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!”