was barred, as though they opened into
+treasure-vaults.  The Prince sat restlessly in a high, carved wooden
+chair;  there was no other furniture at all, and Ali Partab was left
+standing between his guards.  The Prince drew a pistol from inside his
+clothing.
+
+"Leave us alone!" he ordered;  and the guards went out, closing the
+door behind them.
+
+"I gave no orders for your capture," said Jaimihr, with a smile.
+
+"Then, let me go," grinned Ali Partab.
+
+"First, I must be informed on certain matters."
+
+Ali Partab still grinned, but the muscles of his face changed their
+position slightly, and it took no expert in physiognomy to read that
+questions he would answer must be very tactfully asked.
+
+"Ask on!"
+
+"You are Mahommed Gunga's man?"
+
+"Yes. It is an honorable service."
+
+"Did he order you to stay here?"
+
+"Here--in this palace? Allah forbid!"
+
+"Did he order you to stay in Howrah?"
+
+"He gave me certain orders.  I obeyed them until your men invited swift
+death for themselves and you by interfering with me!"
+
+"What were the orders?"
+
+Ali Partab grinned again--this time insolently.
+
+"To make sure that the Jaimihr-sahib did not make away with the
+treasure of his brother Howrah!" he answered.
+
+"If you were released now what would you proceed to do?"
+
+"To obey my orders."
+
+Jaimihr changed his tactics and assumed the frequently successful legal
+line of pretending to know far more than he really did.
+
+"I am told by one who overheard you speak that you were to take the
+missionary and his daughter to Alwa's place.  How much is my brother
+Howrah paying for Mahommed Gunga's services in this matter?  It is well
+known that he and Alwa between them could call out all the Rangars in
+the district for whichever side they chose.  Since they are not on my
+side, they must be for Howrah.  How much does he pay?  I might offer
+more."
+
+"I know not," said Ali Partab, perfectly ready to admit anything that
+was not true.
+
+"It is true, then, that Howrah has designs on the missionary's
+daughter?  Alwa is to keep her prisoner until the great blow is struck,
+and Howrah dare take possession of her?"
+
+"That is not my business," answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man
+who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it.  Jaimihr
+began to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle.
+
+"Where is Mahommed Gunga?"
+
+"I know not."
+
+"At Alwa's place?"
+
+"Am I God that I should know where any man is whom I cannot see?"
+
+"Oh!  So he is at Alwa's, eh?"  That overdose of opium had rendered
+Jaimihr's brain very dull indeed;  he considered himself clever, and
+overlooked the fact that Ali Partab would be almost surely lying to
+him.  In India men never tell the truth to chance-met strangers or to
+their enemies;  the truth is a valuable thing, to be shared cautiously
+among friends.
+
+"If Mahommed Gunga is at Alwa's," reasoned Jaimihr, "then he is much
+too close at hand to take any chances with.  I must keep this man close
+confined."  He raised his voice in a high-pitched command, and the
+guards opened the door instantly;  at a sign from the Prince they
+seized Ali Partab by the wrists.
+
+"I will send a message to Mahommed Gunga for thee," said Jaimihr.  "On
+his answer will depend your release or otherwise."  He nodded.  The
+guards took their prisoner out between them--led him past the
+wrinkled old woman in the courtyard--and halted him in a far corner,
+where an evil-smelling cage of a place stood open to receive him.  A
+moment later, in order to make sure, the master of the horse sent for
+the old woman and made her sweep out the cell a little;  then he drove
+her away with a fierce injunction not to let herself be caught anywhere
+near the cell again unless ordered.  Following the line of eastern
+reasoning, had he not given that order he would not have known what her
+object could be should she make her way toward the cell;  but now, if
+she risked his wrath by disobeying, he would know beyond the least
+shadow of a doubt that she had a message to deliver to the prisoner--
+the man who was hidden in the dark corner need entertain no hope of
+keeping the secret to himself for purposes of sale or blackmail!
+
+They trust each other wonderfully--with an almost childlike
+confidence--in a household such as Jaimihr's!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+    Ho! I am king! All lesser fry
+            Must cringe, and crawl, and cry to me,
+    And none have any rights but I,--
+            Except the right to lie to me.
+
+JAIMIHR was not the only man who would have dearly liked to
+know of the whereabouts of Mahommed Gunga.  It had been reported to
+Maharajah Howrah, by his spies, that the redoubtable ex-Risaldar of
+horse had visited his relatives in Howrah City, and, though he had not
+been able to ascertain a word of what had passed, he was none the less
+anxious.
+
+He knew, of course--for every soul in Howrah knew--that Jaimihr
+was plotting for the throne.  He knew, too, that the priests of
+Siva, who with himself were joint keepers of the wickedly won,
+tax-swollen treasure, had sounded Jaimihr;  they had tentatively hinted
+that they might espouse his cause, provided that an equitable division
+of the treasure were arranged beforehand.  The question uppermost in
+Maharajah Howrah's mind was whether the Rangars--the Moslem
+descendants of once Hindoo Rajputs, who formed such a small but
+valuable proportion of the local population--could or could not be
+induced to throw in their lot with him.
+
+No man on the whole tax-ridden countryside believed or considered it as
+a distant possibility that the Rangars would strike for any hand except
+their own;  they were known, on the other hand, to be more or less
+cohesive, and it was considered certain that, whichever way they swung,
+when the priest-pulled string let loose the flood of revolution, they
+would swing all together.  The question, then, was how to win the favor
+of the Rangars.  It was not at all an easy question, for the love lost
+between Hindoos and Mohammedans is less than that between dark-skinned
+men and white--a lot less.
+
+Within two hours of its happening he had been told of the capture of
+Ali Partab;  and he knew--for that was another thing his spies had
+told him--that Ali Partab was Mahommed Gunga's man.  Apparently,
+then, Ali Partab--a prisoner in Jaimihr's palace-yard--was the only
+connecting link between him and the Rangars whom he wished to win over
+to his side.  He was as anxious as any to help overwhelm the British,
+but he naturally wished to come out of the turmoil high and dry
+himself, and he was, therefore, ready to consider the protection of
+individual British subjects if that would please the men whom he wanted
+for his friends.
+
+Mahommed Gunga was known to have carried letters for the missionaries.
+He was known to have engaged a new servant when he rode away from
+Howrah and to have left his trusted man behind.  Miss McClean was known
+to have conversed with the retainer, immediately after which the man
+had been seized and carried off by Jaimihr's men.  Jaimihr was known to
+have placed watchers round the mission house and--once--to have
+killed a man in Miss McClean's defense.  The deduction was not too
+far-fetched that the retainer had been left as a protection against
+Jaimihr, and consequently that the Rangars, at the behest of Mahommed
+Gunga, had decided--on at least the white girl's safety.
+
+Therefore, he argued, if he now proceeded to protect the McCleans, he
+would, at all events, not incur the Rangars' enmity.
+
+It was a serious decision that he had to make, for, for one thing, he
+dared not yet make any move likely to incite his strongly supported
+brother to open rebellion;  he dared not, therefore, interfere at
+present with the watchers near the mission house.  To openly befriend
+the Christian priests would be to set the whole Hindoo population
+against himself, for it had been mainly against suttee and its kindred
+horrors that the missionaries had bent all their energy.
+
+The great palace of Howrah was ahum.  Elephants with painted tusks, and
+loaded to the groaning-point under howdahs decked with jewels and
+gold-leaf, came and went through the carved entrance-gates.
+Occasionally camels, loaded too until their legs all but buckled
+underneath them, strutted with their weird, mixed air of foolishness
+and dignity, to be disburdened of great cases that eight men could
+scarcely lift;  on the outside the cases were marked "Hardware," but a
+horde of armed and waiting malcontents scattered about the countryside
+could have given a more detailed and accurate guess at what was in them.
+
+Men came and went--men almost of all castes and many nationalities.
+Priests--not all of them fat, but every single one fat-smiling--
+sunned themselves, or waited in the shade until they could have
+audience;  no priest of any Hindoo temple had to wait long to be
+admitted to that Rajah's presence, and there was an everlasting chain
+of them, each with his axe to grind, coming and going by day and night.
+
+Color rioted in the blazing sun and deep, dark shadows lurked in all
+the thousand places where the sun could never penetrate.  It was India
+in essence--noise and blaze and flouted splendor, with a back-ground
+and underground of mystery.  Any but the purblind British could have
+told at half a glance, merely by the attitude of Howrah's armed sepoys,
+that a concerted movement of some kind was afoot--that there was a
+tight-held thread of plan running through the whole confusion;  but no
+man--not even a native--could have guessed what secret plotting
+might be going on within the acres of the straggling palace.
+
+From the courtyard there was no least hint obtainable even of the
+building's size;  its shape could only have been marked down from a
+bird's-eye view aloft.  Even the roof was so uneven, and so subdivided
+by traced and deep-carved walls and ramparts, that a sentry posted at
+one end could not have seen the next man to him, perhaps some twenty
+feet away.  Building had been piled on building--other buildings had
+been added end to end and crisscrosswise--and each extension had been
+walled in as new centuries saw new additions, until the many acres were
+a maze of bricks and stone and fountain-decorated gardens that no
+lifelong palace denizen could have learned to know in their entirety.
+
+Within--one story up above the courtyard din--in a spacious, richly
+decorated room that gave on to a gorgeous roof-garden, the Maharajah
+sat and let himself be fanned by women, who were purchasable for
+perhaps a tenth of what any of the fans had cost.  Another woman,
+younger than the rest, played wild minor music to him on an instrument
+not much unlike a flute;  they were melancholy notes--beautiful--
+but sad enough to sow pessimism's seed in any one who listened.
+
+His divan--carved, inlaid, and gilded--faced the wide, awning-hung
+opening to the garden.  Round him on all three sides was a carved stone
+screen through whose interstices came rustlings and whisperings that
+told of the hidden life which sees and is not seen.  The women with the
+fans and flute were mere court accessories;  the real nerves of Asia--
+the veiled intriguers whom none may know but whose secret power any man
+may feel--could be heard like caged birds crowding on their perches.
+
+Now and then glass bracelets tinkled from behind the screen;  ever and
+again the music stopped, until another girl appeared to play another
+melancholy air.  But the even purring of the fans went on incessantly,
+and the poor, priest-ridden fool who owned it all scowled straight in
+front of him, his brows lined deep in thought.
+
+It is a strange malady, that which seizes men whom fate has elevated to
+a throne.  It acts as certain Indian drugs are known to do--deprives
+its victim of the power to act, but intensifies his ability to think,
+and theorize, and feel.  Howrah, with untold treasure in his vaults,
+with an army of five thousand men, with the authority and backing that
+a hundred generations give, could long for more--could fear the loss
+of what he did have--but could not act.
+
+The priests held him fear-bound.  His brother held him hate-bound.  His
+women--and not even he knew, probably, how many of them languished in
+the secret warren inside those palace walls--kept him restless in a
+net of this-and-that-way-tugged intrigue.  Flattery--and that is by
+far the subtlest poison of the East--blinded him utterly to his own
+best course, and kept him blind.  Luxury unmanned him;  he who had once
+held the straightest spear in western India, and for the love of
+feeling red blood racing in his veins had ridden down panthers on the
+maidan, was flabby now;  deep, dark rings underlined his eyes and the
+once steel-sinewed wrist trembled.
+
+His brother Jaimihr in his place, unsapped yet by decadent delights,
+would have loosed his five thousand on the countryside--butchered any
+who opposed him--pressed into service those who merely lagged--and
+would have plunged India in a welter of blood before the priests had
+time to mature their plans and arrange to keep all the power and
+plunder to themselves.  But Jaimihr had to stalk lesser game and
+content himself with pricking at the ever-growing hate that gradually
+rendered the Maharajah decisionless and sorry only for himself.
+
+A first glimpse at Howrah, particularly in the shaded room, showed a
+handsome man, black-bearded, lean, and lithe;  a second look, undazzled
+by his jewelry or by the studied magnificence of each apparently
+unstudied movement, betrayed a man whose lightest word was law, but
+who feared to give the word.  Where muscles had been were unfilled
+folds of skin that shook;  where a firm if selfish mouth had once
+smiled merrily beneath a pointed black mustache, a mouth still smiled,
+but meanly;  the selfishness was there, but the firmness had faded.
+
+His eyes, though, were his most marked feature.  They were hungry eyes,
+pathetic as a caged beast's and as savage.  No one could see them
+without pitying him, and no man in his senses would have accepted their
+owner's word on any point at all.  A man looks as he did when the fire
+of a burning velt has circled him and there is no way out.  There was
+fear behind them, and the look of restless search for safety that is
+nowhere.
+
+In one of the many-columned courtyards of the palace was a chained, mad
+elephant whose duty was to kneel on the Rajah's captive enemies.  In
+another courtyard was a big, square tank with a weedy, slippery stone
+ramp at one end;  in the tank were alligators;  down the ramp other of
+the Rajah's enemies, tight-bound, would scream and struggle and slide
+from time to time.  But they were only little enemies who died in that
+way; the greater ones, who had power or influence, lived on and
+plotted, because the owner of the execution beasts was afraid to put
+them to their use.
+
+Below, in damp, unlit dungeons, there were silken cords suspended from
+stone ceilings; their ends were noosed, and the nooses hung ten feet
+above the floor;  those told only, though, of the fate of women who had
+schemed unwisely--favorites of a week, perhaps, who had dared to
+sulk, listeners through screens who had forgotten to forget.  No men
+died ever by the silken cord, and no tales ever reached the outside
+world of who did die down in the echoing brick cellars;  there was a
+path that led underground to the alligator tank and a trap-door that
+opened just above the water edge.  Night, and the fungus-fouled long
+jaws, and slimy, weed-filled water--the creak of rusty hinges--a
+splash--the bang of a falling trap--a swirl in the moonlit water,
+and ring after heavy, widening ring that lapped at last against the
+stone would write conclusion to a tragedy.  There would be no record
+kept.
+
+Howrah was childless.  That, of all the hell-sent troubles that beset
+him, was the worst.  That alone was worse than the hoarded treasure
+whose secret he and his brother and the priests of Siva shared.  Only
+in India could it happen that a line of Rajahs, drag-net-armed--
+oblivious to the duties of a king and greedy only of the royal right to
+tax--could pile up, century by century, a hoard of gold an jewels--
+to be looked at.  The secret of that treasure made the throne worth
+plotting for--gave the priests, who shared the secret, more than nine
+tenths of their power for blackmail, pressure, and intrigue--and
+grew, like a cancer, into each succeeding Rajah's mind until, from a
+man with a soul inside him he became in turn a heartless, fear ridden
+miser.
+
+Any childless king is liable to feel the insolent expectancy betrayed
+by the heir apparent.  But Jaimihr--who had no sons either--was an
+heir who understood all of the Indian arts whereby a man of brain may
+hasten the succession.  Worry, artfully stirred up, is the greatest
+weapon of them all, and never a day passed but some cleverly concocted
+tale would reach the Rajah, calculated to set his guessing faculties at
+work.
+
+Either of the brothers, when he happened to be thirsty, would call his
+least-trusted counsellor to drink first from the jewelled cup, and
+would watch the man afterward for at least ten minutes before daring to
+slake his thirst;  but Jaimihr had the moral advantage of an aspirant;
+Howrah, on the defensive, wilted under the nibbling necessity for
+wakefulness, while Jaimihr grinned.
+
+What were five thousand drilled, armed men to a king who feared to use
+them?  Of what use was a waiting countryside, armed if not drilled, if
+he was not sure that his brother had not won every man's allegiance?
+Being Hindoo, priest-reared, priest-fooled, and priest-flattered, he
+knew, or thought he knew, to an anna the value he might set on Hindoo
+loyalty or on the loyalty of any man who did not stand to gain in
+pocket by remaining true; and, as many another fear-sick tyrant has
+begun to do, he turned, in his mind at least, to men of another creed
+--which in India means of another race, practically-wondering whether
+he could not make use of them against his own.
+
+Like every other Rajah of his line, he longed to have sole control of
+that wonderful treasure that had eaten out his very manhood.  Miser
+though he was,  he was prepared at least to bargain with outsiders with
+the promise of a portion of it, if that would give him possession of it
+all.  He had learned from the priests who took such full advantage of
+him an absolute contempt for Mohammedans;  and their teaching, as well
+as his own trend of character, made him quite indifferent to promises
+he might make, for the sake of diplomacy, to men of another creed.  It
+began to be obvious to him that he would lose nothing by courting the
+favor of the Rangars, and of Alwa in particular, and that he might win
+security by coaxing them to take his part.  Of one thing he was
+certain:  the Rangars would do anything at all, if by doing it they
+could harm the Hindoo priests.
+
+But, being of the East Eastern, and at that Hindoo, he could not have
+brought himself to make overtures direct and go straight to the real
+issue.  He had to feel his way gingerly.  The thousand horses in his
+stables, he reflected, would mount a thousand of the Rangars and place
+at his disposal a regiment of cavalry which would be difficult to beat;
+but a thousand mounted Mohammedans might be a worse thorn in his side
+than even his brother or the priests.  He decided to write to Alwa, but
+to open negotiations with a very thin and delicately inserted wedge.
+
+He could write.  The priests had overlooked that opportunity, and had
+taught him in his boyhood;  in that one thing he was their equal.  But
+the other things that they had taught him, too, offset his penmanship.
+He was too proud to write--too lazy, too enamoured of his dignity.
+He called a court official, and the man sat very humbly at his feet--
+listened meekly to the stern command to secrecy--and took the letter
+from dictation.
+
+Alwa was informed, quite briefly, that in view of certain happenings in
+Howrah City His Highness the Maharajah had considered it expedient to
+set a guard over the Christian missionaries in the city, for their
+safety.  The accompanying horse was a gift to the Alwa-sahib.  The
+Alwa-sahib himself would be a welcome guest whenever he might care to
+come.
+
+The document was placed in a silver tube and scaled.  Within the space
+of half an hour a horseman was kicking up the desert dust, riding as
+though he carried news of life-and-death importance, and with another
+man and a led horse galloping behind him.  Five minutes after the man
+had started, in a cell below the temple, of Siva, the court official
+who had taken down the letter was repeating it word for word to a
+congeries of priests.  And one hour later still, in a room up near the
+roof of Jaimihr's palace, one of the priests--panting from having
+come so fast--was asking the Rajah's brother what he thought about it.
+
+"Did he say nothing--," asked Jaimihr.
+
+"Nothing, sahib."
+
+The priest watched him eagerly;  he would have to bear back to the
+other priests an exact account of the Prince's every word, and
+movement, and expression.
+
+"Then I, too, say nothing!" answered Jaimihr.
+
+"But to the priests of Siva, who are waiting, sahib?"
+
+"Tell them I said nothing."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+    Eyes in the dark, awake and keen,
+            See and may not themselves be seen;
+    But--and this is the tale I tell--
+            What if the dark have eyes as well?
+
+BESIDE the reeking bear's cage in which Ali Partab stood and swore was
+a dark, low corner space in which at one time and another sacks and
+useless impedimenta had been tossed, to become rat-eaten and decayed.
+In among all the rubbish, cross-legged like the idol of the underworld,
+a nearly naked Hindoo sat, prick-eared.  He was quite invisible long
+before the sun went down, for that was the dingiest corner of the yard;
+when twilight came, he could not have been seen from a dozen feet away.
+
+Joanna, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping, in the courtyard, with her back
+very nearly always turned toward the cage, appeared to take no notice
+of the falling darkness;  unlike the other menials, who hurried to
+their rest and evening meal, she went on working, accomplishing very
+little but seeming to be very much in earnest about it all.  Very, very
+gradually she drew nearer to the cage.  When night fell, she was within
+ten feet of it.  A few lamps were lit then, here and there over
+doorways, but nobody appeared to linger in the courtyard;  no footfalls
+resounded;  nothing but the neigh of stabled horses and the chatter
+around the big, flat supper pans broke on the evening quiet.
+
+Joanna drew nearer.  Ali Partab came forward to the cage bars, but said
+nothing;  it was very dark inside the cage, and even the sharp-eyed old
+woman could not possibly have seen his gestures;  when he stood,
+tight-pressed, against the bars she might have made out his dark shape
+dimly, but unless he chose to speak no signal could possibly have
+passed from him to her.  He said nothing, though, and she-still
+sweeping, with her back toward him--passed by the cage, and stooped
+to scratch at some hard-caked dirt or other close to the rubbish hole
+where the Hindoo waited.  Still scratching, still working with her twig
+broom, still with her back toward the rubbish hole, she approached
+until the darkest shadow swallowed her.
+
+There were two in the dark then--she and the man who listened.  He,
+motionless as stone, had watched her;  peering outward at the lesser
+darkness, he lost sight of her for a second as she backed into the
+deepest shadow unexpectedly.  Before he could become accustomed to the
+altered focus and the deeper black, her beady eyes picked out the
+whites of his.  Before he could move she was on him--at his throat,
+tearing it with thin, steel fingers.  Before he could utter a sound, or
+move, she had drawn a short knife from her clothing and had driven it
+to the hilt below his ear.  He dropped without a gurgle, and without a
+sound she gathered up her broom again and swept her way back past the
+cage-bars, where Ali Partab waited.
+
+"Was any there?" he whispered.
+
+"There was one."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"Good!  Now will the reward be three mohurs instead of two!"
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"These pigs have taken all the money from me.  Now we must wait until
+Mahommed Gunga-sahib comes.  His word is pledged."
+
+"He said two mohurs."
+
+"I--Ali Partab--pledge his word for three."
+
+"And who art thou?  The bear in the cage said:  'I will eat thee if I
+get outside!"'
+
+"Mother of corruption!  Listen!  Alwa must know!  Canst thou escape
+from here?  Canst thou reach the Alwa-sahib?"
+
+"If the price were four mohurs, there might be many things that I could
+do."
+
+"The price is three!  I have spoken!"
+
+"'I would eat honey were I outside!' said the bear."
+
+"Hag!  The bear died in the cage, and they sold his pelt for how much?
+Alive, he had been worth three mohurs, but he died while they bargained
+for him!--Quick!"
+
+"I am black, sahib, and the night is black.  I am old, and none would
+believe me active.  They watch the gates, but the bats fly in and out."
+
+"Find out, then, what has happened to my horses, left at the
+caravansary;   give that information to the Alwa-sahib.  Tell the
+Miss-sahib at the mission where I am.  Tell her whither I have sent
+thee.  Tell the Alwa-sahib that a Rangar--by name Ali Partab--sworn
+follower of the prophet, and servant of the Risaldar Mahommed Gunga--
+is in need and asks his instant aid.  Say also to the Alwa-sahib that
+it may be well to rescue the Miss-sahib first, before he looks for me,
+but of that matter I am no judge, being imprisoned and unable to
+ascertain the truth.  Hast thou understood?"
+
+"And all that for three mohurs?"
+
+"Nay.  The price is now two mohurs again.  It will be one unless--"
+
+"Three, sahib!  It was three!"
+
+"Then run!  Hasten!"
+
+The shadows swallowed her again.  She crept where they were darkest--
+lay still once, breathless, while a man walked almost over her--
+reached the outer wall, and felt her way along it until she reached low
+eaves that reached down like a jagged saw from utter blackness.  Less
+than a minute later she was crawling monkeywise along a roof;  before
+another five had passed she had dropped on all fours in the dust of the
+outer road and was running like a black ghost--head down--an end of
+her loin-cloth between her teeth--one arm held tight to her side and
+the other crooked outward, swinging--striding, panting, boring
+through the blackness.
+
+She wasted little time at the caravansary.  The gate was shut and a
+sleepy watchman cursed her for breaking into his revery.
+
+"Horses?  Belonging to a Rangar?  Fool!  Does not the Maharajah-sahib
+impound all horses left ownerless?  Ask them back of him that took
+them!  Go, night-owl!  Go ask him!"
+
+Almost as quickly as a native pony could have eaten up the distance,
+she dropped panting on the door-step of the little mission house.  She
+was panting now from fright as well as sheer exhaustion.  There were
+watchers--two sets of them.  One man stood, with his back turned
+within ten paces of her, and another--less than two yards away from
+him--stood, turned half sideways, looking up the street and whistling
+to himself.  There was not a corner or an angle of the little place
+that was not guarded.
+
+She had tried the back door first, but that was locked, and she had
+rapped on it gently until she remembered that of evenings the
+missionary and his daughter occupied the front room always and that
+they would not have heard her had she hammered.  She tapped now, very
+gently, with her fingers on the lower panel of the door, quaking and
+trembling in every limb, but taking care to make her little noise
+unevenly, in a way that would be certain to attract attention inside.
+Tap-tap-tap.  Pause.  Tap-tap.  Pause.  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.  Pause.
+Tap-tap.  The door opened suddenly.  Both watchers turned and gazed
+straight into the lamplight that streamed out past the tall form of
+Duncan McClean.  He stared at them and they stared back again.  Joanna
+slunk into the deep shadow at one side of the steps.
+
+"Is it necessary for you to annoy me by rapping on my door as well as
+by spying on me?" asked the missionary in a tone of weary remonstrance.
+
+The guards laughed and turned their backs with added insolence.  In
+that second Joanna shot like a black spirit of the night straight past
+the missionary's legs and collapsed in a bundle on the floor behind him.
+
+"Shut the door, sahib!" she hissed at him.  "Quick! Shut the door!"
+
+He shut it and bolted it, half recognizing something in the voice or
+else guided by instinct.
+
+"Joanna!" he exclaimed, holding up a lamp above her.  "You, Joanna!"
+
+At the name, Rosemary McClean came running out--looked for an instant
+--and then knelt by the old woman.
+
+"Father, bring some water, please, quickly!"
+
+The missionary went in search of a water-jar, and Rosemary McClean bent
+down above the ancient, shrivelled, sorry-looking mummy of a woman--
+drew the wrinkled head into her lap--stroked the drawn face--and
+wept over her.  The spent, age-weakened, dried-out widow had fainted;
+there was no wakened self-consciousness of black and white to
+interfere.  This was a friend--one lone friend of her own sex amid
+all the waste of smouldering hate--some one surely to be wept over
+and made much of and caressed.  The poor old hag recovered
+consciousness with her head pillowed on a European lap, and Duncan
+McClean--no stickler for convention and no believer in a line too
+tightly drawn--saw fit to remonstrate as he laid the jar of water
+down beside them.
+
+"Why," she answered, looking up at him, "father, I'd have kissed a dog
+that got lost and came back again like this!"
+
+They picked her up between them, after they had let her drink, and
+carried her between them to the long, low sitting-room, where she told
+them--after considerable make-believe of being more spent than she
+really was--after about a tenth "sip" at the brandy flask and when
+another had been laughingly refused--all about Ali Partab and what
+his orders to her were.
+
+"I wonder what it all can mean?"  McClean sat back and tried to
+summarize his experiences of months and fit them into what Joanna said.
+
+"What does that mean?" asked his daughter, leaning forward.  She was
+staring at Joanna's forearm and from that to a dull-red patch on the
+woman's loin-cloth.  Joanna answered nothing.
+
+"Are you wounded, Joanna?  Are you sure?  That's blood!  Look here,
+father!"
+
+He agreed that it was blood.  It was dry and it came off her forearm in
+little flakes when he rubbed it.  But not a word could they coax out of
+Joanna to explain it, until Rosemary--drawing the old woman to her--
+espied the handle of her knife projecting by an inch above the
+waist-fold of her cloth.  Too late Joanna tried to hide it.  Rosemary
+held her and drew it out.  Beyond any shadow of a doubt, there was
+blood on the blade still, and on the wooden hilt, and caked in the
+clumsy joint between the hilt and blade.
+
+"'Joanna--have you killed any one?"
+
+Joanna shook her head.
+
+"Tell me the truth, Joanna.  Whose blood is that?"
+
+"A dog's, Miss-sahib.  A street dog attacked me as I ran hither."
+
+"I wish I could believe it!"
+
+"I too!" said her father, and he took Joanna to one side and
+cross-examined her.  But he could get no admission from her--nothing
+but the same statement, with added details each time he made her tell
+it, that she had killed a dog.
+
+They fed her, and she ate like a hyena.  No caste prejudices or
+forbidden foods troubled her;  she ate whatever came her way, Hindoo
+food, or Mohammedan, or Christian,--and reached for more--and
+finished, as hyenas finish, by breaking bones to get the marrow out.
+At midnight they left her, curled dogwise on a mat in the hall, to
+sleep; and at dawn, when they came to wake her, she was gone again--
+gone utterly, without a trace or sign of explanation.  The doors, both
+front and back, were locked.
+
+It was two days later when they found a hole torn through the thatch,
+through which she had escaped;  and though they searched the house from
+cellar up to roof, and turned all their small possessions over, they
+could not find (and they were utterly glad of it) that she had stolen
+anything.
+
+"Thank God for that!" said the missionary.
+
+"I've finished disbelieving in Joanna!" said his daughter with a
+grimace that went always with irrevocable decision.
+
+"I've come to the conclusion," said McClean, "that there are more than
+just Joanna to be trusted.  There is Ali Partab, and--who knows how
+many?"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+    Against all fear; against the weight of what,
+    For lack of worse name, men miscall the Law;
+    Against the Tyranny of Creed; against the hot,
+    Foul Greed of Priest, and Superstition's Maw;
+    Against all man-made Shackles, and a man-made Hell--
+    Alone--At last--Unaided--
+            I REBEL!
+
+No single, individual circumstance, but a chain of happenings in very
+quick succession, brought about a climax, forcing the hand of Howrah
+and his brother and for the moment drawing the McCleans, father and
+daughter, into the toothed wheel of Indian action.  As usual in India,
+the usual brought about the unexpected, and the unexpected fitted
+strangely into the complex, mysteriously worked-out whole.
+
+Two days after Joanna left the mission house, through a hole made in
+the thatch, the spirit of revolt took hold of Rosemary McClean again.
+The stuffy, narrow quarters--the insolent, doubled, unexplained, but
+very obvious, guard that lounged outside--the sense of rank injustice
+and helplessness--the weird feeling of impending horror added onto
+stale-grown ghastliness--youth, chafing at the lack of liberty--
+stirred her to action.
+
+Without a word to her father, who was writing reports that seemed
+endless at the little desk by the shaded window, she left the house--
+drew with a physical effort on all her reserve of strength and health
+--faced the scorching afternoon wind, as though it were a foe that
+could shrink away before her courage, and walked, since she had no pony
+now, in any direction in which chance or her momentary whim might care
+to lead her.
+
+"I won't cry again--and I won't submit--and I'll see what happens!"
+she told herself;  and the four who followed her at a
+none-too-respectful distance--two of the Maharajah's men in uniform
+and two shabby-looking ruffians of Jaimihr's--grinned as they scented
+action.  Like their masters they bore no love for one another;  they
+were there now, in fact, as much to watch one another as the
+missionaries;  they detected the possibility of an excuse to be at one
+another's throats, and gloated as they saw two messengers, one of
+either side, run off in a hurry to inform the rival camps.
+
+It was neither plan nor conscious selection that led Rosemary McClean
+toward the far end of the maidan, where the sluggish, narrow, winding
+Howrah River sucked slimily beside the burning ghats.  When she
+realized where her footsteps were leading her she would have turned in
+horror and retreated, for even a legitimately roasting corpse that died
+before the Hindoo priests had opportunity to introduce it to the flames
+is no sight for eyes that are civilized.
+
+But, when she turned her head, the sight of her hurrying escort
+perspiring in her wake--(few natives like the heat and wind one whit
+better than their conquerors)--filled her with an unexpected,
+probably unjustifiable, determination not to let them see her flinch at
+any kind of horror.  That was the spirit of sahibdom that is not always
+quite commendable;  it is the spirit that takes Anglo-Saxon women to
+the seething, stenching plains and holds them there high-chinned to
+stiffen their men-folk by courageous example, but it leads, too, to
+things not quite so womanly and good.
+
+"I'll show them!" muttered Rosemary McClean, wiping the blown dust from
+her eyes and facing the wind again that now began to carry with it the
+unspread taint--the awful, sickening, soul-revolting smell
+inseparable from Hindoo funeral rites.  There were three pyres,
+low-smouldering, close by the river-bank, and men stirred with long
+poles among the ashes to make sure that the incineration started the
+evening before should be complete;  there was one pyre that looked as
+though it had been lit long after dawn--another newly lit--and
+there were two pyres building.
+
+It was those two new ones that held her attention, and finally decided
+her to hold her course.  She wanted to make sure.  The smell of burning
+--the unoutlined, only guessed-at ghastliness--would probably have
+killed her courage yet, before she came close enough to really see;
+but the suspicion of a greater horror drew her on, as snakes are said
+to draw birds on, by merely being snakes, and with red-rimmed eyes
+smarting from smoke as well as wind she pressed forward.
+
+The ghats were deserted-looking, for the funeral rites of those who
+burned were practically over until the time should come to scatter
+ashes on the river-surface;  only a few attendants hovered close to the
+fires to prod them and occasionally throw on extra logs.  Only round
+the two new pyres not yet quite finished was anything approaching a
+crowd assembled, and there a priest was officiously directing the
+laying of the logs.  It was the manner of their laying and the careful
+building of a scaffold on each side of either pyre that held Rosemary
+McClean's attention--called all the rebellious womanhood within her
+to interfere--and drew her nearer.
+
+Soon the priest noticed her--a cotton-skirted wraith amid the smoke
+--and shouted to the guards behind;  one of them answered, laughing
+coarsely, and Rosemary understood enough of the dialect he used to grit
+her teeth with shame and anger.  The men left off building, and,
+directed by the priest, came toward her in a ragged line to cut her off
+from closer approach;  she stood, then--examined the new pyres as
+carefully as she could--walked to another vantage-point and viewed
+them sideways--then turned her back.
