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"The other is Captain Warkworth," said Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Do you know him?" "Warkworth Warkworth? Ah of course the man who distinguished himself in the Mahsud expedition. But why is he home again so soon?" Mademoiselle Le Breton smiled uncertainly. "I think he was invalided home," she said, with that manner, at once restrained and gracious, that Sir Wilfrid had already observed in her.
We managed to advance into the heart of the Mahsud country on a single line, subjected and still subject to incessant attacks by the enemy; but we are very little nearer effective occupation than when we started; and now financial stringency has necessitated a material alteration in the whole programme, and we are reverting more or less to the methods whereby we have always controlled the tribes, namely, tribal levies or khassadars belonging to the tribe itself, frontier militia or other armed civil force, backed by troops behind.
Many another fight too did the Guides have during the next few years with unvarying success, but we may perhaps pass the less important by, and come to the stiff encounter that faced them during the expedition against the Mahsud Waziri tribe in 1860.
The dinner that evening was, as Quita explained, "Just a family affair," to celebrate Richardson's good progress, and drink success to the punitive expedition, which on that very day was filing through the Gomal Pass into Mahsud territory, to take toll, not only in men's lives, but 'in steer and gear and stack' for that day of treachery and black disaster, whose hidden motive still remained a mystery even to those most intimate with the tribes of the district.
Yet long after Dudley Norton's name had been almost forgotten by the overtasked, fluctuating world of Anglo-India, it still remained a household word among the Mahsud Waziris, whose brothers in blood had so treacherously taken his life. And while Norton lay dying at the Desmonds' bungalow, Richardson was established under his friend's roof as a matter of course.
In the same paper certain promotions and distinctions on account of the recent Mahsud campaign were reprinted from the Gazette. Captain Henry Warkworth's brevet majority was among them.
It's more than I deserve; and I'm sorry I must repay you by giving you your first taste of the pleasant little surprises that are a main feature of Frontier life. I have to go off across the Border early next week, to fix the position of a post we are going to build for our Mahsud levies, and to collect a fine from some rascals who have been raiding Tank." "Where's that?"
"I declare that fellow's improved," said one man, who might certainly have counted as Warkworth's enemy the week before, to his companion at table. "The government's been beastly remiss so far. Hope he'll pull it off. Ripping chance, anyway. Though what they gave it to him for, goodness knows! There were a dozen fellows, at least, did as well as he in the Mahsud business.
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