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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KING--OF THE KHYBER RIFLES: A
+ROMANCE OF ADVENTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+KING--OF THE KHYBER RIFLES
+
+A Romance of Adventure
+
+
+By Talbot Mundy
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+     Suckled were we in a school unkind
+     On suddenly snatched deduction
+     And ever ahead of you (never behind!)
+     Over the border our tracks you'll find,
+     Wherever some idiot feels inclined
+     To scatter the seeds of ruction.
+
+     For eyes we be, of Empire, we!
+     Skinned and Puckered and quick to see
+     And nobody guesses how wise we be.
+     Unwilling to advertise we be.
+     But, hot on the trail of ties, we be
+     The pullers of roots of ruction!
+
+     --Song of the Indian Secret Service
+
+
+The men who govern India--more power to them and her!--are few. Those
+who stand in their way and pretend to help them with a flood of words
+are a host. And from the host goes up an endless cry that India is the
+home of thugs, and of three hundred million hungry ones.
+
+The men who know--and Athelstan King might claim to know a
+little--answer that she is the original home of chivalry and the modern
+mistress of as many decent, gallant, native gentlemen as ever graced a
+page of history.
+
+The charge has seen the light in print that India--well-spring of
+plague and sudden death and money-lenders--has sold her soul to twenty
+succeeding conquerors in turn.
+
+Athelstan King and a hundred like him whom India has picked from British
+stock and taught, can answer truly that she has won it back again from
+each by very purity of purpose.
+
+So when the world war broke the world was destined to be surprised on
+India's account. The Red Sea, full of racing transports crowded with
+dark-skinned gentlemen, whose one prayer was that the war might not be
+over before they should have struck a blow for Britain, was the Indian
+army's answer to the press.
+
+The rest of India paid its taxes and contributed and muzzled itself and
+set to work to make supplies. For they understand in India, almost as
+nowhere else, the meaning of such old-fashioned words as gratitude and
+honor; and of such platitudes as, “Give and it shall be given unto you.”
+
+More than one nation was deeply shocked by India's answer to “practises”
+ that had extended over years. But there were men in India who learned to
+love India long ago with that love that casts out fear, who knew exactly
+what was going to happen and could therefore afford to wait for orders
+instead of running round in rings.
+
+Athelstan King, for instance, nothing yet but a captain unattached, sat
+in meagerly furnished quarters with his heels on a table. He is not a
+doctor, yet he read a book on surgery, and when he went over to the club
+he carried the book under his arm and continued to read it there. He is
+considered a rotten conversationalist, and he did nothing at the club to
+improve his reputation.
+
+“Man alive--get a move on!” gasped a wondering senior, accepting a
+cigar. Nobody knows where he gets those long, strong, black cheroots,
+and nobody ever refuses one.
+
+“Thanks--got a book to read,” said King.
+
+“You ass! Wake up and grab the best thing in sight, as a stepping stone
+to something better! Wake up and worry!”
+
+King grinned. You have to when you don't agree with a senior officer,
+for the army is like a school in many more ways than one.
+
+“Help yourself, sir! I'll take the job that's left when the scramble's
+over. Something good's sure to be overlooked.”
+
+“White feather? Laziness? Dark Horse?” the major wondered. Then he
+hurried away to write telegrams, because a belief thrives in the early
+days of any war that influence can make or break a man's chances. In
+the other room where the telegraph blanks were littered in confusion
+all about the floor, he ran into a crony whose chief sore point was
+Athelstan King, loathing him as some men loathe pickles or sardines, for
+no real reason whatever, except that they are what they are.
+
+“Saw you talking to King,” he said.
+
+“Yes. Can't make him out. Rum fellow!”
+
+“Rum? Huh! Trouble is he's seventh of his family in succession to serve
+in India. She has seeped into him and pickled his heritage. He's a
+believer in Kismet crossed on to Opportunity. Not sure he doesn't pray
+to Allah on the sly! Hopeless case.”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Quite!”
+
+So they all sent telegrams and forgot King who sat and smoked and read
+about surgery; and before he had nearly finished one box of cheroots
+a general at Peshawur wiped a bald red skull and sent him an urgent
+telegram.
+
+“Come at once!” it said simply.
+
+King was at Lahore, but miles don't matter when the dogs of war are
+loosed. The right man goes to the right place at the exact right time
+then, and the fool goes to the wall. In that one respect war is better
+than some kinds of peace.
+
+In the train on the way to Peshawur he did not talk any more volubly,
+and a fellow traveler, studying him from the opposite corner of the
+stifling compartment, catalogued him as “quite an ordinary man.” But he
+was of the Public Works Department, which is sorrowfully underpaid and
+wears emotions on its sleeve for policy's sake, believing of course that
+all the rest of the world should do the same.
+
+“Don't you think we're bound in honor to go to Belgium's aid?” he asked.
+“Can you see any way out of it?”
+
+“Haven't looked for one,” said King.
+
+“But don't you think--”
+
+“No,” said King. “I hardly ever think. I'm in the army, don't you know,
+and don't have to. What's the use of doing somebody else's work?”
+
+“Rotter!” thought the P.W.D. man, almost aloud; but King was not
+troubled by any further forced conversation. Consequently he reached
+Peshawur comfortable, in spite of the heat. And his genial manner
+of saluting the full-general who met him with a dog-cart at Peshawur
+station was something scandalous.
+
+“Is he a lunatic or a relative of royalty?” the P.W.D. man wondered.
+
+Full-generals, particularly in the early days of war, do not drive
+to the station to meet captains very often; yet King climbed into the
+dog-cart unexcitedly, after keeping the general waiting while he checked
+a trunk!
+
+The general cracked his whip without any other comment than a smile.
+A blood mare tore sparks out of the macadam, and a dusty military road
+began to ribbon out between the wheels. Sentries in unexpected places
+announced themselves with a ring of shaken steel as their rifles came to
+the “present,” which courtesies the general noticed with a raised whip.
+Then a fox-terrier resumed his chase of squirrels between the planted
+shade-trees, and Peshawur became normal, shimmering in light and heat
+reflected from the “Hills.”
+
+(The P.W.D. man, who would have giggled if a general mentioned him by
+name, walked because no conveyance could be hired. Judgment was in the
+wind.)
+
+On the dog-cart's high front seat, staring straight ahead of him between
+the horse's ears, King listened. The general did nearly all the talking.
+
+“The North's the danger.”
+
+King grunted with the lids half-lowered over full dark eyes. He did not
+look especially handsome in that attitude. Some men swear he looks like
+a Roman, and others liken him to a gargoyle, all of them choosing to
+ignore the smile that can transform his whole face instantly.
+
+“We're denuding India of troops--not keeping back more than a mere
+handful to hold the tribes in check.”
+
+King nodded. There has never been peace along the northwest border. It
+did not need vision to foresee trouble from that quarter. In fact it
+must have been partly on the strength of some of King's reports that the
+general was planning now.
+
+“That was a very small handful of Sikhs you named as likely to give
+trouble. Did you do that job thoroughly?”
+
+King grunted.
+
+“Well--Delhi's chock-full of spies, all listening to stories made in
+Germany for them to take back to the 'Hills' with 'em. The tribes'll
+know presently how many men we're sending oversea. There've been rumors
+about Khinjan by the hundred lately. They're cooking something. Can you
+imagine 'em keeping quiet now?”
+
+“That depends, sir. Yes, I can imagine it.”
+
+The general laughed. “That's why I sent for you. I need a man with
+imagination! There's a woman you've got to work with on this occasion
+who can imagine a shade or two too much. What's worse, she's ambitious.
+So I chose you to work with her.”
+
+King's lips stiffened under his mustache, and the corners of his eyes
+wrinkled into crow's-feet to correspond. Eyes are never coal-black, of
+course, but his looked it at that minute.
+
+“You know we've sent men to Khinjan who are said to have entered the
+Caves. Not one of 'em has ever returned.”
+
+King frowned.
+
+“She claims she can enter the Caves and come out again at pleasure. She
+has offered to do it, and I have accepted.”
+
+It would not have been polite to look incredulous, so King's expression
+changed to one of intense interest a little overdone, as the general did
+not fail to notice.
+
+“If she hadn't given proof of devotion and ability, I'd have turned
+her down. But she has. Only the other day she uncovered a plot in
+Delhi--about a million dynamite bombs in a ruined temple in charge of a
+German agent for use by mutineers supposed to be ready to rise against
+us. Fact! Can you guess who she is?”
+
+“Not Yasmini?” King hazarded, and the general nodded and flicked his
+whip. The horse mistook it for a signal, and it was two minutes before
+the speed was reduced to mere recklessness.
+
+The helmet-strap mark, printed indelibly on King's jaw and cheek by the
+Indian sun, tightened and grew whiter--as the general noted out of the
+corner of his eye.
+
+“Know her?”
+
+“Know of her, of course, sir. Everybody does. Never met her to my
+knowledge.”
+
+“Um-m-m! Whose fault was that? Somebody ought to have seen to that. Go
+to Delhi now and meet her. I'll send her a wire to say you're coming.
+She knows I've chosen you. She tried to insist on full discretion, but
+I overruled her. Between us two, she'll have discretion once she gets
+beyond Jamrud. The 'Hills' are full of our spies, of course, but none
+of 'em dare try Khinjan Caves any more and you'll be the only check we
+shall have on her.”
+
+King's tongue licked his lips, and his eyes wrinkled. The general's
+voice became the least shade more authoritative.
+
+“When you see her, get a pass from her that'll take you into Khinjan
+Caves! Ask her for it! For the sake of appearances I'll gazette you
+Seconded to the Khyber Rifles. For the sake of success, get a pass from
+her!”
+
+“Very well, sir.”
+
+“You've a brother in the Khyber Rifles, haven't you? Was it you or your
+brother who visited Khinjan once and sent in a report?”
+
+“I did, sir.”
+
+He spoke without pride. Even the brigade of British-Indian cavalry that
+went to Khinjan on the strength of his report and leveled its defenses
+with the ground, had not been able to find the famous Caves. Yet the
+Caves themselves are a by-word.
+
+“There's talk of a jihad (holy war). There's worse than that! When you
+went to Khinjan, what was your chief object?”
+
+“To find the source of the everlasting rumors about the so-called 'Heart
+of the Hills,' sir.”
+
+“Yes, yes. I remember. I read your report. You didn't find anything, did
+you? Well. The story is now that the 'Heart of the Hills' has come to
+life. So the spies say.”
+
+King whistled softly.
+
+“There's no guessing what it means,” said the general. “Go and find
+out. Go and work with Yasmini. I shall have enough men here to attack
+instantly and smash any small force as soon as it begins to gather
+anywhere near the border. But Khinjan is another story. We can't prove
+anything, but the spies keep bringing in rumors of ten thousand men in
+Khinjan Caves, and of another large lashkar not far away from Khinjan.
+There must be no jihad, King! India is all but defenseless! We can
+tackle sporadic raids. We can even handle an ordinary raid in force. But
+this story about a 'Heart of the Hills' coming to life may presage unity
+of action and a holy war such as the world has not seen. Go up there and
+stop it if you can. At least, let me know the facts.”
+
+King grunted. To stop a holy war single-handed would be rather like
+stopping the wind--possibly easy enough, if one knew the way. Yet
+he knew no general would throw away a man like himself on a useless
+venture. He began to look happy.
+
+The general clucked to the mare and the big beast sank an inch between
+the shafts. The sais behind set his feet against the drop-board and
+clung with both hands to the seat. One wheel ceased to touch the gravel
+as they whirled along a semicircular drive. Suddenly the mare drew up
+on her haunches, under the porch of a pretentious residence. Sentries
+saluted. The sais swung down. In less than sixty seconds King was
+following the general through a wide entrance into a crowded hall. The
+instant the general's fat figure darkened the doorway twenty men of
+higher rank than King, native and English, rose from lined-up chairs and
+pressed forward.
+
+“Sorry--have to keep you all waiting--busy!” He waved them aside with a
+little apologetic gesture. “Come in here, King.”
+
+King followed him through a door that slammed tight behind them on
+rubber jambs.
+
+“Sit down!”
+
+The general unlocked a steel drawer and began to rummage among the
+papers in it. In a minute he produced a package, bound in rubber bands,
+with a faded photograph face-upward on the top.
+
+“That's the woman! How d'you like the look of her?”
+
+King took the package and for a minute stared hard at the likeness of a
+woman whose fame has traveled up and down India, until her witchery
+has become a proverb. She was dressed as a dancing woman, yet very few
+dancing women could afford to be dressed as she was.
+
+King's service uses whom it may, and he had met and talked with many
+dancing women in the course of duty; but as he stared at Yasmini's
+likeness he did not think he had ever met one who so measured up to
+rumor. The nautch he knew for a delusion. Yet--!
+
+The general watched his face with eyes that missed nothing.
+
+“Remember--I said work with her!”
+
+King looked up and nodded.
+
+“They say she's three parts Russian,” said the general. “To my own
+knowledge she speaks Russian like a native, and about twenty other
+tongues as well, including English. She speaks English as well as you or
+I. She was the girl-widow of a rascally Hill-rajah. There's a story I've
+heard, to the effect that Russia arranged her marriage in the day when
+India was Russia's objective--and that's how long ago?--seems like
+weeks, not years! I've heard she loved her rajah. And I've heard she
+didn't! There's another story that she poisoned him. I know she got
+away with his money--and that's proof enough of brains! Some say she's
+a she-devil. I think that's an exaggeration, but bear in mind she's
+dangerous!”
+
+King grinned. A man who trusts Eastern women over readily does not rise
+far in the Secret Service.
+
+“If you've got nous enough to keep on her soft side and use her--not let
+her use you--you can keep the 'Hills' quiet and the Khyber safe! If
+you can contrive that--now--in this pinch--there's no limit for you!
+Commander-in-chief shall be your job before you're sixty!”
+
+King pocketed the photograph and papers. “I'm well enough content, sir,
+as things are,” he said quietly.
+
+“Well, remember she's ambitious, even if you're not! I'm not preaching
+ambition, mind--I'm warning you! Ambition's bad! Study those papers on
+your way down to Delhi and see that I get them back.”
+
+The general paced once across the room and once back again, with hands
+behind him. Then he stopped in front of King.
+
+“No man in India has a stiffer task than you have now! It may encourage
+you to know that I realize that! She's the key to the puzzle, and she
+happens to be in Delhi. Go to Delhi, then. A jihad launched from the
+'Hills' would mean anarchy in the plains. That would entail sending
+back from France an army that can't be spared. There must be no jihad,
+King!--There must--not--be--one! Keep that in your head!”
+
+“What arrangements have been made with her, sir?”
+
+“Practically none! She's watching the spies in Delhi, but they're likely
+to break for the 'Hills' any minute. Then they'll be arrested. When that
+happens the fate of India may be in your hands and hers! Get out of my
+way now, until tiffin-time!”
+
+In a way that some men never learn, King proceeded to efface himself
+entirely among the crowd in the hall, contriving to say nothing of any
+account to anybody until the great gong boomed and the general led
+them all in to his long dining table. Yet he did not look furtive
+or secretive. Nobody noticed him, and he noticed everybody. There is
+nothing whatever secretive about that.
+
+The fare was plain, and the meal a perfunctory affair. The general and
+his guests were there for other reason than to eat food, and only the
+man who happened to seat himself next to King--a major by the name of
+Hyde--spoke to him at all.
+
+“Why aren't you with your regiment?” he asked.
+
+“Because the general asked me to lunch, sir!”
+
+“I suppose you've been pestering him for an appointment!”
+
+King, with his mouth full of curry did not answer, but his eyes smiled.
+
+“It's astonishing to me,” said the major, “that a captain should leave
+his company when war has begun! When I was captain I'd have been driven
+out of the service if I'd asked for leave of absence at such a time!”
+
+King made no comment, but his expression denoted belief.
+
+“Are you bound for the front, sir?” he asked presently. But Hyde did not
+answer. They finished the meal in silence.
+
+After lunch he was closeted with the general again for twenty minutes.
+Then one of the general's carriages took him to the station; and it did
+not appear to trouble him at all that the other occupant of the carriage
+was the self-same Major Hyde who had sat next him at lunch. In fact, he
+smiled so pleasantly that Hyde grew exasperated. Neither of them spoke.
+At the station Hyde lost his temper openly, and King left him abusing an
+unhappy native servant.
+
+The station was crammed to suffocation by a crowd that roared and
+writhed and smelt to high heaven. At one end of the platform, in the
+midst of a human eddy, a frenzied horse resisted with his teeth and all
+four feet at once the efforts of six natives and a British sergeant to
+force him into a loose-box. At the back of the same platform the little
+dark-brown mules of a mountain battery twitched their flanks in line,
+jingling chains and stamping when the flies bit home.
+
+Flies buzzed everywhere. Fat native merchants vied with lean and timid
+ones in noisy effort to secure accommodation on a train already crowded
+to the limit. Twenty British officers hunted up and down for the places
+supposed to have been reserved for them, and sweating servants hurried
+after them with arms full of heterogeneous baggage, swearing at
+the crowd that swore back ungrudgingly. But the general himself had
+telephoned for King's reservation, so he took his time.
+
+There were din and stink and dust beneath a savage sun, shaken into
+reverberations by the scream of an engine's safety valve. It was India
+in essence and awake!--India arising out of lethargy!--India as she is
+more often nowadays--and it made King, for the time being of the Khyber
+Rifles, happier than some other men can be in ballrooms.
+
+Any one who watched him--and there was at least one man who did--must
+have noticed his strange ability, almost like that of water, to reach
+the point he aimed for, through, and not around, the crowd.
+
+He neither shoved nor argued. Orders and blows would have been equally
+useless, for had it tried the crowd could not have obeyed, and it was in
+no mind to try. Without the least apparent effort he arrived--and
+there is no other word that quite describes it--he arrived, through
+the densest part of the sweating throng of humans, at the door of the
+luggage office.
+
+There, though a bunnia's sharp elbow nagged his ribs, and the bunnia's
+servant dropped a heavy package on his foot, he smiled so genially that
+he melted the wrath of the frantic luggage clerk. But not at once. Even
+the sun needs seconds to melt ice.
+
+“Am I God?” the babu wailed. “Can I do all the-e things in all the-e
+world at once if not sooner?”
+
+King's smile began to get its work in. The man ceased gesticulating to
+wipe sweat from his stubbly jowl with the end of a Punjabi headdress. He
+actually smiled back. Who was he, that he should suspect new outrage or
+guess he was about to be used in a game he did not understand? He would
+have stopped all work to beg for extra pay at the merest suggestion of
+such a thing; but as it was he raised both fists and lapsed into his own
+tongue to apostrophize the ruffian who dared jostle King. A Northerner
+who did not seem to understand Punjabi almost cost King his balance as
+he thrust broad shoulders between him and the bunnia.
+
+The bunnia chattered like an outraged ape; but King, the person most
+entitled to be angry, actually apologized! That being a miracle, the
+babu forthwith wrought another one, and within a minute King's one trunk
+was checked through to Delhi.
+
+“Delhi is right, sahib?” he asked, to make doubly sure; for in India
+where the milk of human kindness is not hawked in the market-place, men
+will pay over-measure for a smile.
+
+“Yes. Delhi is right. Thank you, babuji.”
+
+He made more room for the Hillman, beaming amusement at the man's
+impatience; but the Hillman had no luggage and turned away, making an
+unexpected effort to hide his face with a turban end. He who had forced
+his way to the front with so much violence and haste now burst back
+again toward the train like a football forward tearing through the thick
+of his opponents. He scattered a swath a yard wide, for he had shoulders
+like a bull. King saw him leap into third-class carriage. He saw, too,
+that he was not wanted in the carriage. There was a storm of protest
+from tight-packed native passengers, but the fellow had his way.
+
+The swath through the crowd closed up like water in a ship's wake, but
+it opened again for King. He smiled so humorously that the angry jostled
+ones smiled too and were appeased, forgetting haste and bruises and
+indignity merely because understanding looked at them through merry
+eyes. All crowds are that way, but an Indian crowd more so than all.
+
+Taking his time, and falling foul of nobody, King marked down a native
+constable--hot and unhappy, leaning with his back against the train. He
+touched him on the shoulder and the fellow jumped.
+
+“Nay, sahib! I am only constabeel--I know nothing--I can do nothing! The
+teerain goes when it goes, and then perhaps we will beat these people
+from the platform and make room again! But there is no authority--no law
+any more--they are all gone mad!”
+
+King wrote on a pad, tore off a sheet, folded it and gave it to him.
+
+“That is for the Superintendent of Police at the office. Carriage number
+1181, eleven doors from here--the one with the shut door and a big
+Hillman inside sitting three places from the door facing the engine.
+Get the Hillman! No, there is only one Hillman in the carriage. No, the
+others are not his friends; they will not help him. He will fight, but
+he has no friends in that carriage.”
+
+The “constabeel” obeyed, not very cheerfully. King stood to watch him
+with a foot on the step of a first-class coach. Another constable passed
+him, elbowing a snail's progress between the train and the crowd. He
+seized the man's arm.
+
+“Go and help that man!” he ordered. “Hurry!”
+
+Then he climbed into the carriage and leaned from the window. He grinned
+as he saw both constables pounce on a third-class carriage door and,
+with the yell of good huntsmen who have viewed, seize the protesting
+Northerner by the leg and begin to drag him forth. There was a fight,
+that lasted three minutes, in the course of which a long knife flashed.
+But there were plenty to help take the knife away, and the Hillman stood
+handcuffed and sullen at last, while one of his captors bound a cut
+forearm. Then they dragged him away; but not before he had seen King at
+the window, and had lipped a silent threat.
+
+“I believe you, my son!” King chuckled, half aloud. “I surely believe
+you! I'll watch! Ham dekta hai!”
+
+“Why was that man arrested?” asked an acid voice behind him; and without
+troubling to turn his head, he knew that Major Hyde was to be
+his carriage mate again. To be vindictive, on duty or off it, is
+foolishness; but to let opportunity slip by one is a crime. He looked
+glad, not sorry, as he faced about--pleased, not disappointed--like a
+man on a desert island who has found a tool.
+
+“Why was that man arrested?” the major asked again.
+
+“I ordered it,” said King.
+
+“So I imagined. I asked you why.”
+
+King stared at him and then turned to watch the prisoner being dragged
+away; he was fighting again, striking at his captors' heads with
+handcuffed wrists.
+
+“Does he look innocent?” asked King.
+
+“Is that your answer?” asked the major. Balked ambition is an ugly horse
+to ride. He had tried for a command but had been shelved.
+
+“I have sufficient authority,” said King, unruffled. He spoke as if he
+were thinking of something entirely different. His eyes were as if they
+saw the major from a very long way off and rather approved of him on the
+whole.
+
+“Show me your authority, please!”
+
+King dived into an inner pocket and produced a card that had about ten
+words written on its face, above a general's signature. Hyde read it and
+passed it back.
+
+“So you're one of those, are you!” he said in a tone of voice that would
+start a fight in some parts of the world and in some services. But
+King nodded cheerfully, and that annoyed the major more than ever; he
+snorted, closed his mouth with a snap and turned to rearrange the sheet
+and pillow on his berth.
+
+Then the train pulled out, amid a din of voices from the left-behind
+that nearly drowned the panting of overloaded engine. There was a roar
+of joy from the two coaches full of soldiers in the rear--a shriek from
+a woman who had missed the train--a babel of farewells tossed back and
+forth between the platform and the third-class carriages--and Peshawur
+fell away behind.
+
+King settled down on his side of the compartment, after a struggle with
+the thermantidote that refused to work. There was heat enough below the
+roof to have roasted meat, so that the physical atmosphere became as
+turgid as the mental after a little while.
+
+Hyde all but stripped himself and drew on striped pajamas. King was
+content to lie in shirt-sleeves on the other berth, with knees raised,
+so that Hyde could not overlook the general's papers. At his ease he
+studied them one by one, memorizing a string of names, with details as
+to their owners' antecedents and probable present whereabouts. There
+were several photographs in the packet, and he studied them very
+carefully indeed.
+
+But much most carefully of all he examined Yasmini's portrait, returning
+to it again and again. He reached the conclusion in the end that when it
+was taken she had been cunningly disguised.
+
+“This was intended for purpose of identification at a given time and
+place,” he told himself.
+
+“Were you muttering at me?” asked Hyde.
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“It looked extremely like it!”
+
+“My mistake, sir. Nothing of the sort intended.”
+
+“H-rrrrr-ummmmmph!”
+
+Hyde turned an indignant back on him, and King studied the back as if he
+found it interesting. On the whole he looked sympathetic, so it was as
+well that Hyde did not look around. Balked ambition as a rule loathes
+sympathy.
+
+After many prickly-hot, interminable, jolting hours the train drew up at
+Rawal-Pindi station. Instantly King was on his feet with his tunic on,
+and he was out on the blazing hot platform before the train's motion had
+quite ceased.
+
+He began to walk up and down, not elbowing but percolating through the
+crowd, missing nothing worth noticing in all the hot kaleidoscope and
+seeming to find new amusement at every turn. It was not in the least
+astonishing that a well-dressed native should address him presently, for
+he looked genial enough to be asked to hold a baby. King himself did not
+seem surprised at all. Far from it; he looked pleased.
+
+“Excuse me, sir,” said the man in glib babu English. “I am seeking
+Captain King sahib, for whom my brother is veree anxious to be servant.
+Can you kindlee tell me, sir, where I could find Captain King sahib?”
+
+“Certainly,” King answered him. He looked glad to be of help. “Are you
+traveling on this train?”
+
+The question sounded like politeness welling from the lips of
+unsuspicion.
+
+“Yes, sir. I am traveling from this place where I have spent a few days,
+to Bombay, where my business is.
+
+“How did you know King sahib is on the train?” King asked him, smiling
+so genially that even the police could not have charged him with more
+than curiosity.
+
+“By telegram, sir. My brother had the misfortune to miss Captain King
+sahib at Peshawur and therefore sent a telegram to me asking me to do
+what I can at an interview.”
+
+“I see,” said King. “I see.” And judging by the sparkle in his eyes as
+he looked away he could see a lot. But the native could not see his eyes
+at that instant, although he tried to.
+
+He looked back at the train, giving the man a good chance to study his
+face in profile.
+
+“Oh, thank you, sir!” said the native oilily. “You are most kind! I am
+your humble servant, sir!”
+
+King nodded good-by to him, his dark eyes in the shadow of the khaki
+helmet seeming scarcely interested any longer.
+
+“Couldn't you find another berth?” Hyde asked him angrily when he
+stepped back into the compartment.
+
+“What were you out there looking for?”
+
+King smiled back at him blandly.
+
+“I think there are railway thieves on the train,” he announced without
+any effort at relevance. He might not have heard the question.
+
+“What makes you think so?”
+
+“Observation, sir.”
+
+“Oh! Then if you've seen thieves, why didn't you have 'em arrested? You
+were precious free with that authority of yours on Peshawur platform!”
+
+“Perhaps you'd care to take the responsibility, sir? Let me point out
+one of them.”
+
+Full of grudging curiosity Hyde came to stand by him, and King stepped
+back just as the train began to move.
+
+“That man, sir--over there--no, beyond him--there!”
+
+Hyde thrust head and shoulders through the window, and a well-dressed
+native with one foot on the running-board at the back end of the train
+took a long steady stare at him before jumping in and slamming the door
+of a third-class carriage.
+
+“Which one?” demanded Hyde impatiently.
+
+“I don't see him now, sir!”
+
+Hyde snorted and returned to his seat in the silence of unspeakable
+scorn. But presently he opened a suitcase and drew out a repeating
+pistol which he cocked carefully and stowed beneath his pillow; not at
+all a contemptible move, because the Indian railway thief is the most
+resourceful specialist in the world. But King took no overt precautions
+of any kind.
+
+After more interminable hours night shut down on them, red-hot,
+black-dark, mesmerically subdivided into seconds by the thump of
+carriage wheels and lit at intervals by showers of sparks from the
+gasping engine. The din of Babel rode behind the first-class carriages,
+for all the natives in the packed third-class talked all together.
+(In India, when one has spent a fortune on a third-class ticket, one
+proceeds to enjoy the ride.) The train was a Beast out of Revelation,
+wallowing in noise.
+
+But after other, hotter hours the talking ceased. Then King, strangely
+without kicking off his shoes, drew a sheet up over his shoulders. On
+the opposite berth Hyde covered his head, to keep dust out of his hair,
+and presently King heard him begin to snore gently. Then, very carefully
+he adjusted his own position so that his profile lay outlined in the dim
+light from the gas lamp in the roof. He might almost have been waiting
+to be shaved.
+
+The stuffiness increased to a degree that is sometimes preached in
+Christian churches as belonging to a sulphurous sphere beyond the grave.
+Yet he did not move a muscle. It was long after midnight when his vigil
+was rewarded by a slight sound at the door. From that instant his eyes
+were on the watch, under dark of closed lashes; but his even breathing
+was that of the seventh stage of sleep that knows no dreams.
+
+A click of the door-latch heralded the appearance of a hand. With skill,
+of the sort that only special training can develop, a man in native
+dress insinuated himself into the carriage without making another sound
+of any kind. King's ears are part of the equipment for his exacting
+business, but he could not hear the door click shut again.
+
+For about five minutes, while the train swayed head-long into Indian
+darkness, the man stood listening and watching King's face. He stood
+so near that King recognized him for the one who had accosted him on
+Rawal-Pindi platform. And he could see the outline of the knife-hilt
+that the man's fingers clutched underneath his shirt.
+
+“He'll either strike first, so as to kill us both and do the looting
+afterward--and in that case I think it will be easier to break his neck
+than his arm--yes, decidedly his neck; it's long and thin;--or--”
+
+His eyes feigned sleep so successfully that the native turned away at
+last.
+
+“Thought so!” He dared open his eyes a mite wider. “He's pukka--true to
+type! Rob first and then kill! Rule number one with his sort, run when
+you've stabbed! Not a bad rule either, from their point of view!”
+
+As he watched, the thief drew the sheet back from Hyde's face, with
+trained fingers that could have taken spectacles from the victims' nose
+without his knowledge. Then as fish glide in and out among the reeds
+without touching them, swift and soft and unseen, his fingers searched
+Hyde's body. They found nothing. So they dived under the pillow and
+brought out the pistol and a gold watch.
+
+After that he began to search the clothes that hung on a hook beside
+Hyde's berth. He brought forth papers and a pocketbook--then money.
+Money went into one bag--papers and pocketbook into another. And that
+was evidence enough as well as risk enough. The knife would be due in a
+minute.
+
+King moved in his sleep, rather noisily, and the movement knocked a book
+to the floor from the foot of his berth. The noise of that awoke Hyde,
+and King pretended to begin to wake, yawning and rolling on his back
+(that being much the safest position an unarmed man can take and much
+the most awkward for his enemy).
+
+“Thieves!” Hyde yelled at the top of his lungs, groping wildly for his
+pistol and not finding it.
+
+King sat up and rubbed his eyes. The native drew the knife,
+and--believing himself in command of the situation--hesitated for one
+priceless second. He saw his error and darted for the door too late.
+With a movement unbelievably swift King was there ahead of him; and with
+another movement not so swift, but much more disconcerting, he threw his
+sheet as the retiarius used to throw a net in ancient Rome. It wrapped
+round the native's head and arms, and the two went together to the floor
+in a twisted stranglehold.
+
+In another half-minute the native was groaning, for King had his
+knife-wrist in two hands and was bending it backward while he pressed
+the man's stomach with his knees.
+
+“Get his loot!” he panted between efforts.
+
+The knife fell to the floor, and the thief made a gallant effort
+to recover it, but King was too strong for him. He seized the knife
+himself, slipped it in his own bosom and resumed his hold before the
+native guessed what he was after. Then he kept a tight grip while
+Hyde knelt to grope for his missing property. The major found both the
+thief's bags, and held them up.
+
+“I expect that's all,” said King, loosening his grip very gradually.
+The native noticed--as Hyde did not--that King had begun to seem almost
+absent-minded; the thief lay quite still, looking up, trying to divine
+his next intention. Suddenly the brakes went on, but King's grip did not
+tighten. The train began to scream itself to a standstill at a wayside
+station, and King (the absent-minded)--very nearly grinned.
+
+“If I weren't in such an infernal hurry to reach Bombay--” Hyde
+grumbled; and King nearly laughed aloud then, for the thief knew
+English, and was listening with all his ears, “--may I be damned if I
+wouldn't get off at this station and wait to see that scoundrel brought
+to justice!”
+
+The train jerked itself to a standstill, and a man with a lantern began
+to chant the station's name.
+
+“Damn it!--I'm going to Bombay to act censor. I can't wait--they want me
+there.”
+
+The instant the train's motion altogether ceased the heat shut in on
+them as if the lid of Tophet had been slammed. The prickly heat burst
+out all over Hyde's skin and King's too.
+
+“Almighty God!” gasped Hyde, beginning to fan himself.
+
+There was plenty of excuse for relaxing hold still further, and King
+made full use of it. A second later he gave a very good pretense of pain
+in his finger-ends as the thief burst free. The native made a dive
+at his bosom for the knife, but he frustrated that. Then he made a
+prodigious effort, just too late, to clutch the man again, and he did
+succeed in tearing loose a piece of shirt; but the fleeing robber must
+have wondered, as he bolted into the blacker shadows of the station
+building, why such an iron-fingered, wide-awake sahib should have made
+such a truly feeble showing at the end.
+
+“Damn it!--couldn't you hold him? Were you afraid of him, or what?”
+ demanded Hyde, beginning to dress himself. Instead of answering, King
+leaned out into the lamp-lit gloom, and in a minute he caught sight of a
+sergeant of native infantry passing down the train. He made a sign that
+brought the man to him on the run.
+
+“Did you see that runaway?” he asked.
+
+“Ha, sahib. I saw one running. Shall I follow?”
+
+“No. This piece of his shirt will identify him. Take it. Hide it! When
+a man with a torn shirt, into which that piece fits, makes for the
+telegraph office after this train has gone on, see that he is allowed to
+send any telegrams he wants to! Only, have copies of every one of them
+wired to Captain King, care of the station-master, Delhi. Have you
+understood?”
+
+“Ha, sahib.”
+
+“Grab him, and lock him up tight afterward--but not until he has sent
+his telegrams!'
+
+“Atcha, sahib.”
+
+“Make yourself scarce, then!”
+
+Major Hyde was dressed, having performed that military evolution in
+something less than record time.
+
+“Who was that you were talking to?” he demanded. But King continued to
+look out the door.
+
+Hyde came and tapped on his shoulder impatiently, but King did not seem
+to understand until the native sergeant had quite vanished into the
+shadows.
+
+“Let me pass, will you!” Hyde demanded. “I'll have that thief caught if
+the train has to wait a week while they do it!”
+
+He pushed past, but he was scarcely on the step when the station-master
+blew his whistle, and his colored minion waved a lantern back and forth.
+The engine shrieked forthwith of death and torment; carriage doors
+slammed shut in staccato series; the heat relaxed as the engine
+moved--loosened--let go--lifted at last, and a trainload of hot
+passengers sighed thanks to an unresponsive sky as the train gained
+speed and wind crept in through the thermantidotes.
+
+Only through the broken thermantidote in King's compartment no wet
+air came. Hyde knelt on King's berth and wrestled with it like a caged
+animal, but with no result except that the sweat poured out all over him
+and he was more uncomfortable than before.
+
+“What are you looking at?” he demanded at last, sitting on King's berth.
+His head swam. He had to wait a few seconds before he could step across
+to his own side.
+
+“Only a knife,” said King. He was standing under the dim gas lamp that
+helped make the darkness more unbearable.
+
+“Not that robber's knife? Did he drop it?”
+
+“It's my knife,” said King.
+
+“Strange time to stand staring at it, if it's yours! Didn't you ever see
+it before?”
+
+King stowed the knife away in his bosom, and the major crossed to his
+own side.
+
+“I'm thinking I'll know it again, at all events!” King answered, sitting
+down. “Good night, sir.”
+
+“Good night.”
+
+Within ten minutes Hyde was asleep, snoring prodigiously. Then King
+pulled out the knife again and studied it for half an hour. The blade
+was of bronze, with an edge hammered to the keenness of a razor. The
+hilt was of nearly pure gold, in the form of a woman dancing.
+
+The whole thing was so exquisitely wrought that age had only softened
+the lines, without in the least impairing them. It looked like one of
+those Grecian toys with which Roman women of Nero's day stabbed their
+lovers. But that was not why he began to whistle very softly to himself.
+
+Presently he drew out the general's package of papers, with the
+photograph on the top. He stood up, to hold both knife and papers close
+to the light in the roof.
+
+It needed no great stretch of imagination to suggest a likeness between
+the woman of the photograph and the other, of the golden knife-hilt.
+And nobody, looking at him then, would have dared suggest he lacked
+imagination.
+
+If the knife had not been so ancient they might have been portraits of
+the same woman, in the same disguise, taken at the same time.
+
+“She knew I had been chosen to work with her. The general sent her word
+that I am coming,” he muttered to himself. “Man number one had a try for
+me, but I had him pinched too soon. There must have been a spy watching
+at Peshawur, who wired to Rawal-Pindi for this man to jump the train and
+go on with the job. She must have had him planted at Rawal-Pindi in case
+of accidents. She seems thorough! Why should she give the man a knife
+with her own portrait on it? Is she queen of a secret society? Well--we
+shall see!”
+
+He sat down on his berth again and sighed, not discontentedly. Then
+he lit one of his great black cigars and blew rings for five or six
+minutes. Then he lay back with his head on the pillow, and before five
+minutes more had gone he was asleep, with the cold cigar still clutched
+between his fingers.
+
+He looked as interesting in his sleep as when awake. His mobile face in
+repose looked Roman, for the sun had tanned his skin and his nose was
+aquiline. In museums, where sculptured heads of Roman generals and
+emperors stand around the wall on pedestals, it would not be difficult
+to pick several that bore more than a faint resemblance to him. He had
+breadth and depth of forehead and a jowl that lent itself to smiles as
+well as sternness, and a throat that expressed manly determination in
+every molded line.
+
+He slept like a boy until dawn; and he and Hyde had scarcely exchanged
+another dozen words when the train screamed next day into Delhi station.
+Then he saluted stiffly and was gone.
+
+“Young jackanapes!” Hyde muttered after him. “Lazy young devil! He ought
+to be with his regiment, marching and setting a good example to his men!
+We'll have our work cut out to win this war, if there are many of his
+stamp! And I'm afraid there are--I'm afraid so--far too many of 'em!
+Pity! Such a pity! If the right men were at the top the youngsters
+at the foot of the ladder would mind their P's and Q's. As it is, I'm
+afraid we shall get beaten in this show. Dear, oh, dear!”
+
+Being what he was, and consistent before all things, Major Hyde drew
+out his writing materials there and then and wrote a report against
+Athelstan King, which he signed, addressed to headquarters and mailed at
+the first opportunity. There some future historian may find it and draw
+from it unkind deductions on the morale of the British army.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+
+     The only things which can not be explained are facts.  So,
+     use 'em. A riddle is proof there is a key to it.  Nor is it
+     a riddle when you've got the key. Life is as simple as all
+     that.--Cocker
+
+
+Delhi boasts a round half-dozen railway stations, all of them designed
+with regard to war, so that to King there was nothing unexpected in the
+fact that the train had brought him to an unexpected station. He
+plunged into its crowd much as a man in the mood might plunge into a
+whirlpool,--laughing as he plunged, for it was the most intoxicating
+splurge of color, din and smell that even India, the many-peopled--even
+Delhi, mother of dynasties--ever had evolved.
+
+The station echoed--reverberated--hummed. A roar went up of human
+voices, babbling in twenty tongues, and above that rose in differing
+degrees the ear-splitting shriek of locomotives, the blare of bugles,
+the neigh of led horses, the bray of mules, the jingle of gun-chains and
+the thundering cadence of drilled feet.
+
+At one minute the whole building shook to the thunder of a grinning
+regiment; an instant later it clattered to the wrought-steel hammer of a
+thousand hoofs, as led troop-horses danced into formation to invade the
+waiting trucks. Loaded trucks banged into one another and thunderclapped
+their way into the sidings. And soldiers of nearly every Indian military
+caste stood about everywhere, in what was picturesque confusion to the
+uninitiated, yet like the letters of an index to a man who knew. And
+King knew. Down the back of each platform Tommy Atkins stood in long
+straight lines, talking or munching great sandwiches or smoking.
+
+The heat smelt and felt of another world. The din was from the same
+sphere. Yet everywhere was hope and geniality and by-your-leave as if
+weddings were in the wind and not the overture to death.
+
+Threading his way in and out among the motley swarm with a
+great black cheroot between his teeth and sweat running into
+his eyes from his helmet-band, Athelstan King strode at ease--at
+home--intent--amused--awake--and almost awfully happy. He was not in the
+least less happy because perfectly aware that a native was following him
+at a distance, although he did wonder how the native had contrived to
+pass within the lines.
+
+The general at Peshawur had compressed about a ton of miscellaneous
+information into fifteen hurried minutes, but mostly he had given him
+leave and orders to inform himself; so the fun was under way of winning
+exact knowledge in spite of officers, not one of whom would not have
+grown instantly suspicions at the first asked question. At the end of
+fifteen minutes there was not a glib staff-officer there who could have
+deceived him as to the numbers and destination of the force entraining.
+
+“Kerachi!” he told himself, chewing the butt of his cigar and keeping
+well ahead of the shadowing native. Always keep a “shadow” moving until
+you're ready to deal with him is one of Cocker's very soundest rules.
+
+“Turkey hasn't taken a hand yet--the general said so. No holy war yet.
+These'll be held in readiness to cross to Basra in case the Turks
+begin. While they wait for that at Kerachi the tribes won't dare begin
+anything. One or two spies are sure to break North and tell them what
+this force is for--but the tribes won't believe. They'll wait until the
+force has moved to Basra before they take chances. Good! That means no
+especial hurry for me!”
+
+He did not have to return salutes, because he did not look for them.
+Very few people noticed him at all, although he was recognized once
+or twice by former messmates, and one officer stopped him with an
+out-stretched hand.
+
+“Shake hands, you old tramp! Where are you bound for next? Tibet by any
+chance--or is it Samarkand this time?”
+
+“Oh, hullo, Carmichel!” he answered, beaming instant good-fellowship.
+“Where are you bound for?” And the other did not notice that his own
+question had not been answered.
+
+“Bombay! Bombay--Marseilles--Brussels--Berlin!”
+
+“Wish you luck!” laughed King, passing on. Every living man there, with
+the exception of a few staff-officers, believed himself en route for
+Europe; their faces said as much. Yet King took another look at the
+piles of stores and at the kits the men carried.
+
+“Who'd take all that stuff to Europe, where they make it?” he reflected.
+“And what 'u'd they use camel harness for in France?”
+
+At his leisure--in his own way, that was devious and like a string of
+miracles--he filtered toward the telegraph office. The native who had
+followed him all this time drew closer, but he did not let himself be
+troubled by that.
+
+He whispered proof of his identity to the telegraph clerk, who was a
+Royal Engineer, new to that job that morning, and a sealed telegram was
+handed to him at once. The “shadow” came very close indeed, presumably
+to try and read over his shoulder from behind, but he side-stepped into
+a corner and read the telegram with his back to the wall.
+
+It was in English, no doubt to escape suspicion; and because it was
+war-time, and the censorship had closed on India like a throttling
+string, it was not in code. So the wording, all things considered, had
+to be ingenious, for the Mirza Ali, of the Fort, Bombay, to whom it
+was addressed, could scarcely be expected to read more than between the
+lines. The lines had to be there to read between.
+
+“Cattle intended for slaughter,” it ran, “despatched Bombay on Fourteen
+down. Meet train. Will be inspected en route, but should be dealt with
+carefully, on arrival. Cattle inclined to stampede owing to bad scare
+received to North of Delhi. Take all precautions and notify Abdul.” It
+was signed “Suliman.”
+
+“Good!” he chuckled. “Let's hope we get Abdul too. I wonder who he is!”
+
+Still uninterested in the man who shadowed him, he walked back to the
+office window and wrote two telegrams; one to Bombay, ordering the
+arrest of Ali Mirza of the Fort, with an urgent admonition to discover
+who his man Abdul might be, and to seize him as soon as found; the other
+to the station in the north, insisting on close confinement for Suliman.
+
+“Don't let him out on any terms at all!” he wired.
+
+That being all the urgent business, he turned leisurely to face his
+shadow, and the native met his eyes with the engaging frankness of an
+old friend, coming forward with outstretched hand. They did not shake
+hands, for King knew better than to fall into the first trap offered
+him. But the man made a signal with his fingers that is known to not
+more than a dozen men in all the world, and that changed the situation
+altogether.
+
+“Walk with me,” said King, and the man fell into stride beside him.
+
+He was a Rangar,--which is to say a Rajput who, or whose ancestors had
+turned Muhammadan. Like many Rajputs he was not a big man, but he looked
+fit and wiry; his head scarcely came above the level of King's chin,
+although his turban distracted attention from the fact. The turban was
+of silk and unusually large.
+
+The whitest of well-kept teeth, gleaming regularly under a little black
+waxed mustache betrayed no trace of betel-nut or other nastiness, and
+neither his fine features nor his eyes suggested vice of the sort that
+often undermines the character of Rajput youth.
+
+On second thoughts, and at the next opportunity to see them, King was
+not so sure that the eyes were brown, and he changed his opinion about
+their color a dozen times within the hour. Once he would even have sworn
+they were green.
+
+The man was well-to-do, for his turban was of costly silk, and he was
+clad in expensive jodpur riding breeches and spurred black riding boots,
+all perfectly immaculate. The breeches, baggy above and tight, below,
+suggested the clean lines of cat-like agility and strength.
+
+The upper part of his costume was semi-European. He was a regular Rangar
+dandy, of the type that can be seen playing polo almost any day at
+Mount Abu--that gets into mischief with a grace due to practise and
+heredity--but that does not manage its estates too well, as a rule, nor
+pay its debts in a hurry.
+
+“My name is Rewa Gunga,” he said in a low voice, looking up sidewise at
+King a shade too guilelessly. Between Cape Comorin and the Northern Ice
+guile is normal, and its absence makes the wise suspicious.
+
+“I am Captain King.”
+
+“I have a message for you.”
+
+“From whom?”
+
+“From her!” said the Rangar, and without exactly knowing why, or being
+pleased with himself, King felt excited.
+
+They were walking toward the station exit. King had a trunk check in
+his hand, but returned it to pocket, not proposing just yet to let this
+Rangar over-hear instructions regarding the trunk's destination; he was
+too good-looking and too overbrimming with personal charm to be trusted
+thus early in the game. Besides, there was that captured knife, that
+hinted at lies and treachery. Secret signs as well as loot have been
+stolen before now.
+
+“I'd like to walk through the streets and see the crowd.”
+
+He smiled as he said that, knowing well that the average young Rajput of
+good birth would rather fight a tiger with cold steel than walk a mile
+or two. He drew fire at once.
+
+“Why walk, King sahib? Are we animals? There is a carriage waiting--her
+carriage--and a coachman whose ears were born dead. We might be
+overheard in the street. Are you and I children, tossing stones into a
+pool to watch the rings widen!”
+
+“Lead on, then,” answered King.
+
+Outside the station was a luxuriously modern victoria, with C springs
+and rubber tires, with horses that would have done credit to a viceroy.
+The Rangar motioned King to get in first, and the moment they were both
+seated the Rajput coachman set the horses to going like the wind. Rewa
+Gunga opened a jeweled cigarette case.
+
+“Will you have one?” he asked with the air of royalty entertaining a
+blood-equal.
+
+King accepted a cigarette for politeness' sake and took occasion to
+admire the man's slender wrist, that was doubtless hard and strong as
+woven steel, but was not much more than half the thickness of his own.
+
+The Rajputs as a race are proud of their wrists and hands. Their swords
+are made with a hilt so small that none save a Rajput of the blood could
+possibly use one; yet there is no race in all warring India, nor any
+in the world, that bears a finer record for hard fighting and sheer
+derring-do. One of the questions that occurred to King that minute was
+why this well-bred youngster whose age he guessed at twenty-two or so
+had not turned his attention to the army.
+
+“My height!”
+
+The man had read his thoughts!
+
+“Not quite tall enough. Besides--you are a soldier, are you not? And do
+you fight?”
+
+He nodded toward a dozen water-buffaloes, that slouched along the street
+with wet goatskin mussuks slung on their blue flanks.
+
+“They can fight,” he said smiling. “So can any other fool!” Then, after
+a minute of rather strained silence: “My message is from her.”
+
+“From Yasmini?”
+
+“Who else?”
+
+King accepted the rebuke with a little inclination of the head. He spoke
+as little as possible, because he was puzzled. He had become conscious
+of a puzzled look in the Rangar's eyes--of a subtle wonderment that
+might be intentional flattery (for Art and the East are one). Whenever
+the East is doubtful, and recognizes doubt, it is as dangerous as a
+hillside in the rains, and it only added to his problem if the Rangar
+found in him something inexplicable. The West can only get the better of
+the East when the East is too cock-sure.
+
+“She has jolly well gone North!” said the Rangar suddenly, and King
+shut his teeth with a snap. He sat bolt upright, and the Rangar allowed
+himself to look amused.
+
+“When? Why?”
+
+“She was too jolly well excited to wait, sahib! She is of the North,
+you know. She loves the North, and the men of the 'Hills'; and she knows
+them because she loves them. There came a tar (telegram) from Peshawur,
+from a general, to say King sahib comes to Delhi; but already she had
+completed all arrangements here. She was in a great stew, I can assure
+you. Finally she said, 'Why should I wait?' Nobody could answer her.”
+
+He spoke English well enough. Few educated foreign gentlemen could have
+spoken it better, although there was the tendency to use slang that
+well-bred natives insist on picking up from British officers; and as he
+went on, here and there the native idiom crept through, translated. King
+said nothing, but listened and watched, puzzled more than he would
+have cared to admit by the look in the Rangar's eyes. It was not
+suspicion--nor respect. Yet there was a suggestion of both.
+
+“At last she said, 'It is well; I will not wait! I know of this sahib.
+He is a man whose feet stand under him and he will not tread my growing
+flowers into garbage! He will be clever enough to pick up the end of
+the thread that I shall leave behind and follow it and me! He is a true
+hound, with a nose that reads the wind, or the general sahib never would
+have sent him!' So she left me behind, sahib, to--to present to you the
+end of the thread of which she spoke.”
+
+King tossed away the stump of the cigarette and rolled his tongue round
+the butt of a fresh cheroot. The word “hound” is not necessarily a
+compliment in any of a thousand Eastern tongues and gains little by
+translation. It might have been a slip, but the East takes advantage of
+its own slips as well as of other peoples' unless watched.
+
+The carriage swayed at high speed round three sharp corners in
+succession before the Rangar spoke again.
+
+“She has often heard of you,” he said then. That was not unlikely, but
+not necessarily true either. If it were true, it did not help to account
+for the puzzled look in the Rangar's eyes, that increased rather than
+diminished.
+
+“I've heard of her,” said King.
+
+“Of course! Who has not? She has desired to meet you, sahib, ever since
+she was told you are the best man in your service.”
+
+King grunted, thinking of the knife beneath his shirt.
+
+“She is very glad that you and she are on the same errand.” He leaned
+forward for the sake of emphasis and laid a finger on King's hand. It
+was a delicate, dainty finger with an almond nail. “She is very glad.
+She is far more glad than you imagine, or than you would believe. King
+sahib, she is all bucked up about it! Listen--her web is wide! Her
+agents are here--there--everywhere, and she is obeyed as few kings have
+ever been! Those agents shall all be held answerable for your life,
+sahib,--for she has said so! They are one and all your bodyguard, from
+now forward!”
+
+King inclined his head politely, but the weight of the knife inside
+his shirt did not encourage credulity. True, it might not be Yasmini's
+knife, and the Rangar's emphatic assurance might not be an unintentional
+admission that the man who had tried to use it was Yasmini's man. But
+when a man has formed the habit of deduction, he deduces as he goes
+along, and is prone to believe what his instinct tells him.
+
+Again, it was as if the Rangar read a part of his thoughts, if not all
+of them. It is not difficult to counter that trick, but to do it a man
+must be on his guard, or the East will know what he has thought and what
+he is going to think, as many have discovered when it was too late.
+
+“Her men are able to protect anybody's life from any God's number of
+assassins, whatever may lead you to think the contrary. From now forward
+your life is in her men's keeping!”
+
+“Very good of her; I'm sure,” King murmured. He was thinking of the
+general's express order to apply for a “passport” that would take him
+into Khinjan Caves--mentally cursing the necessity for asking any kind
+of favor,--and wondering whether to ask this man for it or wait until he
+should meet Yasmini. He had about made up his mind that to wait would
+be quite within a strict interpretation of his orders, as well as
+infinitely more agreeable to himself, when the Rangar answered his
+thoughts again as if he had spoken them aloud.
+
+“She left this with me, saying I am to give it to you! I am to say that
+wherever you wear it, between here and Afghanistan, your life shall be
+safe and you may come and go!”
+
+King stared. The Rangar drew a bracelet from an inner pocket and held it
+out. It was a wonderful, barbaric thing of pure gold, big enough for a
+grown man's wrist, and old enough to have been hammered out in the very
+womb of time. It looked almost like ancient Greek, and it fastened with
+a hinge and clasp that looked as if they did not belong to it, and might
+have been made by a not very skillful modern jeweler.
+
+“Won't you wear it?” asked Rewa Gunga, watching him. “It will prove a
+true talisman! What was the name of the Johnny who had a lamp to rub?
+Aladdin? It will be better than what he had! He could only command a lot
+of bogies. This will give you authority over flesh and blood! Take it,
+sahib!”
+
+So King put it on, letting it slip up his sleeve, out of sight,--with
+a sensation as the snap closed of putting handcuffs on himself. But the
+Rangar looked relieved.
+
+“That is your passport, sahib! Show it to a Hill-man whenever you
+suppose yourself in danger. The Raj might go to pieces, but while
+Yasmini lives--”
+
+“Her friends will boast about her, I suppose!”
+
+King finished the sentence for him because it is not considered good
+form for natives to hint at possible dissolution of the Anglo-Indian
+Government. Everybody knows that the British will not govern India
+forever, but the British--who know it best of all, and work to that end
+most fervently--are the only ones encouraged to talk about it.
+
+For a few minutes after that Rewa Gunga held his peace, while the
+carriage swayed at breakneck speed through the swarming streets. They
+had to drive slower in the Chandni Chowk, for the ancient Street of the
+Silversmiths that is now the mart of Delhi was ablaze with crude colors,
+and was thronged with more people than ever since '57. There were a
+thousand signs worth studying by a man who could read them.
+
+King, watching and saying nothing, reached the conclusion that Delhi was
+in hand--excited undoubtedly, more than a bit bewildered, watchful,
+but in hand. Without exactly knowing how he did it, he grew aware of a
+certain confidence that underlay the surface fuss. After that the sea
+of changing patterns and raised voices ceased to have any particular
+interest for him and he lay back against the cushions to pay stricter
+attention to his own immediate affairs.
+
+He did not believe for a second the lame explanation Yasmini had left
+behind. She must have some good reason for wishing to be first up the
+Khyber, and he was very sorry indeed she had slipped away. It might be
+only jealousy, yet why should she be jealous? It might be fear--yet why
+should she be afraid?
+
+It was the next remark of the Rangar's that set him entirely on his
+guard, and thenceforward whoever could have read his thoughts would have
+been more than human. Perhaps it is the most dominant characteristic of
+the British race that it will not defend itself until it must. He had
+known of that thought-reading trick ever since his ayah (native
+nurse) taught him to lisp Hindustanee; just as surely he knew that its
+impudent, repeated use was intended to sap his belief in himself. There
+is not much to choose between the native impudence that dares intrude on
+a man's thoughts, and the insolence that understands it, and is rather
+too proud to care.
+
+“I'll bet you a hundred dibs,” said the Rangar, “that she jolly well
+didn't fancy your being on the scene ahead of her! I'll bet you she
+decided to be there first and get control of the situation! Take me?
+You'd lose if you did! She's slippery, and quick, and like all Women,
+she's jealous!”
+
+The Rangar's eyes were on his, but King was not to be caught again.
+It is quite easy to think behind a fence, so to speak, if one gives
+attention to it.
+
+“She will be busy presently fooling those Afridis,” he continued, waving
+his cigarette. “She has fooled them always, to the limit of their bally
+bent. They all believe she is their best friend in the world--oh, dear
+Yes, you bet they do! And so she is--so she is--but not in the way they
+think! They believe she plots with them against the Raj! Poor silly
+devils! Yet Yasmini loves them! They want war--blood--loot! It is all
+they think about! They are seldom satisfied unless their wrists and
+elbows are bally well red with other peoples' gore! And while they
+are picturing the loot, and the slaughter of unbelievers--(as if they
+believed anything but foolishness themselves!)--Yasmini plays her own
+game, for amusement and power--a good game--a deep game! You have seen
+already how India has to ask her aid in the 'Hills'! She loves power,
+power, power--not for its name, for names are nothing, but to use
+it. She loves the feel of it! Fighting is not power! Blood-letting
+is foolishness. If there is any blood spilt it is none of her
+doing--unless--”
+
+“Unless what?” asked King.
+
+“Oh--sometimes there were fools who interfered. You can not blame her
+for that.”
+
+“You seem to be a champion of hers! How long have you known her?”'
+
+The Rangar eyed him sharply.
+
+“A long time. She and I played together when we were children. I know
+her whole history--and that is something nobody else in the world knows
+but she herself. You see, I am favored. It is because she knows me very
+well that she chose me to travel North with you, when you start to find
+her in the 'Hills'!”
+
+King cleared his throat, and the Rangar nodded, looking into his eyes
+with the engaging confidence of a child who never has been refused
+anything, in or out of reason. King made no effort to look pleased, so
+the Rangar drew on his resources.
+
+“I have a letter from her,” he stated blandly.
+
+From a pocket in the carriage cushions he brought out a silver tube,
+richly carved in the Kashmiri style and closed at either end with a
+tightly fitting silver cap. King accepted it and drew the cap from one
+end. A roll of scented paper fell on his lap, and a puff of hot wind
+combined with a lurch of the carriage springs came near to lose it
+for him; he snatched it just in time and unrolled it to find a letter
+written to himself in Urdu, in a beautiful flowing hand.
+
+Urdu is perhaps the politest of written tongues and lends itself most
+readily to indirectness; but since he did not expect to read a catalogue
+of exact facts, he was not disappointed.
+
+Translated, the letter ran:
+
+        “To Athelstan King sahib, by the hand of Rewa Gunga.
+        Greeting.  The bearer is my well-trusted servant, whom
+        I have chosen to be the sahib's guide until Heaven
+        shall be propitious and we meet.  He is instructed
+        in all that he need know concerning what is now in hand,
+        and he will tell by word of mouth such things as ought
+        not to be written.  By all means let Rewa Gunga travel
+        with you, for he is of royal blood, of the House of
+        Ketchwaha and will not fail you.  His honor and mine
+        are one.  Praying that the many gods of India may heap
+        honors on your honor's head, providing each his proper
+        attribute toward entire ability to succeed in all things,
+        but especially in the present undertaking,
+
+        “I am Your Excellency's humble servant,
+        --Yasmini.”
+
+He had barely finished reading it when the coachman took a last corner
+at a gallop and drew the horses up on their haunches at a door in a high
+white wall. Rewa Gunga sprang out of the carriage before the horses were
+quite at a standstill.
+
+“Here we are!” he said, and King, gathering up the letter and the silver
+tube, noticed that the street curved here so that no other door and no
+window overlooked this one.
+
+He followed the Rangar, and he was no sooner into the shadow of the door
+than the coachman lashed the horses and the carriage swung out of view.
+
+“This way,” said the Rangar over his shoulder. “Come!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+     Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin.
+     Steal from a thief, for that is easy.
+     Set a trap for a trickster, and catch him at the first attempt.
+     But beware of the man who has no axe to grind.
+     --Eastern Proverb
+
+
+It was a musty smelling entrance, so dark that to see was scarcely
+possible after the hot glare outside. Dimly King made out Rewa Gunga
+mounting stairs to the left and followed him. The stairs wound backward
+and forward on themselves four times, growing scarcely any lighter as
+they ascended, until, when he guessed himself two stories at least above
+road level, there was a sudden blaze of reflected light and he blinked
+at more mirrors than he could count. They had been swung on hinges
+suddenly to throw the light full in his face.
+
+There were curtains reflected in each mirror, and little glowing lamps,
+so cunningly arranged that it was not possible to guess which were
+real and which were not. Rewa Gunga offered no explanation, but stood
+watching with quiet amusement. He seemed to expect King to take a chance
+and go forward, but if he did he reckoned without his guest. King stood
+still.
+
+Then suddenly, as if she had done it a thousand times before and
+surprised a thousand people, a little nut-brown maid parted the middle
+pair of curtains and said “Salaam!” smiling with teeth that were as
+white as porcelain. All the other curtains parted too, so that the
+whereabouts of the door might still have been in doubt had she not
+spoken and so distinguished herself from her reflections. King looked
+scarcely interested and not at all disturbed.
+
+Balked of his amusement, Rewa Gunga hurried past him, thrusting the
+little maid aside, and led the way. King followed him into a long room,
+whose walls were hung with richer silks than any he remembered to have
+seen. In a great wide window to one side some twenty women began at
+once to make flute music.
+
+Silken punkahs swung from chains, wafting back and forth a cloud of
+sandalwood smoke that veiled the whole scene in mysterious, scented
+mist. Through the open window came the splash of a fountain and the
+chattering of birds, and the branch of a feathery tree drooped near by.
+It seemed that the long white wall below was that of Yasmini's garden.
+
+“Be welcome!” laughed Rewa Gunga; “I am to do the honors, since she is
+not here. Be seated, sahib.”
+
+King chose a divan at the room's farthest end, near tall curtains that
+led into rooms beyond. He turned his back toward the reason for his
+choice. On a little ivory-inlaid ebony table about ten feet away lay a
+knife, that was almost the exact duplicate of the one inside his shirt.
+Bronze knives of ancient date, with golden handles carved to represent a
+woman dancing, are rare. The ability to seem not to notice incriminating
+evidence is rarer still--rarest of all when under the eyes of a native
+of India, for cats and hawks are dullards by comparison to them. But
+King saw the knife, yet did not seem to see it.
+
+There was nothing there calculated to set an Englishman at ease. In
+spite of the Rangar's casual manner, Yasmini's reception room felt
+like the antechamber to another world, where mystery is atmosphere and
+ordinary air to breathe is not at all. He could sense hushed expectancy
+on every side--could feel the eyes of many women fixed on him--and began
+to draw on his guard as a fighting man draws on armor. There and then he
+deliberately set himself to resist mesmerism, which is the East's chief
+weapon.
+
+Rewa Gunga, perfectly at home, sprawled leisurely, along a cushioned
+couch with a grace that the West has not learned yet; but King did not
+make the mistake of trusting him any better for his easy manners, and
+his eyes sought swiftly for some unrhythmic, unplanned thing on which to
+rest, that he might save himself by a sort of mental leverage.
+
+Glancing along the wall that faced the big window, he noticed for the
+first time a huge Afridi, who sat on a stool and leaned back against the
+silken hangings with arms folded.
+
+“Who is that man?” he asked.
+
+“He? Oh, he is a savage--just a big savage,” said Rewa Gunga, looking
+vaguely annoyed.
+
+“Why is he here?”
+
+He did not dare let go of this chance side-issue. He knew that Rewa
+Gunga wished him to talk of Yasmini and to ask questions about her, and
+that if he succumbed to that temptation all his self-control would be
+cunningly sapped away from him until his secrets, and his very senses,
+belonged to some one else.
+
+“What is he doing here?” he insisted.
+
+“He? Oh, he does nothing. He waits,” purred the Rangar. “He is to be
+your body-servant on your journey to the North. He is nothing--nobody at
+all!--except that he is to be trusted utterly because he loves Yasmini.