+
+"Oh, the brutes!" she ejaculated.  There were tears in her voice, as
+well as helpless anger.  "There is not one devil, there are a million,
+and they all live here!"
+
+She looked back again once, trembling with an overmastering hate,
+directed less at the priest who grinned back at her than at the
+loathsome rite he represented.  In two actual words, she cursed him.
+It was the first time she had ever cursed anybody in her life, and the
+wickedness of doing it swept over her as a relief.  She revelled in it.
+She was glad she had cursed him.  Her little, light, graceful body
+that had been quivering grew calm again, and she turned to hurry home
+with an unexpected sense of having pulled some lever in the mechanism
+that would bring about results.  She neither knew nor cared what
+results, nor how they were to happen;  she felt that that curse of
+hers, her first, had landed on the mark!
+
+But she had come further than she thought.  Distance, hot wind, and
+emotion had exhausted her far more, too, than she had had time to
+realize.  Before a mile of the homeward journey had been accomplished,
+she was forced against her stubborn Scots will to sit down on a big
+stone by the roadside and rest, while the four that followed came up
+close, grinning and passing remarks in anything but under-tones.  If
+the meaning of the words escaped her, their gestures left little to be
+misunderstood.  A crowd of stragglers drew together near the four--
+laughed with them--took sides in the coarse-worded argument about
+Jaimihr's known ambition--and shamed her into pressing on homeward.
+
+But she was forced to rest again, and then again.  Physical sickness
+prevented her from obeying instinct, reason, will, that all three urged
+her on.  No false pride now told her to dare the insolence of the
+guards;  nothing appealed to her but the desire to hurry, hurry, hurry,
+and do whatever should appear to need doing when she reached the
+mission house.  She had no plan in her head.  She only knew that she
+had cursed a man, and that the curse was potent.  But her feet dragged,
+and her vitality died down.  It was sundown when she reached the
+mission house, and she could hear the rising, falling, intermittent din
+of drums before she saw her father in the doorway.
+
+"Father!"  She ran to him, and he caught her in his arms to save her
+from falling headlong.  "Father, there is going to be a suttee tonight!
+Hear the drums, father!  Hear the drums!  It'll be tonight!  That's to
+stop the screams from being heard!  Listen to them, father--two
+suttees, side by side--I've seen the pyres and the scaffolds--do
+they jump into the flames, father, from the scaffolds?--tell me!
+No-don't tell me--I won't listen!  Take me away from here--away--
+away--away--take me away, d'you hear!"
+
+He carried her inside, and laid her on the caned couch in the
+living-room, looking like a great, big, helpless, gray-haired baby, as
+any man is prone to do when he has hysteria to deal with in a woman
+whom he loves.
+
+"I cursed a man, father!  I cursed a man!  I did!  I said 'Damn you!'
+I'm glad!"
+
+"Don't, little girl--don't!  Lassie mine, don't!  Never mind what you
+saw or what you said--be calm now--there is something we must do;
+we must act;  I have determined we must act.  We must act tonight.  But
+we can't do anything with you in this state."
+
+Slowly, gradually he calmed her--or probably she grew calm, in spite
+of his attentions, for he was too upset himself to exercise much
+soothing sway over anybody else.  At last, though, she fell into a
+fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that
+she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear of
+waking her.
+
+Outside a full moon rose majestically, pure and silvery as peace
+herself, bathing the universe in blessings.  And each month, when the
+full moon rose above the carved dome of Siva's temple, there was a
+ceremony gone through that commemorated cruelty, greed, poisoning,
+throat-slitting, hate, and all the hell-invented infamy that suckles
+always at the breast of stagnant treasure.
+
+Since history has forgotten when, at each full moon, the priests of
+Siva had gone with circumstantial ceremony to view the hoarded wealth
+tied up by jealousy and guarded jealously in Howrah's palace.  With
+them, as the custom that was stronger than a thousand laws dictated,
+went the Maharajah and his brother Jaimihr--joint owners with the
+priests.
+
+There had not been one Maharajah, since the first of that long line,
+who would not have given the lives of ten thousand men for leave to
+broach that treasure;  nor, since the first heir apparent shared the
+secret with the priests and the holder of the throne, had there been
+one prince in line-son-brother-cousin--who would not have drenched
+the throne with his relation's blood with that same purpose.
+
+Heir after heir could have agreed with Maharajah, but the priests had
+stood between.  That treasure was their fulcrum;  the legacy, dictated
+by a dead, misguided hand, intended as a war reserve to stay the throne
+of Howrah in its need, and trebly locked to guard against profligacy,
+had placed the priests of Siva in the position of dictators of Howrah's
+destiny.  A word from them, and a prince would slay his father--only
+to discover that the promises of Siva's priests were something less to
+build on than the hope of loot.  There would be another heir apparent
+to be let into the secret--another man to scheme and hunger for the
+throne--another party to the bloody three-angled intrigue which kept
+the Siva-servers fat and the princes lean.
+
+Past masters of the art by which superstitious ignorance is swayed, the
+priests could swing the allegiance of the mob whichever way they chose
+--even the soldiers, loyal enough to their masters under ordinary
+circumstances, would have rebelled at as much as a hint from holy Siva.
+It was the priests who made it possible for Jaimihr to dare take his
+part in the ceremony;  without them he would not have entered his
+brother's palace-yard unless five thousand men at least were there to
+guard his back--but, if there was danger where the priests were,
+there was safety too.
+
+As the custom was, he rode to the temple of Siva first with a ten-man
+guard;  there, when the priests had finished droning age-old anthems to
+the echoing roof, when his brother, the Maharajah, also with a ten-man
+guard, had joined him, and the two had submitted to the sanctifying
+rites prescribed, eleven priests would walk with them in solemn mummery
+to the palace-entrance--censer-swinging, chanting, blasphemously
+acting duty to their gods and state.
+
+The moon--and that, too, was custom-rested with her lower rim one
+full hand's breadth above the temple dome as viewed from the
+palace-gate, when a gong clanged resonantly, died to silence, music of
+pipes and cymbals broke on the evening quiet, and the strange
+procession started from the temple door, the Maharajah leading.
+
+Generally it passed uninterrupted over the intervening street to the
+palace-entrance, between the ranks of a salaaming, silent crowd, and
+disappeared from view.  This time, though, for the first time in living
+memory, and possibly for the first time in all history, the unforeseen,
+amazing happened.  The procession stopped.  Moon-bathed, between the
+carved posts of the palace-gate, two people blocked the way.
+
+The music ceased.  The sudden silence framed itself against the distant
+thunder of a hundred drums.  The crowd--all heads bowed, as decreed
+--drew in its breath and held it.  A sea of pugrees moved as brown eyes
+looked up surreptitiously--stared--memorized--and then looked
+down again.  There was no precedent for this happening, and even the
+Maharajah and the priests were at a momentary loss--stood waiting,
+staring--and said nothing.
+
+"Maharajah-sahib!--I must interrupt your ceremony.  I must have word
+with you at once!"
+
+It was Duncan McClean, bareheaded, holding his daughter's hand.  They
+had no weapons;  they were messengers of peace, protesting, or so they
+looked.  No longer timid, but resigned to what might happen--they
+held each other's hands, and blocked the way of Siva's votaries--
+Siva's tools--and Siva's ritual.
+
+Jaimihr whispered to his brother--the first time he had dared one
+word to him in person for years--the high priest of the temple
+pressed forward angrily, saying nothing, but trying to combine rage and
+dignity with an attempt to turn the incident to priestly advantage.
+Surely this was a crisis out of which the priests must come triumphant;
+they held all the cards--knew how and when rebellion was timed, and
+could compare, as the principals themselves could not do, Howrah's
+strength with Jaimihr's.  And the priests had the crowd to back them--
+the ignorant, superstitious crowd that can make or dethrone emperors.
+
+But some strange freak of real dignity--curiosity perhaps, or
+possibly occasion--spurred desire to act of his own initiative and
+keep the high priest in his place--impelled the Maharajah in that
+minute.  Men said afterward that Jaimihr had whispered to him advice
+which he knew was barbed because it was his brother whispering, and
+that he promptly did the opposite;  but, whatever the motive, he drew
+himself up in all his jewelled splendor and demanded:  "What do you
+people wish?"
+
+The McCleans were given no time to reply.  The priests did not see fit
+to let the reins of this occasion slip;  the word went out,
+panic-voiced, that sacrilege to Siva was afoot.
+
+"Slay them! Slay them!" yelled the crowd.  "They violate the sacred
+rites!"
+
+There were no Mohammedans among that crowd to take delight in seeing
+Hindoo priests discomfited and Hindoo ritual disturbed.   There came no
+counter-shout.  The crowd did not, as so often happens, turn and rend
+itself;  and yet, though a surge from behind pressed forward, the men
+in front pressed back.
+
+"Slay them!  Slay the sacrilegious foreigners!"  The yell grew louder
+and more widely voiced, but no man in the front ranks moved.
+
+The Maharajah looked from the company of guards that lined the
+palace-steps to the priests and his brother and the crowd--and then
+to the McCleans again.
+
+He remembered Alwa and his Rangars, thought of the messenger whom he
+had sent, remembered that a regiment of lance-armed horsemen would be
+worth a risk or two to win over to his side, and made decision.
+
+"You are in danger," he asserted, using a pronoun not intended to
+convey politeness, but--Eastern of the East--counteracting that by
+courtesy of manner.  "Do you ask my aid?"
+
+"Yes, among other things," Duncan McClean answered him.  "I wish also
+to speak about a Rangar, who I know is held prisoner in a cage in the
+Jaimihr-sahib's palace."
+
+"Speak of that later," answered Howrah.  "Guard!"
+
+He made a sign.  A spoken word might have told the priests too much,
+and have set them busy fore-stalling him.  The guards rushed down the
+steps, seized both McCleans, and half-carried, half-hustled them up the
+palace-steps, through the great carved doors, and presently returned
+without them.
+
+"They are my prisoners," said the Maharajah, turning to the high
+priest.  "We will now proceed."
+
+The crowd was satisfied, at least for the time being.  Well versed in
+the kind of treatment meted out to prisoners, partly informed of what
+was preparing for the British all through India, the crowd never
+doubted for an instant but that grizzly vengeance awaited the
+Christians who had dared to remonstrate against time-honored custom.
+It looked for the moment as though the high priest's word had moved the
+Maharajah to order the arrest, and the high priest realized it.  By
+skilful play and well-used dignity he might contrive to snatch all the
+credit yet.  He ordered;  the pipes and cymbals started up again at
+once;  and, one by one--Maharajah,  Jaimihr, high priest, then royal
+guard, Jaimihr's guard, priest again--the procession wound ahead,
+jewelled and egretted, sabred and spurred, priest-robed, representative
+of all the many cancers eating at the heart of India.
+
+Chanting, clanging, wailing minor dirges to the night, it circled all
+the front projections of the palace, turned where a small door opened
+on a courtyard at one side, entered, and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+    Oh, is it good, my soldier prince and is the wisdom clear,
+    To guard thy front a thousand strong, while ten may take thy rear?
+
+Now, because it was impregnable to almost anything except a
+yet-to-be-invented air-ship, the Alwa-sahib owned a fortress still,
+high-perched on a crag that overlooked a glittering expanse of desert.
+More precious than its bulk in diamonds, a spring of clear, cold water
+from the rock-lined depths of mother earth gushed out through a fissure
+near the Summit, and round that spring had been built, in bygone
+centuries, a battlemented nest to breed and turn out warriors.  Alwa's
+grandfather had come by it through complicated bargaining and
+dowry-contracts, and Alwa now held it as the rallying-point for the
+Rangars thereabout.
+
+But its defensibility was practically all the crag fort had to offer by
+way of attraction.  Down at its foot, where the stream of rushing water
+splashed in a series of cascades to the thirsty, sandy earth, there
+were an acre or two of cultivation--sufficient, in time of peace, to
+support an attenuated garrison and its horses.  But for his revenues
+the Alwa-sahib had to look many a long day's march afield.  Leagues of
+desert lay between him and the nearest farm he owned, and since--more
+in the East than anywhere--a landlord's chief absorption is the
+watching of his rents, it followed that he spent the greater part of
+his existence in the saddle, riding from one widely scattered tenant to
+another.
+
+It was luck or fortuitous circumstance--Fate, he would have called
+it, had he wasted time to give it name--that brought him along a road
+where, many miles from Howrah City, he caught sight of Joanna.
+Needless to say, he took no slightest notice of her.
+
+Dog-weary, parched, sore-footed, she was hurrying along the burning,
+sandy trail that led in the direction of Alwa's fort.  The trail was
+narrow, and the horsemen whose mounts ambled tirelessly behind Alwa's
+plain-bred Arab pressed on past him, to curse the hag and bid her make
+horse-room for her betters.  She sunk on the sand and begged of them.
+Laughingly, they asked her what a coin would buy in all that arid waste.
+
+"Have the jackals, then, turned tradesman?" they jeered;  but she only
+mumbled, and displayed her swollen tongue, and held her hands in an
+attitude of pitiful supplication.  Then Alwa cantered up--rode past
+--heard one of his men jeering--drew rein and wheeled.
+
+"Give her water!" he commanded.
+
+He sat and watched her while she knelt, face upward, and a Rangar
+poured lukewarm water from a bottle down her tortured throat.  He held
+it high and let the water splash, for fear his dignity might suffer
+should he or the bottle touch her.  Strictly speaking, Rangars have no
+caste, but they retain by instinct and tradition many of the Hindoo
+prejudices.  Alwa himself saw nothing to object to in the man's
+precaution.
+
+"Ask the old crows' meat whither she was running."
+
+"She says she would find the Alwa-sahib."
+
+"Tell her I am he."
+
+Joanna fawned and laid her wrinkled forehead in the dust.
+
+"Get up!" he growled.  "Thy service is dishonor and my ears are deaf to
+it!  Now, speak!  Hast thou a message?  Who is it sends a rat to bring
+me news?"
+
+"Ali Partab."
+
+"Soho!  And who is Ali Partab?  He needs to learn manners.  He has come
+to a stern school for them!"
+
+"Sahib--great one--Prince of swordsmen!--Ali Partab is Mahommed
+Gunga-sahib's man.  He bid me say that he is held a prisoner in a
+bear-cage in Jaimihr's palace and needs aid."
+
+Alwa's black beard dropped onto his chest as he frowned in thought.  He
+had nine men with him.  Jaimihr had by this time, perhaps, as many as
+nine thousand, for no one knew but Jaimihr and the priests how many in
+the district waited to espouse his cause.  The odds seemed about as
+stupendous as any that a man of his word had ever been called upon to
+take.
+
+A moment more, and without consulting any one, he bade one of his men
+dismount.
+
+"Put that hag on thy horse!" he commanded.  "Mount thou behind another!"
+
+The order was obeyed.  Another Rangar took the led horse, and Joanna
+found herself, perched like a monkey on a horse that objected to the
+change of riders, between two troopers whose iron-thewed legs squeezed
+hers into the saddle.
+
+"To Howrah City!" ordered Alwa, starting off at an easy, desert-eating
+amble;  and without a word of comment, but with downward glances at
+their swords and a little back-stiffening which was all of excitement
+that they deigned to show, his men wheeled three and three behind him.
+
+It was no affair of Alwa's that a full moon shone that night--none of
+his arranging that on that one night of the month Jaimihr and his most
+trusted body-guard should go with the priests and the Maharajah to
+inspect the treasure.  Alwa was a soldier, born to take instant
+advantage of chance--sent opportunity;  Jaimihr was a schemer, born
+to indecision and the cunning that seeks underhanded means but
+overlooks the obvious.  Because the streets were full of men whose
+allegiance was doubtful yet, because he himself would be too occupied
+to sit like a spider in a web and watch the intentions of the crowd
+unfold, Jaimihr had turned out every retainer to his name, and had
+scattered them about the city, with orders, if they were needed, to
+rally on a certain point.
+
+He did think that at any minute a disturbance might break out which
+would lead to civil war, and he saw the necessity for watchfulness at
+every point;  but he did not see the rather obvious necessity for
+leaving more than twenty men on guard inside his palace.  Not even the
+thoughtfulness of Siva's priests could have anticipated that ten
+horse-men would be riding out of nowhere, with the spirit in them that
+ignores side issues and leads them only straight to their objective.
+
+Alwa, as a soldier, knew exactly where fresh horses could be borrowed
+while his tired ones rested.  A little way beyond the outskirts of the
+city lived a man who was neither Mohammedan nor Hindoo--a fearful
+man, who took no sides, but paid his taxes, carried on his business,
+and behaved--a Jew, who dealt in horses and in any other animal or
+thing that could be bought to show a profit.
+
+Alwa had an utterly complete contempt for Jews, as was right and proper
+in a Rangar of the blood.  He had not met many of them, and those he
+had had borne away the memory of most outrageous insult gratuitously
+offered and rubbed home.  But this particular Jew was a money-lender on
+occasion, and his rates had proved as reasonable as his acceptance of
+Alwa's unwritten promise had been prompt.  A man who holds his given
+word as sacred as did Alwa respects, in the teeth of custom or
+religion, the man who accepts that word;  so, when the chance had
+offered, Alwa had done the Jew occasional favors and had won his
+gratitude.  He now counted on the Jew for fresh horses.
+
+To reach him, he had to wade the Howrah River, less than a mile from
+where the burning ghats glowed dull crimson against the sky;  the crowd
+around the ghats was the first intimation he received that the streets
+might prove less densely thronged than usual.  It was the Jew,
+beard-scrabbling and fidgeting among his horses, who reminded him that
+when the full moon shone most of the populace, and most of Jaimihr's
+and Howrah's guards, would be occupied near Siva's temple and the
+palace.
+
+He left his own horses, groomed again, and gorging their fill of good,
+clean grain in the Jew's ramshackle stable place.  Joanna he turned
+loose, to sneak into any rat-hole that she chose.  Then, with their
+swords drawn--for if trouble came it would be certain to come
+suddenly--he and his nine made a wide-ringed circuit of the city, to a
+point where the main street passing Jaimihr's palace ended in a rune of
+wind-piled desert sand.  From the moment when they reached that point
+they did not waste a second;  action trod on the heel of thought and
+thought flashed fast as summer lightning.
+
+They lit through the deserted street, troubling for speed, not silence;
+the few whom they passed had no time to determine who they were, and
+no one followed them.  A few frightened night-wanderers ran at sight of
+them, hiding down side streets, but when they brought up at last
+outside Jaimihr's palace-gate they had so far escaped recognition.  And
+that meant that no one would carry word to Jaimihr or his men.
+
+It was death-dark outside the bronze-hinged double gate;  only a dim
+lamp hung above from chains, to show how dark it was, and the moon--
+cut off by trees and houses on a bluff of rising ground--lent nothing
+to the gloom.
+
+"Open!  The jaimihr-sahib comes!" shouted Alwa and one of his horsemen
+legged up close beside the gate.
+
+Some one moved inside, for his footsteps could be heard;  whoever he
+was appeared to listen cautiously.
+
+"Open for the Jaimihr-sahib!" repeated Alwa.
+
+Evidently that was not the usual command, or otherwise the gates would
+have swung open on the instant.  Instead, one gate moved inward by a
+fraction of a foot, and a pureed head peered cautiously between the
+gap.  That, though, was sufficient.  With a laugh, the man up closest
+drove his sword-hilt straight between the Hindoo's eyes, driving his
+horse's shoulder up against the gate;  three others spurred and shoved
+beside him.  Not thirty seconds later Alwa and his nine were striking
+hoof sparks on the stone of Jaimihr's courtyard, and the gates--that
+could have easily withstood a hundred-man assault with battering-rams
+--had clanged behind them, bolted tight against their owner.
+
+"Where is the bear cage?" demanded Alwa.  "It is a bear I need, not
+blood!"
+
+The dozen left inside to guard the palace had recovered quickly enough
+from their panic.  They were lining up in the middle of the courtyard,
+ready to defend their honor, even if the palace should be lost.  It was
+barely probable that Jaimihr's temper would permit them the privilege
+of dying quickly should he come and find his palace looted;  a Rangar's
+sword seemed better, and they made ready to die hard.
+
+"Where's Ali Partab?"
+
+There was no answer.  The little crowd drew in, and one by one took up
+the fighting attitude that each man liked the best.
+
+"I say I did not come for blood!  I came for Ali Partab!  If I get him,
+unharmed, I ride away again;  but otherwise--"
+
+"What otherwise?" asked the captain of the guard.
+
+"This palace burns!"
+
+There was a momentary consultation--no argument, but a quickly
+reached agreement.
+
+"He is here, unharmed," declared the captain gruffly.
+
+"Bring him out!"
+
+"What proof have we that he is all you came for?"
+
+"My given word."
+
+"But the Jaimihr-sahib--"
+
+"You also have my given word that unless I get Ali Partab this palace
+burns, with all that there is in it!"
+
+Distrustful still, the captain of the guard called out to a sweeper,
+skulking in the shadow by the stables to go and loose Ali Partab.
+
+"Send no sweepers to him!" ordered Alwa.  "He has suffered indignity
+enough. Go thou!"
+
+The captain of the guard obeyed.  Two minutes later Ali Partab stood
+before Alwa and saluted.
+
+"Sahib, my master's thanks!"
+
+"They are accepted," answered Alwa, with almost regal dignity.  "Bring
+a lamp!" he ordered.
+
+One of the guard brought a hand-lantern, and by its light Alwa examined
+Ali Partab closely.  He was filthy, and his clothing reeked of the
+disgusting confinement he had endured.
+
+"Give this man clothing fit for a man of mine!" commanded Alwa.
+
+"Sahib, there is none;  perhaps the Jaimihr-sahib--"
+
+"I have ordered!"
+
+There was a movement among Alwa's men--a concerted,
+horse-length-forward movement, made terrifying by the darkness--each
+man knew well enough that the men they were bullying could fight;
+success, should they have to force it at the sword-point, would depend
+largely on which side took the other by surprise.
+
+"It is done, sahib," said the leader of the guard, and one man hurried
+off to execute the order.  Ten minutes later--they were ten impatient
+minutes, during which the horses sensed the fever of anxiety and could
+be hardly made to stand--Ali Partab stood arrayed in clean, new khaki
+that fitted him reasonably well.
+
+"A sword, now!" demanded Alwa.  "Thy sword!  This man had a sword when
+he was taken!  Give him thine, unless there is a better to be had."
+
+There was nothing for it but obedience, for few things were more
+certain than that Alwa was not there to waste time asking for anything
+he would not fight for if refused.  The guard held out his long sword,
+hilt first, and Ali Partab strapped it on.
+
+"I had three horses when they took me," he asserted, "three good ones,
+sound and swift, belonging to my master."
+
+"Then take three of Jaimihr's!"
+
+It took ten minutes more for Ali Partab and two of Alwa's men to search
+the stables and bring out the three best chargers of the twenty and
+more reserved for Jaimihr's private use.  They were wonders of horses,
+half-Arab and half-native-bred, clean-limbed and firm--worth more,
+each one of them, than all three of Mahommed Gunga's put together.
+
+"Are they good enough?" demanded Alwa.
+
+"My master will be satisfied," grinned Ali Partab.
+
+"Open the gate, then!"  Alwa was peering through the blackness for a
+sight of firearms, but could see none.  He guessed--and he was right
+--that the guard had taken full advantage of their master's absence,
+and had been gambling in a corner while their rifles rested under cover
+somewhere else.  For a second he hesitated, dallying with the notion of
+disarming the guard before he left, then decided that a fight was
+scarcely worth the risking now, and with ten good men behind him he
+wheeled and scooted through the wide-flung gates into outer gloom.
+
+He galloped none too fast, for his party was barely out of range before
+a ragged volley ripped from the palace-wall;  one of his men, hampered
+and delayed by a led horse that was trying to break away from him, was
+actually hit, and begged Alwa to ride back and burn the palace after
+all.  He was grumbling still about the honor of a Rangar, when Alwa
+called a halt in the shelter of a deserted side street in order to
+question Ali Partab further.
+
+Ali Partab protested that he did not know what to say or think about
+the missionaries.  He explained his orders and vowed that his honor
+held him there in Howrah until Miss McClean should consent to come
+away.  He did not mention the father;  he was a mere side issue--it
+was Alwa who asked after him.
+
+"A tick on the belly of an ox rides with the ox," said Ali Partab.
+
+"Lead on, then, to the mission house," commanded Alwa, and the ten-man
+troop proceeded to obey.  They had reached the main street again, and
+were wheeling into it, when Joanna sprang from gutter darkness and
+intercepted them.  She was all but ridden down before Ali Partab
+recognized her.
+
+"The mohurs, sahib!" she demanded. "Three golden mohurs!"
+
+"Ay, three!" said Ali Partab, giving her a hand and yanking her off the
+ground.  She sprang across his horse's rump behind him, and he seemed
+to have less compunction about personal defilement than the others had.
+
+"Is she thy wife or thy mother-in-law?" laughed Alwa.
+
+"Nay, sahib, but my creditor!  The mother of confusion tells me that
+the Miss-sahib and her father are in Howrah's palace!"
+
+They halted, all together in a cluster in the middle of the street--
+shut in by darkness--watched for all they knew, by a hundred enemies.
+
+"Of their own will or as prisoners?"
+
+"As prisoners, sahib."
+
+"Back to the side street!  Quickly!  Jaimihr' rat's nest is one
+affair," he muttered;  "Howrah' beehive is another!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+    Now, secrets and things of the Councils of Kings
+    Are deucid expensive to buy,
+    For it wouldn't look nice if a Councillor's price
+    Were anything other than high.
+    Be advised, though, and note that the price they will quote
+    Is less at each grade you go deeper,
+    And--(Up on its toes it's the Underworld knows!)--
+    The cheapest of all is the Sweeper.
+
+JOANNA--when Alwa forgot about her and loosed her to run just where
+she chose--had sneaked, down alleys and over roof-tops, straight for
+the mission house.  She found there nothing but a desultory guard and
+an impression, rather than the traces, of an empty cage.  About two
+minutes of cautious questioning of neighbors satisfied her where the
+missionaries were;  nothing short of death seemed able to deprive her
+of ability to flit like a black bat through the shadows, and the
+distance to Howrah's palace was accomplished, by her usual bat's entry
+route, in less time than a pony would have taken by the devious street.
+Before Alwa had thundered on Jaimihr's gate Joanna had mingled in the
+crowd outside the palace and was shrewdly questioning again.
+
+She arrived too late to see McClean and his daughter seized;  what she
+did hear was that they were prisoners, and that the Maharajah, Jaimihr,
+and the priests were all of them engaged in the secret ceremony whose
+beginning was a monthly spectacle but whose subsequent developments--
+supposed to be somewhere in the bowels of the earth--were known only
+to the men who held the key.
+
+Like a rat running in the wainscot holes, she tried to follow the
+procession;  like everybody else, she knew the way it took from the
+palace gate, and--as few others were--she was aware of a
+scaling-place on the outer wall where a huge baobab drooped
+century-scarred branches nearly to the ground on either side.  The
+sacred monkeys used that route and where they went Joanna could
+contrive to follow.
+
+It was another member of the sweeper caste, lurking in the darkness of
+an inner courtyard, who pointed out the bronze-barred door to her
+through which the treasure guardians had chanted on their way;  it was
+he, too, who told her that Rosemary McClean and her father had been
+rushed into the palace through the main entrance.  Also, he informed
+her that there was no way--positively no way practicable even for a
+monkey or a bird--of following further.  He was a sweeper-intimate
+acquaintance of creeper ladders, trap-doors, gutters drains, and
+byways;  she realized at once that there would be no wisdom in
+attempting to find within an hour what he had not discovered in a
+lifetime.
+
+So Joanna, her beady eyes glittering between the wrinkled folds of
+skin, slunk deeper in a shadow and began to think.  She, the looker-on,
+had seen the whole play from its first beginning and could judge at
+least that part of it which had its bearing on her missionary masters.
+First, she knew what Jaimihr's ambition was--every man in Howrah knew
+how he planned to seize Miss McClean when the moment should be
+propitious--and her Eastern wisdom warned her that Jaimihr, foiled,
+would stop at nothing to contrive vengeance.  If he could not seize
+Miss McClean, he would be likely to use every means within his power to
+bring about her death and prevent another from making off with his
+prize.  Jaimihr, then, was the most pressing danger.
+
+Second, as a Hindoo, she knew well how fiendishly the priests loathed
+the Christian missionaries;  and it was common knowledge that the
+Maharajah was cross-hobbled by the priests.  The Maharajah was a
+fearful man, and, unless the priests and Jaimihr threatened him with a
+show of combination, there was a slight chance that he might dread
+British vengeance too much to dare permit violence to the McCleans.
+Possibly he might hold out against the priests alone;  but before an
+open alliance between Jaimihr and the priests he would surrender for
+his own throne's sake.
+
+So far Joanna could reason readily enough, for there was a vast fund of
+wisdom stored beneath her wrinkled ugliness.  But her Eastern
+limitation stopped her there.  She could not hold loyalty to more than
+one cause, or to more than one offshoot of that cause, in the same
+shrewd head at once.  She decided that at all costs Jaimihr must be out
+of the way so that the Maharaja might be left to argue with the priests
+alone.  For the moment no other thought occurred to her.
+
+The means seemed ready to her hand.  A peculiarity of the East, which
+is democratic in most ways under the veneer of swaggering autocracy,
+that servants of the very lowest caste may speak, and argue on
+occasion, with men who would  shudder at the prospect of defilement
+from their touch.  There was nothing in the least outrageous in the
+proposition that the sweeper, waiting in a corner for the procession to
+emerge again so that he might curl on his mat and sleep undisturbed
+when it had gone, should dare to approach Jaimihr and address him.  He
+would run no small risk of being beaten by the guards;  but, on the
+other hand, should he catch jaimihr's ear and interest him, he would be
+safe.
+
+"Wouldst thou win Jaimihr's favor?" asked Joanna, creeping up beside
+him, and whispering with all the suggestiveness she could assume.
+
+"Who would not?  Who knows that within week he will not be ruler?"
+
+"True.  I have a message for him.  I must hurry back.  Deliver it for
+me."
+
+"What would be the nature of the message?"
+
+"This.  His prisoner is gone.  A raid has taken place.  In his absence,
+while his men patrolled the city, certain Rangars broke into his palace
+--looted--and prepared to burn.  Bid him hurry back with all the men
+he can collect."
+
+"From whom is this message?"
+
+"From the captain of the guard."
+
+"And I am to deliver it?  Thou dodderest!  Mother of a murrain, have I
+not trouble sufficient for one man?  Who bears bad news to a prince, or
+to any but his enemy?  I--with these two eyes--I saw what happened
+to the men who bore bad news to Howrah once.  I--with this broom of
+mine--I helped clean up the mess.  Deliver thine own message!"
+
+"Nay.  Afterward I will say this--to the Jaimihr-sahib in person.
+There is one, I will tell him, a sweeper in the palace, who refused to
+bear tidings when the need was great."
+
+"If his palace is burned and his wealth all ashes, who cares what
+Jaimihr hears?"
+
+"There is no glow yet in the sky," said Joanna looking up. "The palace
+is not yet in flames;  they loot still."
+
+"What if it be not true?"
+
+"Will Jaimihr not be glad?"
+
+"Glad to see me, the bearer of false news, impaled--or crushed beneath
+an elephant--ay--glad, indeed."
+
+"The reward, were the Jaimihr-sahib warned in time, would be a great
+one."
+
+"Then, why waitest thou not to have word with him.  Art thou above
+rewards?"
+
+"Have no fear!  He will know in good time who it was brought thee the
+news."
+
+They argued for ten minutes, Joanna threatening and coaxing and
+promising rewards, until at last the man consented.  It was the
+thought, thoroughly encouraged by Joanna, that the penalty for not
+speaking would be greater than the beating he might get for bearing
+evil news that at last convinced him;  and it was not until she had won
+him over and assured herself that he would not fail that it dawned on
+Joanna just what an edged tool she was playing with.  While getting rid
+of Jaimihr, she was endangering the liberty and life of Alwa--the one
+man able to do anything for the McCleans!
+
+That thought sent her scooting over housetops, diving down dark
+alleyways, racing, dodging, hiding, dashing on again, and brought her
+in the nick of time to a ditch, from whose shelter she sprang and
+seized the hand of Ali Partab.  That incident, and her intimation that
+the missionaries were in Howrah's palace, took Alwa back up the black,
+blind side street;  and before he emerged from it he saw Jaimihr and
+his ten go thundering past, their eyes on the sky-line for a hint of
+conflagration, and their horses--belly-to-the-earth--racing as only
+fear, or enthusiasm, or grim desperation in their riders' minds can
+make them race.
+
+A little later, in groups and scattered fours, and one by one, his
+heavy-breathing troopers followed, cursing the order that had sent them
+abroad with-out their horses, damning--as none but a dismounted
+cavalryman can damn--the earth's unevenness, their swords, their
+luck, their priests, the night, their boots, and  Jaimihr.  Forewarned,
+Alwa held on down the pitch-dark side street, into whose steep-sided
+chasm the moon's rays would not reach for an hour or two to come, and
+once again he led his party in a sweeping, wide-swung circle,
+loose-reined and swifter than the silent night wind--this time for
+Howrah's palace.  There was his given word, plighted to Mahommed Gunga,
+to redeem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+    Ha! my purse may be lean, but my 'scutcheon is clean,
+    And I'm backed by a dozen true men;
+    I've a sword to my name, and a wrist for the same;
+    Can a king frown fear into me, then?
+
+IT is the privilege of emperors, and kings and princes, that--however
+little real authority they have, or however much their power is
+undermined by men behind the throne--they must be accorded dignity.
+They must be, on the face of things, obeyed.
