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