King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure by Talbot Mundy (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

perform. So I provide performance. She gets the credit for it. I get a pretty good personal following at least as far as up the Khyber! Q.E.D., sir!”

The man in bed nodded. “Not bad,” he said.

“Didn't she make some effort to get those men away from Ali's?” King asked him. “I mean, didn't she try to get them dry-nursed by the sirkar in some way?”

“Yes. She did. But it was difficult. In the first place, there didn't seem to be any particular hurry. They were eating Ali's substance. The scoundrel had to feed them as long as he kept them there, and we wanted that. We forbade her to pay their debts to Ali, because he has too urgent need of money just now. He is being pressed on account of debts of his own, and the pressure is making him take risks. He has been begging for money from the German agents. We know who they are, and we expect to make a big haul within a few hours now.”

“Hope I didn't spoil things by butting in, sir.”

“No. This is different. She wanted them arrested and locked up at a moment when the jails were all crowded. And then she wanted us to put 'em into trucks and railroad 'em up North out of harm's way as she put it, and we happened to be too busy. The railway staff was overworked. Now things are getting straightened out. I felt it keenly not being able to oblige her, but she asked too much at the wrong moment! I would have done it if I could out of gratitude; it was she who tipped off for us most of the really dangerous men, and it was not her fault a few of them escaped. But we've all been working both tides under, King. Take me; this is my first night in bed in three, and here I am awake! No--nothing personal--glad to see you, but please understand. And I'm a leisured dilettante compared to most of the others. She must have known our fix. She shouldn't have asked.”

King smiled. “Perfectly good opportunity for me, sir!” he said cheerfully.

“So you seem to think. But look out for that woman, King--she's dangerous. She's got the brains of Asia coupled with Western energy! I think she's on our side, and I know he believes it; but watch her!”

“Ham dekta hai!” King grinned. But the older man continued to look as if he pitied him.

“If you get through alive, come and tell me about it afterward. Now, mind you do! I'm awfully interested, but as for envying you--”

“Envy!” King almost squealed. He made the bed-springs rattle as he jumped. “I wouldn't swap jobs with General French, sir!”

“Nor with me, I suppose!”

“Nor with you, sir.

“Good-by, then. Good-by, King, my boy. Good-by, Athelstan. Your brother's up the Khyber, isn't he? Give him my regards. Good-by!”

Long before dawn the thirty prisoners and Ismail squatted in a little herd on the up-platform of a railway station, shepherded by King, who smoked a cheroot some twenty paces away, sitting on an unmarked chest of medicines. He seemed absorbed in a book on surgery that he had borrowed from a chance-met acquaintance in the go-down where he drew the medical supplies. Ismail sat on the one trunk that had been fetched from the other station and nursed the new hand-bag on his knees, picking everlastingly at the lock and wondering audibly what the bag contained to an accompaniment of low-growled sympathy.

“I am his servant--for she said so--and he said so. As the custom is he gave me the key of the great bag--on which I sit--as he said himself, for safe-keeping. Then why--why in Allah's name--am I not to have the key of this bag too? Of this little bag that holds so little and is so light?”

“It might be money in it?” hazarded one of the herd.

“Nay, for that it is too light.”

“Paper money!” suggested another man. “Hundies, with printing on the face that sahibs accept instead of gold.”

“Nay, I know where his money is,” said Ismail. “He has but little with him.”

“A razor would slit the leather easily,” suggested another man. “Then with a hand inserted carefully through the slit, so as not to widen it more than needful, a man could soon discover the contents. And later, the bag might be dropped or pushed violently against some sharp thing, to explain the cut.”

Ismail shook his head.

“Why? What could he do to thee?”

“It is because I know not what he would do to me that I will do nothing!” answered Ismail. “He is not at all like other sahibs I have had dealings with. This man does unexpected things. This man is not mad, he has a devil. I have it in my heart to love this man. But such talk is foolishness. We are all her men!”

“Aye! We are her men!” came the chorus, so that King looked up and watched them over the open book.

At dawn, when the train pulled out, the thirty prisoners sat safely locked in third-class compartments. King lay lazily on the cushions of a first-class carriage in the rear, utterly absorbed in the principles of antiseptic dressing, as if that had anything to do with Prussians and the Khyber Pass; and Ismail attended to the careful packing of soda water bottles in the ice-box on the floor.

“Shall I open the little bag, sahib?” he asked.

King shook his head.

Ismail shook the bag.

“The sound is as of things of much importance all disordered,” he said sagely. “It might be well to rearrange.”

“Put it over there!” King ordered. “Set it down!”

Ismail obeyed and King laid his book down to light another of his black cheroots. The theme of antiseptics ceased to exercise its charm over him. He peeled off his tunic, changed his shirt and lay back in sweet contentment. Headed for the “Hills,” who would not be contented, who had been born in their very shadow?--in their shadow, of a line of Britons who have all been buried there!

“The day after to-morrow I'll see snow!” he promised himself. And Ismail, grinning with yellow teeth through a gap in his wayward beard, understood and sympathized.

Forward in the third-class carriages the prisoners hugged themselves and crooned as they met old landmarks and recognized the changing scenery. There was a new cleaner tang in the hot wind that spoke of the “Hills” and home!

Delhi had drawn them as Monte Carlo attracts the gamblers of all Europe. But Delhi had spewed them out again, and oh! how exquisite the promise of the “Hills” was, and the thunder of the train that hurried--the bumping wheels that sang Himahlayas--Himahlyas!--the air that blew in on them unscented--the reawakened memory--the heart's desire for the cold and the snow and the cruelty--the dark nights and the shrieking