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Grouped in the center of the hall were about two hundred men, all armed with sabers, men of every age, and height and swarthiness, from stout, blue-bearded veterans to youths yet in their teens, dressed in every hue imaginable from the scarlet frock-coat, white breeches and high black boots of a risaldar-major to the jeweled silken gala costume of the dandiest of Rajput's youth.
That was a mistake, for it called the Rajput's attention to what had been happening to his prisoner. He came striding toward us with his black beard bristling and eyes blazing with anger. "Who searched him?" he demanded. "He was searched by my order," Kagig answered in the calm level voice that in a man of such spirit was prophetic of explosion.
There was something lying on the floor, in the middle of the room, that was bulky and shapeless and unfamiliar. "Ayah!" said Ruth. "Ayah!" But there was no answer. "Where is she, Risaldar?" "She is there, heavenborn!" "Is she asleep?" "Aye! She sleeps deeply!" There was, something in the Rajput's voice that was strange, that hinted at a darker meaning.
If thy memories and honor urge thee to come the way I take, is there no room for two of us?" "Aye, sahib!" said the Rajput huskily. "I said before, I am thy man. I come. I obey!" "Obey, do you?" Monty laid both hands on the Rajput's shoulders, struck him knee against knee without warning and pressed him down into a squatting posture. "Then obey when I order you to sit!"
Then, as the weight of the fallen horse was rolled aside there surged a tide of blissful relief that carried me over the border of oblivion. When I recovered my senses I was astride of Rustum Khan's mare, with a leather thong around my shoulders and the Rajput's to keep me from falling.
A fist-blow in the Rajput's face would have meant a blood-feud that nothing less than a man's life could settle, and Monty looked worried. There came a new thundering on the door that brought everybody to his feet as if murder were the least of the charges against us. Only Kagig appeared at ease and unconcerned. "Open to them!" he shouted, and resumed his pacing to and fro.
It was as if he expected her to know something that she did not know, and to give him a cue that he waited for in vain. She felt he must think her stupid, and the thought made her every minute less at ease; but Tom's approach, eyed narrowly by Samson for some reason, seemed to raise the Rajput's spirits.
You shall have an escort as far as the nearest garrison. You shall have fifty men to take you back by dawn to-morrow." At that Rustum Khan turned several shades darker and glared truculently. "Who art thou, Armenian, to frame a test for thy betters?" he demanded, throwing a very military chest. And Will promptly bridled at the Rajput's attitude.
They suffered agonies from the heat, and not a little from hunger, and once or twice they were hard put to it to stop the Rajput's charger from neighing when a native pony passed along the nearby road. But night came again, and with it the screen of darkness for their strange, almost defenseless caravan.
Almost before the echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a voice cried from the roof in Armenian, and Kagig rose to his feet. "Let us climb to the roof and see, effendim," he said, pulling on his tattered goat-skin coat. "See what, Ermenie?" demanded Rustum Khan. The Rajput's eyes were still ablaze with pagan flame, from watching Maga.
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