They swore the land was empty of Boer-log. They held up their hands and swore it. That was about the time of the evening meal. I stood near the verandah with Sikander Khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost scent. At last he took my arm and said, “See yonder! There is the sun on the window of the house that signalled last night. This house can see that house from here,” and he looked at the hill behind him all hairy with bushes, and sucked in his breath. Then the idiot with the shrivelled head danced by me and threw back that head, and regarded the roof and laughed like a hyena, and the fat woman talked loudly, as it were, to cover some noise. After this passed I to the back of the house on pretence to get water for tea, and I saw fresh fresh horse-dung on the ground, and that the ground was cut with the new marks of hoofs; and there had dropped in the dirt one cartridge. Then Kurban Sahib called to me in our tongue, saying, “Is this a good place to make tea?” and I replied, knowing what he meant, “There are over many cooks in the cook-house. Mount and go, Child.” Then I returned, and he said, smiling to the woman, “Prepare food, and when we have loosened our girths we will come in and eat;” but to his men he said in a whisper, “Ride away!” No. He did not cover the old man or the fat woman with his rifle. That was not his custom. Some fool of the _Durro Muts_, being hungry, raised his voice to dispute the order to flee, and before we were in our saddles many shots came from the roof—from rifles thrust through the thatch. Upon this we rode across the valley of stones, and men fired at us from the nullah behind the house, and from the hill behind the nullah, as well as from the roof of the house—so many shots that it sounded like a drumming in the hills. Then Sikandar Khan, riding low, said, “This play is not for us alone, but for the rest of the _Durro Muts_,” and I said, “Be quiet. Keep place!” for his place was behind me, and I rode behind Kurban Sahib. But these new bullets will pass through five men a-row! We were not hit—not one of us—and we reached the hill of rocks and scattered among the stones, and Kurban Sahib turned in his saddle and said, “Look at the old man!” He stood in the verandah firing swiftly with a gun, the woman beside him and the idiot also—both with guns. Kurban Sahib laughed, and I caught him by the wrist, but—his fate was written at that hour. The bullet passed under my arm-pit and struck him in the liver, and I pulled him backward between two great rocks atilt—Kurban Sahib, my Kurban Sahib! From the nullah behind the house and from the hills came our Boer-log in number more than a hundred, and Sikandar Khan said, “_Now_ we see the meaning of last night’s signal. Give me the rifle.” He took Kurban Sahib’s rifle—in this war of fools only the doctors carry swords—and lay belly-flat to the work, but Kurban Sahib turned where he lay and said, “Be still. It is a Sahibs’ war,” and Kurban Sahib put up his hand—thus;