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A couple of days were spent at Tezeen among the melancholy relics of the January slaughter, whence most of the party were carried several miles further into the southern mountains to the village of Zandeh, while General Elphinstone, whose end was fast approaching, remained in the Tezeen valley with Pottinger, Mackenzie, Eyre, and one or two others.
On the morning of the 13th the concentrated force had quitted its camp in the Tezeen valley, and had committed itself without due precaution to the passage of the ravine beyond, when the Afghan levies with which Akbar Khan had manned the flanking heights, opened their fire.
Among the thicket of medals on the bosom of this broken old light dragoon note the one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842" within the laurel wreath. Its wearer was a trooper in the famous "rescue" column. The skeletons of Elphinstone's hapless force littered the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up which the squadron in which he rode charged straight for the tent of the splendid demon Akbar Khan.
On the 20th Sale, reinforced by troops returned from the Zurmut expedition, moved forward on Monteath, and on the 22d pushed on to the Tezeen valley, meeting with no opposition either on the steep summit of the Huft Kotul or in the deep narrow ravine opening into the valley. The Ghilzais were in force around the mouth of the defile, but a few cannon-shots broke them up.
The Ghilzai chief of Tezeen possessed a strong fort full of supplies, which Dennie was about to attack, when the wily Afghan sent to Major Macgregor, the political officer accompanying Sale, a tender of submission. Macgregor fell into the snare, desired Sale to countermand the attack, and entered into negotiations.
Casual entries in Lady Sale's journal, during the later days of October, afford clear evidence how utterly unconscious were they of the close gathering of the storm that so soon was to break upon them. Her husband had written to her from Tezeen that his wound was fast healing, and that the chiefs were extremely polite.
He insisted on the halt of the column at Bootkhak until the following morning, when he would provide supplies, but he demanded an immediate subsidy of 15,000 rupees, and that Pottinger, Lawrence and Mackenzie should be given up to him as hostages that the force would not march beyond Tezeen until tidings should arrive that Sale had evacuated Jellalabad.
During the march from Kubbar-i-Jubbar to the Tezeen valley Shelton's dogged valour had mainly saved the force from destruction. With a few staunch soldiers of his own regiment, the one-armed veteran, restored now to his proper metier of stubborn fighting man, had covered the rear and repelled the Ghilzai assaults with persevering energy and dauntless fortitude.
Their fort was put into a state of defence, and a store of provisions was gathered in case of a siege. But in mid-September came the tidings that Akbar had been defeated at Tezeen, and had fled no one knew whither, whereupon the self-emancipated party set out on the march to Cabul. At noon of the 17th they passed into the safe guardianship of Shakespear and his horsemen.
Sale, continuing his march, would be separated further and further from the now diminished force in Cabul, and by the feigned submission the chiefs had made they had escaped the permanent establishment of a strong detachment in their midst at Tezeen.
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