+He is Obedience! A big obedient fool! Let him be!”
+
+“No,” said King. “If he's to be my man I'll speak to him!”
+
+He felt himself winning. Already the spell of the room was lifting, and
+he no longer felt the cloud of sandalwood smoke like a veil across his
+brain.
+
+“Won't you tell him to come here to me?”
+
+Rewa Gunga laughed, resting his silk turban against the wall hangings
+and clasping both hands about his knee. It was as a man might laugh who
+has been touched in a bout with foils.
+
+“Oh!--Ismail!” he called, with a voice like a bell, that made King
+stare.
+
+The Afridi seemed to come out of a deep sleep and looked bewildered,
+rubbing his eyes and feeling whether his turban was on straight. He
+combed his beard with nervous fingers as he gazed about him and caught
+Rewa Gunga's eye. Then he sprang to his feet.
+
+“Come!” ordered Rewa Gunga.
+
+The man obeyed.
+
+“Did you see?” Rewa Gunga chuckled. “He rose from his place like a
+buffalo, rump first and then shoulder after shoulder! Such men are safe!
+Such men have no guile beyond what will help them to obey! Such men
+think too slowly to invent deceit for its own sake!”
+
+The Afridi came and towered above them, standing with gnarled hands
+knotted into clubs.
+
+“What is thy name?” King asked him.
+
+“Ismail!” he boomed.
+
+“Thou art to be my servant?”
+
+“Aye! So said she. I am her man. I obey!”
+
+“When did she say so?” King asked him blandly, asking unexpected
+questions being half the art of Secret Service, although the other half
+is harder to achieve.
+
+The Hillman stroked his great beard and stood considering the question.
+One could almost imagine the click of slow machinery revolving in his
+mind, although King entertained a shrewd suspicion that he was not so
+stupid as he chose to seem. His eyes were too hawk-bright to be a stupid
+man's.
+
+“Before she went away,” he answered at last.
+
+“When did she go away?”
+
+He thought again, then “Yesterday,” he said.
+
+“Why did you wait before you answered?”
+
+The Afridi's eyes furtively sought Rewa Gunga's and found no aid there.
+Watching the Rangar less furtively, but even less obviously, King was
+aware that his eyes were nearly closed, as if they were not interested.
+The fingers that clasped his knee drummed on it indifferently, seeing
+which King allowed himself to smile.
+
+“Never mind,” he told Ismail. “It is no matter. It is ever well to think
+twice before speaking once, for thus mistakes die stillborn. Only the
+monkey-folk thrive on quick answers--is it not so? Thou art a man of
+many inches--of thew and sinew--Hey, but thou art a man! If the heart
+within those great ribs of thine is true as thine arms are strong I
+shall be fortunate to have thee for a servant!”
+
+“Aye!” said the Afridi. “But what are words? She has said I am thy
+servant, and to hear her is to obey!”
+
+“Then from now thou art my servant?”
+
+“Nay, but from yesterday when she gave the order!”
+
+“Good!” said King.
+
+“Aye, good for thee! May Allah do more to me if I fail!”
+
+“Then, take me a telegram!” said King.
+
+He began to write at once on a half-sheet of paper that he tore from a
+letter he had in his pocket, setting down a row of figures at the top
+and transposing into cypher as he went along.
+
+“Yasmini has gone North. Is there any reason at your end why I should
+not follow her at once?”
+
+He addressed it in plain English to his friend the general at Peshawur,
+taking great care lest the Rangar read it through those sleepy,
+half-closed eyes of his. Then he tore the cypher from the top, struck
+a match and burned the strip of paper and handed the code telegram to
+Ismail, directing him carefully to a government office where the cypher
+signature would be recognized and the telegram given precedence.
+
+Ismail stalked off with it, striding like Moses down from
+Sinai--hook-nose--hawk-eye--flowing beard--dignity and all, and King
+settled down to guard himself against the next attempt on his sovereign
+self-command.
+
+Now he chose to notice the knife on the ebony table as if he had not
+seen it before. He got up and reached for it and brought it back,
+turning it over and over in his hand.
+
+“A strange knife,” he said.
+
+“Yes,--from Khinjan,” said Rewa Gunga, and King eyed him as one wolf
+eyes another.
+
+“What makes you say it is from Khinjan?”
+
+“She brought it from Khinjan Caves herself! There is another knife that
+matches it, but that is not here. That bracelet you now wear, sahib, is
+from Khinjan Caves too! She has the secret of the Caves!”
+
+“I have heard that the 'Heart of the Hills' is there,” King answered.
+“Is the 'Heart of the Hills' a treasure house?”
+
+Rewa Gunga laughed.
+
+“Ask her, sahib! Perhaps she will tell you! Perhaps she will let you
+see! Who knows? She is a woman of resource and unexpectedness--Let her
+women dance for you a while.”
+
+King nodded. Then he got up and laid the knife back on the little table.
+A minute or so later he noticed that at a sign from Rewa Gunga a woman
+left the great window place and spirited the knife away.
+
+“May I have a sheet of paper?” he asked, for he knew that another fight
+for his self-command was due.
+
+Rewa Gunga gave an order, and a maid brought him scented paper on a
+silver tray. He drew out his own fountain pen then and made ready.
+
+In spite of the great silken punkah that swung rhythmically across the
+full breadth of the room the beat was so great that the pen slipped
+round and round between his fingers. Yet he contrived to write, and
+since his one object was to give his brain employment, he wrote down
+a list of the names he had memorized in the train on the journey from
+Peshawur, not thinking of a use for the list until he had finished.
+Then, though, a real use occurred to him.
+
+While he began to write more than a dozen dancing women swept into the
+room from behind the silk hangings in a concerted movement that was all
+lithe slumberous grace. Wood-wind music called to them from the great
+deep window as snakes are summoned from their holes, and as cobras
+answer the charmer's call the women glided to the center and stood
+poised beneath the punkah.
+
+There they began to chant, still dreamily, and with the chant the dance
+began, in and out, round and round, lazily, ever so lazily, wreathed in
+buoyant gossamer that was scarcely more solid than the sandalwood smoke
+they wafted into rings.
+
+King watched them and listened to their chant until he began to
+recognize the strain on the eye-muscles that precedes the mesmeric
+spell. Then he wrote and read what he had written and wrote again. And
+after that, for the sake of mental exercise, he switched his thoughts
+into another channel altogether. He reverted to Delhi railway station.
+
+“The Turks can spy as well as anybody.--They know those men are going to
+Kerachi to be ready for them.--Therefore, having cut his eye-teeth B.C.
+several hundred, the Unspeakable Turk will take care not to misbehave
+UNTIL he's ready. And I suppose our government, being ours and we being
+us, will let him do it! All of which will take time.--And that again
+means no trouble in the Hills--probably--until the Turks really do feel
+ready to begin. They'll preach a holy war just ahead of the date. The
+tribes will keep quiet because an army at Kerachi might be meant for
+their benefit. Oh, yes, I'm quite sure they were entraining for Kerachi
+in readiness to move on Basra.
+
+“Trucks ready for camels--and camel drivers--and food for camels--and
+Eresby, who's just come from taking a special camel course. Not a doubt
+of it!--And then, Corrigan--Elwright--Doby--Gould--all on the platform
+in a bunch, and all down on the Army List as Turkish interpreters! Not a
+doubt left!”
+
+“What have you written?” asked a quiet voice at his ear; and he turned
+to look straight in the eyes of Rewa Gunga, who had leaned forward to
+read over his shoulder. Just for one second he hovered on the brink of
+quick defeat. Having escaped the Scylla of the dancing women, Charybdis
+waited for him in the shape of eyes that were pools of hot mystery. It
+was the sound of his own voice that brought him back to the world again
+and saved his will for him unbound.
+
+“Read it, won't you?” he laughed. “If you know, take this pen and mark
+the names of whichever of those men are still in Delhi.”
+
+Rewa Gunga took pen and paper and set a mark against some thirty of the
+names, for King had a manner that disarmed refusal.
+
+“Where are the others?” he asked him, after a glance at it.
+
+“In jail, or else over the border.”
+
+“Already?”
+
+The Rangar nodded. “Trust Yasmini! She saw to that jolly well before she
+left Delhi! She would have stayed had there been anything more to do!”
+
+King began to watch the dance again, for it did not feel safe to look
+too long into the Rangar's eyes. It was not wise just then to look too
+long at anything, or to think too long on any one subject.
+
+“Ismail is slow about returning,” said the Rangar.
+
+“I wrote at the foot of the tar,” said King, “that they are to detain
+him there until the answer comes.”
+
+The Rangar's eyes blazed for a second and then grew cold again (as King
+did not fail to observe). He knew as well as the Rangar that not many
+men would have kept their will so unfettered in that room as to be able
+to give independent orders. He recognized resignation, temporary at
+least, in the Rangar's attitude of leaning back again to watch from
+under lowered eyelids. It was like being watched by a cat.
+
+All this while the women danced on, in time to wailing flute-music,
+until, it seemed from nowhere, a lovelier woman than any of them
+appeared in their midst, sitting cross-legged with a flat basket at her
+knees. She sat with arms raised and swayed from the waist as if in a
+delirium. Her arms moved in narrowing circles, higher and higher above
+the basket lid, and the lid began to rise. Nobody touched it, nor was
+there any string, but as it rose it swayed with sickening monotony.
+
+It was minutes before the bodies of two great king-cobras could be
+made out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was
+resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild
+weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched the
+lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing the
+cobra's hate-song that is prelude to the poison-death.
+
+They struck at the woman, one after the other, and she leaped out of
+their range, swift and as supple as they. Instantly then she joined
+in the dance, with the snakes striking right and left at her. Left
+and right she swayed to avoid them, far more gracefully than a matador
+avoids the bull and courting a deadlier peril than he--poisonous, two to
+his one. As she danced she whirled both arms above her head and cried as
+the were-wolves are said to do on stormy nights.
+
+Some unseen hand drew a blind over the great window and an eerie
+green-and-golden light began to play from one end of the room, throwing
+the dancers into half-relief and deepening the mystery.
+
+Sweet strange scents were wafted in from under the silken hangings.
+The room grew cooler by unguessed means. Every sense was treacherously
+wooed. And ever, in the middle of the moving light among the languorous
+dancers, the snakes pursued the woman!
+
+“Do you do this often?” wondered King, in a calm aside to Rewa Gunga,
+turning half toward him and taking his eyes off the dance without any
+very great effort.
+
+Rewa Gunga clapped his hands and the dance ceased. The woman spirited
+her snakes away. The blind was drawn upward and in a moment all was
+normal again with the punkah swinging slowly overhead, except that the
+seductive smell remained, that was like the early-morning breath of all
+the different flowers of India.
+
+“If she were here,” said the Rangar, a little grimly--with a trace of
+disappointment in his tone--“you would not snatch your eyes away
+like that! You would have been jolly well transfixed, my friend!
+These--she--that woman--they are but clumsy amateurs! If she were here,
+to dance with her snakes for you, you would have been jolly well dancing
+with her, if she had wished it! Perhaps you shall see her dance some
+day! Ah,--here is Ismail,” he added in an altered tone of voice. He
+seemed relieved at sight of the Afridi.
+
+Bursting through the glass-bead curtains at the door, the great savage
+strode down the room, holding out a telegram. Rewa Gunga looked as if
+he would have snatched it, but King's hand was held out first and Ismail
+gave it to him. With a murmur of conventional apology King tore the
+envelope and in a second his eyes were ablaze with something more than
+wonder. A mystery, added to a mystery, stirred all the zeal in him. But
+in a second he had sweated his excitement down.
+
+“Read that, will you?” he said, passing it to Rewa Gunga. It was not in
+cypher, but in plain everyday English.
+
+“She has not gone North,” it ran. “She is still in Delhi. Suit your own
+movements to your plans.”
+
+“Can you explain?” asked King in a level voice. He was watching the
+Rangar narrowly, yet he could not detect the slightest symptom of
+emotion.
+
+“Explain?” said the Rangar. “Who can explain foolishness? It means that
+another fat general has made another fat mistake!”
+
+“What makes you so certain she went North?” King asked.
+
+Instead of answering, Rewa Gunga beckoned Ismail, who had stepped back
+out of hearing. The giant came and loomed over them like the Spirit of
+the Lamp of the Arabian Nights.
+
+“Whither went she?” asked the Rangar.
+
+“To the North!” he boomed.
+
+“How knowest thou?”
+
+“I saw her go!”
+
+“When went she?”
+
+“Yesterday, when a telegram came.”
+
+The word “came” was the only clue to his meaning, for in the language he
+used “yesterday” and “to-morrow” are the same word; such is the East's
+estimate of time.
+
+“By what route did she go?” asked Rewa Gunga.
+
+“By the terrain from the station.”
+
+“How knowest thou that?”
+
+“I was there, bearing her box of jewels.”
+
+“Didst thou see her buy the tikkut?”
+
+“Nay, I bought it, for she ordered me.”
+
+“For what destination was the tikkut?”
+
+“Peshawur!” said Ismail, filling his mouth with the word as if he loved
+it.
+
+“Yet”--it was King who spoke now, pointing an accusing finger at him--“a
+burra sahib sends a tar to me--this is it!--to say she is in Delhi
+still! Who told thee to answer those questions with those words?”
+
+“She!” the big man answered.
+
+“Yasmini?”
+
+“Aye! May Allah cover her with blessings!”
+
+“Ah!” said King. “You have my leave to depart out of earshot.”
+
+Then he turned on Rewa Gunga.
+
+“Whatever the truth of all this,” he said quietly, “I suppose it means
+she has done what there was to do in Delhi?”
+
+“Sahib,--trust her! Does a tigress hunt where no watercourses are, and
+where no game goes to drink? She follows the sambur!”
+
+“You are positive she has started for the North?”
+
+“Sahib, when she speaks it is best to believe! She told me she will go.
+Therefore I am ready to lead King sahib up the Khyber to her!”
+
+“Are you certain you can find her?”
+
+“Aye, sahib,--in the dark!”
+
+“There's a train leaves for the North to-night,” said King.
+
+The Rangar nodded.
+
+“You'll want a pass up the line. How many servants? Three--four--how
+many?”
+
+“One,” said the Rangar, and King was instantly suspicious of the modesty
+of that allowance; however he wrote out a pass for Rewa Gunga and one
+servant and gave it to him.
+
+“Be there on time and see about your own reservation,” he said. “I'll
+attend to Ismail's pass myself.”
+
+He folded the list of names that the Rangar had marked and wrote
+something on the back. Then he begged an envelope, and Rewa Gunga had
+one brought to him. He sealed the list in the envelope, addressed it and
+beckoned Ismail again.
+
+“Take this to Saunders sahib!” he ordered. “Go first to the telegraph
+office, where you were before, and the babu there will tell you where
+Saunders sahib may be found. Having found him, deliver the letter to
+him. Then come and find me at the Star of India Hotel and help me to
+bathe and change my clothes.”
+
+“To hear is to obey!” boomed Ismail, bowing; but his last glance was
+for Rewa Gunga, and he did not turn to go until he had met the Rangar's
+eyes.
+
+When Ismail had gone striding down the room, with no glance to spare
+for the whispering women in the window, and with dignity like an aura
+exuding from him, King looked into the Rangar's eyes with that engaging
+frankness of his that disarms so many people.
+
+“Then you'll be on the train to-night?” he asked.
+
+“To hear is to obey! With pleasure, sahib!”
+
+“Then good-by until this evening.”
+
+King bowed very civilly and walked out, rather unsteadily because his
+head ached. Probably nobody else, except the Rangar, could have guessed
+what an ordeal he had passed through or how near he had been to losing
+self-command.
+
+But as he felt his way down the stairs, that were dimly lighted now, he
+knew he had all his senses with him, for he “spotted” and admired the
+lurking places that had been designed for undoing of the unwary, or even
+the overwary. Yasmini's Delhi nest was like a hundred traps in one.
+
+“Almost like a pool table,” he reflected. “Pocket 'em at both ends and
+the middle!”
+
+In the street he found a gharry after a while and drove to his hotel.
+And before Ismail came he took a stroll through a bazaar, where he made
+a few strange purchases. In the hotel lobby he invested in a leather bag
+with a good lock, in which to put them. Later on Ismail came and proved
+himself an efficient body-servant.
+
+That evening Ismail carried the leather bag and found his place on the
+train, and that was not so difficult, because the trains running North
+were nearly empty, although the platforms were all crowded. As he stood
+at the carriage door with Ismail near him, a man named Saunders slipped
+through the crowd and sought him out.
+
+“Arrested 'em all!” he grinned.
+
+“Good.”
+
+“Seen anything of her? I recognized Yasmini's scent on your envelope.
+It's peculiar to her--one of her monopolies!”
+
+“No. I'm told she went North yesterday.”
+
+“Not by train, she didn't! It's my business to know that!”
+
+King did not answer; nor did he look surprised. He was watching Rewa
+Gunga, followed by a servant, hurrying to a reserved compartment at the
+front end of the train. The Rangar waved to him and he waved back.
+
+“I'd know her in a million!” vowed Saunders. “I can take oath she hasn't
+gone anywhere by train! Unless she has walked, or taken a carriage,
+she's in Delhi!”
+
+The engine gave a preliminary shriek and the giant Ismail nudged King's
+elbow in impatient warning. There was no more sign of Rewa Gunga, who
+had evidently settled down in his compartment for the night.
+
+“Get my bag out again!” King ordered, and Ismail stared.
+
+“Get out my bag, I said!”
+
+“To hear is to obey!” Ismail grumbled, reaching with his long arm
+through the window.
+
+The engine shrieked again, somebody whistled, and the train began to
+move.
+
+“You've missed it!” said Saunders, amused at Ismail's frantic
+disappointment. The giant was tugging at his beard. “How about your
+trunk? Better wire ahead and have it spotted for you.”
+
+“No,” said King; “it's still in the baggage room at the other station.
+I didn't intend to go by this train. Came down here to see another
+fellow off, that's all! Have a cigar and then let's go together and
+look those prisoners over!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+
+   Men boast in the Hills, when they ought to pray;
+   For the wind blows lusty, and the blood runs red,
+   And Law lies belly upwards for a man to wreak his fancy on it.
+   Down in the plains, in the dust of the plains
+   Where law is master and a good man ought to boast,
+   They all lie belly downwards praying for their Hills again!
+
+
+The rear lights of the train he had not taken swayed out of Delhi
+station and King grinned as he wiped the sweat from his face with
+a dripping handkerchief. Behind him towered the hook-nosed Ismail,
+resentful of the unexpected. In front of him Saunders eyed the proffered
+black cheroots suspiciously, accepted one with an air of curiosity and
+passed the case back. Around them the clatter of the station crowd began
+to die, and Parsimony in a shabby uniform went round to lower lights.
+
+“Are you sure--”
+
+King's merry eyes looked into Saunders' as if there were no world war
+really and they two were puppets in a comedy.
+
+“--are you absolutely certain Yasmini is in Delhi?”
+
+“No,” said Saunders. “What I swear to is that she has not left by train.
+It's my business to know who leaves by train.”
+
+“What can you suggest?” asked King, twisting at his scrubby little
+mustache. But if he wished to convey the impression of a man at his
+wits' end, he failed signally.
+
+“I? Nothing! She's the most elusive individual in Asia! One person
+in the world knows where she is, unless she has an accomplice. My
+information's negative. I know she has not gone by--”
+
+King struck a match and held it out, so the sentence was unfinished;
+the first few puffs of the astonishing cigar wiped out all memory of the
+missing word. And then King changed the subject.
+
+“Those men I asked you to arrest--?”
+
+“Nabbed”--puff--“every one of 'em!”--puff--puff--“all
+under”--puff--puff--“lock and key,--best smoke I ever tasted--where
+d'you get 'em?”
+
+“Had they been in communication with her?”
+
+Puff--puff--“You bet they had! Where d'you get these things?”
+
+“Not her special men by any chance?”
+
+Puff--“Gad, what smoke!--couldn't say, of course,
+but”--puff--puff--“shouldn't think so.”
+
+“Well--I'll go along with you if you like, and look them over.”
+
+Both tone and manner gave Saunders credit for the suggestion, and
+Saunders seemed to like it. There is nothing like following up, in
+football, war or courtship.
+
+“I see you're a judge of a cigar,” said King, and Saunders purred,
+all men being fools to some extent, and the only trouble being to
+demonstrate the fact.
+
+They had started for the station entrance when a nasal voice began
+intoning, “Cap-teen King sahib--Cap-teen King sahib!” and a telegraph
+messenger passed them with his book under his arm. King whistled him. A
+moment later he was tearing open an official urgent telegram and writing
+a string of figures in pencil across the top. Then he decoded swiftly,
+
+        “Advices are Yasmini was in Delhi as recently as six
+        this evening.  Fail to understand your inability to
+        get in touch.  Have you tried at her house?  Matters
+        in Khyber district much less satisfactory.  Word from
+        O-C Khyber Rifles to effect that lashkar is collecting.
+        Better sweep up in Delhi and proceed northward as quickly
+        as compatible with caution.   L. M. L.”
+
+The three letters at the end were the general's coded signature. The
+wording of the telegram was such that as he read King saw a mental
+picture of the general's bald red skull and could almost hear him say
+the “fail to understand.” The three words “much less satisfactory” were
+a bookful of information. So, as he folded up the telegram, tore the
+penciled strip of figures from the top and burned it with a match, he
+was at pains to look pleased.
+
+“Good news?” asked Saunders, blowing smoke through his nose.
+
+“Excellent. Where's my man? Here--you--Ismail!”
+
+The giant came and towered above him.
+
+“You swore she went North!”
+
+“Ha, sahib! To Peshawur she went!”
+
+“Did she start from this station?”
+
+“From where else, sahib?”
+
+But this was too much for Saunders, who stepped forward and thrust in
+an oar. King on the other hand stepped back a pace so as to watch both
+faces.
+
+“Then, when did she go?”
+
+“I saw her go!” said Ismail, affronted.
+
+“When? When, confound you! When?”
+
+“Yesterday.”
+
+“I expect he means to-morrow,” said King. With the advantage of
+looker-on and a very deep experience of Northerners, he had noted that
+Ismail was lying and that Saunders was growing doubtful, although both
+men concealed the truth with what was very close to being art.
+
+“I have a telegram here,” he said, “that says she is in Delhi!”
+
+He patted his coat, where the inner pocket bulged.
+
+“Nay, then the tar lies, for I saw her go with these two eyes of mine!”
+
+“It is not wise to lie to me, my friend,” King assured him, so
+pleasantly that none could doubt he was telling truth.
+
+“If I lie may I eat dirt!” Ismail answered him.
+
+Inches lent the Afridi dignity, but dignity has often been used as a
+stalking horse for untruth. King nodded, and it was not possible to
+judge by his expression whether he believed or not.
+
+“Let's make a move,” he said, turning to Saunders. “She seems at
+any rate to wish it believed she has gone North. I can't stay here
+indefinitely. If she's here she's on the watch here, and there's no need
+of me. If she has gone North, then that is where the kites are wheeling!
+I'll take the early morning train. Where are the prisoners?”
+
+“In the old Mir Khan Palace. We were short of jail room and had to
+improvise. The horse-stalls there have come in handy more than once
+before. Shall we take this gharry?”
+
+With Ismail up beside the driver nursing King's bag and looking like
+a great grim vulture about to eat the horse, they drove back through
+swarming streets in the direction of the river. King seemed to have lost
+all interest in crowds. He scarcely even troubled to watch when they
+were held up at a cross-roads by a marching regiment that tramped as if
+it were herald of the Last Trump, with bayonets glistening in the street
+lights. He sat staring ahead in silence, although Saunders made more
+than one effort to engage him in conversation.
+
+“No!” he said at last suddenly--so that Saunders jumped.
+
+“No what?”
+
+“No need to stay here. I've got what I came for!”
+
+“What was that?” asked Saunders, but King was silent again. Conscious of
+the unaccustomed weight on his left wrist, he moved his arm so that the
+sleeve drew and he could see the edge of the great gold bracelet Rewa
+Gunga had given him in Yasmini's name.
+
+“Know anything of Rewa Gunga?” he asked suddenly again.
+
+“The Rangar?”
+
+“Yes, the Rangar. Yasmini's man.”
+
+“Not much. I've seen him. I've spoken with him, and I've had to stand
+impudence from him--twice. I've been tipped off more than once to let
+him alone because he's her man. He does ticklish errands for her, or so
+they say. He's what you might call 'known to the police' all right.”
+
+They began to approach an age-old palace near the river, and Saunders
+whispered a pass-word when an armed guard halted them. They were halted
+again at a gloomy gateway where an officer came out to look them over;
+by his leave they left the gharry and followed him under the arch
+until their heels rang on stone paving in a big ill-lighted courtyard
+surrounded by high walls.
+
+There, after a little talk, they left Ismail squatting beside King's
+bag, and Saunders led the way through a modern iron door, into what had
+once been a royal prince's stables.
+
+In gloom that was only thrown into contrast by a wide-spaced row of
+electric lights, a long line of barred and locked converted horse-stalls
+ran down one side of a lean-to building. The upper half of each locked
+door was a grating of steel rods, so that there was some ventilation for
+the prisoners; but very little light filtered between the bars, and all
+that King could see of the men within was the whites of their eyes. And
+they did not look friendly.
+
+He had to pass between them and the light, and they could see more of
+him than he could of them. At the first cell he raised his left hand and
+made the gold bracelet on his wrist clink against the steel bars.
+
+A moment later be cursed himself, and felt the bracelet with his
+fingernail. He had made a deep nick in the soft gold. A second later yet
+he smiled.
+
+“May God be with thee!” boomed a prisoner's voice in Pashtu.
+
+“Didn't know that fellow was handcuffed,” said Saunders. “Did you hear
+the ring? They should have been taken off. Leaving his irons on has made
+him polite, though.”
+
+He passed on, and King followed him, saying nothing. But at the next
+cell he repeated what he had done at the first, taking better care of
+the gold but letting his wrist stay longer in the light.
+
+“May God be with thee!” said a voice within.
+
+“Gettin' a shade less arrogant, what?” said Saunders.
+
+“May God be with thee!” said a man in the third stall as King passed.
+
+“They seem to be anxious for your morals!” laughed Saunders, keeping a
+pace or two ahead to do the honors of the place.
+
+“May God be with thee!” said a fourth man, and King desisted for the
+present, because Saunders looked as if he were growing inquisitive.
+
+“Where did you arrest them?” he asked when Saunders came to a stand
+under a light.
+
+“All in one place. At Ali's.”
+
+“Who and what is Ali?”
+
+“Pimp--crimp--procurer--Prussian spy and any other evil thing that takes
+his fancy! Runs a combination gambling hell and boarding house. Lets
+'em run into debt and blackmails 'em. Ali's in the kaiser's pay--that's
+known! 'Musing thing about it is he keeps a photo of Wilhelm in his
+pocket and tries to make himself believe the kaiser knows him by name.
+Suffers from swelled head, which is part of their plan, of course.
+We'll get him when we want him, but at present he's useful 'as is' for
+a decoy. Ali was very much upset at the arrest--asked in the name of
+Heaven--seems to be familiar with God, too, and all the angels!--how he
+shall collect all the money these men owe him!”
+
+“You wouldn't call these men prosperous, then?”
+
+“Not exactly! Ali is the only spy out of the North who prospers much at
+present, and even he gets most of his money out of his private business.
+Why, man, the real Germans we have pounced on are all as poor as church
+mice. That's another part of the plan, of course, which is sweet in all
+its workings. They're paid less than driven by threats of exposure to
+us--comes cheaper, and serves to ginger up the spies! The Germans pay
+Ali a little, and he traps the Hillmen when they come South--lets
+'em gamble--gets 'em into debt--plays on their fear of jail and their
+ignorance of the Indian Penal Code, which altereth every afternoon--and
+spends a lot of time telling 'em stories to take back with 'em to the
+Hills when they can get away. They can get away when they've paid him
+what they owe. He makes that clear, and of course that's the fly in the
+amber. Yasmini sends and pays their board and gambling debts, and she's
+our man, so to speak. When they get back to the 'Hills'--”
+
+“Thanks,” said King, “I know what happens in the 'Hills. Tell me about
+the Delhi end of it.”
+
+“Well, when the wander-fever grabs 'em again they come down once more
+from their 'Hills' to drink and gamble,--and first they go to Yasmini's.
+But she won't let 'em drink at her place. Have to give her credit for
+that, y'know; her place has never been a stews. Sooner or later they
+grow tired of virtue, 'specially with so much intrigue goin' on under
+their noses, and back they all drift to Ali's and tell him tales to
+tell the Germans--and the round begins again. Yasmini coaxes all their
+stories out of 'em and primes 'em with a few extra good ones into the
+bargain. Everybody's fooled--'specially the Germans--and exceptin', of
+course, Yasmini and the Raj. Nobody ever fooled that woman, nor ever
+will if my belief goes for anything!”
+
+“Sounds simple!” said King.
+
+“Simple and sordid!” agreed Saunders.
+
+King looked up and down the line of locked doors and then straight into
+Saunders' eyes in a friendly, yet rather disconcerting way. One could
+not judge whether he were laughing or just thinking.
+
+“D'you suppose it's as simple as all that?”
+
+“How d'you mean?”
+
+“D'you suppose the Germans aren't in direct touch with the tribes?”
+
+“Why should they be? The simpler the better, I expect, from their point
+of view; and the cheaper the better, too!”
+
+“Um-m-m!” King rubbed his chin. “On what charge did you get these men?”
+
+“Defense of the Realm--suspicious characters--charge to be entered
+later.”
+
+“Good! That's simple at all events! Know anything of my man Ismail?”
+
+“Sure! He's one of Yasmini's pets. She bailed him out of Ali's three
+years ago and he worships her. It was he who broke the leg and ribs of
+a pup-rajah a month or two ago for putting on too much dog in her
+reception room! He's Ursus out of Quo Vadis! He's dog, desperado,
+stalking horse and Keeper of the Queen's secrets!”
+
+“Then why d'you suppose she passed him along to me?” asked King.
+
+“Dunno! This is your little mystery, not mine!”
+
+“Glad you appreciate that! Do me a favor, will you?”
+
+“Anything in reason.”
+
+“Get the keys to all these cells--send 'em in here to me by Ismail--and
+leave me in here alone!”
+
+Saunders whistled and wiped sweat from his glistening face, for in spite
+of windows open to the courtyard it was hotter than a furnace room.
+
+“Mayn't I have you thrown into a den of tigers?” he asked. “Or a nest
+of cobras? Or get the fiery furnace ready? You'll find 'em sore--and
+dangerous! That man at the end with handcuffs on has probably been
+violent! That 'God be with thee' stuff is habit--they say it with
+unction before they knife a man!”
+
+“I'll be careful, then,” King chuckled; and it is a fact that few men
+can argue with him when he laughs quietly in that way. “Send me in the
+keys, like a good chap.”
+
+So Saunders went, glad enough to get into the outer air. He slammed
+the great iron door behind him as if he were glad, too, to disassociate
+himself from King and all foolishness. Like many another first-class
+man, King sheds friends as a cat sheds fur going under a gate. They grow
+again and quit again and don't seem to make much difference.
+
+The instant the door slammed King continued down the line with his left
+wrist held high so that the occupant of each cell in turn could see the
+bracelet.
+
+“May God be with thee!” came the instant greeting from each cell until
+down toward the farther end. The occupants of the last six cells were
+silent.
+
+Numbers had been chalked roughly on the doors. With wetted fingers he
+rubbed out the chalk marks on the last six doors, and he had scarcely
+finished doing that when Ismail strode in, slamming the great iron door
+behind him, jangling a bunch of keys and looking more than ever like
+somebody out of the Old Testament.
+
+“Open every door except those whose numbers I have rubbed out!” King
+ordered him.
+
+Ismail proceeded to obey as if that were the least improbable order
+in all the world. It took him two minutes to select the pass-key and
+determine how it worked, then the doors flew open one after another in
+quick succession.
+
+“Come out!” he growled. “Come out!--Come out!” although King had not
+ordered that.
+
+King went and stood under the center light with his left arm bared. The
+prisoners, emerging like dead men out of tombs, blinked at the bright
+light--saw him--then the bracelet--and saluted.
+
+“May God be with thee!” growled each of them.
+
+They stood still then, awaiting fresh developments. It did not seem
+to occur to any one of them as strange that a British officer in khaki
+uniform should be sporting Yasmini's talisman; the thing was apparently
+sufficient explanation in itself.
+
+“Ye all know this?” he asked, holding up his wrist. “Whose is this?”
+
+“Hers!”
+
+The answer was monosyllabic and instant from all thirty throats. “May
+Allah guard her, sleeping and awake!” added one or two of them.
+
+King lit a cheroot and made mental note of the wisdom of referring to
+her by pronoun, not by name.
+
+“And I? Who am I?” he asked, since it saves worlds of trouble to have
+the other side state the case. The Secret Service was not designed for
+giving information, but discovering it.
+
+“Her messenger! Who else? Thou art he who shall take us to the 'Hills'!
+She promised!”
+
+“How did she know ye were in this jail?” he asked them, and one of the
+Hillmen laughed like a jackal, showing yellow eye-teeth. The others
+cackled in chorus after him.
+
+“Answer that riddle thyself--or else ask her! Who are we? Bats, that can
+see in the night? Spirits, who can hear through walls? Nay, we be plain
+men of the mountains!”
+
+“But where were ye when she promised?”
+
+“At Ali's. All of us at Ali's--held for debt. We sent and begged of her.
+She sent word back by a woman that one of the sirkar's men shall free us
+and send us home. So we waited, eating shame and little else, at Ali's.
+At last came a sahib in a great rage, who ordered irons put on our
+wrists and us marched hither. Only when each was pushed into a separate
+cell were the irons taken off again. Yet we were patient, for we knew
+this is part of her cunning, to get us away from Ali without paying him.
+'May Ali die of want,' said we, with one voice all together in these
+cells! And now we be ready! They fed us before we had been in here an
+hour. Our bellies be full, but we be hungry for the 'Hills'!”
+
+King thought of the gold-hilted knife, that still rested under his
+shirt. He was tempted to show it to them and find out surely whose
+it was and what it meant. But wisdom and curiosity seldom mingle. He
+thought of Ismail--“Ursus, of Quo Vadis--dog, desperado, stalking-horse
+and Keeper of the Queen's secrets.” It was not time yet to run risks
+with Ismail. The knife stayed where it was.
+
+“I shall start for the Hills at dawn,” he said slowly, and he watched
+their eyes gleam at the news. No caged tiger is as wretched as a
+prisoned Hillman. No freed bird wings more wildly for the open. No moth
+comes more foolishly back to the flame again. It was easy to take pity
+on them--probably not one of whom knew pity's meaning.
+
+“Is there any among you who would care to come--?”
+
+“Ah-h-h-h!”
+
+“--at the price of strict obedience?”
+
+“Eh-h-h-h-h!”
+
+It seemed there was no word in Pashtu that could express their
+willingness.
+
+“We be very, very weary for our Hills!” explained the nearest man.
+
+“Aye!” King answered. “And ye all owe Ali!”
+
+“Uh-h-h-h-h!”
+
+But he knew better than to browbeat them on that account just then, for
+the men of the North are easier led than driven--up to a certain point.
+Yet it is no bad plan to remind them of the fundamentals to begin with.
+
+“Will ye obey me, and him?” he asked, laying his hand on Ismail's
+shoulder, as much to let them see the bracelet again as for any other
+reason.
+
+“Aye! If we fail, Allah do more to us!”
+
+King laughed. “Ye shall leave this place as my prisoners. Here ye have
+no friends. Here ye must obey. But what when ye come to your 'Hills' at
+last? Can one man hold thirty men prisoners then? In the 'Hills' will ye
+still obey me?”
+
+They answered him in chorus. Every man of the thirty, and Ismail into
+the bargain, threw his right hand in the air.
+
+“Allah witness that we will obey!”
+
+“Ah-h-h!” said King. “I have heard Hillmen swear by Allah many a time!
+Many a time!”
+
+The answer to that was unexpected. Ismail knelt--seized his hand--and
+pressed the gold bracelet to his lips!
+
+In turn, every one of them filed by, knelt reverently and kissed the
+bracelet!
+
+“Saw ye ever a Hillman do that before?” asked Ismail. “They will obey
+thee! Have no fear!”
+
+“Kutch dar nahin hai!” King answered. “There is no such thing as fear!”
+ and Ismail grinned at him, not knowing that King was feeling as Aladdin
+must have done.
+
+“I have heard you swear,” said King; “be ye true men!”
+
+“Ah-h-h!”
+
+“Have they belongings that ought to be collected first?” he asked, and
+Ismail laughed.
+
+“No more than the dead have! A shroud apiece! Ali gave them bitterness
+to eat and picked their teeth afterward for gleanings! They stand in
+what they own!”
+
+“Then, come!” ordered King, turning his back confidently on thirty
+savages whom Saunders, for instance, would have preferred to drive in
+front of him, after first seeing them handcuffed. But when he is not
+pressed for time neither pistols, nor yet handcuffs, are included in
+King's method.
+
+“Each lock has a key, but some keys fit all locks,” says the Eastern
+proverb. King has been chosen for many ticklish errands in his time, and
+Saunders is still in Delhi.
+
+Through the great iron door into dim outer darkness King led them and
+presently made them squat in a close-huddled semicircle on the paving
+stones, like night-birds waiting for a meal.
+
+“I want blankets for them--two good ones apiece--and food for a week's
+journey!” he told the astonished Saunders; and he spoke so decidedly
+that the other man's questions and argument died stillborn. “While you
+attend to that for me, I'll be seeing his dibs and making explanations.
+You look full of news. What do you know?”
+
+“I've telephoned all the other stations, and my men swear Yasmini has
+not left Delhi by train!”
+
+King smiled at him.
+
+“If I leave by train d'you suppose she'll hear of it?”
+
+“You bet! Bet your boots! Man alive--if she's interested in you by so
+much,”--he measured off a fraction of his little finger end--“she knows
+your next two moves ahead, to say nothing of your past half-dozen!
+I crossed her bows once and thought I had her at a disadvantage. She
+laughed at me. On my honor, my spine tingles yet at the mere thought of
+it! You've never met her? Never heard her laugh? Never seen her eyes?
+You've a treat in store for you--and a mauvais quat' d'heure! What'll
+you bet me she doesn't laugh you out of countenance the very first time
+you meet? Come now--what'll you bet?”
+
+“Not in the habit,” King answered, glancing at his watch. “Will you see
+about their rations, please, and the blankets? Thanks!”
+
+They went then in opposite directions and the prisoners were left
+squatting under the eyes and bayonets of a very suspicious prison guard,
+who made no secret of being ready for all conceivable emergencies. One
+enthusiast drew the cartridge out of his breech-chamber and licked it at
+intervals of a minute or two, to the very great interest of the Hillmen,
+who memorized every detail that by any stretch of imagination might be
+expected to improve their own shooting when they should get home again.
+
+King found his way on foot through a maze of streets to a palace where
+he was admitted through one door after another by sentries who saluted
+when he had whispered to them. He ended by sitting on the end of the bed
+of a gray-headed man who owns three titles and whose word is law between
+the borders of a province. To him he talked as one schoolboy to a bigger
+one, because the gray-haired man had understanding, and hence sympathy.
+
+“I don't envy you!” said he under the sheet. “There was an American
+here not long ago--most amusing man I ever talked to. He had the right
+expression. 'I do not desiderate that pie!' was his way of putting it.
+Good, don't you think?”
+
+All the while he talked the older man was writing on a pad that he held
+propped by his knees beneath the bedclothes, holding the paper tight to
+keep it from fluttering in the breeze of a big electric fan.
+
+“There's the release for your prisoners. Take it--and take them!
+Whatever possessed you to want such a gift?”
+
+“Orders, sir.”
+
+“Whose?”
+
+“His. He sent for me to Peshawur and gave me strict orders to work with,
+not against her. This was obvious.”
+
+“How obvious? It seems bewildering!”
+
+“Well, sir,--first place, she doesn't want to seem to be connected with
+me. Otherwise she'd have been more in evidence. Second place, she has
+left Delhi--his telegram and Saunders' men on oath notwithstanding--and
+she did not mean to leave those men. I imagine her best way to manage
+Hillmen is to keep promises, and they say she promised them. Third
+place, if those thirty men had been anything but her particular pet
+gang they'd either have been over the border or else in jail before
+now,--just like all the others. For some reason that I don't pretend to
+understand, she promised 'em more than she has been able to perform. So
+I provide performance. She gets the credit for it. I get a pretty good
+personal following at least as far as up the Khyber! Q.E.D., sir!”
+
+The man in bed nodded. “Not bad,” he said.
+
+“Didn't she make some effort to get those men away from Ali's?” King
+asked him. “I mean, didn't she try to get them dry-nursed by the sirkar
+in some way?”
+
+“Yes. She did. But it was difficult. In the first place, there didn't
+seem to be any particular hurry. They were eating Ali's substance. The
+scoundrel had to feed them as long as he kept them there, and we wanted
+that. We forbade her to pay their debts to Ali, because he has too
+urgent need of money just now. He is being pressed on account of debts
+of his own, and the pressure is making him take risks. He has been
+begging for money from the German agents. We know who they are, and we
+expect to make a big haul within a few hours now.”
+
+“Hope I didn't spoil things by butting in, sir.”
+
+“No. This is different. She wanted them arrested and locked up at a
+moment when the jails were all crowded. And then she wanted us to put
+'em into trucks and railroad 'em up North out of harm's way as she put
+it, and we happened to be too busy. The railway staff was overworked.
+Now things are getting straightened out. I felt it keenly not being able
+to oblige her, but she asked too much at the wrong moment! I would have
+done it if I could out of gratitude; it was she who tipped off for us
+most of the really dangerous men, and it was not her fault a few of them
+escaped. But we've all been working both tides under, King. Take me;
+this is my first night in bed in three, and here I am awake! No--nothing
+personal--glad to see you, but please understand. And I'm a leisured
+dilettante compared to most of the others. She must have known our fix.
+She shouldn't have asked.”
+
+King smiled. “Perfectly good opportunity for me, sir!” he said
+cheerfully.
+
+“So you seem to think. But look out for that woman, King--she's
+dangerous. She's got the brains of Asia coupled with Western energy! I
+think she's on our side, and I know he believes it; but watch her!”
+
+“Ham dekta hai!” King grinned. But the older man continued to look as if
+he pitied him.
+
+“If you get through alive, come and tell me about it afterward. Now,
+mind you do! I'm awfully interested, but as for envying you--”
+
+“Envy!” King almost squealed. He made the bed-springs rattle as he
+jumped. “I wouldn't swap jobs with General French, sir!”
+
+“Nor with me, I suppose!”
+
+“Nor with you, sir.
+
+“Good-by, then. Good-by, King, my boy. Good-by, Athelstan. Your
+brother's up the Khyber, isn't he? Give him my regards. Good-by!”
+
+Long before dawn the thirty prisoners and Ismail squatted in a little
+herd on the up-platform of a railway station, shepherded by King, who
+smoked a cheroot some twenty paces away, sitting on an unmarked chest of
+medicines. He seemed absorbed in a book on surgery that he had borrowed
+from a chance-met acquaintance in the go-down where he drew the medical
+supplies. Ismail sat on the one trunk that had been fetched from
+the other station and nursed the new hand-bag on his knees, picking
+everlastingly at the lock and wondering audibly what the bag contained
+to an accompaniment of low-growled sympathy.
+
+“I am his servant--for she said so--and he said so. As the custom is he
+gave me the key of the great bag--on which I sit--as he said himself,
+for safe-keeping. Then why--why in Allah's name--am I not to have the
+key of this bag too? Of this little bag that holds so little and is so
+light?”
+
+“It might be money in it?” hazarded one of the herd.
+
+“Nay, for that it is too light.”
+
+“Paper money!” suggested another man. “Hundies, with printing on the
+face that sahibs accept instead of gold.”
+
+“Nay, I know where his money is,” said Ismail. “He has but little with
+him.”
+
+“A razor would slit the leather easily,” suggested another man. “Then
+with a hand inserted carefully through the slit, so as not to widen it
+more than needful, a man could soon discover the contents. And later,
+the bag might be dropped or pushed violently against some sharp thing,
+to explain the cut.”
+
+Ismail shook his head.
+
+“Why? What could he do to thee?”
+
+“It is because I know not what he would do to me that I will do
+nothing!” answered Ismail. “He is not at all like other sahibs I have
+had dealings with. This man does unexpected things. This man is not mad,
+he has a devil. I have it in my heart to love this man. But such talk is
+foolishness. We are all her men!”
+
+“Aye! We are her men!” came the chorus, so that King looked up and
+watched them over the open book.
+
+At dawn, when the train pulled out, the thirty prisoners sat safely
+locked in third-class compartments. King lay lazily on the cushions of a
+first-class carriage in the rear, utterly absorbed in the principles of
+antiseptic dressing, as if that had anything to do with Prussians and
+the Khyber Pass; and Ismail attended to the careful packing of soda
+water bottles in the ice-box on the floor.
+
+“Shall I open the little bag, sahib?” he asked.
+
+King shook his head.
+
+Ismail shook the bag.
+
+“The sound is as of things of much importance all disordered,” he said
+sagely. “It might be well to rearrange.”
+
+“Put it over there!” King ordered. “Set it down!”
+
+Ismail obeyed and King laid his book down to light another of his black
+cheroots. The theme of antiseptics ceased to exercise its charm over
+him. He peeled off his tunic, changed his shirt and lay back in sweet
+contentment. Headed for the “Hills,” who would not be contented, who had
+been born in their very shadow?--in their shadow, of a line of Britons
+who have all been buried there!
+
+“The day after to-morrow I'll see snow!” he promised himself. And
+Ismail, grinning with yellow teeth through a gap in his wayward beard,
+understood and sympathized.
+
+Forward in the third-class carriages the prisoners hugged themselves and
+crooned as they met old landmarks and recognized the changing scenery.
+There was a new cleaner tang in the hot wind that spoke of the “Hills”
+ and home!
+
+Delhi had drawn them as Monte Carlo attracts the gamblers of all Europe.
+But Delhi had spewed them out again, and oh! how exquisite the promise
+of the “Hills” was, and the thunder of the train that hurried--the
+bumping wheels that sang Himahlayas--Himahlyas!--the air that blew in on
+them unscented--the reawakened memory--the heart's desire for the cold
+and the snow and the cruelty--the dark nights and the shrieking storms
+and the savagery of the Land of the Knife ahead!
+
+The journey to Peshawur, that ought to have been wearisome because
+they were everlastingly shunted into sidings to make way for roaring
+south-bound troop trains and kept waiting at every wayside station
+because the trains ahead of them were blocked three deep, was no less
+than a jubilee progress!
+
+Not a packed-in regiment went by that was not howled at by King's
+prisoners as if they were blood-brothers of every man in it. Many an
+officer whom King knew waved to him from a passing train.
+
+“Meet you in Berlin!” was a favorite greeting. And after that they would
+shout to him for news and be gone before King could answer.
+
+Many a man, at stations where the sidings were all full and nothing
+less than miracles seemed able to release the wedged-in trains, came
+and paced up and down a platform side by side with King. From them he
+received opinions, but no sympathy to speak of.
+
+“Got to stay in India? Hard lines!” Then the conversation would be
+bluntly changed, for in the height of one's enthusiasm it is not decent
+to hurt another fellow's feelings. Simple, simple as a little child is
+the clean-clipped British officer. “Look at that babu, now. Don't you
+think he's a marvel? Don't you think the Indian babu's a marvel? Sixty
+a month is more than the beggar gets, and there he goes, doing two
+jobs and straightening out tangled trains into the bargain! Isn't he a
+wonder, King?”
+
+“India's a wonderful country,” King would answer, that being one of his
+stock remarks. And to his credit be it written that he never laughed at
+one of them. He let them think they were more fortunate than he, with
+manlier, bloodier work to do.
+
+Peshawur, when they reached it at last, looked dusty and bleak in the
+comfortless light of Northern dawn. But the prisoners crowed and crooned
+it a greeting, and there was not much grumbling when King refused to
+unlock their compartment doors. Having waited thus long, they could
+endure a few more hours in patience, now that they could see and smell
+their “Hills” at last.
+
+And there was the general again, not in a dog-cart this time, but
+furiously driven in a motor-car, roaring and clattering into the station
+less than two minutes after the train arrived. He was out of the car,
+for all his age and weight, before it had come to a stand. He took one
+steady look at King and then at the prisoners before he returned King's
+salute.
+
+“Good!” he said. And then, as if that were not enough: “Excellent! Don't
+let 'em out, though, to chew the rag with people on the platform. Keep
+'em in!”
+
+“They're locked in, sir.”
+
+“Excellent! Come and walk up and down with me.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+
+     Death roosts in the Khyber while he preens his wings!
+     --Native Proverb
+
+
+“Seen her?” asked the general, with his hands behind him.
+
+“No,” said King, looking sharply sidewise at him and walking stride for
+stride. His hands were behind him, too, and one of them covered the gold
+bracelet on his other wrist.
+
+The general looked equally sharply sidewise.
+
+“Nor've I,” he said. “She called me up over the phone yesterday to ask
+for facilities for her man Rewa Gunga, and he was in here later. He's
+waiting for you at the foot of the Pass--camped near the fort at Jamrud
+with your bandobast all ready. She's on ahead--wouldn't wait.”
+
+King listened in silence, and his prisoners, watching him through the
+barred compartment windows, formed new and golden opinions of him, for
+it is common knowledge in the “Hills” that when a burra sahib speaks
+to a chota sahib, the chota sahib ought to say, “Yes, sir, oh, yes!” at
+very short intervals. Therefore King could not be a chota sahib after
+all. So much the better. The “Hills” ever loved to deal with men in
+authority, just as they ever despised underlings.
+
+“What made you go back for the prisoners?” the general asked. “Who gave
+you that cue?”
+
+“It's a safe rule never to do what the other man expects, sir, and Rewa
+Gunga expected me to travel by his train.”
+
+“Was that your only reason?”
+
+“No, sir. I had general reasons. None of 'em specific. Where natives
+have a finger in the pie there's always something left undone at the
+last minute.”
+
+“But what made you investigate those prisoners?”
+
+“Couldn't imagine why thirty men should be singled out for special
+treatment. Rewa Gunga told me they were still at large in Delhi.
+Couldn't guess why. Had 'em arrested so's to be able to question 'em.
+That's all, sir.”
+
+“Not nearly all!” said the general. “You realize by now, I suppose, that
+they're her special men--special personal following?”
+
+“Guessed something of that sort.”
+
+“Well--she's clever. It occurred to her that the safest way to get
+'em up North was to have 'em arrested and deported. That would avoid
+interference and delay and would give her a chance to act deliverer at
+this end, and so make 'em grateful to her--you see? Rewa Gunga told me
+all this, you understand. He seems to think she's semi-divine. He was
+full of her cleverness in having thought of letting 'em all get into
+debt at a house of ill repute, so as to have 'em at hand when she wanted
+'em.”
+
+“She must have learned that trick from our merchant marine,” said King.
+
+“Maybe. She's clever. She asked me over the phone whether her thirty men
+had started North. I sent a telegram in cypher to find out. The answer
+was that you had found 'em and rounded 'em up and were bringing 'em with
+you. When she called me up on the phone the second time I told her so,
+and I heard her chuckle with delight. So I emphasized the point of your
+having discovered 'em and saved 'em every wit whole and all that kind of
+thing. I asked her to come and see me, but she wouldn't,--said she was
+disguised and particularly did not want to be recognized, which
+was reasonable enough. She sent Rewa Gunga instead. Now, this seems
+important:
+
+“Before I sent you down to Delhi--before I sent for you at all--I told
+her what I meant to do, and I never in my life knew a woman raise such
+terrific objections to working with a man. As it happened her objections
+only confirmed my determination to send for you, and before she went
+down to Delhi to clean up I told her flatly she would either have to
+work with you or else stay in India for the duration of the war.”
+
+The general did not notice that King was licking his lips. Nor, if
+he had noticed King's hand that now was in front of him pressing on
+something under his shirt, could he have guessed that the something
+was a gold-hilted knife with a bronze blade. King grunted in token of
+attention, and the general continued.
+
+“She gave in finally, but I felt nervous about it. Now, without your
+getting sight of her--you say you haven't seen her?--her whole attitude
+has changed! What have you done? Bringing up her thirty men seems a
+little enough thing. Yet, she swears by you! Used to swear at you, and
+now says you're the only officer in the British army with enough brains
+to fill a helmet! Says she wouldn't go up the Khyber without you! Says
+you're indispensable! Sent Rewa Gunga round to me with orders to
+make sure I don't change my mind about you! What have you done to
+her--bewitched her?”
+
+“Done nothing,” said King.
+
+“Well, keep on doing nothing in the same style and the world shall
+render you its best jobs, one after the other, in sequence! You've made
+a good beginning!”
+
+“Know anything of Rewa Gunga, sir?”
+
+“Nothing, except that he's her man. She trusts him, so we've got to, and
+you've got to take him up the Khyber with you. What she orders, he'll
+do, or you may take it from me she would never have left him behind.
+As long as she is on our side you will be pretty safe in trusting Rewa
+Gunga. And she has got to be on our side. Got to be! She's the only key
+we've got to Khinjan, and hell is brewing there this minute! She dare
+unlock the gates and ride the devil down the Khyber if she thought it
+worth her while! You're to go up the Khyber after her to convince her
+that there are better mounts than the devil and better fun than playing
+with hell-fire! The Rangar told me he had given you her passport--that
+right?”
+
+As they turned at the end of the platform King bared his wrist and
+showed the gold bracelet.
+
+“Good!” said the general, but King thought his face clouded. “That thing
+is worth more than a hundred men. Jack Allison wore that same bracelet,
+unless I'm much mistaken, on his way down in disguise from Bukhara. So
+did another man we both knew; but he died. Be sure not to forget to give
+it back to her when the show's over, King.”
+
+King nodded and grunted. “What's the news from Khinjan, sir?”
+
+“Nothing specific, except that the place is filling up. You remember
+what I told you about the 'Heart of the Hills' being in Khinjan? Well,
+they say now that the 'Heart of the Hills' has been awake for a long
+time, and that when the heart stirs the body does not lie quiet long. No
+use trying to guess what they mean; go and find out. And remember--the
+whole armed force at my disposal in this Province isn't more than enough
+to tempt the tribes to conclusions! It's a case for diplomacy. It's a
+case where diplomacy must not fail.”
+
+King said nothing, but the chin-strap mark on his cheek and chin grew
+slightly whiter, as it always does under the stress of emotion. He
+can not control it, and he has dyed it more than once on the eve of
+happenings, there being no more wisdom in wearing feelings on one's face
+than on a sleeve.
+
+“Here comes your engine,” said the general. “Well--there are two
+battalions of Khyber Rifles up the Pass and they're about at full
+strength. They've got word already that you are gazetted to them.
+They'll expect you. By the way, you've a brother in the K.R., haven't
+you?”
+
+“At Ali Masjid, sir.”
+
+“Give him my regards when you see him, will you?”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“There's your engine whistling. You'd better hurry, Good-by, my boy. Get
+word to me whenever possible. Good luck to you! Regards to your brother!
+Good-by!”
+
+King saluted and stood watching while the general hurried to the waiting
+motor-car. When the car whirled away in a din of dust he returned
+leisurely to the train that had been shortened to three coaches. Then he
+gave the signal to start up the spur-track, that leads to Jamrud, where
+a fort cowers in the very throat of the dreadfulest gorge in Asia--the
+Khyber Pass.
+
+It was not a long journey, nor a very slow one, for there was nothing to
+block the way except occasional men with flags, who guarded culverts
+and little bridges. The Germans would know better than to waste time or
+effort on blowing up that track, but there might be Northern gentlemen
+at large, out to do damage for the sport of it, and the sepoys all along
+the line were posted in twos, and awake.
+
+It was low-tide under the Himalayas. The flood that was draining India
+of her armed men had left Jamrud high and dry with a little nondescript
+force stranded there, as it were, under a British major and some native
+officers. There were no more pomp and circumstance; no more of the
+reassuring thunder of gathering regiments, nor for that matter any more
+of that unarmed native helplessness that so stiffens the backs of the
+official English.
+
+Frowning over Jamrud were the lean “Hills,” peopled by the fiercest
+fighting men on earth, and the clouds that hung over the Khyber's course
+were an accent to the savagery.
+
+But King smiled merrily as he jumped out of the train, and Rewa Gunga,
+who was there to meet him, advanced with outstretched hand and a smile
+that would have melted snow on the distant peaks if he had only looked
+the other way.
+
+“Welcome, King sahib!” he laughed, with the air of a skilled fencer who
+admires another, better one. “I shall know better another time and let
+you keep in front of me! No more getting first into a train and settling
+down for the night! It may not be easy to follow you, and I suspect it
+isn't, but at least it jolly well can't be such a job as leading you! I
+trust you had a comfortable journey?”
+
+“Thanks,” said King, shaking hands with him, and then turning away to
+unlock the carriage doors that held his prisoners in. They were baying
+now like wolves to be free, and they surged out, like wolves from a
+cage, to clamor round the Rangar, pawing him and struggling to be first
+to ask him questions.
+
+“Nay, ye mountain people; nay!” he laughed. “I, too, am from the plains!
+What do I know of your families or of your feuds? Am I to be torn to
+pieces to make a meal?”
+
+At that Ismail interfered, with the aid of an ash pick-handle,
+chance-found beside the track.
+
+“Hill-bastards!” he howled at them, beating at them as if they were
+sheaves and his cudgel were a flail. “Sons of nameless mothers!
+Forgotten of God! Shameless! Brood of the evil one! Hands off!”
+
+King had to stop him, not that he feared trouble, for they did not seem
+to resent either abuse or cudgeling in the least--and that in itself was
+food for thought; but broken shoulders are no use for carrying loads.
+
+Laughing as if the whole thing was the greatest joke imaginable, Rewa
+Gunga fell into stride beside King and led him away in the direction of
+some tents.
+
+“She is up the Pass ahead of us,” he announced. “She was in the deuce of
+a hurry, I can assure you. She wanted to wait and meet you, but matters
+were too jolly well urgent, and we shall have our bally work cut out to
+catch her, you can bet! But I have everything ready--tents and beds and
+stores--everything!”
+
+King looked over his shoulder to make sure that Ismail was bringing the
+little leather bag along.
+
+“So have I,” he said quietly.
+
+“I have horses,” said Rewa Gunga, “and mules and--”
+
+“How did she travel up the Khyber?” King asked him, and the Rangar
+spared him a curious sidewise glance.
+
+“On a horse. You should have seen the horse!”
+
+“What escort had she?”
+
+“She?”
+
+Rewa Gunga chuckled and then suddenly grew serious.
+
+“The 'Hills' are her escort, King sahib. She is mistress in the 'Hills.'
+There isn't a murdering ruffian who would not lie down and let her walk
+on him! She rode away alone on a thoroughbred mare and she jolly well
+left me the mare's double on which to follow her. Come and look.”
+
+Not far from where the tents had been pitched in a cluster a string of
+horses winnied at a picket rope. King saw the two good horses ready for
+himself, and ten mules beside them that would have done credit to any
+outfit. But at the end of the line, pawing at the trampled grass, was a
+black mare that made his eyes open wide. Once in a hundred years or so
+a viceroy's cup, or a Derby is won by an animal that can stand and look
+and move as that mare did.
+
+“Just watch!” the Rangar boasted; hooking up the bit and throwing off
+the blanket. And as he mounted into the native-made rough-hide saddle
+a shout went up from the fort and native officers and half the soldiery
+came out to watch the poetry of motion.
+
+The mare was not the only one worth watching; her rider shared the
+praise. There was something unexpected, although not in the least
+ungainly, about the Rangar's seat in the saddle that was not the
+ordinary, graceful native balance and yet was full of grace. King
+ascribed the difference to the fact that the Rangar had seen no military
+service, and before the inadequacy of that explanation had asserted
+itself he had already forgotten to criticize in sheer admiration.
+
+There was none of the spurring and back-reining that some native bloods
+of India mistake for horse-manship. The Rangar rode with sympathy and
+most consummate skill, and the result was that the mare behaved as if
+she were part of him, responding to his thoughts, putting a foot where
+he wished her to put it and showing her wildest turn of speed along a
+level stretch in instant response to his mood.
+
+“Never saw anything better,” King admitted ungrudgingly, as the mare
+came back at a walk to her picket rope.
+
+“There is only one mare like this one,” laughed the Rangar. “She has
+her.”
+
+“What'll you take for this one?” King asked him. “Name your price!”
+
+“The mare is hers. You must ask her. Who knows? She is generous. There
+is nobody on earth more generous than she when she cares to be. See what
+you wear on your wrist!”
+
+“That is a loan,” said King, uncovering the bracelet. “I shall give it
+back to her when we meet.”
+
+“See what she says when you meet!” laughed the Rangar, taking a
+cigarette from his jeweled case with an air and smiling as he lighted
+it. “There is your tent, sahib.”
+
+He motioned with the cigarette toward a tent pitched quite a hundred
+yards away from the others and from the Rangar's own; with the Rangar's
+and the cluster of tents for the men it made an equilateral triangle, so
+that both he and the Rangar had privacy.
+
+With a nod of dismissal, King walked over to inspect the bandobast, and
+finding it much more extravagant than he would have dreamed of providing
+for himself, he lit one of his black cheroots, and with hands clasped
+behind him strolled over to the fort to interview Courtenay, the officer
+commanding.
+
+It so happened that Courtenay had gone up the Pass that morning with
+his shotgun after quail. He came back into view, followed by his little
+ten-man escort just as King neared the fort, and King timed his approach
+so as to meet him. The men of the escort were heavily burdened; he could
+see that from a distance.
+
+“Hello!” he said by the fort gate, cheerily, after he had saluted and
+the salute had been returned.
+
+“Oh, hello, King! Glad to see you. Heard you were coming, of course.
+Anything I can do?”
+
+“Tell me anything you know,” said King, offering him a cheroot which the
+other accepted. As he bit off the end they stood facing each other, so
+that King could see the oncoming escort and what it carried. Courtenay
+read his eyes.
+
+“Two of my men!” he said. “Found 'em up the Pass. Gazi work I think.
+They were cut all to pieces. There's a big lashkar gathering somewhere
+in the 'Hills,' and it might have been done by their skirmishers, but I
+don't think so.”
+
+“A lashkar besides the crowd at Khinjan?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Who's supposed to be leading it?”
+
+“Can't find out,” said Courtenay. Then he stepped aside to give orders
+to the escort. They carried the dead bodies into the fort.
+
+“Know anything of Yasmini?” King asked, when the major stood in front of
+him again.
+
+“By reputation, of course, yes. Famous person--sings like a
+bulbul--dances like the devil--lived in Delhi--mean her?”
+
+King nodded. “When did she start up the Pass?” he asked.
+
+“How d'ye mean?” Courtenay demanded sharply.
+
+“To-day or yesterday?”
+
+“She didn't start! I know who goes up and who comes down. Would you care
+to glance over the list?”
+
+“Know anything of Rewa Gunga?” King asked him.
+
+“Not much. Tried to buy his mare. Seen the animal? Gad! I'd give a
+year's pay for that beast! He wouldn't sell and I don't blame him.”
+
+“He goes up the Khyber with me,” said King. “He's what the Turks would
+call my youldash.”
+
+“And the Persians a hamrah, eh? There was an American here lately--merry
+fellow--and I was learning his language. Side partner's the word in
+the States. I can imagine a worse side partner than that same man Rewa
+Gunga--much worse.”
+
+“He told me just now,” said King, “that Yasmini went up the Pass
+unescorted, mounted on a mare the very dead spit of the black one you
+say you wanted to buy.”
+
+Courtenay whistled.
+
+“I'm sorry, King. I'm sorry to say he lied.”
+
+“Will you come and listen while I have it out with him?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+King threw away his less-than-half-consumed cheroot and they started to
+walk together toward King's camp. After a few minutes they arrived at a
+point from which they could see the prisoners lined up in a row facing
+Rewa Gunga. A less experienced eye than King's or Courtenay's could have
+recognized their attitude of reverent obedience.