+
+
+Inspection of the treasure finished and an hour-long mummery of rites
+performed, the thirty wound their way, chanting, in single file back
+again.  The bronze-enforced door, that was only first of half a hundred
+barriers between approach and the semi-sacred hoard, at last clanged
+shut and was locked with three locks, each of whose individual keys was
+in the keeping of a separate member of the three--Maharajah, Prince,
+and priest.  The same keys fitted every door of the maze--made
+passages, but no one door would open without all three.
+
+Speaking like an omen from the deepest shadow, the sweeper called to
+Jaimihr.
+
+"Sahib, thy palace burns!  Sahib, thy prisoner runs!  Haste, sahib!
+Call thy men and hasten back!  Thy palace is in flames--the Rangars
+come to--"
+
+As a raven, disturbed into night omen-croaking, he sent forth his news
+from utter blackness into nerve-strung tension.  No one member of the
+thirty but was on the alert for friction or sudden treachery;  the were
+all eyes for each other, and the croaking fell on ears strained to the
+aching point.  He had time to repeat his warning before one of
+Jaimihr's men stepped into the darkness where he hid and dragged him
+out.
+
+"Sahib, a woman came but now and brought the news.  It was from the
+captain of the guard.  The Rangars came to take their man away.  They
+broke in.  They burn.  They loot.  They--"
+
+But Jaimihr did not wait another instant to hear the rest.  To him this
+seemed like the scheming of his brother.  Now he imagined he could read
+between the lines!  That letter sent to Alwa had been misreported to
+him, and had been really a call to come and free the prisoner and wreak
+Rangar vengeance!  He understood!  But first he must save his palace,
+if it could be saved.  The priests must have deceived him, so he wasted
+no time in arguing with them;  he ran, with his guards behind him, to
+the outer wall of Siva's temple where the horses waited, each with a
+saice squatting at his head.  The saices were sent scattering among the
+crowd to give the alarm and send the rest of his contingent hurrying
+back;  Jaimihr and his ten drove home their spurs, and streaked, as the
+frightened jackal   runs when a tiger interrupts them at their worry,
+hell-bent-for-leather up the unlit street.
+
+Then Maharajah Howrah's custom-accorded dignity stood him in good
+stead.  It flashed across his worried brain that space had been given
+him by the gods in which to think.  Jaimihr--one facet of the problem
+and perhaps the sharpest--would have his hands full for a while, and
+the priests--wish how they would--would never dare omit the
+after-ritual in Siva's temple.  He--untrammelled for an hour to come
+--might study out a course to take and hold with those embarrassing
+prisoners of his.
+
+He turned--updrawn in regal stateliness--and intimated to the high
+priest that the ceremony might proceed without him.  When the priests
+demurred and murmured, he informed them that he would be pleased to
+give them audience when the ritual was over, and without deigning
+another argument he turned through a side door into the palace.
+
+Within ten minutes he was seated in his throne-room.  One minute later
+his prisoners stood in front of him, still holding each other's hands,
+and the guard withdrew.  The great doors opening on the marble outer
+hall clanged tight, and in this room there were no carved screens
+through which a hidden, rustling world might listen.  There was
+gold-incrusted splendor--there were glittering, hanging ornaments
+that far outdid the peacocks' feathers of the canopy above the throne;
+but the walls were solid, and the marble floor rang hard and true.
+
+There was no nook or corner anywhere that could conceal a man.  For a
+minute, still bejewelled in his robes of state and glittering as the
+diamonds in his head-dress caught the light from half a dozen hanging
+lamps, the Maharajah sat and gazed at them, his chin resting on one
+hand and his silk-clad elbow laid on the carved gold arm of his throne.
+
+"Why am I troubled?" he demanded suddenly.
+
+"You know!" said the missionary.  His daughter clutched his hand
+tightly, partly to reassure him, partly because she knew that a despot
+would be bearded now in his gold-bespattered den, and fear gripped her.
+
+"Maharajah-sahib, when I came here with letters from the government of
+India and asked you for a mission house in which to live and work, I
+told you that I came as a friend--as a respectful sympathizer.  I
+told you I would not incite rebellion against you, and that I would not
+interfere with native custom or your authority so long as acquiescence
+and obedience by me did not run counter to the overriding law of the
+British Government."
+
+Howrah did not even move his head in token that he listened, but his
+tired eyes answered.
+
+"To that extent I promised not to interfere with your religion."
+
+Howrah nodded.
+
+"Once--twice--in all nine times--I came and warned you that the
+practice of suttee was and is illegal.  My knowledge of Sanskrit is
+only slight, but there are others of my race who have had opportunity
+to translate the Sanskrit Vedas, and I have in writing what they found
+in them.  I warned you, when that information reached me, that your
+priests have been deliberately lying to you--that the Vedas say:
+'Thrice-blessed is she who dies of a broken heart because her lord and
+master leaves her.'  They say nothing, absolutely nothing, about suttee
+or its practice, which from the beginning has been a damnable invention
+of the priests.  But the practice of suttee has continued.  I have
+warned the government frequently, in writing, but for reasons which I
+do not profess to understand they have made no move as yet.   For that
+reason, and for no other, I have tried to be a thorn in your side, and
+will continue to try to be until this suttee ceases!"
+
+"Why," demanded Howrah, "since you are a foreigner with neither
+influence nor right, do you stay here and behold what you cannot
+change?  Does a snake lie sleeping on an ant-hill?  Does a woman watch
+the butchering of  lambs?  Yet, do ant-hills cease to be, and are lambs
+not butchered?  Look the other way!  Sleep softer in another place!"
+
+"I am a prisoner.  For months past my daughter and I have been
+prisoners to all intents and purposes, and you, Maharajah-sahib, have
+known it well.  Now, the one man who was left to be our escort to
+another place is a prisoner, too.  You know that, too.  And you ask me
+why I stay!  Suppose you answer?"
+
+Rosemary squeezed his hand again, this time less to restrain him than
+herself.  She was torn between an inclination to laugh at the daring or
+shiver at the indiscretion of taking to task a man whose one word could
+place them at the mercy of the priests of Siva, or the mob.  But Duncan
+McClean, a little bowed about the shoulders, peered through his
+spectacles and waited--quite unawed by all the splendor--for the
+Maharajah's answer.
+
+"Of what man do you speak?" asked Howrah, still undecided what to do
+with them, and anxious above all things to disguise his thoughts.
+"What man is a prisoner, and how do you know it?"
+
+Before McClean had time to answer him, a spear haft rang on the great
+teak double door. There was a pause, and the clang repeated--another
+pause--a third reverberating, humming metal notice of an
+interruption, and the doors swung wide.  A Hindoo, salaaming low so
+that the expression of his face could not be seen, called out down the
+long length of the hall.
+
+"The Alwa-sahib waits, demanding audience!"
+There was no change apparent on Howrah's face.  His fingers tightened
+on the jewelled cimeter that protruded, silk-sashed, from his middle,
+but neither voice nor eyes nor lips betrayed the least emotion.  It was
+the McCleans whose eyes blazed with a new-born hope, that was destined
+to be dashed a second later.
+
+"Has he guards with him?"
+
+"But ten, Maharajah-sahib."
+
+"Then remove these people to the place where they were, and afterward
+admit him--without his guards!"
+
+"I demand permission to speak with this Alwa-sahib!" said McClean.
+
+"Remove them!"
+
+Two spear-armed custodians of the door advanced.  Resistance was
+obviously futile.  Still holding his daughter's hand, the missionary
+let himself be led to the outer hall and down a corridor, where,
+presently, a six-inch door shut prisoners and guards even from sound of
+what transpired beyond.
+
+Alwa, swaggering until his long spurs jingled like a bunch of keys each
+time his boot-heels struck the marble floor, strode straight as a
+soldier up to the raised throne dais--took no notice whatever of the
+sudden slamming of the door behind him--looked knife-keenly into
+Howrah's eyes--and saluted with a flourish.
+
+"I come from bursting open Jaimihr's buzzard roost!" he intimated
+mildly. "He held a man of mine.  I have the man."
+
+Merely to speak first was insolence;  but that breach of etiquette was
+nothing to his manner and his voice.  It appeared that he was so
+utterly confident of his own prowess that he could afford to speak
+casually;  he did not raise his voice or emphasize a word.  He was a
+man of his word, relating facts, and every line of his steel-thewed
+anatomy showed it.
+
+"I sent a letter to you, by horseman, with a present," said Howrah.  "I
+await the answer."
+
+Alwa's eyes changed, and his attention stiffened.  Not having been at
+home, he knew nothing of the letter, but he did not choose to
+acknowledge the fact.  The principle that one only shares the truth
+with friends is good, when taken by surprise.
+
+"I preferred to have confirmation of the matter from the Maharajah's
+lips in person, so--since I had this other matter to attend to--I
+combined two visits in one trip."
+
+He lied, as he walked and fought, like a soldier, and the weary man who
+watched him from the throne detected no false ring.
+
+"I informed you that I had extended my protection to the two
+missionaries, man and daughter."
+
+"You did.  Also, you did well."  He tossed that piece of comfort to the
+despot as a man might throw table scraps to a starveling dog!  "I have
+come to take away the missionaries."
+
+"With a guard of ten!"
+
+It was the first admission of astonishment that either man had made.
+
+"Are you not aware that Jaimihr, too, has eyes on the woman?"
+
+"I am aware of it.  I have shown Jaimihr how deep my fear of him lies!
+I know, too, how deep the love lies between thee and thy brother, king
+of Howrah!  I am here to remind you that many more than ten men would
+race their horses to a stand-still to answer my summons--brave men,
+Maharajah-sahib--men whose blades are keen, and straightly held, and
+true.  They who would rally round me against Jaimihr would--"
+
+"Would fight for me?"
+
+"I have not yet said so."  There was a little, barely accentuated
+emphasis on the one word "yet."  The Maharajah thought a minute before
+he answered.
+
+"How many mounted troopers could you raise?"
+
+"Who knows?  A thousand--three thousand--according to the soreness
+of the need."
+
+"You have heard--I know that you have heard--what, even at this
+minute, awaits the British?  I know, for I have taken care to know,
+that a cousin of yours--Mahommed Gunga--is interested for the
+British.  So--so I am interested to have word with you."
+
+Alwa laughed ironically.
+
+"And the tiger asked the wolf pack where good hunting was!" he mocked.
+"I and my men strike which way suits us when the hour comes."
+
+"My palace has many chambers in it!" hinted Howrah.  "There have been
+men who wondered what the light of day was like, having long ago
+forgotten!"
+
+"Make me prisoner!" laughed Alwa.  "Count then the hours until three
+thousand blades join Jaimihr and help him grease the dungeon hinges
+with thy fat!"
+
+"Having looted Jaimihr's palace, you speak thus?"
+
+"Having whipped a dog, I wait for the dog to lick my hand."
+
+"What is your purpose with these missionaries?"
+
+"To redeem my given word."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"I would be free to pledge it again."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"To whom I choose."
+
+"I will give thee the missionaries, against thy word to fight on my
+side when the hour comes."
+
+"Against whom?"
+
+"The British."
+
+"I have no quarrel with the British, yet."
+
+"I will give thee the missionaries, against thy word to support me on
+this throne."
+
+"Against whom?"
+
+"Against all comers."
+
+"If I refuse, what then?"
+
+"Jaimihr--who by this time must surely be thy very warmest friend!--
+shall attack thee unmolested.  Pledge thy word--take thy missionary
+people--and Jaimihr must oppose thee and me combined."
+
+"Should Jaimihr ride after me, what then?"
+
+"If he takes many with him, he must leave his camp unguarded, or only
+weakly guarded.  Then I would act.  If he goes with few, how can he
+take thy castle?"
+
+"Then I have your protection against Jaimihr, and the missionaries,
+against my promise to support you on the throne?"
+
+"My word on it."
+
+"And mine."
+
+Howrah rose, stepped forward to the dais edge, and held his hand out.
+
+"Nay!" swore Alwa, recoiling.  "My word is given.  I take no Hindoo's
+hand!"
+
+Howrah glared for a moment, but thought better of the hot retort that
+rose to his lips.  Instead he struck a silver gong, and when the doors
+swung open ordered the prisoners to be produced.
+
+"Escape through the palace-grounds," he advised Alwa.  "A man of mine
+will show the way."
+
+"Remember!" said Alwa across his shoulder with more than royal
+insolence, "I swore to help thee against Jaimihr and to support thee on
+thy throne--but in nothing did I swear to be thy tool--remember!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+    Howrah City bows the knee
+    (More or less) to masters three,
+    King, and Prince, and Siva.
+    Howrah City comes and goes--
+    Buys and sells--and never knows
+    Which is friend, and which are foes--
+            King, or Prince, or Siva.
+
+
+THAT that followed Alwa's breakaway was all but the tensest hour in
+Howrah City's history.  The inevitable--the foiled rage of the
+priests and Jaimihr's impudent insistence that the missionaries should
+be handed over to him--the Maharajah's answer--all combined to set
+the murmurings afoot.  Men said that the threatened rebellion against
+the rule of Britain had broken loose at last, and a dozen other quite
+as false and equally probable things.
+
+Jaimihr, finding that his palace was intact, and that only the prisoner
+and three horses from his stable were missing, placed the whole guard
+under arrest--stormed futilely, while his hurrying swarm flocked to
+him through the dinning streets--and then, mad-angry and made
+reckless by his rage, rode with a hundred at his back to Howrah's
+palace, scattering the bee-swarm of inquisitive but so far peaceful
+citizens right and left.
+
+With little ceremony, he sent in word to Howrah that he wanted Alwa and
+the missionaries;  he stated that his private honor was at stake, and
+that he would stop at nothing to wreak vengeance.  He wanted the man
+who had dared invade his palace--the man whom he had released--and
+the two who were the prime cause of the outrage.  And with just as
+little ceremony word came out that the Maharajah would please himself
+as to what he did with prisoners.
+
+That message was followed almost instantly by the high priest of Siva
+in person, angry as a turkey-gobbler and blasphemously vindictive.  He
+it was who told Jaimihr of the unexpected departure through the
+palace-grounds.
+
+"Ride, Jaimihr-sahib!  Ride!" he advised him.
+
+"How many have you?  A hundred?  Plenty!  Ride and cut him off!  There
+is but one road to Alwa's place;  he must pass by the northern ford
+through Howrah River.  Ride and cut him off!"
+
+So, loose-reined, foam-flecked, breathing vengeance, Jaimihr and his
+hundred thundered through the dark hot night, making a bee-line for the
+point where Alwa's band must pass in order to take the shortest route
+to safety.
+
+It was his word to the Jew that saved Alwa's neck.  He and his men were
+riding borrowed horses, and he had promised to return them and reclaim
+his own.  They had moved at a walk through winding, dark palace-alleys,
+led by a palace attendant, and debouched through a narrow door that
+gave barely horse-room into the road where Jaimihr had once killed a
+Maharati trader who molested Rosemary McClean.  The missionary and his
+daughter were mounted on the horses seized in Jaimihr's stable;
+Joanna, moaning about "three gold mohurs, sahib--three, where are
+they?" was up behind Ali Partab, tossed like a pea on a drum-skin by
+the lunging movements of the wonder of a horse.
+
+Instead of heading straight for home, in which case--although he did
+not know it--he would have been surely overhauled and brought to bay,
+he led at a stiff hand gallop to the Jew's, changed horses, crossed the
+ford by the burning ghats, and swooped in a wide half-circle for the
+sandy trail that would take him homeward.  He made the home road miles
+beyond the point where Jaimihr waited for him--drew rein into the
+long-striding amble that desert-taught horses love--and led on,
+laughing.
+
+"Ho!" He laughed.  "Ho-ho!  Here, then, is the end of Mahommed Gunga's
+scheming!  Now, when he comes with arguments to make me fight on the
+British side, what a tale I have for him!  Ho!  What a swearing there
+will be!  I will give him his missionary people, and say,  'There,
+Mahommed Gunga, cousin mine, there is my word redeemed--there is thy
+man into the bargain--there are three horses for thee--and I--I
+am at Howrah's beck and call!'  Allah!  What a swearing there will be!"
+
+There was swearing, viler and more blasphemous than any of which
+Mahommed Gunga might be capable, where Jaimihr waited in the dark.  He
+waited until the yellow dawn broke up the first dim streaks of violet
+before he realized that Alwa had given him the slip;  and he cursed
+even the high priest of Siva when that worthy accosted him and asked
+what tidings.
+
+"Another trick!" swore Jaimihr.  "So, thou and thy temple rats saw fit
+to send me packing for the night!  What devils' tricks have been
+hatched out in my absence?"
+
+The high priest started to protest, but Jaimihr silenced him with
+coarse-mouthed threats.
+
+"I, too, can play double when occasion calls for it!" he swore.  And
+with that hint at coming trouble he clattered on home to his palace.
+
+To begin with, when he reached home, he had the guard beaten all but
+unconscious for having dared let raiders in during the night before;
+then he sent them, waterless and thirsty, back to the dungeon.  He felt
+better then, and called for ink and paper.
+
+For hours he thought and wrote alternately, tearing up letter after
+letter.  Then, at last, he read over a composition that satisfied him
+and set his seal at the foot.  He placed the whole in a silver tube,
+poured wax into the joint, and called for the fat man who had been
+responsible for Ali Partab's capture.
+
+"Dog!" he snarled.  "Interfering fool!  All this was thy doing!  Didst
+thou see the guard beaten awhile ago?"
+
+"I did.  It was a lordly beating.  The men are all but dead but will
+live for such another one."
+
+"Wouldst thou be so beaten?"
+
+"How can I prevent, if your highness wishes?"
+
+"Take this.  It is intended for Peshawur but may be given to any
+British officer above the rank of major.  It calls for a receipt.  Do
+not dare come back, or be caught in Howrah City, without a receipt for
+that tube and its contents intact!"
+
+"If Alwa and Mahommed Gunga are in league with my brother," muttered
+Jaimihr to himself when the fat Hindoo had gone, "then the sooner the
+British quarrel with both of them the better.  Howrah alone I can
+dispose of easily enough, and there is yet time before rebellion starts
+for the British to spike the guns of the other two.  By the time that
+is done, I will be Maharajah!"
+
+It was less than three days later when the word came mysteriously
+through the undiscoverable "underground" route of India for all men to
+be ready.
+
+"By the next full moon," went the message, from the priests alone knew
+where, "all India will be waiting.  When the full moon rises then the
+hour is come!"
+
+"And when that full moon rises," thought Jaimihr to himself, "my
+brother's funeral rites will be past history!"
+
+For the present, though, he made believe to regret his recent rage, and
+was courteous to priest and Maharajah alike--even sending to his
+brother to apologize.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+    They've called thee by an evil word,
+            They've named thee traitor, friend o' mine.
+    Thou askest faith?  I send my sword.
+            There is no greater, friend o' mine.
+
+
+RALPH CUNNINGHAM said good-by to Brigadier-General Byng (Byng the
+Brigadier) with more feeling of regret and disappointment than he cared
+to show.  A born soldier, he did his hard-mouthed utmost to refrain
+from whining;  he even pretended that a political appointment was a
+recognizable advance along the road to sure success--or, rather,
+pretended that he thought it was;  and the Brigadier, who knew men, and
+particularly young men, detected instantly the telltale expression of
+the honest gray eyes--analyzed it--and, to Cunningham's amazement,
+approved the unwilling make-believe.
+
+"Now, buck up, Cunningham!" he said, slapping him familiarly on the
+shoulder.  "You're making a good, game effort to hide chagrin, and
+you're a good, game ass for your pains.  There isn't one man in all
+India who has half your luck at this minute, if you only knew it;  but
+go ahead and find out for yourself!  Go to Abu and report, but waste no
+more time there than you can help.  Hurry on to Howrah, and once you're
+there, if Mahommed Gunga tells you what looks like a lie, trust him to
+the hilt!"
+
+"Is he coming with me, then?" asked Cunningham in some amazement.
+
+"Yes--unofficially.  He has relations in that neighborhood and wants
+to visit them;  he is going to take advantage of your pack-train and
+escort.  You'll have a small escort as far as Abu;  after that you'll
+be expected to look out for yourself.  The escort is made up of details
+travelling down-country;  they'll leave you at Abu Road."
+
+So, still unbelieving--still wondering why the Brigadier should go to
+all that trouble to convince him that politics in a half-forgotten
+native state were fair meat for a soldier--Cunningham rode off at the
+head of a variously made-up travelling party, grudging every step of
+that wonderful mare Mahommed Gunga had given him, that bore him away
+from the breeze-swept north--away from the mist-draped hills he had
+already learned to love--ever down, down, down into the hell-baked
+plains.
+
+Each rest-house where he spent a night was but another brooding-place
+of discontent and regret, each little petty detail connected with the
+command of the motley party (mainly time-expired men, homeward bound),
+was drudgery;  each Hindoo pugree that he met was but a beastly
+contrast, or so it seemed to him, to the turbans of the troop that but
+a week ago had thundered at his back.
+
+More than any other thing, Mahommed Gunga's cheerfulness amazed him.
+He resented it. He did not see why the man who had expressed such
+interest in the good fortune of his father's son should not be
+sympathetic now that his soldier career had been nipped so early in the
+bud.  He began to lose faith in Mahommed Gunga's wisdom, and was glad
+when the ex-Risaldar chose to bring up the rear of the procession
+instead of riding by his side.
+
+But behind, in Peshawur, there was one man at least who knew Mahommed
+Gunga and his worth, and who refused to let himself be blinded by any
+sort of circumstantial evidence.  The evidence was black--in black on
+white--written by a black-hearted schemer, and delivered by a big,
+fat black man, who was utterly road-weary, to the commissioner in
+person.
+
+The sepoy mutiny that had been planned so carefully had started to take
+charge too soon.  News had arrived of native regiments whose officers
+had been obliged against their will to disarm and disband them, and the
+loyalty of other regiments was seriously called in question.
+
+But the men whose blindness was responsible for the possibility of
+mutiny were only made blinder by the evidence of coming trouble.  With
+a dozen courses open to them, any one of which might have saved the
+situation, they deliberately chose a thirteenth--two-forked
+toboggan-slide into destruction.  To prove their misjudged confidence
+in the native army, they actually disbanded the irregulars led by Byng
+the Brigadier--removed the European soldiers wherever possible from
+ammunition-magazine guard-duty, replacing them with native companies--
+and reprimanded the men whose clear sight showed them how events were
+shaping.
+
+They reprimanded Byng, as though depriving him of his command were not
+enough.  When he protested, as he had a right to do, they showed him
+Jaimihr's letter.
+
+"Mahommed Gunga told you, did he?  Look at this!"
+
+The letter, most concisely and pointedly written, considering the
+indirect phraseology and caution of the East, deliberately accused
+Mahommed Gunga and a certain Alwa, together with all the Rangars of a
+whole province, of scheming with Maharajah Howrah to overthrow the
+British rule.  It recommended the immediate arrest of Mahommed Gunga
+and stern measures against the Rangars.
+
+"What do you propose to do about it?" inquired Byng.
+
+"It's out of our province.  A copy of this letter has been sent to the
+proper quarter, and no doubt the story will be investigated.  There
+have been all kinds of stories about suttee being practised in Howrah,
+and it very likely won't be difficult to find a plausible excuse for
+deposing the Maharajah and putting Jaimihr in his place.  In the
+meantime, if Mahommed Gunga shows himself in these parts he'll be
+arrested."
+
+Byng did then the sort of thing that was fortunately characteristic of
+the men who rose in the nick of time to seize the reins.  He hurried to
+his quarters,  packed in its case the sword of honor that had once been
+given him by his Queen, and despatched it without a written line of
+comment to Mahommed Gunga.  The native who took it was ordered to ride
+like the devil, overtake Mahommed Gunga on the road to Abu, present the
+sword without explanation, and return.
+
+Cunningham, in spite of himself, had travelled swiftly.  The moon
+lacked two nights of being full and two more days would have seen him
+climbing up the fourteen-mile rock road that leads up the purple flanks
+of Abu, when the ex-trooper of Irregulars cantered from a dust cloud,
+caught up Mahommed Gunga, who was riding, as usual, in the rear, and
+handed him the sword.  He held it out with both hands.  Mahommed Gunga
+seized it by the middle, and neither said a word for the moment.
+
+In silence Mahommed Gunga drew the blade--saw Byng's name engraved
+close to the hilt--recognized the sword, and knew the sender--
+thought--and mistook the meaning.
+
+"Was there no word?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Then take this word back. 'I will return the sword, with honor added
+to it, when the peace of India is won.'  Say that, and nothing else."
+
+"I would rest my horse for a day or two," said the trooper.
+
+"Neither thou nor yet thy horse will have much rest this side of
+Eblis!" said Mahommed Gunga.  "Ride!"
+
+The trooper wheeled and went with a grin and a salute which he repeated
+twice, leaning back from the saddle for a last look at the man of his
+own race whom Byng had chosen to exalt.  He felt himself honored merely
+to have carried the sword.  Mahommed Gunga removed his own great sabre
+and handed it to one of his own five whom he overtook;  then he buckled
+on the sword of honor and spurred until he rode abreast of Cunningham,
+a hundred yards or more ahead of the procession.
+
+"Sahib," he asked, "did Byng-bahadur say a word or two about listening
+to me?"
+
+"He did.  Why?"
+
+"Because I will now say things!"
+
+The fact that the Brigadier had sent no message other than the sword
+was probably the Rajput's chief reason for talking in riddles still to
+Cunningham.  The silence went straight to his Oriental heart--so to
+speak, set the key for him to play to.  But he knew, too, that
+Cunningham's youth would be a handicap should it come to argument;
+what he was looking for was not a counsellor or some one to make plans,
+for the plans had all been laid and cross-laid by the enemy, and
+Mahommed Gunga knew it.  He needed a man of decision--to be flung
+blindfold into unexpected and unexpecting hell wrath, who would lead,
+take charge, decide on the instant, and lead the way out again, with
+men behind him who would recognize decision when they saw it.  So he
+spoke darkly.  He understood that the sword meant "Things have
+started," so with a soldier's courage he proceeded to head Cunningham
+toward the spot where hell was loose.
+
+"Say ahead!" smiled Cunningham.
+
+"Yonder, sahib, lies Abu.  Yonder to the right lies thy road now, not
+forward."
+
+"I have orders to report at Abu."
+
+"And I, sahib, orders to advise!"
+
+"Are you advising me to disobey orders?"
+
+The Rajput hesitated.  "Sahib, have I anything to gain," he asked, "by
+offering the wrong advice?"
+
+"I can't imagine so."
+
+"I advise, now, that we--thou and I, sahib, and my five turn off here
+--yonder, where the other trail runs--letting the party proceed to
+Abu without us."
+
+"But why, Mahommed Gunga?"
+
+"There is need of haste, sahib.  At Abu there will be delay--much
+talk with Everton-sahib, and who knows?--perhaps cancellation of the
+plan to send thee on to Howrah."
+
+"I'd be damned glad, Mahommed Gunga, not to have to go there!"
+
+"Sahib, look!  What is this I wear?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"See here, sahib--this."
+
+For the first time Cunningham noticed the fine European workmanship on
+the sword-hilt, and realized that the Rajput's usual plain, workmanlike
+weapon had been replaced.
+
+"That is Byng-bahadur's sword of honor!  It reached me a few minutes
+ago.  The man who brought it is barely out of sight.  It means, sahib,
+that the hour to act is come!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"Sahib--this sending thee to Howrah is my doing?  Since the day when
+I first heard that the son of Pukka Cunnigan-bahadur was on his way I
+have schemed and planned and contrived to this end.  It was at word
+from me that Byng-bahadur signed the transfer papers--otherwise he
+would have kept thee by him.  There are owls--old women--men whom
+Allah has deprived of judgment--drunkards--fools--in charge at
+Peshawur and in other places;  but there are certain men who know.
+Byng-bahadur knows. I know--and I will show the way!  Let me lead,
+sahib, for a little while, and I will show thee what to lead!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"Does this sword, sahib, mean nothing?  Did Byng-bahadur send it me for
+fun?"
+
+"But what's the idea?  I can't disobey orders, and ride off to--God
+knows where--without some excuse.  You'll have to tell me why.
+What's the matter?  What's happening?"
+
+"Byng-bahadur sent not one word to me when he sent this sword.  To thee
+he said:  'Listen to Mahommed Gunga, even when he seems to lie!'  I
+know that, for he told me he had said it.  To me he said:  'Take
+charge, Mahommed Gunga, when the hour comes, and rub his innocent young
+nose hard as you like into the middle of the mess!'  Ay, sahib, so said
+he.  It is now that I take charge."
+
+"But--"
+
+"'But,' said the nylghau, and the wolf-pack had him! 'But,' said the
+tiger, and the trap door shut!  'But,' said the Hindoo, and a priest
+betrayed him!  But--but--but--I never knew thy father make much
+use of that word!"
+
+"Yes--but--I have my orders, Mahommed Gunga!"
+
+"Sahib--this sword is a sword of honor--it stands for
+Byng-bahadur's honor.  I have it in my keeping.  Mine own honor is a
+matter somewhat dear to me, and I have kept it clean these many years.
+Now I ask to keep thine honor, too, awhile--making three men's
+honor.  If I fail, then thou and I and Byng-bahadur all go down
+together in good company.  If I fail not, then, sahib--Allah is
+contented when his honor stands!"
+
+Cunningham drew rein and looked him in the eyes.  Gray eyes met brown
+and neither flinched;  each read what men of mettle only can read when
+they see it--the truth, the fearlessness, the thought they understand
+because it lives with them.  Cunningham held out his hand.
+
+Some thirty minutes later Cunningham, Mahommed Gunga, and the five,
+with a much-diminished mule-train bumping in their wake, were headed
+westward on a dry, hot trail, while the time-expired and convalescent
+escort plodded south.  The escort carried word that Cunningham had
+heard of trouble to the west, and had turned off to investigate it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+    Quoth little red jackal, famishing, "Lo,
+    Yonder a priest and a soldier go;
+    You can see farthest, and you ought to know,--
+    Which shall I wander with, carrion crow?"
+    The crow cawed back at him, "Ignorant beast!
+    Soldiers get glory, but none of the feast;
+    Soldiers work hardest, and snaffle the least.
+    Take my advice on it--Follow the priest!"
+
+
+IT was two hours after sunrise on the second day that followed
+Cunningham's desertion of his party when he and Mahommed Gunga first
+caught sight of a blue, baked rock rising sheer out of a fringe of
+green on the dazzling horizon.  It was a freak of nature--a point
+pushed through the level crust of bone-dry earth, and left to glitter
+there alone.
+
+"That is my cousin Alwa's place!" exclaimed Mahommed Gunga, and he
+seemed to draw a world of consolation from the fact.
+
+The sight loosed his tongue at last;  he rode by Cunningham, and
+deigned an explanation now, at least, of what had led to what might
+happen.  He wasted little breath on prophecy, but he was eloquent in
+building up a basis from which Cunningham might draw his own
+deductions.  They had ridden through the cool of the night in easy
+stages, and should have camped at dawn;  but Mahommed Gunga had
+insisted that the tired animals could carry them for three hours longer.
+
+"A soldier's horse must rest at the other end sahib," he had laughed.
+"Who knows that they have not sent from Abu to arrest both thee and
+me?"  And he had not vouchsafed another word until, over the desert
+glare, his cousin's aerie had blazed out, beating back the molten
+sun-rays.
+
+"It looks hotter than the horns of hell!" said Cunningham.
+
+"The horns of hell, sahib, are what we leave behind us!  They grow hot
+now!  Thy countrymen--the men who hated thee so easily--heated them
+and sit now between them for their folly!"
+
+"How d'you mean?  'Pon my soul and honor, Risaldar, you talk more
+riddles in five minutes than I ever heard before in all my life!"
+
+"There be many riddles I have not told yet--riddles of which I do not
+know the answer.  Read me this one.  Why did the British Government
+annex the state of Oudh?  All the best native soldiers came from Oudh,
+or nearly all.  They were loyal once;  but can a man be fairly asked to
+side against his own?  If Oudh should rise in rebellion, what would the
+soldiers do?"
+
+"Dunno, I'm sure," said Cunningham.
+
+"Read me this one, then.  By pacifying both Mohammedan and Hindoo and
+by letting both keep their religion, by sometimes playing one against
+the other and by being just, the British Government has become supreme
+from the Himalayas to the ocean.  Can you tell me why they now issue
+cartridges for the new rifles that are soaked in the fat of cows and
+pigs, thus insulting both Mohammedan and Hindoo?"
+
+"I didn't know it was so."
+
+"Sahib, it is!  These damned new cartridges and this new drill-sahib, I
+--I who am loyal to the marrow of my bones--would no more touch
+those cartridges--nor bite them, as the drill decrees--than I would
+betray thee!  Pig's fat!  Ugh!"
+
+He spat with Mohammedan eloquence and wiped his lips on his tunic
+sleeve before resuming.
+
+"Then, like a flint and steel, to light the train that they have laid,
+they loose these missionaries, in a swarm, from one end of India to the
+other.  Why?  What say one and all?  Mohammedan and Hindoo both say it
+is a plot, first to make them lose their own religion by defilement,
+then to make Christians of them!  Foolishness to talk thus?  Nay!  It
+was foolishness to act thus!
+
+"Sahib, peace follows in the wake of soldiers, as we know.  Time and
+time again the peace of India has been ripped asunder at the whim of
+priests!  These padre people, preaching new damnation everywhere, are
+the flint and steel for the tinder of the cartridge fat!"
+
+"I never knew you to croak before, Mahommed Gunga."
