“Because the enemy’s supplies must be exhausted by then. These border armies never carry much food with them, expecting to live on the country. We are preventing that. There is no food to be got in the hills, and when they burned the forest they destroyed any chances in that direction. We have sent Harris with one of the guns to make a flank march to the south and take up a strong position with Vidal and his police across the road by which the enemy came, and the Sheikh will take good care that no stragglers get past him. So far as we can see, they must either fight or surrender.” “But isn’t it rather cruel--starving them out in this way?” “Cruel! If you talk of cruelty, wasn’t it cruel of them to fire the best _shikargah_ in Khemistan? Isn’t it cruel of them now to be keeping us grilling out on the plains, without time even for a change of clothes? Why, until I managed to get a bath just now, I hadn’t taken off my things since the night we rode out to find you!” “You looked it, when you rode in two hours ago,” said Lady Haigh, with such fervent sympathy that her husband requested her indignantly not to be personal. “And if we’re not to starve them out, what are we to do?” he demanded, still smarting under the accusation of cruelty. “Of course, when an enemy takes up his quarters in broken country inside your borders, any fool will tell you you ought to clear him out; but what are you to do with one weak regiment against an army? Perhaps they will let the Chief raise another regiment after this--if we come through it--and give him the two more European officers he’s been asking for so long. Wilayat Ali might have swept us from the face of the earth if he had a grain of generalship about him, and Gobind Chand’s army might have rushed the guns a dozen times over if he could have got them to stand fire.” “But what is it that paralyses them?” asked Lady Haigh. “Mutual antipathy, so far as we can make out. It seems that Wilayat Ali carefully picked out the most disloyal Sardars to serve under Gobind Chand, evidently in the hope that either we or they would remove him from his path, and that the Sardars would also get their ranks thinned. He hasn’t forgotten Gobind Chand’s attempt to get the Chief’s help in deposing him, after all. But Gobind Chand is not eager to take the chances of war, and the Sardars don’t quite see hurling themselves against our guns that Wilayat Ali may have a walk-over; and, moreover, they see through his scheme now. It’s really as good as a play, the way the two chief villains are trying to betray one another to us.” “But have they actually tried to open negotiations?”