+
+“He'll make a good adjutant for you, that man,” said Courtenay; but King
+only grunted.
+
+At sight of them Ismail left the line and came hurrying toward them with
+long mountainman's strides.
+
+“Tell Rewa Gunga sahib that I wish to speak to him!” King called, and
+Ismail hurried back again.
+
+Within two minutes the Rangar stood facing them, looking more at ease
+than they.
+
+“I was cautioning those savages!” he explained. “They're an escort, but
+they need a reminder of the fact, else they might jolly well imagine
+themselves mountain goats and scatter among the 'Hills'!”
+
+He drew out his wonderful cigarette case and offered it open to
+Courtenay, who hesitated, and then helped himself. King refused.
+
+“Major Courtenay has just told me,” said King, “that nobody resembling
+Yasmini has gone up the Pass recently. Can you explain?”
+
+“You see, I've been watching the Pass,” explained Courtenay.
+
+The Rangar shook his head, blew smoke through his nose and laughed.
+
+“And you did not see her go?” he said, as if he were very much amused.
+
+“No,” said Courtenay. “She didn't go.”
+
+“Can you explain?” asked King rather stiffly.
+
+“Do you mean, can I explain why the major failed to see her? 'Pon my
+soul, King sahib, d'you want me to insult the man? Yasmini is too jolly
+clever for me, or for any other man I ever met; and the major's a
+man, isn't he? He may pack the Khyber so full of men that there's only
+standing room and still she'll go up without his leave if she chooses!
+There is nobody like Yasmini in all the world!”
+
+The Rangar was looking past them, facing the great gorge that lets the
+North of Asia trickle down into India and back again when weather and
+the tribes permit. His eyes had become interested in the distance. King
+wondered why--and looked--and saw. Courtenay saw, too.
+
+“Hail that man and bring him here!” he ordered.
+
+Ismail, keeping his distance with ears and eyes peeled, heard instantly
+and hurried off. He went like the wind and all three watched in silence
+for ten minutes while he headed off a man near the mouth of the Pass,
+stopped him, spoke to him and brought him along. Fifteen minutes later
+an Afridi stood scowling in front of them with a little letter in
+a cleft stick in his hand. He held it out and Courtenay took it and
+sniffed.
+
+“Well--I'll be blessed! A note”--sniff--sniff--“on scented paper!”
+ Sniff--sniff! “Carried down the Khyber in a split stick! Take it,
+King--it's addressed to you.”
+
+King obeyed and sniffed too. It smelt of something far more subtle than
+musk. He recognized the same strange scent that had been wafted from
+behind Yasmini's silken hangings in her room in Delhi. As he unfolded
+the note--it was not sealed--he found time for a swift glance at Rewa
+Gunga's face. The Rangar seemed interested and amused.
+
+        “Dear Captain King,” the note ran, in English.  “Kindly
+        be quick to follow me, because there is much talk of a
+        lashkar getting ready for a raid.  I shall wait for
+        you in Khinjan, whither my messenger shall show the way.
+        Please let him keep his rifle.  Trust him, and Rewa
+        Gunga and my thirty whom you brought with you.  The
+        messenger's name is Darya Khan.
+
+                “Your servant,
+
+                        “Ysamini.”
+
+He passed the note to Courtenay, who read it and passed it back.
+
+“Are you the messenger who is to show this sahib the road to Khinjan?”
+ he asked.
+
+“Aye!”
+
+“But you are one of three who left here and went up the Pass at dawn! I
+recognize you.”
+
+“Aye!” said the man. “She met me and gave me this letter and sent me
+back.”
+
+“How great is the lashkar that is forming?” asked Courtenay.
+
+“Some say three thousand men. They speak truth. They who say five
+thousand are liars. There is a lashkar.”
+
+“And she went up alone?” King murmured aloud in Pashtu.
+
+“Is the moon alone in the sky?” the fellow asked, and King smiled at
+him.
+
+“Let us hurry after her, sahib!” urged Rewa Gunga, and King looked
+straight into his eyes, that were like pools of fire, just as they had
+been that night in the room in Delhi. He nodded and the Rangar grinned.
+
+“Better wait until dawn,” advised Courtenay. “The Pass is supposed to be
+closed at dusk.”
+
+“I shall have to ask for special permission, sir.”
+
+“Granted, of course.”
+
+“Then, we'll start at eight to-night!” said King, glancing at his watch
+and snapping the gold case shut.
+
+“Dine with me,” said Courtenay.
+
+“Yes, please. Got to pack first. Daren't trust anybody else.”
+
+“Very well. We'll dine in my tent at six-thirty,” said Courtenay. “So
+long!”
+
+“So long, sir,” said King, and each went about his own business, King
+with the Rangar, and Ismail and all thirty prisoners at his heels, and
+Courtenay alone, but that much more determined.
+
+“I'll find out,” the major muttered, “how she got up the Pass without my
+knowing it. Somebody's tail shall be twisted for this!”
+
+But he did not find out until King told him, and that was many days
+later, when a terrible cloud no longer threatened India from the North.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+
+     Oh, a broken blade,
+     And an empty bag,
+     And a sodden kit,
+     And a foundered nag,
+     And a whimpering wind
+     Are more or less
+     Ground for a gentleman's distress.
+     Yet the blade will cut,
+     (He should swing with a will!)
+     And the emptiest bag
+     He may readiest fill;
+     And the nag will trot
+     If the man has a mind,
+     So the kit he may dry
+     In the whimpering wind.
+     Shades of a gallant past--confess!
+     How many fights were won with less?
+
+
+“I think I envy you!” said Courtenay.
+
+They were seated in Courtenay's tent, face to face across the low table,
+with guttering lights between and Ismail outside the tent handing plates
+and things to Courtenay's servant inside.
+
+“You're about the first who has admitted it,” said King.
+
+Not far from them a herd of pack-camels grunted and bubbled after the
+evening meal. The evening breeze brought the smoke of dung fires down
+to them, and an Afghan--one of the little crowd of traders who had come
+down with the camels three hours ago--sang a wailing song about his
+lady-love. Overhead the sky was like black velvet, pierced with silver
+holes.
+
+“You see, you can't call our end of this business war--it's sport,”
+ said Courtenay. “Two battalions of Khyber Rifles, hired to hold the Pass
+against their own relations. Against them a couple of hundred thousand
+tribesmen, very hungry for loot, armed with up-to-date rifles, thanks
+to Russia yesterday and Germany to-day, and all perfectly well aware
+that a world war is in progress. That's sport, you know--not the 'image
+and likeness of war' that Jorrocks called it, but the real red root. And
+you've got a mystery thrown in to give it piquancy. I haven't found out
+yet how Yasmini got up the Pass without my knowledge. I thought it was a
+trick. Didn't believe she'd gone. Yet all my men swear they know she
+has gone, and not one of them will own to having seen her go! What d'you
+think of that?”
+
+“Tell you later,” said King, “when I've been in the 'Hills' a while.”
+
+“What d'you suppose I'm going to say, eh? Shall I enter in my diary that
+a chit came down the Pass from a woman who never went up it? Or shall I
+say she went up while I was looking the other way?”
+
+“Help yourself!” laughed King.
+
+“Laugh on! I envy you! If the worst comes to the worst, you'll have
+had the best end of it. If you fail up there in the 'Hills' you'll get
+scoughed and be done with you. You'll at least have had a show. All we
+shall know of your failure will be the arrival of the flood! We'll be
+swamped ingloriously--shot, skinned alive and crucified without a chance
+of doing anything but wait for it! You're in luck--you can move about
+and keep off the fidgets!”
+
+For a while, as he ate Courtenay's broiled quail, King did not answer.
+But the merry smile had left his eyes and he seemed for once to be
+letting his mind dwell on conditions as they concerned himself.
+
+“How many men have you at the fort?” he asked at last.
+
+“Two hundred. Why?”
+
+“All natives?”
+
+“To a man.”
+
+        “Like 'em?”
+
+“What's the use of talking?” answered Courtenay. “You know what it means
+when men of an alien race stand up to you and grin when they salute.
+They're my own.”
+
+King nodded. “Die with you, eh?”
+
+“To the last man,” said Courtenay quietly with that conviction that can
+only be arrived at in one way, and that not the easiest.
+
+“I'd die alone,” said King. “It'll be lonely in the 'Hills.' Got any
+more quail?”
+
+And that was all he ever did say on that subject, then or at any other
+time.
+
+“Here's to her!” laughed Courtenay at last, rising and holding up his
+glass. “We can't explain her, so let's drink to her! No heel-taps!
+Here's to Rewa Gunga's mistress, Yasmini!”
+
+“May she show good hunting!” answered King, draining his glass; and it
+was his first that day. “If it weren't for that note of hers that came
+down the Pass, and for one or two other things, I'd almost believe her
+a myth--one of those supposititious people who are supposed to express
+some ideal or other. Not an hallucination, you understand--nor exactly
+an embodied spirit, either. Perhaps the spirit of a problem. Let y be
+the Khyber district, z the tribes, and x the spirit of the rumpus. Find
+x. Get me?”
+
+“Not exactly. Got quinine in your kit, by the way?”
+
+“Plenty, thanks.”
+
+“What shall you do first after you get up the Pass? Call on your brother
+at Ali Masjid? He's likely to know a lot by the time you get there.”
+
+“Not sure,” said King. “May and may not. I'd like to see him. Haven't
+seen the old chap in a donkey's age. How is he?”
+
+“Well two days ago,” said Courtenay. “What's your general plan?”
+
+“Hunt!” said King. “Hunt for x and report. Hunt for the spirit of the
+coming ruction and try to scrag it! Live in the open when I can, sleep
+with the lice when it rains or snows, eat dead goat and bad bread, I
+expect; scratch myself when I'm not looking, and take a tub at the first
+opportunity. When you see me on my way back, have a bath made ready for
+me, will you--and keep to windward!”
+
+“Certainly!” said Courtenay. “What's the Rangar going to do with that
+mare of his? Suppose he'll leave her at Ali Masjid? He'll have to leave
+her somewhere on the way. She'll get stolen. Gad! That's the brightest
+notion yet! I'll make a point of buying her from the first horse-thief
+who comes traipsing down the Pass!”
+
+“Here's wishing you luck!” said King. “It's time to go, sir.”
+
+He rose, and Courtenay walked with him to where his party waited in the
+dark, chilled by the cold wind whistling down the Khyber. Rewa Gunga
+sat, mounted, at their head, and close to him his personal servant rode
+another horse. Behind them were the mules, and then in a cluster, each
+with a load of some sort on his head, were the thirty prisoners, and
+Ismail took charge of them officiously. Darya Khan, the man who had
+brought the letter down the Pass, kept close to Ismail.
+
+“Are you armed?” King asked, as soon as he could see the whites of the
+Rangar's eyes through the gloom.
+
+“You jolly well bet I am!” the Rangar laughed.
+
+King mounted, and Courtenay shook hands; then he went to Rewa Gunga's
+side and shook hands with him, too.
+
+“Good-by!” called King.
+
+“Good-by and good luck!”
+
+“Forward! March!” King ordered, and the little procession started.
+
+“Oh, men of the 'Hills,' ye look like ghosts--like graveyard ghosts!”
+ jeered Courtenay, as they all filed past him. “Ye look like dead men,
+going to be judged!”
+
+Nobody answered. They strode behind the horses, with the swift silent
+strides of men who are going home to the “Hills”; but even they, born in
+the “Hills”' and knowing them as a wolf-pack knows its hunting-ground,
+were awed by the gloom of Khyber-mouth ahead. King's voice was the first
+to break the silence, and he did not speak until Courtenay was out of
+ear-shot. Then:
+
+“Men of the 'Hills'!” he called. “Kuch dar nahin hai!”
+
+“Nahin hai! Hah!” shouted Ismail. “So speaks a man! Hear that, ye
+mountain folk! He says, 'There is no such thing as fear!'”
+
+In his place in the lead, King whistled softly to himself; but he drew
+an automatic pistol from its place beneath his armpit and transferred it
+to a readier position.
+
+Fear or no fear, Khyber-mouth is haunted after dark by the men whose
+blood-feuds are too reeking raw to let them dare go home and for whom
+the British hangman very likely waits a mile or two farther south. It is
+one of the few places in the world where a pistol is better than a thick
+stick.
+
+Boulder, crag and loose rock faded into gloom behind; in front on both
+hands ragged hillsides were beginning to close in; and the wind, whose
+home is in Allah's refuse heap, whistled as it searched busily among
+the black ravines. Then presently the shadow of the thousand-foot-high
+Khyber walls began to cover them, and King drew rein to count them all
+and let them close up. To have let them straggle after that point would
+be tantamount to murder probably.
+
+“Ride last!” he ordered Rewa Gunga. “You've got the only other pistol,
+haven't you?”
+
+Darya Khan, who had brought the letter, had a rifle; so King gave him a
+roving commission on the right flank.
+
+They moved on again after five minutes, in the same deep silence,
+looking like ghosts in search of somebody to ferry them across the Styx.
+Only the glow of King's cheroot, and the lesser, quicker fire of Rewa
+Gunga's cigarette, betrayed humanity, except that once or twice King's
+horse would put a foot wrong and be spoken to.
+
+“Hold up!”
+
+But from five or ten yards away that might have been a new note in the
+gaining wind or even nothing.
+
+After a while King's cheroot went out, and he threw it away. A little
+later Rewa Gunga threw away his cigarette. After that, the veriest
+five-year-old among the Zakka Khels, watching sleepless over the rim of
+some stone watch-tower, could have taken oath that the Khyber's unburied
+dead were prowling in search of empty graves. Probably their uncanny
+silence was their best protection; but Rewa Gunga chose to break it
+after a time.
+
+“King sahib!” he called softly, repeating it louder and more loudly
+until King heard him. “Slowly! Not so fast!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+King did not check speed by a fraction, but the Rangar legged his mare
+into a canter and forced him to pull out to the left of the track and
+make room.
+
+“Because, sahib, there are men among those boulders, and to go too
+fast is to make them think you are afraid! To seem afraid is to invite
+attack! Can we defend ourselves, with three firearms between us? Look!
+What was that?”
+
+They were at the point where the road begins to lead up-hill, westward,
+leaving the bed of a ravine and ascending to join the highway built
+by British engineers. Below, to left and right, was pit-mouth gloom,
+shadows amid shadows, full of eerie whisperings, and King felt the short
+hair on his neck begin to rise.
+
+So he urged his horse forward, because what Rewa Gunga said is true.
+There is only one surer key to trouble in the Khyber than to seem
+afraid--and that is to be afraid. And to have sat his horse there
+listening to the Rangar's whisperings and trying to see through shadows
+would have been to invite fear, of the sort that grows into panic.
+
+The Rangar followed him, close up, and both horse and mare sensed
+excitement. The mare's steel shoes sent up a shower of sparks, and King
+turned to rebuke the Rangar. Yet he did not speak. Never, in all the
+years he had known India and the borderland beyond, had he seen eyes so
+suggestive of a tiger's in the dark! Yet they were not the same color as
+a tiger's, nor the same size, nor the same shape!
+
+“Look, sahib!”
+
+“Look at what?”
+
+“Look!”
+
+After a second or two he caught a glimpse of bluish flame that flashed
+suddenly and died again, somewhere below to the right. Then all at once
+the flame burned brighter and steadier and began to move and to grow.
+
+“Halt!” King thundered; and his voice was as sharp and unexpected as a
+pistol-crack. This was something tangible, that a man could tackle--a
+perfect antidote for nerves.
+
+The blue light continued on a zigzag course, as if a man were running
+among boulders with an unusual sort of torch; and as there was no answer
+King drew his pistol, took about thirty seconds' aim and fired. He fired
+straight at the blue light.
+
+It vanished instantly, into measureless black silence.
+
+“Now you've jolly well done it, haven't you!”' the Rangar laughed in his
+ear. “That was her blue light--Yasmini's!”
+
+It was a minute before King answered, for both animals were all but
+frantic with their sense of their riders' state of mind; it needed
+horsemanship to get them back under control.
+
+“How do you know whose light it was?” King demanded, when the horse and
+mare were head to head again.
+
+“It was prearranged. She promised me a signal at the point where I am to
+leave the track!”
+
+“Where's that guide?” demanded King; and Darya Khan came forward out of
+the night, with his rifle cocked and ready.
+
+“Did she not say Khinjan is the destination?”'
+
+“Aye!” the fellow answered.
+
+“I know the way to Khinjan. That is not it. Get down there and find out
+what that light was. Shout back what you find!”
+
+The man obeyed instantly and sprang down into darkness. But King had
+hardly given the order when shame told him he had sent a native on an
+errand he had no liking for himself.
+
+“Come back!” he shouted. “I'll go.”
+
+But the man had gone, slipping noiselessly in the dark from rock to
+rock.
+
+So King drove both spurs home, and set his unwilling horse to scrambling
+downward at an angle he could not guess, into blackness he could feel,
+trusting the animal to find a footing where his own eyes could make out
+nothing.
+
+To his disgust he heard the Rangar follow immediately. To his even
+greater disgust the black mare overtook him. And even then, with his own
+mount stumbling and nearly pitching him headforemost at each lurch, he
+was forced to admire the mare's goatlike agility, for she descended into
+the gorge in running leaps, never setting a wrong foot. When he and his
+horse reached the bottom at last he found the Rangar waiting for him.
+
+“This way, sahib!”
+
+The next he knew sparks from the black mare's heels were kicking up in
+front of him, and a wild ride had begun such as he had never yet dreamed
+of. There was no catching up, for the black mare could gallop two to
+his horse's one; but he set his teeth and followed into solid night,
+trusting ear, eye, guesswork and the God of Secret Service men who loves
+the reckless.
+
+Once in a minute or so he would see a spark, or a shower of them, where
+the mare took a turn in a hurry. Once in every two or three minutes he
+caught sight for a second of the same blue siren light that had started
+the race. He suspected that there were many torches placed at intervals.
+It could not be one man running. More than once it occurred to him to
+draw and shoot, but that thought died into the darkness whence it came.
+Never once while he rode did he forget to admire the Rangar's courage or
+the black mare's speed.
+
+His own horse developed a speed and stamina he had not suspected, and
+probably the Rangar did not dare extend the mare to her limit in the
+dark; at all events, for ten, perhaps fifteen, minutes of breathless
+galloping he almost made a race of it, keeping the Rangar, either within
+sight or sound.
+
+But then the mare swerved suddenly behind a boulder and was gone. He
+spurred round the same great rock a minute later, and was faced by a
+blank wall of shale that brought his horse up all standing. It led
+steep up for a thousand feet to the sky-line. There was not so much as a
+goat-track to show in which direction the mare had gone, nor a sound of
+any kind to guide him.
+
+He dismounted and stumbled about on foot for about ten minutes with his
+eyes two feet from the earth, trying to find some trace of hoof. Then he
+listened, with his ear to the ground. There was no result.
+
+He knew better than to shout, for that would sound like a cry of
+distress, and there is no mercy whatever in the “Hills” for lost
+wanderers, or for men who seem lost. He had not a doubt there were
+men with long jezails lurking not far away, to say nothing of those
+responsible for the blue torchlight.
+
+After some thought be mounted and began to hunt the way back,
+remembering turns and twists with a gift for direction that natives
+might well have envied him. He found his way back to the foot of the
+road at a trot, where ninety-nine men out of almost any hundred would
+have been lost hopelessly; and close to the road he overtook Darya Khan,
+hugging his rifle and staring about like a scorpion at bay.
+
+“Did you expect that blue light, and this galloping away?” he asked.
+
+“Nay, sahib; I knew nothing of it! I was told to lead the way to
+Khinjan.”
+
+“Come on, then!”
+
+He set his horse at the boulder-strewn slope and had to dismount to lead
+him at the end of half a minute. At the end of a minute both he and the
+messenger were hauling at the reins and the horse had grown frantic from
+fear of falling backward. He shouted for help, and Ismail and another
+man came leaping down, looking like the devils of the rocks, to lend
+their strength. Ismail tightened his long girdle and stung the other two
+with whiplash words, so that Darya Khan overcame prejudice to the point
+of stowing his rifle between some rocks and lending a hand. Then it took
+all four of them fifteen minutes to heave and haul the struggling animal
+to the level road above.
+
+There, with eyes long grown used to the dark, King stared about him,
+recovering his breath and feeling in his pockets for a fresh cheroot and
+matches. He struck a match and watched it to be sure his hand did not
+shake before he spoke, because one of Cocker's rules is that a man must
+command himself before trying it on others.
+
+“Where are the others?” he asked, when he was certain of himself.
+
+“Gone!” boomed Ismail, still panting, for he had heaved and dragged more
+stoutly than had all the rest together.
+
+King took a dozen pulls at the cheroot and stared about again. In the
+middle of the road stood his second horse, and three mules with his
+baggage, including the unmarked medicine chest. Close to them were
+three men, making the party now only six all told, including Darya Khan,
+himself and Ismail.
+
+“Gone whither?” he asked.
+
+“Whither?”
+
+Ismail's voice was eloquent of shocked surprise.
+
+“They followed! Was it then thy baggage on the other mules? Were they
+thy men? They led the mules and went!”
+
+“Who ordered them?”
+
+“Allah! Need the night be ordered to follow the Day?”
+
+“Who told them whither to go?”
+
+“Who told the moon where the night was?” Ismail answered.
+
+“And thou?”
+
+“I am thy man! She bade me be thy man!”
+
+“And these?”
+
+“Try them!”
+
+King bethought him of his wrist, that was heavy with the weight of gold
+on it. He drew back his sleeve and held it up.
+
+“May God be with thee!” boomed all five men at once, and the Khyber
+night gave back their voices, like the echoing of a well.
+
+King took his reins and mounted.
+
+“What now?” asked Ismail, picking up the leather bag that he regarded as
+his own particular charge.
+
+“Forward!” said King. “Come along!”
+
+He began to set a fairly fast pace, Ismail leading the spare horse and
+the others towing the mules along. Except for King, who was modern and
+out of the picture, they looked like Old Testament patriarchs, hurrying
+out of Egypt, as depicted in the illustrated Bibles of a generation
+ago--all leaning forward--each man carrying a staff--and none looking to
+the right or left.
+
+After a time the moon rose and looked at them from over a distant ridge
+that was thousands of feet higher than the ragged fringe of Khyber wall.
+The little mangy jackals threw up their heads to howl at it; and after
+that there was pale light diffused along the track, and they could
+see so well that King set a faster pace, and they breathed hard in the
+effort to keep up. He did not draw rein until it was nearly time for
+the Pass to begin narrowing and humping upward to the narrow gut at Ali
+Masjid. But then he halted suddenly. The jackals had ceased howling, and
+the very spirit of the Khyber seemed to hold its breath and listen.
+
+In that shuddersome ravine unusual sounds will rattle along sometimes
+from wall to wall and gully to gully, multiplying as they go, until
+night grows full of thunder. So it was now that they heard a staccato
+cannonade--not very loud yet, but so quick, so pulsating, so filling to
+the ears that he could judge nothing about the sound at all, except that
+whatever caused it must be round a corner out of sight.
+
+At first, for a few minutes King suspected it was Rewa Gunga's mare,
+galloping over hard rock away ahead of him. Then he knew it was a horse
+approaching. After that he became nearly sure he was mistaken altogether
+and that the drums were being beaten at a village--until he remembered
+there was no village near enough and no drums in any case.
+
+It was the behavior of the horse he rode, and of the led one and the
+mules, that announced at last beyond all question that a horse was
+coming down the Khyber in a hurry. One of the mules brayed until the
+whole gorge echoed with the insult, and a man hit him hard on the nose
+to silence him.
+
+King legged his horse into the shadow of a great rock. And after
+shepherding the men and mules into another shadow, Ismail came and held
+his stirrup, with the leather bag in the other hand. The bag fascinated
+him, because he did not know what was in it, and it was plain that he
+meant to cling to it until death or King should put an end to curiosity.
+
+King drew his pistol. Ismail drew in his breath with a hissing sound, as
+if he and not King were the marksman. King notched the foresight against
+the corner of a crag, at a height that ought to be an inch or two above
+an oncoming horse's ears, and Ismail nodded sagely. Whoever now should
+gallop round that rock would be obliged to cross the line of fire. Such
+are the vagaries of the Khyber's night echoes that it was a long five
+minutes yet before a man appeared at last, riding like the night wind,
+on a horse that seemed to be very nearly on his last legs. The beast was
+going wildly, sobbing, with straggled ears.
+
+Instead of speaking, King spurred out of the shadow and blocked the
+oncoming horseman's way, making his own horse meet the other shoulder to
+breast, knocking most of the remaining wind out of him. At risk of his
+own life, Ismail seized the man's reins. The sparks flew, and there
+was a growled oath; but the long and the short of it was that the rider
+squinted uncomfortably down the barrel of King's repeating pistol.
+
+“Give an account of yourself!” commanded King.
+
+The man did not answer. He was a jezailchi of the Khyber
+Rifles--hook-nosed as an osprey--black-bearded--with white teeth
+glistening out of a gap in the darkness of his lower face. And he was
+armed with a British government rifle, although that is no criterion
+in that borderland of professional thieves where many a man has offered
+himself for enlistment with a stolen government rifle in his grasp.
+
+The waler he rode was an officer's charger. The poor brute sobbed and
+heaved and sweated in his tracks as his rightful owner surely had never
+made him do.
+
+“Whither?” King demanded.
+
+“Jamrud!”
+
+The jezailchi growled the one-word answer with one eye on King, but the
+other eye still squinted down the pistol barrel warily.
+
+“Have you a letter?”
+
+The man did not answer.
+
+“You may speak to me. I am of your regiment. I am Captain King.”
+
+“That is a lie, and a poor one!” the fellow answered. “But a very little
+while ago I spoke with King sahib in Ali Masjid Fort, and he is no
+cappitin, he is leftnant. Therefore thou art a liar twice over--nay,
+three times! Thou art no officer of Khyber Rifles! I am a jezailchi, and
+I know them all!”
+
+“None the less,” said King, “I am an officer of the Khyber Rifles, newly
+appointed. I asked you, have you a letter?”
+
+“Aye!”
+
+“Let me see it.”
+
+“Nay!”
+
+“I order you!”
+
+“Nay! I am a true man! I will eat the letter rather!”
+
+“Tell me who wrote it, then.”
+
+But the fellow shook his head, still eying the pistol as if it were a
+snake about to strike.
+
+“I have eaten the salt!” he said. “May dogs eat me if I break faith! Who
+art thou, to ask me to break faith? An arrficer? That must be a lie!
+The letter is from him who wrote it, to whom I bear it--and that is my
+answer if I die this minute!”
+
+King let his reins fall and raised his left wrist until the moonlight
+glinted on the gold of his bracelet under the jezailchi's very eyes.
+
+“May God be with thee!” said the man at once.
+
+“From whom is your letter, and to whom?” asked King, wondering what the
+men in the clubs at home would say if they knew that a woman's bracelet
+could outweigh authority on British sod; for the Khyber Pass is as much
+British as the air is an eagle's or Korea Japanese, or Panama United
+States American, and the Khyber jezailchis are paid to help keep it so.
+
+“From the karnal sahib (colonel) at Landi Kotal, whose horse I ride,”
+ said the jezailchi slowly, “to the arrficer at Jamrud. To King sahib,
+the arrficer at Ali Masjid I bore a letter also, and left it as I
+passed.”
+
+“Had they no spare horse at Ali Masjid? That beast is foundered.”
+
+“There are two horses there, and both lame. The man who thou sayest is
+thy brother is heavy on horses.”
+
+King nodded. “What is in the letter?” he asked.
+
+“Nay! Have I eyes that can see through paper?”
+
+“Thou hast ears that can listen!” answered King.
+
+“In the letter that I left at Ali Masjid there is news of the lashkar
+that is gathering in the 'Hills,' above Ali Masjid and beyond Khinjan.
+King sahib is ordered to be awake and wary.”
+
+“And to lame no more horses jumping them over rocks!”
+
+“Nay, the karnal sahib said he is to ride after no more jackals with a
+spear!”
+
+“Same old game!” said King to himself. “What knowest thou of the lashkar
+that is gathering?”
+
+“I? Oh, a little. An uncle of mine, and three half-brothers, and a
+brother are of its number! One came at night to tempt me to join--but
+I have eaten the salt. It was I who first warned our karnal sahib. Now,
+let me by!”
+
+“Nay, wait!” ordered King. But he lowered his pistol point.
+
+To hold up a despatch rider was about as irregular as any proceeding
+could be; but it was within his province to find out how far the Khyber
+jezailchis could be trusted and within his power more than to make up
+the lost time. So that the irregularity did not trouble him much.
+
+“Does this other letter tell of the lashkar, too?”
+
+“Am I God, that I should know? But of what else should the karnal sahib
+write?”
+
+“What is the object of the rising?” King asked him next; and the man
+threw his head back to laugh like a wolf. Laughter, at night in the
+Khyber, is an insult. Ismail chattered into his beard; but King sat
+still.
+
+“Object? What but to force the Khyber and burst through into India and
+loot? What but to plunder, now that English backs are turned the other
+way?”
+
+“Who said their backs are turned?” demanded King.
+
+“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ho! Hear him!”
+
+The Khyber echoed the mockery away and away into the distance.
+
+“Their backs are this way and their faces that! The kites know it! The
+vultures know it! The little jackals know it! The little butchas in
+the valley villages all know it! Ask the rocks, and the grass--the very
+water running from the 'Hills'! They all know that the English fight for
+life!”
+
+“And the Khyber jezailchis? What of them?” King asked.
+
+“They know it better than any!”
+
+“And?”
+
+“They make ready, even as I.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For what Allah shall decide! We ate the salt, we jezailchis. We chose,
+and we ate of our own free will. We have been paid the price we named,
+in silver and rifles and clothing. The arrficers the sirkar sent us are
+men of faith who have made no trouble with our women. What, then, should
+the Khyber jezailchis do? For a little while there will be fighting--or,
+if we be very brave and our arrficers skillful, and Allah would fain see
+sport, then for a longer while. Then we shall be overridden. Then the
+Khyber will be a roaring river of men pouring into India, as my father's
+father told me it has often been! India shall bleed in these days--but
+there will be fighting in the Khyber first!”
+
+“And what of her? Of Yasmini?” King asked.
+
+“Thou wearest that--and askest what of her? Nay--tell!”
+
+“Should she order the jezailchis to be false to the salt--?”
+
+“Such a question!”
+
+The man clucked into his beard and began to fidget in the saddle.
+King gave him another view of the bracelet, and again he found a civil
+answer.
+
+“We of the Rifles have her leave to be loyal to the salt, for, said she,
+otherwise how could we be true men; and she loves no liars. From the
+first, when she first won our hearts in the 'Hills,' she gave us of the
+Rifles leave to be true men first and her servants afterward! We may
+love her--as we do!--and yet fight against her, if so Allah wills--and
+she will yet love us!”
+
+“Where is she?” King asked him suddenly, and the man began to laugh
+again.
+
+“Let me by!” he shouted truculently. “Who am I to sit a horse and gossip
+in the Khyber? Let me by, I say!”
+
+“I will let you by when you have told me where she is!”
+
+“Then I die here, and very likely thou, too!” the man answered, bringing
+his rifle to the port in front of him so quickly that he almost had King
+at a disadvantage. As it was, King was quick enough to balance matters
+by covering him with the pistol again. The horses sensed excitement and
+began to stir. With a laugh the jezailchi let the rifle fall across his
+lap, and at that King put the pistol out of sight.
+
+“Fool!” hissed Ismail in his ear; but King knows the “Hills” better in
+some ways than the savages who live in them; they, for instance, never
+seem able to judge whether there will be a fight presently or not.
+
+“Why won't you tell me where she is?” he asked in his friendliest voice,
+and that would wheedle secrets from the Sphynx.
+
+“Her secrets are her own, and may Allah help her guard them! I will tear
+my tongue out first!”
+
+“Enviable woman!” murmured King. “Pass, friend!” he ordered, reining
+aside. “Take my spare horse and leave me that weary one, so you will
+recover the lost time and more into the bargain.”
+
+The man changed horses gladly, saying nothing. When he had shifted the
+saddle and mounted, he began to ride off with a great air, not so much
+as deigning to scowl at Ismail. But he had not ridden a dozen paces when
+he sat round in the saddle and drew rein.
+
+“Sahib!” he called. “Sahib!”
+
+King waited. He had waited for this very thing and could afford to wait
+a minute longer.
+
+“Hast thou--is there--does the sahib--I have not tasted--”
+
+He made a sign with his hand that men recognize in pretty nearly every
+land under the sun.
+
+“So-ho!” laughed King, patting his hip pocket, from which the cap of a
+silver-topped flask had been protruding ever since he put the pistol out
+of sight. “So our copper's hot, eh?”
+
+“May Allah do more to me if my throat is not lined with the fires of
+Eblis!”
+
+“But the Kalamullah!” King objected. “What saith the Prophet?”
+
+“The Prophet forbade the faithful to drink wine,” said the jezailchi.
+“He said nothing about whiskey, that I ever heard!”
+
+“Mine is brandy,” said King.
+
+“May Allah bless the sahib's sons and grandsons to the seventh
+generation! May Allah--”
+
+“Tell me about Yasmini first! Where is she?”
+
+“Nay!”
+
+King tapped the flask in his pocket.
+
+“Nay! My throat is dry, but it shalt parch! I know not! As to where she
+is, I know not!”
+
+“Remember, and I will give you the whole of it!”
+
+He drew the flask out of his pocket and rode a little way toward the
+man.
+
+“None can overhear. Tell me now.”
+
+“Nay, sahib! I am silent!”
+
+“Have you passed her on your way?”
+
+The man shook his head--shook it until the whites of his eyes were a
+streak in the middle of his dark face; and when a Hillman is as vehement
+as that he is surely lying.
+
+King set the flask to his own lips and drank a few drops.
+
+“Salaam, sahib!” said the jezaitchi, wheeling his horse to ride away.
+
+King let him ride twenty paces before calling to him to halt.
+
+“Come back!” he ordered, and rode part of the way to meet him.
+
+“I but tried thee, friend!” he said, holding out the flask.
+
+“Allah then preserve me from a second test!”
+
+The jezailchi seized the flask, clapped it to his lips and drained it to
+the last drop while King sat still in the moonlight and smiled at him.
+
+“God grant the giver peace!” he prayed, handing the flask back. The
+kindly East possesses no word for “Thank you.” Then he wheeled the horse
+in a sudden eddy, as polo ponies turn on the Indian plains, and rode
+away down the wind as if the Pass were full of devils in pursuit of him.
+
+King watched him out of sight and then listened until the hoof-beats
+died away and the Pass grew still again.
+
+“The jezailchis'll stand!” he said, lighting a new cheroot. “Good men
+and good luck to 'em!”
+
+Then he rode back to his own men.
+
+“Where starts the trail to Khinjan?” he asked; not that he had forgotten
+it, but to learn who knew.
+
+“This side of Ali Masjid!” they answered all together.
+
+“Two miles this side. More than a mile from here,” said Ismail. “What
+next? Shall we camp here? Here is fuel and a little water. Give the
+word--”
+
+“Nay-forward!” ordered King.
+
+“Forward?” growled Ismail. “With this man it is ever 'forward!' Is there
+neither rest nor fear? Has she bewitched him? Hai! Ye lazy ones! Ho!
+Sons of sloth! Urge the mules faster! Beat the led horse!”
+
+So in weird wan moonlight, King led them forward, straight up the
+narrowing gorge, between cliffs that seemed to fray the very bosom of
+the sky. He smoked a cigar and stared at the view, as if he were off
+to the mountains for a month's sport with dependable shikarris whom he
+knew. Nobody could have looked at him and guessed he was not enjoying
+himself.
+
+“That man,” mumbled Ismail behind him, “is not as other sahibs I have
+known. He is a man, this one! He will do unexpected things!”
+
+“Forward!” King called to them, thinking they were grumbling. “Forward,
+men of the 'Hills'!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+
+     The owl he has eyes that are big for his size,
+     And the night like a book he deciphers;
+     “Too-woop!” he asserts, and “Hoo-woo-ip!” he cries,
+     And he means to remark he is awfully wise;
+     But he lags behind us, who are “on” to the lies
+     Of the hairy Himalayan knifers!
+
+     For eyes we be, of Empire, we,
+     Skinned and puckered and quick to see,
+     And nobody guesses how wise we be,
+     Nor hidden in what disguise we be,
+     A-cooking a sudden surprise we be
+     For hairy Himahlyan knifers!
+
+
+After a time King urged his horse to a jog-trot, and the five Hillmen
+pattered in his wake, huddled so close together that the horse could
+easily have kicked more than one of them. The night was cold enough to
+make flesh creep; but it was imagination that herded them until they
+touched the horse's rump and kept the whites of their eyes ever showing
+as they glanced to left and right. The Khyber, fouled by memory, looks
+like the very birthplace of the ghosts when the moon is fitful and a
+mist begins to flow.
+
+“Cheloh!” King called merrily enough; but his horse shied at nothing,
+because horses have an uncanny way of knowing how their riders really
+feel. They led mules and the spare horse, instead of dragging at their
+bridles, pressed forward to have their heads among the men, and every
+once and again there would sound the dull thump of a fist on a beast's
+nose--such being the attitude of men toward the lesser beasts.
+
+They trotted forward until the bed of the Khyber began to grow very
+narrow, and Ali Masjid Fort could not be much more than a mile away, at
+the widest guess. Then King drew rein and dismounted, for he would have
+been challenged had he ridden much farther. A challenge in the Khyber
+after dark consists invariably of a volley at short range, with the mere
+words afterward, and the wise man takes precaution.
+
+“Off with the mules' packs!” he ordered, and the men stood round and
+stared. Darya Khan, leaning on the only rifle in the party, grinned like
+a post-office letter box.
+
+“Truly,” growled Ismail, forgetting past expression of a different
+opinion, “this man is as mad as all the other Englishmen.”
+
+“Were you ever bitten by one?” wondered King aloud.
+
+“God forbid!”
+
+“Then, off with the packs--and hurry!”
+
+Ismail began to obey.
+
+“Thou! Lord of the Rivers! (For that is what Darya Khan means.) What is
+thy calling?”
+
+“Badragga” (guide), he answered. “Did she not send me back down the Pass
+to be a guide?”
+
+“And before that what wast thou?”
+
+“Is that thy business?” he snarled, shifting his rifle-barrel to the
+other hand. “I am what she says I am! She used to call me 'Chikki'--the
+Lifter!--and I was! There are those who were made to know it! If she
+says now I am badragga, shall any say she lies?”
+
+“I say thou art unpacker of mules' burdens!” answered King. “Begin!”
+
+For answer the fellow grinned from ear to ear and thrust the
+rifle-barrel forward insolently. King, with the movement of
+determination that a man makes when about to force conclusions, drew up
+his sleeves above the wrist. At that instant the moon shone through the
+mist and the gold bracelet glittered in the moonlight.
+
+“May God be with thee!” said “Lord of the Rivers” at once. And without
+another word he laid down his rifle and went to help off-load the mules.
+
+King stepped aside and cursed softly. To a man who knows how to enforce
+his own authority, it is worse than galling to be obeyed because he
+wears a woman's favor. But for a vein of wisdom that underlay his pride
+he would have pocketed the bracelet there and then and have refused to
+wear it again. But as he sweated his pride he overheard Ismail growl:
+
+“Good for thee! He had taught thee obedience in another bat of the eye!”
+
+“I obey her!” muttered Darya Khan.
+
+“I, too,” said Ishmail. “So shall he before the week dies! But now it is
+good to obey him. He is an ugly man to disobey!”
+
+“I obey him until she sets me free, then,” grumbled Darya Khan.
+
+“Better for thee!” said Ismail.
+
+The packs were laid on the ground, and the mules shook themselves, while
+the jackals that haunt the Khyber came closer, to sit in a ring and
+watch. King dug a flashlight out of one of the packs, gave it to Ismail
+to hold, sat on the other pack and began to write on a memorandum pad.
+It was a minute before he could persuade Ismail that the flashlight was
+harmless, and another minute before he could get him to hold it still.
+Then, however, he wrote swiftly.
+
+        “In the Khyber, a mile below you.
+
+        “Dear Old Man--I would like to run in and see you, but
+        circumstances don't permit.  Several people sent you
+        their regards by me.  Herewith go two mules and their
+        packs.  Make any use of the mules you like, but store
+        the loads where I can draw on them in case of need.
+        I would like to have a talk with you before taking the
+        rather desperate step I intend, but I don't want to be
+        seen entering or leaving Ali Masjid.  Can you come
+        down the Pass without making your intention known?
+        It is growing misty now.  It ought to be easy.  My men
+        will tell you where I am and show you the way.  Why
+        not destroy this letter?
+
+        “Athelstan.”
+
+He folded the note and stuck a postage stamp on it in lieu of seal. Then
+he examined the packs with the aid of the flashlight, sorted them and
+ordered two of the mules reloaded.
+
+“You three!” he ordered then. “Take the loaded mules into Ali Masjid
+Fort. Take this chit, you. Give it to the sahib in command there.”
+
+They stood and gaped at him, wide-eyed--then came closer to see his
+eyes and to catch any whisper that Ismail might have for them. But
+Ismail and Darya Khan seemed full of having been chosen to stay behind;
+they offered no suggestions--certainly no encouragement to mutiny.
+
+“To hear is to obey!” said the nearest man, seizing the note, for at all
+events that was the easiest task. His action decided the other two. They
+took the mules' leading-reins and followed him. Before they had gone
+ten paces they were all swallowed in the mist that had begun to flow
+southeastward; it closed on them like a blanket, and in a minute more
+the clink of shod hooves had ceased. The night grew still, except for
+the whimpering of jackals. Ismail came nearer and squatted at King's
+feet.
+
+“Why, sahib?” he asked: and Darya Khan came closer, too. King had tied
+the reins of the two horses and the one remaining mule together in a
+knot and was sitting on the pack.
+
+“Why not?” he countered.
+
+Solemn, almost motionless, squatted on their hunkers, they looked like
+two great vultures watching an animal die.
+
+“What have they done that they should be sent away?” asked Ismail. “What
+have they done that they should be sent to the fort, where the arrficer
+will put them in irons?”
+
+“Why should he put them in irons?” asked King.
+
+“Why not? Here in the Khyber there is often a price on men's heads!”
+
+“And not in Delhi?”
+
+“In Delhi these were not known. There were no witnesses in Delhi. In the
+fort at Ali Masjid there will be a dozen ready to swear to them!”
+
+“Then, why did they obey?” asked King.
+
+“What is that on the sahib's wrist?”
+
+“You mean--?”
+
+“Sahib--if she said, 'Walk into the fire or over that Cliff!' there be
+many in these 'Hills' who would obey without murmuring!”
+
+“I have nothing against them,” said King. “As long as they are my men I
+will not send them into a trap.”
+
+“Good!” nodded Ismail and Darya Khan together, but they did not seem
+really satisfied.
+
+“It is good,” said Ismail, “that she should have nothing against thee,
+sahib! Those three men are in thy keeping!”
+
+“And I in thine?” King asked, but neither man answered him.
+
+They sat in silence for five minutes. Then suddenly the two Hillmen
+shuddered, although King did not bat an eyelid. Din burst into being. A
+volley ripped out of the night and thundered down the Pass.
+
+“How-utt! Hukkums dar?” came the insolent challenge half a minute after
+it--the proof positive that Ali Masjid's guards neither slept nor were
+afraid.
+
+A weird wail answered the challenge, and there began a tossing to and
+fro of words, that was prelude to a shouted invitation:
+
+“Ud-vance-frrrennen-orsss-werrul!”
+
+English can be as weirdly distorted as wire, or any other supple medium,
+and native levies advance distortion to the point of art; but the
+language sounds no less good in the chilly gloom of a Khyber night.
+
+Followed another wait, this time of half an hour. Then a man's
+footsteps--a booted, leather-heeled man, striding carelessly. Not far
+behind him was the softer noise of sandals. The man began to whistle
+Annie Laurie.
+
+“Charles? That you?” called King.
+
+“That you, old man?”
+
+A man in khaki stepped into the moonlight. He was so nearly the image of
+Athelstan King that Ismail and Darya Khan stood up and stared. Athelstan
+strode to meet him. Their walk was the same. Angle for angle, line
+for line, they might have been one man and his shadow, except for
+three-quarters of an inch of stature.
+
+“Glad to see you, old man,” said Athelstan.
+
+“Sure, old chap!” said Charles; and they shook hands.
+
+“What's the desperate proposal?” asked the younger.
+
+“I'll tell you when we are alone.”
+
+His brother nodded and stood a step aside. The three who had taken the
+note to the fort came closer--partly to call attention to themselves,
+partly to claim credit, partly because the outer silence frightened
+them. They elbowed Ismail and Darya Khan, and one of them received a
+savage blow in the stomach by way of retort from Ismail. Before that
+spark could start an explosion Athelstan interfered.
+
+“Ismail! Take two men. Go down the Pass out of ear-shot, and keep watch!
+Come back when I whistle thus--but no sooner!”
+
+He put fingers between his teeth and blew until the night shrilled back
+at him. Ismail seized the leather bag and started to obey.
+
+“Leave that bag. Leave it, I say!”
+
+“But some man may steal it, sahib. How shall a thief know there is no
+money in it?”
+
+“Leave it and go!”
+
+Ismail departed, grumbling, and King turned on Darya Khan.
+
+“Take the remaining man, and go up the Pass!” he ordered. “Stand out of
+ear-shot and keep watch. Come when I whistle!”
+
+“But this one has a belly ache where Ismail smote him! Can a man with
+a belly ache stand guard? His moaning will betray both him and me!”
+ objected “Lord of the Rivers.”
+
+“Take him and go!” commanded King.
+
+“But--”
+
+King was careful now not to show his bracelet.
+
+But there was something in his eye and in his attitude--a subtle
+suggestive something-or-other about him--that was rather more convincing
+than a pistol or a stick. Darya Khan thrust his rifle-end into the hurt
+man's stomach for encouragement and started off into the mist.
+
+“Come and ache out of the sahibs' sight!” he snarled.
+
+In a minute King and his brother stood unseen, unheard in the shadow by
+a patch of silver moonlight. Athelstan sat down on the mule's pack.
+
+“Well?” said the younger. “Tell me. I shall have to hurry. You see I'm
+in charge back there. They saw me come out, but I hope to teach 'em a
+lesson going back.”
+
+Athelstan nodded. “Good!” he said. “I've a roving commission. I'm
+ordered to enter Khinjan Caves.”
+
+His brother whistled. “Tall order! What's your plan?”
+
+“Haven't one--yet. Know more when I'm nearer Khinjan. You can help no
+end.”
+
+“How? Name it!”
+
+“I shall go up in disguise. Nobody can put the stain on as well as you.
+But tell me something first. Any news of a holy war yet?”
+
+His brother nodded. “Plenty of talk about one to come,” he said. “We
+keep hearing of that lashkar that we can't locate, under a mullah whose
+name seems to change with the day of the week. And there are everlasting
+tales about the 'Heart of the Hills.”'
+
+“No explanation of 'em?” Athelstan asked him.
+
+“None! Not a thing!”
+
+“D'you know of Yasmini?”
+
+“Heard of her of course,” said his brother.
+
+“Has she come up the Pass?”
+
+His brother laughed. “No, neither she nor a coach and four.”
+
+“I have heard the contrary,” said Athelstan.
+
+“Heard what, exactly?”
+
+“She's up the Pass ahead of me.”
+
+“She hasn't passed Ali Masjid!” said his brother, and Athelstan nodded.
+
+“Are the Turks in the show yet?” asked Charles.
+
+“Not yet. But I know they're expected in.”
+
+“You bet they're expected in!” The younger man grinned from ear to ear.
+“They're working both tides under to prepare the tribes for it. They
+flatter themselves they can set alight a holy war that will put Timour
+Ilang to shame. You should hear my jezailchies talk at night when they
+think I'm not listening!”
+
+“The jezailchies'll stand though,” said Athelstan.
+
+“Stake my life on it!” said his brother. “They'll stick to the last
+man!”
+
+“I can't tell you,” said Athelstan, “why we're not attacking brother
+Turk before he's ready. I imagine Whitehall has its hands full. But it's
+likely enough that the Turk will throw in his lot with the Prussians the
+minute he's ready to begin. Meanwhile my job is to help make the holy
+war seem unprofitable to the tribes, so that they'll let the Turk down
+hard when he calls on 'em. Every day that I can point to forts held
+strongly in the Khyber is a day in my favor. There are sure to be raids.
+In fact, the more the merrier, provided they're spasmodic. We must keep
+'em separated--keep 'em from swarming too fast--while I sow other seeds
+among 'em.”
+
+His brother nodded. Sowing seeds was almost that family's hereditary
+job. Athelstan continued:
+
+“Hang on to Ali Masjid like a leech, old man! The day one raiding
+lashkar gets command of the Khyber's throat, the others'll all believe
+they've won the game. Nothing'll stop 'em then! Look out for traps.
+Smash 'em on sight. But don't follow up too far!”
+
+“Sure,” said Charles.
+
+“Help me with the stain now, will you?”
+
+With his flash-light burning as if its battery provided current by the
+week instead of by the minute, Athelstan dragged open the mule's pack
+and produced a host of things. He propped a mirror against the pack and
+squatted in front of it. Then he passed a little bottle to his brother,
+and Charles attended to the chin-strap mark that would have betrayed him
+a British officer in any light brighter than dusk. In a few minutes his
+whole face was darkened to one hue, and Charles stepped back to look at
+it.
+
+“Won't need to wash yourself for a month!” he said. “The dirt won't
+show!” He sniffed at the bottle. “But that stain won't come off if you
+do wash--never worry! You'll do finely.”
+
+“Not yet, I won't!” said Athelstan, picking up a little safety razor and
+beginning on his mustache. In a minute he had his upper lip bare. Then
+his brother bent over him and rubbed in stain where the scrubby mustache
+had been.
+
+After that Athelstan unlocked the leather bag that had caused Ismail so
+much concern and shook out from it a pile of odds and ends at which
+his brother nodded with perfect understanding. The principal item was
+a piece of silk--forty or fifty yards of it--that he proceeded to
+bind into a turban on his head, his brother lending him a guiding,
+understanding finger at every other turn. When that was done, the man
+who had said he looked in the least like a British officer would have
+lied.
+
+One after another he drew on native garments, picking them from the pile
+beside him. So, by rapid stages he developed into a native hakim--by
+creed a converted Hindu, like Rewa Gunga,--one of the men who practise
+yunani, or modern medicine, without a license and with a very great deal
+of added superstition, trickery and guesswork.
+
+“I wouldn't trust you with a ha'penny!” announced his brother when he
+had done.
+
+“Really? As good as all that?”
+
+“The part to a T.”
+
+“Well--take these into the fort for me, will you?” His brother caught
+the bundle of discarded European clothes and tucked them under his arm.
+“Now, re-member, old man! This is the biggest show there has ever been!
+We've got to hold the Khyber, and we can't do it by riding pell-mell
+into the first trap set for us! We must smash when the fighting
+starts--but we mayn't miss! We mayn't run past the mark! Be a coward,
+if that's the name you care to give it. You needn't tell me you've got
+orders to hunt skirmishers to a standstill, because I know better. I
+know you've just had your wig pulled for laming two horses!”
+
+“How d'you know that?”
+
+“Never mind! I've been seconded to your crowd. I'm your senior, and I'm
+giving you orders. This show isn't sport, but the real red thing, and
+I want to count on you to fight like a trained man, not like a
+natural-born fool. I want to know you're holding Ali Masjid like Fabius
+held Rome, by being slow and wily, just for the sake of the comfortable
+feeling it will give me when I'm alone among the 'Hills.' Hit hard when
+you have to, but for God's sake, old man, ware traps!”
+
+“All right,” said his brother.
+
+“Then good-by, old man!”
+
+“Good-by, Athelstan!”
+
+They stood facing and shook hands. Where had been a man and his
+reflection in the mist, there now seemed to be the same man and a
+native. Athelstan King had changed his very nature with his clothes.
+He stood like a native--moved like one; even his voice was changed, as
+if--like the actor who dyed himself all over to act Othello--he could do
+nothing by halves.
+
+“I'm going to try to get in without my men seeing me!” said the younger.
+
+“If they do see you, they'll shoot!”
+
+“Yes, and miss! Trust a Khyber jezailchi not to hit much in the dark!
+It'll do 'em good either way. I'll have time to give 'em the password
+before they fire a second volley. They're not really dangerous till the
+third one. Good-by!”
+
+“By, Charles!”
+
+Officers in that force are not chosen for their clumsiness, or inability
+to move silently by night. His foot-steps died in the mist almost as
+quickly as his shadow. Before he had been gone a minute the Pass was
+silent as death again, and though Athelstan listened with trained ears,
+the only sound he could detect was of a jackal cracking a bone fifty or
+sixty yards away.
+
+He repacked the loads, putting everything back carefully into the big
+leather envelopes and locking the empty hand-bag, after throwing in a
+few stones for Ismail's benefit. Then he went to sit in the moonlight,
+with his back to a great rock and waited there cross-legged to give his
+brother time to make good a retreat through the mist. When there was
+no more doubt that his own men, at all events, had failed to detect the
+lieutenant, he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
+
+Almost at once he heard sandals come pattering from both directions. As
+they emerged out of the mist he sat silent and still. It was Darya Khan
+who came first and stood gaping at him, but Ismail was a very close
+second, and the other three were only a little behind. For full two
+minutes after the man with the sore stomach had come they all stood
+holding one another's arms, astonished. Then--
+
+“Where is he?” asked Ismail.
+
+“Who?” said King, the hakim.
+
+“Our sahib--King sahib--where is he?”
+
+“Gone!”
+
+Even his voice was so completely changed that men who had been reared
+amid mutual suspicion could not recognize it.
+
+“But there are his loads! There is his mule!”
+
+“Here is his bag!” said Ismail, pouncing on it, picking it up and
+shaking it. “It rattles not as formerly! There is more in it than there
+was!”
+
+“His two horses and the mule are here,” said Darya Khan.
+
+“Did I say he took them with him?” asked the hakim, who sat still with
+his back to a rock. “He went because I came! He left me here in charge!
+Should he not leave the wherewithal to make me comfortable, since I must
+do his work? Hah! What do I see? A man bent nearly double? That means a
+belly ache! Who should have a belly ache when I have potions, lotions,
+balms to heal all ills, magic charms and talismans, big and little
+pills--and at such a little price! So small a price! Show me the belly
+and pay your money! Forget not the money, for nothing is free except
+air, water and the Word of God! I have paid money for water before now,
+and where is the mullah who will not take a fee? Nay, only air costs
+nothing! For a rupee, then--for one rupee I will heal the sore belly and
+forget to be ashamed for taking such a little fee!”
+
+“Whither went the sahib? Nay--show us proof!” objected Darya Khan; and
+Ismail stood back a pace to scratch his flowing beard and think.
+
+“The sahib left this with me!” said King, and held up his wrist. The
+gold bracelet Rewa Gunga had given him gleamed in the pale moonlight.
+
+“May God be with thee!” boomed all five men together.
+
+King jumped to his feet so suddenly that all five gave way in front of
+him, and Darya Khan brought his rifle to the port.
+
+“Hast thou never seen me before?” he demanded, seizing Ismail by the
+shoulders and staring straight into his eyes.
+
+“Nay, I never saw thee!”
+
+“Look again!”
+
+He turned his head, to show his face in profile.
+
+“Nay, I never saw thee!”
+
+“Thou, then! Thou with the belly! Thou! Thou!”
+
+They all denied ever having seen him.
+
+So he stepped back until the moon shone full in his face and pulled off
+his turban, changing his expression at the same time.
+
+“Now look!”
+
+“Ma'uzbillah! (May God protect us!)”
+
+“Now ye know me?”
+
+“Hee-yee-yee!” yelled Ismail, hugging himself by the elbows and
+beginning to dance from side to side. “Hee-yee-yee! What said I? Said
+I not so? Said I not this is a different man? Said I not this is a
+good one--a man of unexpected things? Said I not there was magic in the
+leather bag? I shook it often, and the magic grew! Hee-yee-yee! Look at
+him! See such cunning! Feel him! Smell of him! He is a good one--good!”
+
+Three of the others stood and grinned, now that their first shock of
+surprise had died away. The fourth man poked among the packs. There was
+little to see except gleaming teeth and the whites of eyes, set in hairy
+faces in the mist. But Ismail danced all by himself among the stones of
+Khyber road and he looked like a bearded ghoul out for an airing.
+
+“Hee-yee-yee! She smelt out a good one! Hee-yee-yee! This is a man after
+my heart! Hee-yee-yee! God preserve me! God preserve me to see the end
+of this! This one will show sport! Oh-yee-yee-yee!”
+
+Suddenly he closed with King and hugged him until the stout ribs cracked
+and bent inward and King sobbed for breath among the strands of the
+Afridi's beard. He had to use knuckles and knees and feet to win
+freedom, and though he used them with all his might and hurt the old
+savage fiercely, he made no impression on his good will.
+
+“After my own heart, thou art! Spirit of a cunning one! Worker of
+spells! Allah! That was a good day when she bade me wait for thee!”
+
+King sat down again, panting. He wanted time to get his breath back and
+a little of the ache out of his ribs, but he did not care to waste any
+more minutes, and his eyes watched the faces of the other four men. He
+saw them slowly waken to understanding of what Ismail meant by “worker
+of spells” and “magic in the bag” and knew that he had even greater hold
+on them now than Yasmini's bracelet gave him.
+
+“Ma'uzbillah!” they murmured as Ismail's meaning dawned and they
+recognized a magician in their midst. “May God protect us!”
+
+“May God protect me! I have need of it!” said King. “What shall my new
+name be? Give ye me a name!”
+
+“Nay, choose thou!” urged Ismail, drawing nearer. “We have seen one
+miracle; now let us hear another!”
+
+“Very well. Khan is a title of respect. Since I wish for respect, I
+will call myself Khan. Name me a village the first name you can think
+of--quick!”
+
+“Kurram,” said Ismail, at a hazard.
+
+“Kurram is good. Kurram I am! Kurram Khan is my name henceforward!
+Kurram Khan the dakitar!”
+
+“But where is the sahib who came from the fort to talk?” asked the man
+whose stomach ached yet from Ismail and Darya Khan's attentions to it.
+
+“Gone!” announced King. “He went with the other one!”
+
+“Went whither? Did any see him go?”
+
+“Is that thy affair?” asked King, and the man collapsed. It is not
+considered wise to the north of Jamrud to argue with a wizard, or even
+with a man who only claims to be one. This was a man who had changed his
+very nature almost under their eyes.
+
+“Even his other clothes have gone!” murmured one man, he who had poked
+about among the packs.
+
+“And now, Ismail, Darya Khan, ye two dunder-heads!--ye bellies without
+brains!--when was there ever a dakitar--a hakim, who had not two
+assistants at the least? Have ye never seen, ye blinder-than-bats--how
+one man holds a patient while his boils are lanced, and yet another
+makes the hot iron ready?”
+
+“Aye! Aye!”
+
+They had both seen that often.
+
+“Then, what are ye?”
+
+They gaped at him. Were they to work wonders too? Were they to be part
+and parcel of the miracle? Watching them, King saw understanding dawn
+behind Ismail's eyes and knew he was winning more than a mere admirer.
+He knew it might be days yet, might be weeks before the truth was out,
+but it seemed to him that Ismail was at heart his friend. And there are
+no friendships stronger than those formed in the Khyber and beyond--no
+more loyal partnerships. The “Hills” are the home of contrasts,
+of blood-feuds that last until the last-but-one man dies, and of
+friendships that no crime or need or slander can efface. If the feuds
+are to be avoided like the devil, the friendships are worth having.
+
+“There is another thing ye might do,” he suggested, “if ye two grown men
+are afraid to see a boil slit open. Always there are timid patients who
+hang back and refuse to drink the medicines. There should be one or two
+among the crowd who will come forward and swallow the draughts eagerly,
+in proof that no harm results. Be ye two they!”
+
+Ismail spat savagely.
+
+“Nay! Bismillah! Nay, nay! I will hold them who have boils, sitting
+firmly on their bellies--so--or between their shoulders--thus--when
+the boils are behind! Nay, I will drink no draughts! I am a man, not a
+cess-pool!”
+
+“And I will study how to heat hot irons!” said Darya Khan, with grim
+conviction. “It is likely that, having worked for a blacksmith once, I
+may learn quickly! Phaughghgh! I have tasted physic! I have drunk Apsin
+Saats! (Epsom Salts.)”
+
+He spat, too, in a very fury of reminiscence.
+
+“Good!” said King. “Henceforward, then, I am Kurram Khan, the dakitar,
+and ye two are my assistants, Ismail to hold the men with boils, and
+Darya Khan to heat the irons--both of ye to be my men and support me
+with words when need be!”
+
+“Aye!” said Ismail, quick to think of details, “and these others shall
+be the tasters! They have big bellies, that will hold many potions
+without crowding. Let them swallow a little of each medicine in the
+chest now, for the sake of practise! Let them learn not to make a wry
+face when the taste of cess-pools rests on the tongue--”
+
+“Aye, and the breath comes sobbing through the nose!” said Darya Khan,
+remembering fragments of an adventurous career. “Let them learn to drink
+Apsin Saats without coughing!”
+
+“We will not drink the medicines!” announced the man who had a stomach
+ache. “Nay, nay!”
+
+But Ismail hit him with the back of his hand in the stomach again and
+danced away, hugging himself and shouting “Hee-yee-yee!” until the
+jackals joined him in discontented chorus and the Khyber Pass became
+full of weird howling. Then suddenly the old Afridi thought of something
+else and came back to thrust his face close to King's.
+
+“Why be a Rangar? Why be a Rajput, sahib? She loves us Hillmen better!”
+
+“Do I look like a Hillman of the 'Hills'?” asked King.
+
+“Nay, not now. But he who can work one miracle can work another. Change
+thy skin once more and be a true Hillman!”
+
+“Aye!” King laughed. “And fall heir to a blood-feud with every second
+man I chance upon! A Hill-man is cousin to a hundred others, and what
+say they in the 'Hills'?--'to hate like cousins,' eh? All cousins are
+at war. As a Rangar I have left my cousins down in India. Better be
+a converted Hindu and be despised by some than have cousins in the
+'Hills'! Besides--do I speak like a Hillman?”
+
+“Aye! Never an Afridi spake his own tongue better!”
+
+“Yet--does a Hillman slip? Would a Hillman use Punjabi words in a
+careless moment?”'
+
+“God forbid!”
+
+“Therefore, thou dunderhead, I will be a Rangar Rajput,--a stranger in
+a strange land, traveling by her favor to visit her in Khinjan!
+Thus, should I happen to make mistakes in speech or action, it may be
+overlooked, and each man will unwittingly be my advocate, explaining
+away my errors to himself and others instead of my enemy denouncing me
+to all and sundry! Is that clear, thou oaf?”
+
+“Aye! Thou art more cunning than any man I ever met!”
+
+The great Afridi began to rub the tips of his fingers through his
+straggly beard in a way that might mean anything, and King seemed to
+draw considerable satisfaction from it, as if it were a sign language
+that he understood. More than any one thing in the world just then
+he needed a friend, and he certainly did not propose to refuse such a
+useful one.
+
+“And,” he added, as if it were an afterthought, instead of his chief
+reason, “if her special man Rewa Gunga is a Rangar, and is known as a
+Rangar through out the 'Hills,' shall I not the more likely win favor
+by being a Rangar too? If I wear her bracelet and at the same time am a
+Rangar, who will not trust me?”
+
+“True! Thou art a magician!”
+
+“True!” agreed Ismail.
+
+But the moon was getting low and Khyber would be dark again in half an
+hour, for the great crags in the distance to either hand shut off more
+light than do the Khyber walls. The mist, too, was growing thicker. It
+was time to make a move.