+
+"Nor am I croaking.  I am praising Allah, who has sent thee now to the
+place whence the wind will come to fan the hell flames that presently
+will burn.  The wind will blow hot or cold--for or against the
+government--according as you and I and certain others act when
+opportunity arrives!  See yonder!"
+
+They had been seen, evidently, for horsemen--looking like black ants
+on the desert--seemed to have crawled from the bowels of the living
+rock and were galloping in their direction.
+
+"Friends?" asked Cunningham.
+
+"Friends, indeed!  But they have yet to discover whether we are
+friends.  They set me thinking, sahib.  Alwa is well known on this
+country-side and none dare raid his place;  few would waste time
+trying.  Therefore, it is all one to him who passes along this road;
+and he takes no trouble, as a rule, to send his men out in skirmishing
+order when a party comes in view.  Why, then, does he trouble now?"
+
+"Couldn't say.  I don't know Alwa."
+
+"I am thinking, sahib, that the cloud has burst at last!  A blood-red
+cloud!  Alwa is neither scare-monger nor robber;  when he sends out
+armed men to inspect strangers on the sky-line, there is war!  Sahib, I
+grow young again!  Had people listened to me--had they called me
+anything but fool when I warned them--thou and I would have been
+cooped up now in Agra, or in Delhi, or Lucknow, or Peshawur!  Now we
+are free of the plains of Rajputana--within a ride of fifty of my
+blood-relations, and they each within reach of others!  Ho!  I can hear
+the thunder of a squadron at my back again!  I am young, sahib--
+young!  My old joints loosen!  Allah send the cloud has burst at last
+--I bring to two thousand Rangars a new Cunnigan-bahadur!  Thy father's
+son shall learn what Cunnigan-bahadur taught!"
+
+He lapsed into silence, watching the advancing horsemen, who swooped
+down on them in an ever-closing fan formation.  His tired horse sensed
+the thrill that tingled through its rider's veins, and pranced again,
+curving his neck and straining at the bit until Mahommed Gunga steadied
+him.  The five behind--even the mule-drivers too--detected
+excitement in the air, and the little column closed in on its leaders.
+All eyes watched the neck-and-neck approach of Alwa's men, until
+Cunningham at last could see their turbans and make out that they were
+Rangars, not Hindoos.  Then he and the Risaldar drew rein.
+
+There were twenty who raced toward them, but no Alwa.
+
+"It is as I thought!" declared Mahommed Gunga.  "It is war, sahib!  He
+has summoned men from his estates.  As a rule, he can afford but ten
+men for that fort of his, and he would not send all his men to meet us
+--he has a garrison up yonder!"
+
+Like blown dust-devils the twenty raced to them, and drew up thundering
+within a lance-length.  A sword-armed Rangar with a little gold lace on
+his sleeve laughed loud as he saluted, greeting Mahommed Gunga first.
+The Risaldar accepted his salute with iron dignity.
+
+"Forgive him, sahib!" he whispered to Cunningham.  "The jungli knows no
+better!  He will learn whom to salute first when Alwa has said his
+say!"
+
+But Cunningham was in no mood just then to stand on military ceremony
+or right of precedence. He was too excited, too inquisitive, too
+occupied with the necessity for keeping calm in the face of what most
+surely looked like the beginning of big happenings.  These horsemen of
+Alwa's rode, and looked, and laughed like soldiers, new-stripped of the
+hobble ropes of peace, and their very seat in the untanned saddles--
+tight down, loose-swaying from the hips, and free--was confirmation
+of Mahommed Gunga's words.
+
+They wheeled in a cloud and led the way, opening a little in the centre
+to let the clouds of sand their horses kicked up blow to the right and
+left of Cunningham and his men.  Not a word was spoken--not a
+question asked or a piece of news exchanged--until the whole party
+halted at the foot of Alwa's fortress home--a great iron gate in
+front of them and garden land on either side--watered by the
+splashing streamlet from the heights above.
+
+"Men of the house of Kachwaha have owned and held this place, sahib,
+since Allah made it!" whispered Mahommed Gunga.  "Men say that Alwa has
+no right to it;  they lie!  His father's father won the dower-right!"
+
+He was interrupted by the rising of the iron gate.  It seemed solid,
+without even an eyehole in it.  It was wide enough to let four horses
+under side by side, and for all its weight it rose as suddenly and
+evenly as though a giant's hand had lifted it.  Immediately behind it,
+like an actor waiting for the stage-curtain to rise, Alwa bestrode his
+war-horse in the middle of a roadway.  He saluted with drawn sabre, and
+this time Cunningham replied.
+
+Almost instantly the man who had led the gallopers and had saluted
+Mahommed Gunga spurred his horse up close to Cunningham and whispered:
+
+"Pardon, sahib!  I did not know!  Am I forgiven?"
+
+"Yes," said Cunningham, remembering then that a Rajput, and a Rangar
+more particularly, thinks about points of etiquette before considering
+what to eat.  Alwa growled out a welcome, rammed his sabre home, and
+wheeled without another word, showing the way at a walk--which was
+all a wild goat could have accomplished--up a winding road, hewn out
+of the solid mountain, that corkscrewed round and round upon itself
+until it gave onto the battlemented summit.  There he dismounted,
+ordered his men to their quarters, and for the first time took notice
+of his cousin.
+
+"I have thy missionary and his daughter, three horses for thee, and thy
+man," he smiled.
+
+"Did Ali Partab bring them?"
+
+"Nay.  It was I brought Ali Partab and the rest!  My promise is
+redeemed!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga thrust his sword-hilt out and smiled back at him.  "I
+present Raff-Cunnigan-sahib--son of Pukka-Cunnigan-bahadur!" he
+announced.
+
+Alwa drew himself up to his full height and eyed young Cunningham as a
+buyer eyes a war-horse, inch by inch.  The youngster, who had long since
+learned to actually revel in the weird sensation of a hundred pairs of
+eyes all fixed on him at once, felt this one man's gaze go over him as
+though he were being probed.  He thanked his God he had no fat to be
+detected, and that his legs were straight, and that his tunic fitted
+him!
+
+"Salaam, bahadur," said Alwa slowly.  "I knew thy father.  So--thou
+--art--his--son.  Welcome.  There is room here always for a guest.
+I have other guests with whom you might care to speak.  I will have a
+room made ready.  Have I leave to ask questions of my cousin here?"
+
+Cunningham bowed in recognition of his courtesy, and walked away to a
+point whence he could look from the beetling parapet away and away
+across  desert that shone hot and hazy-rimmed on every side.   If this
+were a man on whom he must depend for following--if any of all the
+more than hints dropped by the risaldar were true--it seemed to him
+that his reception was a little too chilly to be hopeful.
+
+After a minute or two he turned his eyes away from the dazzling plain
+below and faced about to inspect the paved courtyard.  Round it, on
+three sides of a parallelogram, there ran a beautifully designed and
+wonderfully worked-out veranda-fronted building, broken here and there
+by cobbled passages that evidently led to other buildings on the far
+edge of the rock.  In the centre, covered by a roof like a temple-dome
+in miniature, was the ice-cold spring, whose existence made the fort
+tenable.  Under the veranda, on a long, low lounge, was a sight that
+arrested his attention--held him spell-bound--drew him, tingling in
+a way he could not have explained--drew him--drew him, slow-footed,
+awkward, red--across the courtyard.
+
+He heard Mahommed Gunga swear aloud;  he recognized the wording of the
+belly-growled Rangar oath;  but it did not occur to him that what he
+saw--what was drawing him--could be connected with it.  He looked
+straight ahead and walked ahead--reached the edge of the veranda--
+took his helmet off--and stood still, feeling like an idiot, with the
+sun full on his head.
+
+"I'd advise you to step into the shade," said a voice that laughed more
+sweetly than the chuckling spring.  "I don't know who you are, but I'm
+more glad to see you than I ever was in my life to see anybody.  I
+can't get up, because I'm too stiff;  the ride to here from Howrah City
+all but killed me, and I'm only here still because I couldn't ride
+another yard.  My father will be out in a moment.  He's half-dead too."
+
+"My name is Cunningham."
+
+"I'm Miss McClean.  My father was a missionary in Howrah."
+
+She nodded to a chair beside her, and Cunningham took it, feeling
+awkward, as men of his type usually do when they meet a woman in a
+strange place.
+
+"How in the world did you get in?" she asked him.  "It's two days now
+since the Alwa-sahib told us that the whole country is in rebellion.
+How is it that you managed to reach here?  According to Alwa, no white
+man's life is safe in the open, and he only told me today that he
+wouldn't let me go away even if I were well enough to ride."
+
+"First I've heard of rebellion!" said Cunningham aghast at the notion
+of hearing news like that a second hand, and from a woman.
+
+"Hasn't Alwa told you?"
+
+"He hasn't had time to, yet."
+
+"Then, you'd better ask him.  If what he say is true--and I think he
+tells the truth--the natives mean to kill us all, or drive us out of
+India.  Of course they can't do it, but they mean to try.  He has been
+more than kind--more than hospitable--more than chivalrous.   Just
+because he gave his word to another Rangar, he risked his life about a
+dozen times to get my father and me and Ali Partab out of Howrah.  But,
+I don't think he quite liked doing it--and--this is in confidence
+--if I were asked--and speaking just from intuition--I should say
+he is in sympathy with the rebellion!"
+
+"How long have you been here?" asked Cunningham.
+
+"Several days--ten, I think.  It seemed strange at first and rather
+awful to be lodged on a rock like this in a section of a Rangar's
+harem!  Yes, there are several women here behind the scenes, but I only
+see the waiting-women.  I've forgotten time;  the news about rebellion
+seems too awful to leave room for any other thought."
+
+"Who was the Rangar to whom Aliva gave his word?  Not Mahommed Gunga,
+by any chance?"
+
+"Yes, Mahommed Gunga."
+
+"Well, I'm--!" Cunningham clipped off the participle just in time.
+"There is something, then, in the talk about rebellion!  That man's
+been talking in riddles to me ever since I came to India, and it looks
+as though he knew long in advance."
+
+He was about to cross-examine Miss McClean rigorously, even at the risk
+of seeming either rude or else frightened;  but before his lips could
+frame another question he caught sight of Mahommed Gunga making signals
+to him.  He affected to ignore the signals.  He objected to being kept
+in the dark so utterly, and wished to find out a little for himself
+before listening to what the Rangars had to say.  But Mahommed Gunga
+started over to him.
+
+He could not hear the remark Mahommed Gunga made to Alwa over his
+shoulder as he came.
+
+"Had I remembered there was a woman of his own race here, I would have
+plunged him straight into the fighting!  Now there will be the devil
+first to pay!"
+
+"He has decision in at least one thing!" grinned Alwa.
+
+"Something that I think thou lackest, cousin!" came the hot retort.
+
+Alwa turned his back with a shake of his head and a thin-lipped smile
+--then disappeared through a green door in the side of what seemed like
+solid rock.  A moment later Mahommed Gunga stood near Cunningham,
+saluting.
+
+"We ask the favor of a consultation, sahib."
+
+Cunningham rose, a shade regretfully, and followed into the rock-walled
+cavern into which Alwa had preceded them.  It was nearly square--a
+hollow bubble in the age-old lava--axe-trimmed many hundred years
+ago.  What light there was came in through three long slits that gave
+an archer's view of the plain and of the zigzag roadway from the iron
+gate below.  It was cool, for the rock roof was fifty or more feet
+thick, and the silence of it seemed like the nestling-place of peace.
+
+They sat down on wooden benches round the walls, with their soldier
+legs stretched out in front of them.  Alwa broke silence first, and it
+was of anything but peace he spoke.
+
+"Now--now, let us see whose throats we are to slit!" he started
+cheerfully.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+    Achilles had a tender spot
+    That even guarding gods forgot,
+            When clothing him in armor;
+    And I have proved this charge o' mine
+    For fear, and sloth, and vice, and wine,
+            But clear forgot the charmer!
+
+
+THE Alwa-sahib knew more English than he was willing to admit.  In the
+first place, he had the perfectly natural dislike of committing his
+thoughts to any language other than his own when anything serious was
+the subject of discussion;  in the second place, he had little of
+Mahommed Gunga's last-ditch loyalty.  Not that Alwa could be disloyal;
+he had not got it in him;  but as yet he had seen no good reason for
+pledging himself and his to the British cause.
+
+So for more than ten minutes he chose to sit in apparent dudgeon, his
+hands folded in front of him on the hilt of his tremendous sabre,
+growling out a monologue in his own language for Mahommed Gunga's
+benefit.  Then  Mahommed Gunga silenced him with an uplifted hand, and
+turned to translate to Cunningham.
+
+"It would seem, sahib, that even while we rode to Abu the rebellion was
+already raging!  It burst suddenly.  They have mutinied at Berhampur,
+and slain their officers.  Likewise at Meerut, and at all the places in
+between.  At Kohat, in this province they have slain every white man,
+woman, and child, and also at Arjpur and Sohlat.  The rebels are
+hurrying to Delhi, where they have proclaimed new rule, under the
+descendants of the old-time kings.  Word of all this came before dawn
+today, by a messenger from Maharajah Howrah to my cousin here.  My
+cousin stands pledged to uphold Howrah on his throne;  Howrah is
+against the British;  Jaimihr, his brother, is in arms against Howrah."
+
+"Why did the Alwa-sahib pledge himself to Howrah's cause?"
+
+Mahommed Gunga--who knew quite well--saw fit to translate the
+question.  With a little sign of irritation Alwa growled his answer.
+
+"He says, sahib, that for the safety of two Christian missionaries, for
+whom he has no esteem at all, he was forced to swear allegiance to a
+Hindoo whom he esteems even less.  He says that his word is given!"
+
+"Does he mean that he would like me and the missionaries to leave his
+home at once--do we embarrass him?"
+
+Again Mahommed Gunga--this time with a grin--saw fit to ask before
+he answered.
+
+"He says, 'God forbid,' sahib;  'a guest is guest!'"
+
+Cunningham reflected for a moment, then leaned forward.
+
+"Tell him this!" he said slowly.  "I am glad to be his guest, but, if
+this story of rebellion is true--"
+
+"It is true, sahib!  More than true!  There is much more to be told!"
+
+"Then, I can only accept his hospitality as the representative of my
+government!  I stay here officially, or not at all.  It is for him to
+answer!"
+
+"Now, Allah be praised!" swore Mahommed Gunga.  "I knew we had a man!
+That is well said, sahib!"
+
+"The son of Cunnigan-bahadur is welcome here on any terms at all!"
+growled Alwa when Mahommed Gunga had translated.  "All the rebels in
+all India, all trying at once, would fail to take this fort of mine,
+had I a larger garrison.  But what Rangar on this countryside will risk
+his life and estates on behalf of a cause that is already lost?  If
+they come to hold my fort for me, the rebels will burn their houses.
+The British Raj is doomed.  We Rangars have to play for our own stake!"
+
+Then Mahommed Gunga rose and paced the floor like a man in armor,
+tugging at his beard and kicking at his scabbard each time that he
+turned at either end.
+
+"What Rangar in this province would have had one yard of land to his
+name but for this man's father?" he demanded.  "In his day we fought,
+all of us, for what was right!  We threw our weight behind him when he
+led, letting everything except obedience go where the devil wanted it!
+What came of that?  Good tithes, good report, good feeling, peace!"
+
+"And then, the zemindary laws!" growled Alwa.  "Then the laws that took
+away from us full two-thirds of our revenue!"
+
+"We had had no revenue, except for Cunnigan-bahadur!"
+
+It dawned on Cunningham exactly why and how he came to be there!  He
+understood now that Mahommed Gunga had told nothing less than truth
+when he declared it had been through his scheming, and no other man's,
+that he--Cunningham--whose sole thought was to be a soldier, had
+been relegated to oblivion and politics!  He understood why Byng had
+signed the transfer, and he knew--knew--knew--deep down inside
+him that his chance had come!
+
+"It seems that another Cunningham is to have the honor of preserving
+Rangars' titles for them," he smiled.  "How many horsemen could the
+Alwa-sahib raise?"
+
+"That would depend!" Alwa was in no mood to commit himself.
+
+"At the most--at a pinch--in case of direst need, and for a cause
+that all agreed on?"
+
+"Two thousand."
+
+"Horsed and armed?"
+
+"And ready!"
+
+"And you, Alwa-sahib--are you pledged to fight against the British?"
+
+"Not in so many words.  I swore to uphold Howrah on his throne.  He is
+against the British."
+
+"You swore to help smash his brother, Jaimihr?"
+
+"If I were needed."
+
+"And Jaimihr too is against the British?"
+
+"Jaimihr is for Jaimihr, and has a personal affair with me!"
+
+"I must think," said Cunningham, getting up.  "I can think better alone.
+D'you mind if I go outside for a while, and come back later to tell
+you what I think?"
+
+Alwa arose and held the door open for him--stood and watched him
+cross the courtyard--then turned and laughed at Mahommed Gunga.
+
+"Straight over to the woman!" he grinned.  "This leader of thine seems
+in leading-strings himself already!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga cursed, and cursed again as his own eyes confirmed what
+Alwa said.
+
+"I tried him all the ways there are, except that one way!" he declared.
+ "May Allah forgive my oversight!  I should have got him well entangled
+with a woman before he reached Peshawur!  He should have been
+heart-broken by this time--rightly, he should have been desperate
+with unrequited love!  Byng-bahadur could have managed it!
+Byng-bahadur would have managed it, had I thought to advise him!"
+
+He stood, looking over very gloomily at Cunningham, making a dozen wild
+plans for getting rid of Miss McClean--by no means forgetting poison
+--and the height of Alwa's aerie from the plain below!  He would have
+been considerably calmer, could he have heard what Cunningham and Miss
+McClean were saying.
+
+The missionary was with her now--ill and exhausted from the combined
+effects of excitement, horror, and the unaccustomed ride across the
+desert--most anxious for his daughter--worried, to the verge of
+desperation, by the ghastly news of the rebellion.
+
+"Mr. Cunningham, I hope you are the forerunner of a British force?" he
+hazarded.
+
+But Cunningham was too intent on cross-examination to waste time on
+giving any information.
+
+"I want you to tell me, quite quietly and without hurry, all you can
+about Howrah," he said, sitting close to Miss McClean.  "I want you to
+understand that I am the sole representative of my government in the
+whole district, and that whatever can be done depends very largely on
+what information I can get.  I have been talking to the Alwa-sahib, but
+he seems too obsessed with his own predicament to be able to make
+things quite clear.  Now, go ahead and tell me what you know about
+conditions in the city.  Remember, you are under orders!  Try and
+consider yourself a scout, reporting information to your officer.  Tell
+me every single thing, however unimportant."
+
+On the far side of the courtyard Alwa and Mahommed Gunga had gone to
+lean over the parapet and watch something that seemed to interest both
+of them intently.  There were twenty or more men, lined round the
+ramparts on the lookout, and they all too seemed spellbound, but
+Cunningham was too engrossed in Miss McClean's story of the happenings
+in Howrah City to take notice.  Now and then her father would help her
+out with an interjected comment;  occasionally Cunningham would stop
+her with a question, or would ask her to repeat some item;  but, for
+more than an hour she spun a clear-strung narrative that left very
+little to imagination and included practically all there was to know.
+
+"Do you think," asked Cunningham "that this brute Jaimihr really wants
+to make you Maharanee?"
+
+"I couldn't say," she shuddered.  "You know, there have been several
+instances of European women having practically sold themselves to
+native princes;  there have been stories--I have heard them--of
+English women marrying Rajahs, and regretting it.  There is no reason
+why he should not be in earnest, and he certainly seemed to be."
+
+"And this treasure?  Of course, I have heard tales about it, but I
+thought they were just tales."
+
+"That treasure is really there, and its amount must be fabulous.  I
+have been told that there are jewels there which would bring a Rajah's
+ransom, and gold enough to offset the taxes of the whole of India for a
+year or two.  I've no doubt the stories are exaggerated, but the
+treasure is real enough, and big enough to make the throne worth
+fighting for.   Jaimihr counts on being able to break the power of the
+priests and broach the treasure."
+
+"And Jaimihr is--er--in love with you!"
+
+"He tried very hard to prove it, in his own objectionable way!"
+
+"And Jaimihr wants the throne--and Howrah wants to send a force
+against the British, but dare not move because of Jaimihr--I have
+Mahommed Gunga and five or six men to depend on--the Rangars are
+sitting on the fence--and the government has its hands full!  The
+lookout's bright!  I think I see the way through!"
+
+"You are forgetting me."  The missionary spread his broad stooped
+shoulders.  "I am a missionary first, but next to that I have my
+country's cause more at heart than anything.  I place myself under your
+orders, Mr. Cunningham."
+
+"I too," said Miss McClean.  She was looking at him keenly as he gazed
+away into nothing through slightly narrowed eyes.  Vaguely, his
+attitude reminded her of a picture she had once seen of the Duke of
+Wellington;  there was the same mastery, the same far vision, the same
+poise of self-contained power.  His nose was not like the Iron Duke's,
+for young Cunningham's had rather more tolerance in its outline and
+less of Roman overbearing;  but the eyes, and the mouth, and the angle
+of the jaw were so like Wellesley's as to force a smile.  "A woman
+isn't likely to be much use in a case like this--but, one never
+knows.  My country comes first."
+
+"Thanks," he answered quietly.  And as he turned his head to flash one
+glance at each of them, she recognized what Mahommed Gunga had gloated
+over from the first--the grim decision, that will sacrifice all--
+take full responsibility--and use all means available for the one
+unflinching purpose of the game in hand.  She knew that minute, and her
+father knew, that if she could be used--in any way at all--he would
+make use of her.
+
+"Go ahead!" she nodded.  "I'll obey!"
+
+"And I will not prevent!" said Duncan McClean, smiling and
+straightening his spectacles.
+
+Cunningham left them and walked over to the parapet, where the whole
+garrison was bending excitedly now above the battlement.  There were
+more than forty men, most of them clustered near Alwa and Mahommed
+Gunga. Mahommed Gunga was busy counting.
+
+"Eight hundred!" he exclaimed, as Cunningham drew near.
+
+"Eight hundred what, Mahommed Gunga?  Come and see, sahib."
+
+Cunningham leaned over, and beheld a mounted column, trailing along the
+desert road in wonderfully good formation.
+
+"Where are they from?" he asked.
+
+"Jaimihr's men, from Howrah!"
+
+"That means," growled Alwa, "that the Hindoo pig Jaimihr has more than
+half the city at his back.  He has left behind ten men for every one he
+brings with him--sufficient to hold Howrah in check.  Otherwise he
+would never have dared come here.  He hopes to settle his little
+private quarrel with me first, before dealing with his brother!  Who
+told him, I wonder, that I was pledged to Howrah?"
+
+"He reckons he has caught thee napping in this fort of thine!" laughed
+Mahommed Gunga.  "He means to bottle up the Rangars' leader, and so
+checkmate all of them!"
+
+The eight hundred horsemen on the plain below rode carelessly through
+Alwa's gardens, leaving trampled confusion in their wake, and lined up
+--with Jaimihr at their head--immediately before the great iron gate.
+A moment later four men rode closer and hammered on it with their
+lance-ends.
+
+"Go down and speak to them!" commanded Alwa, and a man dropped down the
+zigzag roadway like a goat, taking short cuts from level to level,
+until he stood on a pinnacle of rock that overhung the gate.  Ten
+minutes later he returned, breathing hard with the effort of his climb.
+
+"Jaimihr demands the missionaries--particularly the Miss-sahib--
+also quarters and food!" he reported.
+
+"Quarters and food he shall have!" swore Alwa, looking down at the
+Prince who sat his charger in the centre of the roadway.  "Did he
+deign a threat?"
+
+"He said that in fifteen minutes he will burst the gate in, unless he
+is first admitted!"
+
+Duncan McClean walked over, limping painfully, and peered over the
+precipice.
+
+"Unfriendly?" he asked, and Mahommed Gunga heard him.
+
+"Thy friend Jaimihr, sahib!  His teeth are all but visible from here!"
+
+"And--?"
+
+"He demands admittance--also thee and thy daughter!"
+
+"And--?"
+
+"Sahib--art thou a priest?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"One, then, who prays?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For dead men, ever?  For the dying?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Aloud?"
+
+"On occasion, yes."
+
+"Then pray now!  There will be many dead and dying on the plain below
+in less than fifteen minutes!  Hindoos, for all I know, would benefit
+by prayer.  They have too many gods, and their gods are too busy
+fighting for ascendancy to listen.  Pray thou, a little!"
+
+There came a long shout from the plain, and Alwa sent a man again to
+listen.  He came back with a message that Jaimihr granted amnesty to
+all who would surrender, and that he would be pleased to accept Alwa's
+allegiance if offered to him.
+
+"I will offer the braggart something in the way of board and lodging
+that will astonish him!" growled Alwa.  "Eight men to horse!  The first
+eight!  That will do!  Back to the battlement, the rest of you!"
+
+They had raced for the right to loose themselves against eight hundred!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+    OH, duck and run--the hornets come!
+    Oh, jungli!  Clear the way!
+    The nest's ahum--the hornets come!
+    The sharp-stinged, harp-winged hornets come!
+    Nay, jungli!  When the hornets come,
+            It isn't well to stay!
+
+
+ALWA ordered ten men down into the bowels of the rock itself, where
+great wheels with a chain attached to them were forced round to lift
+the gate.  Next he stationed a signaller with a cord in either hand,
+above the parapet, to notify the men below exactly when to set the
+simple machinery in motion.  His eight clattered out from the stables
+on the far side of the rock, and his own charger was brought to him,
+saddled.
+
+Then, in a second, it was evident why Raputs do not rule in Rajputana.
+
+"I ride too with my men!" declared Mahommed Gunga.
+
+"Nay!  This is my affair--my private quarrel with Jaimihr!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga turned to Ali Partab, who had been a shadow to him ever
+since he came.
+
+"Turn out my five, and bring my charger!" he commanded.
+
+"No, I say!" Alwa had his hand already on his sabre hilt.  "There is
+room for eight and no more.  Four following four abreast, and one ahead
+to lead them.  I and my men know how to do this.  I and my men have a
+personal dispute with Jaimihr.  Stay thou here!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga's five and Ali Partab came clattering out so fast as to
+lead to the suspicion that their horses had been already saddled.
+Mahommed Gunga mounted.
+
+"Lead on, cousin!" he exclaimed.  "I will follow thy lead, but I come!"
+
+Then Alwa did what a native nearly always will do.  He turned to a man
+not of his own race, whom he believed he could trust to be impartial.
+
+"Sahib--have I no rights in my own house?"
+
+"Certainly you have," said Cunningham, who was wondering more than
+anything what weird, wild trick these horsemen meant to play.  No man
+in his senses would have dared to ride a horse at more than foot-pace
+down the path.  Was there another path? he wondered.  At least, if
+eight men were about to charge into eight hundred, it would be best to
+keep his good friend Mahommed Gunga out of it, he decided.
+
+"Risaldar!"  The veteran was always most amenable to reason when
+addressed by his military title.  "Who of us two is senior--thou or
+I?"
+
+"By Allah, not I, sahib!  I am thy servant!"
+
+"I accept your service, and I order you to stay with your men up here
+with me!"
+
+Mahommed Gunga saluted and dismounted, and his six followed suit,
+looking as disappointed as children just deprived of a vacation.  Alwa
+wheeled his horse in front of Cunningham and saluted too.
+
+"For that service, sahib, I am thy friend!" he muttered.  "That was
+right and reasonable, and a judgement quickly given!  Thy friend,
+bahadur!"  He spoke low on purpose, but Mahommed Gunga heard him,
+caught Cunningham's eye, and grinned.  He saw a way to save his face,
+at all events.
+
+"That was a trick well turned, sahib!" he whispered, as Alwa moved
+away. "Alwa will listen in future when Cunnigan-bahadur speaks!"
+
+"Go down and tell Jaimihr that I come in person!" ordered Alwa, and the
+man dropped down the cliff side for the third time;  they could hear
+his voice, high-pitched, resounding off the rock, and they caught a
+faint murmur of the answer.  Below, Jaimihr could be seen waiting
+patiently, checking his restive war-horse with a long-cheeked bit, and
+waiting, ready to ride under the gate the moment it was opened.
+Rosemary McClean came over;  she and Cunningham and the missionary
+leaned together over the battlement and watched.
+
+"We might do some execution with rifles from here," Cunningham
+suggested;  "I believe I'll send for mine."  But Mahommed Gunga
+overheard him.
+
+"Nay, sahib!  No shooting will be necessary.  Watch!"
+
+There was a clatter of hoofs, and they all looked up in time to see the
+tails of the last four chargers disappearing round the corner,
+downward.  They had gone--full pelt--down a path that a man might
+hesitate to take!  From where they stood, there was an archer's view of
+every inch of the only rock-hewn road that led from the gate to the
+summit of the cliff;  an enemy who had burst the gate in would have had
+to climb in the teeth of a searching hail of missiles, with little
+chance of shooting back.
+
+They could see the gate itself, and Jaimihr on the other side.  And,
+swooping--shooting--sliding down the trail like a storm-loosed
+avalanche, they could see the nine go, led by Alwa.  No living creature
+could have looked away!
+
+Below, entirely unconscious of the coming shock, the mounted sepoys
+waited behind Jaimihr in four long, straight lines.  Jaimihr himself,
+with a heavy-hilted cimeter held upward at the "carry," was about four
+charger lengths beyond the iron screen, ready to spur through.  Close
+by him were a dozen, waiting to ram a big beam in and hold up the gate
+when it had opened.  And, full-tilt down the gorge, flash-tipped like a
+thunderbolt, gray-turbaned, reckless, whirling death ripped down on
+them.
+
+They caught sound of the hammering hoofs too late.  Two gongs boomed in
+the rock.  The windlass creaked.  Five seconds too late Jaimihr
+gathered up his reins, spurred, wheeled, and shouted to the men behind
+him.  The great gate rose, like the jaws of a hungry monster, and the
+nine--streaking too fast down far too steep a slide to stop
+themselves--burst straight out under it and struck, as a wind blast
+smites a poppy-field.
+
+Jaimihr was borne backward--carried off his horse.  Alwa and the
+first four rode him down, and crashed through the four-deep line
+beyond;  the second four pounced on him, gathered him, and followed.
+Before the lines could form again the whole nine wheeled--as a
+wind-eddy spins on its own axis--and burst through back again, the
+horses racing neck and neck, and the sabres cutting down a swath to
+screech and swear and gurgle in among the trampled garden stuff.
+
+They came back in a line, all eight abreast, Alwa leading only by a
+length.  At the opening, four horses--two on either side--slid,
+rump to the ground, until their noses touched the rock.  Alwa and four
+dashed through and under;  the rest recovered, spun on their haunches,
+and followed.  The gongs boomed again down in the belly of the rock,
+and the gate clanged shut.
+
+"That was good," said Mahommed Gunga quietly.  "Now, watch again!"
+
+Almost before the words had left his lips, a hail of lead barked out
+from twenty vantage-points, and the smoke showed where some forty men
+were squinting down steel barrels, shooting as rapidly and as rottenly
+as natives of India usually do.  They did little execution;  but before
+Alwa and his eight had climbed up the steep track to the summit,
+patting their horses' necks and reviling Jaimihr as they came, the
+cavalry below had scampered out of range, leaving their dead and
+wounded where they lay.
+
+"How is that for a start, sahib?" demanded Mahommed Gunga exultantly,
+as two men deposited the dishevelled Jaimihr on his feet, and the
+Prince glared around him like a man awaking from a dream.  "How is that
+for a beginning?"
+
+"As bad as could be!" answered Cunningham.  "It was well executed--
+bold--clever--anything you like, Mahommed Gunga, but--if I'd been
+asked I'd have sooner made the devil prisoner!  Jaimihr is no use at
+all to us in here.  Outside, he'd be veritable godsend!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+    There is war to the North should I risk and ride forth,
+    And a fight to the South, too, I'm thinking;
+    There is war in the East, and one battle at least
+    In the West between eating and drinking.
+    I'm allowed to rejoice in an excellent choice
+    Of plans for a soldier of mettle,
+    For all of them mean bloody war and rapine.
+    So--on which should a gentleman settle?
+
+
+WITH his muscles strained and twisted (for his Rangar capturers had
+dragged him none too gently) and with his jewelled pugree all awry,
+Jaimihr did not lack dignity.  He held his chin high, although he gazed
+at the bubbling spring thirstily;  and, thirsty though he must have
+been, he asked no favors.
+
+One of Alwa's men brought him a brass dipper full of water, after
+washing it out first thoroughly and ostentatiously.  But Jaimihr
+smiled.  His caste forbade.  He waved away the offering much as Caesar
+may have waved aside a crown, with an air of condescending mightiness
+too proud to know contempt.
+
+"Go, help thyself!" growled Alwa;  and Jaimihr walked to the spring
+without haste, knelt down, and dipped up water with his hand.
+
+"Now to a cell with him!" commanded Alwa, before the Prince had time to
+slake a more than ordinary thirst.  Jaimihr stood upright as four men
+closed in on him, and looked straight in the eyes of every one in turn.
+Rosemary McClean stepped back, to hide herself behind Cunningham's
+broad shoulders, but Jaimihr saw her and his proud smile broadened to a
+laugh of sheer amusement.  He let his captors wait for him while he
+stared straight at her, sparing her no fragment of embarrassment.
+
+"I slew a man once to save thee, sahiba!" he mocked.  "Why slink away?
+Have I ever been thy enemy?"
+
+Then he folded his arms and walked off between his guards, without even
+an acknowledgment of Alwa's or any other man's existence on the earth.
