When the Indian Mutiny broke out, and a little time before the siege of
Delhi, a regiment of Native Irregular Horse was stationed at Peshawur on
the frontier of India. That regiment caught what John Lawrence called
at the time “the prevalent mania,” and would have thrown in its lot with
the mutineers, had it been allowed to do so. The chance never came, for,
as the regiment swept off down south, it was headed off by a remnant
of an English corps into the hills of Afghanistan, and there the newly
conquered tribesmen turned against it as wolves turn against buck. It
was hunted for the sake of its arms and accoutrements from hill to hill,
from ravine to ravine, up and down the dried beds of rivers and round
the shoulders of bluffs, till it disappeared as water sinks in the
sand--this officerless rebel regiment. The only trace left of its
existence to-day is a nominal roll drawn up in neat round hand and
countersigned by an officer who called himself, “Adjutant, late
Irregular Cavalry.” The paper is yellow with years and dirt, but on the
back of it you can still read a pencil-note by John Lawrence, to this
effect: “See that the two native officers who remained loyal are not
deprived of their estates.--J. L.” Of six hundred and fifty sabres only
two stood strain, and John Lawrence in the midst of all the agony of the
first months of the Mutiny found time to think about their merits.
That was more than thirty years ago, and the tribesmen across the Afghan
border who helped to annihilate the regiment are now old men. Sometimes
a graybeard speaks of his share in the massacre. “They came,” he will
say, “across the border, very proud, calling upon us to rise and kill
the English, and go down to the sack of Delhi. But we who had just been
conquered by the same English knew that they were over-bold, and that
the Government could account easily for those down-country dogs. This
Hindustani regiment, therefore, we treated with fair words, and kept
standing in one place till the redcoats came after them very hot and
angry. Then this regiment ran forward a little more into our hills to
avoid the wrath of the English, and we lay upon their flanks watching
from the sides of the hills till we were well assured that their path
was lost behind them. Then we came down, for we desired their clothes,
and their bridles, and their rifles, and their boots--more especially
their boots. That was a great killing--done slowly.” Here the old man
will rub his nose, and shake his long snaky locks, and lick his bearded
lips, and grin till the yellow tooth-stumps show. “Yea, we killed them
because we needed their gear, and we knew that their lives had been
forfeited to God on account of their sin--the sin of treachery to the
salt which they had eaten. They rode up and down the valleys, stumbling
and rocking in their saddles, and howling for mercy. We drove them
slowly like cattle till they were all assembled in one place, the flat
wide valley of Sheor Kit. Many had died from want of water, but there
still were many left, and they could not make any stand. We went among
them pulling them down with our hands two at a time, and our boys killed
them who were new to the sword. My share of the plunder was such and
such--so many guns, and so many saddles. The guns were good in those
days. Now we steal the Government rifles, and despise smooth barrels.
Yes, beyond doubt we wiped that regiment from off the face of the earth,
and even the memory of the deed is now dying. But men say--”
At this point the tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to
find out what men said across the border. The Afghans were always a
secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying
anything at all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till
one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut
the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away
three or four women, and withdraw, in the red glare of burning thatch,
driving the cattle and goats before them to their own desolate hills.
The Indian Government would become almost tearful on these occasions.
First it would say, “Please be good and we'll forgive you.” The tribe
concerned in the latest depredation would collectively put its thumb to
its nose and answer rudely. Then the Government would say: “Hadn't you
better pay up a little money for those few corpses you left behind you
the other night?” Here the tribe would temporise, and lie and bully,
and some of the younger men, merely to show contempt of authority, would
raid another police-post and fire into some frontier mud-fort, and, if
lucky, kill a real English officer. Then the Government would say:--
“Observe; if you really persist in this line of conduct, you will be
hurt.” If the tribe knew exactly what was going on in India, it would
apologise or be rude, according as it learned whether the Government
was busy with other things or able to devote its full attention to
their performances. Some of the tribes knew to one corpse how far to go.
Others became excited, lost their heads, and told the Government to come
on. With sorrow and tears, and one eye on the British taxpayer at home,
who insisted on regarding these exercises as brutal wars of annexation,
the Government would prepare an expensive little field-brigade and some
guns, and send all up into the hills to chase the wicked tribe out of
the valleys, where the corn grew, into the hill-tops, where there was
nothing to eat. The tribe would turn out in full strength and enjoy the
campaign, for they knew that their women would never be touched, that
their wounded would be nursed, not mutilated, and that as soon as each
man's bag of corn was spent they could surrender and palaver with the
English General as though they had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years
afterwards, they would pay the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the
Government, and tell their children how they had slain the redcoats by
thousands. The only drawback to this kind of picnic-war was the weakness
of the redcoats for solemnly blowing up with powder their fortified
towers and keeps. This the tribes always considered mean.
