King--of the Khyber Rifles Part 56

"Was I never in Khinjan Caves?" he retorted. "Whence came I? I am her man, sent to help trap the mullah! I would have trapped all you, but for being weary of these 'Hills' and wishful to go back to India and be pardoned! That is who I am! That is how I know!"

Their breath came and went sibilantly, and the darkness was alive with the excitement they thought themselves too warrior-like to utter.

"But what will she do then?" asked somebody.

King searched his memory, and in a moment there came back to him a picture of the hurrying jezailchi he had held up in the Khyber Pa.s.s, and recollection of the man's words.

"Know ye not," he said, "that long ago she gave leave to all who ate the salt to be true to the salt? She gave the Khyber jezailchis leave to fight against her. Be sure, whatever she does, she will stand between no man and his pardon!"

"But will she lead a jihad? We will not fight against her!"

"Nay," said King, drawing his breath in. Ismail's chin felt like a knife against his collar bone, and Ismail's iron fingers clutched his arm. It was time to give his hostage to dame Fortune. "She will go down into India and use her influence in the matter of the pardons!"

"I believe thou art a very great liar indeed!" said the man who lacked part of his nose. "The Pathan went, and he did not come back. What proof have we."

"Ye have me!" said King. "If I show you no proof, how can I escape you?"

They all grunted agreement as to that. King used his elbow to hit Ismail in the ribs. He did not dare speak to him; but now was the time for Ismail to carry information to her, supposing that to be his job. And after a minute Ismail rolled into a shadow and was gone. King gave him twenty minutes start, letting his men rest their legs and exercise their tongues.

Now that he was out of the mullah's clutches-and he suspected Yasmini would know of it within an hour or two, and before dawn in any event-he began to feel like a player in a game of chess who foresees his opponent mate in so many moves.

If Yasmini were to let the mullah and his men into the Caves and to join forces with him in there, he would at least have time to hurry back to India with his eighty men and give warning. He might have time to call up the Khyber jezailchis and blockade the Caves before the hive could swarm, and he chuckled to think of the hope of that.

On the other hand, if there was to be a battle royal between Yasmini and the mullah he would be there to watch it and to comfort India with the news.

"Now we will go on again, in order to be close to Khinjan at break of day," he said, and they all got up and obeyed him as if his word had been law to them for years. Of all of them he was the only man in doubt-he who seemed most confident of all.

They swung along into the darkness under low-hung stars, trailing behind King's horse, with only half a dozen of them a hundred yards or so ahead as an advance guard, and all of them expecting to see Khinjan loom above each next valley, for distances and darkness are deceptive in the "Hills," even to trained eyes. Suddenly the advance guard halted, but did not shoot. And as King caught up with them he saw they were talking with some one.

He had to ride up close before he recognized the Orakzai Pathan.

"Salaam!" said the fellow with a grin. "I bring one hundred and eleven!"

As he spoke graveyard shadows rose out of the darkness all around and leaned on rifles.

"Be ye men all ex-soldiers of the raj?" King asked them.

"Aye!" they growled in chorus.

"What will ye?"

"Pardons!" They all said the word together.

"Who gave you leave to come?" King asked.

"None! He told us of the pardons and we came!"

"Aye!" said the Orakzai Pathan, drawing King aside. "But she gave me leave to seek them out and tempt them!"

"And what does she intend?" King asked him suddenly.

"She? Ask Allah, who put the spirit in her! How should I know?"

"We will march again, my brothers!" King shouted, and they streamed along behind him, now with no advance guard, but with the Orakzai Pathan striding beside King's horse, with a great hand on the saddle. Like the others, he seemed decided in his mind that the hakim ought not to be allowed much chance to escape.

Just as the dawn was tinting the surrounding peaks with softest rose they topped a ridge, and Khinjan lay below them across the mile-wide bone-dry valley. They all stood and stared at it, leaning on their guns. All the "Men with New Eyes" saw it now for the first time, and it held them speechless, for with its patchwork towers and high battlements it looked like a very city of the spirits that their tales around the fire on winter nights so linger on.

And while they watched, and the Khinjan men were beginning to murmur (for they needed no last view of the place to satisfy any longings!) none else than Ismail rose from behind a rock and came to King's stirrup. He tugged and King backed his horse until they stood together apart.

"She sends this message," said Ismail, showing his teeth in the most peculiar grin that surely the Hills ever witnessed. And then, omitting the message, he proceeded first to give some news. "Many of her men who have never been in the army, are none the less true to her, and she will not leave them to the mullah's mercy. They will leave the Caves in a little while and will come up here. They are to go down into India and be made prisoners if the sirkar will not enlist them. You are to wait for them here."

"Is that all her message?" King asked him.