+
+Alwa spat as he wiped blood from his long sabre.  He imagined he was
+doing the necessary dirty work out of Miss McClean's sight;  but,
+except hospital nurses, there are few women who can see dry blood
+removed from steel without a qualm;  she had looked at Alwa to escape
+Jaimihr's gaze;  now she looked at Jaimihr's back to avoid the sight of
+what Alwa was seeing fit to do.  And with all the woman in her she
+pitied the prisoner, who had said no less than truth when he claimed to
+have killed a man for her.
+
+She knew that he would have killed a thousand men for her with equal
+generosity and equal disregard of what she thought was right, and she
+did not doubt that he would think himself both justified and worthy of
+renown for doing it.  She could have begged his release that minute,
+had she thought for an instant that Alwa would consent, and but for
+Cunningham.  She had grown aware of Cunningham's gray eyes, staring
+straight at her--summing her up--reading her.  And she became
+conscious of the fact that she had met a man whose leave she would like
+to ask before deciding to act.
+
+The mental acknowledgment brought relief for a few seconds.  She was
+tired.  The woman in here went out to the man in Cunningham, and she
+welcomed a protector.  Then the Scots blood raced to the assistance of
+the woman, and she bridled instantly.  Who, then, was this chance-met
+jackanapes, that she should lean on him or look to him for guidance?
+
+The rebellion that had made her disobey her father back in Howrah City
+--the spirit that had kept her in Howrah City and had given Jaimihr
+back cool stare for stare--rallied her to resist--to ridicule--to
+rival Cunningham's pretensions.  He saw her flush beneath his gaze, and
+turned away to where Mahommed Gunga watched from the parapet.
+
+The leaders of Jaimihr's calvary were arguing.  They could be seen
+gathered together out of rifle-shot but in full view of Alwa's rock,
+and from their gestures they seemed to be considering the feasibility
+of an attack.
+
+But it needed no warrior--it needed less even than ordinary
+intelligence--to know that as few as forty men could hold that
+fastness against two thousand.  Eight hundred would have no chance
+against it.  Even two thousand would need engineers, and ordnance, as
+well as plans.
+
+Presently half of the little army rode away, back toward Howrah City,
+and the other half proceeded to bivouac where they could watch the
+iron-shuttered entrance and cut off the little garrison from all
+communication or assistance.
+
+"We might as well resume our conference," suggested Alwa, with the
+courtly air of a man just arisen from a chair.  No one who had not seen
+him ride would have dreamed that he was fresh from snatching a prisoner
+at the bottom of a neck-breaking defile.  Cunningham nodded
+acquiescence and followed him, turning to stare again at Miss McClean
+before he strode away with long, even strides that had a reassuring
+effect on any one who watched him.  She bridled again, and blushed.
+But she experienced the weird sensation of being read right through
+before Mahommed Gunga contrived adroitly to step into the line of view
+and so let Cunningham's attention fix itself on something else.  The
+Risaldar had made up his mind that love was inopportune just then;  and
+he was a man who left no stone unturned--no point unwatched--when
+he had sensed a danger.  This might be danger and it might not be;  so
+he watched.  Cunningham was conscious of the sudden interruption of a
+train of thought, but he was not conscious of deliberate interference.
+
+"That very young man is an old man," said Duncan McClean, wiping his
+spectacles as he walked beside his daughter to the deep veranda where
+their chairs were side by side.  "He is a grown man. He has come to
+man's estate.  Look at the set of that pair of shoulders.  Mark his
+strength!"
+
+"I expect any one of those Rajputs is physically stronger," answered
+Rosemary, in no mood to praise any one.
+
+"I was thinking of the strength of character he expresses rather than
+of his actual muscles," said McClean.
+
+"Bismillah!"  Alwa was swearing behind the thick teak door that closed
+behind him and Cunningham and Mahommed Gunga.  "We have made a good
+beginning!  With the wolf in a trap, what has the goat to dread?
+Howrah may chuckle  himself to sleep!  And I--I,  too, by the beard
+of God's prophet!--I, too, may laugh, for, with Jaimihr under lock
+and key, what need is there to ride to the aid of a Hindoo Rajah?  I am
+free again!"
+
+"Alwa-sahib!"
+
+Cunningham had fixed him with those calm gray eyes of his, and Mahommed
+Gunga sat down on the nearest bench contented.  He could wait for what
+was coming now.  He recognized the blossoming of the plant that he had
+nursed through its growth so long.
+
+"I listen," answered Alwa.
+
+"I represent the British Government.  I am the only servant of the
+Company within reach.  Do you realize that?"
+
+"Yes, sahib."
+
+"I have no orders which entitle me to deal with any crisis such as
+this.  But, when my orders were given me, no such crisis was
+contemplated.  Therefore, on behalf of the Company, I assume full
+authority until such time as some one senior to me turns up to relieve
+me.  Is all that clear to you?"
+
+"Yes, sahib."
+
+Mahommed Gunga went through considerable pantomime of being angry with
+a fly.  He found it necessary to conceal emotion in some way or other.
+Alwa sat motionless and stared straight back at Cunningham.
+
+"I understand, sahib," he repeated.
+
+"You are talking to me, then, on that understanding?"
+
+"Most certainly, huzoor."
+
+"You can raise two thousand men?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Say fifteen hundred?"
+
+"Surely fifteen hundred.  Not a sabre less."
+
+"All horsed and armed?"
+
+"Surely, bahadur.  Of what use would be a rabble?  I was speaking in
+terms of men able to fight, as one soldier to another."
+
+"Will you raise those men?"
+
+"Of a truth, I must, sahib!" Alwa laughed.  "Jaimihr's thousands will
+be in no mind to lie leaderless and let Howrah ride rough-shod over
+them!  They know his charity of old!  They will be here to claim their
+Prince within a day or two, and without my fifteen hundred how would I
+stand?  Surely, bahadur, I will raise my fifteen hundred."
+
+"Very well.  Now I will make you a proposal.  On behalf of the Company
+I offer you and your men pay at the rate paid to all irregular cavalry
+on a war basis.  In return, I demand your allegiance."
+
+"To whom, sahib?  To you or to the Company?"
+
+"To the Company, of course."
+
+"Nay!  Not I!  For the son of Cunnigan-bahadur I would slit the throats
+of half Asia, and then of nine-tenths of the other half!  But by the
+breath of God--by my spurs and this sabre here--I have had enough
+of pledging!  I swore allegiance to Howrah.  Being nearly free of that
+pledge by Allah's sending, shall I plunge into another, like a
+frightened bird fluttering from snare to snare?  Nay, nay, bahadur!
+For thyself, for thy father's sake, ask any favor.  It is granted.  But
+thy Company may stew in the grease of its own cartridges for ought I
+care!"
+
+Cunningham stood up and bowed very slightly--very stiffly--very
+punctiliously.  Mahommed Gunga leaped to his feet, and came to
+attention with a military clatter.  Alwa stared, inclining his head a
+trifle in recognition of the bow, but evidently taken by surprise.
+
+"Then, good-by, Alwa-sahib."
+
+Cunningham stretched out a hand.
+
+"I am much obliged to you for your hospitality, and regret exceedingly
+that I cannot avail myself of it further, either for myself or for
+Mahommed Gunga or for Mr. and Miss McClean.  As the Company's
+representative, they, of course, look to me for orders and protection,
+and I shall take them away at once.  As things are, we can only be a
+source of embarrassment to you."
+
+"But--sahib--huzoor--it is impossible.  You have seen the cavalry
+below.  How can you--how could you get away?"
+
+"Unless I am your prisoner I shall certainly leave this place at once.
+The only other condition on which I will stay here is that you pledge
+your allegiance to the Company and take my orders."
+
+"Sahib, this is--why--huzoor--"
+
+Alwa looked over to Mahommed Gunga and raised his eyebrows eloquently.
+
+"I obey him!  I go with him!" growled Mahommed Gunga.
+
+"Sahib, I would like time to think this over."
+
+"How much time?  I thought you quick-witted when you made Jaimihr
+prisoner.  Has that small success undermined your power of decision?  I
+know my mind.  Mahommed Gunga knows his, Alwa-sahib."
+
+"I ask an hour.  There are many points I must consider.  There is the
+prisoner for one thing."
+
+"You can hand him over to the custody of the first British column we
+can get in touch with, Alwa-sahib.  That will relieve you of further
+responsibility to Howrah and will insure a fair trial of any issue
+there may be between yourself and Jaimihr."
+
+Alwa scowled.  No Rajput likes the thought of litigation where affairs
+of honor are concerned.  He felt he would prefer to keep Jaimihr
+prisoner for the present.
+
+"Also, sahib"--fresh facets of the situation kept appearing to him as
+he sparred for time--"with Jaimihr in a cage I can drive a bargain
+with his brother.  While I keep him in the cage, Howrah must respect my
+wishes for fear lest otherwise I loose Jaimihr to be a thorn in his
+side anew.  If I hand him to the British, Howrah will know that he is
+safe and altogether out of harm's way;  then he will recall what he may
+choose to consider insolence of mine;  and then--"
+
+"Oh, well--consider it!" said Cunningham, saluting him and making for
+the door, close followed by Mahommed Gunga.  The two went out and it
+left Alwa to stride up and down alone--to wrestle between desire and
+circumspection--to weigh uncomfortable fact with fact--and to curse
+his wits that could not settle on the wisest and most creditable
+course.  They turned into another chamber of the tunnelled rock, and
+there until long after the hour of law allowed to Alwa they discussed
+the situation too.
+
+"The point was well taken, sahib," said Mahommed Gunga, "but he should
+have been handled rather less abruptly."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Rather less abruptly, sahib."
+
+"Oh! Well--if his mind isn't clear as to which side he'll fight on, I
+don't want him, and that's all!" said Cunningham.  And Mahommed Gunga
+bitted his impatience fiercely, praying the one God he believed in to
+touch the right scale of the two.  Later, Cunningham strode out to pace
+the courtyard in the dark, and the Rajput followed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+    The trapped wolf bared his fangs and swore,
+    "But set me this time free,
+    And I will hunt thee never more!
+    By ear and eye and jungle law,
+    I'll starve--I'll faint--I'll die before
+    I bury tooth in thee!"
+
+
+WHILE Alwa raged alone, and while Mahommed Gunga talked to Cunningham
+in a rock-room near at hand, Rosemary McClean saw fit to take a hand in
+history.  It was not her temperament to sit quite idle while others
+shaped her destiny;  nor was she given to mere brooding over wrongs.
+When a wrong was being done that she could alter or alleviate it was
+her way to tackle it at once without asking for permission or advice.
+
+From where her chair was placed under the long veranda she could see
+the passage in the rock that led to Jaimihr's cell.  She saw his
+captors take him up the passage;  she heard the door clang shut on him,
+and she saw the men come back again.  She heard them laugh, too, and
+she overheard a few words of a jest that seemed the reason for the
+laughter.
+
+In Rajputana, as in other portions of the East, men laugh with meaning
+as a rule, and seldom from mere amusement.  Included in the laugh there
+usually lies more than a hint of threat, or hate, or cruelty.  And, in
+partial confirmation of the jest she unintentionally overheard, she saw
+no servant go to the chuckling spring to fill a water-jar.  She
+recalled that Jaimihr only sipped as much as he could dip up in the
+hollow of his hand, and that physical exertion and suffering of the
+sort that he had undergone produces prodigious thirst in that hot, dry
+atmosphere.
+
+She waited until dark for Cunninham, growing momentarily more restless.
+She recalled that she was a guest of Alwa's, and as such not free to
+interfere with his arrangements or to suggest insinuations anent his
+treatment of prisoners.  She recalled the pride of all Rajputs, and its
+accompanying corollary of insolence when offended.  There would come no
+good--she knew--from asking anybody whether Jaimihr was allowed to
+drink or not.
+
+Cunningham, with that middle-aged air of authority laid over the fire
+and ability of youth, would be able, no doubt, to enforce his wishes in
+the matter after finding out the truth about it.  But Cunningham did
+not come;  and she remembered from a short experience of her own what
+thirst was.
+
+The men-at-arms were all on the ramparts now, watching the leaderless
+cavalry on the plain.  They had even left the cell door unguarded, for
+it was held shut by a heavy beam  that could not be reached from the
+inside;  and they were all too few, even all of them together, to hold
+that rock against eight  hundred.  It was characteristic, though, and
+Eastern of the East, that they should omit to padlock the big beam.  It
+pivoted at its centre on a big bronze pin, and even a child could move
+it from the outside;  it was only from the inside that it was
+uncontrollable.  From inside one could have jerked at the door for a
+week  and the big beam would have lain still and efficient in its niche
+in the rock-wall;  but a little pressure underneath one end would send
+it swinging in an arc until it hung bolt upright.  Then the same child
+who had pushed it up could have swung the teak door wide.
+
+Rosemary, growing momentarily thirstier herself as she thought of the
+probable torture of the prisoner, walked down to the spring and filled
+a dipper, as she had done half a dozen times a day since she first
+arrived.  She had carried almost all her own and her father's water,
+for Joanna was generally sleeping somewhere out of view, and no other
+body-servant had been provided for her.  There was a fairly big brass
+pitcher by the spring.  She filled it.  Nobody noticed her.
+
+Then she recalled that nobody would notice her if she were to carry the
+brass pitcher in the direction of her room, for she had done that
+often.  She picked it up, and she reached the end of the veranda with
+it without having called attention to herself.  She set it down then to
+make quite sure that she was unobserved.
+
+But some movement of the cavalry on the plain below was keeping the
+eyes of the garrison employed.  Although a solitary lantern shone full
+on her, she reached the passage leading to the prisoner's cell unseen;
+and she walked on down it, making no attempt to hide or hurry,
+remembering that she was acting out of mercy and had no need to be
+ashamed.  If she were to be discovered, then she would be, and that was
+all about it, except that she would probably be able to appeal to
+Cunningham to save her from unpleasant consequences.  In any case, she
+reasoned, she would have done good.  She was quite ready to get herself
+and her own in trouble if by doing it she could insure that a prisoner
+had water.
+
+But she was not seen.  And no one saw her set the jar down by the door.
+No one except the prisoner inside heard her knock.
+
+"Have you water, Jaimihr-sahib?" she inquired.
+
+The East has a hundred florid epithets for one used in the West;  and
+in a land where water is as scarce as gold and far more precious the
+mention of water to a thirsty man calls forth a flood of thought such
+as only music or perhaps religion can produce in luckier climes.
+Jaimihr waxed eloquent;  more eloquent than even water might have made
+him had another--had even another woman--brought it.  He recognized
+her voice, and said things to her that roused all the anger that she
+knew.  She had not come to be made love to.
+
+She thought, though, of his thirst.  She remembered that within an hour
+or two he might be raving for another reason and with other words.  The
+big beam lifted on her hands with barely more effort than was needed to
+lift up the water-jar;  the door opened a little way, and she tried,
+while she passed the water in, to peer through the darkness at the
+prisoner.  But there were no windows to that cell, and such dim light
+as there was came from behind her.
+
+"They have bound me, sahiba, in this corner," groaned Jaimihr.  "I
+cannot reach it.  Take it away again!  The certainty that it is there
+and out of reach is too great torture!"
+
+So she slipped in through the door, leaving it open a little way--
+both her hands busy with the brass pitcher and both eyes straining
+their utmost through the gloom--advancing step by step through mouldy
+straw that might conceal a thousand horrors.
+
+"You wonder, perhaps, why I do not escape!" said a voice.  And then she
+heard the cell door close again gently.
+
+Now she could see Jaimihr, for he stood with his back against the door,
+and his head was between her and the little six-inch grating that was
+all the ventilation or light a prisoner in that place was allowed.
+
+"So you lied to me, even when I brought you water?" she answered.  She
+was not afraid.  She had nerve enough left to pity him.
+
+"Yes.  But I see that you did not lie.  I am still thirsty, sahiba."
+
+He held out both hands, and she could see them dimly.  There were no
+chains on them, and he was not bound in any way.  She gave him the jar.
+
+"Let me pass out again before you drink," she ordered. "It is not known
+that I am in here, and I would not have it known."
+
+She could have bitten out her tongue with mortification a moment
+afterward for letting any such admission escape her.  She heard him
+chuckle as he drank--he choked from chuckling, and set the jar down
+to cough.  Then, when he had recovered breath again, he answered almost
+patronizingly.
+
+"Which would be least pleased with you, sahiba?  The Rangars, or thy
+father, or the other Englishman?  But never mind, sahiba, we are
+friends.  I have proved that we are friends.  Never have I taken water
+from the hands of any man or any woman not of my own caste.  I would
+have died sooner.  It was only thou, sahiba, who could make me set
+aside my caste."
+
+"Let me pass!"
+
+She certainly was frightened now.  It dawned on her, as it had at once
+on him, that at the least commotion on his part or on hers a dozen
+Rangars would be likely to come running.  And just as he had done, she
+wondered what explanation she would give in that case, and who would be
+likely to believe it.  To have been caught going to the cell would have
+been one thing;  to be caught in it would be another.  He divined her
+thoughts.
+
+"Have no fear, sahiba.  Thou and I are friends."
+
+She did not answer, for words would not come.  Besides, she was
+beginning to realize that words would be of little help to her.  A
+woman who will tell nothing but the truth under any circumstances and
+will surely keep her promises is at a disadvantage when conversing with
+a man who surely will not tell the truth if he can help it and who
+regards his given word with almost equal disrespect.
+
+"I have no fear, sahiba.  I am not afraid to open this door wide and
+make a bid for liberty.  It would not be wise, that is all, and thou--
+and I must deal in wisdom."
+
+His words came through the dark very evenly--spaced evenly--as
+though he weighed each one of them before he voiced it.  She gathered
+the impression that he was thinking for his very life.  She felt unable
+to think for her own.  She felt impelled to listen--incredulous,
+helpless, frightened,--not a little ashamed.  She was thinking more
+of the awful things those Moslem gentlemen would say about her should
+they come and discover her in Jaimihr's cell.
+
+"Listen, sahiba!  From end to end of India thy people are either dead,
+or else face to face with death.  There is no escape anywhere for any
+man or woman--no hope, no chance.  The British doom is sealed.  So is
+the doom of every man who dared to side with them."
+
+She shuddered.  But she had to listen.
+
+"There will be an army here within a day or two.  My men--and I
+number them by thousands--will come and rip these Rangars from their
+roost.  Those that are not crucified will be thrown down from the
+summit, and there shall be a Hindoo shrine where they have worshipped
+their false god.  Then, sahiba, if thou art here--perhaps--there
+might--yet--be a way-perhaps, yes?--a way, still, to escape me?"
+
+She was trembling.  She could not help beginning to believe him.
+Whatever might be true of what he said was certainly not comforting.
+
+"But, while my army comes in search of me, my brother Howrah will be
+making merry with my palace and belongings.  There will be devastation
+and other things in my army's rear for which there is no need and for
+which I have no stomach.  I detest the thought of them, sahiba.
+Therefore, sahiba, I would drive a bargain.  Notice, sahiba, I say not
+one word of love, though love such as mine is has seldom been offered
+to a woman.  I say no word of love--as yet.  I say, help me to escape
+by night, when I may make my way unseen back to my men:  enable me to
+reach Howrah before my dear brother is aware of my trouble and before
+his men can start plundering, and name your own terms, sahiba!"
+
+Name her own terms--name her own terms--name her own terms!  The
+words dinned through her head and she could grasp no other thought.
+She was alone in a cell with Jaimihr, and she could get out of it if
+she would name her terms!  She must name them--she must hurry--what
+were they?  What were her terms?  She could not think.
+
+"Understand, sahiba.  Certain things are sure.  It is sure my men will
+come.  It is sure that every Rangar on this rock will meet a very far
+from pleasant death--"
+
+He grinned, and though she could not see him grin, she knew that he was
+doing it.  She knew that he was even then imagining a hundred horrors
+that the Rangars would endure before they died.  She might name her
+terms.  She could save them.
+
+"No!" she hissed hoarsely.  "No!  They are my terms!  I name them!  You
+must spare them--spare the Rangars--spare every man on this hill,
+and theirs, and all they have!"
+
+"Truly are those thy terms, sahiba?"
+
+"Truly!  What others can I ask?"
+
+"They are granted, sahiba!"
+
+"Oh, thank God!"
+
+She knew that he was speaking at least half the truth.  She knew his
+power.  She knew enough of Howrah City's politics to be convinced that
+he would not be left at the mercy of a little band of Rangars.  She
+knew that there were not enough Rangars on the whole countryside to
+oppose the army that would surely come to his rescue.  And whether he
+were dead or living, she knew well enough that the vengeance would be
+wreaked on every living body on the hill.  Alwa might feel confident,
+not she.  She trembled now with joy at the thought that she--she the
+most helpless and useless of all of them--might save the lives of
+all.
+
+But then another phase of the problem daunted her. She might help
+Jaimihr go. He might escape unobserved with her aid.  But then?  What
+then?  What would the Rangars do to her?  Had she sufficient courage to
+face that?  It was not fear now that swept over her so much as wonder
+at herself.   Jaimihr detected something different in her mental
+attitude, and, since almost any change means weakness to the Oriental
+mind, he was quick to try to take advantage of it.  He guessed right at
+the first attempt.
+
+"And what wilt thou do here, sahiba?  When I am gone, and there is none
+here to love thee--"
+
+"Peace!" she commanded.  "Peace!  I have suffered enough--"
+
+"Thou wilt suffer more, should the Rangars learn--"
+
+"That is my business!  Let me pass!  I have bargained, and I will try
+to fulfil my part!"
+
+She stepped toward the door, but he held out both his arms and she saw
+them.  She had no intention of being embraced by him, whatever their
+conspiracy.
+
+"Stand back!" she ordered.
+
+"Nay, nay, sahiba!  Listen!  Escape with me!  These Rangars will not
+believe without proof that thou hast saved their lives by bargaining.
+They will show thee short shrift indeed when my loss is discovered.
+Come now and I will make thee Maharanee in a week!"
+
+"I would be as safe with one as with the other!" she laughed, something
+of calm reflection returning to her.  "And what proof have I in any case
+that you will keep your word, Jaimihr-sahib.  I will keep mine--but
+who will keep yours, that has been so often broken?"
+
+"Sahiba--"
+
+"Show me a proof!"
+
+"Here--now--in this place?"
+
+"Convince me, if you can!  I will give myself willingly if I can save
+my father by it and these Rangars and Mr. Cunningham;  but your bare
+word, Jaimihr-sahib, is worth that!"
+
+She snapped her fingers, and he swore beneath his breath.  Then he
+remembered his ambition and his present need, and words raced to his
+aid--words, plans, oaths, treachery, and all the hundred and one
+tricks that he was used to.  He found himself consciously selecting
+from a dozen different plans for tricking her.
+
+"Sahiba"--he spoke slowly and convincingly.  In the gloom she could
+see his brown eyes levelled straight at hers, and she saw they did not
+flinch--"there is none who knows better than thou knowest how my
+brother and I stand to each other."  She shuddered at the reiterated
+second person singular, but he either did not notice it or else
+affected not to.  "Thou know est that there is no love between him and
+me,  and that I would have his throne.  The British could set me on
+that throne unless they were first overwhelmed.  Wert thou my legal
+wife, and were I to aid the British in this minute of their need, they
+would not be overwhelmed, and afterward they would surely set me on the
+throne.  Therefore I pledge my word to lead my men to the Company's
+aid, provided that these Rangars ride to my aid.  My brother plans to
+overcome me first, and then take arms against the British.  If the
+Rangars come to help me I will ride with them to the Company's aid
+afterward.  That is my given word!"
+
+"Then the throne of Howrah is your price, Jaimihr-sahib?"
+
+"Thou art the price and the prize, sahiba!  For thee I would win the
+throne!"
+
+She actually laughed, and he winced palpably.  There was no doubt that
+he loved her after a manner of his own, and her contempt hurt him.
+
+"I have said all I can say," he told her. "I have promised all I can
+promise.  What more is there to say or offer?  If I stay here, I swear
+on the honor of a Rajput and a prince of royal blood, that every living
+man and woman on this rock, excepting thee only, shall be dead within a
+week.  But if I escape by thy aid, and if, at thy instance, these
+Rangars and their friends ride to my help against my brother, then I
+will throw all my weight--men and influence--in the scale on the
+British side."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"And thou shalt be Maharanee!"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"But in case that the British should be beaten before we reach them,
+then, sahiba!  Then in case of thy need!"
+
+"Jaimihr-sahib, I will help you to escape tonight on the terms that you
+have named--that you spare these Rangars and every living body on
+this hill.  Then I will do my utmost to persuade the Rangars to ride to
+your assistance on your condition, that you lead your men to help the
+British afterward.  And if my action in helping you escape should make
+the Rangars turn against me and my immediate friends, I shall claim
+your protection.  Is that agreed?"
+
+"Sahiba--absolutely!"
+
+"Then let me pass!"
+
+Reluctantly he stood aside.  She slipped out and let the bar down
+unobserved.  But she had not recovered all her self-possession when she
+reached the courtyard.
+
+"Evening, Miss McClean," said Cunningham;  and she all but fainted, she
+was strained to such a pitch of nervousness.
+
+"Where have you come from, Miss McClean?" asked Cunningham.  And she
+told him.  She was not quite so stiff-chinned as she had been.
+
+"What were you doing there?"
+
+She told him that, too.
+
+"Where is your father?"
+
+"In his chair on the veranda, Mr. Cunningham.  There, in that deep
+shadow."
+
+"Come to him, please.  I want your explanation in his presence."
+
+She followed as obediently as a child.  The sense of guilt--of fright
+--of impending judgment left her as she walked with him, and gave
+place to a glow of comfort that here should be a man on whom to lean.
+She did not fight the new sensation, for she was growing strangely
+weary of the other one.  By the time that they had reached her father,
+and he was standing before Cunningham wiping his spectacles in his
+nervous way, she had completely recovered her self-possession, although
+it is likely she would not have given any reason for it to herself.
+
+Cunningham held a lantern up, so that he could study both their faces.
+His own face muscles were set rigidly, and he questioned them as he
+might have cross-examined a spy caught in the act.  His voice was
+uncompromising, and his manner stern.
+
+"Do you both understand how serious this situation is?" he asked.
+
+"We naturally do," said Duncan McClean.  The Scotsman was beginning to
+betray an inclination to bridle under the youngster's attitude, and to
+show an equally pronounced desire not to appear to.  "More so,
+probably, than anybody else!"
+
+"Are you positive--both of you--you too, Mr. McClean--that all
+that talk about treasure in Howrah City is not mere imagination and
+legend?"
+
+"Absolutely positive!"  They both answered him at once, both looking in
+his eyes across the unsteady rays of the flickering, smoky lamp.  "The
+amount has been, of course, much exaggerated," said McClean, "but I
+have no doubt there is enough there to pay the taxes of all India for a
+year or two."
+
+"Then I have another question to ask. Do you both--or do you not--
+place yourselves at the service of the Company?  It is likely to be
+dangerous--a desperate service.  But the Company needs all that it
+can muster."
+
+"Of course we do!"  Again both answered in one breath.
+
+"Do you understand that that involves taking my orders?"
+
+This time Duncan McClean did the answering, and now it was he who
+seized the lamp.  He held it high, and scanned Cunningham's face as
+though he were reading a finely drawn map.
+
+"We are prepared--I speak for my daughter as well as for myself--to
+obey any orders that you have a right to give, young man."
+
+"You misunderstand me," answered Cunningham.  "I am offering you the
+opportunity to serve the Company. As the Company's senior officer in
+the neighborhood,  I am responsible to the Company for such orders as I
+see fit to give.  I could not have my orders questioned.  I don't mind
+telling you that I'm asking you, as British subjects, no more than I
+intend to ask Alwa and his Rangars.  You can do as much as they are
+going to be asked to do.  You can't do more.  But you can do less if
+you like.  You are being given the opportunity now to offer your
+services unconditionally--that is to say in the only manner in which
+I will accept them.  Otherwise you will remain non-combatants, and I
+shall take such measures for your safety as I see fit.  Time presses.
+Your answer, please!"
+
+"I will obey your legal orders," said McClean, still making full use of
+the lantern.
+
+"I refuse to admit the qualification," answered Cunningham promptly.
+"Either you will obey, or you will not.  You are asked to say which,
+that is all."
+
+"I will obey," said Rosemary McClean quietly.  She said it through
+straight lips and in a level voice that carried more assurance than a
+string of loud-voiced oaths.
+
+"And you, sir?"
+
+"Since my daughter sees fit to--ah--capitulate, I have no option."
+
+"Be good enough to be explicit."
+
+"I agree to obey your orders."
+
+"Thank you."  He seemed to have finished with McClean.  He turned away
+from him and faced Rosemary, not troubling to examine her face closely
+as he had done her father's, but seeming none the less to give her full
+attention.  "I understood you to say that you promised to help Prince
+Jaimihr to escape from his cell tonight?"
+
+"WHAT?"
+
+Duncan McClean could not have acted such amazement.  Cunningham desired
+no further evidence that he had not been accessory to his daughter's
+visit to the prisoner.  He silenced him with a gesture.  And now his
+eyes seemed for the time being to have finished with both of them;  in
+spite of the darkness they both knew that he had resumed the far-away
+look that seemed able to see things finished.
+
+"Yes," said Rosemary. "I promised.  I had to."
+
+Her father gasped.  But Cunningham appeared to follow an unbroken chain
+of thought, and she listened.
+
+"Well.  You will both realize readily that we, as British subjects, are
+ranged all together on one side opposed to treachery, as represented by
+the large majority of the natives.  That means that our first
+consideration must be to keep our given word.  What we say,--what we
+promise--what we boast--must tally with what we undertake, and at
+the least try, to do.  You must keep your word to Jaimihr, Miss
+McClean!"
+
+She stared back at Cunningham through wide, unfrightened eyes.
+Whatever this man said to her, she seemed unable to feel fear while she
+had his attention.  Her father seemed utterly bewildered, and she held
+his hand to reassure him.
+
+"On the other hand, we cannot be guilty of a breach of faith to our
+friend Alwa here.  I must have a little talk with him before I issue
+any orders.  Please wait here and--ah--do nothing while I talk to
+Alwa.  Did you--ah--did you agree to marry Jaimihr, should he make
+you Maharanee?"
+
+"No!  I told him I would rather die!"
+
+"Thank you.  That makes matters easier.  Now tell me over again from
+the beginning what you know about the political situation in Howrah.
+Quickly, please.  Consider yourself a scout reporting to his officer."
+
+Ten minutes later Cunninham heard a commotion by the parapet, and
+stalked off to find Alwa, close followed by Mahommed Gunga.  The grim
+old Rajput was grinning in his beard as he recognized the set of what
+might have been Cunningham the elder's shoulders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+    Ye may go and lay your praise
+    At a shrine of other days
+    By the tomb of him who gat, and her who bore me;
+    My plan is good--my way--
+    The sons of kings obey--
+    But, I'm reaping where another sowed before me.
+
+
+JAIDEV SINGH was a five-K man, with the hair, breeches, bangle, comb,
+and dagger that betoken him who has sworn the vow of Khanda ka Pahul.
+Every item of the Sikh ritual was devised with no other motive than to
+preserve the fighting character of the organization.  The very name
+Singh means lion.  The Sikh's long hair with the iron ring hidden
+underneath is meant as a protection against sword-cuts.  And because
+their faith is rather spiritual than fanatical--based rather on the
+cause of things than on material effect--men of that creed take first
+rank among fighting men.
+
+Jaidev Singh arrived soon after the moon had risen.  The notice of his
+coming was the steady drumming footfall of his horse, that slowed
+occasionally, and responded to the spur again immediately.
+
+Close to the big iron gate below Alwa's eyrie there were some of
+Jaimihr's cavalry nosing about among the trampled gardens for the dead
+and wounded they had left there earlier in the afternoon.  They ceased
+searching, and formed up to intercept whoever it might be who rode in
+such a hurry.  Above them, on the overhanging ramparts, there was quick
+discussion, and one man left his post hurriedly.
+
+"A horseman from the West!" he announced, breaking in on Alwa's privacy
+without ceremony.
+
+"One?"
+
+"One only."
+
+"For us or them?"
+
+"I know not, sahib."
+
+Alwa--glad enough of the relief from puzzling his brain--ran to the
+rampart and looked long at the moving dot that was coming noisily
+toward his fastness but that gave no sign of its identity or purpose.
+
+"Whoever he is can see them," he vowed. "The moon shines full on them.
+Either he is a man of theirs or else a madman!"
+
+He watched for five more minutes without speaking.  Cunningham and
+Mahommed Gunga, coming out at last in search of him, saw the strained
+figures of the garrison peering downward through the yellow moon rays,
+and took stand on either side of him to gaze, too, in spellbound
+silence.
+
+"If he is their man," said Alwa presently, "he will turn now.  He will
+change direction and ride for the main body of them yonder.  He can see
+them now easily.  Yes.  See.  He is their man!"
+
+On a horse that staggered gamely--silhouetted and beginning to show
+detail in the yellow light--a man whose nationality or caste could
+not be recognized rode straight for the bivouacking cavalry, and a
+swarm of them rode out at a walk to meet him.
+
+The tension on the ramparts was relaxed then.  As a friend in direst
+need the man would have been welcome.  As one of enemy, with a message
+for them, however urgent, he was no more than an incident.
+
+"By Allah!" roared Alwa suddenly.  "That is no man of theirs!  Quick!
+To the wheels!  Man the wheels!  Eight men to horse!"
+
+He took the cord himself, to send the necessary signal down into the
+belly of the rock.  From his stables, where men and horses seemed to
+stand ready day and night, ten troopers cantered out, scattering the
+sparks, the whites of their horses' eyes and their drawn blades
+gleaming; without another order they dipped down the breakneck gorge,
+to wait below.  The oncoming rider had wheeled again;  he had caught
+the cavalry, that rode to meet him, unawares.  They were not yet
+certain whether he was friend or foe, and they were milling in a bunch,
+shouting orders to one another.  He, spurring like a maniac, was
+heading straight for the searching party, who had formed to cut him
+off.  He seemed to have thrown his heart over Alwa's iron gate and to
+be thundering on hell's own horse in quest of it again.
