V
It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their night attack on the
lowland villages. The Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
plunder; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out of the
very earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down under the stars, so that
no man knew where to turn, and all feared that they had brought an army
about their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the panic of that flight
more men were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife
jabbed upwards, and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then there
rose a cry of treachery, and when they reached their own guarded
heights, they had left, with some forty dead and sixty wounded, all
their confidence in the Blind Mullah on the plains below. They
clamoured, swore, and argued round the fires; the women wailing for the
lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses on the returned.
Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for he had taken no part
in the fight, rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out that the
tribe owed every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah, who
had lied in every possible particular and talked them into a trap. It
was undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should
presume to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah
pretended, herald a general time of license and lifting; and the
inexplicable madness of the English had not in the least impaired their
power of guarding their marches. On the contrary, the baffled and out-
generalled tribe would now, just when their food-stock was lowest, be
blockaded from any trade with Hindustan until they had sent hostages for
good behaviour, paid compensation for disturbance, and blood-money at
the rate of thirty-six English pounds per head for every villager that
they might have slain. 'And ye know that those lowland dogs will make
oath that we have slain scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or must we
sell our guns?' A low growl ran round the fires. 'Now, seeing that all
this is the Mullah's work, and that we have gained nothing but promises
of Paradise thereby, it is in my heart that we of the Khusru Kheyl lack
a shrine whereat to pray. We are weakened, and henceforth how shall we
dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border, as has been our custom, to
kneel to Pir Sajji's tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us, and rightly.
But our Mullah is a holy man. He has helped two score of us into
Paradise this night. Let him therefore accompany his flock, and we will
build over his body a dome of the blue tiles of Mooltan, and burn lamps
at his feet every Friday night. He shall be a saint: we shall have a
shrine; and there our women shall pray for fresh seed to fill the gaps
in our fighting-tale. How think you?'
A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of
unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion,
and met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet,
glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and
calling down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a
game of blind man's buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk
Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.
They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped
aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back
of his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his
adherents to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for
Khoda Dad Khan had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men
described to him the glories of the shrine they would build, and the
little children clapping their hands cried, 'Run, Mullah, run! There's a
man behind you!' In the end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan's
brother sent a knife home between his ribs. 'Wherefore,' said Khoda Dad
Khan with charming simplicity, 'I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!' No
man gainsaid him; and they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.
On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry
charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked
with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in
leash so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald's
right ear had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its
unskilled rider, Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and
sobbed till Tommy Dodd made him lie down and rest.
'We must wait about till the morning,' said he. 'I wired to the Colonel
just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He'll be
furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the
hills won't give us any more trouble.'
'Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar on
the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You're quite
sure, Tommy, that--that stuff was--was only the skewbald's ear?'
'Oh, quite,' said Tommy. 'You just missed cutting off his head. _I_ saw
you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.'
Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother
officers demanding the court-martial of Tommy Dodd for 'spoiling the
picnic,' and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris,
Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a
dozen of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the
Beshaklis restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section of
the Khusru Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming with
life as usual, while such of their men as had taken refuge in the
watercourses and ravines were being driven out by the troopers. By
sundown began the remorseless patrol of the Border by police and
trooper, most like the cow-boys' eternal ride round restless cattle.
'Now,' said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of
twinkling fires below, 'ye may see how far the old order changes. After
their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the
tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown
the hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire
Sahib--who loves me--and see if I can stave off at least the blockade.
Do I speak for the tribe?'
'Ay, speak for the tribe in God's name. How those accursed fires wink!
Do the English send their troops on the wire--or is this the work of the
Bengali?'
As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he was delayed by an interview with
a hard-pressed tribesman, which caused him to return hastily for
something he had forgotten. Then, handing himself over to the two
troopers who had been chasing his friend, he claimed escort to
Tallantire Sahib, then with Bullows at Jumala. The Border was safe, and
the time for reasons in writing had begun.
'Thank Heaven!' said Bullows, 'that the trouble came at once. Of course
we can never put down the reason in black and white, but all India will
understand. And it is better to have a sharp short outbreak than five
years of impotent administration inside the Border. It costs less. Grish
Chunder De has reported himself sick, and has been transferred to his
own province without any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not having
taken over the district.'
'Of course,' said Tallantire bitterly. 'Well, what am I supposed to have
done that was wrong?'
'Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all your powers, and should have
reported, and written, and advised for three weeks until the Khusru
Kheyl could really come down in force. But I don't think the authorities
will dare to make a fuss about it. They've had their lesson. Have you
seen Curbar's version of the affair? He can't write a report, but he can
speak the truth.'
'What's the use of the truth? He'd much better tear up the report. I'm
sick and heartbroken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary--except
in that it rid us of that Babu.'
Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed forage-net in his hand, and
the troopers behind him.
'May you never be tired!' said he cheerily. 'Well, Sahibs, that was a
good fight, and Naim Shah's mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib.
A clean cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded coat, and deep into the
collar-bone. Well done! But I speak for the tribe. There has been a
fault--a great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine, Tallantire Sahib,
kept the oath we sware to Orde Sahib on the banks of the Indus.'
'As an Afghan keeps his knife--sharp on one side, blunt on the other,'
said Tallantire.
'The better swing in the blow, then. But I speak God's truth. Only the
Blind Mullah carried the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said
that there was no more Border-law because a Bengali had been sent, and
we need not fear the English at all. So they came down to avenge that
insult and get plunder. Ye know what befell, and how far I helped. Now
five score of us are dead or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry,
and desire no further war. Moreover, that ye may better listen to us, we
have taken off the head of the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have
led us to folly. I bring it for proof,'--and he heaved on the floor the
head. 'He will give no more trouble, for I am chief now, and so I sit in
a higher place at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this head.
That was another fault. One of the men found that black Bengali beast,
through whom this trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping.
Reflecting that he had caused loss of much good life, Alla Dad Khan,
whom, if you choose, I will to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and
I bring it to you to cover your shame, that ye may bury it. See, no man
kept the spectacles, though they were of gold.'
Slowly rolled to Tallantire's feet the crop-haired head of a spectacled
Bengali gentleman, open-eyed, open-mouthed--the head of Terror
incarnate. Bullows bent down. 'Yet another blood-fine and a heavy one,
Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the head of Debendra Nath, the man's
brother. The Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the Khusru
Kheyl know that.'
'Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for me. The thing was under
our hills asking the road to Jumala and Alla Dad Khan showed him the
road to Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a fool. Remains now what
the Government will do to us. As to the blockade--'
'Who art thou, seller of dog's flesh,' thundered Tallantire, 'to speak
of terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills--go, and wait there
starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out for
punishment--children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be
still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!'
'Ay,' returned Khoda Dad Khan, 'for we also be men.'
As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, 'And by God, Sahib,
may thou be that man!'
