'Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!'
'That is a lie; thou art afraid.'
A longer pause followed, and then: 'I am afraid. Be silent! They are
below us still. Pray to God and sleep.'
The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand
what save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.
Shahbaz Khan began to call again: 'They are below us. I can see them.
For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah! My father slew ten
of them. Come over!'
Hafiz Ullah answered in a very loud voice, 'Mine was guiltless. Hear,
ye Men of the Night, neither my father nor my blood had any part in
that sin. Bear thou thy own punishment, Shahbaz Khan.'
'Oh, some one ought to stop those two chaps crowing away like cocks
there,' said Lieutenant Halley, shivering under his rock.
He had hardly turned round to expose a new side of him to the rain
before a bearded, long-locked, evil-smelling Afghan rushed up the
hill, and tumbled into his arms. Halley sat upon him, and thrust as
much of a sword-hilt as could be spared down the man's gullet. 'If
you cry out, I kill you,' he said cheerfully.
The man was beyond any expression of terror. He lay and quaked,
grunting. When Halley took the sword-hilt from between his teeth, he
was still inarticulate, but clung to Halley's arm, feeling it from
elbow to wrist.
'The Rissala! The dead Rissala!' he gasped. 'It is down there!'
'No; the Rissala, the very much alive Rissala. It is up here,' said
Halley, unshipping his watering-bridle, and fastening the man's
hands. 'Why were you in the towers so foolish as to let us pass?'
'The valley is full of the dead,' said the Afghan. 'It is better to
fall into the hands of the English than the hands of the dead. They
march to and fro below there. I saw them in the lightning.'
He recovered his composure after a little, and whispering, because
Halley's pistol was at his stomach, said: 'What is this? There is no
war between us now, and the Mullah will kill me for not seeing you
pass!'
'Rest easy,' said Halley; 'we are coming to kill the Mullah, if God
please. His teeth have grown too long. No harm will come to thee
unless the daylight shows thee as a face which is desired by the
gallows for crime done. But what of the dead regiment?'
'I only kill within my own border,' said the man, immensely relieved.
'The Dead Regiment is below. The men must have passed through it on
their journey--four hundred dead on horses, stumbling among their own
graves, among the little heaps--dead men all, whom we slew.'
'Whew!' said Halley. 'That accounts for my cursing Carter and the
Major cursing me. Four hundred sabres, eh? No wonder we thought there
were a few extra men in the troop. Kurruk Shah,' he whispered to a
grizzled native officer that lay within a few feet of him, 'hast thou
heard anything of a dead Rissala in these hills?'
'Assuredly,' said Kurruk Shah with a grim chuckle. 'Otherwise, why
did I, who have served the Queen for seven-and-twenty years, and
killed many hill-dogs, shout aloud for quarter when the lightning
revealed us to the watch-towers? When I was a young man I saw the
killing in the valley of Sheor-Kot there at our feet, and I know the
tale that grew up therefrom. But how can the ghosts of unbelievers
prevail against us who are of the Faith? Strap that dog's hands a
little tighter, Sahib. An Afghan is like an eel.'
'But a dead Rissala,' said Halley, jerking his captive's wrist. 'That
is foolish talk, Kurruk Shah. The dead are dead. Hold still, _sag_.'
The Afghan wriggled.
'The dead are dead, and for that reason they walk at night. What need
to talk? We be men; we have our eyes and ears. Thou canst both see
and hear them, down the hillside,' said Kurruk Shah composedly.
Halley stared and listened long and intently. The valley was full of
stifled noises, as every valley must be at night; but whether he saw
or heard more than was natural Halley alone knows, and he does not
choose to speak on the subject.
At last, and just before the dawn, a green rocket shot up from the
far side of the valley of Bersund, at the head of the gorge, to show
that the Goorkhas were in position. A red light from the infantry at
left and right answered it, and the cavalry burnt a white flare.
Afghans in winter are late sleepers, and it was not till full day
that the Gulla Kutta Mullah's men began to straggle from their huts,
rubbing their eyes. They saw men in green, and red, and brown
uniforms, leaning on their arms, neatly arranged all round the crater
of the village of Bersund, in a cordon that not even a wolf could
have broken. They rubbed their eyes the more when a pink-faced young
man, who was not even in the Army, but represented the Political
Department, tripped down the hillside with two orderlies, rapped at
the door of the Gulla Kutta Mullah's house, and told him quietly to
step out and be tied up for safe transport. That same young man
passed on through the huts, tapping here one cateran and there
another lightly with his cane; and as each was pointed out, so he was
tied up, staring hopelessly at the crowned heights around where the
English soldiers looked down with incurious eyes. Only the Mullah
tried to carry it off with curses and high words, till a soldier who
was tying his hands said:--
'None o' your lip! Why didn't you come out when you was ordered,
instead o' keepin' us awake all night? You're no better than my own
barrack-sweeper, you white-'eaded old polyanthus! Kim up!'
Half an hour later the troops had gone away with the Mullah and his
thirteen friends. The dazed villagers were looking ruefully at a pile
of broken muskets and snapped swords, and wondering how in the world
they had come so to miscalculate the forbearance of the Indian
Government.
It was a very neat little affair, neatly carried out, and the men
concerned were unofficially thanked for their services.
Yet it seems to me that much credit is also due to another regiment
whose name did not appear in the brigade orders, and whose very
existence is in danger of being forgotten.