+
+Alwa's eight slipped down the defile as quickly as phantoms would have
+dared in that tricky moon-light.  One of them shouted from below.  Alwa
+jerked the cord, and the great gate yawned, well-oiled and silent.  The
+oncomer raced straight for the middle of the intercepting line of
+horsemen;  they--knowing him by this time for no friend--started to
+meet him;  and Alwa's eight, unannounced and unexpected, whirled into
+them from the rear.
+
+In a second there was shouting, blind confusion--eddying and trying
+to reform.  The lone galloper pulled clear, and Alwa's men drove his
+opponents, crupper over headstall, into a body of the main contingent
+who had raced up in pursuit.  They rammed the charge home, and reeled
+through both detachments--then wheeled at the spur and cut their way
+back again, catching up their man at the moment that his horse dropped
+dead beneath him.  They seized him beneath the arms and bore him
+through as the great gate dropped and cut his horse in halves.  Then
+one man took the galloper up behind his saddle, and bore him up the
+hill unquestioned until he could dismount in front of Alwa.
+
+"Who art thou?" demanded the owner of the rock, recognizing a warrior
+by his trademarks, but in no way moderating the natural gruffness of
+his voice.  Alwa considered that his inviolable hospitality should be
+too well known and understood to call for any explanation or
+expression;  he would have considered it an insult to the Sikh's
+intelligence to have mouthed a welcome;  he let it go for granted.
+
+"Jaidev Singh--galloper to Byng-bahadur.  I bring a letter for the
+Risaldar Mahommed Gunga, or for Cunnigan-sahib, whichever I can find
+first."
+
+"They are both here."
+
+"Then my letter is for both of them."
+
+Cunningham and Mahommed Gunga each took one step forward, and the Sikh
+gave Cunningham a tiny, folded piece of paper, stuck together along one
+edge with native gum.  He tore it open, read it in the light of a
+trooper's lantern, and then read it again aloud to Mahommed Gunga,
+pitching his voice high enough for Alwa to listen if he chose.
+
+"What are you two men doing?" ran the note.  "The very worst has
+happened. We all need men immediately, and I particularly need them.
+One hundred troopers now would be better than a thousand men a month
+from now.  Hurry, and send word by bearer.  S. F. BYNG."
+
+"How soon can you start back?" asked Cunningham.
+
+"The minute I am provided with a horse, sahib."
+
+Cunningham turned to Alwa.
+
+"Will you be kind enough to feed him, Alwa-sahib?"
+
+Alwa resented the imputation against his hospitality instantly.
+
+"Nay, I was waiting for his money in advance!" he laughed.  "Food
+waits, thou.  Thou art a Sikh--thou eatest meat--meat, then, is
+ready."
+
+The Sikh, or at least the true Sikh, is not hampered by a list of caste
+restrictions.  All of his precepts, taken singly or collectively, bid
+him be nothing but a man, and no law forbids him accept the hospitality
+of soldiers of another creed.  So Jaidev Singh walked off to feed on
+curried beef that would have made a Hindoo know himself for damned.
+Cunningham then turned on Alwa.
+
+"Now is the time, Alwa-sahib," he said in a level voice.  "My party can
+start off with this man and our answer, if your answer is no.  If your
+answer is yes, then the Sikh can bear that answer for us."
+
+"You would none of you ride half a mile alive!" laughed Alwa.
+
+"I none the less require an answer, Alwa-sahib."
+
+Alwa stared hard at him.  That was the kind of talk that went straight
+to his soldier heart.  He loved a man who held to his point in the
+teeth of odds.  The odds, it seemed to him, were awfully against
+Cunningham.
+
+"So was thy father," he said slowly.  "My cousin said thou wast thy
+father's son!"
+
+"I require an answer by the time that the Sikh has finished eating,"
+said Cunningham.  "Otherwise, Alwa-sabib, I shall regret the necessity
+of foregoing further hospitality at your hands."
+
+"Bismillah!  Am I servant here or master?" wondered Alwa, loud enough
+for all his men to hear.  Then he thought better of his dignity.
+"Sahib," he insisted, "I will not talk here before my men.  We will
+have another conference."
+
+"I concede you ten minutes," said Cunningham, preparing to follow him,
+and followed in turn by Mohammed Gunga.
+
+"Now, swore the Risaldar into his beard, we shall see the reaching of
+decisions!  Now, by the curse of the sack of Chitor we shall know who
+is on whose side, or I am no Rangar, nor the son of one!"
+
+"I have a suggestion to make, sahib," smiled Alwa, closing the door of
+the rock-hewn chamber on the three of them.
+
+"Hear mine first!" said Cunningham, with a hint of iron in his voice.
+
+"Ay!  Hear his first!  Hear Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur!" echoed Mahommed
+Gunga.  "Let us hear a plan worth hearing!"  And Alwa looked into a
+pair of steady eyes that seemed to see through him--past him--to
+the finished work beyond.
+
+"Speak, sahib."
+
+"You are pledged to uphold Howrah on his throne?"
+
+"Ha, sahib."
+
+"Then, I guarantee you shall!  You shall not go to the Company's aid
+until you have satisfactory guarantees that your homes and friends will
+not be assailed behind your backs."
+
+"Guarantees to whose satisfaction, sahib?"
+
+"Yours!"
+
+"But with whom am I dealing?" Alwa seemed actually staggered.  "Who
+makes these promises?  The Company?"
+
+"I give you my solemn word of honor on it!"
+
+"It is at least a man who speaks!" swore Alwa.
+
+"It is the son of Cunnigan-bahadur!" growled Mahommed Gunga, standing
+chin erect.  He seemed in no doubt now of the outcome.  He was merely
+waiting for it with soldierly and ill-concealed impatience.
+
+"But, sahib--"
+
+"Alwa-sahib, we have no time for argument.  It is yes or no.  I must
+send an answer back by that Sikh.  He must--he shall take my answer!
+Either you are loyal to our cause or you are not.  Are you?"
+
+"By the breath of God, sahib, I am thinking you leave me little choice!"
+
+"I still await an answer.  I am calling on you for as many men as you
+can raise, and I have made you specific promises.  Choose, Alwa-sahib.
+Yes or no?"
+
+"The answer is yes--but--"
+
+"Then I understand that you undertake to obey my orders without
+question until such time as a senior to me can be found to take over
+the command."
+
+"That is contingent on the agreement," hesitated Alwa.
+
+"I would like your word of honor, Alwa-sahib."
+
+"I pledge that not lightly, sahib."
+
+"For that very good reason I am asking for it.  I shall know how far to
+trust when I have your word of honor!"
+
+"I knew thy father!  Thou art his son!  I trusted him for good reason
+and with good result.  I will trust thee also.  My word is given, on
+thy conditions, sahib.  First, the guarantees before we ride to the
+British aid!"
+
+And you obey my orders?
+
+"Yes.  My word is given, sahib.  The oath of a Rajput, of a Rangar, of
+a soldier, of a zemindar of the House of Kachwaha;  the oath of a man
+to a man, sahib;  the promise of thy father's friend to thy father's
+son!  Bahadur"--he drew himself to his full height, and clicked his
+spurs together--"I am thy servant!"
+
+Cunningham saluted.  All three men looked in each other's eyes and a
+bond was sealed between them that nothing less than death could sever.
+
+"Thank you," said Cunningham quite quietly.  "And now, Alwa-sahib"--
+(he could strike while the iron glowed, could this son of Cunnigan!)--
+"for the plan.  There is little time.  Jaimihr must escape tonight!"
+
+"Sahib, did I understand aright?"
+
+Alwa's jaw had actually dropped.  He looked as though he had been
+struck.  Mahommed Gunga slammed his sabre ferule on the stone floor.
+He too, was hard put to it to believe his ears.
+
+"Jaimihr is the key to the position.  He is nothing but a nuisance
+where he is.  Outside he can be made to help us."
+
+"Am I dreaming, or art thou, sahib?"  Alwa stood with fists clinched on
+his hips and his legs apart--incredulous.  "Jaimihr to go free?  Why
+that Hindoo pig is the source of all the trouble in the district!"
+
+"We are neither of us dreaming, Alwa-sahib.  Jaimihr is the dreamer.
+Let him dream in Howrah City for a day or two, while we get ready.  Let
+him lead his men away and leave the road clear for us to pass in and
+out."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Oh, I know.  He is your prisoner, and your honor is involved, and all
+that kind of thing.  I'm offering you, to set off against that, a much
+greater honor than you ever experienced in your whole life yet, and
+I've put my order in the shape of a request for the sake of courtesy.
+I ask you again to let me arrange for Jaimihr to escape."
+
+"I was mad.  But it seems that I have passed my word!" swore Alwa.
+
+"I give you your word back again, then."
+
+"Bismillah!  I refuse it!"
+
+"Then I do with Jaimihr as I like?"
+
+"I gave my word, sahib."
+
+"Thanks. You'll be glad before we've finished.  Now I've left the
+raising of as many men as can be raised to you, Alwa-sahib.  You will
+remember that you gave your promise on that count, too."
+
+"I will keep that promise, too, sahib."
+
+"Good.  You shall have a road clear by tonight."
+
+He stepped back a pace, awaited their salute with the calm, assured
+authority of a general of division, returned it, and left the two
+Rajputs looking in each other's eyes.
+
+"What is this, cousin, that thou hast brought me to?" demanded Alwa.
+
+Mahommed Gunga laughed and shook his sabre, letting it rattle in its
+scabbard.
+
+"This?  This is the edge of the war that I promised thee a year ago!
+This is the service of which I spoke!  This is the beginning of the
+blood-spilling!  I have brought thee the leader of whom we spoke in
+Howrah City.  Dost remember, cousin?  I recall thy words!"
+
+"Ay, I recall them.  I said then that I would follow a second Cunnigan,
+could such be found."
+
+"And this is he!" vowed Mahommed Gunga.
+
+"Ho!  But we Rangars have a leader!  A man of men!"
+
+"But this plan of his?  This loosing of the trapped wolf--what of
+that?"
+
+"I neither know nor care, as yet!  I trust him!  I am his man, as I was
+his father's!  I have seen him;  I have heard him;  I have felt his
+pulse in the welter of the wrath of God.  I know him.  Whatever plans
+he makes, whatever way he leads, those are my plans, my road!  I serve
+the son of Cunnigan!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+    Did he swear with his leg in a spring-steel trap
+    And a tongue dry-cracked from thirst?
+    Or down on his knees at his lady's lap
+    With the lady's lips to his own, mayhap,
+    And his head and his heart aburst?
+    Nay! I have listened to vows enough
+    And never the oath could bind
+    Save that, that a free man chose to take
+    For his own good reputation's sake!
+    They're qualified--they're tricks--they break--
+    They're words, the other kind!
+
+
+MAHOMMED GUNGA had long ago determined to "go it blind" on Cunningham.
+He had known him longest and had the greatest right.  Rosemary McClean,
+who knew him almost least of all, so far as length of time was
+concerned, was ready now to trust him as far as the Risaldar dared go;
+her limit was as long and as devil-daring as Mahommed Gunga's.
+Whatever Scots reserve and caution may have acted as a brake on Duncan
+McClean's enthusiasm were offset by the fact that his word was given;
+so far as he was concerned, he was now as much and as obedient a
+servant of the Company as either of the others.  Nor was his attitude
+astonishing.
+
+Alwa's was the point of view that was amazing, unexpected, brilliant,
+soldierly, unselfish--all the things, in fact, that no one had the
+least right to expect it to turn out to be.  Two or three thousand men
+looked to him as their hereditary chieftain who alone could help them
+hold their chins high amid an overwhelming Hindoo population;  his
+position was delicate, and he might have been excused for much
+hesitation, and even for a point-blank refusal to do what he might have
+preferred personally.  He and his stood to lose all that they owned--
+their honor--and the honor of their wives and families, should they
+fight on the wrong side.  Even as a soldier who had passed his word, he
+might have been excused for a lot of wordy questioning of orders, for
+he had enough at stake to make anybody cautious.
+
+Yet, having said his say and sworn a dozen God-invoking Rangar oaths
+before he pledged his word, and then having pledged it, he threw Rajput
+tradition and the odds against him into one bottomless discard and
+proceeded to show Cunningham exactly what his fealty meant.
+
+"By the boots and beard of Allah's Prophet!" he swore, growing
+freer-tongued now that his liberty of action had been limited.  "Here
+we stand and talk like two old hags, Mahommed Gunga!   My word is
+given.  Let us find out now what this fledgling general of thine would
+have us do.  If he is to release my prisoner, at least I would like to
+get amusement out of it!"
+
+So he and Mahommed Gunga swaggered across the courtyard to where
+Cunningham had joined the McCleans again.
+
+"We come with aid and not objections, sahib," he assured him.  "If we
+listen, it may save explanations afterward."
+
+So at a sign from Cunningham they enlarged the circle, and the East and
+West--bearded and clean-shaven, priest and soldiers, Christian and
+Mohammedan--stood in a ring, while almost the youngest of them--by
+far the youngest man of them--laid down the law for all.  His eyes
+were all for Rosemary McClean, but his gestures included all of them,
+and they all answered him with nods or grunts as each saw fit.
+
+"Send for the Sikh!" commanded Cunningham.
+
+Five minutes later, with a lump of native bread still in his fist,
+Jaidev Singh walked up and saluted.
+
+"Where is Byng-bahadur now?" asked Cunningham.
+
+"At Deeseera, sahib--not shut in altogether, but hard pressed.  There
+came cholera, and Byng-bahadur camped outside the town.  He has been
+striking, sahib, striking hard with all too few to help him.  His
+irregulars, sahib, were disbanded at some one's orders just before this
+outbreak, but some of them came back at word from him.  And there were
+some of us Sikhs who knew him, and who would rather serve him and die
+than fight against him and live.  He has now two British regiments with
+him, sadly thinned--some of my people, some Goorkhas, some men from
+the North--not very many more than two thousand men all told, having
+lost heavily in action and by disease.  But word is going round from
+mouth to mouth that many sahibs have been superseded, and that only
+real sahibs such as Byng-bahadur have commands in this hour.
+Byng-bahadur is a man of men.  We who are with him begin to have
+courage in our bones again.  Is the answer ready?  Yet a little while?
+It is well, sahib, I will rest.  Salaam!"
+
+"You see," said Cunningham, "the situation's desperate.  We've got to
+act.  Alwa here stands pledged to protect Howrah and you have promised
+to aid Jaimihr.  Somebody's word has got to break, and you may take it
+from me that it will be the word of the weakest man!  I think that that
+man is Jaimihr, but I can't be sure in advance, and we've got to accept
+his promise to begin with.  Go to him, Miss McClean, and make a very
+careful bargain with him along the line I mapped out for you.
+Alwa-sahib, I want witnesses, or rather overhearers.  I want you and
+Mahommed Gunga to place yourselves near Jaimihr's cell so that you can
+hear what he says.  There won't be any doubt then about who has broken
+promises.  Are you ready, Miss McClean?"
+
+She was trembling, but from excitement and not fear.  Both Rajputs
+saluted her as she started back for the cell, and whatever their
+Mohammedan ideas on women may have been, they chose to honor this one,
+who was so evidently one of them in the hour of danger.  Duncan McClean
+seemed to be praying softly, for his lips moved.
+
+When the cell-door creaked open, Alwa and Mahommed Gunga were crouched
+one on either side, listening with the ears of soldiers that do not let
+many sounds or words escape them.
+
+"Jaimihr-sahib!" she whispered. "Jaimihr-sahib!"
+
+"Ha!  Sahiba!"  Then he called her by half a dozen names that made the
+listening Rangars grin into their beards.
+
+"Jaimihr-sahib"--she raised her voice a little now--"if I help you
+to escape, will you promise me my safety under all conditions?"
+
+"Surely, sahiba!"
+
+"Do you swear to protect every living person on this hill, including
+the Alwa-sahib and Cunningham-sahib?"
+
+"Surely, sahiba."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"I swear it on my honor.  There is no more sacred oath."
+
+"Then, listen.  I can help you to escape now.  I have a rope that is
+long enough to lower you over the parapet.  I am prepared to risk the
+consequences, but I want to bargain with you for aid for my Countrymen."
+
+Jaimihr did not answer.
+
+"The Alwa-sahib and his Rangars stand pledged to help your brother!"
+
+"I guessed at least that much," laughed Jaimihr.
+
+"They would not help you against him under any circumstances.  But they
+want to ride to the Company's aid, and they might be prepared to
+protect you against him.  They might guarantee the safety of your
+palace and your men's homes.  They might exact a guarantee from Howrah."
+
+Jaimihr laughed aloud, careless of the risk of being overheard, and
+Rosemary knew that Cunningham's little plan was useless even before it
+had been quite expounded.  She felt herself trembling for the
+consequences.
+
+"Sahiba, there is only one condition that would make me ride to the
+British aid with all my men."
+
+"Name it!"
+
+"Thou art it!"
+
+"I don't understand you, Jaimihr-sahib," she whispered, understanding
+all too well.
+
+"Follow me.  Come to me in Howrah.  Then whatever these fool Rangars
+choose to do, I swear by Siva and the Rites of Siva that I will hurry
+to the Company's aid!"
+
+Rosemary McClean shuddered, and he knew it.  But that fact rather added
+to his pleasure.  The wolf prefers a cowering, frightened prey even
+though he dare fight on occasion.  She was thinking against time.
+Through that one small, overburdened head, besides a splitting
+headache, there was flashing the ghastly thought of what was happening
+to her countrymen and women--of what would happen unless she hurried
+to do something for their aid.  All the burden of all warring India
+seemed to be resting on her shoulders, in a stifling cell;  and Jaimihr
+seemed to be the only help in sight.
+
+"How many men could you summon to the Company's aid?" she asked him.
+
+He laughed. "Ten thousand!" he boasted.
+
+"Armed and drilled men--soldiers fit to fight?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+"I think that is a lie, Jaimihr-sahib.  There is not time enough to
+waste on lies.  Tell me the exact truth, please."
+
+He contrived to save his face, or, rather, he contrived to make himself
+believe he did.
+
+"I would need some to guard my rear," he answered. "I could lead five
+thousand to the British aid."
+
+"Is that the truth?"
+
+"On my honor, sahiba."
+
+"And you wish to marry me?"
+
+"Sahiba--I--I have no other wish!"
+
+"I agree to marry you provided you will lead five thousand men to the
+Company's aid, but not until you have done so."
+
+"You will come to Howrah?"
+
+She could feel his excitement.  The cell walls seemed to throb.
+
+"Yes; but I shall come accompanied by my father, and Mr. Cunningham,
+and all the Rangars he can raise.  And I shall hold you to your
+bargain.  You must help the Company first.  FIRST--d'you understand?"
+
+"I understand."
+
+It was Jaimihr's turn now to lay the law down. She had let him see her
+eagerness to gain his aid for the Company, and he saw the weakness of
+her case in an instant.  He knew very well, too, that no woman of her
+breed would have thought of consenting to marry him unless her hand was
+forced.  He decided immediately to force it further.
+
+"I understand, sahiba.  I, too, will hold thee to thy promise!  Thou
+wilt come with an escort, as befits a prince's wife!  But how should I
+know that the Rangars would prove friends of mine?  How should I know
+that it is not all a trap?"
+
+"You will have my promise to depend on."
+
+"Truly!  And there will be how many hundred men to override the promise
+of one woman?  Nay!  My word is good;  my promise holds;  but on my own
+conditions!  Help me to escape.  Then follow me to Howrah City.  Come
+in advance of thy Rangar escort.  By that I will know that the Rangars
+and this Cunningham are my friends--otherwise they would not let thee
+come.  The Rangars are to exact guarantees from my brother?  How should
+I know that they do not come to help my brother crush me out of
+existence?  With thee in my camp as hostage I would risk agreement with
+them, but not otherwise.  Escape with me now, or follow.  But bring no
+Rangars, sahiba!  Come alone!"
+
+"I will not.  I would not dare trust you."
+
+Jaimihr laughed.  "I have been reckoning, sahiba, how many hours will
+pass before my army comes to rip this nest of Alwa's from its roots,
+and defile the whole of it!  If I am to spare the people on this rock,
+then I must hurry!  Should my men come here to carry me away, they will
+be less merciful than I!  Choose, sahiba!  Let me go, and I will spare
+these Rangars until such time as they earn punishment anew.  Or let me
+go, and follow me.  Then fight with the Rangars and for the Company,
+with thee as the price of my alliance.  Or leave me in this cell until
+my men come to rescue me.  The last would be the simplest way!  Or it
+would be enough to help me escape and wait until I have done my share
+at conquering the British.  Then I could come and claim thee!  Choose,
+sahiba;  there are many ways, though they all end in one goal."
+
+"If I am the price of your allegiance," said Rosemary, "then I will pay
+the price.  Five thousand men for the British cause are dearer to me
+than my own happiness.  I promise, Jaimihr-sahib, that I will come to
+you in Howrah.  I shall come accompanied by one servant, named Joanna,
+and--I think--by my father;  and the Rangars and Mr. Cunningham
+shall be at least a day's ride behind me.  I give my word on that.  But
+--I can promise you, on Mr. Cunningham's behalf, and on the
+Alwa-sahib's, and Mahommed Gunga's, that should you have made any
+attempt against my liberty--should you have offered me any insult or
+indignity--before they come--should you have tried to anticipate
+the terms of your agreement--then--then--there would be an end
+of bargaining and promises, Jaimihr-sahib, and your life would be
+surely forfeit!  Do you understand?"
+
+"Surely, sahiba!"
+
+"Do you agree?"
+
+"I already have agreed.  They are my terms.  I named them!"
+
+"I would like to hear you promise, on your honor."
+
+"I swear by all my gods and by my honor.  I swear by my love, that is
+dearer to me than a throne, and by the name and the honor of a Rajput!"
+
+"Be ready, then.  I am going now to hide the rope in the shadow of the
+wall.  It will take perhaps fifteen minutes.  Be ready."
+
+He made a quick movement to embrace her, but she slipped out and
+escaped him;  and he thought better of his sudden plan to follow her,
+remembering that her word was likely to be good, whatever his might be.
+He elected to wait inside until she returned for him.  He little knew
+that he missed the downward swing of Alwa's sabre, that was waiting,
+poised and balanced for him, in the darkness by the door.
+
+"Bismillah!  I would have had a right to kill him had he followed her
+and broken faith so early in the business!"  Alwa swore, excusing his
+impatience to Mahommed Gunga.  "Have no fear, sahib!" he counselled
+Cunningham a moment later, laying a heavy hand on the boy's arm.  "Let
+her keep her promises.  That Hindoo pig will not keep his!  We will be
+after her, and surely--surely we will find good cause for some
+throat-slitting as well as the cancelling of marriage promises!"
+
+"Do you understand, Alwa-sahib, that--if Jaimihr keeps his promise to
+her, she must keep hers to him?  Do you realize that?"
+
+"Allah!  Listen to him!  Yes, sahib.  Truly, bahadur, I appreciate!  I
+also know that I have given certain promises which I, too, must fulfil!
+She is not the only bargainer!  I am worrying more about those
+guarantees that Howrah was to give--I am anxious to see how, with
+fifteen hundred, we are to get the better of a Rajah and his brother
+and their total of ten thousand!  I want to see those promises
+performed!  Ay!  The Miss-sahib has done well.  She has done her share.
+Let her continue.  And do thou thy share, bahadur!  I am at thy back
+with my men, but give us action!"
+
+Cunningham held up a lantern, and looked straight at Duncan McClean.
+The missionary had held his daughter's hand while she recounted what
+had happened in the cell.  Whatever he may have thought, he had uttered
+no word of remonstrance.
+
+"Of course, we go to Howrah ahead of you," he answered to Cunningham's
+unspoken question.
+
+Cunningham held out his right hand, and the missionary shook it.
+
+"Hold the lamp, please," said Cunningham, and Mahommed Gunga seized it.
+Then Cunningham took paper and a pencil and read aloud the answer that
+he wrote to Byng-bahadur.  He wrote it in Greek characters for fear
+lest it might fall into the enemy's hands and be too well understood.
+
+
+"I can be with you in one week, sir, and perhaps sooner.  Unless we are
+all killed in the meantime we should number more than fifteen hundred
+when we come.  Expect either all or none of us.  The situation here is
+critical, but our course seems clear, and we ought to pull through.
+Mahommed Gunga sends salaams.  Your obedient servant,
+                                        "RALPH CUNNINGHAM."
+
+"Would God I could see the clear course!" laughed Alwa.
+
+"Call the Sikh, please."
+
+The Sikh came running, and Cunningham gave him the folded note.
+
+"Have you a horse for him, Alwa-sahib?"
+
+"That has been attended to, sahib," the Sikh answered.  "The Alwa-sahib
+has given me a wonder of a horse."
+
+"Very well, then, Jaidev Singh.  Watch your chance.  Go to the parapet,
+and when you see by their lanterns that the cavalry below have ridden
+off, then race for all you're worth with that news for Byng-bahadur!"
+
+"Salaam, sahib!" said the Sikh.
+
+"Salaam, Jaidev Singh.  And now hide, every-body!  Don't let Jaimihr
+get the impression that we're playing with him."
+
+A little later Miss McClean led Jaimihr through a passage in the rock,
+off which axe-hewn cells led on either side, to the far side of the
+summit, where the parapet was higher but the wall was very much less
+sheer.  The Prince's arms were still too sore from the wrenching he
+received when they took him prisoner for him to dare trust himself hand
+over hand on a rope;  she had to make the rope fast beneath his
+armpits, and then lower him slowly, taking two turns with the rope
+round the waist of a brass cannon.  The Prince fended himself off the
+ragged wall with hands and feet, and called up instructions to her as
+loudly as he dared.
+
+It was a tremendous drop.  For the last fifty or more feet the wall
+rose straight, overhung by a ridge that rasped the rope.  And the rope
+proved fifteen feet or more too short.  Rosemary paid out as much of it
+as she dared, and then made the end fast round the cannon, leaning over
+to see whether Jaimihr would have sense enough or skill enough to cut
+himself free and fall.  But he hung where he was and spun, and it was
+five minutes before Rosemary remembered that his weapons had all been
+taken from him!  It was scarcely likely that he could bite the thick
+rope through with his teeth!
+
+She stood then for two or three more minutes wondering what to do, for
+she had no knife of her own, and she had made the rope fast--
+woman-wise--with a true landlubber's knot that tightened from the
+strain until her struggling fingers could not make the least impression
+on it.  But Alwa walked up openly--drew his heavy sabre--and saved
+the situation for her.
+
+"That may help to jog his recollection of the bargain!" he laughed,
+severing the rope with a swinging cut and peering over to see, if he
+could, how Jaimihr landed.  By a miracle the Prince landed on his feet.
+He sat down for a moment to recover from the shock, and then walked
+off awkwardly to where his cavalry were sleeping by their horses.
+
+He had some trouble in persuading the outposts who he really was, and
+there was an argument that could be quite distinctly heard from the
+summit of the rock,  and made Alwa roar with laughter before, finally,
+the whole contingent formed and wheeled and moved away, ambling toward
+Howrah City at a pace that betokened no unwillingness.
+
+Five minutes later the Sikh's horse thundered out across the plain from
+under Alwa's iron gate, and the news, such as it was, was on its way to
+Byng-bahadur.
+
+"A clear road at the price of a horse-hide rope!" laughed Alwa.  "Now
+for some real man's work!"
+
+Rosemary stole off to argue with her father and her conscience, but
+Alwa went to his troopers' quarters and told off ten good men for the
+task of manning the fortress in his absence.  They were ten unwilling
+men;  it needed all his gruff authority, and now and then a threat, to
+make them stay behind.
+
+"I must leave ten men behind," he insisted.  "It takes four men, even
+at a pinch, to lift the gate.  And who shall guard my women?  Nay, I
+should leave twenty, and I must leave ten.  Therefore I leave the ten
+best men I have, and they who stay behind may know by that that I
+consider them the best!"
+
+The remainder of his troopers he sent out one by one in different
+directions, with orders to rally every Rangar they could find, and at a
+certain point he named.  Then he and Mahommed Gunga said good-by to
+Cunningham and took a trail that led in the direction where most of the
+doubtfuls lived--the men who might need personal convincing--
+rousing--awakening from lethargy.
+
+"You think I ought to stay behind?" asked Cunningham, who had already
+made his mind up but chose to consult Alwa.
+
+"Surely, sahib.  If for no other reason, then to make sure that that
+priest of thine and his daughter make tracks for Howrah City!  While he
+is here he is a priest, and we Rangars have our own ideas on what they
+are good for!  When he is there he will be a man maneuvering to save
+his own life and his daughter's reputation!  See that he starts, sahib!"
+
+He rode off then.  But before Mahommed Gunga saw fit to follow him he
+legged his charger close to Cunningham for a final word or two.
+
+"Have no fear now, bahadur--no anxiety!  Three days hence there will
+be a finer regiment to lead than ever thundered in thy father's wake--
+a regiment of men, sahib, for a man to lead and love!--a regiment
+that will trust thee, sahib!    See thou to the guarantees!  Rung Ho,
+bahadur!"
+
+"Rung Ho!  See you again, Mahommed Gunga!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+    Sabres and spurs and jingling bits--
+            (Ho!  But the food to feed them!)
+    Sinews and eyes and ears and wits--
+            (Hey!  But the troopers need them!)
+    Sahib, mount!  Thy chargers fling
+    Foam to the night--thy trumpets sing--
+    Thy lance-butts on the stirrups ring--
+            Mount, sahib!  Blood them!  Lead them!
+
+
+IT was arranged that the McCleans, with old Joanna, should start at
+dawn for Howrah City, and they were, both of them, too overcome with
+mingled dread and excitement to even try to sleep.  Joanna, very much
+as usual, snoozed comfortably, curled in a blanket in a corner.
+
+They would run about a hundred different risks, not least of which was
+the chance of falling in with a party of Howrah's men.  In fact, if
+they should encounter anybody before bringing up at Jaimihr's palace it
+was likely that the whole plan would fizzle into nothing.
+
+Cunningham, after fossicking for a long time in Aliva's armory--that
+contained, besides weapons of the date, a motley assortment of the
+tools of war that would have done great credit to a museum of
+antiquities--produced two pistols.  He handed, one to the missionary
+and one to Miss McClean, advising her to hide hers underneath her
+clothing.   "You know what they're for?" he asked.  "No.  You'd gain
+nothing by putting up a fight.  They're loaded.  All you've got to do
+is jerk the hammer back and pull the trigger, and the best way not to
+miss is to hold the muzzle underneath your chin--this way--keeping
+the butt well out from you.  You make sure when you do that.  The only
+satisfaction you'll have, if it comes to suicide as a last resource,
+will be that you've tried to do your duty and the knowledge that you'll
+be avenged.  I promise that.  But I don't think you'll have any need to
+do it--if I did think it I'd have thought twice before sending you."
+
+"How does such a very young man as you come to have all this
+responsibility?" asked Rosemary, taking the pistol without a shudder.
+She laughed then as she noticed Cunningham's discomfort and recognized
+the decency that hates to talk about itself.
+
+"I suppose I know my own mind," he answered.  "These other awfully
+decent fellows don't, that's all--if you except Mahommed Gunga.  That
+chap's a wonder.  'Pon my soul, it seems he knew this was coming and
+picked me from the start to take charge over here.  Seems, owing to my
+dad's reputation, these Rangars think me a sort of reincarnation of
+efficiency.  I've got to try and live up to it, you know--same old
+game of reaping what you didn't sow and hoping it'll all be over before
+you wake up!  Won't you try and get some sleep before morning?  No?
+Come and sit over by the parapet with me, then."
+
+He carried chairs for both of them to a point whence he could sit and
+watch the track that led to Howrah and so help out the very meagre
+garrison.  There, until the waning moon dipped down below the sky-line,
+they talked together--first about the task ahead of each of them;
+then about the sudden ghastliness of the rebellion, whose extent not
+one of them could really grasp as yet;  last, and much longest, as
+familiarity gradually grew between them, of youthful reminiscences and
+home--of Eton and the Isle of Skye.
+
+In the darkness and the comparative coolness that came between the
+setting of the moon and dawn Rosemary fell asleep, her head pillowed in
+her father's lap.  For a while, then, seeing her only dimly through the
+night, but conscious, as he could not help being, of her youth and
+charm and of the act of self-sacrifice that she had undertaken without
+remonstrance, he felt ashamed.  He began to wonder whether there might
+not have been some other way--whether he had any right, even for his
+country's sake, to send a girl on such a mission.  Misgiving began to
+sap his optimism, and there was no Mahommed Gunga to stir the soldier
+in him and encourage iron-willed pursuance of the game.  He began to
+doubt;  and doubt bred silence.
+
+He was wakened from a revery by Duncan McClean, who raised his daughter
+tenderly and got up on his feet.
+
+"The dawn will be here soon, Mr. Cunningham.  We had better get ready.
+Well--in case we never meet again--I'm glad I met you."
+
+"Better start before the sun gets up," he answered, gripping the
+missionary's hand.  He was a soldier again.  He had had the answer to
+his thoughts!  If the man who was to sacrifice his daughter--or risk
+her sacrifice--was pleased to have met him, there was not much sense
+in harboring self-criticism!  He shook it off, and squared his
+shoulders, beginning again to think of all that lay ahead.