+
+King rose. “Pack the mule and bring my horse!” he ordered and they
+hurried to obey with alacrity born of new respect, Darya Khan attending
+to the trimming of the mule's load in person instead of snarling at
+another man. It was a very different little escort from the one that
+had come thus far. Like King himself, it had changed its very nature in
+fifteen minutes!
+
+They brought the horse, and King laughed at them, calling the
+idiots--men without eyes.
+
+“The saddle?” Ismail suggested. “It is a government arrficer's saddle.”
+
+“Stolen!” said King, and they nodded. “Stolen along with the horse!”
+
+“Then the bridle?”
+
+“Stolen too, ye men without eyes! Ye insects! A stolen horse and saddle
+and bridle, are they not a passport of gentility this side of the
+border?”
+
+“Aye!”
+
+“I am Kurram Khan, the dakitar, but who in the 'Hills' would believe it?
+Look now--look ye and tell me what is wrong?”
+
+He pointed to the horse, and they stood in a row and stared.
+
+“Shorten those stirrups, then, six holes at the least! Men will laugh at
+me if I ride like a British arrficer!”
+
+“Aye!” said Ismail, hurrying to obey.
+
+“Aye! Aye! Aye!” agreed the others.
+
+“Now,” he said, gathering the reins and swinging into the saddle, “who
+knows the way to Khinjan?”
+
+“Which of us does not!”
+
+“Ye all know it? Then ye all are border thieves and worse! No honest man
+knows that road! Lead on, Darya Khan, thou Lord of Rivers! Do thy duty
+as badragga and beware lest we get our knees wet at the fords! Ismail,
+you march next. Now I. You other two and the mule follow me. Let the man
+with the belly ache ride last on the other horse. So! Forward march!”
+
+So Darya Khan led the way with his rifle, and King's face glowed in
+cigarette light not very far behind him as he legged his horse up the
+narrow track that led northward out of the Khyber bed.
+
+It would be a long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and
+his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before
+that day. But he did not seem to mind.
+
+“Cheloh!” he called. “Forward, men of the mountains! Kuch dar nahin
+hai!”
+
+“Thy mother and the spirit of a fight were one!” swore Ismail just in
+front of him, stepping out like a boy going to a picnic. “She will love
+thee! Allah! She will love thee! Allah! Allah!”
+
+The thought seemed to appal him. For hours after that he climbed ahead
+in silence.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+
+     Dear is the swagger that takes a man in
+             Helmeted, clattering, proud.
+     Sweet are the honors the arrogant win,
+             Hot from the breath of a crowd.
+     Precious the spirit that never will bend--
+             Hot challenge for insolent stare!
+     But--talk when you've tried it!--to win in the end,
+     Go ahsti!*  Be meek!  And beware!
+
+     [* Slowly.]
+
+
+Even with the man with the stomach ache mounted on the spare horse for
+the sake of extra speed (and he was not suffering one-fifth so much as
+he pretended); with Ismail to urge, and King to coax, and the fear of
+mountain death on every side of them, they were the part of a night and
+a day and a night and a part of another day in reaching Khinjan.
+
+Darya Khan, with the rifle held in both hands, led the way swiftly,
+but warily; and the last man's eyes looked ever backward, for many a
+sneaking enemy might have seen them and have judged a stern chase worth
+while.
+
+In the “Hills” the hunter has all the best of it, and the hunted needs
+must run. The accepted rule is to stalk one's enemy relentlessly and get
+him first. King happened to be hunting, although not for human life, and
+he felt bold, but the men with him dreaded each upstanding crag, that
+might conceal a rifleman. Armed men behind corners mean only one thing
+in the “Hills.”
+
+The animals grew weary to the verge of dropping, for the “road” had been
+made for the most part by mountain freshets, and where that was not the
+case it was imaginary altogether. They traveled upward, along ledges
+that were age-worn in the limestone--downward where the “hell-stones”
+ slid from under them to almost bottomless ravines, and a false step
+would have been instant death--up again between big edged boulders, that
+nipped the mule's pack and let the mule between--past many and many a
+lonely cairn that hid the bones of a murdered man (buried to keep his
+ghost from making trouble)--ever with a tortured ridge of rock for
+sky-line and generally leaning against a wind, that chilled them to the
+bone, while the fierce sun burned them.
+
+At night and at noon they slept fitfully at the chance-met shrine of
+some holy man. The “Hills” are full of them, marked by fluttering rags
+that can be seen for miles away; and though the Quran's meaning must be
+stretched to find excuse, the Hillmen are adept at stretching things and
+hold those shrines as sacred as the Book itself. Men who would almost
+rather cut throats than gamble regard them as sanctuaries.
+
+When a man says he is holy he can find few in the “Hills” to believe
+him; but when he dies or is tortured to death or shot, even the men who
+murdered him will come and revere his grave.
+
+Whole villages leave their preciousest possessions at a shrine before
+wandering in search of summer pasture. They find them safe on their
+return, although the “Hills” are the home of the lightest-fingered
+thieves on earth, who are prouder of villainy than of virtue. A man
+with a blood-feud, and his foe hard after him, may sleep in safety at
+a faquir's grave. His foe will wait within range, but he will not draw
+trigger until the grave is left behind.
+
+So a man may rest in temporary peace even on the road to Khinjan,
+although Khinjan and peace have nothing whatever in common.
+
+It was at such a shrine, surrounded by tattered rags tied to sticks,
+that fluttered in the wind three or four thousand feet above Khyber
+level, that King drew Ismail into conversation, and deftly forced on him
+the role of questioner.
+
+“How can'st thou see the Caves!” he asked, for King had hinted at his
+intention; and for answer King gave him a glimpse of the gold bracelet.
+
+“Aye! Well and good! But even she dare not disobey the rule. Khinjan was
+there before she came, and the rule was there from the beginning, when
+the first men found the Caves! Some--hundreds--have gained admission,
+lacking the right. But who ever saw them again? Allah! I, for one, would
+not chance it!”
+
+“Thou and I are two men!” answered King. “Allah gave thee qualities I
+lack. He gave thee the strength of a bull and a mountain goat in one,
+and her for a mistress. To me he gave other qualities. I shall see the
+Caves. I am not afraid.”
+
+“Aye! He gave thee other gifts indeed! But listen! How many Indian
+servants of the British Raj have set out to see the Caves? Many,
+many--aye, very many! Again and again the sirkar sent its loyal ones.
+Did any return? Not one! Some were crucified before they reached the
+place. One died slowly on the very rock whereon we sit, with his eyelids
+missing and his eyes turned to the sun! Some entered Khinjan, and the
+women of the place made sport with them. Those would rather have been
+crucified outside had they but known. Some, having got by Khinjan,
+entered the Caves. None ever came out again!”
+
+“Then, what is my case to thee?” King asked him “If I can not come out
+again and there is a secret then the secret will be kept, and what is
+the trouble?”
+
+“I love thee,” the Afridi answered simply. “Thou art a man after mine
+own heart. Turn! Go back before it is too late!”
+
+King shook his head.
+
+“Be warned!”
+
+Ismail reached out a hairy-backed hand that shook with half-suppressed
+emotion.
+
+“When we reach Khinjan, and I come within reach of her orders again,
+then I am her man, not thine!”
+
+King smiled, glancing again at the gold bracelet on his arm.
+
+“I look like her man, too!”
+
+“Thou!” Ismail's scorn was well feigned if it was not real. “Thou
+chicken running to the hand that will pluck thy breast-feathers!
+Listen! Abdurrahman--he of Khabul--and may Allah give his ugly bones no
+peace!--Abdurrahman of Khabul sought the secret of the Caves. He sent
+his men to set an ambush. They caught twenty coming out of Khinjan on
+a raid. The twenty were carried to Khabul and put to torture there.
+How many, think you, told the secret under torture? They died cursing
+Abdurrahman to his face and he died without the secret! May God
+recompense him with the fire that burns forever and scalding water and
+ashes to eat! May rats eat his bones!”
+
+“Had Abdurrahman this?” asked King, touching the bracelet.
+
+“Nay! He would have given one eye for it, but none would trade with him!
+He knew of it, but never saw it.”
+
+“I am more favored. I have it. It is hers, is it not? Does not she know
+the secret?”
+
+“She knows all that any man knows and more!”
+
+“Was she seen to slay a man in the teeth of written law?” asked King,
+and Ismail stared so hard at him that he laughed.
+
+“I was in Khinjan once before, my friend! I know the rule! I failed to
+reach the Caves that other time because I had no witnesses to swear they
+had seen me slay a man in the teeth of written law. I know!”
+
+“Who saw thee this time?” Ismail asked, and began to cackle with the
+cruel humor of the “Hills,” that sees amusement in a man's undoing, or
+in the destruction of his plans. His humor forced him to explain.
+
+“The price of an entrance has come of late to be the life of an English
+arrficer! Many an one the English have dubbed Ghazi, because he crossed
+the border and buried his knife in a man on church parade! They hang
+and burn them, knowing our Muslim law, that denies Heaven to him who is
+hanged and burned. Yet the man they miscall ghazi sought but the key to
+Khinjan Caves, with no thought at all about Heaven! Thou art a British
+arrficer. It may be they will let thee enter the Caves at her bidding.
+It may be, too, that they will keep thee in a cage there for some
+chief's son to try his knife on when the time comes to win admission!
+Listen--man o' my heart!--so strict is the rule that boys born in the
+Caves, when they come to manhood, must go and slay an Englishman and
+earn outlawry before they may come back; and lest they prove fearful and
+betray the secret, ten men follow each. They die by the hand of one or
+other of the ten unless they have slain their man within two weeks. So
+the secret has been kept more years than ten men can remember!” (That
+estimate was doubtless due to a respect for figures and bore no relation
+to the length of a human generation.)
+
+“Whom did she kill to gain admission?” King asked him unexpectedly.
+
+“Ask her!” said Ismail. “It is her business.”
+
+“And thou? Was the life of a British officer the price paid?”
+
+“Nay. I slew a mullah.”
+
+The calmness of the admission, and the satisfaction that its memory
+seemed to bring the owner made King laugh. He found lawless satisfaction
+for himself in that Ismail's blood-price should have been a priest, not
+one of his brother officers. A man does not follow King's profession for
+health, profit or sentiment's sake, but healthy sentiment remains. The
+loyalty that drives him, and is its own most great reward, makes him a
+man to the middle. He liked Ismail. He could not have liked him in the
+same way if he had known him guilty of English blood, which is only
+proof, of course, that sentiment and common justice are not one. But
+sentiment remains. Justice is an ideal.
+
+“Be warned and go back!” urged Ismail.
+
+“Come with me, then.”
+
+“Nay, I am her man. She waits for me!”
+
+“I imagine she waits for me!” laughed King. “Forward! We have rested in
+this place long enough!”
+
+So on they went, climbing and descending the naked ramparts that lead
+eastward and upward and northward to the Roof of Mother Earth--Ismail
+ever grumbling into his long beard, and King consumed by a fiercer
+enthusiasm than ever had yet burned in him,
+
+“Forward! Forward! Cast hounds forward! Forward in any event!” says
+Cocker. It is only regular generals in command of troops in the field
+who must keep their rear open for retreat. The Secret Service thinks
+only of the goal ahead.
+
+It was ten of a blazing forenoon, and the sun had heated up the rocks
+until it was pain to walk on them and agony to sit, when they topped the
+last escarpment and came in sight of Khinjan's walls, across a
+mile-wide rock ravine--Khinjan the unregenerate, that has no other human
+habitation within a march because none dare build.
+
+They stood on a ridge and leaned against the wind. Beneath them a path
+like a rope ladder descended in zigzags to the valley that is Khinjan's
+dry moat; it needed courage as well as imagination to believe that the
+animals could be guided down it.
+
+“Is there no other way?” asked King. He knew well of one other, but one
+does not tell all one knows in the “Hills,” and there might have been a
+third way.
+
+“None from this side,” said Ismail.
+
+“And on the other side?”
+
+“There is a rather better path--that by which the sirkar's troops once
+came--although it has been greatly obstructed since. It is two days'
+march from here to reach it. Be warned a last time, sahib--little
+hakim--be warned and go back!”
+
+“Thou bird of ill omen!” laughed King. “Must thou croak from every rock
+we rest on?”
+
+“If I were a bird I would fly away back with thee!” said Ismail.
+
+“Forward, since we can not fly--forward and downward!” King answered.
+“She must have crossed this valley. Therefore there are things worth
+while beyond! Forward!”
+
+The animals, weary to death anyhow, fell rather than walked down the
+track. The men sat and scrambled. And the heat rose up to meet them from
+the waterless ravine as if its floor were Tophet's lid and the devil
+busy under it, stoking.
+
+It was midday when at last they stood on bottom and swayed like men in a
+dream fingering their bruises and scarcely able for the heat haze to
+see the tangled mass of stone towers and mud-and-stone walls that faced
+them, a mile away. Nobody challenged them yet. Khinjan itself seemed
+dead, crackled in the heat.
+
+“Sahib, let us mount the hill again and wait for night and a cool
+breeze!” urged Darya Khan.
+
+Ismail clucked into his beard and spat to wet his lips.
+
+“This glare makes my eyes ache!” he grumbled.
+
+“Wait, sahib! Wait a while!” urged the others.
+
+“Forward!” ordered King. “This must be Tophet. Know ye not that none
+come out of Tophet by the way they entered in? Forward! The exit is
+beyond!”
+
+They staggered after him, sheltering their eyes and faces from the
+glare with turban-ends and odds and ends of clothing. The animals swayed
+behind them with hung heads and drooping ears, and neither man nor beast
+had sense enough left to have detected an ambush. They were more than
+half-way across the valley, hunting for shadow where none was to be
+found, when a shotted salute brought them up all-standing in a cluster.
+Six or eight nickel-coated bullets spattered on the rocks close by, and
+one so narrowly missed King that he could feel its wind.
+
+Up went all their hands together, and they held them so until they
+ached. Nothing whatever happened. Their arms ceased aching and grew
+numb.
+
+“Forward!” ordered King.
+
+After another quarter of a mile of stumbling among hot boulders, not
+one of which was big enough to afford cover, or shelter from the sun,
+another volley whistled over them. Their hands went up again, and this
+time King could see turbaned heads above a parapet in front. But nothing
+further happened.
+
+“Forward!” he ordered.
+
+They advanced another two hundred yards and a third volley rattled
+among the rocks on either hand, frightening one of the mules so that it
+stumbled and fell and had to be helped up again. When that was done,
+and the mule stood trembling, they all faced the wall. But they were too
+weary to hold their hands up any more. Thirst had begun to exercise its
+sway. One of the men was half delirious.
+
+“Who are ye?” howled a human being, whose voice was so like a wolf's
+that the words at first had no meaning. He peered over the parapet,
+a hundred feet above, with his head so swathed in dirty linen that he
+looked like a bandaged corpse.
+
+“What will ye? Who comes uninvited into Khinjan?”
+
+King bethought him of Yasmini's talisman. He, held it up, and the gold
+band glinted in the sun. Yet, although a Hillman's eyes are keener than
+an eagle's, he did not believe the thing could be recognized at that
+angle, and from that distance. Another thought suggested itself to him.
+He turned his head and caught Ismail in the act of signaling with both
+hands.
+
+“Ye may come!” howled the watchman on the parapet, disappearing
+instantly.
+
+King trembled--perhaps as a racehorse trembles at the starting gate,
+though he was weary enough to tremble from fatigue. The “Hills,” that
+numb the hearts of many men, had not cowed him, for he loved them and
+in love there is no fear. Heat and cold and hunger were all in the day's
+work; thirst was an incident; and the whistle of lead in the wind had
+never meant more to him than work ahead to do.
+
+But a greyhound trembles in the leash. A boiler, trembles when word goes
+down the speaking-tube from the bridge for “all she's got.” And so
+the mild-looking hakim Kurram Khan, walking gingerly across hot rocks,
+donning cheap, imitation shell-rimmed spectacles to help him look the
+part, trembled even more than the leg-weary horse he led.
+
+But that passed. He was all in hand when he led his men up over a rough
+stone causeway to a door in the bottom of a high battlemented wall and
+waited for somebody to open it.
+
+The great teak door looked as if it had been stolen from some Hindu
+temple, and he wondered how and when they could have brought it there
+across those savage intervening miles. With its six-inch teak planks
+and bronze bolts its weight must be guessed at in tons--yet a horse can
+hardly carry a man along any of the trails that lead to Khinjan!
+
+The wood bore the marks of siege and fracture and repair. The walls were
+new-built, of age-old stone. The last expedition out of India had
+leveled every bit of those defenses flat with the valley, but Khinjan's
+devils had reerected them, as ants rebuild a rifled nest.
+
+The door was swung open after a time, pulled by a rope, manipulated from
+above by unseen hands. Inside was another blind wall, twenty feet behind
+the first. To the right a low barricade blocked the passage and provided
+a safe vantage point from which it could be swept by a hail of lead;
+but to the left a path ran unobstructed for more than a hundred yards
+between the walls, to where the way was blocked by another teak door,
+set in unscalable black rock. High above the door was a ledge of rock
+that crossed like a bridge from wall to wall, with a parapet of stone
+built upon it, pierced for rifle-fire.
+
+As they approached this second door a Rangar turban, not unlike King's
+own, appeared above the parapet on the ledge and a voice he recognized
+hailed him good-humoredly.
+
+“Salaam aleikoum!”
+
+“And upon thee be peace!” King answered in the Pashtu tongue, for the
+“Hills” are polite, whatever the other principles.
+
+Rewa Gunga's face beamed down on him, wreathed in smiles that seemed to
+include mockery as well as triumph. Looking up at him at an angle that
+made his neck ache and dazzled his eyes, King could not be sure, but it
+seemed to him that the smile said, “Here you are, my man, and aren't you
+in for it?” He more than half suspected he was intended to understand
+that. But the Rangar's conversation took another line.
+
+“By jove!” he chuckled. “She expected you. She guessed you are a hound
+who can hunt well on a dry scent, and she dared bet you will come in
+spite of all odds! But she didn't expect you in Rangar dress! No, by
+jove! You jolly well will take the wind out of her sails!”
+
+King made no answer. For one thing, the word “hound,” even in English,
+is not essentially a compliment. But he had a better reason than that.
+
+“Did you find the way easily?” the Rangar asked but King kept silence.
+
+“Is he parched? Have they cut his tongue out on the road?”
+
+That question was in Pashtu, directed at Ismail and the others, but King
+answered it.
+
+“Oh, as for that,” he said, salaaming again in the fastidious manner
+of a native gentleman, “I know no other tongue than Pashtu and my own
+Rajasthani. My name is Kurram Khan. I ask admittance.”
+
+He held up his wrist to show the gold bracelet, and high over his head
+the Rangar laughed like a bell.
+
+“Shabash!” he laughed. “Well done! Enter, Kurram Khan, and be welcome,
+thou and thy men. Be welcome in her name!”
+
+Somebody pulled a rope and the door yawned wide, giving on a kind of
+courtyard whose high walls allowed no view of anything but hot blue sky.
+King hurried under the arch and looked up, but on the courtyard side of
+the door the wall rose sheer and blank, and there was no sign of window
+or stairs, or of any means of reaching the ledge from which the Rangar
+had addressed him. What he did see, as he faced that way, was that
+each of his men salaamed low and covered his face with both hands as he
+entered.
+
+“Whom do ye salute?” he asked.
+
+Ismail stared back at him almost insolently, as one who would rebuke a
+fool.
+
+“Is this not her nest these days?” he answered. “It is well to bow low.
+She is not as other women. She is she! See yonder!”
+
+Through a gap under an arch in a far corner of the courtyard came a
+one-eyed, lean-looking villain in Afridi dress who leaned on a long gun
+and stared at them under his hand. After a leisurely consideration of
+them he rubbed his nose slowly with one finger, spat contemptuously, and
+then used the finger to beckon them, crooking it queerly and turning on
+his heel. He did not say one word.
+
+King led the way after him on foot, for even in the “Hills” where
+cruelty is a virtue, a man may be excused, on economic grounds, for
+showing mercy to his beast. His men tugged the weary animals along
+behind him, through the gap under the arch and along an almost
+interminable, smelly maze of alleys whose sides were the walls of square
+stone towers, or sometimes of mud-and-stone-walled compounds, and here
+and there of sheer, slab-sided cliff.
+
+At intervals they came to bolted narrow doors, that probably led up to
+overhead defenses. Not fifty yards of any alley was straight; not a yard
+but what was commanded from overhead. Khinjan had been rebuilt since its
+last destruction by some expert who knew all about street fighting. Like
+Old Jerusalem, the place could have contained a civil war of a hundred
+factions, and still have opposed stout resistance to an outside army.
+
+Alley gave on to courtyard, and filthy square to alley, until
+unexpectedly at last a seemingly blind passage turned sharply and opened
+on a straight street, of fair width, and more than half a mile long. It
+is marked “Street of the Dwellings” on the secret army maps, and it has
+been burned so often by Khinjan rioters, as well as by expeditions out
+of India, that a man who goes on a long journey never expects to find it
+the same on his return.
+
+It was lined on either hand with motley dwellings, out of which a
+motlier crowd of people swarmed to stare at King and his men. There were
+houses built of stolen corrugated iron--that cursed, hot, hideous stuff
+that the West has inflicted on an all-too-willing East; others of
+wood--of stone--of mud--of mats--of skins--even of tent-cloth. Most of
+them were filthy. A row of kites sat on the roof of one, and in the
+gutter near it three gorged vultures sat on the remains of a mule.
+Scarcely a house was fit to be defended, for Khinjan's fighting men all
+possess towers, that are plastered about the overfrowning mountain like
+wasp nests on a wall. These were the sweepers, the traders, the loose
+women, the mere penniless and the more or less useful men--not Khinjan's
+inner guard by any means.
+
+There were Hindus--sycophants, keepers of accounts and writers to
+the chiefs (since literacy is at premium in these parts). In proof of
+Khinjan's catholic taste and indiscriminate villainy, there were
+women of nearly every Indian breed and caste, many of them stolen into
+shameful slavery, but some of them there from choice. And there were
+little children--little naked brats with round drum tummies, who
+squealed and shrilled and stared with bold eyes; some of them were
+pretending to be bandits on their own account already, and one flung a
+stone that missed King by an inch. The stone fell in the gutter on the
+far side and, started a fight among the mangy street curs, which
+proved a diversion and probably saved King's party from more accurate
+attentions.
+
+Perhaps a thousand souls came out to watch, all told. Not an eye of them
+all missed the government marks on King's trappings, or the government
+brand on the mules, and after a minute or two, when the procession was
+half-way down the street, a man reproved the child who had thrown
+a stone, and he was backed up by the others. They classified King
+correctly, exactly as he meant they should. As a hakim--a man of
+medicine--he could fill a long-felt want; but by the brand on his
+accouterments he walked an openly avowed robber, and that made him a
+brother in crime. Somebody cuffed the next child who picked up a stone.
+
+He knew the street of old, although it had changed perhaps a dozen times
+since he had seen it. It was a cul-de-sac, and at the end of it, just
+as on his previous visit, there stood a stone mosque, whose roof leaned
+back at a steep angle against the mountain-side. The fact that it was a
+mosque, and that it was the only building used as such in Khinjan,
+had saved it from being leveled to the ground by the last British
+expedition.
+
+It was a famous mosque in its way, for the bed-sheet of the Prophet is
+known to hang in it, preserved against the ravages of time and the touch
+of infidels by priceless Afghan rugs before and behind, so that it hangs
+like a great thin sandwich before the rear stone wall. King had seen
+it. Very vividly he recalled his almost exposure by a suspicious mullah,
+when he had crept nearer to examine it at close range. For the Secret
+Service must probe all things.
+
+There had been an attempt since his last visit to make the mosque's
+exterior look more in keeping with the building's use. It was cleaner.
+It had been smeared with whitewash. A platform had been built on the
+roof for the muezzin. But it still looked more like a fort than a place
+of worship.
+
+Toward it the one-eyed ruffian led the way, with the long,
+leisurely-seeming gait of a mountaineer. At the door, in the middle of
+the end of the street, he paused and struck on the lintel three times
+with his gun-butt. And that was a strange proceeding, to say the least,
+in a land where the mosque is public resting place for homeless ones,
+and all the “faithful” have a right to enter.
+
+A mullah, shaven like a mummy for some unaccountable reason--even his
+eyebrows and eyelashes had been removed--pushed his bare head through
+the door and blinked at them. There was some whispering and more
+staring, and at last the mullah turned his back.
+
+The door slammed. The one-eyed guide grounded his gun-butt on the
+stone, and the procession waited, watched by the crowd that had lost its
+interest sufficiently to talk and joke.
+
+In two minutes the mullah returned and threw a mat over the threshold.
+It turned out to be the end of a long narrow strip that he kicked and
+unrolled in front of him all across the floor of the mosque. After that
+it was not so astonishing that the horses and mules were allowed to
+enter.
+
+“Which proves I was right after all!” murmured King to himself.
+
+In a steel box at Simla is a memorandum, made after his former visit
+to the place, to the effect that the entrance into Khinjan Caves might
+possibly be inside the mosque. Nobody had believed it likely, and he
+had not more than half favored it himself; but it is good, even when
+the next step may lead into a death-trap, to see one's first opinions
+confirmed.
+
+He nodded to himself as the outer door slammed shut behind them, for
+that was another most unusual circumstance.
+
+A faint light shone through slit-like windows, changing darkness into
+gloom, and little more than vaguely hinting at the Prophet's bed-sheet.
+But for a section of white wall to either side of it, the relic might
+have seemed part of the shadows. The mullah stood with his back to it
+and beckoned King nearer. He approached until he could see the pattern
+on the covering rugs, and the pink rims round the mullah's lashless
+eyes.
+
+“What is thy desire?” the mullah asked--as a wolf might ask what a lamb
+wants.
+
+Supposing Yasmini to be jealous of invasion of her realm, King did not
+doubt she would be glad to have him break down at this point. Until he
+had actually gained access to her, nobody could reasonably charge her
+with his safety. If he had been done to death in the Khyber, the sirkar
+would have known it in a matter of hours. If he were killed here they
+might never know it.
+
+“Answer!” said the mullah. “What is thy desire?”
+
+“Audience with her!” he answered, and showed the gold bracelet on his
+wrist.
+
+The red eye-rims of the mullah blinked a time or two, and though he
+did not salute the bracelet, as others had invariably done, his manner
+underwent a perceptible change.
+
+“That is proof that she knows thee. What is thy name.”
+
+“Kurram Khan.”
+
+“And thy business?”
+
+“Hakim.”
+
+“We need thee in Khinjan Caves! But none enter who have not earned right
+to enter! There is but one key. Name it!”
+
+King drew in his breath. He had hoped Yasmini's talisman would prove to
+be key enough. The nails his left hand nearly pierced the palm, but he
+smiled pleasantly.
+
+“He who would enter must slay a man before witnesses in the teeth of
+written law!” he said.
+
+“And thou?”
+
+“I slew an Englishman!” The boast made his blood run cold, but his
+expression was one of sinful pride.
+
+“Whom? When? Where?”
+
+“Athelstan King--a British arrficer--sent on his way to these 'Hills' to
+spy!”
+
+It was like having spells cast on himself to order!
+
+“Where is his body?”
+
+“Ask the vultures! Ask the kites!”
+
+“And thy witnesses?”
+
+Hoping against hope, King turned and waved his hand. As he did so, being
+quick-eyed, he saw Ismail drive an elbow home into Darya Khan's ribs, and
+caught a quick interchange of whispers.
+
+“These men are all known to me,” said the mullah. “They all have right
+to enter here. They have right to testify. Did ye see him slay his man?”
+
+“Aye!” lied Ismail, prompt as friend can be.
+
+“Aye!” lied Darya Khan, fearful of Ismail's elbow.
+
+“Then, enter!” said the priest resignedly, as one admits a communicant
+against his better judgment.
+
+He turned his back on them so as to face the Prophet's bed-sheet and
+the rear wall, and in that minute a hairy hand gripped King's arm from
+behind, and Ismail's voice hissed hot-breathed in his ear.
+
+“Ready of tongue! Ready of wit! Who told thee I would lie to save thy
+skin? Be thy kismet as thy courage, then--but I am hers, not thy man!
+Hers, thou light of life--though God knows I love thee!”
+
+The mullah seized the Prophet's bed-sheet and its covering rugs in both
+hands, with about as much reverence as salesmen show for what they keep
+in stock. The whole lot slid to one side by means of noisy rings on a
+rod, and a wall lay bare, built of crudely cut but very well laid stone
+blocks. It appeared to reach unbroken across the whole width of the
+mosque's interior.
+
+On the floor lay a mallet, a peculiar thing of bronze, cast in one
+piece, handle and all. The mullah took it in his hand and struck the
+stone floor sharply once--then twice again--then three times--then a
+dozen times in quick succession. The floor rang hollow at that spot.
+
+After about a minute there came one answering hammer-stroke from beyond
+the wall. Then the mullah laid the mallet down and though King ached to
+pick it up and examine it he did not dare.
+
+Excitement now was probably the least of his emotions. It had been
+swallowed in interest. But in his guise of hakim he had to beware of
+that superficial western carelessness, that permits folk to acknowledge
+themselves frightened or excited or amused. His business was to attract
+as little attention to himself as possible; and to that end he folded
+his hands and looked reverent, as if entering some Mecca of his dreams.
+Through his horn-rimmed spectacles his eyes looked far-away and dreamy.
+But it would have been a mistake to suppose that a detail was escaping
+him.
+
+The irregular lines in the masonry began to be more pronounced. All at
+once the wall shook and they gaped by an inch or two, as happens when an
+earthquake has shaken buildings without bringing anything down. Then an
+irregular section of wall began to move quite smoothly away in front of
+him, leaving a gap through which eight men abreast could have marched.
+
+As it receded he observed that the lowest course of stones was laid
+on a bronze foundation, that keyed in wide bronze grooves. There was
+oil enough in the grooves to have greased a ship's ways and there was
+neither squeak nor tremor as the tons of masonry slid back.
+
+At the end of perhaps three minutes that section of the wall had become
+the fourth side of a twenty-foot-wide island that stood fair in the
+middle of a tunnel, splitting it in two to right and left. Judging by
+the angle of the two divisions they became one again before going very
+far.
+
+The mullah stood aside and motioned King to enter. But the one-eyed
+guide who had led them to the mosque thrust himself between Darya Khan
+and Ismail, pushed King aside and took the lead.
+
+“Nay!” he said, “I am responsible to her.”
+
+It was the first time he had spoken and he appeared to resent the waste
+of words.
+
+The tunnel that led to the left was pierced in twenty places in the roof
+for rifle-fire; a score of men with enough ammunition could have held
+it forever against an army. But the right-hand way looked undefended.
+Nevertheless, the guide led to the left, and King followed him, filled
+with curiosity.
+
+“Many have entered!” sang the lashless mullah in a sing-song chant.
+“More have sought to enter! Some who remained without were wisest! I
+count them! I keep count! Many went in! Not all came out again by this
+road!”
+
+“Then there is another road?” King wondered, but he held his tongue and
+followed the guide.
+
+It proved to be fifty yards through part natural, part hand-hewn, tunnel
+to the neck of the fork where the left--and right-hand passages became
+one again. He stopped at the fork and looked back, for none of his men
+was following.
+
+He caught the sound of scuffling--of clattering hoofs, and grunts and
+shouted oaths--and started to run back, since even a native hakim may
+protect his own, should he care to, even in the “Hills.”
+
+For the sake of principle he chose the other passage, for Cocker says,
+“Look! Look! Look!” But the guide seized him by the arm from behind and
+swung him back again.
+
+“Not that way!” he growled. But he offered no explanation.
+
+In the “Hills” it is not good to ask “why” of strangers. It is good
+to be glad one was not knifed, and to be deferent until more suitable
+occasion. King started to run again, but this time along the same
+defended passage down which they had come. And now the guide made no
+objection but leaned on his long gun and waited.
+
+The charger proved to be making the trouble--the horse that King had
+exchanged with the jezailchi in the Khyber. The terrified brute was
+refusing to enter the passage, and all the men, including Ismail and the
+mullah, were shoving, or else tugging at the reins.
+
+At the moment King appeared the united strength of six men was beginning
+to prevail. The mullah let go the reins, and in that instant the horse
+saw King advance toward him out of the tunnel; so, after the manner of
+horses, he chose the other passage. King ran at full speed round
+the corner after him, remembering that the guide had admitted
+responsibility, and therefore that the chances were he would be rescued
+should he run into a trap.
+
+Suddenly, ten yards in the lead down the dark tunnel the horse threw his
+weight back with a clatter of sparks and screamed as only a horse can.
+After that there was neither sight nor sound of him.
+
+Creeping forward with both arms outstretched against the left-hand wall,
+he reached the spot where, the horse had been, and shuddered on the
+smooth dark edge of a hole that went the full width of the floor. There
+came whispering up out of it, and a dank wet smell, as if there were
+running water a mile away below. He could feel that a little air flowed
+downward into it. Twenty yards away on the far side the path resumed,
+but there was neither hand nor foothold on the smooth damp
+walls between. He went back to his men with a shiver between his
+shoulder-blades, and the mullah, standing in the gap of the mosque wall,
+blinked at him with lashless eyes.
+
+“Many have entered,” he chanted maliciously. “Some went out by a
+different road!”
+
+“Come!” Ismail growled at the other men, seizing the mule's bridle
+himself and leading to the left. “The ghosts will have a charger now for
+their captain to ride! Lead on, Hakim sahib!”
+
+“Come!” called the one-eyed guide from the neck of the fork ahead. And
+as they all pressed forward after King the hairless mullah gave a
+signal and the great stone door slid slowly into place. It was like a
+tombstone. It was as if the world that mortals know were a thing of the
+forgotten past and the underworld lay ahead.
+
+“Lead along, Charon!” King grinned. He needed some sort of pleasantry
+to steady his nerves. But even so he wondered what the nerves of India
+would be like if her millions knew of this place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+
+     Oh, Abdul trod with a martial tread,
+     Swinging his scimiter's weight.
+     “I am overlord here,” he said,
+     “And he who wishes may chance his head,
+     “For my blade is long, and my arm is strong,
+     “And the goods of the world to the bold belong!”
+      So Abdul guarded the gate.
+
+     Many a head did Abdul cleave,
+     Turban and crown and chin,
+     For all the 'venturers sought to know
+     What it could be he guarded so.
+     And since none give but eke receive,
+     A thrust in his ribs made Abdul grieve
+     For good blood outpourin'.
+
+     His men wept, watching Abdul bleed
+     And life's light waning dim,
+     Till he cursed them. “Open the fort gate wide!
+     To saddle, and scour the countryside
+     For a leech!” he swore.  “God rot ye, ride!”
+      'Twas thus, in the guise of a friend in need,
+     His enemy came to him.
+
+
+The second gap closed up behind them and the tunnel began to echo
+weirdly. The mule was the next to be panic-stricken. The noise of
+his plunging increased the echoes a thousand times and multiplied his
+fright, until the poor brute collapsed into meek obedience at last.
+But the guide strode on unconcerned with his easy Hillman gait, neither
+deigning to glance back nor making any verbal comment.
+
+Over their heads, at irregular intervals, there were holes that if they
+led as King presumed into caves above, left not an inch of all the
+long passage that could not have been swept by rifle-fire. It was
+impregnable; for no artillery heavy enough to pound the mountain into
+pieces could ever be dragged within range. Whatever hiding place this
+entrance guarded could be held forever, given food and cartridges!
+
+The tunnel wound to right and left like a snake, growing lighter and
+lighter after each bend; and soon their own din began to be swallowed in
+a greater one that entered from the farther end. After two sharp turns
+they came out unexpectedly into the blaze of blue day, nearly stunned by
+light and sound. A road came up from below like that of an ocean in the
+grip of a typhoon.
+
+When his wits recovered from the shock, King struggled with a wild
+desire to yell, for before him, was what no servant of British India had
+ever seen and lived to tell about, and that is an experience more potent
+than unbroken rum.
+
+They had emerged from a round-mouthed tunnel--it looked already like a
+rabbit-hole, so huge was the cliff behind--on to a ledge of rock that
+formed a sort of road along one side of a mile-wide chasm. Above him, it
+seemed a mile up, was blue sky, to which limestone walls ran sheer, with
+scarcely a foothold that could be seen. Beneath, so deep that eyes
+could not guess how deep, yawned the stained gorge of the underworld,
+many-colored, smooth and wet.
+
+And out of a great, jagged slit in the side of the cliff, perhaps a
+thousand feet below them, there poured down into thunderous dimness a
+waterfall whose breadth seemed not less than half a mile. It spouted
+seventy or eighty yards before it began to curve, and its din was like
+the voice of all creation.
+
+Ismail came and stood by King in silence, taking his hand, as a little
+child might. Presently he stooped and picked up a stone and tossed it
+over.
+
+“Gone!” he said simply. “That down there is Earth's Drink!”
+
+“And this is the 'Heart of the Hills' men boast about?”
+
+“Nay! It is not!” snapped Ismail.
+
+“Then, where--”
+
+But the one-eyed guide beckoned impatiently, and King led the way after
+him, staring as hakim or prisoner or any man had right to do on first
+admission to such wonders. Not to have stared would have been to
+proclaim himself an idiot.
+
+The least of all the wonders was that the secret of the place should
+have been kept all down the centuries; for it was the hollow middle of
+a limestone mountain, that could neither be looked down into from
+above, because the heights were not scalable, nor guessed at from the
+conformation of the country. The river, that flowed out of rock and went
+plunging down into the chasm, must be snow from the Himalayan peaks, on
+its way to swell the sea. There was no other way to account for that;
+but that explanation did explain why at least one Indian river is no
+greater than it is.
+
+The road they followed was a fold in the natural rock, rising and
+falling and curving like a ribbon, but tending on the average downward.
+It looked to be about two miles to the point where it curved at the
+chasm's end and swept round and downward, to be lost in a fissure in the
+cliff.
+
+They soon began to pass the mouths of caves. Some were above the road,
+now and then at crazy heights above it, reached by artificial steps hewn
+out of the stone. Others were below, reached from the road by means of
+ladders, that trembled and swayed over the dizzying waterfall. Most of
+the caves were inhabited, for armed men and sullen women came to their
+entrances to stare.
+
+Ears grow accustomed to the sound of water sooner than to almost
+anything. It was not long before King's ears could catch the patter of
+his men's feet following, and the shod clink of the mule. He could hear
+when Ismail whispered:
+
+“Be brave, little hakim! She loves fearless men.”
+
+As the track descended caves became more numerous. In one there were
+horses, for as they passed there came a whiff of unclean stables, and
+the litter of fodder and dung was all about the entrance. The mouths
+of other caves were sealed, with great wax disks, strangely stamped,
+affixed to stout wooden doors. One cave smelt as if oil were stored in
+it, and King wondered whence the oil was brought--for the sirkar knows
+to a pint and an ounce what products travel up and down the Khyber.
+
+At last the guide halted, in the middle of a short steep slope where the
+path was less than six feet wide and a narrow cave mouth gave directly
+on to it.
+
+“Be content to rest here!” he said, pointing.
+
+“Thy cave?” asked King.
+
+“Nay. God's! I am the caretaker!”
+
+(The “Hills” are very pious and polite, between the acts of robbing and
+shedding blood.)
+
+“Allah, then, reward thee, brother!” answered King. “Allah give sight to
+thy blind eye! Allah give thee children! Allah give thee peace, and to
+all thy house!”
+
+The guide salaamed, half-mockingly, half-wondering at such eloquence,
+pausing in the passage to point into the side-caves that debouched to
+either hand. There was a niche of a place, where a man might lie on
+guard near the entrance; another cave in which horses could be stabled,
+with plenty of fodder piled up ready; another beyond that for servants
+and baggage, with a fireplace and cooking pots; and at the last at the
+rear of all a great cavern full of eerie gloom, that opened out from the
+end of the passage like a bottle at the end of a long neck.
+
+Peering about him into vastness, King became aware of frame beds, placed
+at intervals in a row, each with a mat beside it. And there were several
+brass basins and ewers for water. Also there were some little bronze
+lamps; the guide lit three of them, and King took up one to examine it.
+As he did so, involuntarily his hand almost went to his bosom, where the
+strange knife still reposed that he had taken from the would-be murderer
+in the train to Delhi.
+
+There was no gold on the lamp; but the handle by which he lifted it had
+been cast, the devils of the Himalayas only knew how many centuries ago,
+in the form of a woman dancing; her size, and her shape, and the art
+with which she had been fashioned, were the same as the handle of the
+knife.
+
+Watching him as a wolf eyes another one, the strange guide found his
+tongue.
+
+“How many such hast thou ever seen?” he asked.
+
+“None!” answered King, and the guide cackled at him, like a hen that has
+laid an egg.
+
+“There be many strange things in Khinjan, but few strangers!” he
+remarked; and then, as if that were enough for any man to say on any
+occasion, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the cavern. It was
+the last King ever saw of him. He followed him down the passage to the
+entrance and watched him until his back disappeared round the first
+bend, but the man never turned his head once. He did not even look over
+the edge of the road, down into the amazing waterfall, nor up to the
+round disk of sky.
+
+King turned back and looked into the other caves--saw the weary horse
+and mule fed, watered and bedded down--took note of the running water
+that rushed out of a rock fissure and gurgled out of sight down another
+one--examined the servants' cave and saw that they had been amply
+provided with blankets. There was nothing lacking that the most exacting
+traveler could have demanded at such a distance from civilization. There
+was more than the most exacting would have dared expect.
+
+“Why isn't it damp in here?” he wondered, returning to his own cave. And
+then he noticed long fissures in the cavern walls, and that the smoke
+from the lamps drifted toward them. He could not guess what made it
+do that, unless it were the suction of the enormous river hurrying
+underground; and then he remembered that at the entrance air had rushed
+downward into the hole down which the horse had disappeared, which
+partly confirmed his guess.
+
+“Ismail!” he shouted, and jumped at the revolver-crack--like echo of his
+voice.
+
+Ismail came running.
+
+“Make the men carry the mule's packs into this cave. You and Darya Khan
+stay here and help me open them. Remember, ye are both assistants of
+Kurram Khan, the hakim!”
+
+“They will laugh at us! They will laugh at us!” clucked Ismail, but he
+hurried to obey, while King wondered who would laugh.
+
+Within an hour a delegation came from no less a person than Yasmini
+herself, bearing her compliments, and hot food savory enough to make
+a brass idol's mouth water. By that time King had his sets of surgical
+instruments and drugs and bandages all laid out on one of the beds and
+covered from view by a blanket.
+
+It was only one more proof of the British army's everlasting luck that
+one of the men, who set the great brass dish of food on the floor
+near King, had a swollen cheek, and that he should touch the swelling
+clumsily, as he lifted his hand to shake back a lock of greasy hair.
+
+There followed an oath like flint struck on steel ten times in rapid
+succession.
+
+“Does it pain thee, brother?” asked Kurram Khan the hakim.
+
+“Are there devils in Tophet! Fire and my veins are one!”
+
+The man did not notice the eagerness beaming out of King's horn-rimmed
+spectacles, but Ismail did; it seemed to him time to prove his virtues
+as assistant.
+
+“This is the famous hakim Kurram Khan,” he boasted. “He can cure
+anything, and for a very little fee!”
+
+“Nay, for no fee at all in this case!” said King.
+
+The man looked incredulous, but King drew the covering from his row of
+instruments and bottles.
+
+“Take a chance!” he advised. “None but the brave wins anything!”
+
+The man sat down, as if he would argue the point at length, but Ismail
+and Darya Khan were new to the business and enthusiastic. They had him
+down, held tight on the floor to the huge amusement of the rest, before
+the man could even protest; and his howls of rage did him no good, for
+Ismail drove the hilt of a knife between his open jaws to keep them
+open.
+
+A very large proportion of King's stores consisted of morphia and
+cocaine. He injected enough cocaine to deaden the man's nerves, and
+allowed it time to work. Then he drew out three back teeth in quick
+succession, to make sure he had the right one.
+
+Ismail let the victim up, and Darya Khan gave him water in a brass
+cup. Utterly without pain for the first time for days, the man was as
+grateful as a wolf freed from a trap.
+
+“Allah reward thee, since the service was free!” he smirked.
+
+“Are there any others in pain in Khinjan?” King asked him.
+
+“Listen to him! What is Khinjan? Is there one man without a wound or a
+sore or a scar or a sickness?”
+
+“Then, tell them,” said King.
+
+The man laughed.
+
+“When I show my jaw, there will be a fight to be first! Make ready,
+hakim! I go!”
+
+He was true to his word and left the cave like a gust of wind, followed
+by the three who had come with him. King sat down to eat, but he had not
+finished his meal--he had made the last little heap of rice into a
+ball with his fingers, native style, and was mopping up the last of the
+curried gravy with it--when the advance guard of the lame and the halt
+and the sick made its appearance. The cave's entrance became jammed with
+them, and no riot ever made more noise.
+
+“Hakim! Ho, hakim! Where is the hakim who draws teeth? Where is the man
+who knows yunani?”
+
+Ten men burst down the passage all together, all clamoring, and one man
+wasted no time at all but began to tear away bloody bandages to show his
+wound. The hardest thing now was to get and keep some kind of order,
+and for ten minutes Ismail and Darya Khan labored, using threats where
+argument failed, and brute force when they dared. It was like beating
+mad hounds from off their worry. What established order at last was that
+King rolled up his sleeves and began, so that eagerness gave place to
+wonder.
+
+The “Hills” are not squeamish in any one particular; so that the fact
+that the cave became a shambles upset nobody. The surgeon's thrill that
+makes even half-amateurs oblivious of all but the work in hand,
+coupled with the desperate need of winning this first trick, made King
+horror-proof; and nobody waiting for the next turn was troubled because
+the man under the knife screamed a little or bled more than usual.
+
+When they died--and more than one did die--men carried them out and
+flung them over the precipice into the waterfall below.
+
+Ismail and Darya Khan became choosers of the victims. They seized a man,
+laid him on the bed, tore off his disgusting bandages and held their
+breath until the awful resulting stench had more or less dispersed. Then
+King would probe or lance or bandage as he saw fit, using anaesthetics
+when he must, but managing mostly without them.
+
+They almost flung money at him. Few of them asked what his fee would
+be. Those who had no money brought him shawls, and swords, and even
+clothing. Two or three brought old-fashioned fire-arms; but they were
+men who did not expect to live. And King accepted every gift without
+comment, because that was in keeping with the part he played. He tossed
+money and clothes and every other thing they gave him into a corner at
+the back of the cave, and nobody tried to steal them back, although a
+man suspected of honesty in that company would have been tortured to
+death as an heretic and would have had no sympathy.
+
+For hour after gruesome hour he toiled over wounds and sores such as
+only battles and evil living can produce, until men began to come at
+last with fresh wounds, all caused by bullets, wrapped in bandages on
+which the blood had caked but had not grown foul.
+
+“There has been fighting in the Khyber,” somebody informed him, and
+he stopped with lancet in mid-air to listen, scanning a hundred faces
+swiftly in the smoky lamplight. There were ten men who held lamps for
+him, one of them a newcomer, and it was he who spoke.
+
+“Fighting in the Khyber! Aye! We were a little lashkar, but we drove
+them back into their fort! Aye! we slew many!”
+
+“Not a jihad yet?” King asked, as if the world might be coming to an
+end. The words were startled out of him. Under other circumstances
+he would never have asked that question so directly; but he had
+lost reckoning of everything but these poor devils' dreadful need of
+doctoring, and he was like a man roused out of a dream. If a holy war
+had been proclaimed already, then he was engaged on a forlorn hope. But
+the man laughed at him.
+
+“Nay, not yet. Bull-with-a-beard holds back yet. This was a little
+fight. The jihad shall come later!”
+
+“And who is 'Bull-with-a-beard'?” King wondered; but he did not ask that
+question because his wits were awake again. It pays not to be in too
+much of a hurry to know things in the “Hills.”
+
+As it happened, he asked no more questions, for there came a shout
+at the cave entrance whose purport he did not catch, and within five
+minutes after that, without a word of explanation, the cave was left
+empty of all except his own five men. They carried away the men too sick
+to walk and vanished, snatching the last man away almost before King's
+fingers had finished tying the bandage on his wound.
+
+“Why is that?” he asked Ismail. “Why did they go? Who shouted?”
+
+“It is night,” Ismail answered. “It was time.”
+
+King stared about him. He had not realized until then that without aid
+of the lamps he could not see his own hand held out in front of him;
+his eyes had grown used to the gloom, like those of the surgeons in the
+sick-bays below the water line in Nelson's fleet.
+
+“But who shouted?”
+
+“Who knows? There is only one here who gives orders. We be many who
+obey,” said Ismail.
+
+“Whose men were the last ones?” King asked him, trying a new line.
+
+“Bull-with-a-beard's.”
+
+“And whose man art thou, Ismail?”
+
+The Afridi hesitated, and when he spoke at last there was not quite the
+same assurance in his voice as once there had been.
+
+“I am hers! Be thou hers, too! But it is night. Sleep against the toil
+tomorrow. There be many sick in Khinjan.”
+
+King made a little effort to clean the cave, but the task was hopeless.
+For one thing he was so weary that his very bones were water; for
+another, Ismail pretended to be equally tired, and when the suggestion
+that they should help was put to the others they claimed their izzat
+indignantly. Izzat and sharm (honor and shame) are the two scarcely
+distinguishable enemies of honest work, into whose teeth it takes both
+nerve and resolution to drive a Hillman at the best of times. Nerve King
+had, but his resolution was asleep. He was too tired to care.
+
+He appointed them to two-hour watches, to relieve one another until
+dawn, and flung himself on a clean bed. He was asleep before his head
+had met the pillow; and for all he knew to the contrary he dreamed of
+Yasmini all night long.
+
+It seemed to him that she came into the cave--she the woman of the faded
+photograph the general had given him in Peshawur--and that the cave
+became filled with the strange intoxicating scent that had first wooed
+his senses in her reception room in Delhi.
+
+He dreamed that she called him by name. First, “King sahib!” Then,
+“Kurram Khan!” And her voice was surprisingly familiar. But dreams are
+strange things.
+
+“He sleeps!” said the same voice presently. “It is good that he sleeps!”
+ And in his sleep he thought that a shadowy Ismail grunted an answer.
+
+After that he was very sure in his dream that it was good to sleep,
+although a voice he did not recognize and that he was quite sure was a
+dream-voice, kept whispering to him to wake up and protect himself.
+
+But the scent grew stronger, and he began to dream of cobras, that
+danced with a woman and struck at her so swiftly that she had to become
+two women in order to avoid them; and Rewa Gunga came and laughed at
+both and called them amateurs, so that the woman became enraged and drew
+a bronze-bladed dagger with a golden hilt.
+
+Then intelligible dreams ceased altogether, and he, slept like a dead
+man, but with a vague suggestion ever with him that Yasmini was not
+very far away, and that she was interested in him to a point that was
+actually embarrassing. It was like the ether-dream he once dreamt in a
+hospital.
+
+When he awoke at last it was after dawn, and light shone down the
+passage into his cave.
+
+“Ismail!” he shouted, for he was thirsty. But there was no answer.
+
+“Darya Khan!”
+
+Again there was no answer. He called each of the other men by name with
+the same result.
+
+He got up and realized then for the first time that he had not undressed
+himself the night before. His head felt heavy, and although he did not
+believe he had been drugged, there was a scent he half-recognized that
+permeated the cave, and even overcame the dreadful atmosphere that the
+sick of yesterday had left behind. He decided to go to the cave mouth,
+summon his men, who were no doubt sleeping as he had done, sniff the
+fresh air outside and come back to try the scent again; he would know
+then whether his nose were deceiving him.
+
+But there was no Ismail near the entrance--no Darya Khan--nor any of the
+other men. The horse was gone. So was the mule. So was the harness, and
+everything he had, except the drugs and instruments and the presents
+the sick had given him; he had noticed all those still lying about in
+confusion when he woke.
+
+“Ismail!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, thinking they might all be
+outside.
+
+He heard a man hawk and spit, close to the entrance, and went out to
+see. A man whom he had never seen before leaned on a magazine rifle and
+eyed him as a tiger eyes its prey.
+
+“No farther!” he growled, bringing his rifle to the port.
+
+“Why not?” King asked him.
+
+“Allah! When a camel dies in the Khyber do the kites ask why? Go in!”
+
+He thought then of Yasmini's bracelet, that always gained him at least
+civility from every man who saw it. He held up his left wrist and knew
+that instant why it felt uncomfortable. The bracelet has disappeared!
+
+He turned back into the cave to hunt for it, and the strange scent
+greeted him again. In spite of the surrounding stench of drugs and
+filthy wounds, there was no mistaking it. If it had been her special
+scent in Delhi, as Saunders swore it was, and her special scent on the
+note Darya Khan had carried down the Khyber, then it was hers now, and
+she had been in the cave.
+
+He hunted high and low and found no bracelet.
+
+His pistol was gone, too, and his cartridges, but not the dagger,
+wrapped in a handkerchief, under his shirt. The money, that his patients
+had brought him, lay on the floor untouched. It was an unusual robber
+who had robbed him.
+
+At least once in his life (or he were not human, but an angel) it dawns
+on a man that he has done the unforgivable. It dawns on most men oftener
+than once a week. So men learn sympathy.
+
+“I should have been awake to change the guard every two hours!” he
+admitted, sitting on the bed. “I wouldn't hesitate to shoot another man
+for that--or for less!”
+
+He let the thought sink in, until the very lees of shame tasted like
+ashes in his mouth. Then, being what he was,--and there are not very
+many men good enough to shoulder what lay ahead of him--he set the whole
+affair behind him as part of the past and looked forward.
+
+“Who's 'Bull-with-a-beard'?” he wondered. “Nobody interfered with me
+until I doctored his men. He's in opposition. That's a fair guess. Now,
+who in thunder--by the fat lord Harry--can 'Bull-with-a-beard' be?
+And why fighting in the Khyber so early as all this? And why does
+'Bull-with-a-beard,' whoever he is, hang back?”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+
+   Are jackals a tiger's friends because they flatter him and eat
+   his leavings?
+   Choose, ye with stripes and proud whiskers, choose between friend
+   and enemy.--Native Proverb
+
+
+They came and changed the guard two hours after dawn, to the
+accompaniment of a lot of hawking and spitting, orders growled through
+the mist, and the crash of rifle-butts grounding on the rock path. King
+went to the cave entrance, to look the new man over; but because he was
+in Khinjan, and Khinjan in the “Hills,” where indirectness is the key to
+information, he stood for a while at gaze, listening to the thunder of
+tumbling water and looking at the cliff-edge six feet away that was laid
+like a knife in the ascending mist.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the new man was a
+Mahsudi--no sweeter to look at and no less treacherous for the fact.
+Also, that he had boils all over the back of his neck. He was not likely
+to be better tempered because of that fact, either. But it is an ill
+wind that blows no good to the Secret Service.
+
+“There is an end to everything,” he remarked presently, addressing the
+world at large, or as much as he could see of it through the cave mouth.
+“A hill is so high, a pool so deep, a river so wide. How long, for
+instance, must thy watch be?”
+
+“What is that to thee?” the fellow growled.
+
+“There is an end to pain!” said King, adjusting his horn-rimmed
+spectacles. “I lanced a man's boils last night, and it hurt him, but he
+must be well to-day.”
+
+“Get in!” growled the guard. “She says it is sorcery! She says none are
+to let thee touch them!”
+
+Plainly, he was in no receptive mood; orders had been spat into his
+hairy ear too recently.
+
+“Get in!” he growled, lifting his rifle-butt as if to enforce the order.
+
+“I can heal boils!” said King, retiring into the cave. Then, from a
+safe distance down the passage, he added a word or two to sink in as the
+hours went by.
+
+“It is good to be able to bend the neck without pain and to rest easily
+at night! It is good not to flinch at another's touch. Boils are bad!
+Healing is easy and good!”
+
+Then, since a quarrel was the very last thing he was looking for, he
+retired into his own gloomy quarters at the rear, taking care to sit so
+that he could see and overhear what passed at the entrance. Among other
+things in the course of the day he noticed that the watch was changed
+every four hours and that there were only three men in the guard, for
+the same man was back again that evening.
+
+At intervals throughout the day Yasmini sent him food by silent
+messengers; so he ate, for “the thing to do,” says Cocker, “is the first
+that comes to hand, and the thing not to do is worry.” It is not easy to
+worry and eat heartily at one and the same time. Having eaten, he rolled
+up his sleeves and native-made cotton trousers and proceeded to clean
+the cave. After that he overhauled his stock of drugs and instruments,
+repacking them and making ready against opportunity.
+
+“As I told that heathen with a gun out there, there's an end to
+everything!” he reflected. “May this come soon!”
+
+When they changed the guard that afternoon he had grown weary of his
+own company and of fruitless speculation and was pacing up and down. The
+second guard proved even less communicative than the first, up to the
+point when, to lessen his ennui, King began to whistle. Because a Secret
+Service man must be consistent, the tune was not English, but a weird
+minor one to which the “Hills” have set their favorite love song (that
+is, all about hate in the concrete!).
+
+The echo of the waterfall within the cave was like the roaring in a
+shell held to the ear, but each time he came near the entrance the
+new guard could catch a few bars of the tune. After a little while the
+hook-nosed ruffian began to sing the words to it, in a voice like a
+forgotten dog's.
+
+So he stopped at the entrance and changed the tune. And the guard sang
+the words of the new tune, too. After that he came out into the light
+of day (direct sunlight was cut off by the huge height of the cliffs all
+around) and leaned in the entrance, smiling.
+
+“Allah preserve thee, brother!” he remarked. “Thine is a voice like a
+warrior's--bold and big! Thou art a true son of the Prophet!”
+
+“Aye!” said the fellow, “that I am! Allah preserve thee, for thou hast
+more need of it than I, although I guard thee just at present. Whistle
+me another one!”
+
+So King whistled the refrain of a song that boasts of an Afghan invasion
+of India, and of the loot that came of it, and the prisoners, and the
+women--particularly the women, mentioning more than a few of them by
+name, and their charms in detail. It was a song to warm the very cockles
+of a Hillman's heart. Nothing could have been better chosen for that
+setting, of a cave mouth half-way down the side of a gash in earth's
+wildest mountains, with the blue sky resting on a jagged rim a mile
+above.
+
+“Good!” said the bearded jailer. “Now begin again and I will sing!”
+
+He threw his head back and howled until the mountain walls rang with the
+song, and other men in far-off caves took it up and howled it back at
+him. When he left off singing at last, to drink from a water-bottle,
+that surely had been looted from a British soldier, King decided to be
+done with overtures and make the next move in the game.
+
+“Didst thou ever sing for her?” he asked, and the man turned round to
+stare at him as if he were mad, King saw then a blood-soaked bandage on
+the right of his neck, not very far from the jugular.
+
+“When she sings we are silent! When she is silent it is good to wait a
+while and see!” he answered.
+
+“Hah!” said King. “Was that wound got in the Khyber the other day?”
+
+“Nay. Here in Khinjan. I had my thumb in a man's eye, and the bastard
+bit me! May devils do worse to him where he has gone! I threw him into
+Earth's Drink!”
+
+“A good place for one's enemies!” laughed King.
+
+“Aye!”
+
+“A man told me last night,” said King, drawing on imagination without
+any compunction at all, “that the fight in the Khyber was because a
+jihad is launched aleady.”
+
+“That man lied!” said the guard, shifting position uneasily, as if
+afraid to talk too much.
+
+“So I told him!” answered King. “I told him there never will be another
+jihad.”'
+
+“Then art thou a greater liar than he!” the guard answered hotly. “There
+will be a jihad when she is ready, such an one as never yet was! India
+shall bleed for all the fat years she has lain unplundered! Not a throat
+of an unbeliever in the world shall be left un-slit! No jihad? Thou
+liar! Get in out of my sight!”
+
+So King retired into the cave, with something new to think about. Was
+she planning the jihad! Or pretending to plan one? Every once in a while
+the guard leaned far into the cave mouth and hurled adjectives at him,
+the mildest of which was a well of information. If his temper was the
+temper of the “Hills,” it was easy to read disappointment for a jihad
+that should have been already but had been postponed.
+
+When they changed the guard again the new man proved surly. There was
+no getting a word out of him. He showed dirty yellow teeth in a wolfish
+snarl, and his only answer was a lifted rifle and a crooked forefinger.
+King let him alone and paced the cave for hours.
+
+He was squatting on his bed-end in the dark, like a spectacled image of
+Buddha, when the first of the three men came on guard again and at last
+Ismail came for him holding a pitchy torch that filled the dim passage
+full of acrid smoke and made both of them cough. Ismail was red-eyed
+with it.
+
+“Come!” he growled. “Come, little hakim!” Then he turned on his heel at
+once, as if afraid of being twitted with desertion. He seemed to want to
+get outside, where he could keep out of range of words, yet not to wish
+to seem unfriendly.
+
+But King made no effort to speak to him, following in silence out on to
+the dark ledge above the waterfall and noticing that the guard with the
+boils was back again on duty. He grinned evilly out of a shadow as King
+passed.
+
+“Make an end!” he advised, spitting over the Cliff into thunderous
+darkness to illustrate the suggestion. “Jump, hakim, before a worse
+thing happens!”
+
+To add further point he kicked a loose stone over the edge, and the
+movement caused him to bend his neck and so inadvertently to hurt his
+boils. He cursed, and there was pity in King's voice when he spoke next.
+
+“Do they hurt thee?”
+
+“Aye, like the devil! Khinjan is a place of plagues!”
+
+“I could heal them,” King said, passing on, and the man stared hard.
+
+“Come!” boomed Ismail through the darkness, shaking the torch to make
+it burn better and beckoning impatiently, and King hurried after him,
+leaving behind a savage at the cave mouth who fingered his sores and
+wondered, muttering, leaning on a rifle, muttering and muttering again
+as if he had seen a new light.
+
+Instead of waiting for King to catch up, Ismail began to lead the way at
+great speed along a path that descended gradually until it curved round
+the end of the chasm and plunged into a tunnel where the darkness grew
+opaque. In the tunnel the torch's smoke cast weird shadows on walls and
+roof, and the fitful light only confused, so that Ismail slowed down and
+let him come up close.
+
+Then for thirty minutes he led swiftly down a crazy devil's stairway
+of uneven boulders, stopping to lend a hand at the worst places, but
+everlastingly urging him to hurry. They were both breathless, and King
+was bruised in a dozen places when they reached level going at least six
+or seven hundred feet below the cave from which they started.
+
+Then the hell-mouth gloom began to grow faintly luminous, and the
+waterfall's thunder burst on their ears from close at hand. They emerged
+into fresh wet air and a sea of sound, on a rock ledge like the one
+above. Ismail raised the torch and waved it. The fire and smoke wandered
+up, until they flattened on a moving opal dome, that prisoned all the
+noises in the world.
+
+“Earth's Drink!” he announced, waving the torch and then shutting his
+mouth tight, as if afraid to voice sacrilege.
+
+It was the river, million-colored in the torch-light, pouring from a
+half-mile-long slash in the cliff above them and plunging past them
+through the gloom toward the very middle of the world. Its width was a
+matter of memory, and its depth unguessable, for although dim moonlight
+filtered through it, he did not know where the moon was, nor how far
+such light could penetrate through moving water. Somewhere it met
+rock-bottom and boiled there, for a roar like the sea's came up from
+deeps unimaginable.
+
+He watched the overturning dome until his senses reeled. Then he crawled
+on hands and knees to the ledge's brink and tried to peer over. But
+Ismail dragged him back.
+
+“Come!” he howled; but in all that din his shout was like a whisper.
+
+“How deep is it?” King bellowed back.
+
+“Allah! Ask Him who made it!”
+
+The fear of the falls was on the Afridi, and he tugged at King's arm in
+a frenzy of impatience. Suddenly he let go and broke into a run. King
+trotted after him, afraid too, to look to right or left, lest the
+fear should make him throw himself over the brink. The thunder and the
+hugeness had their grip on him and had begun to numb his power to think
+and his will to be a man. Suddenly when they had run a hundred yards,
+Ismail turned sharp to the right into a tunnel that led straight back
+into the cliff and sloped uphill. As the din of the falls grew less
+behind him and his power to think returned, King calculated that they
+must be following the main direction of the river bed, but edging away
+gradually to the right of it. After ten minutes' hurrying uphill he
+guessed they must be level with the river, in a tunnel running nearly
+parallel.
