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He said the Sikhs and the Pathans could settle their claims on the Khye-Kheens and Malo'ts later on, but he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain-climbing job, because Sikhs could shoot. They can, too. Give 'em a mule-load of ammunition apiece, and they're perfectly happy." "And out he gat," said Dick Four.
Stalky said and the other two backed up his knowledge of Oriental nature that the Khye-Kheens and the Malo'ts between 'em would organize a combined attack on us that night, as a proof of good faith. They wouldn't drive it home, though, because neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutton Singh put it, of the little accidents.
They're holding a pow-wow between the Khye-Kheens and the Malo'ts at the head of the gorge. I don't think these so-called coalitions are much good. "Do you know what that maniac had done? Tertius and I shook it out of him by instalments. There was an underground granary cellar-room below the watch-tower, and in blasting the road Stalky had blown a hole into one side of it.
"Then it occurred to me to comfort the Khye-Kheens. So I turned out the whole command, and we advanced a' la pas de charge, doublin' up what, for the sake of argument, we'll call the Malo'ts' left flank.
Stalky said the Malo'ts and Khye-Kheens were up together; havin' sunk their blood feuds to settle us. The chaps we'd seen across the gorge were Khye-Kheens. It was about half a mile from them to us as a bullet flies, and they'd made a line of sungars under the brow of the hill to sleep in and starve us out. The Malo'ts, he said, were in front of us promiscuous.
"'Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett, and I went out lookin' for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me. I abolished him privatim scragged him. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khye-Kheens are shocked at the Malo'ts perpetratin' these two dastardly outrages after they'd sworn to sink all bleed feuds.
The moment Stalky saw our game he duplicated it his side the gorge; and, by Jove! the Khye-Kheens did just the same thing." "Yes, but," said Tertius, "you've forgot him playin' 'Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby' on the bugle to hurry us up." "Did he?" roared McTurk. Somehow we all began to sing it, and there was an interruption. "Rather," said Tertius, when we were quiet.
Then, in the night and a howling snow-storm, he'd dropped over the edge of the khud, made his way down to the bottom of the gorge, forded the nullah, which was half frozen, climbed up on the other side along a track he'd discovered, and come out on the right flank of the Khye-Kheens.
"'No trustin' these snow-storms, he said. 'Nip out quick and snaffle what you can get. There's a certain amount of friction between the Khye-Kheens and the Malo'ts just now. "I turned Tertius out with twenty Pathans, and they bucked about in the snow for a bit till they came on to a sort of camp about eight hundred yards away, with only a few men in charge and half a dozen sheep by the fire.
There wasn't good cover behind the fort, or they'd have been there, too. Stalky didn't mind the Malo'ts half as much as he did the Khye-Kheens. He said the Malo'ts were treacherous curs. What I couldn't understand was, why in the world the two gangs didn't join in and rush us. There must have been at least five hundred of 'em.
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