“'Twas ringin' in my ears still whin I felt in the bones of me that
Dinah was comin', an' I heard a shout, an' thin I saw a horse an' a
tattoo latherin' down the road, hell to shplit, under women. I knew--I
knew! Wan was the Tyrone Colonel's wife--ould Beeker's lady--her gray
hair flyin' an' her fat round carkiss rowlin' in the saddle, an' the
other was Dinah, that shud ha' been at Pindi. The Colonel's lady she
charged at the head av our column like a stone wall, an' she all but
knocked Beeker off his horse throwin' her arms round his neck an'
blubberin', 'Me bhoy! Me bhoy!' an' Dinah wheeled left an' came down
our flank, an' I let a yell that had suffered inside av me for months,
and--Dinah came. Will I iver forget that while I live! She'd come on
pass from Pindi, an' the Colonel's lady had lint her the tattoo. They'd
been huggin' an' cryin' in each other's arms all the long night.
“So she walked along wid her hand in mine, askin' forty questions to
wanst, an' beggin' me on the Virgin to make oath that there was not
a bullet consaled in me, unbeknownst somewhere, an' thin I remimbered
Love-o'-Women. He was watchin' us, an' his face was like the face av a
divil that has been cooked too long. I did not wish Dinah to see ut, for
whin a woman's runnin' over wid happiness she's like to be touched,
for harm aftherwards, by the laste little thing in life. So I dhrew the
curtain, an' Love-o'-Women lay back and groaned.
“Whin we marched into Peshawur, Dinah wint to barracks to wait for me,
an' me feelin' so rich that tide, I wint on to take Love-o'-Women to
hospital. It was the last I cud do, an' to save him the dust an' the
smother I turned the doolie-men down a road well clear av the rest av
the throops, an we wint along, me talkin' through the curtains. Av a
sudden I heard him say:--
“'Let me look. For the Mercy av Hiven, let me look!' I had been so tuk
up wid gettin' him out av the dust and thinkin' of Dinah that I had not
kept my eyes about me. There was a woman ridin' a little behind av us,
an', talkin' ut over wid Dinah aftherwards, that same woman must ha' rid
not far on the Jumrood road. Dinah said that she had been hoverin' like
a kite on the left flank av the column.
“I halted the doolie to set the curtains, an' she rode by walkin'-pace,
an' Love-o'-Women's eyes wint afther her as if he would fair haul her
down from the saddle.
“'Follow there,' was all he sez, but I niver heard a man spake in that
voice before or since, an' I knew by those two wan words an' the look
in his face that she was Di'monds-an'-Pearls that he'd talked av in his
disthresses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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