+
+He proved to be right, for they came to a gap in the wall, and Ismail
+thrust the torch through it. The light shone on swift black water, and a
+wind rushed through the gap that nearly blew the torch out. It accounted
+altogether for the dryness of the rock and the fresh air in the tunnel.
+The river's weight seemed to suck a hurricane along with it--air enough
+for a million men to breathe.
+
+After that there was no more need to stop at intervals and beat the
+torch against the wall to make it burn brightly, for the wind fanned it
+until the flame was nearly white. Ismail kept looking back to bid King
+hurry and never paused once to rest.
+
+“Come!” he urged fiercely. “This leads to the 'Heart of the Hills'!” And
+after that King had to do his best to keep the Afridi's back in sight.
+
+They began after a time to hear voices and to see the smoky glare made
+by other torches. Then Ismail set the pace yet faster, and they became
+the last two of a procession of turbaned men, who tramped along a
+winding tunnel into a great mountain's womb. The sound of slippers
+clicking and rutching on the rock floor swelled and died and swelled
+again as the tunnel led from cavern into cavern.
+
+In one great cave they came to every man beat out his torch and tossed
+it on a heap. The heap was more than shoulder high, and three parts
+covered the floor of the cave. After that there was a ledge above the
+height of a man's head on either side of the tunnel, and along the ledge
+little oil-burning lamps were spaced at measured intervals. They looked
+ancient enough to have been there when the mountain itself was born,
+and although all the brass ones suggested Indian and Hindu origin, there
+were others among them of earthenware that looked like plunder from
+ancient Greece.
+
+It was like a transposition of epochs. King felt already as if the
+twentieth century had never existed, just as he seemed to have left life
+behind for good and all when the mosque door had closed on him.
+
+A quarter of a mile farther along the tunnel opened into another, yet
+greater cave, and there every man kicked off his slippers, without
+seeming to trouble how they lay; they littered the floor unarranged and
+uncared for, looking like the cast-off wing-cases of gigantic beetles.
+
+After that cave there were two sharp turns in the tunnel, and then at
+last a sea of noise and a veritable blaze of light.
+
+Part of the noise made King feel homesick, for out of the mountain's
+very womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made use
+of before the days of electricity and steam. It was being worked by
+inexpert hands, for the time was something jerky; but it was robbed of
+its tinny meanness and even lent majesty by the hugeness of a
+cavern's roof, as well as by the crashing, swinging march it
+played--wild--wonderful--invented for lawless hours and a kingless
+people.
+
+“Marchons!--Citoyens!--”
+
+The procession began to tramp in time to it, and the rock shook. They
+deployed to left and right into a space so vast that the eye at first
+refused to try to measure it. It was the hollow core of a mountain,
+filled by the sea-sound of a human crowd and hung with huge stalactites
+that danced and shifted and flung back a thousand colors at the
+flickering light below.
+
+There was an undertone to the clangor of the music-box and the human
+hum, for across the cavern's farther end for a space of two hundred
+yards the great river rushed, penned here into a deep trough of less
+than a tenth its normal width--plunging out of a great fanged gap and
+hurrying out of view down another one, licking smooth banks on its way
+with a hungry sucking sound. Its depth where it crossed the cavern's
+end could only be guessed by remembering the half-mile breadth of the
+waterfall.
+
+There were little lamps everywhere, perched on ledges amid the
+stalactites, and they suffused the whole cavern in golden glow, made the
+crowd's faces look golden and cast golden shimmers on the cold, black
+river bed. There was scarcely any smoke, for the wind that went like a
+storm down the tunnel seemed to have its birth here; the air was fresh
+and cool and never still. No doubt fresh air was pouring in continually
+through some shaft in the rock, but the shaft was invisible.
+
+In the midst of the cavern a great arena had been left bare, and
+thousands of turbaned men squatted round it in rings. At the end where
+the river formed a tangent to them the rings were flattened, and at that
+point they were cut into by the ramp of a bridge, and by a lane left
+to connect the bridge with the arena. The bridge was almost the most
+wonderful of all.
+
+So delicately formed that fairies might have made it with a guttered
+candle, it spanned the river in one splendid sweep, twenty feet above
+water, like a suspension bridge. Then, so light and graceful that it
+scarcely seemed to touch anything at all, it swept on in irregular
+arches downward to the arena and ceased abruptly as if shorn off by a
+giant ax, at a point less than half-way to it.
+
+Its end formed a nearly square platform, about fourteen feet above
+the floor, and the broad track thence to the arena, as well as all the
+arena's boundary, had been marked off by great earthenware lamps, whose
+greasy smoke streaked up and was lost by the wind among the stalactites.
+
+“Greek lamps, every one of 'em!” King whispered to himself, but he
+wasted no time just then on trying to explain how Greek lamps had ever
+got there. There was too much else to watch and wonder at.
+
+No steps led down from the bridge end to the floor; toward the arena it
+was blind. But from the bridge's farther end across the hurrying water
+stairs had been hewn out of the rock wall and led up to a hole of twice
+a man's height, more than fifty feet above water level.
+
+On either side of the bridge end a passage had been left clear to the
+river edge, and nobody seemed to care to invade it, although it was not
+marked off in any way. Each passage was about fifty feet wide and quite
+straight. But the space between the bridge end and the arena, and the
+arena itself, had to be kept free from trespassers by fifty swaggering
+ruffians armed to the teeth.
+
+Every man of the thousands there had a knife in evidence, but the arena
+guards had magazine rifles well as Khyber tulwars. Nobody else wore
+firearms openly. Some of the arena guards bore huge round shields of
+prehistoric pattern of a size and sort he had never seen before, even
+in museums. But there was very little that he was seeing that night of a
+kind that he had seen before anywhere!
+
+The guards lolled insolently, conscious of brute strength and special
+favor. When any man trespassed with so much as a toe beyond the ring of
+lamps, a guard would slap his rifle-butt until the swivels rattled and
+the offender would scurry into bounds amid the jeers of any who had
+seen.
+
+Shoving, kicking and elbowing with set purpose, Ismail forced a way
+through the already seated crowd, and drew King down into the cramped
+space beside him, close enough to the arena to be able to catch the
+guards' low laughter. But he was restless. He wished to get nearer yet,
+only there seemed no room anywhere in front.
+
+The music-box was hidden. King could see it nowhere. Five minutes after
+he and Ismail were seated it stopped playing. The hum of the crowd died
+too.
+
+Then a guard threw his shield down with a clang and deliberately fired
+his rifle at the roof. The ricocheting bullet brought down a shower of
+splintered stone and stalactite, and he grinned as he watched the
+crowd dodge to avoid it. Before they had done dodging and while he yet
+grinned, a chant began--ghastly--tuneless--so out of time that the words
+were not intelligible--yet so obvious in general meaning that nobody
+could hear it and not understand.
+
+It was a devils' anthem, glorifying hellishness--suggestive of the
+gnashing of a million teeth, and the whicker of drawn blades--more
+shuddersome and mean than the wind of a winter's night. And it ceased as
+suddenly as it had begun.
+
+Another ruffian fired at the roof, and while the crack of the shot yet
+echoed seven other of the arena guards stepped forward with long horns
+and blew a blast. That was greeted by a yell that made the cavern
+tremble.
+
+Instantly a hundred men rose from different directions and raced for the
+arena, each with a curved sword in either hand. The yelling changed back
+into the chant, only louder than before, and by that much more terrible.
+Cymbals crashed. The music-box resumed its measured grinding of The
+Marseillaise. And the hundred began an Afridi sword dance, than which
+there is nothing wilder in all the world. Its like can only be seen
+under the shadow of the “Hills.”
+
+Ismail put his hands together and howled through them like a wolf on the
+war-path, nudging King with an elbow. So King imitated him, although one
+extra shout in all that din seemed thrown away.
+
+The dancers pranced in a circle, each man whirling both swords around
+his head and the head of the man in front of him at a speed that passed
+belief. Their long black hair shook and swayed. The sweat began to pour
+from them until their arms and shoulders glistened. The speed increased.
+Another hundred men leaped in, forming a new ring outside the first,
+only facing the other way. Another hundred and fifty formed a ring
+outside them again, with the direction again reversed; and two hundred
+and fifty more formed an outer circle--all careering at the limit of
+their power, gasping as the beasts do in the fury of fighting to the
+death, slitting the air until it whistled, with swords that missed human
+heads by immeasurable fractions of an inch.
+
+Ismail seemed obsessed by the spirit of hell let loose--drawn by it,
+as by a magnet, although subsequent events proved him not to have been
+altogether without a plan. He got up, with his eyes fixed on the dance,
+and dragged King with him to a place ten rows nearer the arena, that had
+been vacated by a dancer. There--two, where there was only rightly
+room for one--he thrust himself and King next to some Orakzai Pathans,
+elbowing savagely to right and left to make room. And patience proved
+scarce. The instant oaths of anything but greeting were like overture to
+a dog fight.
+
+“Bismillah!” swore the nearest man, deigning to use intelligible
+sentences at last. “Shall a dog of an Afridi bustle me?”
+
+He reached for the ever-ready Pathan knife, and Ismail, with both eyes
+on the dancing, neither heard nor saw. The Pathan leaned past King to
+stab, but paused in the instant that his knife licked clear. From a
+swift side-glance at King's face be changed to full stare, his scowl
+slowly giving place to a grin as he recognized him.
+
+“Allah!”
+
+He drove the long blade back again, fidgeting about to make more room
+and kicking out at his next neighbor to the same end, so that presently
+King sat on the rock floor instead of on other men's hip-bones.
+
+“Well met, hakim! See--the wound heals finely!”
+
+Baring his shoulder under the smelly sheepskin coat, he lifted a bandage
+gingerly to show the clean opening out of which King had coaxed a bullet
+the day before. It looked wholesome and ready to heal.
+
+“Name thy reward, hakim! We Orakzai Pathans forget no favors!” (Now that
+boast was a true one.)
+
+King glanced to his left and saw that there was no risk of being
+overheard or interrupted by Ismail; the Afridi was beating his fists
+together, rocking from side to side in frenzy, and letting out about one
+yell a minute that would have curdled a wolf's heart.
+
+“Nay, I have all I need!” he answered, and the Pathan laughed.
+
+“In thine own time, hakim! Need forgets none of us!”
+
+“True!” said King.
+
+He nodded more to himself than to the other man. He needed, for
+instance, very much to know who was planning a jihad, and who
+“Bull-with-a-beard” might be; but it was not safe to confide just yet in
+a chance-made acquaintance. A very fair acquaintance with some phases of
+the East had taught him that names such as Bull-with-a-beard are often
+almost photographically descriptive. He rose to his feet to look. A
+blind man can talk, but it takes trained eyes to gather information.
+
+The din had increased, and it was safe to stand up and stare, because
+all eyes were on the madness in the middle. There were plenty besides
+himself who stood to get a better view, and he had to dodge from side to
+side to see between them.
+
+“I'm not to doctor his men. Therefore it's a fair guess that he and
+I are to be kept apart. Therefore he'll be as far away from me now as
+possible, supposing he's here.”
+
+Reasoning along that line, he tried to see the face on the far side, but
+the problem was to see over the dancers' heads. He succeeded presently,
+for the Orakzai Pathan saw what he wanted, and in his anxiety to be
+agreeable, reached forward to pull back a box from between the ranks in
+front.
+
+Its owners offered instant fight, but made no further objection when
+they saw who wanted it and why. King wondered at their sudden change of
+mind, the Pathan looked actually grieved that a fight should have been
+spared him. He tried, with a few barbed insults, to rearouse a spark of
+enmity, but failed, to his own great discontent.
+
+The box was a commonplace affair, built square, of pine, and had
+probably contained somebody's new helmet at one stage of its career. The
+stenciled marks on its sides and top had long ago become obliterated by
+wear and dirt.
+
+King got up on it and gazed long at the rows of spectators on the far
+side, and having no least notion what to look for, he studied the faces
+one by one.
+
+“If he's important enough for her to have it in for him, he'll not be
+far from the front,” he reasoned and with that in mind he picked out
+several bull-necked, bearded men, any one of whom could easily have
+answered to the description. There were too many of them to give him any
+comfort, until the thought occurred to him that a man with brains enough
+to be a leader would not be so obsessed and excited by mere prancing
+athleticism as those men were. Then he looked farther along the line.
+
+He found a man soon who was not interested in the dancing, but who had
+eyes and ears apparently for everything and everybody else. He watched
+him for ten minutes, until at last their eyes met. Then he sat down and
+kicked the box back to its owners.
+
+He looked again at Ismail. With teeth clenched and eyes ablaze, the
+Afridi was smashing his knuckles together and rocking to and fro.
+There was no need to fear him. He turned and touched the Pathan's broad
+shoulder. The man smiled and bent his turbaned head to listen.
+
+“Opposite,” said King, “nearly exactly opposite--three rows back from
+the front, counting the front row as one--there sits a man with his arm
+in a sling and a bandage over his eye.”
+
+The Pathan nodded and touched his knife-hilt.
+
+“One-and-twenty men from him, counting him as one, sits a man with a big
+black beard, whose shoulders are like a bull's. As he sits he hangs his
+head between them--thus.”
+
+“And you want him killed? Nay, I think you mean Muhammad Anim. His time
+is not yet.”
+
+The suggestion was as good-naturedly prompt as if the hakim's need had
+been water, and the other's flask were empty. He was sorry he could not
+offer to oblige.
+
+“Who am I that I should want him killed?” King answered with mild
+reproof. “My trade is to heal, not slay. I am a hakim.”
+
+The other nodded.
+
+“Yet, to enter Khinjan Caves you had to slay a man, hakim or no!”
+
+“He was an unbeliever,” King answered modestly, and the other nodded
+again with friendly understanding.
+
+“What about the man yonder, then?” the Pathan asked. “What will you have
+of him?”
+
+“Look! See! Tell me truly what his name is!”
+
+The Pathan got up and strode forward to stand on the box, kicking aside
+the elbows that leaned on it and laughing when the owners cursed him.
+He stood on it and stared for five minutes, counting deliberately three
+times over, striking a finger on the palm of his hand to check himself.
+
+“Bull-with-a-beard!” he announced at last, dropping back into place
+beside King. “Muhammad Anim. The mullah Muhammad Anim.”
+
+“An Afghan?” King asked.
+
+“He says he is an Afghan. But unless he lies he is from Ishtamboul
+(Constantinople).”
+
+Itching to ask more questions, King sat still and held his peace. The
+direr the need of information in the “Hills,” and in all the East
+for that matter, the greater the wisdom, as a rule, of seeming
+uninquisitive. And wisdom was rewarded now, for the Pathan, who would
+have dried up under eager questioning, grew talkative. Civility and
+volubility are sometimes one, and not always only among the civilized.
+King--the hakim Kurram Khan--blinked mildly behind his spectacles and
+looked like one to whom a savage might safely ease his mind.
+
+“He bade me go to Sikaram where my village is and bring him a hundred
+men for his lashkar. He says he has her special favor. Wait and watch, I
+say!
+
+“Has he money?” asked King, apparently drawing a bow at a venture for
+conversation's sake. But there is an art in asking artless questions.
+
+“Aye! The liar says the Germans gave it to him! He swears they will send
+more. Who are the Germans? Who is a man who talks of a jihad that is
+to be, that he should have gold coin given him by unbelievers? I saw a
+German once, at Nuklao. He ate pig-meat and washed it down with wine.
+Are such men sons of the Prophet? Wait and watch, say I!”
+
+“Money?” said King. “He admits it? And none dare kill him for it? You
+say his time is not yet come?”
+
+More than ever it was obvious that the hakim was a very simple man. The
+Pathan made a gesture of contempt.
+
+“I dare what I will, hakim! But he says there is more money on the way!
+When he has it all--why--we are all in Allah's keeping--He decides!”
+
+“And should no more money come?”
+
+This was courteous conversation and received as such--many a long league
+removed from curiosity.
+
+“Who am I to foretell a man's kismet? I know what I know, and I think
+what I think! I know thee, hakim, for a gentle fellow, who hurt me
+almost not at all in the drawing of a bullet out of my flesh. What
+knowest thou about me?”
+
+“That I will dress the wound for thee again!”
+
+Artless statements are as useful in their way as artless questions. Let
+the guile lie deep, that is all.
+
+“Nay, nay! For she said nay! Shall I fall foul of her, for the sake of a
+new bandage?”
+
+The temptation was terrific to ask why she had given that order, but
+King resisted it; and presently it occurred to the Pathan that his own
+theories on the subject might be of interest.
+
+“She will use thee for a reward,” he said. “He who shall win and keep
+her favor may have his hurts dressed and his belly dosed. Her enemies
+may rot.”
+
+“Who is fool enough to be her enemy?” asked King, the altogether mild
+and guileless.
+
+The Pathan stuck out his tongue and squeezed his nose with one finger
+until it nearly disappeared into his face.
+
+“If she calls a man enemy, how shall he prove otherwise?” he answered.
+Then he rolled off center, to pull out his great snuff-box from the
+leather bag at his waist.
+
+“Does she call the mullah Muhammad Anim enemy?” King asked him.
+
+“Nay, she never mentions him by name.”
+
+“Art thou a man of thy word?” King asked.
+
+“When it suits me.”
+
+“There was a promise regarding my reward.”
+
+“Name it, hakim! We will see.”
+
+“Go tell the mullah Muhammad Anim where I sit!”
+
+The fellow laughed. He considered himself tricked; one could read that
+plainly enough; for taking polite messages does not come within the
+Hills' elastic code of izzat, although carrying a challenge is another
+matter. Yet he felt grateful for the hakim's service and was ready to
+seize the first cheap means of squaring the indebtedness.
+
+“Keep my place!” he ordered, getting up. He growled it, as some men
+speak to dogs, because growling soothed his ruffled vanity.
+
+He helped himself noisily to snuff then and began to clear a passage,
+kicking out to right and left and laughing when his victims protested.
+Before he had traversed fifty yards he had made himself more enemies
+than most men dare aspire to in a lifetime, and he seemed well pleased
+with the fruit of his effort.
+
+The dance went on for fifteen minutes yet, but then--quite
+unexpectedly--all the arena guards together fired a volley at the roof,
+and the dance stopped as if every dancer had been hit. The spectators
+were set surging by the showers of stone splinters, that hurt whom they
+struck, and their snarl was like a wolf-pack's when a tiger interferes.
+But the guards thought it all a prodigious joke and the more the crowd
+swore the more they laughed.
+
+Panting--foaming at the mouth, some of them--the dancers ran to their
+seats and set the crowd surging again, leaving the arena empty of all
+but the guards. The man whose seat Ismail had taken came staggering,
+slippery with sweat, and squeezed himself where he belonged, forcing
+King into the Pathan's empty place. Ismail threw his arms round the man
+and patted him, calling him “mighty dancer,” “son of the wind,” “prince
+of prancers,” “prince of swordsmen,” “war-horse,” and a dozen more
+endearing epithets. The fellow lay back across Ismail's knees,
+breathless but well enough contented.
+
+And after a few more minutes the Orakzai Pathan came back, and King
+tried to make room for him to sit.
+
+“I bade thee keep my place!” he growled, towering over King and plucking
+at his knife-belt irresolutely. He made it clear without troubling to
+use words that any other man would have had to fight, and the hakim
+might think himself lucky.
+
+“Take my seat,” said King, struggling to get up.
+
+“Nay, nay--sit still, thou. I can kick room for myself. So! So! So!”
+
+There was an answering snarl of hate that seemed like a song to him,
+amid which he sat down.
+
+“The mullah Muhammad Anim answered he knows nothing of thee and cares
+less! He said--and he said it with vehemence--it is no more to him where
+a hakim sits than where the rats hide!”
+
+He watched King's face and seeing that, King allowed his facial muscles
+to express chagrin.
+
+“Between us, it is a poor time for messages to him. He is too full of
+pride that his lashkar should have beaten the British.”
+
+“Did they beat the British greatly?” King asked him, with only vague
+interest on his face and a prayer inside him that his heart might
+flutter less violently against his ribs. His voice was as non-committal
+as the mullah's message.
+
+“Who knows, when so many men would rather lie than kill? Each one who
+returned swears he slew a hundred. But some did not return. Wait and
+watch, say I!”
+
+Now a man stood up near the edge of the crowd whom King recognized;
+and recognition brought no joy with it. The mullah without hair or
+eyelashes, who had admitted him and his party through the mosque into
+the Caves, strode out to the middle of the arena all alone, strutting
+and swaggering. He recalled the man's last words and drew no consolation
+from them, either.
+
+“Many have entered! Some went out by a different road!”
+
+Cold chills went down his back. All at once Ismail's manner became
+unencouraging. He ceased to make a fuss over the dancer and began to eye
+King sidewise, until at last he seemed unable to contain the malice that
+would well forth.
+
+“At the gate there were only words!” he whispered. “Here in this cavern
+men wait for proof!”
+
+He licked his teeth suggestively, as a wolf does when he contemplates
+a meal. Then, as an afterthought, as though ashamed, “I love thee! Thou
+art a man after my own heart! But I am her man! Wait and see!”
+
+The mullah in the arena, blinking with his lashless eyes, held both
+arms up for silence in the attitude of a Christian priest blessing
+a congregation. The guards backed his silent demand with threatening
+rifles. The din died to a hiss of a thousand whispers, and then the
+great cavern grew still, and only the river could be heard sucking
+hungrily between the smooth stone banks.
+
+“God is great!” the mullah howled.
+
+“God is great!” the crowd thundered in echo to him; and then the vault
+took up the echoes. “God is great--is great--is great--ea--ea--eat!”
+
+“And Muhammad is His prophet!” howled the mullah. Instantly they
+answered him again.
+
+“And Muhammad is His prophet!”
+
+“His prophet--is His prophet--is His prophet!” said the stalactites, in
+loud barks--then in murmurs--then in awe-struck whispers.
+
+That seemed to be all the religious ritual Khinjan remembered or could
+tolerate. Considering that the mullah, too, must have killed his man
+in cold blood before earning the right to be there, perhaps it was
+enough--too much. There were men not far from King who shuddered.
+
+“There are strangers!” announced the mullah, as a man might say, “I
+smell a rat!” But he did not look at anybody in particular; he blinked
+at the crowd.
+
+“Strangers!” said the stalactites, in an awe-struck whisper.
+
+“Show them! Show them! Let them stand forth!”
+
+“Oh-h-h-h-h! Let them stand forth!” said the roof.
+
+The mullah bowed as if that idea were a new one and he thought it better
+than his own; for all crowds love flattery.
+
+“Bring them!” he shouted, and King suppressed a shudder--for what proof
+had he of right to be there beyond Ismail's verbal corroboration of a
+lie? Would Ismail lie for him again? he wondered. And if so, would the
+lie be any use?
+
+Not far from where King sat there was an immediate disturbance in the
+crowd, and a wretched-looking Baluchi was thrust forward at a run, with
+arms lashed to his sides and a pitiful look of terror on his face. Two
+more Baluchis were hustled along after him, protesting a little, but
+looking almost as hopeless.
+
+Once in the arena, the guards took charge of all three of them and lined
+them up facing the mullah, clubbing them with their rifle-butts to
+get quick obedience. The crowd began to be noisy again, but the mullah
+signed for silence.
+
+“These are traitors!” he howled, with a gesture such as Ajax might have
+used when he defied the lightning.
+
+The roof said “Traitors!”
+
+“Slay them, then!” howled the crowd, delighted. And blinking behind the
+horn-rimmed spectacles, King began to look about busily for hope, where
+there did not seem to be any.
+
+“Nay, hear me first!” the mullah howled, and his voice was like a wolf's
+at hunting time. “Hear, and be warned!”
+
+The crowd grew very still, but King saw that some men licked their lips,
+as if they well knew what was coming.
+
+“These three men came, and one was a new man!” the mullah howled. “The
+other two were his witnesses! All three swore that the first man came
+from slaying an unbeliever in the teeth of written law. They said he ran
+from the law. So, as the custom is, I let all three enter!”
+
+“Good!” said the crowd. “Good!” They might have been five thousand
+judges, judging in equity, so grave they were. Yet they licked their
+lips.
+
+“But later, word came to me saying they are liars. So--again as the
+custom is--I ordered them bound and held!”
+
+“Slay them! Slay them!” the crowd yelped, gleeful as a wolf-pack on a
+scent and abandoning solemnity as suddenly as it had been assumed. “Slay
+them!”
+
+They were like the wind, whipping in and out among Khinjan's rocks,
+savage and then still for a minute, savage and then still.
+
+“Nay, there is a custom yet!” the mullah howled, holding up both arms.
+And there was silence again like the lull before a hurricane, with only
+the great black river talking to itself.
+
+“Who speaks for them? Does any speak for them?”
+
+“Speak for them?” said the roof.
+
+There was silence. Then there was a murmur of astonishment. Over
+opposite to where King sat the mullah stood up, who the Pathan had said
+was “Bull-with-a-beard”--Muhammad Anim.
+
+“The men are mine!” he growled. His voice was like a bear's at bay; it
+was low, but it carried strangely. And as he spoke he swung his great
+head between his shoulders, like a bear that means to charge. “The proof
+they brought has been stolen! They had good proof! I speak for them! The
+men are mine!”
+
+The Pathan nudged King in the ribs with an elbow like a club and tickled
+his ear with hot breath.
+
+“Bull-with-a-beard speaks truth!” he grinned. “'Truth and a lie
+together! Good may it do him and them! They die, they three Baluchis!”
+
+“Proof!” howled the mullah who had no hair eyelashes.
+
+“Proof--oof--oof!” said the stalactites.
+
+“Proof! Show us proof!” yelled the crowd.
+
+“Words at the gate--proof in the cavern!” howled the lashless one.
+
+The Pathan next King leaned over to whisper to him again, but stiffened
+in the act. There was a great gasp the same instant, as the whole crowd
+caught its breath all together. The mullah in the middle froze into
+immobility. Bull-with-a-beard stood mumbling, swaying his great head from
+side to side, no longer suggestive of a bear about to charge, but of one
+who hesitates.
+
+The crowd was staring at the end of the bridge. King stared, too, and
+caught his own breath. For Yasmini stood there, smiling on them all as
+the new moon smiles down on the Khyber! She had come among them like a
+spirit, all unheralded.
+
+So much more beautiful than the one likeness King had seen of her that
+for a second he doubted who she was--more lovely than he had imagined
+her even in his dreams--she stood there, human and warm and real, who
+had begun to seem a myth, clad in gauzy transparent stuff that made no
+secret of sylph-like shapeliness and looking nearly light enough to blow
+away. Her feet--and they were the most marvelously molded things he had
+ever seen--were naked and played restlessly on the naked stone. Not one
+part of her was still for a fraction of a second; yet the whole effect
+was of insolently lazy ease.
+
+Her eyes blazed brighter than the little jewels stitched to her gossamer
+dress, and when a man once looked at them he did not find it easy to
+look away again. Even mullah Muhammad Anim seemed transfixed, like a
+great foolish animal.
+
+But King was staring very hard indeed at something else--mentally
+cursing the plain glass spectacles he wore, that had begun to film over
+and dim his vision. There were two bracelets on her arm, both barbaric
+things of solid gold. The smaller of the two was on her wrist and the
+larger on her upper arm, but they were so alike, except for size, and so
+exactly like the one Rewa Gunga had given him in her name and that had
+been stolen from him in the night, that he ran the risk of removing the
+glasses a moment to stare with unimpeded eyes. Even then the distance
+was too great. He could not quite see.
+
+But her eyes began to search the crowd in his direction, and then he
+knew two things absolutely. He was sitting where she had ordered Ismail
+to place him; for she picked him out almost instantly, and laughed as
+if somebody had struck a silver bell. And one of those bracelets was the
+one that he had worn; for she flaunted it at him, moving her arm so that
+the light should make the gold glitter.
+
+Then, perhaps because the crowd had begun to whisper, and she wanted all
+attention, she raised both arms to toss back the golden hair that came
+cascading nearly to her knees. And as if the crowd knew that symptom
+well, it drew its breath in sharply and grew very still.
+
+“Muhammad Anim!” she said, and she might have been wooing him. “That was
+a devil's trick!”
+
+It was rather an astounding statement, coming from lovely lips in such
+a setting. It was rather suggestive of a driver's whiplash, flicked
+through the air for a beginning. Muhammad Anim continued glaring and did
+not answer her, so in her own good time, when she had tossed her golden
+hair back once or twice again, she developed her meaning.
+
+“We who are free of Khinjan Caves do not send men out to bring recruits.
+We know better than to bid our men tell lies for others at the gate.
+Nor, seeking proof for our new recruit, do we send men to hunt a head
+for him--not even those of us who have a lashkar that we call our own,
+mullah Muhammad Anim. Each of us earns his own way in!”
+
+The mullah Muhammad Anim began to stroke his beard, but he made no
+answer.
+
+“And--mullah Muhammad Anim, thou wandering man of God--when that lashkar
+has foolishly been sent and has failed, is it written in the Kalamullah
+saying we should pretend there was a head, and that the head was stolen?
+A lie is a lie, Muhammad Anim! Wandering perhaps is good, if in search
+of the way. Is it good to lose the way, and to lie, thou true follower
+of the Prophet?”
+
+She smiled, tossing her hair back. Her eyes challenged, her lips mocked
+him and her chin scorned. The crowd breathed hard and watched. The
+mullah muttered something in his beard, and sat down, and the crowd
+began to roar applause at her. But she checked it with a regal gesture,
+and a glance of contempt at the mullah that was alone worth a journey
+across the “Hills” to see.
+
+“Guards!” she said quietly. And the crowd's sigh then was like the night
+wind in a forest.
+
+“Away with those three of Muhammad Anim's men!”
+
+Twelve of the arena guards threw down their shields with a sudden
+clatter and seized the prisoners, four to each. The crowd shivered with
+delicious anticipation. The doomed men neither struggled nor cried,
+for fatalism is an anodyne as well as an explosive. King set his teeth.
+Yasmini, with both hands behind her head, continued to smile down on
+them all as sweetly as the stars shine on a battle-field.
+
+She nodded once; and then all was over in a minute. With a ringing “Ho!”
+ and a run, the guards lifted their victims shoulder high and bore them
+forward. At the river bank they paused for a second to swing them. Then,
+with another “Ho!” they threw them like dead rubbish into the swift
+black water.
+
+There was only one wild scream that went echoing and re-echoing to the
+roof. There was scarcely a splash, and no extra ripple at all. No heads
+came up again to gasp. No fingers clutched at the surface. The fearful
+speed of the river sucked them under, to grind and churn and pound them
+through long caverns underground and hurl them at last over the great
+cataract toward the middle of the world.
+
+“Ah-h-h-h-h!” sighed the crowd in ecstasy.
+
+“Is there no other stranger?” asked Yasmini, searching for King again
+with her amazing eyes. The skin all down his back turned there and then
+into gooseflesh. And as her eyes met his she laughed like a bell at him.
+She knew! She knew who he was, how he had entered, and how he felt. Not
+a doubt of it!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+     Long slept the Heart o' the Hills, oh, long!
+     (Ye who have watched, ye know!)
+     As sap sleeps in the deodars
+     When winter shrieks and steely stars
+     Blink over frozen snow.
+     Ye haste? The sap stirs now, ye say?
+     Ye feel the pulse of spring?
+     But sap must rise ere buds may break,
+     Or cubs fare forth, or bees awake,
+     Or lean buck spurn the ling!
+
+
+“Kurram Khan!” the lashless mullah howled, like a lone wolf in the
+moonlight, and King stood up.
+
+It is one of the laws of Cocker, who wrote the S. S. Code, that a man
+is alive until he is proved dead, and where there is life there is
+opportunity. In that grim minute King felt heretical; but a man's
+feelings are his own affair provided he can prove it, and he managed to
+seem about as much at ease as a native hakim ought to feel at such an
+initiation.
+
+“Come forward!” the mullah howled, and he obeyed, treading gingerly
+between men who were at no pains to let him by, and silently blessing
+them, because he was not really in any hurry at all. Yasmini looked
+lovely from a distance, and life was sweet.
+
+“Who are his witnesses?”
+
+“Witnesses?” the roof hissed.
+
+“I!” shouted Ismail, jumping up.
+
+“I!” cracked the roof. “I! I!” So that for a second King almost believed
+he had a crowd of men to swear for him and did not hear Darya Khan at
+all, who rose from a place not very far behind where had sat.
+
+Ismail followed him in a hurry, like a man wading a river with loose
+clothes gathered in one arm and the other arm ready in case of falling.
+He took much less trouble than King not to tread on people, and oaths'
+marked his wake.
+
+Darya Khan did not go so fast. As he forced his way forward a man passed
+him up the wooden box that King had used to stand on; he seized it in
+both hands with a grin and a jest and went to stand behind King and
+Ismail, in line with the lashless mullah, facing Yasmini. Yasmini smiled
+at them all as if they were actors in her comedy, and she well pleased
+with them.
+
+“Look ye!” howled the mullah. “Look ye and look well, for this is to be
+one of us!”
+
+King felt ten thousand eyes burn holes in his back, but the one pair of
+eyes that mocked him from the bridge was more disconcerting.
+
+“Turn, Kurram Khan! Turn that all may see!”
+
+Feeling like a man on a spit, he revolved slowly. By the time he had
+turned once completely around, besides knowing positively that one of
+the two bracelets on her right arm was the one he had worn, or else its
+exact copy, he knew that he was not meant to die yet; for his eyes could
+work much more swiftly than the horn-rimmed spectacles made believe. He
+decided that Yasmini meant he should be frightened, but not much hurt
+just yet.
+
+So he ceased altogether to feel frightened and took care to look more
+scared than ever.
+
+“Who paid the price of thy admission?” the mullah howled, and King
+cleared his throat, for he was not quite sure yet what that might mean.
+
+“Speak, Kurram Khan!” Yasmini purred, smiling her loveliest. “Tell them
+whom you slew.”
+
+King turned and faced the crowd, raising himself on the balls of his
+feet to shout, like a man facing thousands of troops on parade. He
+nearly gave himself away, for habit had him unawares. A native hakim,
+given the stoutest lungs in all India, would not have shouted in that
+way.
+
+“Cappitin Attleystan King!” he roared. And he nearly jumped out of
+his skin when his own voice came rattling back at him from the roof
+overhead.
+
+“Cappitin Attleystan King!” it answered.
+
+Yasmini chuckled as a little rill will sometimes chuckle among ferns. It
+was devilish. It seemed to say there were traps not far ahead.
+
+“Where was he slain?” asked the mullah.
+
+“In the Khyber Pass,” said King.
+
+“In the Khyber Pass!” the roof whispered hoarsely, as if aghast at such
+cold-bloodedness.
+
+“Now give proof!” said the mullah. “Words at the gate--proof in the
+cavern! Without good proof, there is only one way out of here!”
+
+“Proof!” the crowd thundered. “Proof!”
+
+“Proof! Proof! Proof!” the roof echoed.
+
+There was no need for Darya Khan to whisper. King's hands were behind
+him, and he had seen what he had seen and guessed what he had guessed
+while he was turning to let the crowd look at him. His fingers closed on
+human hair.
+
+“Nay, it is short!” hissed Darya Khan. “Take the two ears, or hold it by
+the jawbone! Hold it high in both hands!”
+
+King obeyed, without looking at the thing, and Ismail, turning to face
+the crowd, rose on tiptoe and filled his lungs for the effort of his
+life.
+
+“The head of Cappitin Attleystan King--infidel kaffir--British
+arrficer!” he howled.
+
+“Good!” the crowd bellowed. “Good! Throw it!”
+
+The crowd's roar and the roof's echoes combined until pandemonium.
+
+“Throw it to them, Kurram Khan!” Yasmini purred from the bridge end,
+speaking as softly and as sweetly, as if she coaxed a child. Yet her
+voice carried.
+
+He lowered the head, but instead of looking at it he looked up at her.
+He thought she was enjoying herself and his predicament as he had never
+seen any one enjoy anything.
+
+“Throw it to them, Kurram Khan!” she purred. “It is the custom!”
+
+“Throw it! Throw it!” the crowd thundered.
+
+He turned the ghastly thing until it lay face-upward in his hands, and
+so at last he saw it. He caught his breath, and only the horn-rimmed
+spectacles, that he had cursed twice that night, saved him from
+self-betrayal. The cavern seemed to sway, but he recovered and his wits
+worked swiftly. If Yasmini detected his nervousness she gave no sign.
+
+“Throw it! Throw it! Throw it!”
+
+The crowd was growing impatient. Many men were standing, waving their
+arms to draw attention to themselves, and he wondered what the ultimate
+end of the head would be, if he obeyed and threw it to them. Watching
+Yasmini's eyes, he knew it had not entered her head that he might
+disobey.
+
+He looked past her toward the river. There were no guards near enough to
+prevent what he intended; but he had to bear in mind that the guards
+had rifles, and if he acted too suddenly one of them might shoot at him
+unbidden. They were wondrous free with their cartridges, those guards,
+in a land where ammunition is worth its weight in silver coin.
+
+Holding the head before him with both hands, he began to walk toward the
+river, edging all the while a little toward the crowd as if meaning to
+get nearer before he threw.
+
+He was much more than half-way to the river's edge before Yasmini or
+anybody else divined his true intention. The mullah grew suspicions
+first and yelled. Then King hurried, for he did not believe Yasmini
+would need many seconds in which to regain command of any situation. But
+she saw fit to stand still and watch.
+
+He reached the river and stood there. Now he was in no hurry at all, for
+it stood to reason that unless Yasmini very much desired him to be kept
+alive he would have been shot dead already. For a moment the crowd was
+so interested that it forgot to bark and snarl.
+
+His next move was as deliberate as he could make it, although he was
+careful to avoid the least suggestion of mummery (for then the crowd
+would have suspected disloyalty to Islam, and the “Hills” are very, very
+pious, and very suspicious of all foreign ritual).
+
+He did a thoughtful simple thing that made every savage who watched him
+gasp because of its very unexpectedness. He held the head in both
+hands, threw it far out into the river and stood to watch it sink. Then,
+without visible emotion of any kind, he walked back stolidly to face
+Yasmini at the bridge end, with shoulders a little more stubborn now
+than they ought to be, and chin a shade too high, for there never was a
+man who could act quite perfectly.
+
+“Thou fool!” Yasmini whispered through lips that did not move.
+
+She betrayed a flash of temper like a trapped she-tiger's, but followed
+it instantly with her loveliest smile. Like to like, however, the crowd
+saw the flash of temper and took its cue from that.
+
+“Slay him!” yelled a lone voice, that was greeted an approving murmur.
+
+“Slay him!” advised the roof in a whisper, in one of its phonetic
+tricks.
+
+“This is a darbar!” Yasmini announced in a rising, ringing voice. “My
+darbar, for I summoned it! Did I invite any man to speak?”
+
+There was silence, as a whipped unwilling pack is silent.
+
+“Speak, thou, Kurram Khan!” she said. “Knowing the custom--having heard
+the order to throw that trophy to them--why act otherwise? Explain!”
+
+Nothing in the wide world could be fairer! She left him to extricate
+himself from a mess of his own making! It was more than fair, for she
+went out of her way to offer him an opening to jump through. And she
+paid him the compliment of suggesting be must be clever enough to take
+it, for she seemed to expect a satisfying answer.
+
+“Tell them why!” she said, smiling. No man could have guessed by the
+tone of her voice whether she was for him or against him, and the crowd,
+beginning again to whisper, watched to see which way the cat would jump.
+
+He bowed low to her three times--very low indeed and very slowly, for he
+had to think. Then he turned his back and repeated the obeisance to the
+crowd. Still he could think of no excuse, except Cocker's Rule No. I for
+Tight Places, and all the world knows that because Solomon said much the
+same thing first:
+
+“A soft answer is better than a sword!”
+
+But Cocker adds, “Never excuse. Explain! And blame no man.”
+
+“My brothers,” he said, and paused, since a man must make a beginning,
+even when he can not see the end. And as he spoke the answer came to
+him. He stood upright, and his voice became that of a man whose advice
+has been asked, and who gives it freely. “These be stirring times! Ye
+need take care, my brothers! Ye saw this night how one man entered here
+on the strength of an oath and a promise. All he lacked was proof. And I
+had proof. Ye saw! Who am I that I should deny you a custom? Yet--think
+ye, my brothers!--how easy would it not have been, had I thrown that
+head to you, for a traitor to catch it and hide it in his clothes,
+and make away with it! He could have used it to admit to these
+caves--why--even an Englishman, my brothers! If that had happened, ye
+would have blamed me!”
+
+Yasmini smiled. Taking its cue from her, the crowd murmured, scarcely
+assent, but rather recognition of the hakim's adroitness. The game
+was not won; there lacked a touch to tip the scales in his favor, and
+Yasmini supplied it with ready genius.
+
+“The hakim speaks truth!” she laughed.
+
+King turned about instantly to face her, but he salaamed so low that she
+could not have seen his expression had she tried.
+
+“If Ye wish it, I will order him tossed into Earth's Drink after those
+other three.”
+
+Muhammed Anim rose stroking his beard and rocking where he stood.
+
+“It is the law!” he growled, and King shuddered.
+
+“It is the law,” Yasmini answered in a voice that rang with pride and
+insolence, “that none interrupt me while I speak! For such ill-mannered
+ones Earth's Drink hungers! Will you test my authority, Muhammad Anim?”
+
+The mullah sat down, and hundreds of men laughed at him, but not all of
+the men by any means.
+
+“It is the law that none goes out of Khinjan Cave alive who breaks the
+law of the Caves. But he broke no very big law. And he spoke truth.
+Think Ye! If that head had only fallen into Muhammad Anim's lap, the
+mullah might have smuggled in another man with it!”
+
+A roar of laughter greeted that thrust. Many men who had not laughed at
+the mullah's first discomfiture, joined in now. Muhammad Anim sat and
+fidgeted, meeting nobody's eye and answering nothing.
+
+“So it seems to me good,” Yasmini said, in a voice that did not echo any
+more but rang very clear and true (she seemed to know the trick of the
+roof, and to use the echo or not as she chose), “to let this hakim live!
+He shall meditate in his cave a while, and perhaps he shall be beaten,
+lest he dare offend again. He can no more escape from Khinjan Caves than
+the women who are prisoners here. He may therefore live!”
+
+There was utter silence. Men looked at one another and at her, and her
+blazing eyes searched the crowd swiftly. It was plain enough that there
+were at least two parties there, and that none dared oppose Yasmini's
+will for fear of the others.
+
+“To thy seat, Kurram Khan!” she ordered, when she had waited a full
+minute and no man spoke.
+
+He wasted no time. He hurried out of the arena as fast as he could walk,
+with Ismail and Darya Khan close at his heels. It was like a run out of
+danger in a dream. He stumbled over the legs of the front-rank men in
+his hurry to get back to his place, and Ismail overtook him, seized him
+by the shoulders, hugged him, and dragged him to the empty seat next to
+the Orakzai Pathan. There he hugged him until his ribs cracked.
+
+“Ready o' wit!” he crowed. “Ready o' tongue! Light o' life! Man after
+mine own heart! Hey, I love thee! Readily I would be thy man, but for
+being hers! Would I had a son like thee! Fool--fool--fool not to throw
+the head to them! Squeamish one! Man like a child! What is the head
+but earth when the life has left it? What would thy head be without the
+nimble wit? Fool--fool--fool! And clever! Turned the joke on Muhammad
+Anim! Turned it on Bull-with-a-beard in a twinkling--in the bat of an
+eye--in a breath! Turned it against her enemy and raised a laugh against
+him from his own men! Ready o' wit! Shameless one! Lucky one! Allah was
+surely good to thee!”
+
+Still exulting, he let go, but none too soon for comfort. King's ribs
+were sore from his hugging for days.
+
+“What is it?” he asked. For King seemed to be shaping words with his
+lips. He bent a great hairy ear to listen.
+
+“Have they taken Ali Masjid Fort?” King whispered.
+
+“How should I know? Why?”
+
+“Tell me, man, if you love me! Have they taken it?”
+
+“Nay, how should I know? Ask her! She knows more than any man knows!”
+
+King turned to ask the same question of his friend the Orakzai Pathan;
+but the Pathan would have none of his questions, he was busy listening
+for whispers from the crowd, watching with both eyes, and he shoved King
+aside.
+
+The crowd was very far from being satisfied. An angry murmur had begun
+to fill the cavern as a hive is filled with the song of bees at swarming
+time. But even so, surmise what one might, it was not easy to persuade
+the eye that Yasmini's careless smile and easy poise were assumed.
+If she recognized indignation and feared it, she disguised her fear
+amazingly.
+
+King saw her whisper to a guard. The fellow nodded and passed his shield
+to another man. He began to make his way in no great hurry toward the
+edge of the arena. She whispered again and standing forward with their
+trumpets seven of the guards blew a blast that split across the cavern
+like the trump of doom; and as its hundred thousand echoes died in the
+roof, the hum of voices died, too, and the very sound of breathing. The
+gurgling of water became as if the river flowed in solitude.
+
+Leisurely then, languidly, she raised both arms until she looked like an
+angel poised for flight. The little jewels stitched to her gauzy dress
+twinkled like fire-flies as she moved. The crowd gasped sharply. She had
+it by the heart-strings.
+
+She called, and four guards got under one shield, bowing their heads and
+resting the great rim on their shoulders. They carried it beneath her
+and stood still. With a low delicious laugh, sweet and true, she sprang
+on it, and the shield scarcely trembled; she seemed lighter than the
+silk her dress was woven from!
+
+They carried her so, looking as if she and the shield were carved of a
+piece, and by a master such as has not often been. And in the midst of
+the arena before they had ceased moving she began to sing, with her head
+thrown back and bosom swelling like a bird's.
+
+The East would ever rather draw its own conclusions from a hint let fall
+than be puzzled by what the West believes are facts. And parables are
+not good evidence in courts of law, which is always a consideration. So
+her song took the form of a parable.
+
+And to say that she took hold of them and played rhapsodies of her own
+making on their heart-strings would be to undervalue what she did. They
+were dumb while she sang, but they rose at her. Not a force in the
+world could have kept them down, for she was deftly touching cords that
+stirred other forces--subtle, mysterious, mesmeric, which the old East
+understands--which Muhammad the Prophet understood when he harnessed
+evil in the shafts with men and wrote rules for their driving in a book.
+They rose in silence and stood tense.
+
+While she sang, the guard to whom she had whispered forced a way through
+the ranks of the standing crowd, and came behind Ismail. He tweaked
+the Afridi's ear to draw attention, for like all the others--like King,
+too--Ismail was listening with dropped jaw and watching with burning
+eyes. For a minute they whispered, so low that King did not hear what
+they said; and then the guard forced his way back by the shortest route
+to the arena, knocking down half a dozen men and gaining safety beyond
+the lamps before his victims could draw knife and follow him.
+
+Yasmini's song went on, verse after verse, telling never one fact, yet
+hinting unutterable things in a language that was made for hint and
+metaphor and parable and innuendo. What tongue did not hint at was
+conveyed by subtle gesture and a smile and flashing eyes. It was
+perfectly evident that she knew more than King--more than the general at
+Peshawur--more than the viceroy at Simla--probably more than the British
+government--concerning what was about to happen in Islam. The others
+might guess. She knew. It was just as evident that she would not tell.
+The whole of her song, and it took her twenty minutes by the count of
+King's pulse, to sing it, was a warning to wait and a promise of amazing
+things to come.
+
+She sang of a wolf-pack gathering from the valleys in the winter snow--a
+very hungry wolf-pack. Then of a stalled ox, grown very fat from being
+cared for. Of the “Heart of the Hills” that awoke in the womb of the
+“Hills,” and that listened and watched.
+
+“Now, is she the 'Heart of the Hills'?” King wondered. The rumors men
+had heard and told again in India, about the “Heart of the Hills” in
+Khinjan seemed to have foundation.
+
+He thought of the strange knife, wrapped in a handkerchief under his
+shirt, with its bronze blade and gold hilt in the shape of a woman
+dancing. The woman dancing was astonishingly like Yasmini, standing on
+the shield!
+
+She sang about the owners of the stalled ox, who were busy at bay,
+defending themselves and their ox from another wolf-pack in another
+direction “far beyond.”
+
+She urged them to wait a little while. The ox was big enough and fat
+enough to nourish all the wolves in the world for many seasons. Let
+them wait, then, until another, greater wolf-pack joined them, that they
+might go hunting all together, overwhelm its present owners and devour
+the ox! So urged the “Heart of the Hills,” speaking to the mountain
+wolves, according to Yasmini's song.
+
+        “The little cubs in the burrows know.
+        Are ye grown wolves, who hurry so?”
+
+She paused, for effect; but they gave tongue then because they could not
+help it, and the cavern shook to their terrific worship.
+
+“Allah! Allah!”
+
+They summoned God to come and see the height and depth and weight of
+their allegiance to her! And because for their thunder there was no more
+chance of being heard, she dropped from the shield like a blossom. No
+sound of falling could have been heard in all that din, but one could
+see she made no sound. The shield-bearers ran back to the bridge and
+stood below it, eyes agape.
+
+Rewa Gunga spoke truth in Delhi when he assured King he should some day
+wonder at Yasmini's dancing.
+
+She became joy and bravery and youth! She danced a story for them of the
+things they knew. She was the dawn light, touching the distant peaks.
+She was the wind that follows it, sweeping among the junipers and
+kissing each as she came. She was laughter, as the little children
+laugh when the cattle are loosed from the byres at last to feed in the
+valleys. She was the scent of spring uprising. She was blossom. She was
+fruit! Very daughter of the sparkle of warm sun on snow, she was the
+“Heart of the Hills” herself!
+
+Never was such dancing! Never such an audience! Never such mad applause!
+She danced until the great rough guards had to run round the arena with
+clubbed butts and beat back trespassers who would have mobbed her. And
+every movement--every gracious wonder-curve and step with which she
+told her tale was as purely Greek as the handle on King's knife and the
+figures on the lamp-bowls and as the bracelets on her arm. Greek!
+
+And she half-modern-Russian, ex-girl-wife of a semi-civilized
+Hill-rajah! Who taught her? There is nothing new, even in Khinjan, in the
+“Hills”!
+
+And when the crowd defeated the arena guards at last and burst through
+the swinging butts to seize and fling her high and worship her with
+mad barbaric rite, she ran toward the shield. The four men raised it
+shoulder-high again. She went to it like a leaf in the wind--sprang on
+it as if wings had lifted her, scarce touching it with naked toes--and
+leapt to the bridge with a laugh.
+
+She went over the bridge on tiptoes, like nothing else under heaven but
+Yasmini at her bewitchingest. And without pausing on the far side she
+danced up the hewn stone stairs, dived into the dark hole and was gone!
+
+“Come!” yelled Ismail in King's ear. He could have heard nothing less,
+for the cavern was like to burst apart from the tumult.
+
+“Whither?” the Afridi shouted in disgust. “Does the wind ask whither?
+Come like the wind and see! They will remember next that they have a
+bone to pick with thee! Come away!”
+
+That seemed good enough advice. He followed as fast as Ismail could
+shoulder a way out between the frantic Hillmen, deafened, stupefied,
+numbed, almost cowed by the ovation they were giving their “Heart of
+their Hills.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+
+     A scorpion in a corner stings himself to death.
+     A coward blames the gods. They laugh and let him die
+     A man goes forward
+     --Native Proverb
+
+
+As they disappeared after a scramble through the mouth of the same
+tunnel they had entered by, a roar went up behind them like the birth of
+earthquakes. Looking back over his shoulder, King saw Yasmini come back
+into the hole's mouth, to stand framed in it and bow acknowledgment.
+She looked so ravishing in contrast to the huge grim wall, and the black
+river, and the darkness at her back, that Khinjan's thousands tried to
+storm the bridge and drag her down to them. The guards were hard put to
+it, with their backs to the bridge end, for two or three minutes.
+
+But Ismail would not let him wait and watch from there. He dragged him
+down the tunnel and pushed him up on to a ledge where they could both
+see without being seen, through a fissure in the rock.
+
+For the space of five minutes Yasmini stood in the great hole, smiling
+and watching the struggle below. Then she went, and the guards began to
+get the best of it, because the crowd's enthusiasm waned when they could
+see her no more. Then suddenly the guards began to loose random volleys
+at the roof and brought down hundredweights of splintered stalactite.
+
+Within a minute there were a hundred men busy sweeping up the
+splinters. In another minute twenty Zakka Khels had begun a sword dance,
+yelling like the damned. A hundred joined them. In three minutes more
+the whole arena was a dinning whirlpool, and the river's voice was
+drowned in shouting and the stamping of naked feet on stone.
+
+“Come!” urged Ismail, and led the way.
+
+King's last impression was of earth's womb on fire and of hellions
+brewing wrath. The stalactites and the hurrying river multiplied the
+dancing lights into a million, and the great roof hurled the din down
+again to make confusion with the new din coming up.
+
+Ismail went like a rat down a run, and King failed to overtake him until
+he found him in the cave of the slippers kicking to right and left at
+random.
+
+“Choose a good pair!” he growled. “Let late-comers fight for what is
+left! Nay, I have thine! Choose thou the next best!”
+
+The statement being one of fact, and that no time or place for a quarrel
+with the only friend in sight, King picked out the best slippers he
+could see. The instant he had them on Ismail was off again, running like
+the wind.
+
+They had no torch. They left the little tunnel lamps behind. It became
+so dark that King had to follow by ear, and so it happened that he
+missed seeing where the tunnel forked. He imagined they were running
+back toward the ledge under the waterfall; yet, when Ismail called a
+halt at last, panting, groped behind a great rock for a lamp and lit the
+wick with a common safety match, they were in a cave he had never seen
+before.
+
+“Where are we?” King asked.
+
+“Where none dare seek us.”
+
+Ismail held the lamp high, shielding its wick with a hollowed palm and
+peering about him as if in doubt, his ragged beard looking like smoke in
+the wind; for a wind blew down all the passages in Khinjan.
+
+King examined the lamp. It was of bronze and almost as surely ancient
+Greek as it surely was not Indian. There were figures graven on the bowl
+representing a woman dancing, who looked not unlike Yasmini; but before
+he had time to look very closely Ismail blew the lamp out and was off
+again, like a shadow shot into its mother night.
+
+Confused by the sudden darkness King crashed into a rock as he tried to
+follow. Ismail turned back and gave him the end of a cotton girdle that
+he unwound from his waist; then he plunged ahead again into Cimmerian
+blackness, down a passage so narrow that they could touch a wall with
+either hand.
+
+Once he shouted back to duck, and they passed under a low roof where
+water dripped on them, and the rock underfoot was the bed of a shallow
+stream. After that the track began to rise, and the grade grew so steep
+that even Ismail, the furious, had to slacken pace.
+
+They began to climb up titanic stairways all in the dark, feeling their
+way through fissures in a mountain's framework, up zigzag ledges, and
+over great broken lumps of rock from one cave to another; until at last
+in one great cave Ismail stopped and relit the lamp. Hunting about with
+its aid he found an imported “hurricane” lantern and lit that, leaving
+the bronze lamp in its place.
+
+Soon after that they lost sight of walls to their left for a time,
+although there were no stars, nor any light to suggest the outer
+world--nothing but wind. The wind blew a hurricane.
+
+Their path now was a very narrow ledge formed by a crack that ran
+diagonally down the face of a black cliff on their right. They hugged
+the stone because of a sense of fathomless space above--below--on every
+side but one. The rock wall was the one thing tangible, and the footing
+the crack in it afforded was the gift of God.
+
+The moaning wind rose to a shriek at intervals and made their clothes
+flutter like ghosts' shrouds, and in spite of it King's shirt was
+drenched with sweat, and his fingers ached from clinging as if they were
+on fire. Crawling against the wind along a wider ledge at the top, they
+came to a chasm, crossed by a foot-wide causeway. The wind bowled and
+moaned in it, and the futile lantern rays only suggested unimaginable,
+things--death the least of them.
+
+“Art thou afraid?” asked Ismail, holding the lantern to King's face.
+
+“Kuch dar nahin hai!” he answered. “There is no such thing as fear!”
+
+It was a bold answer, and Ismail laughed, knowing well that neither of
+them believed a word of it at that moment. Only, each thought better
+of the other, that the one should have cared to ask, and that the other
+should be willing to give the lie to a fear that crawled and could be
+felt. Too many men are willing to admit they are afraid. Too many would
+rather condemn and despise than ask and laugh. But it is on the edges of
+eternity that men find each other out, and sympathize.
+
+Ismail went down on his hands and knees, lifting the lantern along a
+foot at a time in front of him and carrying it in his teeth by the bail
+the last part of the way. It seemed like an hour before he stood up,
+nearly a hundred yards away on the far side, and yelled for King to
+follow.
+
+The wind snatched the yells away, but the waving lantern beckoned him,
+and King knelt down in the dark. It happened that he laid his hand on a
+loose stone, the size of his head, near the edge. He shoved it over and
+listened. He listened for a minute but did not hear it strike anything,
+and the shudder, that he could not repress, came from the middle of his
+backbone and spread outward through each fiber of his being. If he had
+delayed another second his courage would have failed; he began at once
+to crawl to where Ismail stood swinging the light.
+
+There was room on the ledge for his knees and no more. Toes and fingers
+were overside. He sat down as on horseback, and transferred both
+slippers to his pockets, and then went forward again with bare feet,
+waiting whenever the wind snatched at him with redoubled fury, to lean
+against it and grip the rock with numb fingers. Ismail swung the lamp,
+for reasons best known to himself, and half-way over King sat astride
+the ridge again to shout to him to hold it still. But Ismail did not
+understand him.
+
+“Khinjan graves are deep!” he howled back. “Fear and the shadow of death
+are one!”
+
+He swung the lamp even more violently, as if it were a charm that could
+exorcise fear and bring a man over safely. The shadows danced until
+his brain reeled, and King swore he would thrash the fool as soon as he
+could reach him. He lay belly-downward on the rock and crawled like an
+insect the remainder of the way.
+
+And as if aware of his intention Ismail started to hurry on while
+there was yet a yard or two to crawl, and anger not being a load worth
+carrying, nor revenge a thing permitted to interfere with the sirkar's
+business, King let both die.
+
+Hunted by the wind, they ran round a bold shoulder of cliff into another
+black-dark tunnel. There the wind died, swallowed in a hundred fissures,
+but the track grew worse and steeper until they had to cling with both
+hands and climb and now and then Ismail set the lantern on a ledge
+and lowered his girdle to help King up. Sometimes he stood on King's
+shoulder in order to reach a higher level. They climbed for an hour and
+dropped at last panting, on a ledge, after squeezing themselves under
+the corner of a boulder.
+
+The lantern light shone on a tiny trickle of cold water, and there
+Ismail drank deep, like a bull, before signing to King to imitate him.
+
+“A thirsty throat and a crazy head are one,” he counseled. “A man needs
+wit and a wet tongue who would talk with her!”
+
+“Where is she?” asked King, when he had finished drinking.
+
+“Go and look!”
+
+Ismail gave him a sudden shove, that sent him feet first forward over
+the edge. He fell a distance rather greater than his own height,
+to another ledge and stood there looking up. He could see Ismail's
+red-rimmed eyes blinking down at him in the lantern light, but suddenly
+the Afridi blew the lamp out, and then the darkness became solid.
+Thought itself left off less than a yard away.
+
+“Ismail!” he whispered. But Ismail did not answer him.
+
+He faced about, leaning against the rock, with the flat of both hands
+pressed tight against it for the sake of its company; and almost at once
+he saw a little bright red light glowing in the distance. It might have
+been a hundred yards, and it might have been a mile away below him; it
+was perfectly impossible to judge, for the darkness was not measurable.
+
+“Flowers turn to the light!” droned Ismail's voice above sententiously,
+and turning, he thought he could see red eyes peering over the rock. He
+jumped, and made a grab for the flowing beard that surely must be below
+them, but he missed.
+
+“Little fish swim to the light!” droned Ismail. “Moths fly to the light!
+Who is a man that he should know less than they?”
+
+He turned again and stared at the light. Dimly, very vaguely be could
+make out that a causeway led downward from almost where he stood. He was
+convinced that should he try to climb back Ismail would merely reach out
+a hand and shove him down again, and there was no sense in being put to
+that indignity. He decided to go forward, for there was even less sense
+in standing still.
+
+“Come with me! Come along, Ismail!” he called.
+
+“Allah! Hear him! Nay, nay, nay! Who was it said a little while ago,
+'There is no such thing as fear!' I am afraid, but thou and I are two
+men! Go thou alone!”
+
+Reason is a man's only dependable faculty. Reason told him that at a
+word from Yasmini he would have been flung into “Earth's Drink” hours
+ago. Therefore, added reason, why should she forego that spectacular
+opportunity when his death would have amused Khinjan's thousands, only
+to kill him now in the dark alone? He had treated a few dozen sick men,
+surely she had not been afraid to offend them. Had she not dared forbid
+the sick coming to him altogether? “Forward!” says Cocker, in at least a
+dozen places. “Go forward and find out! Better a bed in hell than a seat
+on the horns of a dilemma! Forward!”
+
+There was no sound now anywhere. He stretched a leg downward and felt
+a rock two or three feet lower down, and the sound of his slipper sole
+touching it, being the only noise, made the short hair rise on the back
+of his neck. Then he took himself, so to speak, by the hand and went
+forward and downward, for action is the only curb imagination knows.
+
+He forgot to count his pulse and judge how long it took him to descend
+that causeway in the dark. It was not so very rough, nor so very
+dangerous, but of course he only knew that fact afterward. He had to
+grope his way inch by inch, trusting to sense of touch and the British
+army's everlasting luck, with an eye all the while on a red light that
+was something like the glow through hell's keyhole.
+
+When he reached bottom, after perhaps twenty minutes, and stood at last
+on comparatively level rock, his legs were trembling from tension, and
+he had to sit down while he stretched them out and rested. The light
+still looked a quarter of a mile away, although that was guesswork. It
+made scarcely more impression on the surrounding darkness than one coal
+glowing in a cellar. The silence began to make his head ache.
+
+He got up and started forward, but just as he did that he thought he
+heard a footstep. He suspected Ismail might be following after all.
+
+“Ismail!” he called, trying to peer through the dark.
+
+But all the darkness had its home there. He could not even see his own
+hand stretched out. His own voice made him jump; after a second's pause
+it began to crack and rattle from wall to wall and from roof to floor,
+until at last the echoing word became one again and died with a hiss
+somewhere in the bowels of the world--Mbisssss!--like the sound of hot
+iron being plunged into a blacksmith's trough with a little after-murmur
+of complaining water.
+
+But then he was sure he heard a footstep! He faced about; and now there
+were two red lights where there had been only one. They seemed rather
+nearer, perhaps because there were two of them.
+
+“Hullo, King sahib!” said a voice he recognized; and he choked. He felt
+that if he had coughed his heart would have lain on the floor!
+
+“Are you afraid, King sahib?” said the Rangar Rewa Gunga's voice, and
+he took a step forward to be closer to his questioner. He found himself
+beside a rock, looking up at the Rangar's turban, that peered over the
+top of it. He could dimly make out the Rangar's dark eyes.
+
+“I would be afraid if I were you!”
+
+Rewa Gunga flashed a little electric torch into his eyes, but after
+a few seconds he shifted it so that both their faces could be seen,
+although the Rangar's only very faintly.
+
+“I have come to warn you!”
+
+“Very good of you, I'm sure!” said King.
+
+“If she knew I were here, she would jolly well have my liver nailed to a
+wall! I come to advise you to go back!”
+
+“Have they taken Ali Masjid Fort?” King asked him.
+
+“Never mind, sahib, but listen! I have brought her bracelet! I stole it!