+
+"Trust to the old woman to guide you and show you a place to rest at,
+if you must rest.  You ought to reach Howrah at dusk tomorrow, for
+you'll find it quite impossible to travel fast--you're both of you
+too stiff, for one thing.  Lie up somewhere--Joanna will know of a
+place--until the old woman has taken in a message to Jaimihr, and
+wait until he sends you some men to escort you through the outskirts of
+the city.  I've got disguises ready for you--a pugree for you, Mr.
+McClean, and a purdah for your daughter--you'll travel as a Hindoo
+merchant and his wife.  If you get stopped, say very little, but show
+this."
+
+He produced the letter written once by Maharajah Howrah to the
+Alwa-sahib and sent by galloper with the present of a horse.  It was
+signed, and at the bottom of it was the huge red royal seal.  "Now go
+and put the disguise on, while I see to the horses;  I'm going to pick
+out quiet ones, if possible, though I warn you they're rare in these
+parts."
+
+Some twenty minutes later he led their horses for them gingerly down
+the slippery rock gorge, and waited at the bottom while six men wound
+the gate up slowly.  Rosemary McClean was quite unrecognizable, draped
+from head to foot in a travelling veil that might have been Mohammedan
+or Hindoo, and gave no outward sign as to her caste, or rank.  McClean,
+in the full attire of a fairly prosperous Hindoo, but with no other
+mark about him to betoken that he might be worth robbing, rode in front
+of her, high-perched on a native saddle.  In front, on a desert pony,
+rode Joanna, garbed as a man.
+
+"She ought to be travelling in a carriage of some kind," admitted
+Cunningham, "but we haven't got a single wheeled thing here.  If any
+one asks pertinent questions on the road, you'd better say that she had
+an ekka, but that some Rangars took it from you.  D'you think you know
+the language well enough to pass muster?"
+
+"It's a little late to ask me that!" laughed McClean.  "Yes--I'm
+positive I do. Good-by."
+
+They shook hands again and the three rode off, cantering presently, to
+make the most of the coolness before the sun got up.  Cunningham
+climbed slowly up the hill and then watched them from the parapet--
+wondering, wondering again--whether he was justified.  As he put it
+to himself, it was "the hell of a position for a man to find himself
+in!"  He caught himself wondering whether his thoughts would have been
+the same, and whether his conscience would have racked him quite as
+much, had Rosemary McClean been older, and less lovely, and a little
+more sour-tongued.
+
+He had to laugh presently at the absurdity of that notion, for Jaimihr
+would never have bargained for possession of a sour-faced, elderly
+woman.  He came to the conclusion that the only thing he could do was
+to congratulate the Raj because, at the right minute, the right
+good-looking woman had been on the spot!  But he did not like the
+circumstances any better;  and before two hours had passed the
+loneliness began to eat into his soul.
+
+Like any other man whose race and breed and training make him
+self-dependent, he could be alone for weeks on end and scarcely be
+aware that he had nobody to talk to.  But his training had never yet
+included sending women off on dangerous missions any more than it had
+taught him to resist woman's attraction--the charm of a woman's
+voice, the lure of a woman's eyes.  He did not know what was the matter
+with him, but supposed that his liver must be out of order or else that
+the sun had touched him.
+
+Taking a chance on the liver diagnosis, he had out the attenuated
+garrison, and drilled it, both mounted and dismounted, first on the
+hilltop--where they made the walls re-echo to the clang of grounded
+butts--and then on the plain below, with the gate wide open in their
+rear and one man watching from the height above.  When he had tired
+them thoroughly, and himself as well, he set two men on the lookout and
+retired to sleep;  nor did the droning and the wailing music of some
+women in the harem trouble him.
+
+They called him regularly when the guard was changed, but he slept the
+greater part of that day and stood watch all night.  The next day, and
+the third day, he drilled the garrison again, growing horribly
+impatient and hourly more worried as to what Byng-bahadur might be
+doing, and thinking of him.
+
+It was evening of the fourth day when a Rangar woke him, squeezing at
+his foot and standing silent by the cot.
+
+"Huzoor--Mahommed Gunga comes!"
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+He ran to the parapet and watched in the fading light a little dust
+cloud that followed no visible track but headed straight toward them
+over desert.
+
+"How d'you know that's Mahommed Gunga?" he demanded.
+
+"Who else, huzoor?  Who else would ride from that direction all alone
+and straight for this nest of wasps?  Who else but Alwa or Mahommed
+Gunga?  Alwa said he would not come, but would wait yonder."
+
+"It might be one of Alwa's men."
+
+"We have many good men, sahib--and many good horses--but no man or
+horse who could come at that pace after traversing those leagues of
+desert!  That is Mahommed Gunga, unless a new fire-eater has been
+found.  And what new man would know the way?"
+
+Soon--staccato, like a drum-beat in the silence--came the welcome,
+thrilling cadence of the horse's hoofs--the steady thunder of a horse
+hard-ridden but not foundered.  The sun went down and blackness
+supervened, but the sound increased, as one lone rider raced with the
+evening wind, head on.
+
+It seemed like an hour before the lookout challenged from the crag that
+overhung the gate--before the would-be English words rang out;  and
+all Asia and its jackals seemed to wait in silence for the answer.
+
+"Howt-uh!  Hukkums-thar!"
+
+"Ma--hommed--Gunga--hai!"
+
+"Hurrah!"
+
+The cheer broke bonds from the depth of Cunningham's being, and
+Mahommed Gunga heard it on the plain below.  There was a rush to man
+the wheels and sweat the gate up, and Cunningham started to run down
+the zigzag pathway.  He thought better of it, though, and waited where
+the path gave out onto the courtyard, giving the signal with the cords
+for the gate to lower away again.
+
+"Evening, Mahommed Gunga!" he said, almost casually, as the weary
+charger's nose appeared above the rise.
+
+"Salaam, bahadur!"
+
+He dismounted and saluted and then leaned against his horse.
+
+"I wonder, sahib, whether the horse or I be weariest!  Of your favor,
+water, sahib!"
+
+Cunningham brought him water in a dipper, and the Rajput washed his
+horse's mouth out, then held out the dipper again to Cunningham for
+fresh charge for himself.
+
+"I would not ask the service, sahib, but for the moment my head reels.
+I must rest before I ride again."
+
+"Is all well, Mahommed Gunga?"
+
+"Ay, sahib!  More than well!"
+
+"The men are ready?"
+
+"Horsed, armed, and waiting, they keep coming--there were many when I
+left--there will be three squadrons worthy of the name by the time we
+get there!  Is all well at your end, sahib?"
+
+"Yes, all's well."
+
+"Did the padre people go to Howrah?"
+
+"They started and they have not returned."
+
+"Then, Allah be praised!  Inshallah, I will grip that spectacled old
+woman of a priest by the hand before I die.  He has a spark of manhood
+in him!  Send me this good horse to the stables, sahib;  I am
+overweary.  Have him watered when the heat has left him, and then fed.
+Let them blanket him lightly.  And, sahib, have his legs rubbed--that
+horse ever loved to have his legs rubbed.  Allah!  I must sleep four
+hours before I ride!  And the Miss-sahib--went she bravely?"
+
+"Went as a woman of her race ought to go, Mahommed Gunga."
+
+"Ha!  She met a man first of her own race, and he made her go!  Would
+she have gone if a coward asked her, think you?  Sahib--women are
+good--at the other end of things!  We will ride and fetch her.  Ha!
+I saw!  My eyes are old, but they bear witness yet!--Now, food, sahib
+--for the love of Allah, food, before my belt-plate and my backbone
+touch!"
+
+"I wonder what the damned old infidel is dreaming of!"  swore
+Cunningham, as Mahommed Gunga staggered to the chamber in the rock
+where a serving-man was already heaping victuals for him.
+
+"Have me called in four hours, sahib!  In four hours I will be a man
+again!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+    The freed wolf limped home to his lair,
+    And lay to lick his sore.
+    With wrinkled lip and fangs agnash--
+    With back-laid ear and eyes aflash--
+    "Twas something rather more than rash
+    To turn me loose!" he swore.
+
+
+NOW Jaimihr fondly thought he held a few cards up his sleeve when he
+made his bargain with Rosemary McClean and let himself be lowered from
+the Alwa-sahib's rock.  He knew, better probably than any one except
+his brother and the priests, how desperate the British situation had
+become throughout all India at an instant's notice, and he made his
+terms accordingly.
+
+He did not believe, in the first place, that there would be any British
+left to succor by the time matters had been settled sufficiently in
+Howrah to enable him to dare leave the city at his rear.  Afterward,
+should it seem wise, he would have no objection in the world to riding
+to the aid of a Company that no longer existed.
+
+In the second place, he entertained no least compunction about breaking
+his word completely in every particular.  He knew that the members of
+the little band on Alwa's rock would keep their individual and
+collective word, and therefore that Rosemary McClean would come to him.
+He suspected, though, that there would prove to be a rider of some
+sort to her agreement as regarded marrying him, for he had young
+Cunningham in mind;  and he knew enough of Englishmen from hearsay and
+deduction to guess that Cunningham would interject any obstacle his
+ingenuity could devise.
+
+Natives of India do not like Englishmen to marry their women.  How much
+less, then, would a stiff-necked member of a race of conquerors care to
+stand by while a woman of his own race became the wife of a native
+prince?  He did not trust Cunningham, and he recalled that he had had
+no promise from that gentleman.
+
+Therefore, he proposed to forestall Cunningham if possible, and, if
+that were inconvenient or rash, he meant to take other means of making
+Rosemary McClean his, beyond dispute, in any case.
+
+Next to Rosemary McClean he coveted most the throne of Howrah.  With
+regard to that he was shrewd enough not to conceal from himself for a
+second the necessity for scotching the priests of Siva before he dare
+broach the Howrah treasure, and so make the throne worth his royal
+while.  Nor did he omit from his calculations the public clamor that
+would probably be raised should he deal too roughly with the priests.
+And he intended to deal roughly with them.
+
+So the proposed allegiance of the Rangars suited him in more ways than
+one.  His army and his brother's were so evenly matched in numbers and
+equipment that he had been able to leave Howrah without fear for the
+safety of his palace while his back was turned.  The eight hundred whom
+he had led on the unlucky forray to Alwa's were scarcely missed, and,
+even had the Maharajah known that he was absent with them, there were
+still too many men behind for him to dare to start reprisals.  The
+Maharajah was too complete a coward to do anything much until he was
+forced into it.
+
+The Rangars, he resolved, must be made to take the blame for the
+broaching of the treasure.  He proposed to go about the broaching even
+before hostilities between himself and his brother had commenced, and
+he expected to be able to trick the Rangars into seeming to be looting.
+To appear to defend the treasure would probably not be difficult;  and
+it would be even less difficult to blame the Rangars afterward for the
+death of any priest who might succumb during the ensuing struggle.  He
+counted on the populace, more than on his own organized forces, to make
+the Rangars powerless when the time should come for them to try to take
+the upper hand.  The mob would suffer in the process, but its
+fanaticism--its religious prejudice and numbers--would surely win
+the day.
+
+As for Rosemary McClean, the more he considered her the more his brown
+eyes glowed.  He had promised to make her Maharanee.  But he knew too
+thoroughly what that would mean not to entertain more than a passing
+doubt as to the wisdom of the course.  He was as ready to break his
+word on that point as on any other.
+
+A woman of his own race, however wooed and won, would have been content
+to accept the usual status of whisperer from behind the close-meshed
+screens.  Not so an Englishwoman, with no friends to keep her company
+and with nothing in the world to do but think.  She, he realized, would
+expect to make something definite of her position, and that would suit
+neither his creed (which was altogether superficial), nor custom (which
+was iron-bound and to be feared), nor prejudice (which was prodigious),
+nor yet convenience (which counted most).
+
+He came to the conclusion that the fate in store for her was not such
+as she would have selected had she had her choice.  Nor were his
+conclusions in regard to her such as would commend him in the eyes of
+honest men.
+
+But, after all, the throne was the fulcrum of his plotting;  and the
+lever had to be the treasure, if his plans were to succeed beyond
+upsetting.  He changed his plans a dozen times over before he arrived
+at last at the audacious decision he was seeking.
+
+Like many another Hindoo in that hour of England's need, he did not
+lose sight altogether of the distant if actual possibility that the
+Company's servants might--by dint of luck and grit, and what the
+insurance papers term the Act of God--pull through the crisis.
+Therefore, he decided that under no circumstances should Rosemary
+McClean be treated cavalierly until the Rangars were out of the way and
+he could pose as her protector if need be.
+
+He would be able to prove that Rosemary and her father had come to him
+of their own free will.  He would say that they had asked him for
+protection from the Rangars.  He had evidence that his brother Howrah
+had been in communication with the Rangars.  So, should the Company
+survive and retain power enough to force an answer to unpleasant
+questions, he thought it would not be difficult to prove that he had
+been the Company's friend all along.
+
+Under all the circumstances he considered it best to be false to
+everybody and strike for no hand but his own, and with that
+reconsidered end in view he decided on a master-stroke.  He sent word
+to his brother, the Maharajah, saying that the Rangars had accepted
+service with the Company and purposed a raid on Howrah;  therefore, he
+proposed that they unite against the common enemy and set a trap for
+the Rangars.
+
+Howrah sent back to ask what proof he had of the Rangars' taking
+service with the British.  Jaimihr answered that Cunningham and
+Mahommed Gunga were both on Alwa's crag.  He also swore that as Alwa's
+prisoner he had been able to over-hear the Rangars' plans.
+
+The Maharajah was bewildered, as Jaimihr had expected that he would be.
+And with just as Eastern, just as muddle-headed, just as dishonest
+reasoning, he made up his mind to play a double game with everybody,
+too.  He agreed to join Jaimihr in opposition to the Rangars.  He
+agreed to send all his forces to meet Jaimihr's and together kill every
+Rangar who should show himself inside the city.  And he privately made
+plans to arrive on the scene too late, and smash Jaimihr's army after
+it had been reduced in size and efficiency by its battle with Alwa's
+men.
+
+Jaimihr, unknowingly, fitted his plan into his brother's by determining
+to get on the scene early enough to have first crack at the treasure.
+He meant to get away with that, leave his brother to deal with Alwa's
+men, circle round, and then attack his brother from the rear.
+
+Finally, he made up his mind once and for all that Rosemary McClean
+must remain inviolate until he was quite certain that the English had
+been driven out of India.  He expected that good news within a week.
+
+He was delighted when Joanna, dressed as a man, turned up at his
+palace-gates and cajoled her way in past the guards.  To be asked for
+an escort to bring the McCleans into Howrah fitted in with his role of
+protector as a key might fit a lock.  Now they could never pretend--
+nobody could ever pretend--that he had seized them.  He sent a
+carriage out for them, and when they arrived placed a whole wing of his
+palace at their disposal, treating them like royalty.  He made no
+attempt to molest or interfere with either of them, except that he
+prevented them from going in and out;  and he told off plenty of
+witnesses who would be able to swear subsequently that they had seen
+how well his guests were treated.  He was taking no unnecessary chances
+at that stage of the game he played.
+
+There were others, though, who plotted besides Jaimihr.  There were,
+for instance, Siva's priests.  It is not to be forgotten that in that
+part of India the priests had been foremost in fomenting the rebellion.
+They urged Howrah constantly to take the field against the British,
+and it was only the sure knowledge of his brother's intention to strike
+for the throne that prevented the Maharajah from doing what the priests
+urged.
+
+He knew that Alwa and the Rangars would not help him unless Jaimihr
+first attacked him, for Alwa would be sure to stand on the strict
+letter of his oath.  And he was afraid of the Rangars.  He feared that
+they might protect him and depose him afterward.  He reasoned that
+that, too, might be construed into a strict interpretation of the terms
+of Alwa's promise!
+
+He consented to collect his army.  He kept it under arms.  He even paid
+it something on account of arrears of wages and served out rations.
+But, to the disgust of the priests who asked nothing better than
+dissension between the brothers, he jumped at the idea of uniting with
+Jaimihr to defeat Alwa's men.  He knew--just as the priests feared--
+that once he could trick and defeat Jaimihr he could treat the
+troublesome priests as cavalierly as he chose.
+
+So the priests made a third knot in the tangle and tried desperately at
+the last moment to recreate dissension between the rival royal camps.
+
+"Jaimihr is getting ready to attack you!" they assured Howrah.  "Attack
+him first!"
+
+"I will wait until he does attack," the Maharajah answered.  "For the
+moment we are friends and have a cause in common."
+
+"Howrah's men will desert to you the moment you make a move to win the
+throne," they assured Jaimihr.
+
+"Wait!" answered Jaimihr.  "Wait but a day or two.  I will move fast as
+I see fit when I am ready.  For the present my cause and my brother's
+cause are one."
+
+Spies brought in news to Maharajah, Prince, and priest of the hurried
+raising of a Rangar army.  The Maharajah and the Prince laughed up
+their sleeves and the priests swore horribly;  the interjection of
+another element--another creed--into the complication did not suit
+the priestly "book."  They were the only men who were really worried
+about Alwa.
+
+And another spy--Joanna--disappeared.  No longer garbed as a man,
+she had hung about the palace, and--known to nearly all the sweepers
+--she had overheard things.  Garbed as a man again, she suddenly
+evaporated in thin air, and Rosemary McClean was left without a servant
+or any means of communication with the outside world.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+    The ringed wolf glared the circle round
+    Through baleful, blue-lit eye,
+    Not unforgetful of his debt.
+    "Now, heed ye how ye draw the net."
+    Quoth he:  "I'll do some damage yet
+    Or ere my turn to die!"
+
+
+THE mare that had been a present from Mahommed Gunga was brought out
+and saddled, together with a fresh horse for the Risaldar.  The veteran
+had needed no summoning, for with a soldier's instinct he had wakened
+at the moment his self-allotted four hours had expired.  He mounted a
+little stiffly, and tried his horse's paces up and down the courtyard
+once or twice before nodding to Cunningham.
+
+"All ready, sahib."
+
+"Ready, Mahommed Gunga."
+
+But there was one other matter, after all, that needed attention first.
+
+"That horse of mine that brought me hither"--the Risaldar picked out
+the man who waited with the gong cord in his hand--"is left in thy
+particular charge.  Dost thou hear me?  I will tell the Alwa-sahib what
+I now tell thee--that horse will be required of thee fit,
+good-tempered, light-mouthed,  not spur-marked, and thoroughly well
+groomed.  There will be a reward in the one case, but in the other--I
+would not stand in thy shoes!  It is a trust!"
+
+"Come along, Risaldar!" called Cunningham. "We're wasting an awful lot
+of time!"
+
+"Nay, sahib, but a good horse is like a woman, to be loved and treated
+faithfully!  Neither horse nor woman should be sacrificed for less than
+duty!  Lead on, bahadur--I will join thee at the gate."
+
+He had several directions to give for the horse's better care, and
+Cunningham was forced to wait at least five minutes for him at the foot
+of the steep descent.  Then for another minute the two sat their horses
+side by side, while the great gate rose slowly, grudgingly, cranked
+upward by four men.
+
+"If we two ever ride under here again, bahadur, we shall ride with
+honor thick on us," remarked Mahommed Gunga.  "God knows what thy plan
+may be;  but I know that from now on there will be no peace for either
+of us until we have helped rip it with our blades from the very belly
+of rebellion.  Ride!"
+
+The gate clanged down behind them as--untouched by heel or spur--
+the two spring-limbed chargers raced for their bits across the sand.
+They went like shadows, casting other shadows--moon-made--
+wind-driven--knee-to-knee.
+
+"Now, sahib!"
+
+The Risaldar broke silence after fifteen minutes.  Neither he nor
+Cunningham were of the type that chatters when the time has come to
+loosen sabres and sit tight.
+
+"In the matter of what lies ahead--as I said, neither I nor any man
+knows what this plan of thine may be, but I and the others have
+accepted thy bare word.  These men who await thee--and they are many,
+and all soldiers, good, seasoned horsemen--have been told that the
+son of Cunnigan will lead them.  Alwa has given his word, and I mine,
+that in the matter of a leader there is nothing left to be desired.
+And my five men have told them of certain happenings that they have
+seen.  Therefore, thou art awaited with no little keenness.  They will
+be all eyes and ears.  It might be well, then, to set the pace a little
+slower, for a man looks better on a fresh horse than on a weary one!"
+
+"I'm thinking, Mahommed Gunga, of the two McCleans and of General Byng,
+who is expecting us.  There is little time to lose."
+
+"I, too, consider them, sahib.  It is we Rangars who must do the sabre
+work.  ALL, sahib--ALL--depends now on the impression created on
+the men awaiting thee!  Rein in a little.  Thy father's name, thine
+own, and mine and Alwa's weigh for much on thy side;  but have a sound
+horse between thy legs and a trumpet in thy throat when we get there!
+I have seen more than one officer have to fight up-hill for the hearts
+of his troopers because his tired horse stumbled or looked shabby on
+the first parade.  Draw rein a little, sahib."
+
+So Cunningham, still saying nothing, drew back into an easy canter.  He
+was conscious of something, not at all like a trumpet, in his throat
+that was nearly choking him.  He did not care to let Mahommed Gunga
+know that what was being mistaken for masterly silence was really
+emotion!  He did not speak because he did not trust his voice.
+
+"There are three squadrons, sahib--each of about five hundred men.
+Alwa has the right wing, I the left.  Take thou the centre and command
+the whole.  The horses are as good as any in this part of India, for
+each man has brought his best to do thee honor.  Each man carries four
+days' rations in his saddle-bag and two days' rations for his horse.
+More horse feed is collecting, and they are bringing wagons, to follow
+when we give the word.  But we thought there would be little sense in
+ordering wagons to follow us to Howrah City, knowing that thy plan
+would surely entail action.  If we are to ride to the aid of
+Byng-bahadur it seemed better to pick up the wagons on the journey back
+again.  That is all, sahib.  There will be no time, of course, to waste
+on talk or drill.  Take charge the moment that we get there--issue
+thy orders--and trust to the men understanding each command.  Lead
+off without delay."
+
+"All right," said Cunningham--two English words that went much
+further to allay the Risaldar's anxiety than any amount of rhetoric
+would have done.  "But--d'you mean to tell me that the men don't
+understand words of command?"
+
+"All of them do, sahib--but to many of them the English words are
+new.  They all understand formations, and those who know the English
+words are teaching the others while they wait for us.  There is not one
+man among them but has couched a lance or swung a sabre in some force
+or other?"
+
+"Good.  Have they all got lances?"
+
+"All the front-rank men are armed with lance and sabre--the rear
+ranks have sabres only."
+
+"Good."
+
+After two hours of steady cantering the going changed and became a
+quick succession of ever-deepening gorges cleft in sandstone.  Far away
+in the distance to the left there rose a glow that showed where Howrah
+City kept uneasy vigil, doubtless with watch-fires at every street
+corner.  It looked almost as though the distant city were in flames.
+
+Ahead of them lay the gloom of hell mouth and the silence of the space
+beyond the stars.
+
+It was with that strange, unclassified, unnamed sixth sense that
+soldiers, savages, and certain hunters have that Cunningham became
+aware of life ahead of him--massed, strong-breathing, ready--
+waiting life, spring-bent in the quivering blackness.  A little
+farther, and he caught the ring of a curb-chain.  Then a horse whinnied
+and a hoarse voice swore low at a restive charger.  His own mare
+neighed, throwing her head high, and some one challenged through the
+dead-black night.
+
+"How-ut!  Hukkums--thar!"
+
+A horseman appeared suddenly from nowhere, and examined them at close
+quarters instead of waiting for their answer.  He peered curiously at
+Cunningham--glanced at Mahommed Gunga--then wheeled, spinning his
+horse as the dust eddies twist in the sudden hot-wind gusts.
+
+"Sahib-bahadur hai!" he shouted, racing back.
+
+The night was instantly alive with jingling movement, as line after
+line of quite invisible light-horse-men--self-disciplined and eager
+to obey--took up their dressing.  The overhanging cliff of sandstone
+hid the moon, but here and there there was a gleam of eyeballs in the
+dark--now man's, now horse's--and a sheen that was the hint of
+steel held vertical.  No human being could have guessed the length of
+the gorge nor the number of the men who waited in it, for the restless
+chargers stamped in inch-deep sand that deadened sound without seeming
+to lessen its quantity.
+
+"Salaam, bahadur!"
+
+It was Alwa, saluting with drawn sabre, reining back a pedigreed mare
+to get all the spectacular emotion out of the encounter that he could.
+
+"Here are fifteen hundred eight and fifty, sahib--all Rangars--true
+believers--all true men--all pledged to see thee unsinged through
+the flames of hell!  Do them the honor of a quick inspection, sahib!"
+
+"Certainly!" smiled Cunningham.
+
+"I have told them, sahib, that their homes, their women, their
+possessions, and their honor are all guaranteed them.  Also pay.  They
+make no other terms."
+
+"I guarantee them all of that," said Cunningham, loud enough for at
+least the nearest ranks to hear.
+
+"On thine own honor, sahib?"
+
+"On my word of honor!"
+
+"The promise is enough!  Will you inspect them, sahib?"
+
+"I'll take their salute first," said Cunningham.
+
+"Pardon, bahadur!"
+
+Alwa filled his lungs and faced the unseen lines.
+
+"Rangars!" he roared.  "Your leader!  To Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur--son
+of Pukka-Cunnigan whom we all knew--general--salute--present--
+sabres!"
+
+There was sudden movement--the ring of whipped-out metal--a bird's
+wing-beat--as fifteen hundred hilts rose all together to as many lips
+--and a sharp intake of breath all down the line.
+
+It wasn't bad.  Not bad at all, thought Cunningham.  It was not done as
+regulars would have worked it.  There was the little matter of the
+lances, that he could make out dimly here and there, and he could
+detect even in that gloom that half of the men had been caught
+wondering how to salute with lance and sabre both.  But that was not
+their fault;  the effort--the respect behind the effort--the desire
+to act altogether--were all there and striving.  He drew his own mare
+back a little, and returned their salute with full military dignity.
+
+"Reeeecee--turn--sabres!" ordered Alwa, and that movement was
+accomplished better.
+
+He rode once, slowly, down the long front rank, letting each man look
+him over--then back again along the rear rank, risking a kick or two,
+for there was little room between them and the cliff.  He was not
+choking now.  The soldier instinct, that is born in a man like
+statesmanship or poetry, but that never can be taught, had full command
+over all his other senses, and when he spurred out to the front again
+his voice rang loud and clear, like a trumpet through the night.
+
+With fifty ground scouts scattered out ahead of them, they drummed out
+of the gorge and thundered by squadrons on the plain beyond--
+straight, as the jackal runs, for Howrah City.  Alwa, leaving his own
+squadron, to canter at Cunningham's side, gave him all the new
+intelligence that mattered.
+
+"Last evening I sent word on ahead to them of our coming, sahib!  I
+sent one messenger to the Maharajah and one to Jaimihr, warning each
+that we ride to keep our plighted word.  At the worst, we shall find
+both parties ready for us!  We shall know before we reach the city who
+is our friend!  News reached me, too, sahib, that the Maharajah and his
+brother have united against us--that Howrah will eat his promises and
+play me false.  God send he does!  I would like to have my hands in
+that Hindoo's treasure-chests!  We none of us know yet, bahadur, what
+is this plan of thine--"
+
+"You've been guessing awfully close to it, I think" laughed Cunningham.
+
+"Aha!  The treasure-chests, then!  But--is there--have you
+information, sahib?  Who knows, then--who has told where they are?
+Neither I nor my men know!"
+
+"Send for Mahommed Gunga."
+
+Mahommed Gunga left his squadron, too, to canter beside Alwa.
+
+"I am all ears, sahib!" he asserted, reining his horse until his stride
+was equal to the others.
+
+"The key to the situation is that treasure," asserted Cunningham.
+"Howrah wants it.  Jaimihr wants it.  The priests want it.  I know that
+much for certain, from the McCleans.  All right.  We're a new factor in
+the problem, and they all mistrust us nearly as much, if not more, than
+they mistrust one another.  Good. They'll be all of them watching that
+treasure.  It'll be near where they are, and I'm going to snaffle it or
+break my neck--and all your necks--in the deuced desperate attempt.
+Is that clear?  Where the carcass is, there wheel the kites and there
+the jackals fight, as your proverb says.  The easiest part will be
+finding the treasure.  Then--"
+
+They legged in closer to him, hanging on his words and too busy
+listening to speak.
+
+"If Howrah thinks we're after the treasure and decides to fight without
+previous argument, that absolves you from your promise, doesn't it,
+Alwa-sahib?"
+
+"Surely, sahib, provided our intention is not to evade the promise."
+
+"Our intention is to prevent Howrah and his brother from fighting, to
+insure peace and protection on this whole countryside, and, if
+possible, to ride away with Jaimihr's army to the Company's aid."
+
+"Good, sahib."
+
+It seemed to occur to none of the three that fifteen hundred mounted
+men were somewhat few with which to accomplish such a marvel.
+
+"If they are fighting already, we must interfere."
+
+"We are ready, bahadur.  Fighting is our trade!"
+
+"But, before all things, we must keep our eyes well skinned for a hint
+of treachery on Jaimihr's part.  I would rather quarrel with that
+gentleman than be his friend, but he happens to hold our promise.
+We've got to keep our promise, provided he keeps his.  I think our
+first objective is the treasure."
+
+"That, sahib, is an acrobat of a plan," said Alwa;  "much jumping from
+one proposition to another!"
+
+"It is no plan at all," said Cunningham.  "It is a mere rehearsal of
+the circumstances.  A plan is something quickly seized at the right
+second and then acted on--like your capture of Jaimihr.  Wait awhile,
+Alwa-sahib!"
+
+"Ay, wait awhile!" growled Mahommed Gunga.  "Did I bring thee a leader
+to ask plans of thee, or a man of men for thee to follow?  Which?"
+
+"All the same," said Alwa, "I would rather halt and make a good plan.
+It would be wiser.  I do not understand this one."
+
+"I follow Cunnigan-bahadur!" said Mahommed Gunga;  and he spurred off
+to his squadron.  Alwa could see nothing better than to follow suit,
+for Cunningham closed his lips tight in a manner unmistakable.  And
+whatever Alwa's misgivings might have been, he had the sense and the
+soldierly determination not to hint at them to his men.
+
+As dawn rose pale-yellow in the eastern sky they thundered into view of
+Howrah City and drew rein to breathe their horses.  The sun was high
+before they had trotted near enough to make out details.  But, long
+before details could be seen, it was evident that an army was formed up
+to meet them on the tree-lined maidan that lay between them and the
+two-mile-long palace-wall.  Beyond all doubt it was Jaimihr's army, for
+his elephants were not so gaudily harnessed as Howrah's, and his men
+were not so brilliantly dressed.
+
+As they dipped into the last depression between them and the wall and
+halted for a minute's consultation, a khaki-clad, shrivelled figure of
+a man leaped up from behind a sand-ridge, and raced toward Cunningham,
+shouting to him in a dialect he had no knowledge of and gesticulating
+wildly.  A trooper spurred down on him, brought him up all standing
+with an intercepted lance, examined him through puckered eyes, and
+then, roaring with laughter, picked him up and carried him to
+Cunningham.
+
+"A woman, sahib!  By the beard of Abraham, a woman!"
+
+"Joanna!"
+
+"Ha, sahib!  Ha, sahib!"
+
+She babbled to him, word overtaking word and choking all together in a
+dust-dry throat.  Cunningham gave her water and then set her on the
+ground.
+
+"Translate, somebody!" he ordered.  "I can't understand a word she
+says."
+
+Babbled and hurried and a little vague it might be, but Joanna had the
+news of the minute pat.
+
+"Jaimihr is looting the treasure now, sahib.  He has tricked his
+brother.  They were to join, and both fight against you, but Jaimihr
+tried to get the treasure out before either you or his brother came.
+He is trying now, sahib!"
+
+"Miss McClean!  Ask her where Miss McClean is!  Ask for Miss Maklin,
+sahib!"
+
+"Jaimihr has told her that thou and Alwa and Mahommed Gunga are all
+dead, and the British overwhelmed throughout all India!  He has her
+with him in a carriage, under guard, for all his men are with him and
+he could spare no great guard for his palace.  See!  Look, sahib!
+Jaimihr's palace is in flames!"
+
+Alwa all but fell from his charger, laughing volcanically.  The Rajput,
+who never can agree, can always see the humor in other Rajputs'
+disagreement.
+
+"Ho, but they are playing a great game with each other!" he shouted.
+But Cunningham decided he had wasted time enough.  He shouted his
+orders, and in less than thirty seconds his three squadrons were
+thundering in the direction of Jaimihr's army and the palace-wall.
+They drew rein again within a quarter of a mile of it, to discover with
+amazed military eyes that Jaimihr had no artillery.
+
+It was then, at the moment when they halted, that Jaimihr reached a
+quick decision and the wrong one.  He knew by now that his brother had
+won the first trick in the game of treachery, for he could see the
+smoke and flames of his burning palace from where he sat his horse.  He
+decided at once that Alwa and his Rangars must have taken sides with
+the Maharajah, for how, otherwise, he reasoned, could the Maharajah
+dare let the Rangars approach unwatched and unmolested.  It was evident
+to him that the Rangars were acting as part of a concerted movement.
+
+He made up his mind to attack and beat off the new arrivals without
+further ceremony.  He out-numbered them by four or five to one, and was
+on his own ground.  Whatever their intentions, at least he would be
+able to pretend afterward that he had acted in defence of the sacred
+treasure;  and then, with the treasure in his possession, he would soon
+be able to recompense himself for a mere burned and looted palace!
+
+So he opened fire without notice, argument, or parley, and an ill-aimed
+volley shrieked over the heads of Cunningham's three squadrons.
