King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of AdventureMundy, Talbot
History
King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure
Mundy, Talbot
British -- India -- Fiction; Historical fiction; India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction; Love stories; War stories
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?”'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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