+She stole it from you, and I stole it back! Take it! Put it on and wear
+it! Use it as a passport out of Khinjan Caves--for no man dare touch you
+while you wear it--and as a passport down the Khyber into India! Go back
+to India and stay there! Take it and go! Quick! Take it!”
+
+“No, thanks!” said King.
+
+The Rangar laughed mirthlessly, shifting the light a little as King
+stepped aside to get a better view of him. He held the torch more
+cunningly than a Spanish lady holds a fan.
+
+“All Englishmen are fools--most of them stiff-necked fools,” he
+asserted. “Bah! Do you think I do not know? Do you think anything
+is hidden from her? I know--and she knows--that you think you have a
+surprise in store for her! You think you will go to her, and she will
+say, 'King sahib, why did you throw that head into the river, and put me
+in danger from my men?' And you will say, will you not, 'Princess, that
+was my brother's head!'? Was that not what you intended? Is it not true?
+Does she not know it? She knows more than you know, King sahib! Because
+you showed me certain little courtesies, I have come to warn you to run
+away!”
+
+“Do you suppose she knows you are here?” King asked, and the Rangar
+laughed.
+
+“If she knows so much, and is able to read my mind from a distance,
+where does she suppose you are?” King insisted.
+
+The Rangar laughed again, leaning his chin on both fists and switching
+out the light.
+
+“Perhaps she sent me to warn you!”
+
+“Well,” said King, “my brother commanded at Ali Masjid Fort. There are
+things I must ask her. How did she know that head was my brother's? What
+part had she in taking it from his shoulders? What did she mean by that
+song of hers?”
+
+The Rangar chuckled softly.
+
+“There are no fools in the world like Englishmen! Listen! You are being
+offered life and liberty! Here is the key to both!”
+
+He made the gold bracelet ring on the rock by way of explanation.
+
+“Take the key and go!”
+
+“No!” said King.
+
+“Very well, sahib! Hear the other side of it! Beyond those two red
+lights there is a curtain. This side of that curtain you are Athelstan
+King of the Khyber Rifles, or Kurram Khan, or whatever you care to call
+yourself. Beyond it, you are what she calls you! Choose!”
+
+King did not answer, so he continued after a pause.
+
+“You shall pass behind that curtain, if you insist. Beyond it you shall
+know what she knows about Ali Masjid and your brother's head! You shall
+know all that she knows! There shall be no secrets between you and her!
+She shall translate the meaning of her song to you! But you shall never
+come out again King of the Khyber Rifles, or Kurram Khan! If you ever
+come out again, it shall be as you never dreamed, bearing arms you never
+saw yet, and you shall cut with your own hand the ties that bind you to
+England! Choose!”
+
+“I chose long ago,” said King.
+
+“Are the gentle English never serious?” the Rangar asked. “Will you not
+understand that if you pass that curtain you shall know all things
+that Yasmini knows, but that you shall cease to be yourself?
+Cease--to--be--yourself! Is my meaning clear?”
+
+“Not in the least,” said King, “but I hope mine is!”
+
+“You will go forward?”
+
+“Yes,” said King.
+
+Rewa Gunga made no answer to that, although King waited for an answer.
+For about a minute there was no sound at all, except the beating of
+King's heart. Then he moved to try and see the Rangar's turban above the
+rock. He could not see it. He found a niche in the rock, set his foot
+in it and mounted three or four feet, until his head was level with the
+top. The Rangar was gone!
+
+He listened for two or three minutes, but the silence began to make his
+head ache again; so he stooped to feel the floor with his hand before
+deciding to go forward. There was no mistaking the finish given by the
+tread of countless feet. He was on a highway, and there are not often
+pitfalls where so many feet have been.
+
+For all that he went forward as a certain Agag once did, and it was many
+minutes before he could see a curtain glowing blood-red in the light
+behind the two lamps, at the top of a flight of ten stone steps. It
+was peculiar to him and to his service that he counted the steps before
+going nearer.
+
+When he went quite close he saw carpet down the middle of the steps,
+so ancient that the stone showed through in places; all the pattern,
+supposing it ever had any, was worn or faded away. Carpet and steps
+glowed red too. His own face, and the hands he held in front of him
+were red-hot-poker color. Yet outside the little ellipse of light the
+darkness looked like a thing to lean against, and the silence was so
+intense that he could hear the arteries singing by his ears.
+
+He saw the curtains move slightly, apparently in a little puff of wind
+that made the lamps waver. He was very nearly sure he heard a footfall
+beyond the curtains and a tinkle--as of a tiny silver bell, or a jewel
+striking against another one.
+
+He kicked his slippers off, because there are no conditions under which
+bad manners ever are good policy. Wide history and Cocker's famous code.
+Then he walked up the steps without treading on the carpet, because
+living scorpions have been known to be placed under carpets on purpose
+on occasion. And at the top, being a Secret Service man, he stooped to
+examine the lamps.
+
+They were bronze, cast, polished and graved. All round the circumference
+of each bowl were figures in half-relief, representing a woman dancing.
+She was the woman of the knife-hilt, and of the lamps in the arena! She
+looked like Yasmini! Only she could not be Yasmini because these lamps
+were so ancient and so rare that he had never seen any in the least like
+them, although he had visited most of the museums of the East.
+
+Both lamps were alike, for he crossed over to make sure and took each in
+his hands in turn. But no two figures of the dance were alike on
+either. It was the same woman dancing, but the artist had chosen twenty
+different poses with which to immortalize his skill, and hers. Both
+lamps burned sweet oil with a wick, and each had a chimney of horn, not
+at all unlike a modern lamp-chimney. The horn was stained red.
+
+As he set the second lamp down he became aware of a subtle interesting
+smell, and memory took back at once to Yasmini's room in the Chandni
+Chowk in Delhi where he had smelled it first. It was the peculiar scent
+he had been told was Yasmini's own--a blend of scents, like a chord of
+music, in which musk did not predominate.
+
+He took three strides and touched the curtains, discovering now for the
+first time that there were two of them, divided down the middle. They
+were about eight feet high, and each three feet wide, of leather, and
+though they looked old as the “Hills” themselves the leather was supple
+as good cloth. They had once been decorated with figures in gold leaf,
+but only a little patch of yellow here and there remained to hint at
+faded glories.
+
+He decided to remember his manners again, and at least to make
+opportunity for an invitation.
+
+“Kurram Khan hai!” he announced, forgetting the echo. But the echo was
+the only answer. It cackled at him, cracking back and forth down the
+cavern to die with a groan in illimitable darkness.
+
+“Kurram-urram-urram-urram-urram-ahn-hai! Urram-urram-urram-urram-ahn-hai!
+Urram-urram-urram-ah-hh-ough-ah!”
+
+There was no sound beyond the curtains. No answer. Only he thought the
+strange scent grew stronger. He decided to go forward. With his heart in
+his mouth he parted the curtains with both hands, startled by the sharp
+jangle of metal rings on a rod.
+
+So he stood, with arms outstretched, staring--staring--staring--with
+eyes skilled swiftly to take in details, but with a brain that tried to
+explain--formed a hundred wild suggestions--and then reeled. He was face
+to face with the unexplainable--the riddle of Khinjan Caves.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+
+     Grand was thy goal! Thy vision new!
+             Ave, Caesar!
+     Conquest?  Ends of Earth thy view?
+             Ave, Caesar!
+     To sow--to reap--to play God's game?
+     How many Caesars did that same
+     Until the great, grim Reaper came!
+     Who ploughs with death shall garner rue,
+     And under all skies is nothing new.
+             Vale, Caesar!
+
+
+Telling the story afterward King never made any effort to describe
+his own sensations. It was surely enough to state what he saw, after a
+breathless climb among the rat-runs of a mountain with his imagination
+fired already by what had happened in the Cavern of Earth's Drink.
+
+The leather curtains slipped through his fingers and closed behind him
+with the clash of rings on a rod. But he was beyond being startled. He
+was not really sure he was in the world. He knew he was awake, and he
+knew he was glad he had left his shoes outside. But he was not certain
+whether it was the twentieth century, or fifty-five B. C., or earlier
+yet; or whether time had ceased. Very vividly in that minute there
+flashed before his mind Mark Twain's suggestion of the Transposition of
+Epochs.
+
+The place where he was did not look like a cave, but a palace chamber,
+for the rock walls had been trimmed square and polished smooth; then
+they had been painted pure white, except for a wide blue frieze, with
+a line of gold-leaf drawn underneath it. And on the frieze, done in
+gold-leaf too, was the Grecian lady of the lamps, always dancing. There
+were fifty or sixty figures of her, no two the same.
+
+A dozen lamps were burning, set in niches cut in the walls at measured
+intervals. They were exactly like the two outside, except that their
+horn chimneys were stained yellow instead of red, suffusing everything
+in a golden glow.
+
+Opposite him was a curtain, rather like that through which he had
+entered. Near to the curtain was a bed, whose great wooden posts were
+cracked with age. And it was at the bed he stared, with eyes that took
+in every detail but refused to believe.
+
+In spite of its age it was spread with fine new linen. Richly
+embroidered, not very ancient Indian draperies hung down from it to
+the floor on either side. On it, above the linen, a man and a woman lay
+hand-in-hand; and the woman was so exactly like Yasmini, even to her
+clothing, and her naked feet, that it was not possible for a man to be
+self-possessed.
+
+They both seemed asleep. It was as if Yasmini, weary from the dancing,
+had laid herself to sleep beside her lord. But who was he? And why did
+he wear Roman armor? And why was there no guard to keep intruders out?
+
+It was minutes before he satisfied himself that the man's breast did not
+rise and fall under the bronze armor and that the woman's jeweled gauzy
+stuff was still. Imagination played such tricks with him that in the
+stillness he imagined he heard breathing.
+
+After he was sure they were both dead, he went nearer, but it was a
+minute yet before he knew the woman was not she. At first a wild thought
+possessed him that she had killed herself.
+
+The only thing to show who he had been were the letters S. P. Q. R. on a
+great plumed helmet, on a little table by the bed. But she was the woman
+of the lamp-bowls and the frieze. A life-size stone statue in a corner
+was so like her, and like Yasmini too, that it was difficult to decide
+which of the two it represented.
+
+She had lived when he did, for her fingers were locked in his. And he
+had lived two thousand years ago, because his armor was about as old as
+that, and for proof that he had died in it part of his breast had turned
+to powder inside the breastplate. The rest of his body was whole and
+perfectly preserved.
+
+Stern, handsome in a high-beaked Roman way, gray on the temples,
+firm-lipped, he lay like an emperor in harness. But the pride and
+resolution on his face were outdone by the serenity of hers. Very surely
+those two had been lovers.
+
+Something--he could not decide what--about the man's appearance kept him
+staring for ten minutes, holding his breath unconsciously and letting
+it out in little silent gasps. It annoyed him that he could not pin down
+the elusive thing; and when he went on presently to be curious about
+more tangible things, it was only to be faced with the unexplainable at
+every turn.
+
+How had the bodies been preserved, for instance? They were perfect,
+except for that one detail of the man's breast. The air was full of the
+perfume he had learned to recognize as Yasmini's, but there was no sniff
+about the bodies of pitch or bitumen, or of any other chemical. Nor
+was there any sign of violence about them, or means of telling how they
+died, or when, except for the probable date of the man's armor.
+
+Both of them looked young and healthy--the woman younger than
+thirty--twenty-five at a guess--and the man perhaps forty, perhaps
+forty-five.
+
+He bent over them. Every stitch of the man's clothing had decayed in the
+course of centuries, so that his armor rested on the naked skin, except
+for a dressed leather kilt about his middle. The leather was as old as
+the curtains at the entrance, and as well preserved.
+
+But the woman's silken clothing was as new as the bedding; and that was
+so new that it had been woven in Belfast, Ireland, by machinery and bore
+the mark of the firm that made it!
+
+Yet, they both died at about the same time, or how could their fingers
+have been interlaced? And some of the jewelry on the woman's clothes was
+very ancient as well as priceless.
+
+He looked closer at the fingers for signs of force and suddenly caught
+his breath. Under the woman's flimsy sleeve was a wrought gold
+bracelet, smaller than that one he himself had worn in Delhi and up the
+Khyber--exactly like the little one that Yasmini wore on her wrist in
+the Cavern of Earth's Drink! He raised the loose sleeve to look more
+closely at it.
+
+The sleeve overlay the man's forearm, and the movement laid bare another
+bracelet, on the man's right wrist. Size for size, this was the same as
+the one that had been stolen from himself.
+
+Memory prompted him. He felt its outer edge with a finger-nail. There
+was the little nick that he had made in the soft gold when he struck it
+against the cell bars in the jail at the Mir Khan Palace!
+
+That put another thought in his head. It was less than two hours since
+Yasmini danced in the arena. It might well be much less than that since
+she had taken off her bracelets. He laid a finger on the dead man's
+stone-cold hand and let it rest so for a minute. Then, running it slowly
+up the wrist, he touched the gold. It was warm. He repeated the test on
+the woman's wrist. Hers was warm, too. Both bracelets had been worn by a
+living being within an hour--
+
+“Probably within minutes!”
+
+He muttered and frowned in thought, and then suddenly jumped backward.
+The leather curtain near the bed had moved on its bronze rod.
+
+“Aren't they dears?” a voice said in English behind him. “Aren't they
+sweet?”
+
+He had jumped so as to face about, and somebody laughed at him. Yasmini
+stood not two arms' lengths away, lovelier than the dead woman because
+of the merry life in her, young and warm, aglow, but looking like
+the dead woman and the woman of the frieze--the woman of the
+lamp--bowls--the statue--come to life, speaking to him in English more
+sweetly than if it had been her mother tongue. The English abuse their
+language. Yasmini caressed it and made it do its work twice over.
+
+Being dressed as a native, he salaamed low. Knowing him for what he was,
+she gave him the senna-stained tips of her warm fingers to kiss, and he
+thought she trembled when he touched them. But a second later she had
+snatched them away and was treating him to raillery.
+
+“Man of pills and blisters!” she said, “tell me how those bodies are
+preserved! Spill knowledge from that learned skull of thine!”
+
+He did not answer. He never shone in conversation at any time, having
+made as many friends as enemies by saying nothing until the spirit moves
+him. But she did not know that yet.
+
+“If I knew for certain why those two did not turn to worms,” she went
+on, “almost I would choose to die now, while I am beautiful! Think
+of the fogy museum men!” (She called them by a far less edifying name,
+really, for the East is frank in that way, especially in its use of
+other tongues.) “What would they say, think you, King sahib, if they
+found us two dead beside those two? Would not that be a mystery? Don't
+you love mysteries? Speak, man, speak! Has Khinjan struck you dumb?”
+
+But he did not speak. He was staring at her arm, where two whitish marks
+on the skin betrayed that bracelets had been.
+
+“Oh, those! They are theirs. I would not rob the dead, or the gods would
+turn on me. I robbed you, instead, while you slept. Fie, King sahib,
+while you slept!”
+
+But her steel did not strike on flint. It was her eyes that flashed. He
+would have done better to have seemed ashamed, for then he might have
+fooled her, at least for a while. But having judged himself, he did
+not care a fig for her judgment of him. She realized that instantly and
+having found a tool that would not work, discarded it for a better one.
+She grew confidential.
+
+“I borrow them,” she explained, “but I put them back. I take them for
+so many days, and when the day comes--the gods like us to be exact! Once
+there was an Englishman to whom I lent the larger one, and he refused
+to return it. He wanted it to wear, to bring him luck. Collins, of the
+Gurkhas. A cobra bit him.”
+
+King's eyes changed, for Collins of the Gurkhas had died in his two
+arms, saying never a word. He had always wondered why the native who
+ran in to kill the cobra had run away again and left Collins lying there
+after seeming to shake hands with him. Yasmini, watching his eyes and
+reading his memory, missed nothing.
+
+“You saw?” she said excitedly. “You remember? Then you understand! You
+yourself were near death when I took the bracelet last night. The time
+was up. I would have stabbed you if you had tried to prevent me!”
+
+Now he spoke at last and gave her a first glimpse of an angle of his
+mind she had not suspected.
+
+“Princess,” he said. He used the word with the deference some men can
+combine with effrontery, so that very tenderness has barbs. “You might
+have had that thing back if you had sent a messenger for it at any time.
+A word by a servant would have been enough.
+
+“You could never have reached Khinjan then!” she retorted. Her eyes
+flashed again, but his did not waver.
+
+“Princess,” he said, “why speak of what you don't know?”
+
+He thought she would strike like a snake, but she smiled at him instead.
+And when Yasmini has smiled on a man he has never been just the same man
+afterward. He knows more, for one thing. He has had a lesson in one of
+the finer arts.
+
+“I will speak of what I do know,” she said. “No, there is no need. Look!
+Look!”
+
+She pointed at the bed--at the man on the bed--fingers locked in those
+of a woman who looked so like herself.
+
+“You see--yet you do not see! Men are blind! Men look into a mirror, and
+see only whiskers they forgot to shave the day before. Women look once
+and then remember! Look again!”
+
+He looked, knowing well there was something to be understood, that
+stared him in the face. But for the life of him he could not determine
+question or answer.
+
+“What is in your bosom?” she asked him.
+
+He put his hand to his shirt.
+
+“Draw it out!” she said, as a teacher drills a child.
+
+He drew out the gold-hilted knife with the bronze blade, with which a
+man had meant to murder him. He let it lie on the palm of his hand
+and looked from it to her and back again. The hilt might have been a
+portrait of her modeled from the life.
+
+“Here is another like it,” she said, stepping to the bedside. She drew
+back the woman's dress at the bosom and showed a knife exactly like that
+in King's hand. “One lay on her bosom and one on his when I found them!”
+ she said. “Now, think again!”
+
+He did think, of thirty thousand possibilities, and of one impossible
+idea that stood up prominent among them all and insisted on seeming the
+only likely one.
+
+“I saw the knife in your bosom last night,” she said, “and laughed so
+that I nearly wakened you. Man! Are you stupid? Will that ready wit of
+yours not work? Have I bewildered you? Is it my perfume? My eyes? My
+jewels? What is it? Think, man! Think!”
+
+But if she wanted to make him guess aloud for her amusement she was
+wasting time. Had he known the answer he would have held his tongue. As
+he did not know it, he had all the more reason to wait indefinitely, if
+need be. But interminable waiting was no part of her plan. Words were
+welling out of her.
+
+“I gave a fool that knife to use, because he was afraid. It gave him
+courage. When he failed I knew it by telegram, and I sent another fool
+before the wires were cold, to kill him in the police-station cell for
+having failed. One fool has been stabbed and the English will hang the
+other. Then I sent twenty men to turn India inside out and find the
+knife again, for like the bracelets it has its place. And that is why I
+laughed. They are hunting. They will hunt until I call them off!”
+
+“Why didn't you take it with the bracelet?” King asked her, holding it
+out. “Take it now. I don't want it.”
+
+She accepted it and laid it on the man's bronze armor. Then, however,
+she resumed it and played with it.
+
+“Look again!” she said. “Think and look again!”
+
+He looked, and he knew now. But he still preferred that she should tell
+him, and his lips shut tight.
+
+“Why, having ordered your death, did I countermand the order when your
+life had been attempted once? Why, as soon as Rewa Gunga had seen you,
+did I order you to be aided in every way?”
+
+Still he did not answer, although the solution to that riddle, too,
+was beginning to dawn on his consciousness. He suspected she would be
+annoyed if he deprived her of the fun of telling him, so that by being
+silent he played both her game and his own.
+
+“Why did I order your death in the first place?”
+
+The answer to that was obvious, but she answered it for him.
+
+“Because, since the sirkar insisted that one man must come with me to
+Khinjan, I preferred a fool, who could be lost on the way. I knew your
+reputation. I never heard any man call you a fool.”
+
+She laughed. He nodded. She was obviously telling truth.
+
+“Can you guess why I changed my mind about you--wise man?”
+
+She looked from him to the man on the bed and back to him again. Having
+solved her riddle, King had leisure to be interested in her eyes, and
+watched them analytically, like a jeweler appraising diamonds. They were
+strangely reminiscent, but much more changeable and colorful than any he
+had ever seen. They had the baffling trick of changing while he watched
+them.
+
+“Having sent a man to kill you, why did I cease to want you killed?
+Instead of losing you on the way to Khinjan, why did I run risks to
+protect you after you reached here? Why did I save your life in the
+Cavern of Earth's Drink to-night? You do not know yet? Then I will tell
+you something else you do not know. I was in Delhi when you were! I
+watched and listened while you and Rewa Gunga talked in my house! I was
+in Rewa Gunga's carriage on the train that he took and you did not! I
+have learned at first hand that you are not a fool. But that was not
+enough! You had to be three things--clever and brave and one other. The
+one other you are! Brave you have proved yourself to be! Clever you
+must be, to trick your way into Khinjan Caves, even with Ismail at your
+elbow! That is why I saved your life--because you are those two things
+and--and--one other!”
+
+She snatched a mirror from a little ivory table--a modern mirror--bad
+glass, bad art, bad workmanship, but silver warranted.
+
+“Look in it and then at him!” she ordered.
+
+But he did not need to look. The man on the bed was not so much like
+himself as the woman was like her, but the resemblance seemed to grow
+under his eyes, as such things do. It was helped out by the stain his
+brother had applied to his face in the Khyber. King was the taller
+and the younger by several years, but the noses were the same, and the
+wrinkled fore-heads; both men had the same firm mouth; both looked like
+Romans.
+
+“How did you get that scar?”
+
+She came closer and took his hand, holding it in both hers, and he felt
+the same thrill Samson knew. He steeled himself as Samson did not.
+
+“A Mahsudi got me with a martini at long range in the blockade of 1902,”
+ he said dryly.
+
+“Look! Did he get his from a spear or from an arrow?”
+
+Almost in the same spot, also on the dead man's left hand, was a scar
+so nearly like it that it needed a third and a fourth glance to tell the
+difference. They both bent over the bed to see it, and she laid a
+hand on his shoulder. Touch and scent and confidence, all three were
+bewitching; all three were calculated, too! He could have killed her,
+and she knew he could have killed her, just as she knew he would not.
+Yet what right had she to know it!
+
+“Athelstan!”
+
+She pronounced his given name as if she loved the word, standing
+straight again and looking into his eyes. There were high lights in hers
+that outgleamed the diamonds on her dress.
+
+“Your gods and mine have done this, Athelstan. When the gods combine
+they lay plans well indeed!”
+
+“I only know one God,” he answered simply, as a man speaks of the deep
+things in his heart.
+
+“I know of many! They love me! They shall love you, too! Many are better
+than one! You shall learn to know my gods, for we are to be partners,
+you and I!”
+
+She laughed at him, looking like a goddess herself, but he frowned. And
+the more he frowned the better she seemed to like him.
+
+“Partners in what, Princess?”
+
+“Thou--Ismail dubbed thee Ready o' wit!--answer thine own question!”
+
+She took his hand again, her eyes burning with excitement and mysticism
+and ambition like a fever. She seemed to take more than physical
+possession of him.
+
+“What brought them here? Tell me that!” she demanded, pointing to the
+bed. “You think he brought, her? I tell you she was the spur that drove
+him! Is it a wonder that men called her the 'Heart of the Hills'? I
+found them ten years ago and clothed her and put new linen on their bed,
+for the old was all rags and dust. There have always been hundreds--and
+sometimes thousands--who knew the secret of Khinjan Caves, but this has
+been a secret within a secret. Some one, who knew the secret before I,
+sawed those bracelets through and fitted hinges and clasps. The men you
+saw in the Cavern of Earth's Drink have no doubt I am the 'Heart of the
+Hills' come to life! They shall know thee as Him within a little while!”
+
+She held his hand a little tighter and pressed closer to him, laughing
+softly. He stood as if made of iron, and that only made her laugh the
+more.
+
+“Tales of the 'Heart of the Hills' have puzzled the Raj, haven't they,
+these many years? They sent me to find the source of them. Me! They
+chose well! There are not many like me! I have found this one dead woman
+who was like me. And in ten years, until you came, I have found no man
+like Him!”
+
+She tried to look into his eyes, but he frowned straight in front of
+him. His native costume and Rangar turban did not make him seem any less
+a man. His jowl, that was beginning to need shaving, was as grim and
+as satisfying as the dead Roman's. She stroked his left hand with soft
+fingers.
+
+“I used to think I knew how to dance!” she laughed--“For ten years I
+have taken those pictures of her for my model and have striven to learn
+what she knew. I have surpassed her! I used to think I knew how to amuse
+myself with men's dreams--until I found this! Then I dreamed on my own
+account! My dream was true, my warrior! You have come! Our hour has
+come!”
+
+She tugged at his hand. He was hers, soul and harness, if outward signs
+could prove it.
+
+“Come!” she said. “Is this my hospitality? You are weary and hungry.
+Come!”
+
+She led him by the hand, for it would have needed brute force to pry her
+fingers loose. She drew aside the leather curtain that hung on a bronze
+rod near the bed, led him through it, and let it clash to again behind
+them.
+
+Now they were in the dark together, and it was not comprehended in her
+scheme of things to let circumstance lie fallow. She pressed his hand,
+and sighed, and then hurried, whispering tender words he could scarcely
+catch. When they burst together through a curtain at the other end of
+a passage in the rock, his skin was red under the tan and for the first
+time her eyes refused to meet his.
+
+“Why did they choose that cave to sleep in?” she asked him. “Is not this
+a better one? Who laid them there?”
+
+He stared about. They were in a great room far more splendid than the
+first. There was a fountain in the center splashing in the midst of
+flowers. They were cut flowers. The “Hills” must have been scoured for
+them within a day.
+
+There were great cushioned couches all about and two thrones made of
+ivory and gold. Between two couches was a table, laden with golden
+plates and a golden jug, on pure white linen. There were two goblets of
+beaten gold and knives with golden handles and bronze blades. The whole
+room seemed to be drenched in the scent Yasmini favored, and there was
+the same frieze running round all four walls, with the woman depicted on
+it dancing.
+
+“Come, we shall eat!” she said, leading him by the hand to a couch. She
+took the one facing him, and they lay like two Romans of the Empire with
+the table in between.
+
+She struck a golden gong then, and a native woman came in who stared at
+King as if she had seen him before and did not like him. Except for the
+jewels, she was dressed exactly like Yasmini, which is to say that her
+gauzy stuff was all but transparent. But Yasmini uses raiment as she
+does her eyes; it is part of her, and of her art. The maid, who would
+have shone among many women, looked stiff and dull by contrast.
+
+“I trust no Hill woman--they are cattle with human tongues,” Yasmini
+said, frowning at the maid. “Even in Delhi there was only this one woman
+whom I dared bring here with me. You brought my men-servants! They
+are loyal, but as clumsy as the bears in their cold 'Hills'! Rewa Gunga
+brought me this one disguised as a man--you remember?”
+
+She nodded to the servant, who clapped her hands. At once came a stream
+of Hillmen, robed in white, who carried sherbet in bottles cooled in
+snow and dishes fragrant with hot food. He recognized his own prisoners
+from the Mir Khan Palace jail, and nodded to them as they set the things
+down under the maid's direction. When they had done the woman chased
+them out and came and stood behind Yasmini with a fan, for though it was
+not too hot, she liked to have her golden hair blown into movement.
+
+“My cook was a viceroy's,” she said, beginning to eat. “He killed an
+officer who said the curry had pig's fat in it. That made him free of
+Khinjan but of not many other places! I have promised him a swim in
+Earth's Drink when he ever forgets his art!”
+
+King ate, because a man can not talk and eat at once. It was true that
+he was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was an
+adjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was his
+chief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if only to keep him company.
+
+“You would rather have wine?” she asked suddenly. “All sahibs drink
+wine. Bring wine!” she ordered.
+
+But King shook his head, and she looked pleased.
+
+He had thought she would be disappointed. When he had finished eating
+she drove the maid away with a sharp word; and when King jumped to his
+feet she led him toward the gold-and-ivory thrones, taking her seat on
+one of them and bidding him adjust the footstool.
+
+“Would I might offer you the other!” she said, merrily enough, “but you
+must sit at my feet until our hearts are one!”
+
+It was clear that she took no delight in easy victories, for she laughed
+aloud at the quizzical expression on his face. He guessed that if she
+could have conquered him at the first attempt a day would have found her
+weary of him; there was deliberate wisdom in his plan for the present to
+seem to let her win by little inches at a time. He reasoned that so she
+would tell him more than if he defied her outright.
+
+He brought an ivory footstool and set it about a yard away from her
+waxen toes. And she, watching him with burning eyes, wound tresses of
+her hair around the golden dagger handle, making her jewels glitter with
+each movement.
+
+“You pleased me by refusing wine,” she said. “You please me--oh, you
+please me! Christians drink wine and eat beef and pig-meat. Ugh! Hindu
+and Muslim both despise them, having each a little understanding of his
+own. The gods of India, who are the only real gods, what do they think
+of it all! They have been good to the English, but they have had no
+thanks. They will stand aside now and watch a greater jihad than the
+world has ever seen! And the Hindu, who holds the cow sacred, will not
+support Christians who hold nothing sacred, against Muhammadans who
+loathe the pig! Christianity has failed! The English must go down with
+it--just as Rome went down when she dabbled in Christianity. Oh, I know
+all about Rome!”
+
+“And the gods of India?” he asked, to keep her to the point now that she
+seemed well started.
+
+He was there to learn, not to teach.
+
+“I know them, too! I know them as nobody else does! They are neither
+Hindu, nor Muhammadan, but are older by a thousand ages than either
+foolishness! I love them, and they love me--as you shall love me, too!
+If they did not love both of us, we would not both be here! We must obey
+them!”
+
+None of the East's amazing ways of courtship are ever tedious. Love
+springs into being on an instant and lives a thousand years inside an
+hour. She left no doubt as to her meaning. She and King were to love,
+as the East knows love, and then the world might have just what they two
+did not care to take from it.
+
+His only possible course as yet was the defensive, and there is no
+defense like silence. He was still.
+
+“The sirkar,” she went on, “the silly sirkar fears that perhaps Turkey
+may enter the war. Perhaps a jihad may be proclaimed. So much for fear!
+I know! I have known for a very long time! And I have not let fear
+trouble me at all!”
+
+Her eyes were on his steadily, and she read no fear in his,
+either, for none was there. In hers he saw ambition--triumph
+already--excitement--the gambler's love of all the hugest risks. Behind
+them burned genius and the devilry that would stop at nothing. As the
+general had told him in Peshawur, she would dare open Hell's gate and
+ride the devil down the Khyber for the fun of it.
+
+“Au diable, diable et demie!” the French say; and like most French
+proverbs it is a wise one. But whence the devil and a half should come
+to thwart her was not obvious.
+
+“I must be a devil and a half,” he told himself, and very nearly
+laughed aloud at the idea. She mistook the sudden humor in his eyes for
+admiration of herself, being used to that from men.
+
+“Listen, while I tell you all from the beginning! The sirkar sent me to
+discover what may be this 'Heart of the Hills' men talk about. I found
+these caves--and this! I told the sirkar a little about the Caves, and
+nothing at all about the Sleepers. But even at that they only believed
+the third of what I said. And I--back in Delhi I bought books--borrowed
+books--sent to Europe for more books--and hired babu Sita Ram to read
+them to me, until his tongue grew dry and swollen and he used
+to fall asleep in a corner. I know all about Rome! Days I
+spent--weeks!--months!--listening to the history of their great Caesar,
+and their little Caesars--of their conquests and their games! It was
+good, and I understood it all! Rome should have been true to the old
+gods, and they would have been true to her! She fell when she fooled
+with Christianity!”
+
+She was speaking dreamily now, with her chin resting on a hand and an
+elbow on the ivory arm of the throne, remembering as she told her story.
+And it meant so much to her, she was so in earnest, that her voice
+conjured up pictures for King to see.
+
+“When I had read enough I came back here to think. I knew enough now
+to be sure that the Sleeper is a Roman, and the 'Heart of the Hills' a
+Grecian maid. She is like me. That is why I know she drove him to make
+an empire, choosing for a beginning these 'Hills' where Rome had never
+penetrated. He found her in Greece. He plunged through Persia to build a
+throne for her! I have seen it all in dreams, and again in the crystal!
+And because I was all alone, I saw that I would need all the skill I
+could learn, and much patience. So I began to learn to dance as she
+danced, using those pictures of her as a model. I have surpassed her! I
+can dance better than she ever did!
+
+“Between times I would go to Delhi and dance there a little, and a
+little in other places--once indeed before a viceroy, and once for the
+king of England--and all men--the king, too!--told me that none in
+the world can dance as I can! And all the while I kept looking for the
+man--the man who should be like the Sleeper, even as I am like her whom
+he loved!
+
+“Many a man--many and many a man I have tried and found wanting! For I
+was impatient in spite of resolutions. I burned to find him at once, and
+begin! But you are the first of all the men I have tested who answered
+all the tests! Languages--he must speak the native tongues. Brave be
+must be--and clever--resembling the Sleeper in appearance. I began to
+think long ago that I must forego that last test, for there was none
+like the Sleeper until you came. And when this world war broke--for it
+is a world war, a world war I tell you!--I thought at last that I must
+manage all alone. And then you came!
+
+“But there were many I tried--many--especially after I abandoned the
+thought that the man must resemble the Sleeper. There was a Prince of
+Germany who came to India on a hunting trip. You remember?”
+
+King pricked his ears and allowed himself to grin, for in common with
+many hundred other men who had been lieutenants at the time, he would
+once have given an ear and an eye to know the truth of that affair. The
+grin transformed his whole appearance, until Yasmini beamed on him.
+
+“I'm listening, Princess!” he reminded her.
+
+“Well--he came--the Prince of Germany--the borrower!”
+
+“Borrower of what, Princess?”
+
+“Of wit! Of brains! Of platitudes! Of reputation! There came a crowd
+with him of such clumsy plunderers, asking such rude questions, that
+even the sirkar could not shut its ears and eyes!
+
+“I did not know all about sahibs in those days. I thought that, although
+this man is what he is, yet he is a prince, and perhaps I can fire him
+with my genius. I could have taught him the native tongues. I thought
+he had ambition, but I learned that he is only greedy. You see, I was
+foolish, not knowing yet that in good time if I am patient my man will
+come to me! But I learned all about Germans--all!
+
+“I offered him India first, then Asia, then the world--even as I now
+offer them to you. The sirkar sent him to see me dance, and he stayed
+to hear me talk. When I saw at last that he has the head and heart of a
+hyena I told him lies. But he, being drunk, told me truths that I have
+remembered.
+
+“Later he sent two of his officers to ask me questions, and they were
+little better than he, although a little better mannered. I told them
+lies, too, and they told me lies, but they told me much that was true.
+
+“Then the prince came again, a last time. And I was weary of him. The
+sirkar was very weary of him too. He offered me money to go to Germany
+and dance for the kaiser in Berlin. He said I will be shown there much
+that will be to my advantage. I refused. He made me other offers. So I
+spat in his face and threw food at him.
+
+“He complained to the sirkar against me, sending one of his high
+officers to demand that I be whipped. So I told the sirkar some--not
+much, indeed, but enough--of the things he and his officers had told
+me. And the sirkar said at once that there was both cholera and bubonic
+plague, and he must go home!
+
+“I have heard--three men told me--that he said he will never rest until
+I have been whipped! But I have heard that his officers laughed behind
+his back. And ever since that time there have always been Germans in
+communication with me. I have had more money from Berlin than would
+bribe the viceroy's council, and I have not once been in the dark about
+Germany's plans--although they have always thought I am in the dark.
+
+“I went on looking for my man--studying all, Germans, English, Turks,
+French--and there was a Frenchman whom I nearly chose--and an American,
+a man who used the strangest words, who laughed at me. I studied Hindu,
+Muslim, Christian, every good-looking fighting man who came my way,
+knowing well that all creeds are one when the gods have named their
+choice.
+
+“There came that old Bull-with-a-beard, Muhammad Anim, and for a time I
+thought he is the man, for he is a man whatever else he is. But I tired
+of him. I called him Bull-with-a-beard, and the 'Hills' took it up and
+mocked him, until the new name stuck. He still thinks he is the man,
+having more strength to hope and more will to will wrongly than any
+man I ever met, except a German. I have even been sure sometimes that
+Muhammad Anim is a German; yet now I am not sure.
+
+“From all the men I met and watched I have learned all they knew! And I
+have never neglected to tell the sirkar sufficient of what men have told
+me, to keep the sirkar pleased with me!
+
+“Nor have I ever played Germany's game--no, no! I have talked with a
+prince of Germany, and I understand too well! Who sups with a boar may
+get good roots to eat, but must endure pigs' feet in the trough! Pigs'
+hides make good saddles; I have used the Germans, as they think they
+have used me! I have used them ruthlessly.
+
+“Knowing all I knew, and being ready except that I had not found my man
+yet, I dallied in India on the eve of war, watching a certain Sikh to
+discover whether he is the man or not. But he lacked imagination, and
+I was caught in Delhi when war broke and the English closed the Khyber
+Pass. Yet I had to come up the Khyber, to reach Khinjan.
+
+“So it was fortunate that I knew of a German plot that I could spoil
+at the last minute. I fooled the Germans by letting the Sikh whom I had
+watched discover it. The Germans still believe me their accomplice--and
+the sirkar was so pleased that I think if I had asked for an English
+peerage they would have answered me soberly. A million dynamite bombs
+was a big haul for the sirkar! My offer to go to Khinjan and keep the
+'Hills' quiet was accepted that same day!
+
+“But what are a million dynamite bombs! Dynamite bombs have been coming
+into Khinjan month by month these three years! Bombs and rifles and
+cartridges! Muhammad Anim's men, whom he trusts because he must, hid it
+all in a cave I showed them, that they think, and he thinks, has only
+one entrance to it. Muhammad Anim sealed it, and he has the key. But I
+have the ammunition!
+
+“There was another way out of that cave, although there is none now,
+for I have blocked it. My men, whom I trust because I know them, carried
+everything out by the back way, and I have it all. I will show it to you
+presently.
+
+“I know all Muhammad Anim's plans. Bull-with-a-beard believes himself a
+statesman, yet he told me all he knows! He has told me how Germany plans
+to draw Turkey in and to force Turkey to proclaim a jihad. As if I did
+not know it first, almost before the Germans knew it! Fools! The jihad
+will recoil on them! It will be like a cobra, striking whoever stirs
+it! A typhoon, smiting right and left! Christianity is doomed, and
+the Germans call themselves Christians! Fools! Rome called herself
+Christian--and where is Rome?
+
+“But we, my warrior, when Muhammad Anim gets the word from Germany and
+gives the sign, and the 'Hills' are afire, and the whole East roars in
+the flame of the jihad--we will put ourselves at the head of that jihad,
+and the East and the world is ours!”
+
+King smiled at her.
+
+“The East isn't very well armed,” he objected. “Mere numbers--”
+
+“Numbers?” She laughed at him. “The West has the West by the throat!
+It is tearing itself! They will drag in America! There will be no armed
+nation with its hands free--and while those wolves fight, other wolves
+shall come and steal the meat! The old gods, who built these caverns in
+the 'Hills,' are laughing! They are getting ready! Thou and I--”
+
+As she coupled him and herself together in one plan she read the changed
+expression of his face--the very quickly passing cloud that even the
+best-trained man can not control.
+
+“I know!” she asserted, sitting upright and coming out of her dream
+to face facts as their master. She looked more lovely now than ever,
+although twice as dangerous. “You are thinking of your brother--of his
+head! That I am a murderess who can never be your friend! Is that not
+so?”
+
+He did not answer, but his eyes may have betrayed something, for
+she looked as if he had struck her. Leaning forward, she held the
+gold-hilted dagger out to him, hilt first.
+
+“Take it and stab me!” she ordered. “Stab--if you blame me for your
+brother's death! I should have known him for your brother if I had come
+on him in the dark!--His head might have come from your shoulders!--You
+were like a man holding up his own head, as I have seen in pictures in a
+book! I would never have killed him!”
+
+Her golden hair fell all about his shoulders, and its scent was not
+intended to be sobering. She ran warm fingers through his hair while she
+held the knife toward him with the other hand.
+
+“Take it and stab!”
+
+“No,” he said.
+
+“No!” she laughed. “No! You are my warrior--my man--my well--beloved!
+You have come to me alone out of all the world! You would no more stab
+me than the gods would forget me!”
+
+Their eyes were on each other's--deep looking into deep.
+
+“Strength!” she said, flinging him away and leaning back to look at him,
+almost as a fed cat stretches in the sunlight. “Courage! Simplicity!
+Directness! Strength I have, too, and courage never failed me, but my
+mind is a river winding in and out, gathering as it goes. I have no
+directness--no simplicity! You go straight from point to point, my
+sending from the gods! I have needed you! Oh, I have needed you so much,
+these many years! And now that you have come you want to hate me because
+you think I killed your brother! Listen--I will tell you all I know
+about your brother.”'
+
+Without a scrap of proof of any kind he knew she was telling truth
+unadorned--or at least the truth as she saw it. Eye to eye, there are
+times when no proof is needed.
+
+“Without my leave, Muhammad Anim sent five hundred men on a foray toward
+the Khyber. Bull-with-a-beard needed an Englishman's head, for proof
+for a spy of his who could not enter Khinjan Caves. They trapped your
+brother outside Ali Masjid with fifty of his men. They took his head
+after a long fight, leaving more than a hundred of their own in payment.
+
+“Bull-with-a-beard was pleased. But he was careless, and I sent my men
+to steal the head from his men. I needed evidence for you. And I swear
+to you--I swear to you by my gods who have brought us two together--that
+I first knew it was your brother's head when you held it up in the
+Cavern of Earth's Drink! Then I knew it could not be anybody else's
+head!”
+
+“Why bid me throw it to them, then?” he asked her, and he was aware of
+her scorn before the words had left his lips.
+
+She leaned back again and looked at him through lowered eyes, as if she
+must study him all anew. She seemed to find it hard to believe that he
+really thought so in the commonplace.
+
+“What is a head to me, or to you--a head with no life in
+it--carrion!--compared to what shall be? Would you have known it was his
+head if you had thrown it to them when I ordered you?”
+
+He understood. Some of her blood was Russian, some Indian.
+
+“A friend is a friend, but a brother is a rival,” says the East, out of
+world-old experience, and in some ways Russia is more eastern than the
+East itself.
+
+“Muhammad Anim shall answer to you for your brother's head!” she said
+with a little nod, as if she were making concessions to a child. “At
+present we need him. Let him preach his jihad, and loose it at the
+right time. After that he will be in the way! You shall name his
+death--Earth's Drink--slow torture--fire! Will that content you?”
+
+“No,” he said, with a dry laugh.
+
+“What more can you ask?”
+
+“Less! My brother died at the head of his men. He couldn't ask more. Let
+Bull-with-a-beard alone.”
+
+She set both elbows on her knees and laid her chin on both hands to
+stare at him again. He began to remember long-forgotten schoolboy lore
+about chemical reagents, that dissolve materials into their component
+parts, such was the magic of her eyes. There were no eyes like hers that
+he had ever seen, although Rewa Gunga's had been something like them.
+Only Rewa Gunga's had not changed so. Thought of the Rangar no sooner
+crossed his mind than she was speaking of him.
+
+“Rewa Gunga met you in the dark, beyond those outer curtains, did he
+not?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“Did he tell you that if you pass the curtains you shall be told all I
+know?”
+
+He nodded again, and she laughed.
+
+“It would take time to tell you all I know! First, I think I will show
+you things. Afterward you shall ask me questions, and I will answer
+them!”
+
+She stood up, and of course he stood up, too. So, she on the footstool
+of the throne, her eyes and his were on a level. She laid hands on
+his shoulders and looked into his eyes until he could see his own twin
+portraits in hers that were glowing sunset pools. Heart of the Hills?
+The Heart of all the East seemed to burn in her, rebellious!
+
+“Are you believing me?” she asked him.
+
+He nodded, for no man could have helped believing her. As she knew
+the truth, she was telling it to him, as surely as she was doing her
+skillful best to mesmerize him. But the Secret Service is made up of men
+trained against that.
+
+“Come!” she said, and stepping down she took his arm.
+
+She led him past the thrones to other leather curtains in a wall, and
+through them into long hewn passages from cavern into cavern, until even
+the Rock of Gibraltar seemed like a doll's house in comparison.
+
+In one cave there were piles of javelins that had been stacked there by
+the Sleeper and his men. In another were sheaves of arrows; and in one
+were spears in racks against a wall. There were empty stables, with
+rings made fast into the rock where a hundred horses could have stood in
+line.
+
+She showed him a cave containing great forges, where the bronze had been
+worked, with charcoal still piled up against the wall at one end. There
+were copper and tin ingots in there of a shape he had never seen.
+
+“I know where they came from,” she told him. “I have made it my
+business to know all the 'Hills.' I know things the Hillmen's
+great-great-great-grand-fathers forgot! I know old workings that would
+make a modern nation rich! We shall have money when we need it, never
+fear! We shall conquer India while the English backs are turned and the
+best troops are oversea. We will bring a hundred thousand slaves back
+here to work our mines! With what they dig from the mines, copper and
+gold and tin, we will make ready to buy the English off when they are
+free to turn this way again. The English will do anything for money!
+They will be in debt when this war is over, and their price will be less
+then than now!”
+
+She laughed merrily at him because his face showed that he did not
+appreciate that stricture. Then she called him her Warrior and her
+Well-beloved and took him down a long passage, holding his hand all the
+way, to show him slots cut in the floor for the use of archers.
+
+“You entered Khinjan Caves by a tunnel under this floor, Well-beloved.
+There is no other entrance!”
+
+By this time Well-beloved was her name for him, although there was no
+air of finality about it. It was as if she paved the way for use of
+Athelstan and that was a sacred name. It was amazing how she conveyed
+that impression without using words.
+
+“The Sleeper cut these slots for his archers. Then he had another
+thought and set these cauldrons in place, to boil oil to pour down.
+Could any army force a way through by the route by which you entered?”
+
+“No,” he said, marveling at the ton-weight copper cauldrons, one to each
+hole.
+
+“Even without rifles for the defense?”
+
+“No,” he said.
+
+“And I have more than a thousand Mauser rifles here, and more than a
+million rounds of ammunition!”
+
+“How did you get them?”
+
+“I shall tell you that later. Come and see some other things. See and
+believe!”
+
+She showed him a cave in which boxes were stacked in high square piles.
+
+“Dynamite bombs!” she boasted. “How many boxes? I forget! Too many to
+count! Women brought them all the way from the sea, for even Muhammad
+Anim could not make Afridi riflemen carry loads. I have wondered what
+Bull-with-a-beard will say when he misses his precious dynamite!”
+
+“You've enough in there to blow the mountain up!” King advised her. “If
+somebody fired a pistol in here, the least would be the collapse of this
+floor into the tunnel below with a hundred thousand tons of rock on top
+of it. There is no other way out?”
+
+“Earth's Drink!” she said, and he made a grimace that set her to
+laughing.
+
+But she looked at him darkly after that and he got the impression that
+the thought was not new to her, and that she did not thank him for
+the advice. He began to wonder whether there was anything she had not
+thought of--any loophole she had left him for escape--any issue she had
+not foreseen.
+
+“Kill her!” a secret voice urged him. But that was the voice of the
+“Hills,” that are violent first and regretful afterward. He did not
+listen to it. And then the wisdom of the West came to him, as epitomized
+by Cocker along the lines laid down by Solomon.
+
+“It isn't possible to make a puzzle that has no solution to it. The fact
+that it's a puzzle is the proof that there's a key! Go ahead!”
+
+It was the “Go ahead!” that Solomon omitted, and that makes Cocker such
+cheerful reading. King ceased conjecturing and gave full attention to
+his guide.
+
+She showed him where eleven hundred Mauser rifles stood in racks in
+another cave, with boxes of ammunition piled beside them--each rifle and
+cartridge worth its weight in silver coin--a very rajah's ransom!
+
+“The Germans are generous in some things--only in some things--very
+mean in others!” she told him. “They sent no medical stores, and no
+blankets!”
+
+Past caves where provisions of every imaginable kind were stored,
+sufficient for an army, she led him to where her guards slept together
+with the thirty special men whom King had brought with him up the
+Khyber.
+
+“I have five hundred others whom I dare trust to come in here,” she
+said, “but they shall stay outside until I want them. A mystery is a
+good thing! It is good for them all to wonder what I keep in here! It is
+good to keep this sanctuary; it makes for power!”
+
+Pressing very close to him, she guided him down another dark tunnel
+until he and she stood together in the jaws of the round hole above the
+river, looking down into the cavern of Earth's Drink.
+
+Nobody looked up at them. The thousands were too busy working up a
+frenzy for the great jihad that was to come.
+
+Stacks of wood had been piled up, six-man high in the middle, and then
+fired. The heat came upward like a furnace blast, and the smoke was a
+great red cloud among the stalactites. Round and round that holocaust
+the thousands did their sword-dance, yelling as the devils yelled at
+Khinjan's birth. They needed no wine to craze them. They were drunk with
+fanaticism, frenzy, lust!
+
+“The women brought that wood from fifty miles away!” Yasmini shouted in
+his ear; for the din, mingling with the river's voice, made a volcano
+chord. “It is a week's supply of wood! But so they are--so they will be!
+They will lay waste India! They will butcher and plunder and burn! It
+will be what they leave of India that we shall build anew and govern,
+for India herself will rise to help them lay her own cities waste! It is
+always so! Conquests always are so! Come!”
+
+She tugged at him and led him back along the tunnel and through other
+tunnels to the throne room, where she made him sit at her feet again.
+
+The food had been cleared away in their absence. Instead, on the ebony
+table there were pens and ink and paper.
+
+She leaned back on her throne, with bare feet pressed tight against the
+footstool, staring, staring at the table and the pens, and then at
+King, as if she would compose an ultimatum to the world and send King to
+deliver it.
+
+“I said I will tell you,” she sad slowly. “Listen!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+
+     Nothing new! Nothing new!
+     Nowhere to hide when a reckoning's due,
+     But right earns right, and wrong gets rue,
+     With nothing deducted or given in lieu;
+     And neither the War God, I, nor you
+     Ever could make one lie come true!
+             Vale, Ceasar!
+
+
+As Yasmini herself had admitted, she headed from point to point after a
+manner of her own.
+
+“You know where is Dar es Salaam?” she asked.
+
+“East Africa,” said King.
+
+“How far is that from here?”
+
+“Two or three thousand miles.”
+
+“And English war-ships watch the Persian Gulf and all the seas from
+India to Aden?”
+
+King nodded.
+
+“Have the English any ships that dive under water?”
+
+He nodded again.
+
+“In these waters?”
+
+“I think not. I'm not sure, but I think not.”
+
+“The grenades you have seen, and the rifles and cartridges were sent by
+the Germans to Dar es Salaam, to suppress a rising of African natives.
+Does it begin to grow clear to you, my friend?”
+
+He smiled as well as nodded this time.
+
+“Muhammad Anim used to wait with a hundred women at a certain place on
+the seashore. What he found on the beach there he made the women carry
+on their heads to Khinjan. And by the time he had hidden what he found
+and returned from Khinjan to the beach, there were more things to
+find and bring. So they worked, he and the Germans, for I know not how
+long--with the English watching the seas as on land lean wolves comb the
+valleys.
+
+“Did you ever hear of the big whale in the Gulf?”
+
+“No,” said King. That was natural. There are as a rule about as many
+whales as salmon in the Persian Gulf.
+
+“A German who came to me in Delhi--he who first showed me pictures of
+an underwater ship--said that at that time the officers and crew of one
+such ship were getting great practise. Do you suppose their practise
+made whales take refuge in the Gulf?”
+
+“How should I know, Princess?”
+
+“Because I heard a story later, of an English cruiser on its way up
+the Gulf, that collided with a whale. The shock of hitting it bent many
+steel plates, and the cruiser had to put back for repair. It must have
+been a very big whale, for there was much oil on the sea for a long time
+afterward. So I heard.
+
+“And no more dynamite came--nor rifles--nor cartridges, although the
+Germans had promised more. And orders for Muhammad Anim that had been
+said to come by sea came now by way of Bagdad, carried by pilgrims
+returning from the holy places. I know that because I intercepted a
+letter and threw its bearer into Earth's Drink to save Muhammad Anim the
+trouble of asking questions.”
+
+“What were the terms of the German bargain?” King asked her. “What
+stipulations did they make?”
+
+“With the tribes? None! They were too wise. A jihad was decided on in
+Germany's good time; and when that time should come ten rifles in the
+'Hills' and a thousand cartridges would mean not only a hundred dead
+Englishmen, but ten times that number busily engaged. Why bargain when
+there was no need? A rifle is what it is. The 'Hills' are the 'Hills'!
+
+“Tell me about your lamp oil, then,” he said. “You burn enough oil in
+Khinjan Caves to light Bombay! That does not come by submarine. The
+sirkar knows how much of everything goes up the Khyber. I have seen
+the printed lists myself--a few hundred cans of kerosene--a few score
+gallons of vegetable oil, and all bound for farther north. There isn't
+enough oil pressed among the 'Hills' to keep these caves going for a
+day. Where does it all come from?”
+
+She laughed, as a mother laughs at a child's questions, finding
+delicious enjoyment in instructing him.
+
+“There are three villages, not two days' march from Khabul, where men
+have lived for centuries by pressing oil for Khinjan Caves,” she said.
+“The Sleeper fetched his oil thence. There are the bones of a camel in a
+cave I did not show you, and beside the camel are the leather bags still
+in which the oil was carried. Nowadays it comes in second-hand cans
+and drums. The Sleeper left gold in here. Those who kept the Sleeper's
+secret paid for the oil in gold. No Afghan troubled why oil was needed,
+so long as gold paid for it, until Abdurrahman heard the story. He made
+a ten-year-long effort to learn the secret, but he failed. When he cut
+off the supply of oil for a time, there was a rebellion so close to
+Khabul gates that he thought better of it. Of gold and Abdurrahman, gold
+was the stronger. And I know where the Sleeper dug his gold!”
+
+They sat in silence for a long while after that, she looking at the
+table, with its ink and pens and paper, and he thinking, with hands
+clasped round one knee; for it is wiser to think than to talk, even when
+a woman is near who can read thoughts that are not guarded.
+
+“Most disillusionments come simply,” King said at last. “D'you know,
+Princess, what has kept the sirkar from really believing in Khinjan
+Caves?”
+
+She shook her head. “The gods!” she said. “The gods can blindfold
+governments and whole peoples as easily as they can make us see!”
+
+“It was the fact that they knew what provisions and what oil and what
+necessities of life went up the Khyber and came down it. They knew a
+place such as this was said to be could not be. They knew it! They could
+prove it!”
+
+Yasmini nodded.
+
+“Let it be a lesson to you, Princess!”
+
+She stared, and her fiery-opal eyes began to change and glow. She began
+to twist her golden hair round the dagger hilt again. But always
+her feet were still on the footstool of the throne, as if she
+knew--knew--knew that she stood on firm foundations. No sirkar ever
+doubted less than she, and the suggestions in King's little homily did
+not please her. She looked toward the table again--then again into his
+eyes.
+
+“Athelstan!” she said. “It sounds like a king's name! What was the
+Sleeper's name? I have often wondered! I found no name in all the books
+about Rome that seemed to fit him. None of the names I mouthed could
+make me dream as the sight of him could. But, Athelstan! That is a
+name like a king's! It seems to fit him, too! Was there such a name, in
+Rome?”
+
+“No,” he said.
+
+“What does it mean?” she asked him.
+
+“Slow of resolution!”
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+“Another sign!” she laughed. “The gods love me! There always is a
+sign when I need one! Slow of resolution, art thou? I will speed thy
+resolution, Well-beloved! You were quick to change from King, of the
+Khyber Rifle Regiment, to Kurram Khan. Change now into my warrior--my
+dear lord--my King again!”
+
+She rose, with arms outstretched to him. All her dancer's art, her
+untamed poetry, her witchery, were expressed in a movement. Her eyes
+melted as they met his. And since he stood up, too, for manner's sake,
+they were eye to eye again--almost lip to lip. Her sweet breath was in
+his nostrils.
+
+In another moment she was in his arms, clinging to him, kissing him. And
+if any man has felt on his lips the kiss of all the scented glamour of
+the East, let him tell what King's sensations were. Let Ceasar, who was
+kissed by Cleopatra, come to life and talk of it!
+
+King's arm is strong, and he did not stand like an idol. His head might
+swim, but she, too, tasted the delirium of human passion loosed and
+given for a mad swift minute. If his heart swelled to bursting, so must
+hers have done.
+
+“I have needed you!” she whispered. “I have been all alone! I have
+needed you!”
+
+Then her lips sought his again, and neither spoke.
+
+Neither knew how long it was before she began to understand that he, not
+she, was winning. The human answer to her appeal was full. He gave her
+all she asked of admiration, kiss for kiss. And then--her arms did not
+cling so tightly, although his strong right arm was like a stanchion.
+Because he knew that he, not she, was winning, he picked her up in his
+arms and kissed her as if she were a child. And then, because he knew he
+had won, he set her on her feet on the footstool of the throne, and even
+pitied her.
+
+She felt the pity. As she tossed the hair back over her shoulder her
+eyes glowed with another meaning--dangerous--like a tiger's glare.
+
+“You pity me? You think because I love you, you can feed my love on a
+plate to the Indian government? You think my love is a weapon to use
+against me? Your love for me may wait for a better time? You are not so
+wise as I thought you, Athelstan!”
+
+But he knew he had won. His heart was singing down inside him as it had
+not sung since he left India behind. But he stood quite humbly before
+her, for had he not kissed her?
+
+“You think a kiss is the bond between us? You mistake! You forget! The
+kiss, my Athelstan, was the fruit, not the seed! The seed came first! If
+I loosed you--if I set you free--you would never dare go back to India!”
+
+He scarcely heard her. He knew he had won. His heart was like a bird,
+fluttering wildly. He knew that the next step would be shown him, and
+for the present he had time and grace to pity her, knowing how he would
+have felt if she had won. Besides, he had kissed her, and he had not
+lied. Each kiss had been a tribute of admiration, for was she not
+splendid--amazing--more to be desired than wine? He stood with bowed
+head, lest the triumph in his eyes offend her. Yet if any one had asked
+him how he knew that he had won, he never could have told.
+
+“If you were to go back to India except as its conqueror, they would
+strip the buttons from your uniform and tear your medals off and shoot
+you in the back against a wall! My signature is known in India and I am
+known. What I write will be believed. Rewa Gunga shall take a letter.
+He shall take two--four--witnesses. He shall see them on their way and
+shall give them the letter when they reach the Khyber and shall send
+them into India with it. Have no fear. Bull-with-a-beard shall not
+intercept them, as I have intercepted his men. When Rewa Gunga shall
+return and tell me he saw my letter on its way down the Khyber, then we
+shall talk again about pity--you and I! Come!”
+
+She took his arm, as if her threats had been caresses. Triumph shone
+from her eyes. She tossed her brave chin and laughed at him, only
+encouraged to greater daring by his attitude.
+
+“Why don't you kill me?” she asked, and though his answer surprised her,
+it did not make her angry.
+
+“It would do no good,” he said simply.
+
+“Would you kill me if you thought it would do good?”
+
+“Certainly!” he said.
+
+She laughed at that as if it were the greatest joke she had ever heard.
+It set her in the best humor possible, and by the time they reached the
+ebony table and she had taken the pen and dipped it in the ink, she was
+chuckling to herself as if the one good joke had grown into a hundred.
+
+She wrote in Urdu. It is likely that for all her knowledge of the spoken
+English tongue she was not so swift or ready with the trick of writing
+it. She had said herself that a babu read English books to her aloud.
+But she wrote in Urdu with an easy flowing hand, and in two minutes she
+had thrown sand on the letter and had given it to King to read. It was
+not like a woman's letter. It did not waste a word.
+
+        “Your Captain King has been too much trouble.  He has
+        taken money from the Germans.  He adopted native dress.
+        He called himself Kurram Khan.  He slew his own brother
+        at night in the Khyber Pass.  These men will say that
+        he carried the head to Khinjan, and their word is true,
+        for I, Yasmini, saw.  He used the head for a passport,
+        to obtain admittance.  He proclaims a jihad!  He urges
+        invasion of India!  He held up his brother's head
+        before five thousand men and boasted of the murder.
+        The next you shall hear of your Captain King of the
+        Khyber Rifles, he will be leading a jihad into India.
+        You would have better trusted me.  Yasmini.”
+
+He read it and passed it back to her.
+
+“They will not disbelieve me,” she said, triumphant as the very devil
+over a branded soul all hot. “They will be sure you are mad, and they
+will believe the witnesses!”
+
+He bowed. She sealed the letter and addressed it with only a scrawled
+mark on its outer cover. That, by the way, was utter insolence, for the
+mark would be understood at any frontier post by the officer commanding.
+
+“Rewa Gunga shall start with this to-day!” she said, with more amusement
+than malice. After that she was still for a moment, watching his eyes,
+at a loss to understand his carelessness. He seemed strangely unabased.
+His folded arms were not defiant, but neither were they yielding.
+
+“I love you, Athelstan!” she said. “Do you love me?”
+
+“I think you are very beautiful, Princess!”
+
+“Beautiful? I know I am beautiful. But is that all?”
+
+“Clever!” he added.
+
+She began to drum with the golden dagger hilt on the table, and to
+look dangerous, which is not to infer by any means that she looked less
+lovely.
+
+“Do you love me?” she asked.
+
+“Forgive me, Princess, but you forget. I was born east of Mecca, but my
+folk were from the West. We are slower to love than some other nations.
+With us love is more often growth, less often surrender at first sight.
+I think you are wonderful.”
+
+She nodded and tucked the sealed letter in her bosom.
+
+“It shall go,” she said darkly, “and another letter with it. They looted
+your brother's body. In his pocket they found the note you wrote him,
+and that you asked him to destroy! That will be evidence. That will
+convince! Come!”
+
+He followed her through leather curtains again and down the dark
+passage into the outer chamber; and the illusion was of walking behind a
+golden-haired Madonna to some shrine of Innocence. Her perfume was like
+incense; her manner perfect reverence. She passed into the cave where
+the two dead bodies lay like a high priestess performing a rite.
+
+Walking to the bed, she stood for minutes, gazing at the Sleeper and
+his queen. And from the new angle from which King saw him the Sleeper's
+likeness to himself was actually startling. Startling--weird--like an
+incantation were Yasmini's words when at last she spoke.
+
+“Muhammad lied! He lied in his teeth! His sons have multiplied his lie!
+Siddhattha, whom men have called Gotama, the Buddha, was before Muhammad
+and he knew more! He told of the wheel of things, and there is a wheel!
+Yet, what knew the Buddha of the wheel? He who spoke of Dharma (the
+customs of the law) not knowing Dharma! This is true---Of old there was
+a wish of the gods--of the old gods. And so these two were. There is a
+wish again now of the old gods. So, are we two not as they two were? It
+is the same wish, and lo! We are ready, this man and I. We will obey, ye
+gods--ye old gods!”
+
+She raised her arms and, going closer to the bed, stood there in an
+attitude of mystic reverence, giving and receiving blessings.
+
+“Dear gods!” she prayed. “Dear old gods--older than these 'Hills'--show
+me in a vision what their fault was--why these two were ended before the
+end!
+
+“I know all the other things ye have shown me. I know the world's silly
+creeds have made it mad, and it must rend itself, and this man and I
+shall reap where the nations sowed--if only we obey! Wherein, ye old
+dear gods, who love me, did these two disobey? I pray you, tell me in a
+vision!”
+
+She shook her head and sighed. Sadness seemed to have crept over her,
+like a cold mist from the night. It was as if she could dimly see her
+plans foredoomed, and yet hoped on in spite of it. The fatalism that she
+scorned as Muhammad's lie held her in its grip, and her natural courage
+fought with it. Womanlike, she turned to King in that minute and
+confided to him her very inmost thoughts. And he, without an inkling as
+to how she must fail, yet knew that she must, and pitied her.
+
+“Have you seen that breast under the armor?” she asked suddenly. “Come
+nearer! Come and look! Why did his breast decay and his body stay whole
+like hers? Did she kill him? Was that a dagger-stab in his breast? I
+found perfume in these caves--great jars of it, and I use it always.