+
+Cunningham, unruffled and undecided still, made out through puckered
+eyes the six-horse carriage in which Miss McClean evidently was;  it
+was drawn up close beside the wall, and two regiments were between it
+and his squadron.  He was recalling the terms of the agreement made
+with Jaimihr;  he remembered it included the sparing of all of Alwa's
+men, and not the firing on them.
+
+A thousand of Jaimihr's cavalry swooped from the shelter of the
+infantry, opened out a very little, and, mistaking Cunningham's delay
+for fear, bore down with a cheer and something very like determination.
+
+They were met some ten yards their side of the half-way mark by
+Cunningham's three squadrons, loosed and led by Cunningham himself.
+Outridden, outfought, outgeneralled, they were smashed through, ridden
+down, and whirled back reeling in confusion.  About a hundred of them
+reached the shelter of the infantry in a formed-up body;  many of the
+rest charged through it in a mob and threw it into confusion.
+
+Too late Jaimihr decided on more reasonable tactics.  Too late he gave
+orders to his infantry that no such confused body could obey.  Before
+he could ride to rally them, the Rangars were in them, at them, through
+them, over them.  The whole was disintegrating in retreat, endeavoring
+to rally and reform in different places, each subdivision shouting
+orders to its nearest neighbor and losing heart as its appeals for help
+were disregarded.
+
+Back came Cunningham's close-formed squadrons, straight through the
+writhing mass again;  and now the whole of Jaimihr's army took to its
+heels, just as part of the five-feet-thick stone palace-wall succumbed
+to the attacks of crowbars and crashed down in the roadway, disclosing
+a dark vault on the other side.
+
+Jaimihr made a rush for the six-horse carriage, and tried vainly to get
+it started.  Cunningham shouted to him to surrender, but he took no
+notice of the challenge;  he escaped being made prisoner by the
+narrowest of margins, as the position next him was cut down.  The other
+postilions were un-horsed, and six Rangars changed mounts and seized
+the reins.  The Prince ran one man through the middle, and then spurred
+off to try and overtake his routed army, some of which showed a
+disposition to form up again.
+
+"Sit quiet!" called Cunningham through the latticed carriage window.
+"You're safe!"
+
+The heavy, swaying carriage rumbled round, and the horses plunged in
+answer to the Rangars' heels.  A moment later it was moving at a
+gallop;  two minutes later it was backed against the wall, and Rosemary
+McClean stepped out behind three protecting squadrons that had not
+suffered perceptibly from what they would have scorned to call a battle.
+
+"Now all together!" shouted Cunningham, whose theories on the value of
+seconds when tackling reforming infantry were worthy of the Duke of
+Wellington, or any other officer who knew his business;  and again he
+led his men at a breakneck charge.  This time Jaimihr's disheartened
+little army did not wait for him, but broke into wild confusion and
+scattered right and left, leaving their elephants to be captured.
+There were only a few men killed.  The lance-tipped, roaring whirlwind
+loosed itself for the most part against nothing, and reformed uninjured
+to trot back again.  Cunningham told off two troops to pursue fugitives
+and keep their eyes open for the Prince before he rode back to examine
+the breach in the wall that Jaimihr had been to so much trouble about
+making.
+
+He had halted to peer through the break in the age-old masonry when
+Mahommed Gunga spurred up close to him, touched his arm, and pointed.
+
+"Look, sahib!  Look!"
+
+Jaimihr--and no one but a wizard could have told how he had managed
+to get to where he was unobserved--was riding as a man rides at a
+tent-peg, crouching low, full-pelt for Rosemary McClean!
+
+Cunningham's spurs went home before the word was out of Mahommed
+Gunga's mouth, and Mahommed Gunga raced behind him;  but Jaimihr had
+the start of them.  Duncan McClean, looking ill and weak and helpless,
+crowded his daughter to the wall, standing between her and the Prince;
+but Jaimihr aimed a swinging sabre at him, and the missionary fell.
+His daughter stooped to bend over him, and Jaimihr seized her below the
+arms.  A second later he had hoisted her to his saddle-bow and was
+spurring hell-bent-for-leather for the open country.
+
+Two things prevented him from making his escape.  Five of Alwa's men,
+returning from pursuing fugitives, cut off his flight in one direction,
+and the extra weight on his horse prevented him from getting clear by
+means of speed alone--as he might have done otherwise, for
+Cunningham's mare was growing tired.
+
+Jaimihr rode for two minutes with the frenzy of a savage before he saw
+the futility of it.  It was Cunningham's mare, gaining on him stride
+over stride, that warned him he would be cut down like a dog from
+behind unless he surrendered or let go his prize.
+
+So he laughed and threw the girl to the ground.  For a moment more he
+spurted, spurring like a fiend, then wheeled and charged at Cunningham.
+He guessed that but for Cunningham that number of Rangars would never
+have agreed on a given plan.  He knew that it was he, and not
+Cunningham or Alwa or Rosemary McClean, who had broken faith.  He had
+broken it in thought, and word, and action.  And he had lost his
+prospect of a throne.  So he came on like a man who has nothing to gain
+by considering his safety.  He came like a real man at last.  And
+Cunningham, on a tired mare, met him point to point.
+
+They fought over a quarter of a mile of ground, for Jaimihr proved to
+be as useful with his weapon as Mahommed Gunga's teaching had made
+Cunningham.  There was plenty of time for the reformed squadrons to see
+what was happening--plenty of time for Alwa, who considered that he
+had an account of his own to settle with the Prince, to leave his
+squadron and come thundering up to help.  Mahommed Gunga dodged and
+reined and spurred, watching his opportunity on one side and Alwa on
+the other.  It would have suited neither of them to have their leader
+killed at that stage of the game, but the fighting was too quick for
+either man to interfere.
+
+Jaimihr charged Cunningham for the dozenth time and missed, charged
+past, to wheel and charge again, then closed with the most vindictive
+rush of all.  Again Cunningham met him point to point.  The two blades
+locked, and bent like springs as they wrenched at them.  Cunningham's
+blade snapped.  He snatched at his mare and spun her before Jaimihr
+could recover, then rammed both spurs in and bore down on the Prince
+with half a sabre.  He had him on the near side at a disadvantage.
+Jaimihr spurred and tried to maneuver for position, and the half sabre
+went home just below his ribs.  He dropped bleeding in the dust at the
+second that Alwa and Mahommed Gunga each saw an opportunity and rushed
+in, to rein back face to face, grinning in each other's faces, their
+horses' breasts pressed tight against the charger that Jaimihr rode.
+The horse screamed as the shock crushed the wind out of him.
+
+"You robbed me of my man, sahib, by about a sabre's breadth!"  laughed
+Alwa.
+
+"And you left your squadron leaderless without my permission!" answered
+Cunningham.  "You too! Mahommed Gunga!"
+
+"But, sahib!"
+
+"Do you prefer to argue or obey?"
+
+Mahommed Gunga flushed and rode back.  Alwa grinned and started after
+him.  Cunningham, without another glance at the dead Prince, rode up to
+Rosemary McClean, who was picking herself up and looking bewildered;
+she had watched the duel in speechless silence, lying full length in
+the dust, and she still could not speak when he reached her.
+
+"Put your foot on mine," he said reassuringly;  "then swing yourself up
+behind me if you can.  If you can't, I'll pick you up in front."
+
+She tried hard, but she failed;  so he put both arms under hers and
+lifted her.
+
+"Am I welcome?" he asked.  And she nodded.
+
+Fresh from killing a man--with a man's blood on his broken sword and
+the sweat of fighting not yet dry on him--he held a woman in his arms
+for the first time in his life.  His hand had been steady when it
+struck the blow under Jaimihr's ribs, but now it trembled.  His eyes
+had been stern and blazing less than two minutes before;  now they
+looked down into nothing more dangerous than a woman's eyes and grew
+strangely softer all at once.  His mouth had been a hard, tight line
+under a scrubby upper lip, but his lips had parted now a little and his
+smile was a boy's--not nervous or mischievous--a happy boy's.
+
+She smiled, too.  Most people did smile when young Cunningham looked
+pleased with them;  but she smiled differently.  And he, with that
+blood still wet on him, bent down and kissed her on the lips.  Her
+answer was as characteristic as his action.
+
+"You look like a blackguard," she said--"but you came, and I knew you
+would!  I told Jaimihr you would, and he laughed at me.  I told God you
+would, and you came!  How long is it since you shaved?  Your chin is all
+prickly!"
+
+They were interrupted by a roar from the three waiting squadrons.  He
+had ridden without caring where he went, and his mare had borne the two
+of them to where the squadrons were drawn up with their rear to the
+great gap in the wall.  The situation suited every Rangar of them!
+That was, indeed, the way a man should win his woman!  They cheered
+him, and cheered again, and he grinned back, knowing that their hearts
+were in the cheering and their good will won.  Red, then, as a boiled
+beet, he rode over to the six-horse carriage and dismounted by her
+father--picked him up--called two troopers--and lifted him on to
+the rear seat of the great old-fashioned coach.
+
+"Get inside beside him!" he ordered Rosemary, examining the
+missionary's head as he spoke.  "It's a scalp wound, and he's stunned
+--no more.  He's left off bleeding already.  Nurse him!"  He was off,
+then, without another word or a backward glance for her--off to his
+men and the gap in the wall that waited an investigation.
+
+The amazing was discovered then.  The treasure--the fabled, fabulous,
+enormous Howrah treasure was no fable.  It was there, behind that wall!
+The jewels and the bullion in marketable bars that could have bought
+an army or a kingdom--the sacred, secret treasure of twenty troubled
+generations, that was guarded in the front by fifty doors and fifty
+corridors and three times fifty locks--the door of whose secret vault
+was guarded by a cannon, set to explode at the slightest touch--was
+hidden from the public road at its other side, its rear, by nothing
+better than a five-foot wall of ill-cemented stone!  Cunningham stepped
+inside over the dismantled masonry and sat down on a chest that held
+more money's worth than all the Cunninghams in all the world had ever
+owned, or spent, or owed, or used, or dreamed of!
+
+"Ask Alwa and Mahommed Gunga to come to me here!" he called;  and a
+minute later they stood at attention in front of him.
+
+"Send a hundred men, each with a flag of truce on his lance, to gallop
+through the city and call on Jaimihr's men to rally to me, if they wish
+protection against Howrah!"
+
+"Good, sahib! Good!" swore Alwa.  "Howrah is the next danger!  Make
+ready to fight Howrah!"
+
+"Attend to my orders, please!" smiled Cunningham, and Alwa did as he
+was told.  Within an hour Jaimihr's men were streaming from the four
+quarters of the compass, hurrying to be on the winning side, and
+forming into companies as they were ordered.
+
+Then Cunningham gave another order.
+
+"Alwa-sahib, will you take another flag of truce, please, and ride with
+not more than two men to Maharajah Howrah.  Tell him that I want him
+here at once to settle about this treasure."
+
+Alwa stared.  His mouth opened a little, and he stood like a man bereft
+of reason by the unexpected.
+
+"Are you not still pledged to support Howrah on his throne?"
+
+"I am, bahadur."
+
+"Would plundering his treasure be in keeping with your promise to him?"
+
+"Nay, sahib.  But--"
+
+"Be good enough to take my message to him.  Assure him that he may come
+with ten men without fear of molestation, but guarantee to him that if
+he comes with more than ten--and with however many more--I will
+fight, and keep his treasure, both!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+    Friends I have sought me of varying nations,
+    Men of all ranks and of different stations;
+            Some are in jail now, and some are deceased.
+    Two, though, I found to be experts at sundering
+    Me from my revenue, leaving me wondering
+    Which was the costlier--soldier or priest.
+
+
+A LITTLE more than one hour later, Howrah--sulky and disgruntled, but
+doing his level best to appear at Ease--faced young Cunningham across
+a table in the treasure-vault.  Outside was a row of wagons, drawn by
+horses and closely guarded by a squadron of the Rangars.  Behind
+Cunningham stood Alwa and Mahommed Gunga;  behind the Maharajah were
+two of his court officials.  There were pen and ink and the royal seal
+between them on the table.
+
+"So, Maharajah-sahib.  They are all scaled, and each chest is marked on
+the outside with its contents;  I'm sorry there was no time to weigh
+the gold, but the number of the ingots ought to be enough.  And, of
+course, you'll understand it wasn't possible to count all those unset
+stones--that 'ud take a week;  but your seal is on that big chest,
+too, so you'll know if it's been opened.  You are certain you can
+preserve the peace of your state with the army you have?"
+
+"Yes," said Howrah curtly.
+
+"Don't want me to leave a squadron of my men to help you out?"
+
+"No!"  He said that even more abruptly.
+
+"Good.  Of course, since you won't have to spare men to guard the
+treasure now, you'll have all the more to keep peace in the district
+with, won't you?  Let me repeat the terms of our bargain--they're
+written here, but let's be sure there is no mistake.  I agree to
+deliver your treasure into safe keeping until the rebellion is over,
+and to report to my government that you are friendly disposed toward
+us.  You, in return, guarantee to protect the families and property of
+all these gentlemen who ride with me.  It is mutually agreed that any
+damage done to their homes during their absence shall be made good out
+of your treasure, but that should you keep your part of the agreement
+the treasure shall be handed back to you intact.  Is that correct?"
+
+"Yes," said Howrah shifting in his seat uneasily.
+
+"Is there anything else?"
+
+"One other thing. I am outmaneuvered, and I have surrendered with the
+best grace possible.  That agreement stands in my name, and no other
+man's?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"The priests of Siva are not parties to it?"
+
+"I've had nothing whatever to do with them," said Cunningham.
+
+"That is all, then, sahib.  I am satisfied."
+
+"While we're about it, Maharajah-sahib, let's scotch those priests
+altogether!  McClean-sahib has told me that suttee has been practised
+here as a regular thing.  That's got to stop, and we may as well stop
+it now.  Of course, I shall keep my word about the treasure, and you'll
+get it back if you live up to the bargain you have made;  but my
+government will know now where it is, and they'll be likely to impose a
+quite considerable fine on you when the rebellion's over unless this
+suttee's put an end to.  Besides, you couldn't think of a better way of
+scoring off the priests than by enforcing the law and abolishing the
+practice.  Think that over, Maharajah-sahib."
+
+Howrah swore into his beard, as any ruling potentate might well do at
+being dictated to by a boy of twenty-two.
+
+"I will do my best, sahib," he answered.  "I am with the British--not
+against them."
+
+"Good for you!--er, I mean, that's right!"  He turned to Alwa, and
+looked straight into his eyes.  "Are you satisfied with the guarantee?"
+he asked.
+
+"Sahib, I am more than satisfied!"
+
+"Good!  Oh, and--Maharajah-sahib--since we've fought your battle
+for you--and lost a few men--and are going to guard your treasure
+for you, and be your friends, and all that kind of thing--don't you
+think you'd like to do something for us--not much, but just a little
+thing?"
+
+"I am in your power.  You have but to command."
+
+"Oh, no.  I don't want to force anything.  We're friends--talking as
+friends.  I ask a favor."
+
+"It is granted, sahib."
+
+"A horse or two, that's all."
+
+"How many horses, sahib?"
+
+"Oh, not more than one each."
+
+The Maharajah pulled a wry face, but bowed assent.  It would empty his
+stables very nearly, but he knew when he could not help himself.
+Mahommed Gunga clapped a hand to his mouth and left the vault hurriedly.
+
+"You understand this is not a demand, Maharajah-sahib.  I take it that
+you offer me these horses as an act of royal courtesy and as additional
+proof of friendliness?"
+
+"Surely, sahib."
+
+"My men will be very grateful to you.  This will enable them to reach
+the scene of action with their own horses in good shape.  I'm sure it's
+awfully good of you to have offered them!"
+
+Outside, where the late afternoon sun was gradually letting things cool
+down, Mahommed Gunga leaned against the wall and roared with laughter,
+as he explained a few details to the admiring troopers.
+
+"A horse or two, says he!  How many?  Oh, just a horse or two,
+Maharajah-sahib--merely a horse apiece!  Fifteen hundred horses!  A
+horse or two!  Oh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ho!  Allah!  But that boy will make a
+better soldier than his father!  As a favor, he asked them--no
+compulsion, mind you--just as a favor!  Allah!  What is he asking
+now, I wonder!  Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ho-ho-ho!"
+
+And inside, with a perfectly straight face and almost ghastly
+generosity, young Cunningham proceeded to impose on Howrah the
+transferred, unwelcome, perilous allegiance of Jaimihr's reassembling
+army.  The mere keeping of it in subjection, it was realized by donor
+and recipient alike, would keep the Maharajah's hands full.
+
+"Are you satisfied that your homes will be safe, now?" he asked Alwa.
+And Alwa looked him in the eyes and grinned.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+    Now, fifteen hundred, horse and man,
+    Reel at the word of one!
+    Loosed by the brazen trumpet's peal--
+    Knee to knee and toe on heel--
+    Troop on troop the squadrons wheel
+            Outbrazening the sun!
+
+
+WITHIN a fortnight of the outbreak of the mutiny, men spoke with bated
+breath about the Act of God.  It burst at the moment when India's reins
+were in the hands of some of the worst incompetents in history.  A week
+found strong men in control of things--the right men, with the right
+handful behind them.
+
+Some of the men in charge went mad, and were relieved.  Some threw up
+their commands.  Some of the worst incompetents were killed by the
+mutineers, and more than one man who could have changed the course of
+history for the worse were taken sick and died.  Instead of finding
+themselves faced by spineless nincompoops, the rebels reeled before the
+sudden, well-timed tactics of real officers with eyes and ears and
+brains.  The mask was off on both sides, and the sudden, stripped
+efficiency of one was no less disconcerting than the unexpected
+rebellion of the other.
+
+Byng-bahadur--"Byng the Brigadier"--was in command of a force again
+within three days of the news of the first massacre;  and because he
+was Byng, with Byng's record, and Byng's ability to handle loyal
+natives, the men who succeeded to the reins packed him off at once with
+a free hand, and with no other orders than to hit, hit hard, and keep
+on hitting.
+
+"Go for them, Byng, old man.  Live off the country, keep moving, and
+don't let 'em guess once what your next move's going to be!"
+
+So Byng recruited as he went, and struck like a brain-controlled
+tornado at whatever crossed his path.  But irreparable damage had been
+done before the old school was relieved, and Byng--like others--was
+terribly short of men.  Many of his own irregulars were so enraged at
+having been disbanded at a moment's notice that they refused to return
+to him.  Their honor, as they saw it, had been outraged.  Only two
+British regiments could be spared him, and they were both thinned by
+sickness from the first.  They were Sikhs, who formed the bulk of his
+headquarterless brigade, and many of them were last-minute friends, who
+came to him unorganized and almost utterly undrilled.
+
+But Byng was a man of genius, and his bare reputation was enough to
+offset much in the way of unpreparedness.  He coaxed and licked and
+praised his new men into shape as he went along;  within a week he had
+stormed Deeseera, blowing up their greatest reserve of ammunition and
+momentarily stunning the rebellion's leaders.  But cholera took charge
+in the city, and two days later found him hurrying out again, to camp
+where there was uncontaminated water, on rising ground that gave him the
+command of three main roads.  It was there that the rebels cornered him.
+
+They blew up a hundred-yard-long bridge behind him at the one point
+where a swiftly running river could be crossed, and from two other
+sides at once mutinied native regiments and thousands from the
+countryside flocked, hurrying to take a hand in what seemed destined to
+be Byng's last action.  The fact that so many swaggering soldier Sikhs
+were cornered with him was sufficient in itself to bring out Hindoo and
+Mohammedan alike.
+
+The mutinous regiments had all been drilled and taught by British
+officers until they were as nearly perfect as the military knowledge of
+the day could make them;  the fact that they had killed their officers
+only served to make them savage without detracting much from their
+efficiency.  They had native officers quite capable of taking charge,
+and sense enough to retain their discipline.
+
+So Byng intrenched himself on the gradual rise, and sent out as many
+messengers as he could spare to bring reinforcements from whatever
+source obtainable.  Then, when almost none came, he got ready to die
+where he stood, using all the soldier gift he had to put courage into
+the last-ditch loyalists who offered to die with him.  He had counted
+most on aid from Cunningham and Mahommed Gunga, but that source seemed
+to have failed him;  and he gave up hope of their arrival when a body
+of several thousand rebels took up position on his flank and cut off
+approach from the direction whence Cunningham should come.
+
+The sun blazed down like molten hell on sick and wounded.  Rotting
+carcasses of horses and cattle, killed by the rebels' artillery-fire,
+lay stenching here and there, and there was no possibility of disposing
+of them.  A day came very soon, indeed, when horse, or occasional
+transport bullock, was all there was to eat, and a night came when
+Govind Singh, the leader of the Sikhs, came to him and remonstrated.
+
+The old man had to be carried to Byng's tent, for a round shot had
+disabled him, and he had himself set down by the tent-door, where the
+General sat on a camp-stool.
+
+"General-sahib, I have not been asked for advice;  I am here to offer
+it."
+
+The huge black dome of heaven was punctuated by a billion dots of
+steely white that looked like pin-pricks.  All the light there was came
+from the fitful watch-fires, where even the wagons were being burned
+now that the meagre supply of rough timber was giving out.  The rebels,
+too, were burning everything on which they could lay their hands, and
+from between the spaced-out glow of their bonfires came ever and again
+the spurt of cannon-flame.
+
+"Speak, Govind Singh!"
+
+"Sahib, we have no artillery with which to answer them.  We have no
+food;  and the supply of ammunition wanes.  Shall we die here like
+cattle in a slaughter-house?"
+
+"This is as good as any other place" said Byng.
+
+"Nay, sahib!"  "How, then?"
+
+"In their lines is a better place!  Here is nothing better than a
+shambles, with none but our men falling.  They know that our food is
+giving out--they know that we lose heavily--they wait.  They will
+wait for days yet before they close in to finish what their guns have
+but begun, and--then--how many will there be to die desperately,
+as is fitting?"
+
+"We might get reinforcements in the morning, Govind Singh."
+
+"And again, we might not, sahib!"
+
+"I sent a number of messengers before we were shut in."
+
+"Yes, sahib--and to whom?  To men who would ask you to reinforce them
+if they could get word to you!  Tomorrow our rear will be surrounded,
+too;  they have laid planks across the little streams behind us, and
+are preparing to drag guns to that side, too.  Now, sahib, we have fire
+left in us.  We can smite yet, and do damage while we die.  Tomorrow
+night may find us decimated and without heart for the finish.  I advise
+you to advance at dawn, sahib!"
+
+That advice came as a great relief to Byng-bahadur.  He had been the
+first to see the hopelessness of the position, and every instinct that
+he had told him to finish matters, not in the last reeking ditch, but
+ahead, where the enemy would suffer fearfully while a desperate charge
+roared into them, to peter out when the last man went down fighting.
+Surrender was unthinkable, and in any event would have been no good,
+for the mutineers would be sure to butcher all their prisoners;  his
+only other chance had been to hold out until relief came, and that hope
+was now forlorn.
+
+A Mohammedan stepped out of blackness and saluted him--a native
+officer, in charge of a handful of irregular cavalry, whose horses had
+all been shot.
+
+"Well--what is it?"
+
+"This, sahib.  Do we die here?  I and my men would prefer to die
+yonder, where a mutineer or two would pay the price!"
+
+A Ghoorka officer--small as a Japanese and sturdy-looking came up
+next.  The whole thing was evidently preconcerted.
+
+"My men ask leave to show the way into the ranks ahead, General-sahib!
+They are overweary of this shambles!"
+
+"We will advance at dawn!" said Byng.  "Egan--" He turned to a British
+officer, who was very nearly all the staff he had.  "Drag that table
+up.  Let's have some paper here and a pencil, and we'll work out the
+best plan possible."
+
+He sent for the commanding officers of the British regiments--both of
+them captains, but the seniors surviving--and a weird scene followed
+round the lamp set on the tiny table.  British, Sikh, Mohammedan, and
+Ghoorka clustered close to him, and watched as his pencil traced the
+different positions and showed the movement that was to make the
+morrow's finish, their faces outlined in the lamp's yellow glow and
+their breath coming deep and slow as they agreed on how the greatest
+damage could be done the enemy before the last man died.
+
+As he finished, and assigned each leader to his share in the last
+assault that any one of them would take a part in, a streak of light
+blazed suddenly across the sky.  A shooting-star swept in a wide
+parabola to the horizon.  A murmur went up from the wakeful lines, and
+the silence of the graveyard followed.
+
+"There is our sign, sahib!" laughed the Mohammedan.  The old Sikh
+nodded and the Ghoorka grinned.  "It is the end!" he said, without a
+trace of discouragement.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Byng, his face, too, turned upward.
+
+"What, then, does it mean, sahib?"
+
+"That--it means that God Almighty has relieved a picket!  We're the
+picket.  We're relieved!  We advance at dawn, and we'll get through
+somehow!  Join your commands, gentlemen, and explain the details
+carefully to your men--let's have no misunderstandings."
+
+The dawn rose gold and beautiful upon a sleepless camp that reeked and
+steamed with hell-hot suffering.  It showed the rebels stationary,
+still in swarming lines, but scouts reported several thousand of them
+moving in a body from the flank toward the British rear.
+
+"What proportion of the rebel force?" asked Byng.  "New arrivals, or
+some of the old ones taking up a new position?"
+
+"The same crowd, sir.  They're just moving round to hem us in
+completely."
+
+"So much the better for us, then!  That leaves fewer for us to deal
+with in front."
+
+As he spoke another man came running to report the arrival of five
+gallopers, coming hell-bent-for leather, one by one and scattered, with
+the evident purpose of allowing one man to get through, whatever
+happened.
+
+"That'll be relief at last!" said Byng-bahadur.  And, instead of
+ordering the advance immediately, he waited, scouring the sky-line with
+his glasses.
+
+"Yes--dust--lance-heads--one--two--three divisions, coming in a
+hurry."
+
+Being on rising ground, he saw the distant relieving force much sooner
+than the rebels did, and he knew that it was help for him on the way
+some time before the first of the five gallopers careered into the
+camp, and shouted:
+
+"Cunnigan-bahadur comes with fifteen hundred!"
+
+"Fifteen hundred," muttered Byng.  "That merely serves to postpone the
+finish by an hour or two!"
+
+But he waited;  and presently the rebel scouts brought word, and their
+leaders, too, became aware of reinforcements on the way for somebody.
+They made the mistake, though, of refusing to believe that any help
+could be coming for the British, and by the time that messengers had
+hurried from the direction of the British rear, to tell of gallopers
+who had ridden past them and been swallowed by the shouting British
+lines, three squadrons on fresh horses were close enough to be reckoned
+dangerous.
+
+"Is that a gun they've got with them?" wondered Byng.  "By the lord
+Harry, no,--it's a coach and six!  They're flogging it along like a
+twelve-pounder!  And what the devil's in those wagons?"
+
+But he had no time for guesswork.  The desultory thunder of the rebel
+ordnance ceased, and the whole mass that hemmed him in began to revolve
+within itself, and present a new front to the approaching cavalry.
+
+"Caught on the hop, by God!  The whole line will advance!  Trumpeter!"
+
+One trumpet-call blared out and a dozen echoed it.  In a second more a
+roar went up that is only heard on battle-fields.  It has none of the
+exultant shout of joy or of the rage that a mob throws up to heaven;
+it is not even anger, as the cities know it, or the men who riot for
+advantage.  It is a welcome ironically offered up to Death--
+full-throated, and more freighted with moral effect on an enemy than a
+dozen salvoes of artillery.
+
+The thousands ahead tried hard to turn again and face two attacks at
+once;  but, though the units were efficiently controlled, there were
+none who could swing the whole.  Byng's decimated, forward-rushing
+fragment of a mixed brigade, tight-reined and working like a piece of
+mechanism, struck home into a mass of men who writhed, and fell away,
+and shouted to each other.  A third of them was out of reach, beyond
+the British rear;  fully another third was camped too far away to bring
+assistance at the first wild onslaught.  Messengers were sent to bring
+them up, but the messengers were overtaken by a horde who ran.
+
+Then, like arrows driven by the bows of death, three squadrons took
+them on the flank as Cunningham changed direction suddenly and loosed
+his full weight at the guns.  Instead of standing and serving grape,
+the rebel gunners tried to get their ordnance away--facing about
+again too late, when the squadrons were almost on them.  Then they died
+gamely, when gameness served no further purpose.  The Rangars rode them
+down and butchered them, capturing every single gun, and leaving them
+while they charged again at the rallying hordes ahead.
+
+The strange assortment of horsed wagons and the lumbering six-horse
+coach took full advantage of the momentary confusion to make at a
+gallop for the British rear, where they drew up in line behind the
+Sikhs, who were volleying at short range in the centre.
+
+Byng detached two companies of British soldiers to do their amateur
+damnedest with the guns, and, for infantry, they did good service with
+them;  fifteen or twenty minutes after the first onslaught the enemy
+was writhing under the withering attention of his own abandoned
+ordnance.  But the odds were still tremendous, and the weight of
+numbers made the ultimate outcome of the battle seem a foregone
+conclusion.
+
+From the British rear heads appeared above the rising ground;  the
+deserted camp was rushed and set alight.  The tents blazed like a
+beacon light, and a moment later the Ghoorkas retaliated by setting
+fire to such of the rebel camp as had fallen into British hands.
+
+It was those two fires that saved the day.  From the sky-line to the
+rebel rear came the thunder of a salvo of artillery.  It was the short
+bark of twelve-pounders loaded up with blank--a signal--and the
+rebels did not wait to see whether this was friend or foe.  Help from
+one unexpected source had reached the British;  this, they argued, was
+probably another column moving to the relief, and they drew off in
+reasonably decent order--harried, pestered, stung, as they attempted
+to recover camp-equipment or get away with stores and wagons, by
+Cunningham, Alwa, and Mahommed Gunga.
+
+In another hour the rebel army was a black swarm spreading on the
+eastern sky-line, and on the far horizon to the north there shone the
+glint of bayonets and helmet spikes, the dancing gleam of lance-tips,
+and the dazzle from the long, polished bodies of a dozen guns.  A
+galloper spurred up with a message for Byng.
+
+"You are to join my command," it ran, "for a raid in force on Howrah,
+where the rebels are supposed to have been concentrating for months
+past.  The idea is to paralyze the vitals of the movement before
+concentrating somewhere on the road to Delhi, where the rebels are sure
+to make a most determined stand."
+
+As he read it Mahommed Gunga galloped up to him, grinning like a boy.
+
+"Cunnigan-sahib's respects, General-sahib!  He asks leave to call his
+men off, saying that he has done all the damage possible with only
+fifteen hundred."
+
+"Yes.  Call 'em off and send Cunningham to me.  How did he shape?"
+
+"Like a son of Cunnigan-bahadur!  General-sahib-salaam!"
+
+"No.  Here, you old ruffian--shake hands, will you?  Now send Cunningham
+to me."
+
+Cunningham came up fifteen minutes later, with a Rangar orderly behind
+him, and did his best to salute as though it were nothing more than an
+ordinary meeting.
+
+"Oh!  Here you are.  'Gratulate you, Cunningham!  You came in the nick
+of time.  What kept you?"
+
+"That 'ud take a long time to tell, sir.  I've fifteen hundred horses
+about ten miles from here, sir, left in charge of native levies, and
+I'd like permission to go and fetch them before the levies make off
+with them."
+
+"Splendid!  Yes, you'd better go for them.  What's in the wagons."
+
+"The Howrah treasure, sir!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The whole of the Howrah treasure, sir!  It's held as security.  Howrah
+guarantees to keep the peace and protect the homes of my men.  I
+guaranteed to hand him back the treasure when the show's over, less
+deductions for damage done!"
+
+"Well, I'm-- Who thought of that?  You or Mahommed Gunga?"
+
+"Oh, I expect we cooked it up between us, sir."
+
+"H-rrrr-umph!  And what's in the six-horse coach?"
+
+"A lady and her father."
+
+"The deuce they are!"
+
+Byng rode up to the lumbering vehicle, signing to Cunningham to follow
+him.
+
+"General Byng," said Cunningham. "Miss McClean, sir."
+
+A very much dishevelled and very weary-looking young woman with a
+wealth of chestnut hair leaned through the window and smiled, not at
+the General but at Cunningham.  Byng stared--looked from one to the
+other of them--and said "Hu-rrrr-umph!" again.
+
+"It was she who made the whole thing possible, sir."
+
+"The very deuce it was!"  It began to be evident that Byng was not a
+ladies' man!
+
+"This is Mr. McClean, sir--Rosemary's father.  He helped her put the
+whole scheme through."
+
+Byng nodded to the missionary and looked back at Rosemary McClean--
+then from her to Cunningham again.
+
+"Hu-rrrr-umph!  Christian names already!  More 'gratulations, eh?"
+
+Rosemary's head and shoulders disappeared and Cunningham looked foolish.
+
+"Well!  Send Mahommed Gunga for the horses.  Ride over there to where
+you see General Evans's column and tell him the whole story.  Take a
+small escort and the treasure with you.  And--ah--er--lemme see
+--take this carriage, too.  Oh, by the bye--you'd better ask General
+Evans to make some arrangements for Miss McClean.  Leave her over there
+with the treasure.  I want you back with my brigade, and I want you to
+be some sort of use.  Can't have love-making with the brigade, Mr.
+Cunningham!"
+
+The Brigadier rode off with a very perfunctory salute.
+
+"Isn't he a rather curmudgeony sort of officer?" asked Rosemary the
+moment that his back was turned.
+
+"Oh, no!" laughed Cunningham.  "That's Byng-bahadur's little way,
+that's all.  He's quite likely to insist on being best man or something
+of that sort when the show's all over!  Wait here while I fetch the
+escort."
+
+
+                END
+
+
+
+
+
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