"Nay. That is none of it! This is her message. THOU SHALT KNOW THIS DAY, THOU ENGLISHMAN, WHETHER OR NOT SHE TRULY LOVED THEE! THERE SHALL BE PROOF, SUCH AS EVEN THOU SHALT UNDERSTAND!"'

"What does that mean?"

"Nay, who am I that I should know?"

Ismail slipped away and lost himself among the men, and none of them seemed to notice that he had been away and had come again. On King's advice a dozen men climbed near-by eminences and began to watch for the mullah's coming. The Khinjan men murmured openly; they wanted to be off.

"But no," said King. "Go if ye will, but she has sent word that other men are coming. I wait for them here."

After a great deal of resentful argument they consented to lie hidden for an hour or two "but no longer," and King hid his horse in a hollow and persuaded three of them to gather gra.s.s for him. It was a little more than an hour after dawn and the chilled rocks were beginning to grow warmer when the head of a procession came out of Khinjan Gate and started toward them over the valley. In all more than five hundred men emerged and about a hundred women and children, and King's men were kept busy for half an hour counting them and quarreling about the exact number. Some of them were burdened heavily, and there was much discussion as to whether to loot them or not. Then:

"Muhammad Anim comes!" shouted a voice from a crag top.

They snuggled into better hiding, and there was no thought now of leaving before the mullah should go by. There began to be wagers as to whether her men would be hidden out of sight before the mullah could top the rise; and then, when the last man was safe across the valley and up the cliff and in hiding, there was endless argument as to how much each had betted and to whom he had lost. It needed an effort to quiet them when the mullah rose into view at last above the rise and paused for a minute to stare across at Khinjan before leading his four thousand down and onward. He was silent as an image, but his men roared like a river in flood and he made no effort to check them. He was like a man who has made up his mind to victory in any event. He seemed to be speculating three or four moves ahead of this one, and to hold this one such a foregone conclusion in his mind that it had ceased to interest. He was admirable, there was no doubt of that. In his own way, like an old boar sniffing up the wind for trouble, he could command a decent man's respect.

He dismounted, for he had to, and tossed his reins to the nearest man with the air of an emperor. And he led the way dawn the cliffside without hesitation, striding like a mountaineer. His men followed him noisily, holding hands to make human chains at the difficult places and shouting a great deal; but not quite naturally now. They were too impressed by the seriousness of what they undertook, and in their hearts too much afraid. The noise was bravado.

It was a weary long wait, watching from the crevices until the last man's back departed down the cliff, and the procession-Pied Piper of Hamelin and rats, (but no music!)-wound across the valley. At last Khinjan Gate opened and the mullah led in. The gate did not shut after the last man, King noted that.

"Let us go now!" shouted fifty voices, and every man of King's party showed himself and stretched. "Let us go! Why wait?"

But King would not go. Nor would he explain why he would not go. Nor could he tell himself what held him, gazing at Khinjan, except that he thought of Yasmini and ached to know what she was doing.

It was thirty minutes after the last of the mullahs men had vanished through the gate, and his own men in dozens and twenties were scattered along the cliff-top arguing against delay with growing rancor, when a lone horseman galloped out of Khinjan Gate and started across the valley. He rode recklessly. He was either panic-stricken or else bolder than the devil.

In a minute King had recognized the mare, and so had the eyes of fifty men around him. No man with half an eye for a horse could have failed to recognize that black mare, having ever seen her once. She came like a goat among the rocks, just as she had once dived into darkness in the Khyber with King following. In another two minutes King had recognized the Rangar's silken turban. And now there was no need to restrain the men; they all stood and watched, to know what new turn affairs were taking.

Most of them were staring downward at the Rangar's head as he urged the mare up the cliff path, when the explanation of Yasmini's message came. It was only King, urged by some intuition, who had his eyes fixed on Khinjan.

There came a shock that actually swayed the hill they stood on. The mare on the path below missed her footing and fell a dozen feet, only to get up again and scramble as if a thousand devils were behind her, the Rangar riding her grimly, like a jockey in a race. Three more shocks followed. A great slice of Khinjan suddenly caved in with a roar, and smoke and dust burst upward through the tumbling crust.

There was a pause after that, as if the waiting elements were gathering strength. For ten minutes they watched and scarcely breathed. Rewa Gunga gained the summit and, dismounting, stood by King with the reins over his arm. The mare was too blown to do anything but stand and tremble. And King was too enthralled to do anything but stare.

"That is what a woman can do for a man!" said Rewa Gunga grimly. "She set a fuse and exploded all the dynamite. There were tons of it! The galleries must have fallen in, one on the other! A thousand men digging for a thousand years could never get into Khinjan now, and the only way out is down Earth's Drink! She bade me come and bid you good-by, sahib. I would have stayed in there, but she commanded me. She said, 'Tell King sahib my love was true. Tell him I give him India and all Asia that were at my mercy!'"