+It is better than temple incense and all the breath of gardens in
+the spring! I have put it on slaughtered animals. Where the knife has
+touched them, they decay--as that man's breast did--but the rest of
+them remains undecaying year after year. It was a knife, I think, that
+pierced his breast. I think that scent is the preservative. Did she kill
+him? Was she jealous of him? How did she die? There is no mark on her!
+Athelstan--listen! I think he would have failed her! I think she stabbed
+him rather than see him fail, and then swallowed poison! Afterward their
+servants laid them there. She smiles in death because she knew the wheel
+will turn and that death dies too! He looks grim because he knew less
+than she. It is always woman who understands and man who fails! I think
+she stabbed him. She should have loved him better, and then there would
+have been no need. I will love you better than she loved him!”
+
+She turned and devoured him with her eyes, so that it needed all his
+manhood to hold him back from being her slave that minute. For in that
+minute she left no charm unexercised--sex--mesmerisrn--beauty--flattery
+(her eyes could flatter as a dumb dog's flatter a huntsman!)--grace
+unutterable-mystery--she used every art on him she knew. Yet he stood
+the test.
+
+“Even if you fail me, Well-beloved, I will love you! The gods who gave
+you to me will know how to make you love; and lessons are to learn. If
+you fail me I will forgive, knowing that in the end the gods will never
+let you fail me! You are mine, and Earth is ours, for the old gods
+intend it so!”
+
+She seemed to expect him to take her in his arms again; but he stood
+respectfully and made no answer, nor any move. Grim and strong his jowl
+was, like the Sleeper's, and the dark hair three days old on it softened
+nothing of its lines. His Roman nose and steady, dark, full eyes
+suggested no compromise. Yet he was good to look at. She had not lied
+when she said she loved him, and he understood her and was sorry. But he
+did not look sorry, nor did he offer any argument to quench her love. He
+was a servant of the raj; his life and his love had been India's
+since the day he first buckled on his spurs, and Yasmini wouldn't have
+understood that.
+
+Nor did she understand that, even supposing he had loved her with
+all his heart, not on any conditions would he have admitted it until
+absolutely free, any more than that if she crucified him he would love
+her the same, supposing that he loved her at all. Nor did she trust the
+“old gods” too well, or let them work unaided.
+
+“Come with me, Athelstan!” she said. She took his arm--found little
+jeweled slippers in a closet hewn in the wall--put them on and led him
+to the curtains he had entered by. She led him through them, and, red as
+cardinals in lamplight on the other side, they stood hand-in-hand, back
+to the leather, facing the unfathomable dark. Her fingers were so strong
+that he could not have wrenched his own away without using the other
+hand to help.
+
+“Where are your shoes?” she asked him.
+
+“At the foot of these steps, Princess.”
+
+“Can you see them yonder in the dark?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Can you guess where the darkness leads to?”
+
+“No.”
+
+He shuddered and she chuckled.
+
+“Could you return alone by the way Ismail brought you?”
+
+“I think not.”
+
+“Will you try?”
+
+“If I must. I am not afraid.”
+
+“You have heard the echo? Yes, I know you heard the echo. Hear it
+again!”
+
+She raised her head and howled like a wolf--like a lone wolf that has
+found no quarry--melancholy, mean, grown reckless with his hunger. There
+was a pause of nearly a minute. Then in the hideous darkness a phantom
+wolf-pack took up the howl in chorus, and for three long minutes there
+was din beside which the voice of living wolves at war would be a
+slumber song. Ten times ghastlier than if it had been real, the chorus
+wailed and ululated back and forth along immeasurable distances--became
+one yell again--and went howling down into earth's bowels as if the last
+of a phantom pack were left behind and yelling to be waited for.
+
+When it ceased at last King was sweating.
+
+“Nor am I afraid,” she laughed, squeezing his hand yet tighter.
+
+She led him down the steps, and at the foot told him to put on his
+slippers, as if he were a child. Then, hurrying as if those opal eyes
+of hers were indifferent to dark or daylight, she picked her way among
+boulders that he could feel but not see, along a floor that was only
+smooth in places, for a distance that was long enough by two or three
+times to lose him altogether.
+
+When he looked back there was no sign of red lights behind him. And when
+he looked forward, there was a dim outer light in front and a whiff of
+the cool fresh air that presages the dawn!
+
+She led him through a gap on to a ledge of rock that hung thousands of
+feet above the home of thunder, a ledge less than six feet wide, less
+than twenty long, tilted back toward the cliff. There they sat, watching
+the stars. And there they saw the dawn come.
+
+Morning looks down into Khinjan hours after the sun has risen, because
+the precipices shut it out. But the peaks on every side are very beacons
+of the range at the earliest peep of dawn. In silence they watched day's
+herald touch the peaks with rosy jeweled fingers--she waiting as if she
+expected the marvel of it all to make King speak.
+
+It was cold. She came and snuggled close to him, and it was so they
+watched the sparkle of dawn's jewels die and the peaks grow gray again,
+she with an arm on his shoulder and strands of her golden hair blown
+past his face.
+
+“Of what are you thinking?” she asked him at last.
+
+“Of India, Princess.”
+
+“What of India?”
+
+“She lies helpless.”
+
+“Ah! You love India?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You shall love me better! You shall love me better than your life!
+Then, for love of me, you shall own the India you think you love! This
+letter shall go!” She tapped her bosom. “It is best to cut you off from
+India first. You shall lose that you may win!”
+
+She got up and stood in the gap, smiling mockingly, framed in the
+darkness of the cave behind.
+
+“I understand!” she said. “You think you are my enemy. Love and hate
+never lived side by side. You shall see!”
+
+Then in an instant she was gone, backward into the dark. He sat and
+waited for her, cross-legged on the ledge. As daylight began to filter
+downward he could dimly make out the waterfall, thundering like the
+whelming of a world; he sat staring at it, trying to formulate a plan,
+until it dawned on him that he was nearly chilled to the bone. Then he
+got up and stepped through the gap, too.
+
+“Princess!” he called. Then louder, “Princess!”
+
+When the echo of his own voice died, it was as if the ghoul who made the
+echoes had taken shape. A beard--red eye-rims--and a hook nose came out
+of the dark, and Ismail bared yellow teeth.
+
+“Come!” he said. “Come, little hakim!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+
+     Private preserves?  New Notions?
+     Measure me a quart of honesty,
+     And I will trade it for a pound weight of my thoughts.
+     Then you and I shall go and dream together
+     A brand-new dream of things that never happened,
+     Nor ever can be.  Come, trade with me!
+
+
+What Yasmini had been doing in the minutes while King stared from the
+ledge in the dawn was unguessable. Perhaps she had been praying to
+her old gods. At least she had given Ismail strict orders, for he said
+nothing, but seized King's hand and led him through the dark as a rat
+leads a blind one--swiftly, surely, unhesitating. King had no means
+whatever of guessing their direction. They did not pass the two lights
+again with the curtain and the steps all glowing red.
+
+They came instead to other steps, narrow and steep, that led upward in a
+semicircle to a rough hole in a rock wall. At the top there was a little
+yellow light, so dim and small that its rays scarcely sufficed to show
+the opening.
+
+“Go up!” said Ismail, giving King a shove and disappearing at once. One
+side-step into blackness and he might have been a mile away.
+
+So King went up, stooping to feel each next footing with a cautious
+hand. He was beginning to be sleepy, and to suspect that Yasmini had
+taken him to view the dawn with just that end in view. Nothing can make
+tired eyes so long for sleep as a glimpse of waking day--Sleepy eyes are
+easiest to trick.
+
+It was not many minutes before he was sure his guess was right.
+
+The opening at the head of the stairs led into a tunnel. He followed
+it with a hand on either wall and reached another of Khinjan's strange
+leather curtains. His face struck the leather unexpectedly, and at that
+instant, as if his touch were electric, the curtain sprang aside and his
+eyes were dazzled by the light of diamonds.
+
+It was Aladdin's Cave, with her acting spirit of the lamp! It needed
+effort of self-control to know that the huge, white, cut crystals that
+sparkled all about the hewn cell could not be diamonds. They were as big
+as his head, and bigger--at least a hundred of them, and they multiplied
+the light of half a dozen little oil lamps until the cave seemed the
+home of light.
+
+Yasmini had not a jewel on her. She was in a new mood and new garments
+to suit it. Her feet were still bare, but she was robed from head to
+heel in pure white linen, on which her long hair shone as if it were
+truly strands of gold. She received him with an air of mystic calm,
+gracious and dignified as the high-priestess of a Grecian temple. She
+seemed devout--to have forgotten that she ever killed a man, or made a
+threat or plotted for a kingdom.
+
+“Be still,” she said, raising a finger. “The old gods talk to us in
+here. It is not for us to answer them in words, but in deeds. Let us
+listen and do!”
+
+There were two cushions--great billowy modern ones, covered in gold
+brocade--on the floor in the midst of the cave. Between them was a stand
+of ivory, some two feet high, whose top was a disk, cut from the largest
+tusk that ever could have been. On the disk resting in a little hollow
+in the ivory, was a pure, perfect crystal sphere of a foot diameter.
+He could see his reflection in it, and Yasmini's, too, the moment he
+entered the cave, and whichever way they moved both images remained
+undistorted. He suspected that the lighting and the crystal reflectors
+had not been arranged at random.
+
+In each corner of the four-square cave there was a brazier of bronze,
+and from each rose incense smoke, straight upward. The four streams of
+smoke met at the ceiling and converged into a cloud that hung almost
+motionless.
+
+Yasmini stepped very reverently to a cushion by the crystal in the
+middle, and signed to King to imitate her. They stood facing. She seemed
+to pray, for her eyes were hidden under the long lashes. Then she knelt,
+and King did the same, his knees sinking deep into another cushion. So
+they knelt eye to eye above the crystal for many minutes without either
+saying a word. It was Yasmini who spoke first.
+
+“The old gods have showed me the past many and many a time in this,” she
+said. “It is, their way of speaking to me. Now, to-day, I have prayed to
+them to show me the future. Look! Look, Athelstan! Do as I do--so!”
+
+There seemed nothing to be gained by disobeying her. To obey her might
+be to win new insight into the ramifications of her plans. Men who have
+experience of the East are the last to deny that there is method in
+Eastern magic; they glimpse the knowledge that belonged to Pharaoh's
+men, although unlike Moses they are not always able to confound it. The
+East forgets nothing. The West ignores. But there are men from the West
+who are willing to look and to listen and to try to understand; like
+King, they go high in the Service. There are others who look on at the
+magic with an understanding eye and are caught by it. Their end is not
+good to contemplate. The East is fettered in her own mesmeric spell and
+must suffer until she wakes.
+
+Yasmini held the upright column of the ivory stand with both hands,
+close under the disk at the top. He copied her, placing his hands below
+hers. Hers slipped down and covered his, soft and warm; and so they
+stayed.
+
+“Look!” she said. “Look!”
+
+Her own eyes were grown big and round, and she gazed at the crystal ball
+as she had looked into King's eyes that night, with the very hunger of
+her soul. Her lips were parted. Watching her, King grew expectant, too.
+His eyes followed hers, to stare into the middle of the crystal, no
+longer feeling sleepy, and in less than a minute he could not have
+withdrawn them had he tried.
+
+The crystal clouded over. Yasmini's breath came steadily, with a little
+hissing sound between her teeth, and the crystal, or else the whole
+world, seemed to sway in time to it. Then the man in Roman armor strode
+out of a mist, and all was steady again and easy to understand. When the
+man in armor opened his lips to speak, one knew what he had said. When
+he frowned, one knew why he frowned. When he smiled, one knew that she
+was coming.
+
+And she did come, dancing out of the mist behind him, to fling soft arms
+round his neck and whisper praises in his ear. He stood like a king who
+has come into his own, with an arm round her and his chin held high. She
+kissed him on his proud chin, and laughed into his face.
+
+There were troubles--difficulties, all in the mist behind, but he stood
+and despised them then while she caressed him!
+
+Just as spoken words had no part in the vision, yet the whole was
+understood, so time did not enter into it. There was no connecting link
+between each scene; each dissolved into the other, and all were one.
+
+She faded into mist, in a swirl of graceful drapery, and he frowned
+again. A long line of men-at-arms stood before him, grim as he and as
+discontented. They leaned on spears, at ease, and that seemed to annoy
+him most of all. A spokesman stood out from the ranks and addressed him,
+with gesticulations and a head so far thrown back that his helmet-plume
+stood out like a secretary's pen behind him. He was not a Roman,
+although there was something Roman about his attitude and armor. None of
+the men-at-arms was a Roman.
+
+They demanded to be led home, wherever home was. (It was as plain as if
+their spokesman had shouted it into King's ear aloud.) And he refused
+them bluntly, proudly.
+
+Two men brought him a native woman, each holding an arm and thrusting
+her forward between them. She was not at all unlike a native woman of
+to-day, either in dress or sullenness; she had the beak and the keen
+eyes and the cruel lips of the “Hills.” They showed her to him, and it
+was quite clear that they compared her to their own women, left behind;
+the comparison was plainly to her disadvantage.
+
+He wasted no argument on them, but his scorn made the two men fade away,
+and the woman with them. Yet he had no scorn for his lined-up fighting
+men, and so could act none. He ordered the spokesman back to the ranks,
+and the man obeyed. He gave another order, and the long lines stood at
+attention, spears straight up and down, and their round sheilds like
+great medallions on a wall. He ordered them away, but they stood still.
+
+Then he did a truly Roman thing. He got his harness off--unbuckled and
+took off the great bronze corselet, in which he lay dead in another
+cave. He threw it down--tore open the white shirt underneath--and held
+his arms out. He bade them come and kill him. He bade them drive their
+spears into his unprotected breast.
+
+There was not a movement down the line of men. They stood
+as a cliff looks at the tide. He dared them. He called them
+cowards--women--weaklings afraid of blood. But they stood still. He
+strode up and down the line, seeking a man with heart enough to plunge a
+spear into him, and no man moved.
+
+Then he stood still before them all again and wept, because they loved
+him and he loved them. And then she came, not dancing this time, but
+barefooted and walking like a poem of the early days of Greece. She
+picked up his corselet and buckled it on him, making him hold up
+his arms and kneel while she slipped it over his head. And the grim
+men-at-arms hove their long spears up into the air and roared her an
+ovation, bringing down their right feet with a thunder all together.
+
+“Ave!”
+
+But the mist closed up and then the crystal was clear again. It was
+Yasmini's voice that spoke, King looked up into her eyes, and they
+made him shudder, for he had never seen eyes like them. Her hands still
+clasped his own, burning hot. She was more terrible than Khinjan.
+
+“I never saw that before,” she said. “It is because you are here! We
+shall see it all now! We shall know it all! We shall know whether it
+was she who killed him, or whether his own men took him at his word. We
+shall know! Look again! Look again!”
+
+His eyes seemed unable to obey his own will any longer. They obeyed
+her voice. He gazed again into the crystal, and it clouded over. But
+although he obeyed her, the crystal obeyed him and answered at least in
+part the questions his imagination asked. He was not conscious of asking
+anything, but being a soldier his curiosity followed a more or less
+definite line.
+
+Yasmini's breath began to come and go again with the little hissing
+sound. Her hot hands pressed his own. The mist suddenly dissolved. There
+was a road--a long white road, across a plain, and the men-at-arms
+fought their way along it. They were facing east.
+
+Archers opposed them--archers on foot, and cavalry--Parthians. The
+Parthians were wild, but the drill of the men-at-arms was a thing to
+marvel at. When the flights of arrows came they knelt behind their
+shields. When the horsemen charged they closed in solid phalanx, and
+the inner ranks hurled javelins at ten-yard range. When the fury of the
+onslaught died they formed in column and went forward, gaining furlongs
+at a time while their enemy watched them and wondered.
+
+It was plain that the enemy expected them to retreat sooner or later,
+for the archers and cavalry were at great pains to get behind them, so
+that before long the road ahead was less well defended than that behind.
+It did not seem to occur to the enemy that they were pressing toward the
+distant line of hills and did not seek to return at all.
+
+They had no baggage to impede them. It was absurd to suppose they would
+not try to fight a way back soon. They must be a Roman raiding party,
+out to teach Parthians a lesson. Yet they pressed ever forward, and the
+hills grew ever nearer; while he sat a great brown charger calmly in
+their midst and gave them not too many orders, but here and there a word
+of praise, and once or twice a trumpet shout of encouragement. He seemed
+to own the knack of being wherever the fight was fiercest. His mere
+presence seemed better than a hundred men when the phalanx bent before
+charging cavalry.
+
+She rode a little white horse, beside him always and utterly scornful
+of the risk. She wore no armor--carried no shield. Her bare feet showed
+through the sandal straps, and the outlines of her lissom body were
+quite visible through the muslin stuff she wore. She might have just
+come from the dancing. She had a flower in her hand, and a wreath of
+flowers in her hair. She shouted more encouragement than he. She shouted
+too much. Once he laid a strong brown hand across her mouth, and she
+held it there and kissed it.
+
+They lost men--five or six or ten or twenty at each onslaught. Perhaps
+they had been a thousand strong in the beginning. Their own men--the
+regimental surgeons probably--cut the throats of the badly wounded, to
+save them from the enemy's attentions; and by this time they were not
+more than seven or eight hundred strong.
+
+But they went forward--ever forward--and the line of hills drew near.
+Then he began to stir himself, and she with him. He shouted to them to
+charge, and she echoed him, leaving his side at last to take command
+of a wing and sting the tired-out men-at-arms into new enthusiasm. In
+a minute they were a roaring tide that swept forward to the foot of the
+hills and surged upward without a check. In a little while they were
+hurling boulders down on an enemy that seemed inclined to parley.
+
+Then, like a shadow of the incense cloud above, the mist closed up in
+the crystal again, and in a moment more King and Yasmini were looking
+into each other's eyes again above it.
+
+“I have seen that before,” she said, shaking her, head. “I am weary of
+their battles. They won; that is enough! I must know how they failed, so
+that we make no such mistakes!”
+
+Her face was flushed, and her eyes glowed with the fire that is not lit
+by ordinary passion. She was being eaten by ambition--burned by her own
+fire--by ambition not totally selfish, for she yearned to shepherd King
+as she seemed to think this woman of the vision had not shepherded the
+man in armor.
+
+“Look again!” she said. “Look again! And oh, ye old gods, show--show me
+wherein she failed!”
+
+They stared again, and once more the crystal clouded. Out of the cloud
+came a city in the middle of a plain, and the city was besieged. It was
+not a very great city, but from the outside it looked rich, for domes
+and roofs and towers showed above the wall, all well built and well
+preserved. He and she, sitting their horses out of arrow range from the
+main gate seemed confident of taking it and eager to get it over with.
+
+They no longer had only six or seven hundred men, but men by the
+thousand. Their veterans in Roman armor were in command of others now,
+and they had a human pack-train with them, heavily burdened captives who
+sulked in chains under a guard.
+
+The mist cleared further, and the gate gave in under the blows of an
+improvised battering-ram, covered by showers of arrows from short
+range. Then, like a river breaking down a dam, the thousands stormed in,
+howling. Smoke rose. There were screams of women. A great tower near the
+gate, that was half wood, half stone, crackled and curled up in yellow
+and crimson flame. He and she rode in together as modern men and women
+ride through a gate to the covert side at a fox-hunt. They chatted and
+laughed together, and their horses pranced, responding to the humor of
+their riders.
+
+King would have liked to tear his eyes away from the scenes that
+followed in the tree-lined streets, but the crystal ball held him as
+if in a trance--that and Yasmini's hands that clasped his own like hot
+torture chamber clamps. Animals fighting to the death are not so vile,
+nor so inhuman as men can be in the hour of what they call victory. Even
+the little children of that city paid the penalty for having closed the
+gate.
+
+Time was no measure to the crystal ball. In minutes it showed the
+devil's work of hours. The city went up in smoke and flame, and from
+the far side through a great breach in the wall the conquerors went
+out, with their plunder and such prisoners as had been saved to drag and
+carry it.
+
+Now there were wagons and camels and horses. Now there were tents and
+furniture. Now each man of the fighting force had as much as he himself
+could carry, as well as what was loaded on the prisoners.
+
+Only he and she seemed to care nothing for the loot and rode as if each
+was all the other needed. Still he wore nothing but his armor, and
+she no more than her dancing dress and sandals. But now she had eight
+prisoners to hold a panoply above her horse and keep the sun from her.
+
+She had flowers woven in her hair, and others in her hand, as if she
+rode from a bridal feast and were not in mourning for a plundered,
+butchered city. They were headed northward now, toward distant
+mountains, and the dust of their long column went up like a river of
+smoke, flowing from the holocaust behind.
+
+Yasmini shook her head impatiently. The crystal clouded over, and King's
+eyes were free.
+
+“I am tired of it,” she said. “I have seen that so many times. I know
+they won. I know they found their way to Khinjan. I know they began to
+build an empire here. I have seen all that a hundred times. What I must
+know is what mistake they made. What did they do wrong? How did they
+come to fail? Look again! Let us look again!”
+
+She never once let King's hands go, but pressed them tighter and
+tighter until the circulation nearly stopped and they grew numb. Her own
+strength seemed endless--to grow rather than to wane in proportion as
+her yearning to look into the past grew. Her attitude would have
+been more understandable if she had believed herself and King to be
+reincarnations of those forgotten conquerors; but she was too original
+for that. She had said the old gods wished, and the man and the woman
+were; the old gods wished the same wish again, and she and King were.
+Why then, if the old gods were contriving it all, should she seek to
+steady the ark for them? But down at bottom there is no logic connected
+with gods many. She clutched King's fingers as if to hold him there, and
+to make him see and understand the distant past, were the only way to
+save him from mistakes.
+
+“Look!” she insisted. “Look again!” And he obeyed her. By this time
+obedience was much the easiest course. Between times his eyes were so
+weary he could hardly hold them open, and it was only when he gazed into
+the crystal that he could rest them and feel easy. He knew well that
+she was winning control over him in some sort, and he fought against it
+grimly. Soon he became weirdly conscious of being two men--one, whom she
+had grasped and overcome, a physical man who did not matter much, and
+another, mental man who was free from her, who could understand her,
+whom she could not reach or touch.
+
+“Look!” she insisted. “Look!” And the crystal clouded over.
+
+He strode out of the mist again, frowning, with his chin hung low and
+fists clenched tight at his sides. Four of his own men came out of the
+mist to him and greeted him respectfully, yet not without a touch of
+irony.
+
+They spoke to him and pointed westward. One laid a hand on his shoulder,
+but he shook it off and the man reeled back as if he had been struck.
+Another man took up the argument, but he shook his head. They all spoke
+together, gesticulating and growing angry; but he stood calm among them,
+as a rock stands in a storm. He folded his arms across his breast after
+a while and listened, saying nothing.
+
+Then as if to end the argument for good and all, he drew his sword and
+held it out toward them, hilt first, telling them again to kill him
+and have done with it. They refused. He laughed at them, but they still
+refused; so he put his sword back in the sheath.
+
+One of the men stepped into the mist and disappeared. Presently he
+came again, with two others, helping a wounded man along between them.
+Whoever the wounded man might be he was treated with respect. Prouder
+than Lucifer, he who had struck another man's hand from off his shoulder
+knelt to give this wounded man a knee and seemed pained when the man
+refused him.
+
+The wounded man pointed to the westward too and argued in short
+clipped-off sentences. He had a day or two to live--certainly not
+longer, for the blood flowed slowly from a wound that would not stanch;
+yet he argued as a man who has lost no interest in life, but rather sees
+its problems truly now that his own are near an end.
+
+He demanded something almost truculently. He took his helmet off and
+passed it down to him. With fingers that were growing feeble the wounded
+man held it and traced out the letters S. P. Q. R. on the front.
+
+“Go home!” he said, passing it back to him. “Fight your way back home!”
+ What he said was as distinct as if a voice in the cave had spoken it.
+
+Then, vision within a vision--dream within a dream--there was a view of
+the Via Appia, with gaunt grim gallows set along it in a row and on them
+a regiment's commander crucified along with the remnant of his men.
+
+“So Rome treats traitors!” said a voice, that might have been either
+man's.
+
+But instantly there was another vision, of ten thousand wolves baying
+down a Himalayan gorge in winter-time, the sleet frozen stiff on their
+fur and their tongues hanging. Eye and fang flashed altogether and made
+one gleam.
+
+“Choose!” said a voice.
+
+So he chose. He nodded. The men saluted him, and the wounded man was
+helped away to die. And then she came, angry as a flash of lightning, to
+spring at him and cling to him and call him names--begging, demanding,
+ordering, crying--abusing him and praising him in turn. He shook his
+head. She sobbed, but he shook his head again and pointed westward.
+Then she took him by the hand and led him away, not looking at his face
+again.
+
+The crystal ball grew clouded. Yasmini's breath came and went as if she
+were running in a race, and her pressure on King's fingers was actually
+painful. The mist dissolved, and King forgot the pressure--forgot
+everything. The man in armor lay dead on his back in the cave on the
+wooden bed, and she bent over him, dagger in hand.
+
+“Ah!” said Yasmini, her teeth chattering. “But what else could she do?”
+ The mist closed in again and the crystal grew opaque. “The future!” she
+begged. “It is the future I must know! Ye old gods, tell me! Show me!”
+
+The mist turned red. The crystal ball became as it were a ball of fire
+revolving within itself. The fire turned to blood, and the blood to
+fire again. The very cavern that they knelt in seemed to sway. Yasmini
+screamed and moaned. She loosed King's hands to cover her own eyes.
+
+And as she did that King sank, like a sack half-empty and toppled over
+sidewise on the floor asleep.
+
+He neither dreamed nor was conscious of anything, but slept like a dead
+man, having fought against her mesmerism harder than he knew.
+
+Statesmen, generals, outlaws, all make their big mistakes and manage to
+recover. Very nearly always it is an apparently little mistake that does
+most damage in the end, something unnoticeable at the time, that grows
+in geometrical proportion, minus instead of plus.
+
+Yasmini made her little mistake that minute in believing King was
+utterly mesmerized at last and utterly in her power. Whereas in truth he
+was only weary. It may be that she gave him orders in his sleep, after
+the accepted manner of mesmerists; but if she did, they never reached
+him; he was far too fast asleep. He slept so deep and long that he was
+not conscious of men's voices, nor of being carried, nor of time, nor of
+anxiety, nor of anything.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+
+     Wolf met wolf in the dawning day
+     Where scent hung sweet over trodden clay,
+     And square each stood in the jungle way
+     Eyeing the other with ears laid back.
+     Still were the watchers.  When foe greets foe
+     The wisest are quietest.  Better to go--
+     Who stays to watch trouble woos trouble!
+             But lo!
+     They trotted together to hunt one doe,
+     Eyeing each other with ears laid back.
+
+
+When King awoke he lay on a comfortable bed in a cave he had never yet
+seen, but there was no trace of Yasmini, nor of the men who must have
+carried him to it. Barbaric splendor and splendor that was not by any
+means barbaric lay all about--tiger skins, ivory-legged chairs, graven
+bronze vases, and a yak-hair shawl worth a rajah's ransom.
+
+The cave was spacious and not gloomy, for there was a wide door,
+apparently unguarded, and another square opening cut in the rock to
+serve as a window. Through both openings light streamed in like taut
+threads of Yasmini's golden hair--strings of a golden zither, on which
+his own heart's promptings played a tune.
+
+He had no idea how long he had slept, but judged from memory of his
+former need of sleep and recogntion of his present freshness--and from
+the fact that it was a morning sun that shone through the openings--that
+he must have slept the clock round.
+
+It did not matter. He knew it did not matter in the least. He had
+no more plan than a mathematician has who starts to solve a problem,
+knowing that twice two is four in infinite combination. Like the
+mathematician, he knew that he must win.
+
+No man ever won a battle or conceived a stroke of statesmanship, no
+great deed was ever accomplished without a first taste of the triumphant
+foreknowledge, such as comes only to men who have digged hard, hewing to
+the line, loyal to first principles. King had been loyal all his life.
+
+The difference between first principles and the other thing could hardly
+be better illustrated than by comparing Yasmini's position with his.
+From her point of view he had no ground to stand on, unless he should
+choose to come and stand on hers. She had men, ammunition, information.
+He had what he stood in, and his only information had been poured into
+his ears for her ends.
+
+Yet his heart sang inside him now; and he trusted it because that
+singing never had deceived him. He did not believe she would have left
+him alone at that state of affairs unless through over-confidence. It
+is one of the absolute laws that over-confidence begets blindness and
+mistakes.
+
+She had staked on what seemed to her the certainty of India's rising
+at the first signal of a holy war. She believed from close acquaintance
+that India was utterly disloyal, having made a study of disloyalty. And
+having read history she knew that many a conqueror has staked on such
+cards as hers, to win for lack of a better man to take the other side.
+
+But King had studied loyalty all his life, and he knew that besides
+being the home of money-lenders, thugs, and murderers, India is the very
+motherland of chivalry; that besides sedition she breeds gentlemen with
+stout hearts; that in addition to what one Christian Book calls “whoring
+after strange gods” India strives after purity. He knew that India's
+ideals are all imperishable, and her crimes but a kaleidoscopic phase.
+
+Not that he was analyzing thoughts just then. He was listening to the
+still small voice that told him half of his purpose was accomplished.
+He had probed Khinjan Caves, and knew the whole purpose for which the
+lawless thousands had been gathering and were gathering still. Remained,
+to thwart that purpose. And he had no more doubt of there being a means
+to thwart it than a mathematician has of the result of two times two,
+applied.
+
+Like a mathematician, he did not waste time and confuse issues by
+casting too far ahead, but began to devote himself steadily to the
+figures nearest. Knots are not untied by wholesale, but are conquered
+strand by strand. He began at the beginning, where he stood.
+
+He became conscious of human life near by and tip-toed to the door to
+look. A six-foot ledge of smooth rock ended just at the door and sloped
+in the other direction sharply downward toward another opening in the
+cliff side, three or four hundred yards away and two hundred feet lower
+down.
+
+Behind him in a corner at the back of the cave was a narrow fissure,
+hung with a leather curtain, that was doubtless the door into Khinjan's
+heart; but the only way to the outer air was along that ledge above a
+dizzying precipice, so high that the huge waterfall looked like a little
+stream below. He was in a very eagle's aerie; the upper rim of Khinjan's
+gorge seemed not more than a quarter of a mile above him.
+
+Round the corner, ten feet from the entrance, stood a guard, armed to
+the teeth, with a rifle, a sword, two pistols and a long curved Khyber
+knife stuck handy in his girdle. He spoke to the man and received no
+answer. He picked up a splinter of rock and threw it. The fellow looked
+at him then. He spoke again. The man transferred his rifle to the other
+hand and made signs with his free fingers. King looked puzzled. The man
+opened his mouth and showed that his tongue was missing. He had been
+made dumb, as pegs are made to fit square holes. King went in again, to
+wait on events and shudder.
+
+Nor did he have long to wait. There came a sound of grunting, up the
+rock path. Then footsteps. Then a hoarse voice, growling orders. He went
+out again to look, and beheld a little procession of women, led by
+a man. The man was armed, but the women were burdened with his own
+belongings--the medicine chest--his saddle and bridle--his unrifled
+mule-pack--and, wonder of wonders! the presents Khinjan's sick had given
+him, including money and weapons. They came past the dumb man on guard
+and laid them all at King's feet just inside the cave.
+
+He smiled, with that genial, face-transforming smile of his that has so
+often melted a road for him through sullen crowds. But the man in charge
+of the women did not grin. He was suffering. He growled at the women,
+and they went away like obedient animals, to sit half-way down the ledge
+and await further orders. He himself made as if to follow them, and the
+dumb man on guard did not pay much attention; he let women and man pass
+behind him, stepping one pace forward toward the edge to make more room.
+That was his last entirely voluntary act in this world.
+
+With a suddenness that disarmed all opposition the other humped himself
+against the wall and bucked into the dumb man's back, sending him,
+weapons and all, hurtling over the precipice. With a wild effort to
+recover, and avenge himself, and do his duty, the victim fired his
+rifle, that was ready cocked. The bullet struck the rock above and
+either split or shook a great fragment loose, that hurtled down after
+him, so that he and the stone made a race of it for the waterfall and
+the caverns into which the water tumbled thousands of feet away. The
+other ruffian spat after him, and then walked back to where King stood.
+
+“Now heal me my boils!” he said, grinning at last, doubtless from
+pleasure at the prospect. He was the same man who had stood on guard at
+the “guest-cave” when Ismail led King out to see the Cavern of Earth's
+Drink.
+
+The temptation was to fling the brute after his victim. The temptation
+always is to do the wrong thing--to cap wrath with wrath, injustice with
+vengeance. That way wars begin and are never ended. King beckoned
+him into the cave, and bent over the chest of medical supplies. Then,
+finding the light better for his purpose at the entrance, he called the
+man back and made him sit down on the box.
+
+The business of lancing boils is not especially edifying in itself; but
+that particular minor operation probably saved India. But for hope of
+it the man with boils would never have stood two turns on guard hand
+running and let the relief sleep on; so he would not have been on duty
+when the message came to carry King's belongings to his new cave of
+residence. There would have been no object in killing the dumb man and
+so there would have been an expert with a loaded rifle to keep Muhammad
+Anim lurking down the trail.
+
+Muhammad Anim came--like the devil to scotch King's faith. He had
+followed the women with the loads. He stood now, like a big bear on a
+mountain track, swaying his head from side to side six feet away from
+King, watching the boils succumb to treatment. He grunted when the job
+was finished, and King jumped, nearly driving the lance into a new place
+in his patient's neck.
+
+“Let him go!” growled Muhammad Anim. “Go thou! Stand guard over the
+women until I come!”
+
+The mullah turned a rifle this way and that in his paws, like a great
+bear dancing. The Mahsudi with a sore neck could have shot him perhaps,
+but there are men with whom only the bravest dare try conclusions. In
+cold gray dawn it would have needed a martinet to make a firing squad
+do execution on Muhammad Anim, even with his hands tied and his back
+against a wall. A man whose boils had just been lanced was no match for
+him at all, even in broad daylight. The Hillman slunk away and did as he
+was told.
+
+“What meant thy message?” growled the mullah. “There came a Pathan to me
+in the Cavern of Earth's Drink with word that yonder sits a hakim. What
+of it?”
+
+King had almost forgotten the message he had sent to Muhammad Anim in
+the Cavern of Earth's Drink. But that was not why his eyes looked past
+the mullah's now, nor why he did not answer. The mullah did not look
+round, for he knew what was happening.
+
+The very Orakzai Pathan who had sat next King in the Cavern of Earth's
+Drink, and who had carried the message for him, was creeping up behind
+the women and already had his rifle leveled at the man with boils.
+
+“Aye!” said the mullah, watching King's eyes. “He has done well, and the
+road is clear!”
+
+The man with boils offered no fight. He dropped his rifle and threw his
+hands up. In a moment the Orakzai Pathan was in command of two rifles,
+holding them in one hand and nodding and making signs to King from
+among the women, whom he seemed to regard as his plunder too. The women
+appeared supremely indifferent in any event. King nodded back to him.
+A friend is a friend in the “Hills,” and rare is the man who spares his
+enemy.
+
+“Why send that message to me?” asked Muhammad Anim.
+
+“Why not?” asked King. “If none know where the hakim is, how shall the
+hakim earn a living?”
+
+“None comes to earn a living in the Hills,” growled the mullah, swaying
+his head slowly and devouring King with cruel calculating eyes. “Why art
+thou here?”
+
+“I slew a man,” said King.
+
+“Thou liest! It was my men who got the head that let thee in! Speak! Why
+art thou here?”
+
+But King did not answer. The mullah resumed.
+
+“He who brought me the message yesterday says he has it from another,
+who had it from a third, that thou art here because she plans a
+simultaneous rising in India, and thou art from the Punjab where the
+Sikhs all wait to rise. Is that true?”
+
+“Thy man said it,” answered King.
+
+“What sayest thou?” the mullah asked.
+
+“I say nothing,” said King.
+
+“Then hear me!” said the mullah. “Listen, thou.” But he did not begin
+to speak yet. He tried to see past King into the cave and to peer about
+into the shadows.
+
+“Where is she?” he asked. “Her man Rewa Gunga went yesterday, with three
+men and a letter to carry, down the Khyber. But where is she?”
+
+So he had slept the clock round! King did not answer. He blocked the way
+into the cave and looked past the mullah at a sight that fascinated, as
+a serpent's eyes are said to fascinate a bird. But the mullah, who knew
+perfectly well what must be happening, did not trouble to turn his head.
+
+The Orakzai Pathan crouched among the women, and the women grinned. The
+Mahsudi, having surrendered and considering himself therefore absolved
+from further responsibility at least for the present, spat over the
+precipice and fingered gingerly the sore place where his boils had been.
+He yawned and dropped both hands to his side; and it was at that instant
+that the Pathan sprang at him.
+
+With arms like the jaws of a vise he pinned the Mahsudi's to his side,
+and lifted him from off his feet. The fellow screamed, and the Pathan
+shouted “Ho!” But he did no murder yet. He let his victim grow fully
+conscious of the fate in store for him, holding him so that his frantic
+kicks were squandered on thin air. He turned him slowly, until he was
+upside-down; and so, perpendicular, face-outward, he hove him forward
+like a dead log. He stood and watched his victim fall two or three
+thousand feet before troubling to turn and resume both rifles; and it
+was not until then, as if he had been mentally conscious of each move,
+that the mullah turned to look, and seeing only one man nodded.
+
+“Good!” he grunted. “'Shabash!”' (Well done!)
+
+Then he turned his head to stare into King's face, with the scrutiny of
+a trader appraising loot. Fire leaped up behind his calculating eyes.
+And without a word passing between them, King knew that this man as well
+as Yasmini was in possession of the secret of the Sleeper. Perhaps he
+knew it first; perhaps she snatched the keeping of the secret from him.
+At all events he knew it and recognized King's likeness to the Sleeper,
+for his eyes betrayed him. He began to stroke his beard monotonously
+with one hand. The rifle, that he pretended to be holding, really leaned
+against his back and with the free hand he was making signals.
+
+King knew well he was making signals. But he knew too that in Yasmini's
+power, her prisoner, he had no chance at all of interfering with her
+plans. Having grounded on the bottom of impotence, so to speak, any tide
+that would take him off must be a good tide. He pretended to be aware of
+nothing, and to be particularly unaware that the Pathan, with a rifle in
+each hand, was pretending to come casually up the path.
+
+In a minute he was covered by a rifle. In another minute the mullah had
+lashed his hands. In five minutes more the women were loaded again with
+his belongings and they were all half-way down the track in single file,
+the mullah bringing up the rear, descending backward with rifle ready
+against surprise, as if he expected Yasmini and her men to pounce out
+any minute to the rescue.
+
+They entered a tunnel and wound along it, stepping at short intervals
+over the bodies of three stabbed sentries. The Pathan spurned them with
+his heel as he passed. In the glare at the tunnel's mouth King tripped
+over the body of a fourth man and fell with his chin beyond the edge of
+a sheer precipice.
+
+They were on a ledge above the waterfall again, having come through
+a projection on the cliff's side, for Khinjan is all rat-runs and
+projections, like a sponge or a hornet's nest on a titanic scale.
+
+The Pathan laughed and came back to gather him like a sheaf of corn. The
+great smelly ruffian hugged him to himself as he set him on his feet.
+
+“Ah! Thou hakim!” he grinned. “There is no pain in my shoulder at all!
+Ask of me another favor when the time comes! Hey, but I am sick of
+Khinjan!”
+
+He gave King a shove along the path in the general direction of the
+mullah. Then he seized the dead body by the legs, and hurled it like a
+sling shot, watching it with a grin as it fell in a wide parabola. After
+that he took the dead man's rifle, and those of the three other dead
+men, that he had hidden in a crevice in the rock, and loaded them all on
+a woman in addition to King's saddle that she carried already.
+
+“Come!” he said. “Hurry, or Bull-with-a-beard yonder will remember us
+again. I love him best when he forgets!”
+
+They soon reached another cave, at which the mullah stopped. It was a
+dark ill-smelling hole, but he ordered King into it and the Pathan after
+him on guard, after first seeing the women pile all their loads
+inside. Then he took the women away and went off muttering to himself,
+swaggering, swinging his right arm as he strode, in a way few natives
+do.
+
+“Let us hope he has forgotten these!” the Pathan grinned, touching the
+pile of rifles. “Weight for weight in silver they will bring me a fine
+price! He may forget. He dreams. For a mullah he cares less for meat and
+money than any I ever saw. He is mad, I think. It is my opinion Allah
+touched him!”
+
+“What is that, under thy shirt?” King asked.
+
+The Pathan grinned, and undid the button. There was a second shirt
+underneath, and to that on the left breast were pinned two British
+medals.
+
+“Oh, yes!” he laughed. “I served the raj! I was in the army eleven
+years.”
+
+“Why did you leave it?” King asked, remembering that this man loved to
+hear his own voice.
+
+“Oh, I had furlough, and the bastard who stood next me in the ranks was
+the son of a dog with whom my father had a blood-feud. The blind fool
+did not know me. He received his furlough on the same day as I. I would
+not lay finger on him that side of the border, for we ate the same salt.
+I knifed him this side the border. It was no affair of the British. But
+I was seen, and I fled. And having slain a man, and having no doubt a
+report had gone back to the regiment, I entered this place. Except for a
+raid now and then to cool my blood I have been here ever since. It is a
+devil of a place.”
+
+Now the art of ruling India consists not in treading barefooted on
+scorpions--not in virtuous indignation at men who know no better--but in
+seeking for and making much of the gold that lies ever amid the dross.
+There is gold in the character of any man who once passed the grilling
+tests before enlistment in a British-Indian regiment. It may need
+experience to lay a finger on it, but it is surely there.
+
+“I heard,” said King, “as I came toward the Khyber in great haste (for
+the police were at my heels)--”
+
+“Ah, the police!” the Pathan grinned pleasantly.
+
+The inference was that at some time or other he had left his mark on the
+police.
+
+“I heard,” said King, “that men are flocking back to their old
+regiments.”
+
+“Aye, but not men with a price on their heads, little hakim!”
+
+“I could not say,” said King. To seem to know too much is as bad as to
+drink too much. “But I heard say that the sirkar has offered pardons to
+all deserters who return.”
+
+“Hah! The sirkar must be afraid. The sirkar needs men!”
+
+“For myself,” said King, “a whole skin in the 'Hills' seems better than
+one full of bullet holes in India.”
+
+“Hah! But thou art a hakim, not a soldier!”
+
+“True!” said King.
+
+“Tell me that again! Free pardons? Free pardons for all deserters?”
+
+“So I heard.”
+
+“Ah! But I was seen to slay a man of my own regiment.”
+
+“On this side the border or that?” asked King artfully.
+
+“On this side.”
+
+“Ah, but you were seen.”
+
+“Ay! But that is no man's business. In India I earned in my salt. I
+obeyed the law. There is no law here in the 'Hills.' I am minded to
+go back and seek that pardon! It would feel good to stand in the rank
+again, with a stiff-backed sahib out in front of me, and the thunder of
+the gun-wheels going by. The salt was good! Come thou with me!”
+
+“The pardon is for deserters,” King objected, “not for political
+offenders.”
+
+“Haugh!” said the Pathan, bringing down his flat hand hard on the
+hakim's thigh. “I will attend to that for thee. I will obtain my pardon
+first. Then will I lead thee by the hand to the karnal sahib and lie to
+him and say, 'This is the one who persuaded me against my will to come
+back to the regiment!”'
+
+“And he will believe? Nay, I would be afraid!” said King.
+
+“Would a pardon not be good?” the Pathan asked him. “A pardon and leave
+to swagger through the bazaars again and make trouble with the daughters
+and wives of fat traders--a pardon--Allah! It would be good to salute
+the karnal sahib again and see him raise a finger, thus; and to have
+the captain sahib call me a scoundrel--or some worse name if he loves me
+very much, for the English are a strange race--”
+
+“Thou art a dreamer!” said King. “Untie my hands; the thong cuts me.”
+ The Pathan obeyed.
+
+“Dreamer, am I? It is good to dream such dreams. By Allah, I've a mind
+to see that dream come true! I never slew a man on Indian soil, only in
+these 'Hills.' I will go to them and say 'Here I am! I am a deserter. I
+seek that pardon!' 'Truly I will go! Come thou with me, little hakim!”
+
+“Nay,” said King, “I have another thought.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“You, who were seen to slay a man a yard this side of the border--”
+
+“Nay; half a mile this side!”
+
+“Half a mile, then. You who were seen to slay a fellow soldier of your
+regiment, and I who am a political offender, do not win pardons so
+easily as that.”
+
+“Would they hang us?”
+
+That was the first squeamishness the Pathan had shown of any kind,
+but men of his race would rather be tortured to death than hanged in a
+merciful hempen noose.
+
+“They would hang us,” said King, “unless we came bearing gifts.”
+
+“Gifts? Has Allah touched thee? What gifts should we bring? A dozen
+stolen rifles? A bag of silver? And I am the dreamer, am I?”
+
+“Nay,” said King. “I am the dreamer. I have seen a good vision.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“There are others in these Hills--others in Khinjan who wear British
+medals?”
+
+The Pathan nodded.
+
+“How many?” asked King.
+
+“Hundreds. Men fight first on one side, then on the other, being true to
+either side while the contract lasts. In all there must be the makings
+of many regiments among the 'Hills.'”
+
+King nodded. He himself had seen the chieftains come to parley after
+the Tirah war. Most of them had worn British medals and had worn them
+proudly.
+
+“If we two,” he said, speaking slowly, “could speak with some of those
+men and stir the spirit in them and persuade them to feel as thou dost,
+mentioning the pardon for deserters and the probability of bonuses to
+the time-expired for reenlistment; if we could march down the Khyber
+with a hundred such, or even with fifty or with twenty-five or with
+a dozen men--we would receive our pardon for the sake of service
+rendered.”
+
+“Good!”
+
+The Pathan thumped him on the back so hard that his eyes watered.
+
+“We would have to use much caution,” King advised him, when he was able
+to speak again.
+
+“Aye! If Bull-with-a-beard got wind of it he would have us crucified.
+And if she heard of it--”
+
+He was silent. Apparently there were no words in his tongue that could
+compass his dread of her revenge. He was silent for ten minutes,
+and King sat still beside him, letting memory of other days do its
+work--memory of the long, clean regimental lines, and of order and
+decency and of justice handed out to all and sundry by gentlemen who did
+not think themselves too good to wear a native regiment's uniform.
+
+“In two days I could do the drill again as well as ever,” he said at
+last. Then there was silence again for fifteen minutes more. “I could
+always shoot,” he murmured; “I could always shoot.”
+
+When Muhammad Anim came back they had both forgotten to replace the
+lashing on King's wrists, but the mullah seemed not to notice it.
+
+“Come!” he ordered, with a sidewise jerk of his great ugly head, and
+then stood muttering impatiently while they obeyed.
+
+He had twice the number of women with him, but none of them the same;
+and he had brought five ruffians to guard them, who pounced on the
+captured rifles and claimed one apiece, to the Pathan's loud-growled
+disgust. Then the women were made to gather up King's belongings, and at
+a word from the mullah they started in single file--the mullah leading,
+then two men, then King, then the Orakzai Pathan, and then the other
+three. The Pathan began to whisper busily to the man next behind and
+noticing that King looked straight forward and contented himself; his
+heart was singing within him unexplainedly; he wanted to sing and dance,
+as once David did before the ark. He did not feel in the least like a
+prisoner.
+
+They marched downward through interminable tunnels and along ledges
+poised between earth and heaven, until they came at last to the tunnel
+leading to the one entrance into Khinjan Caves. Just before they entered
+it two more of the mullah's men came up with them, leading horses. One
+horse was for the mullah, and they helped King mount the other, showing
+him more respect than is usually shown a prisoner in the “Hills.”
+
+Then the mullah led the way into the tunnel, and he seemed in deadly
+fear. The echo of the hoof-beats irritated him. He eyed each hole in the
+roof as if Yasmini might be expected to shoot down at him or drench him
+with boiling oil and hurried past each of them at a trot, only to draw
+rein immediately afterward because the noise was too great.
+
+It became evident that his men had been at work here too, for at
+intervals along the passage lay dead bodies. Yasmini must have posted
+the men there, but where was she? Each of them lay dead with a knife
+wound in his back, and the mullah's men possessed themselves of rifles
+and knives and cartridges, wiping off blood that had scarcely cooled
+yet.
+
+When they came to the end of the tunnel it was to find the door into
+the mosque open in front of them, and twenty more of Muhammad Anim's men
+standing guard over the eyelashless mullah. They had bound and gagged
+him. At a word from Muhammad Anim they loosed him; and at a threat the
+hairless one gave a signal that brought the great stone door sliding
+forward on its oiled bronze grooves.
+
+Then, with a dozen jests thrown to the hairless one for consolation, and
+an utter indifference to the sacredness of the mosque floor, they sought
+outer air, and Muhammad Anim led them up the Street of the Dwellings
+toward Khinjan's outer ramparts. They reached the outer gate without
+incident and hurried into the great dry valley beyond it. As they rode
+across the valley the mullah thumbed a long string of beads. Unlike
+Yasmini, he was praying to one god; but he seemed to have many prayers.
+His back was a picture of determined treachery--the backs of his men
+were expressions of the creed that “He shall keep who can!” King rode
+all but last now and had a good view of their unconsciously vaunted
+blackguardism. There was not a hint of honor or tenderness among the
+lot, man, woman or mullah. Yet his heart sang within him as if he were
+riding to his own marriage feast!
+
+Last of all, close behind him, marched his friend, the Orakzai Pathan,
+and as they picked their way among the boulders across the mile-wide
+moat the two contrived to fall a little to the rear. The Pathan began
+speaking in a whisper and King, riding with lowered head as if he were
+studying the dangerous track, listened with both ears.
+
+“She sent her man Rewa Gunga toward the Khyber with a message,” he
+whispered. “He took a few men with him, and he is to send them with the
+message when they reach the Khyber, but he is to come back. All he
+went for is to make sure the message is not intercepted, for
+Bull-with-a-beard is growing reckless these days. He knew what was doing
+and said at once that she is treating with the British, but there were
+few who believed that. There are more who wonder where she hides while
+the message is on its way. None has seen her. Men have swarmed into the
+Cavern of Earth's Drink and howled for her, but she did not come. Then
+the mullah went to look for his ammunition that he stored and sealed in
+a cave. And it was gone. It was all gone. And there was no proof of who
+had taken it!
+
+“Hakim, there be some who say--and Bull-with-a-beard is one of
+them--that she is afraid and hides. Men say she fears vengeance for the
+stolen ammunition, because it was plenty for a conquest of India. So men
+say. So say these here, for I have asked them.”
+
+“And thou?” asked King, struggling to keep the note of exultation from
+his voice. He did not believe she was hiding. She might be staring into
+a crystal in some secret cave--she might be planning new mischief of any
+kind. But afraid she was surely not. And just as surely he could vow she
+was working out her own undoing.
+
+“I?” said the Pathan. “I swear she is afraid of nothing. If she has
+taken all the ammunition, then we shall hear from it again and from her
+too!”
+
+“And what of me?” asked King. “What will the mullah do with me?”
+
+“His men say he is desperate. His own are losing faith in him. He
+snatched thee to be a bait for her, having it in mind that a man whom
+she hides in her private part of Khinjan must be of great value to her.
+He has sworn to have thee skinned alive on a hot rock should she fail to
+come to terms!”
+
+That being not such a comforting reflection, King rode in silence for
+a while, with the Pathan trudging solemnly beside his stirrup keeping
+semblance of guard over him. When they reached the steep escarpment he
+had to dismount, although the mullah in the lead tried to make his own
+beast carry him up the lower spur and was mad--angry with his men for
+laughing when the horse fell back with him.
+
+Far in the rear King and the Pathan shoved and hauled and nearly lost
+their horse a dozen times at that. But once at the top the mullah set a
+furious pace and the laden women panted in their efforts to keep up, the
+men taking less notice of them than if they had been animals.
+
+The march went on in single file until the sun died down in splendid
+fury. Then there began to be a wind that they had to lean against, but
+the women were allowed no rest.
+
+At last at a place where the trail began to widen, the mullah beckoned
+King to ride beside him. It was not that he wished to be communicative,
+but there were things King knew that he did not know, and he had his own
+way of asking questions.
+
+“Damned hakim!” he growled. “Pill-man! Poulticer! That is a sweeper's
+trade of thine! Thou shalt apply it at my camp! I have some wounded and
+some sick.”
+
+King did not answer, but buttoned his coat closer against the keen wind.
+The mullah mistook the shudder for one of another kind.
+
+“Did she choose thee only for thy face?” he asked. “Did she not consider
+thy courage? Does she love thee well enough to ransom thee?”
+
+Again King did not answer, but he watched the mullah's face keenly in
+the dark and missed nothing of its expression. He decided the man was in
+doubt---even racked by indecision.
+
+“Should she not ransom thee, hakim, thou shall have a chance to show
+my men how a man out of India can die! By and by I will lend thee a
+messenger to send to her. Better make the message clear and urgent!
+Thou shalt state my terms to her and plead thine own cause in the same
+letter. My camp lies yonder.”
+
+He motioned with one sweep of his arm toward a valley that lay in shadow
+far below them. As far as the slope leading down to it was visible in
+the moonlight it was littered with what the “Hills” call “hell-stones,”
+ that will neither lie flat nor keep on rolling, and are dangerous to man
+and beast alike. Nothing else could be made out through the darkness but
+a few twisted tamarisk trees, that served to make the savagery yet more
+savage and the loneliness more desolate. The gloom below the trees was
+that of the very underdepths of hell itself.
+
+The mullah pointed to a rock that rose like a shadow from the deeper
+blackness.
+
+“Yes,” said King, “I have seen.” And the mullah stared at him. Then he
+shouted, and the top of the rock turned into a man, who gave them leave
+to advance, leaning on his rifle as one who had assured himself of their
+identity long minutes ago.
+
+As they approached it the rock clove in two and became two great
+pillars, with a man on each. And between the pillars they looked down
+into a valley lit by fires that burned before a thousand hide tents,
+with shadows by the hundred flitting back and forth between them. A dull
+roar, like the voice of an army, rose out of the gorge.
+
+“More than four thousand men!” said the mullah proudly.
+
+“What are four thousand for a raid into India?” sneered King, greatly
+daring.
+
+“Wait and see!” growled the mullah; but he seemed depressed.
+
+He led the way downward, getting off his horse and giving the reins to
+a man. King copied him, and part-way sliding, part stumbling down they
+found their way along the dry bed of a water-course between two spurs
+of a hillside, until they stood at last in the midst of a cluster of a
+dozen sentries, close to a tamarisk to which a man's body hung spiked.
+That the man had been spiked to it alive was suggested by the body's
+attitude.
+
+Without a word to the sentries the mullah led on down a lane through the
+midst of the camp, toward a great open cave at the far side, in which a
+bonfire cast fitful light and shadow. Watchers sitting by the thousand
+tents yawned at them, but took no particular notice.
+
+The mouth of the cave was like a lion's, fringed with teeth. There were
+men in it, ten or eleven of them, all armed, squatting round the fire.
+
+“Get out!” growled the mullah. But they did not obey. They sat and
+stared at him.
+
+“Have ye tents?” the mullah asked, in a voice like thunder.
+
+“Aye!” But they did not go yet.
+
+One of the men, he nearest the mullah, got on his feet, but he had to
+step back a pace, for the mullah would not give ground and their breath
+was in each other's faces.
+
+“Where are the bombs? And the rifles? And the many cartridges?” he
+demanded. “We have waited long, Muhammad Anim. Where are they now?”
+
+The others got up, to lend the first man encouragement. They leaned on
+rifles and surrounded the mullah, so that King could only get a glimpse
+of him between them. They seemed in no mood to be treated cavalierly--in
+no mood to be argued with. And the Mullah did not argue.
+
+“Ye dogs!” he growled at them, and he strode through them to the fire
+and chose himself a good, thick burning brand. “Ye sons of nameless
+mothers!”
+
+Then he charged them suddenly, beating them over head and face and
+shoulders, driving them in front of him, utterly reckless of their
+rifles. His own rifle lay on the ground behind him, and King kicked its
+stock clear of the fire.
+
+“Oh, I shall pray for you this night!” Muhammad Anim snarled. “What a
+curse I shall beg for you! Oh, what a burning of the bowels ye shall
+have! What a sickness! What running of the eyes! What sores! What boils!
+What sleepless nights and faithless women shall be yours! What a prayer
+I will pray to Allah!”
+
+They scattered into outer gloom before his rage, and then came back
+to kneel to him and beg him withdraw his curse. He kicked them as they
+knelt and drove them away again. Then, silhouetted in the cave mouth,
+with the glow of the fire behind him, he stood with folded arms and
+dared them shoot. He lacked little in that minute of being a full-grown
+brute at bay. King admired him, with reservations.
+
+After five minutes of angry contemplation of the camp he turned on a
+contemptuous heel and came back to the fire, throwing on more fuel from
+a great pile in a corner. There was an iron pot in the embers. He seized
+a stick and stirred the contents furiously, then set the pot between
+his knees and ate like an animal. He passed the pot to King when he had
+finished, but fingers had passed too many times through what was left in
+it and the very thought of eating the mess made his gorge rise; so King
+thanked him and set the pot aside.
+
+Then, “That is thy place!” Muhammad Anim growled, pointing over his
+shoulder to a ledge of rock, like a shelf in the far wall. There was a
+bed upon it, of cotton blankets stuffed with dry grass. King walked over
+and felt the blankets and found them warm from the last man who had lain
+there. They smelt of him too. He lifted them and laughed. Taking the
+whole in both hands he carried it to the fire and threw it in, and the
+sudden blaze made the mullah draw away a yard; but it did not make him
+speak.
+
+“Bugs!” King explained, but the mullah showed no interest. He watched,
+however, as King went back to the bed, and subsequent proceedings seemed
+to fascinate him.
+
+Out of the chest that one of the women had set down King took soap.
+There was a pitcher of water between him and the fire; he carried it
+nearer. With an improvised scrubbing brush of twigs he proceeded to
+scrub every inch of the rock-shelf, and when he had done and had dried
+it more or less, he stripped and began to scrub himself.
+
+“Who taught thee thy squeamishness?” the mullah asked at last, getting
+up and coming nearer. It was well that King's skin was dark (although
+it was many shades lighter than his face, that had been stained so
+carefully). The mullah eyed him from head to foot and looked awfully
+suspicious, but something prompted King and he answered without an
+instant's hesitation.
+
+“Why ask a woman's questions?” he retorted. “Only women ask when they
+know the answer. When I watched thee with the firebrand a short while
+ago, oh, mullah, I mistook thee for a man.”
+
+The mullah grunted and began to tug his beard. But King said no more and
+went on washing himself.
+
+“I forgot,” said the mullah then, “that thou art her pet. She would not
+love thee unless thy smell was sweet.”
+
+“No,” said King quite cheerfully--going it blind, for he did not know
+what had possessed him to take that line, but knew he might as well be
+hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. “No, if I stank like thee she would not
+love me.”
+
+The mullah snorted and went back to the fire, but he took King's cake of
+soap with him and sat examining it.
+
+“Tauba!” he swore suddenly as if he had made a gruesome discovery. “Such
+filthy stuff is made from the fat of pigs!”
+
+“Doubtless!” said King. “That is why she uses it, and why I use it. She
+is a better Muhammadan than thou. She would surely cleanse her skin with
+the fat of pigs!”
+
+“Thou art a shameless one!” said the mullah, shaking his head like a
+bear.
+
+“I am what Allah made me!” answered King, and then, for the sake of the
+impression, he went through the outward form of muslim prayer, spreading
+a mat and omitting none of the genuflections. When he had finished he
+unfolded his own blankets that a woman had thrown down beside the chest
+and spread them carefully on the rock-shelf. But though he was allowed
+to climb up and lie there, he was not allowed to sleep--nor did he want
+to sleep--for more than an hour to come.
+
+The mullah came over from the fire again and stood beside him, glaring
+like a great animal and grumbling in his beard.
+
+“Does she surely love thee?” he asked at last, and King nodded, because
+he knew he was on the trail of information.
+
+“So thou art to ape the Sleeper in his bronze mail, eh? Thou art to
+come to life, as she was said to come to life, and the two of you are to
+plunder India? Is that it?”
+
+King nodded again, for a nod is less committal than a word; and the nod
+was enough to start the mullah off again.
+
+“I saw the Sleeper and his bride before she knew of either! It was I who
+let her into Khinjan! It was I who told the men she is the 'Heart of
+the Hills' come to life! She tricked me! But this is no hour for bearing
+grudges. She has a plan and I am minded to help.”
+
+King lay still and looked up at him, sure that treachery was the
+ultimate end of any plan the mullah Muhammad Anim had. India has been
+saved by the treachery of her enemies more often than ruined by false
+friends. So has the world, for that matter.
+
+“A jihad when the right hour comes will raise the tribes,” the mullah
+growled. “She and thou, as the Sleeper and his mate, could work
+wonders. But who can trust her? She stole that head! She stole all the
+ammunition! Does she surely love thee?”
+
+King nodded again, for modesty could not help him at that juncture. Love
+and boastfulness go together in the “Hills.”
+
+“She shall have thee back, then, at a price!”
+
+King did not answer. His brown eyes watched the mullah's, and he drew
+his breath in little jerks, lest by breathing aloud he should miss one
+word of what, was coming.
+
+“She shall have thee back against Khinjan and the ammunition! She and
+thou shall have India, but I shall be the power behind you! She must
+give me Khinjan and the ammunition! She must admit me to the inner
+caves, whence her damned guards expelled me. I must have the reins in my
+two hands so! Then, thou and she shall have the pomp and glitter while I
+guide!”
+
+King did not answer.
+
+“Dost understand?”
+
+King murmured something unintelligible.
+
+“Otherwise, I and my men will storm Khinjan, and she and thou shall go
+down into Earth's Drink lashed together!”
+
+King shuddered, not because he felt afraid, but because some instinct
+told him to make the mullah think him afraid. He was far too interested
+to be fearful.
+
+“Ye shall both be tortured before the plunge into the river! She shall
+be tortured in the Cavern of Earth's Drink before the men!”
+
+King shuddered again, this time without an effort. He could imagine the
+thousands watching grimly while the flayer used his knife.
+
+“I have men in Khinjan! I have as many as she! On the day I march there
+will be a revolt within. She would better agree to terms!”
+
+King lay looking at him, like a prisoner on the rack undergoing
+examination. He did not answer.
+
+“Write thou a letter. Since she loves thee, state thine own case to her.
+Tell her that I hold thee hostage, and that Khinjan is mine already for
+a little fighting. In a month she can not pick out my men from among
+her own. Her position is undermined. Tell her that. Tell her that if she
+obeys she shall have India and be queen. If she disobeys, she shall die
+in the Cavern of Earth's Drink!”
+
+“She is a proud woman, mullah,” answered King. “Threats to such as
+she--?”
+
+The mullah mumbled and strode back and forth three times between King's
+bed and the fire, with his fists knotted together behind him and his
+head bent, as Napoleon used to walk. When he stood beside the bed again
+at last it was with his mind made up, as his clenched fists and his eyes
+indicated.
+
+“Make thine own terms with her!” he growled. “Write the letter and send
+it! I hold thee; she holds Khinjan and the ammunition. I am between her
+and India. So be it. She shall starve in there! She shall lie in there
+until the war is over and take what terms are offered her in the end!
+Write thine own letter! State the case, and bid her answer!”
+
+“Very well,” said King. He began to see now definitely how India was to
+be saved. It was none of his business to plan yet, but to help others'
+plans destroy themselves and to sow such seed in the broken ground as
+might bear fruit in time.
