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"One of Kirby sahib's officers, and a trooper into the bargain!" The general whistled again. "There were two troopers whom I meant to catch," she said hurriedly, for it was evident that the general did not at all approve of the turn affairs had taken. "I had a trap for them at the House-of-the- Eight-Half-brothers, and some hillmen in there ready to rush out and seize them as they passed.
Then some of those who were squatting on the ground began to play with a dreadful red ball which had some wisps of hair yet clinging to it. A snarling roar went up from the ranks of the Hillmen, and some of them would have rushed to accept the ghastly challenge. But the Chief held them back sternly.
And I," he cried, in free enthusiasm, "will organize a navy and a standing army. Only," he added, with a relapse of interest, "there isn't anybody to fight." "There isn't?" said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile. "You just go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once and you'll get all the fighting you want." "The Hillmen?" said Albert.
They are quite content if the Hillmen satisfy themselves with the outlying huts, as long as they leave them and the town alone; so they seldom come to close quarters." The four men walked on for a half an hour or so, in silence, peering eagerly on every side; but it was not until they had left the woods and marched out into the level stretch of grassy country, that they came upon the enemy.
Daylight soon revealed the respective positions of the contending forces, and the struggle commenced. The hillmen had thrown up across the pass a formidable barricade, composed of stones, mud, and branches of trees. Behind this barrier the enemy were gathered in force, waiting the opportunity to attack the main column when it should attempt the pass.
The Hillmen had stopped about two hundred yards off, and were drawn up in two lines, shouting, and dancing, and hurling taunting remarks at their few adversaries. The stolen cattle were bunched together back of the King. As Stedman walked steadily forward with his handkerchief fluttering, and howling out something in their own tongue, they stopped and listened.
I'll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about drilling, to-morrow morning, and we'll drill these Opekians, and have sham battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild, howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their quarterly visit, they'll go back again on a run. At least some of them will," he added, ferociously.
In fear and wonder Deirdre ran to the spot. No man lay there, but she saw on the bracken the form of a crouching man. She saw, too, the tracks that marked his escape. Nathos followed her, and stooped to take his javelin from the ground. And there, beside it, lay a wooden-hilted knife. 'It is as I thought, he said. 'This knife is used but by the hillmen who are in bondage to Concobar.
Then suddenly the old Afridi thought of something else and came back to thrust his face close to King's. "Why be a Rangar? Why be a Rajput, sahib? She loves us Hillmen better!" "Do I look like a Hillman of the 'Hills'?" asked King. "Nay, not now. But he who can work one miracle can work another. Change thy skin once more and be a true Hillman!" "Aye!" King laughed.
He only did his part in arresting fanatical hillmen and executing the punishment of the law upon them, but he would have been glad that night if he had not been obliged to shoot John Brown of Priest Hill before his wife's eyes, and keep guard at the scaffold from which Pollock went home to God.
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