Chief among the leaders of the smaller tribes--the little clans who
knew to a penny the expense of moving white troops against them--was
a priest-bandit-chief whom we will call the Gulla Kutta Mullah. His
enthusiasm for Border murder as an art was almost dignified. He would
cut down a mail-runner from pure wantonness, or bombard a mud-fort with
rifle-fire when he knew that our men needed to sleep. In his leisure
moments he would go on circuit among his neighbours, and try to
incite other tribes to devilry. Also, he kept a kind of hotel for
fellow-outlaws in his own village, which lay in a valley called Bersund.
Any respectable murderer on that section of the frontier was sure to lie
up at Bersund, for it was reckoned an exceedingly safe place. The sole
entry to it ran through a narrow gorge which could be converted into a
death-trap in five minutes. It was surrounded by high hills, reckoned
inaccessible to all save born mountaineers, and here the Gulla Kutta
Mullah lived in great state, the head of a colony of mud and stone huts,
and in each mud hut hung some portion of a red uniform and the plunder
of dead men. The Government particularly wished for his capture, and
once invited him formally to come out and be hanged on account of the
many murders in which he had taken a direct part. He replied:--
“I am only twenty miles, as the crow flies, from your border. Come and
fetch me.”
“Some day we will come,” said the Government, “and hanged you will be.”
The Gulla Kutta Mullah let the matter slip from his mind. He knew that
the patience of the Government was as long as a summer day; but he
did not realise that its arm was as long as a winter night. Months
afterwards, when there was peace on the border, and all India was quiet,
the Indian Government turned in its sleep and remembered the Gulla Kutta
Mullah at Bersund, with his thirteen outlaws. The movement against him
of one single regiment--which the telegrams would have translated as
war--would have been highly impolitic. This was a time for silence and
speed, and, above all, absence of bloodshed.
You must know that all along the north-west frontier of India there is
spread a force of some thirty thousand foot and horse, whose duty it is
to quietly and unostentatiously shepherd the tribes in front of them.
They move up and down, and down and up, from one desolate little post to
another; they are ready to take the field at ten minutes' notice; they
are always half in and half out of a difficulty somewhere along the
monotonous line; their lives are as hard as their own muscles, and the
papers never say anything about them. It was from this force that the
Government picked its men.
One night, at a station where the mounted Night Patrol fire as they
challenge, and the wheat rolls in great blue-green waves under our cold
northern moon, the officers were playing billiards in the mud-walled
club-house, when orders came to them that they were to go on parade at
once for a night-drill. They grumbled, and went to turn out their men--a
hundred English troops, let us say, two hundred Goorkhas, and about a
hundred cavalry of the finest native cavalry in the world.
When they were on the parade-ground, it was explained to them in
whispers that they must set off at once across the hills to Bersund. The
English troops were to post themselves round the hills at the side of
the valley; the Goorkhas would command the gorge and the death-trap, and
the cavalry would fetch a long march round and get to the back of the
circle of hills, whence, if there were any difficulty, they could charge
down on the Mullah's men. But orders were very strict that there should
be no fighting and no noise. They were to return in the morning with
every round of ammunition intact, and the Mullah and the thirteen
outlaws bound in their midst. If they were successful, no one would know
or care anything about their work; but failure meant probably a small
border war, in which the Gulla Kutta Mullah would pose as a popular
leader against a big bullying power, instead of a common Border
murderer.
Then there was silence, broken only by the clicking of the
compass-needles and snapping of watch-cases, as the heads of columns
compared bearings and made appointments for the rendezvous. Five minutes
later the parade-ground was empty; the green coats of the Goorkhas and
the overcoats of the English troops had faded into the darkness, and the
cavalry were cantering away in the face of a blinding drizzle.
What the Goorkhas and the English did will be seen later on. The heavy
work lay with the horses, for they had to go far and pick their way
clear of habitations. Many of the troopers were natives of that part of
the world, ready and anxious to fight against their kin, and some of
the officers had made private and unofficial excursions into those hills
before. They crossed the border, found a dried river-bed, cantered up
that, walked through a stony gorge, risked crossing a low hill under
cover of the darkness, skirted another hill, leaving their hoof-marks
deep in some ploughed ground, felt their way along another water-course,
ran over the neck of a spur praying that no one would hear their horses
grunting, and so worked on in the rain and the darkness till they had
left Bersund and its crater of hills a little behind them, and to the
left, and it was time to swing round. The ascent commanding the back
of Bersund was steep, and they halted to draw breath in a broad level
valley below the height. That is to say, the men reined up, but the
horses, blown as they were, refused to halt. There was unchristian
language, the worse for being delivered in a whisper, and you heard the
saddles squeaking in the darkness as the horses plunged.
The subaltern at the rear of one troop turned in his saddle and said
very softly:--
“Carter, what the blessed heavens are you doing at the rear? Bring your
men up, man.”