+
+The mullah left him, to squat and gaze into the fire, and mutter, and
+King lay still. After a while the mullah went and carried a great water
+bowl nearer to the fire and, as King had done, stripped himself. Then he
+heaped great fagots on the fire--wasteful fagots, each of which had cost
+some woman hours of mountain climbing. And in the glow of the leaping
+flame he scrubbed himself from head to foot with King's soap. Finally,
+with a feat of strength that nearly forced an exclamation out of King,
+he lifted the great water bowl in both hands and emptied the whole
+contents over himself. Then he resumed his smelly garments without
+troubling to dry his body, and got out a Quran from a corner and began
+to read it in a nasal singsong that would have kept dead men awake. King
+lay and watched and listened.
+
+Reading scripture only seemed to fire the mullah's veins. For him sleep
+was either out of reach or despicable, perhaps both. He seemed in a mood
+to despise anything but conquest and strode back and forth up and down
+the cave like a caged bear, muttering to himself.
+
+After a time he went to the mouth of the cave, to stand and stare out
+at the camp where the thousand fires were dying fitfully and wood smoke
+purged the air of human nastiness. The stars looked down on him, and he
+seemed to try to read them, standing with fists knotted together at his
+back.
+
+And as he stood so, six other mullahs came to him and began to argue
+with him in low tones, he browbeating them all with furious words hissed
+between half-closed teeth. They were whispering still when King fell
+asleep. It was courage, not carelessness, that let him sleep--courage
+and a great hope born of the mullah's perplexity.
+
+He dreamed that he was writing, writing, writing, while the torturers
+made a hot fire ready in the Cavern of Earth's Drink and whetted knives
+on the bridge end while the organ played The Marseillaise. He dreamed
+Yasmini came to him and whispered the solution to it all, but what she
+whispered he could not catch, although she whispered the same words
+again and again and seemed to be angry with him for not listening.
+
+And when he awoke at last he had fragments of his blanket in either
+hand, and the sun was already shining into the jaws of the cave. The
+camp was alive and reeked of cooking food. But the mullah was gone, and
+so was all the money the women had brought, together with his medicines
+and things from Khinjan.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+
+     When the last evil jest has been made, and the rest
+     Of the ink of hypocrisy spilt,
+     When the awfully right have elected to fight
+     Lest their own should discover their guilt;
+     When the door has been shut on the “if” and the “but”
+      And it's up to the men with the guns,
+     On their knees in that day let diplomatists pray
+     For forgiveness from prodigal sons.
+
+
+Instead of the mullah, growling texts out of a Quran on his lap, the
+Orakzai Pathan sat and sunned himself in the cave mouth, emitting
+worldlier wisdom unadulterated with divinity. As King went toward him
+to see to whom he spoke he grinned and pointed with his thumb, and King
+looked down on some sick and wounded men who sat in a crowd together on
+the ramp, ten feet or so below the cave.
+
+They seemed stout soldierly fellows. Men of another type were being kept
+at a distance by dint of argument and threats. Away in the distance was
+Muhammad Anim with his broad back turned to the cave, in altercation
+with a dozen other mullahs. For the time he was out of the reckoning.
+
+“Some of these are wounded,” the Pathan explained. “Some have sores.
+Some have the belly ache. Then again, some are sick of words, hot and
+cold by day and night. All have served in the army. All have medals.
+All are deserters, some for one reason, some for another and some for no
+reason at all. Bull-with-a-beard looks the other way. Speak thou to them
+about the pardon that is offered!”
+
+So King went down among them, taking some of the tools of his supposed
+trade with him and trying to crowd down the triumph that would well up.
+The seed he had sown had multiplied by fifty in a night. He wanted to
+shout, as men once did before the walls of Jericho.
+
+A man bared a sword cut. He bent over him, and if the mullah had turned
+to look there would have been no ground for suspicion. So in a voice
+just loud enough to reach them all, he repeated what he had told the
+Pathan the day before.
+
+“But who art thou?” asked one of them suspiciously. Perhaps there had
+been a shade too much cocksureness in the hakim's voice, but he acted
+faultlessly when he answered. Voice, accent, mannerism, guilty pride,
+were each perfect.
+
+“Political offender. My brother yonder in the cave mouth”--(The Pathan
+smirked. He liked the imputation)--“suggested I seek pardon, too.
+He thinks if I persuade many to apply for pardon then the sirkar may
+forgive me for service rendered.”
+
+The Pathan's smirk grew to a grin. He liked grandly to have the notion
+fathered on himself; and his complacency of course was suggestive of the
+hakim's trustworthiness. But the East is ever cautious.
+
+“Some say thou art a very great liar,” remarked a man with half a nose.
+
+“Nay,” answered King. “Liar I may be, but I am one against many. Which
+of you would dare stand alone and lie to all the others? Nay, sahibs, I
+am a political offender, not a soldier!”
+
+They all laughed at that and seizing the moment when they were in a
+pliant mood the Orakzai Pathan proceeded to bring proposals to a head.
+
+“Are we agreed?” he asked. “Or have we waggled our beards all night long
+in vain? Take him with us, say I. Then, if pardons are refused us he at
+least will gain nothing by it. We can plunge our knives in him first,
+whatever else happens.”
+
+“Aye!”
+
+That was reasonable and they approved in chorus. Possibility of pardon
+and reinstatement, though only heard of at second hand, had brought
+unity into being. And unity brought eagerness.
+
+“Let us start to-night!” urged one man, and nobody hung back.
+
+“Aye! Aye! Aye!” they chorused. And eagerness, as always in the “Hills,”
+ brought wilder counsel in its wake.
+
+“Who dare stab Bull-with-a-beard? He has sought blood and has let blood.
+Let him drink his own.”
+
+“Aye!”
+
+“Nay! He is too well guarded.”
+
+“Not he!”
+
+“Let us stab him and take his head with us; there well may be a price on
+it.”
+
+They took a vote on it and were agreed; but that did not suit King at
+all, whatever Muhammad Anim's personal deserts might be. To let him be
+stabbed would be to leave Yasmini without a check on her of any kind,
+and then might India defend herself! Yet to leave the mullah and Yasmini
+both at large would be almost equally dangerous, for they might form an
+alliance. There must be some other way, and he set out to gain time.
+
+“Nay, nay, sahibs!” he urged. “Nay, nay!”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Sahibs, I have wife and children in Lahore. Same are most dear to me
+and I to them. I find it expedient to make great effort for my pardon.
+Ye are but fifty. Ye are less than fifty. Nay, let us gather a hundred
+men.”
+
+“Who shall find a hundred?” somebody demanded, and there was a chorus of
+denial. “We be all in this camp who ate the salt.”
+
+It was plain, though, that his daring to hold out only gave them the
+more confidence in him.
+
+“But Khinjan,” he objected. The crimes of the Khinjan men were not to
+the point. Time had to be gained.
+
+“Aye,” they agreed. “There be many in Khinjan!” Mere mention of the
+place made them regard Orakzai Pathan and hakim with new respect, as
+having right of entry through the forbidden gate.
+
+“Then I have it!” the Pathan announced at once, for he was awake to
+opportunity. “Many of you can hardly march. Rest ye here and let the
+hakim treat your belly aches. Bull-with-a-beard bade me wait here for a
+letter that must go to Khinjan to-day. Good. I will take his letter.
+And in Khinjan I will spread news about pardons. It is likely there are
+fifty there who will dare follow me back, and then we shall march down
+the Khyber like a full company of the old days! Who says that is not a
+good plan?”
+
+There were several who said it was not, but they happened to have
+nothing the matter with them and could have marched at once. The rest
+were of the other way of thinking and agreed in asserting that Khinjan
+men were a higher caste of extra-ultra murderers whose presence
+doubtless would bring good luck to the venture. These prevailed after
+considerable argument.
+
+Strangely enough, none of them deemed the proposition beneath Khinjan
+men's consideration. Pardon and leave to march again behind British
+officers loomed bigger in their eyes than the green banner of the
+Prophet, which could only lead to more outrageous outlawry. They knew
+Khinjan men were flesh and blood--humans with hearts--as well as they.
+But caution had a voice yet.
+
+“She will catch thee in Khinjan Caves,” suggested the man with part of
+his nose missing. “She will have thee flayed alive!”
+
+“Take note then, I bequeath all the women in the world to thee! Be thou
+heir to my whole nose, too, and a blessing!” laughed the Pathan, and
+the butt of the jest spat savagely. In the “Hills” there is only one
+explanation given as to how one lost his nose, and they all laughed like
+hyenas until the mullah Muhammad Anim came rolling and striding back.
+
+By that time King had got busy with his lancet, but the mullah called
+him off and drove the crowd away to a distance; then he drove King into
+the cave in front of him, his mouth working as if he were biting bits of
+vengeance off for future use.
+
+“Write thy letter, thou! Write thy letter! Here is paper. There is a
+pen--take it! Sit! Yonder is ink--ttutt--ttutt!--Write, now, write!”
+
+King sat at a box and waited, as if to take dictation, but the mullah,
+tugging at his beard, grew furious.
+
+“Write thine own letter! Invent thine own argument! Persuade her, or die
+in a new way! I will invent a new way for thee!”
+
+So King began to write, in Urdu, for reasons of his own. He had spoken
+once or twice in Urdu to the mullah and had received no answer. At the
+end of ten minutes he handed up what he had written, and Muhammad Anim
+made as if to read it, trying to seem deliberate, and contriving to look
+irresolute. It was a fair guess that he hated to admit ignorance of the
+scholars' language.
+
+“Are there any alterations you suggest?” King asked him.
+
+“Nay, what care I what the words are? If she be not persuaded, the worse
+for thee!”
+
+He held it out, and as he took it King contrived to tear it; he also
+contrived to seem ashamed of his own clumsiness.
+
+“I will copy it out again,” he said.
+
+The mullah swore at him, and conceiving that some extra show of
+authority was needful, growled out:
+
+“Remember all I said. Set down she must surrender Khinjan Caves or I
+swear by Allah I will have thee tortured with fire and thorns--and her,
+too, when the time comes!”
+
+Now he had said that, or something very like it, in the first letter.
+There was no doubt left that the Mullah was trying to hide ignorance,
+as men of that fanatic ambitious mold so often will at the expense of
+better judgment. If fanatics were all-wise, it would be a poor world for
+the rest.
+
+“Very well,” King said quietly. And with great pretense of copying the
+other letter out on fresh paper he now wrote what he wished to say,
+taking so long about it (for he had to weigh each word), that the mullah
+strode up and down the cave swearing and kicking things over.
+
+        “Greeting,”' he wrote, “to the most beautiful and very
+        wise Princess Yasmini, in her palace in the Caves in
+        Khinjan, from her servant Kurram Khan the hakim, in
+        the camp of the mullah Muhammad Anim, a night's march
+        distant in the hills.
+
+        “The mullah Muhammad Anim makes his stand and demands
+        now surrender to himself of Khinjan Caves; and of all
+        his ammunition.  Further, he demands full control of
+        you and of me and of all your men.  He is ready to
+        fight for his demands and already--as you must well
+        know--he has considerable following in Khinjan Caves.
+        He has at least as many men as you have, and he has
+        four thousand more here.
+
+        “He threatens as a preliminary to blockade Khinjan
+        Caves, unless the answer to this prove favorable,
+        letting none enter, but calling his own men out to
+        join him.  This would suit the Indian government,
+        because while the 'Hills' fight among themselves
+        they can not raid India, and while he blockades
+        Khinjan Caves there will be time to move against him.
+
+        “Knowing that he dares begin and can accomplish what
+        he threatens, I am sorry;  because I know it is said
+        how many services you have rendered of old to the
+        government I serve.  We who serve one raj are One--one
+        to remember--one to forget--one to help each other in
+        good time.
+
+        “I have not been idle.  Some of Muhammad Anim's men
+        are already mine.  With them I can return to India,
+        taking information with me that will serve my government.
+        My men are eager to be off.
+
+        “It may be that vengeance against me would seem sweeter
+        to you than return to your former allegiance.  In that
+        case, Princess, you only need betray me to the mullah,
+        and be sure my death would leave nothing to be desired
+        by the spectators.  At present he does not suspect me.
+
+        “Be assured, however, that not to betray me to him is
+        to leave me free to serve my government and well able
+        to do so.
+
+        “I invite you to return to India with me, bearing news
+        that the mullah Muhammad Anim and his men are bottled
+        in Khinjan Caves, and to plan with me to that end.
+
+        “If you will, then write an answer to Muhammad Anim,
+        not in Urdu, but in a language he can understand;  seem
+        to surrender to him.  But to me send a verbal message,
+        either by the bearer of this or by some trustier messenger.
+
+        “India can profit yet by your service if you will.  And
+        in that case I pledge my word to direct the government's
+        attention only to your good service in the matter.  It is
+        not yet too late to choose.  It is not impertinent in me
+        to urge you.
+
+        “Nor can I say how gladly I would subscribe myself your
+        grateful and loyal servant.”
+
+The mullah pounced on the finished letter, pretended to read it, and
+watched him seal it up, smudging the hot wax with his own great gnarled
+thumb. Then he shouted for the Orakzai Pathan, who came striding in, all
+grins and swagger.
+
+“There--take it! Make speed!” he ordered, and with his rifle at the
+“ready” and the letter tucked inside his shirt, the Pathan favored King
+with a farewell grin and obeyed.
+
+“Get out!” the mullah snarled then immediately. “See to the sick. Tell
+them I sent thee. Bid them be grateful!”
+
+King went. He recognized the almost madness that constituted the
+mullah's driving power. It is contagious, that madness, until it
+destroys itself. It had made several thousand men follow him and believe
+in him, but it had once given Yasmini a chance to fool him and defeat
+him, and now it gave King his chance. He let the mullah think himself
+obeyed implicitly.
+
+He became the busiest man in all the “Hills.” While the mullah glowered
+over the camp from the cave mouth or fulminated from the Quran or fought
+with other mullahs with words for weapons and abuse for argument, he
+bandaged and lanced and poulticed and physicked until his head swam with
+weariness.
+
+The sick swarmed so around him that he had to have a body-guard to keep
+them at bay; so he chose twenty of the least sick from among those who
+had talked with him after sunrise.
+
+And because each of those men had friends, and it is only human to wish
+one's friend in the same boat, especially when the sea, so to speak, is
+rough, the progress through the camp became a current of missionary zeal
+and the virtues of the Anglo-Indian raj were better spoken of than the
+“Hills” had heard for years.
+
+Not that there was any effort made to convert the camp en masse. Far
+from it. But the likely few were pounced on and were told of a chance to
+enlist for a bounty in India. And what with winter not so far ahead, and
+what with experience of former fighting against the British army, the
+choosing was none so difficult. From the day when the lad first feels
+soft down upon his face until the old man's beard turns white and his
+teeth shake out, the Hillman would rather fight than eat; but he prefers
+to fight on the winning side if he may, and he likes good treatment.
+
+Before if was dark that night there were thirty men sworn to hold
+their tongues and to wait for the word to hurry down the Khyber for the
+purpose of enlisting in some British-Indian regiment. Some even began
+to urge the hakim not to wait for the Orakzai Pathan, but to start with
+what he had.
+
+“Shall I leave my brother in the lurch?” the hakim asked them; and
+though they murmured, they thought better of him for it.
+
+Well for him that he had plenty of Epsom salts in his kit, for in the
+“Hills” physic should taste evil and show very quick results to be
+believed in. He found a dozen diseases of which he did not so much as
+know the name, but half of the sufferers swore they were cured after the
+first dose. They would have dubbed him faquir and have foisted him to a
+pillar of holiness had he cared to let them.
+
+Muhammad Anim slept most of the day, like a great animal that scorns to
+live by rule. But at evening he came to the cave mouth and fulminated
+such a sermon as set the whole camp to roaring. He showed his power
+then. The jihad he preached would have tempted dead men from their
+graves to come and share the plunder, and the curses he called down on
+cowards and laggards and unbelievers were enough to have frightened the
+dead away again.
+
+In twenty minutes he had undone all King's missionary work. And then
+in ten more, feeling his power and their response, and being at heart a
+fool as all rogues are, he built it up again.
+
+He began to make promises too definite. He wanted Khinjan Caves. More,
+he needed them. So he promised them they should all be free of Khinjan
+Caves within a day or two, to come and go and live there at their
+pleasure. He promised them they should leave their wives and children
+and belongings safe in the Caves while they themselves went down to
+plunder India. He overlooked the fact that Khinjan Caves for centuries
+had been a secret to be spoken of in whispers, and that prospect of its
+violation came to them as a shock.
+
+Half of them did not believe him. Such a thing was impossible, and if he
+were lying as to one point, why not as to all the others, too?
+
+And the army veterans, who had been converted by King's talk of pardons,
+and almost reconverted by the sermon, shook their heads at the talk of
+taking Khinjan. Why waste time trying to do what never had been done,
+with her to reckon against, when a place in the sun was waiting for them
+down in India, to say nothing of the hope of pardons and clean living
+for a while? They shook their heads and combed their beards and eyed one
+another sidewise in a way the “Hills” understand.
+
+That night, while the mullah glowered over the camp like a great old
+owl, with leaping firelight reflected in his eyes, the thousands under
+the skin tents argued, so that the night was all noise. But King slept.
+
+All of another day and part of another night he toiled among the sick,
+wondering when a message would come back. It was nearly midnight when
+he bandaged his last patient and came out into the starlight to bend his
+back straight and yawn and pick his way reeling with weariness back to
+the mullah's cave. He had given his bag of medicines and implements to
+a man to carry ahead of him and had gone perhaps ten paces into the dark
+when a strong hand gripped him by the wrist.
+
+“Hush!” said a voice that seemed familiar.
+
+He turned swiftly and looked straight into the eyes of the Rangar Rewa
+Gunga!
+
+“How did you get here?” he asked in English.
+
+“Any fool could learn the password into this camp! Come over here,
+sahib. I bring word from her.”
+
+The ground was criss-crossed like a man's palm by the shadows of
+tent-ropes. The Rangar led him to where the tents were forty feet apart
+and none was likely to overhear them. There he turned like a flash.
+
+“She sends you this!” he hissed.
+
+In that same instant King was fighting for his life.
+
+In another second they were down together among the tent-pegs, King
+holding the Rangar's wrist with both hands and struggling to break
+it, and the Rangar striving for another stroke. The dagger he held
+had missed King's ribs by so little that his skin yet tingled from its
+touch. It was a dagger with bronze blade and a gold hilt--her dagger. It
+was her perfume in the air.
+
+They rolled over and over, breathing hard. King wanted to think before
+he gave an alarm, and he could not think with that scent in his nostrils
+and creeping into his lungs. Even in the stress of fighting be wondered
+how the Rangar's clothes and turban had come to be drenched in it. He
+admitted to himself afterward that it was nothing else than jealousy
+that suggested to him to make the Rangar prisoner and hand him over to
+the mullah.
+
+That would have been a ridiculous thing to do, for it would have forced
+his own betrayal to the mullah. But as if the Rangar had read his
+mind he suddenly redoubled his efforts and King, weary to the point of
+sickness, had to redouble his own or die. Perhaps the jealousy helped
+put venom in his effort, for his strength came back to him as a madman's
+does. The Rangar gave a moan and let the knife fall.
+
+And because jealousy is poison King did the wrong thing then. He
+pounced on the knife instead of on the Rangar. He could have questioned
+him--knelt on him and perhaps forced explanations from him. But with a
+sudden swift effort like a snake's the Rangar freed himself and was
+up and gone before King could struggle to his feet--gone like a shadow
+among shadows.
+
+King got up and felt himself all over, for they had fought on stony
+ground and he was bruised. But bruises faded into nothing, and weariness
+as well, as his mind began to dwell on the new complication to his
+problem.
+
+It was plain that the moment he had returned from his message to the
+Khyber the Rangar had been sent on this new murderous mission. If
+Yasmini had told the truth a letter had gone into India describing him,
+King, as a traitor, and from her point of view that might be supposed to
+cut the very ground away from under his feet.
+
+Then why so much trouble to have him killed? Either Rewa Gunga had never
+taken the first letter, or--and this seemed more probable--Yashiini had
+never believed the letter would be treated seriously by the authorities,
+and had only sent it in the hope of fooling him and undermining his
+determination. In that case, especially supposing her to have received
+his ultimatum on the mullah's behalf before sending Rewa Gunga with the
+dagger, she must consider him at least dangerous. Could she be afraid?
+If so her game was lost already!
+
+Perhaps she saw her own peril. Perhaps she contemplated--gosh! what a
+contingency!--perhaps she contemplated bolting into India with a story
+of her own, and leaving the mullah to his own devices! In such a case,
+before going she would very likely try to have the one man stabbed who
+could give her away most completely. In fact, would she dare escape into
+India and leave himself alive behind her?
+
+He rather thought she would dare do anything. And that thought brought
+reassurance. She would dare, and being what she was she almost surely
+would seek vengeance on the mullah before doing anything else.
+
+Then why the dagger for himself? She must believe him in league with the
+mullah against her. She might believe that with him out of the way the
+mullah would prove an easier prey for her. And that belief might be
+justifiable, but as an explanation it failed to satisfy.
+
+There was an alternative, the very thought of which made him fearfully
+uneasy, and yet brought a thrill with it. In all eastern lands, love
+scorned takes to the dagger. He had half believed her when she swore she
+loved him! The man who could imagine himself loved by Yasmini and not be
+thrilled to his core would be inhuman, whatever reason and caution and
+caste and creed might whisper in imagination's wake.
+
+Reeling from fatigue (he felt like a man who had been racked, for the
+Rangar's strength was nearly unbelievable), he started toward where the
+mullah sat glowering in the cave mouth. He found the man who had carried
+his bag asleep at the foot of the ramp, and taking the bag away from
+him, let him lie there. And it took him five minutes to drag his hurt
+weary bones up the ramp, for the fight had taken more out of him than he
+had guessed at first.
+
+The mullah glared at him but let him by without a word. It was by the
+fire at the back of the cave, where he stooped to dip water from the
+mullah's enormous crock that the next disturbing factor came to light.
+He kicked a brand into the fire and the flame leaped. Its light shone
+on a yard and a half of exquisitely fine hair, like spun gold, that
+caressed his shoulder and descended down one arm. One thread of hair
+that conjured up a million thoughts, and in a second upset every
+argument!
+
+If Rewa Gunga had been near enough to her and intimate enough with her
+not only to become scented with her unmistakable perfume but even to get
+her hair on his person, then gone was all imagination of her love for
+himself! Then she had lied from first to last! Then she had tried to
+make him love her that she might use him, and finding she had failed,
+she had sent her true love with the dagger to make an end!
+
+In a moment he imagined a whole picture, as it might have been in a
+crystal, of himself trapped and made to don the Roman's armor and forced
+to pose to the savage 'Hills'--or fooled into posing to them--as her
+lover, while Rewa Gunga lurked behind the scenes and waited for the
+harvest in the end. And what kind of harvest?
+
+And what kind of man must Rewa Gunga be who could lightly let go all
+the prejudices of the East and submit to what only the West has endured
+hitherto with any complacency--a “tertium quid”?
+
+Yet what a fool he, King, had been not to appreciate at once that Rewa
+Gunga must be her lover. Why should he not be? Were they not alike as
+cousins? And the East does not love its contrary, but its complement,
+being older in love than the West, and wiser in its ways in all but the
+material. He had been blind. He had overlooked the obvious--that from
+first to last her plan had been to set herself and this Rewa Gunga on
+the throne of India!
+
+He washed and went through the mummery of muslim prayers for the
+watchful mullah's sake, and climbed on to his bed. But sleep seemed out
+of the question. He lay and tossed for an hour, his mind as busy as a
+terrier in hay. And when he did fall asleep at last it was so to
+dream and mutter that the mullah came and shook him and preached him
+a half-hour sermon against the mortal sins that rob men of peaceful
+slumber by giving them a foretaste of the hell to come.
+
+All that seemed kinder and more refreshing than King's own thoughts had
+been, for when the mullah had done at last and had gone striding back to
+the cave mouth, he really did fall sound asleep, and it was after dawn
+when he awoke. The mullah's voice, not untuneful was rousing all the
+valley echoes in the call to prayer.
+
+        Allah is Almighty!  Allah is Almighty!
+        I declare there is no God but Allah!
+        I declare Muhammad is his prophet!
+        Hie ye to prayer!
+        Hie ye to salvation!
+        Prayer is better than sleep!
+        Prayer is better than sleep!
+        There is no God but Allah!
+
+And while King knelt behind the mullah and the whole camp faced Mecca in
+forehead-in-the-dust abasement there came a strange procession down the
+midst--not strange to the “Hills,” where such sights are common, but
+strange to that camp and hour. Somebody rose and struck them, and they
+knelt like the rest; but when prayer was over and cooking had begun and
+the camp became a place of savory smell, they came on again--seven blind
+men.
+
+They were weary, ragged, lean--seven very tatter-demalions--and the
+front man led them, tapping the ground with a long stick. The others
+clung to him in line, one behind the other. He was the only clean-shaven
+one, and he was the tallest. He looked as if he had not been blind so
+long, for his physical health was better. All seven men yelled at the
+utmost of their lungs, but he yelled the loudest.
+
+“Oh, the hakim--the good hakim!” they wailed. “Where is the famous
+hakim? We be blind men--blind we be--blind--blind! Oh, pity us! Is any
+kismet worse than ours? Oh, show us to the hakim! Show us the way to
+him! Lead us to him! Oh, the famous, great, good hakim who can heal
+men's eyes!”
+
+The mullah looked down on them like a vulture waiting to see them die,
+and seeing they did not die, turned his back and went into his cave.
+Close to the ramp they stopped, and the front man, cocking his head to
+one side as only birds and the newly blind do, gave voice again in nasal
+singsong.
+
+“Will none tell me where is the great, good, wise hakim Kurram Khan?”
+
+“I am he,” said King, and he stepped down toward him, calling to an
+assistant to come and bring him water and a sponge. The blind man's face
+looked strangely familiar, though it was partly disguised by some gummy
+stuff stuck all about the eyes. Taking it in both hands be tilted the
+eyes to the light and opened one eye with his thumb. There was nothing
+whatever the matter with it. He opened the other.
+
+“Rub me an ointment on!” the man urged him, and he stared at the face
+again.
+
+“Ismail!” he said. “You?”
+
+“Aye! Father of cleverness! Make play of healing my eyes!”
+
+So King dipped a sponge in water and sent back for his bag and made a
+great show of rubbing on ointment. In a minute Ismail, looking almost
+like a young man without his great beard, was dancing like a lunatic
+with both fists in the air, and yelling as if wasps had stung him.
+
+“Aieee--aieee--aieee!” he yelled. “I see again! I see! My eyes have
+light in them! Allah! Oh, Allah heap riches on the great wise hakfim who
+can heal men's eyes! Allah reward him richly, for I am a beggar and have
+no goods!”
+
+The other six blind men came struggling to be next, and while King
+rubbed ointment on their eyes and saw that there was nothing there he
+could cure the whole camp began to surge toward him to see the miracle,
+and his chosen body-guard rushed up to drive them back.
+
+“Find your way down the Khyber and ask for the Wilayti dakitar. He will
+finish the cure.”
+
+The six blind men, half-resentful, half-believing, turned away, mainly
+because Ismail drove them with words and blows. And as they went a tall
+Afridi came striding down the camp with a letter for the mullah held out
+in a cleft stick in front of him.
+
+“Her answer!” said Ismail with a wicked grin.
+
+“What is her word? Where is the Orakzai Pathan?”
+
+But Ismail laughed and would not answer him. It seemed to King that he
+scented climax. So did his near-fifty and their thirty friends. He chose
+to take the arrival of the blind men as a hint from Providence and to
+“go it blind” on the strength of what he had hoped might happen. Also he
+chose in that instant to force the mullah's hand, on the principle that
+hurried buffaloes will blunder.
+
+“To Khinjan!” he shouted to the nearest man. “The mullah will march on
+Khinjan!”
+
+They murmured and wondered and backed away from him to give him room.
+Ismail watched him with dropped jaw and wild eye.
+
+“Spread it through the camp that we march on Khinjan! Shout it! Bid them
+strike the tents!”
+
+Somebody behind took up the shout and it went across the camp in leaps,
+as men toss a ball. There was a surge toward the tents, but King called
+to his deserters and they clustered back to him. He had to cement their
+allegiance now or fail altogether, and he would not be able to do it by
+ordinary argument or by pleading; he had to fire their imagination. And
+he did.
+
+“She is on our side!” That was a sheer guess. “She has kept our man and
+sent another as hostage for him in token of good faith! Listen! Ye saw
+this man's eyes healed. Let that be a token! Be ye the men with new
+eyes! Give it out! Claim the title and be true to it and see me guide
+you down the Khyber in good time like a regiment, many more than a
+hundred strong!”
+
+They jumped at the idea. The “Hills”--the whole East, for that
+matter--are ever ready to form a new sect or join a new band or a
+new blood-feud. Witness the Nikalseyns, who worship a long-since dead
+Englishman.
+
+“We see!” yelled one of them.
+
+“We see!” they chorused, and the idea took charge. From that minute they
+were a new band, with a war-cry of their own.
+
+“To Khinjan!” they howled, scattering through the camp, and the mullah
+came out to glare at them and tug his beard and wonder what possessed
+them.
+
+“To Khinjan!” they roared at him. “Lead us to Khinjan!”
+
+“To Khinjan, then!” he thundered, throwing up both arms in a sort of
+double apostolic blessing, and then motioning as if he threw them the
+reins and leave to gallop. They roared back at him like the sea under
+the whip of a gaining wind. And Ismail disappeared among them, leaving
+King alone. Then the mullah's eyes fell on King and he beckoned him.
+
+King went up with an effort, for he ached yet from his struggle of the
+night before. Up there by the ashes of the fire the mullah showed him a
+letter he had crumpled in his fist. There were only a few lines, written
+in Arabic, which all mullahs are supposed to be able to read, and they
+were signed with a strange scrawl that might have meant anything. But
+the paper smelt strongly of her perfume.
+
+“Come, then. Bring all your men, and I will let you and them enter
+Khinjan Caves. We will strike a bargain in the Cavern of Earth's Drink.”
+
+That was all, but the fire in the mullah's eyes showed that he thought
+it was enough. He did not doubt that once he should have his extra four
+thousand in the caves Khinjan would be his; and he said so.
+
+“Khinjan is mine!” he growled. “India is mine!”
+
+And King did not answer him. He did not believe Yasmini would be fool
+enough to trust herself in any bargain with Muhammad Anim. Yet he could
+see no alternative as yet. He could only be still and be glad he had set
+the camp moving and so had forced the mullah's hand.
+
+“The old fatalist would have suspected her answer otherwise!” he told
+himself, for he knew that he himself suspected it.
+
+While he and the mullah watched the tents began to fall and the women
+labored to roll them. The men began firing their rifles, and within the
+hour enough ammunition had been squandered to have fought a good-sized
+skirmish; but the mullah did not mind, for he had Khinjan Caves in view,
+and none knew better than he what vast store of cartridges and dynamite
+was piled in there. He let them waste.
+
+Watching his opportunity, King slipped down the ramp and into the crowd,
+while the mullah was busy with personal belongings in the cave. King
+left his own belongings to the fates, or to any thief who should care
+to steal them. He was safe from the mullah in the midst of his nearly
+eighty men, who half believed him a sending from the skies.
+
+“We see! we see!” they yelled and danced around him.
+
+Before ever the mullah gave an order they got under way and started
+climbing the steep valley wall. The mullah on his brown mule thrust
+forward, trying to get in the lead, and King and his men hung back, to
+keep at a distance from him. It was when the mullah had reached the top
+of the slope and was not far from being in the lead that Ismail appeared
+again, leading King's horse, that he had found in possession of another
+man. That did not look like enmity or treachery. King mounted and
+thanked him. Ismail wiped his knife, that had blood on it, and stuck
+his tongue through his teeth, which did not look quite like treachery
+either. Yet the Afridi could not be got to say a word.
+
+Two or three miles along the top of the escarpment the mullah sent back
+word that he wanted the hakim to be beside him. Doubtless he had looked
+back and had seen King on the horse, head and shoulders above the
+baggage.
+
+But King's men treated the messenger to open scorn and sent him packing.
+
+“Bid the mullah hunt himself another hakim! Be thou his hakim! Stay, we
+will give thee a lesson in how to use a knife!”
+
+The man ran, lest they carry out their threat, for men joke grimly in
+the “Hills.”
+
+Ismail came and held King's stirrup, striding beside him with the easy
+Hillman gait.
+
+“Art thou my man at last?” King asked him, but Ismail laughed and shook
+his head.
+
+“I am her man.”
+
+“Where is she?” King asked.
+
+“Nay, who am I that I should know?”
+
+“But she sent thee?”
+
+“Aye, she sent me.”
+
+“To what purpose?”'
+
+“To her purpose!” the Afridi answered, and King could not get another
+word out of him. He fell behind.
+
+But out of the corner of his eye, and once or twice by looking back
+deliberately, King saw that Ismail was taking the members of his new
+band one by one and whispering to them. What he said was a mystery, but
+as they talked each man looked at King. And the more they talked the
+better pleased they seemed. And as the day wore on the more deferential
+they grew. By midday if King wanted to dismount there were three at
+least to hold his stirrup and ten to help him mount again.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+
+     By the sweat of your brow;  by the ache of your bones;
+     In the sun, in the wind, in the chill of the rains,
+     Ye sowed as ye knew.  And ye know it was blown
+     To be trodden and burned--aye, and that by your own
+     Who sneered at lean furrows and mocked at the stones.
+     But ye stayed and sowed on.  And a little remains.
+     Ye shall have for your faith.  Ye shall reap for your pains.
+
+
+Four thousand men with women and children and baggage do not move
+so swiftly as one man or a dozen, especially in the “Hills,” where
+discipline is reckoned beneath a proud man's honor. There were many
+miles to go before Khinjan when night fell and the mullah bade them
+camp. He bade them camp because they would have done it otherwise in any
+case.
+
+“And we,” said King to his all but eighty who crowded around him, “being
+men with new eyes and with a great new hope in us, will halt here and
+eat the evening meal and watch for an opportunity.”
+
+“Opportunity for what?” they asked him.
+
+“An opportunity to show how Allah loves the brave!” said King, and they
+had to be content with that, for he would say no more to them. Seeing he
+would not talk, they made their little fires all around him and watched
+while their women cooked the food. The mullah would not let them eat
+until he and the whole camp had prayed like the only righteous.
+
+When the evening meal was eaten, and sentries had been set at every
+vantage point, and the men all sat about cleansing their beards and
+fingers the mullah sent for the hakim again. Only this time he sent
+twenty men to fetch him.
+
+There was so nearly a fight that the skin all down King's back was
+gooseflesh, for a fight at that juncture would have ruined everything.
+At the least he would have been made a hopeless helpless prisoner. But
+in the end the mullah's men drew off snarling, and before they could
+have time to receive new orders or reinforcements, King's die was cast.
+
+There came another order from the mullah. The women and children were to
+be left in camp next dawn, and to remain there until sent for. There
+was murmuring at that around the camp, and especially among King's
+contingent. But King laughed.
+
+“It is good!” he said.
+
+“Why? How so?” they asked him.
+
+“Bid your women make for the Khyber soon after the mullah marches
+tomorrow. Bid them travel down the Khyber until we and they meet!”
+
+“But--”
+
+“Please yourselves, sahibs!” The hakim's air was one of supremest
+indifference. “As for me, I leave no women behind me in the mountains. I
+am content.”
+
+They murmured a while, but they gave the orders to their women, and
+King watched the women nod. And all that while Ismail watched him
+with carefully disguised concern, but undisguised interest. And King
+understood. Enlightenment comes to a man swiftly, when it does come, as
+a rule.
+
+He recalled that Yasmini had not done much to make his first entry into
+Khinjan easy. On the contrary, she had put him on his mettle and had set
+Rewa Gunga to the task of frightening him and had tested him and tried
+him before tempting him at last.
+
+She must be watching him now, for even the East repeats itself. She had
+sent Ismail for that purpose. It might be Ismail's business to drive a
+knife in him at the first opportunity, but he doubted that. It was much
+more likely that, having failed in an attempt to have him murdered, she
+was superstitiously remorseful. Her course would depend on his. If he
+failed, she was done with him. If he succeeded in establishing a strong
+position of his own, she would yield.
+
+All of which did not explain Ismail's whisperings and noddings and chin
+strokings with King's contingent. But it explained enough for King's
+present purpose, and he wasted no time on riders to the problem. With
+or without Ismail's aid, with or without his enmity, he must control his
+eighty men and give the slip to the mullah, and he went at once about
+the best way to do both.
+
+“We will go now,” he said quietly. “That sentry in yonder shadow has his
+back turned. He has over-eaten. We will rush him and put good running
+between us and the mullah.”
+
+Surprised into obedience, and too delighted at the prospect of action to
+wonder why they should obey a hakim so, they slung on their bandoliers
+and made ready. Ismail brought up King's horse and he mounted. And then
+at King's word all eighty made a sudden swoop on the drowsy sentry
+and took him unawares. They tossed him over the cliff, too startled
+to scream an alarm; and though sentries on either hand heard them and
+shouted, they were gone into outer darkness like wind-blown ghosts of
+dead men before the mullah even knew what was happening.
+
+They did not halt until not one of them could run another yard, King
+trusting to his horse to find a footing along the cliff-tops, and to the
+men to find the way.
+
+“Whither?” one whispered to him.
+
+“To Khinjan!” he answered; and that was enough. Each whispered to the
+other, and they all became fired with curiosity more potent than money
+bribes.
+
+When he halted at last and dismounted and sat down and the stragglers
+caught up, panting, they held a council of war all together, with Ismail
+sitting at King's back and leaning a chin on his shoulder in order to
+hear better. Bone pressed on bone, and the place grew numb; King shook
+him off a dozen times; but each time Ismail set his chin back on the
+same spot, as a dog will that listens to his master. Yet he insisted he
+was her man, and not King's.
+
+“Now, ye men of the Hills,” said King, “listen to me who am
+political-offender-with-reward-for-capture-offered!” That was a gem of a
+title. It fired their imaginations. “I know things that no soldier would
+find out in a thousand years, and I will tell you some of what I know.”
+
+Now he had to be careful. If he were to invent too much they might
+denounce him as a traitor to the “Hills” in general. If he were to tell
+them too little they would lose interest and might very well desert
+him at the first pinch. He must feel for the middle way and upset no
+prejudices.
+
+“She has discovered that this mullah Muhammad Anim is no true muslim,
+but an unbelieving dog of a foreigner from Farangistan! She has
+discovered that he plans to make himself an emperor in these Hills, and
+to sell Hillmen into slavery!” Might as well serve the mullah up hot
+while about it! Beyond any doubt not much more than a mile away the
+mullah was getting even by condemning the lot of them to death. “An eye
+for the risk of an eye!” say the unforgiving Hills.
+
+“If one of us should go back into his camp now he would be tortured. Be
+sure of that.”
+
+Breathing deeply in the darkness, they nodded, as if the dark had eyes.
+Ismail's chin drove a fraction deeper into his shoulder.
+
+“Now ye know--for all men know--that the entrance into Khinjan Caves is
+free to any man who can tell a lie without flinching. It is the way out
+again that is not free. How many men do ye know that have entered and
+never returned?”
+
+They all nodded again. It was common knowledge that Khinjan was a very
+graveyard of the presumptuous.
+
+“She has set a trap for the mullah. She will let him and all his men
+enter and will never let them out again!”
+
+“How knowest thou?” This from two men, one on either hand.
+
+“Was I never in Khinjan Caves?” he retorted. “Whence came I? I am her
+man, sent to help trap the mullah! I would have trapped all you, but
+for being weary of these 'Hills' and wishful to go back to India and be
+pardoned! That is who I am! That is how I know!”
+
+Their breath came and went sibilantly, and the darkness was alive with
+the excitement they thought themselves too warrior-like to utter.
+
+“But what will she do then?” asked somebody.
+
+King searched his memory, and in a moment there came back to him a
+picture of the hurrying jezailchi he had held up in the Khyber Pass,
+and recollection of the man's words.
+
+“Know ye not,” he said, “that long ago she gave leave to all who ate
+the salt to be true to the salt? She gave the Khyber jezailchis leave to
+fight against her. Be sure, whatever she does, she will stand between no
+man and his pardon!”
+
+“But will she lead a jihad? We will not fight against her!”
+
+“Nay,” said King, drawing his breath in. Ismail's chin felt like a knife
+against his collar bone, and Ismail's iron fingers clutched his arm.
+It was time to give his hostage to dame Fortune. “She will go down into
+India and use her influence in the matter of the pardons!”
+
+“I believe thou art a very great liar indeed!” said the man who lacked
+part of his nose. “The Pathan went, and he did not come back. What proof
+have we.”
+
+“Ye have me!” said King. “If I show you no proof, how can I escape you?”
+
+They all grunted agreement as to that. King used his elbow to hit Ismail
+in the ribs. He did not dare speak to him; but now was the time for
+Ismail to carry information to her, supposing that to be his job. And
+after a minute Ismail rolled into a shadow and was gone. King gave him
+twenty minutes start, letting his men rest their legs and exercise their
+tongues.
+
+Now that he was out of the mullah's clutches--and he suspected Yasmini
+would know of it within an hour or two, and before dawn in any event--he
+began to feel like a player in a game of chess who foresees his opponent
+mate in so many moves.
+
+If Yasmini were to let the mullah and his men into the Caves and to join
+forces with him in there, he would at least have time to hurry back to
+India with his eighty men and give warning. He might have time to call
+up the Khyber jezailchis and blockade the Caves before the hive could
+swarm, and he chuckled to think of the hope of that.
+
+On the other hand, if there was to be a battle royal between Yasmini and
+the mullah he would be there to watch it and to comfort India with the
+news.
+
+“Now we will go on again, in order to be close to Khinjan at break of
+day,” he said, and they all got up and obeyed him as if his word had
+been law to them for years. Of all of them he was the only man in
+doubt--he who seemed most confident of all.
+
+They swung along into the darkness under low-hung stars, trailing behind
+King's horse, with only half a dozen of them a hundred yards or so ahead
+as an advance guard, and all of them expecting to see Khinjan loom
+above each next valley, for distances and darkness are deceptive in the
+“Hills,” even to trained eyes. Suddenly the advance guard halted, but
+did not shoot. And as King caught up with them he saw they were talking
+with some one.
+
+He had to ride up close before he recognized the Orakzai Pathan.
+
+“Salaam!” said the fellow with a grin. “I bring one hundred and eleven!”
+
+As he spoke graveyard shadows rose out of the darkness all around and
+leaned on rifles.
+
+“Be ye men all ex-soldiers of the raj?” King asked them.
+
+“Aye!” they growled in chorus.
+
+“What will ye?”
+
+“Pardons!” They all said the word together.
+
+“Who gave you leave to come?” King asked.
+
+“None! He told us of the pardons and we came!”
+
+“Aye!” said the Orakzai Pathan, drawing King aside. “But she gave me
+leave to seek them out and tempt them!”
+
+“And what does she intend?” King asked him suddenly.
+
+“She? Ask Allah, who put the spirit in her! How should I know?”
+
+“We will march again, my brothers!” King shouted, and they streamed
+along behind him, now with no advance guard, but with the Orakzai Pathan
+striding beside King's horse, with a great hand on the saddle. Like the
+others, he seemed decided in his mind that the hakim ought not to be
+allowed much chance to escape.
+
+Just as the dawn was tinting the surrounding peaks with softest rose
+they topped a ridge, and Khinjan lay below them across the mile-wide
+bone-dry valley. They all stood and stared at it, leaning on their guns.
+All the “Men with New Eyes” saw it now for the first time, and it held
+them speechless, for with its patchwork towers and high battlements it
+looked like a very city of the spirits that their tales around the fire
+on winter nights so linger on.
+
+And while they watched, and the Khinjan men were beginning to murmur
+(for they needed no last view of the place to satisfy any longings!)
+none else than Ismail rose from behind a rock and came to King's
+stirrup. He tugged and King backed his horse until they stood together
+apart.
+
+“She sends this message,” said Ismail, showing his teeth in the most
+peculiar grin that surely the Hills ever witnessed. And then, omitting
+the message, he proceeded first to give some news. “Many of her men who
+have never been in the army, are none the less true to her, and she will
+not leave them to the mullah's mercy. They will leave the Caves in a
+little while and will come up here. They are to go down into India and
+be made prisoners if the sirkar will not enlist them. You are to wait
+for them here.”
+
+“Is that all her message?” King asked him.
+
+“Nay. That is none of it! This is her message. THOU SHALT KNOW THIS DAY,
+THOU ENGLISHMAN, WHETHER OR NOT SHE TRULY LOVED THEE! THERE SHALL BE
+PROOF, SUCH AS EVEN THOU SHALT UNDERSTAND!”'
+
+“What does that mean?”
+
+“Nay, who am I that I should know?”
+
+Ismail slipped away and lost himself among the men, and none of them
+seemed to notice that he had been away and had come again. On King's
+advice a dozen men climbed near-by eminences and began to watch for the
+mullah's coming. The Khinjan men murmured openly; they wanted to be off.
+
+“But no,” said King. “Go if ye will, but she has sent word that other
+men are coming. I wait for them here.”
+
+After a great deal of resentful argument they consented to lie hidden
+for an hour or two “but no longer,” and King hid his horse in a hollow
+and persuaded three of them to gather grass for him. It was a little
+more than an hour after dawn and the chilled rocks were beginning to
+grow warmer when the head of a procession came out of Khinjan Gate and
+started toward them over the valley. In all more than five hundred men
+emerged and about a hundred women and children, and King's men were
+kept busy for half an hour counting them and quarreling about the
+exact number. Some of them were burdened heavily, and there was much
+discussion as to whether to loot them or not. Then:
+
+“Muhammad Anim comes!” shouted a voice from a crag top.
+
+They snuggled into better hiding, and there was no thought now of
+leaving before the mullah should go by. There began to be wagers as to
+whether her men would be hidden out of sight before the mullah could top
+the rise; and then, when the last man was safe across the valley and up
+the cliff and in hiding, there was endless argument as to how much each
+had betted and to whom he had lost. It needed an effort to quiet them
+when the mullah rose into view at last above the rise and paused for a
+minute to stare across at Khinjan before leading his four thousand down
+and onward. He was silent as an image, but his men roared like a river
+in flood and he made no effort to check them. He was like a man who has
+made up his mind to victory in any event. He seemed to be speculating
+three or four moves ahead of this one, and to hold this one such a
+foregone conclusion in his mind that it had ceased to interest. He was
+admirable, there was no doubt of that. In his own way, like an old
+boar sniffing up the wind for trouble, he could command a decent man's
+respect.
+
+He dismounted, for he had to, and tossed his reins to the nearest
+man with the air of an emperor. And he led the way dawn the cliffside
+without hesitation, striding like a mountaineer. His men followed him
+noisily, holding hands to make human chains at the difficult places
+and shouting a great deal; but not quite naturally now. They were too
+impressed by the seriousness of what they undertook, and in their hearts
+too much afraid. The noise was bravado.
+
+It was a weary long wait, watching from the crevices until the last
+man's back departed down the cliff, and the procession--Pied Piper of
+Hamelin and rats, (but no music!)--wound across the valley. At last
+Khinjan Gate opened and the mullah led in. The gate did not shut after
+the last man, King noted that.
+
+“Let us go now!” shouted fifty voices, and every man of King's party
+showed himself and stretched. “Let us go! Why wait?”
+
+But King would not go. Nor would he explain why he would not go. Nor
+could he tell himself what held him, gazing at Khinjan, except that he
+thought of Yasmini and ached to know what she was doing.
+
+It was thirty minutes after the last of the mullahs men had vanished
+through the gate, and his own men in dozens and twenties were scattered
+along the cliff-top arguing against delay with growing rancor, when
+a lone horseman galloped out of Khinjan Gate and started across the
+valley. He rode recklessly. He was either panic-stricken or else bolder
+than the devil.
+
+In a minute King had recognized the mare, and so had the eyes of fifty
+men around him. No man with half an eye for a horse could have failed
+to recognize that black mare, having ever seen her once. She came like
+a goat among the rocks, just as she had once dived into darkness in the
+Khyber with King following. In another two minutes King had recognized
+the Rangar's silken turban. And now there was no need to restrain the
+men; they all stood and watched, to know what new turn affairs were
+taking.
+
+Most of them were staring downward at the Rangar's head as he urged the
+mare up the cliff path, when the explanation of Yasmini's message came.
+It was only King, urged by some intuition, who had his eyes fixed on
+Khinjan.
+
+There came a shock that actually swayed the hill they stood on. The mare
+on the path below missed her footing and fell a dozen feet, only to
+get up again and scramble as if a thousand devils were behind her, the
+Rangar riding her grimly, like a jockey in a race. Three more shocks
+followed. A great slice of Khinjan suddenly caved in with a roar, and
+smoke and dust burst upward through the tumbling crust.
+
+There was a pause after that, as if the waiting elements were gathering
+strength. For ten minutes they watched and scarcely breathed. Rewa Gunga
+gained the summit and, dismounting, stood by King with the reins over
+his arm. The mare was too blown to do anything but stand and tremble.
+And King was too enthralled to do anything but stare.
+
+“That is what a woman can do for a man!” said Rewa Gunga grimly. “She
+set a fuse and exploded all the dynamite. There were tons of it! The
+galleries must have fallen in, one on the other! A thousand men digging
+for a thousand years could never get into Khinjan now, and the only way
+out is down Earth's Drink! She bade me come and bid you good-by, sahib.
+I would have stayed in there, but she commanded me. She said, 'Tell King
+sahib my love was true. Tell him I give him India and all Asia that were
+at my mercy!'”
+
+While the Rangar spoke there came three more earth tremors in swift
+succession, and a thunder out of Khinjan as if the very “Hills” were
+coming to an end. The mare grew frantic and the Rangar summoned six men
+to hold her.
+
+Suddenly, right over the top of Khinjan's upper rim, where only the
+eagles ever perched, there burst a column of water, immeasurable, huge,
+that for a moment blotted out the sun. It rose sheer upward, curved on
+itself, and fell in a million-ton deluge on to Khinjan and into Khinjan
+valley, hissing and roaring and thundering.
+
+Earth's Drink had been blocked by the explosion and had found a new
+way over the barrier before plunging down again into the bowels of
+the world. The one sky-flung leap it made as its weight burst down a
+mountain wall was enough to blot out Khinjan forever, and what had been
+a dry mile-wide moat was a shallow lake with death's rack and rubbish
+floating on the surface.
+
+The earth rocked. The Hillmen prayed, and King stared, trying to
+memorize all that had been. Suddenly it flashed across his mind that the
+Rangar who had striven like a fiend to stab him only a matter of hours
+ago was now standing behind him, within a yard.
+
+He was up on his feet in a second and faced about. The Rangar laughed.
+
+“So ends the 'Heart of the Hills!'” he said. “Think kindly of her,
+sahib. She thought well enough of you!”
+
+He laughed again and sprang on the black mare, and before King could
+speak or raise a hand to stop him he was off, hell-bent-for-leather
+along the precipice in the direction of the Khyber Pass and India. Two
+of the men who had come out of Khinjan mounted and spurred after him.
+
+King collected his men and the women and children. It was easy, for they
+were numb from what they had witnessed and dazed by fear. In half an
+hour he had them mustered and marching.
+
+“Let us go back and loot the mullah's camp and take the women!” urged a
+dozen men at least.
+
+“Go then!” said King. “Go back! But I go on!”
+
+“He is afraid! The hakim is afraid of what he saw!”
+
+King let them think so. He let them think anything they chose, knowing
+well that what had unnerved him had at least rendered them amenable to
+leading. They would have no more dared go back without him, and without
+at least a hundred others, than they would have dared go and hunt in the
+ruins of Khinjan.
+
+Even Ismail clang to his stirrup and would not leave him, looking like
+a fledgling with his beard all new-sprouted on his jaw, and eyes wider
+than any bird's.
+
+“Why art thou here?” King asked him. “Had she no true men who would die
+with her?”
+
+The Afridi scowled, but choked the answer back.
+
+“Art thou my man now?” King asked him. But he shook his head.
+
+So they marched without talking over the hideous boulder-strewn range
+that separates Khinjan from the Khyber, sleeping fitfully whenever King
+called a halt, and eating almost nothing at all, for only a few of them
+had thought of bringing food.
+
+They reached the Khyber famished and were fed at Ali Masjid Fort, after
+King had given a certain password and had whispered to the officer
+commanding. But he did not change into European clothes yet, and none of
+his following suspected him of being an Englishman.
+
+“A Rangar on a black mare has gone down the pass ahead of you in a
+hurry,” they told him at Ali Masjid. “He had two men with him and food
+enough. Only stopped long enough to make his business known.”
+
+“What did he say his business is?” asked King.
+
+“He gave a sign and said a word that satisfied us--on that point!”
+
+“Oh!” said King. “Can you signal down the Pass?”
+
+“Surely.”
+
+“Courtenay still at Jamrud?”
+
+“Yes. In charge there and growing tired of doing nothing.”
+
+“Signal down and ask him to have that bath ready for me that I spoke
+about. Good-by.”
+
+So he left Ali Masjid at the head of a motley procession that grew
+noisier and more confident every hour. Ismail still clung to his
+stirrup, but began to grow more lively and to have a good many orders to
+fling to the rest.
+
+“You mourn like a dog,” King told him. “Three howls and a whine and a
+little sulking--and then forgetfulness!”
+
+Ismail looked nasty at that but did not answer, although he seemed to
+have a hot word ready. And thenceforward he hung his head more, and at
+least tried to seem bereaved. But his manner was unconvincing none the
+less, and King found it food for thought.
+
+The ex-soldiers and would-be soldiers marched in fours behind him,
+growing hourly more like drilled men, and talking, with each stride that
+brought them nearer India, more as men do who have an interest in law
+and order. Behind them tramped the women from Khinjan, carrying their
+babies and their husbands loads; and behind them again were the other
+women, who had been told they would be overtaken in the Khyber, but who
+had actually had to run themselves raw-footed in order to catch up.
+
+Down the Khyber have come conquerors, a dozen conquering kings, and as
+many beaten armies; but surely no stranger host than this ever trudged
+between the echoing walls. The very eagles screamed at them.
+
+And as they neared Jamrud Fort the men who sought pardons began to grow
+sheepish. They began to remember that the hakim might after all be a
+trickster, and to realize how much too friendly--how almost intimate he
+had been with the sahibs at Ali Masjid. They began to cluster round
+him instead of letting him lead, and by the time they met the farthest
+outposts up the Khyber they were as nervous as raw recruits and ready to
+turn and bolt at a word--for no one can be more timid than your Hillman
+when he is not sure of himself, just as no one can be braver when he
+knows his ground.
+
+Signals preceded them, and Courtenay himself rode up the Pass to greet
+them. But of course he was not very cordial to King, considering his
+disguise; and he chose to keep the Hillmen in doubt yet as to their
+eventual reception. But one of them, the Orakzai Pathan (for nothing
+could completely unman him), shouted to know whether it was true that
+pardons had been offered for deserters, and Courtenay nodded. They were
+less timid after that. Some of them pulled medals out and pinned them
+outside their shirts.
+
+At Jamrud they were given food and their rifles were taken away from
+them and a guard was set to watch them. But the guard only consisted
+of two men, both of whom were Pathans, and they assured them that,
+ridiculous though it sounded, the British were actually willing to
+forgive their enemies and to pardon all deserters who applied for pardon
+on condition of good faith in the future.
+
+That night they prayed to Allah like little children lost and found. The
+women crooned love-songs to their babies over the clear fires and the
+men talked--and talked--and talked until the stars grew big as moons to
+weary eyes and they slept at last, to dream of khaki uniforms and karnel
+sahibs who knew neither fear nor favor and who said things that were so.
+It is a mad world to the Himalayan Hillman where men in authority tell
+truth unadorned without shame and without consideration--a mad, mad
+world, and perhaps too exotic to be wholesome, but pleasant while the
+dream lasts.
+
+Over in the fort Courtenay placed a bath at King's disposal and lent him
+clean clothes and a razor. But he was not very cordial.
+
+“Tell me all the war news!” said King, splashing in the tub. And
+Courtenay told him, passing him another cake of soap when the first
+was finished. After all there was not much to tell--butchery in
+Belgium--Huns and guns--and the everlastingly glorious stand that saved
+Paris and France and Europe.
+
+“According to the cables our men are going the records one better. I
+think that's all,” said Courtenay.
+
+“Then why the stuffiness?” asked King. “Why am I talked to at the end of
+a tube, so to speak?”
+
+“You're under arrest!” said Courtenay.
+
+“The deuce I am!”
+
+“I'm taking care of you myself to obviate the necessity of putting a
+sentry on guard over you.”
+
+“Good of you, I'm sure. What's it all about?”
+
+“I don't mind telling you, but I'd rather you'd wait. The minute you
+were sighted word was wired down to headquarters, and the general
+himself will be up here by train any minute.”
+
+“Very well,” said King. “Got a cigar? Got a black one? Blacker the
+better!”
+
+He was out of his bath and remembered that minute that he had not smoked
+a cigar since leaving India. Naked, shaved, with some of the stain
+removed, he did not look like a man in trouble as he filled his lungs
+with the saltpeterish smoke of a fat Trichinopoli.
+
+And then the general came and did not wait for King to get dressed but
+burst into the bathroom and shook hands with him while he was still
+naked and asked ten questions (like a gatling gun) while King was
+getting on his trousers, divining each answer after the third word and
+waving the rest aside.
+
+“And why am I arrested, sir?” asked King the moment he could slip the
+question in edgewise.
+
+“Oh, yes, of course. Try the case here as well as anywhere. What does
+this mean?”
+
+Out of his pocket the general produced a letter that smelt strongly of
+a scent King recognized. He spread it out on a table, and King read. It
+was Yasmini's letter that she had sent down the Khyber to make India too
+hot to hold him.
+
+        “Your Captain King has been too much trouble.  He has
+        taken money from the Germans.  He adopted native dress.
+        He called himself Kurram Khan.  He slew his own brother
+        at night in the Khyber Pass.  These men will say that
+        he carried the head to Khinjan, and their word is true.
+        I, Yasmini, saw.  He used the head for a passport to
+        obtain admittance.  He proclaims a jihad!  He urges
+        invasion of India!  He held up his brother's head before
+        five thousand men and boasted of the murder.  The next
+        you shall hear of your Captain King of the Khyber Rifles
+        he will be leading a jihad into India.  You would have
+        better trusted me.  Yasmini.”
+
+“Too bad about your brother,” said the general.
+
+“The body is buried. How much is true about the head?”
+
+King told him.
+
+“Where's she?” asked the general.
+
+King did not answer. The general waited.
+
+“I don't know, sir.”
+
+“Ask the Rangar,” Courtenay suggested.
+
+“Where is he?” asked King.
+
+“Caught him coming down the Khyber on his black mare and arrested him.
+He's in the next room! I hope he's to be hanged. So that I can buy the
+mare,” he added cheerfully.
+
+King whistled softly to himself, and the general looked at him through
+half-closed eyes.
+
+“Go in and talk to him, King. Let me know the result.”
+
+He had picked King to go up the Khyber on that errand not for nothing.
+He knew King and he knew the symptoms. Without answering him King
+obeyed. He went out of the room into a dark corridor and rapped on the
+door of the next room to the right. There was a muffled answer from
+within. Courtenay shouted something to the sentry outside the door and
+he called another man who fitted a key in the lock. King walked into a
+room in which one lamp was burning and the door slammed shut behind him.
+
+He was in there an hour, and it never did transpire just what passed,
+for he can hold his tongue on any subject like a clam, and the general,
+if anything, can go him one better. Courtenay was placed under orders
+not to talk, so those who say they know exactly what happened in the
+room between the time when the door was shut on King and the time when
+he knocked to have it opened and called for the general, are not telling
+the truth.
+
+What is known is that finally the general hurried through the door and
+ejaculated, “Well, I'm damned!” before it could close again. The sentry
+(Punjabi Mussulman) has sworn to that over a dozen camp-fires since the
+day.
+
+And it is known, too, for the sentry has taken oath on it and has told
+the story so many times without much variation that no one who knows the
+man's record doubts any longer--it is known that when the door opened
+again King and the general walked out, with the Rangar between them. And
+the Rangar had no turban on, but carried it unwound in his hand. And his
+golden hair fell nearly to his knees and changed his whole appearance.
+And he was weeping. And he was not a Rangar at all, but she, and how
+anybody can ever have mistaken her for a man, even in man's clothes and
+with her skin darkened, was beyond the sentry's power to guess. He for
+one, etc.... But nobody believed that part of his tale.
+
+As Yussuf bin Ali said over the camp-fire up the Khyber later on, “When
+she sets out to disguise herself, she is what she will be, and he who
+says he thinks otherwise has two tongues and no conscience!”
+
+What is surely true is that the four of them--Yasmini, the general,
+Courtenay and King sat up all night in a room in the fort, talking
+together, while a succession of sentries overstrained their ears
+endeavoring to hear through keyholes. And the sentries heard nothing and
+invented very much.
+
+But Partan Singh, the Sikh, who carried in bread and cocoa to them at
+about five the next morning and found them still talking, heard King
+say, “So, in my opinion, sir, there'll be no jihad in these parts.
+There'll be sporadic raids, of course, but nothing a brigade can't deal
+with. The heart of the holy war's torn out and thrown away.”
+
+“Very well,” said the general. “You can get up the Khyber again and join
+your regiment.”'
+
+But by that time the Rangar's turban was on again and the tears were
+dry, and it was Partan Singh who threw most doubt on the sentry's tale
+about the golden hair. But, as the sentry said, no doubt Partan Singh
+was jealous.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that the general went back to Peshawur in the
+train at eight o'clock and that the Rangar went with him in a separate
+compartment with about a dozen Hillmen chosen from among those who had
+come down with King.
+
+And it is certain that before they went King had a talk with the Rangar
+in a room alone, of which conversation, however, the sentry reported
+afterward that he did not overhear one word; and he had to go to the
+doctor with a cold in his ear at that. He said he was nearly sure he
+heard weeping. But on the other hand, those who saw both of them come
+out were certain that both were smiling.
+
+It is quite certain that Athelstan King went up the Khyber again, for
+the official records say so, and they never lie, especially in time of
+war. He rode a coal-black mare, and Courtenay called him “Chikki”--a
+“lifter.”
+
+Some say the Rangar went to Delhi. Some say Yasmini is in Delhi. Some
+say no. But it is quite certain that before he started up the Khyber
+King showed Courtenay a great gold bracelet that he had under his
+sleeve. Five men saw him do it.
+
+And if that was really Rewa Gunga in the general's train, why was the
+general so painfully polite to him? And why did Ismail insist on riding
+in the train, instead of accepting King's offer to go up the Khyber with
+him?
+
+One thing is very certain. King was right about the jihad. There has
+been none in spite of all Turkey's and Germany's efforts. There have
+been sporadic raids, much as usual, but nothing one brigade could not
+easily deal with, the paid press to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+King of the Khyber Rifles is now a major, for you can see that by
+turning up the army list.
+
+But if you wish to know just what transpired in the room in Jamrud Fort
+while the general and Courtenay waited, you must ask King--if you dare;
+for only he knows, and one other. It is not likely you can find the
+other.
+
+But it is likely that you may hear from both of them again, for “A woman
+and intrigue are one!” as India says. The war seems long, and the world
+is large, and the chances for intrigue are almost infinite, given such
+combination as King and Yasmini and a love affair.
+
+And as King says on occasion: “Kuch dar nahin hai! There is no such
+thing as fear!” Another one might say, “The roof's the limit!”
+
+And bear in mind, for this is important: King wrote to Yasmini a letter,
+in Urdu from the mullah's cave, in which he as good as gave her his word
+of honor to be her “loyal servant” should she choose to return to her
+allegiance. He is no splitter of hairs, no quibbler. His word is good on
+the darkest night or wherever he casts a shadow in the sun.
+
+“A man and his promise--a woman and intrigue--are one!”
+
+
+The End
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KING--OF THE KHYBER RIFLES: A
+ROMANCE OF ADVENTURE ***
\ No newline at end of file