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Updated: June 8, 2025
"Give this man clothing fit for a man of mine!" commanded Alwa. "Sahib, there is none; perhaps the Jaimihr-sahib " "I have ordered!"
This is my affair my private quarrel with Jaimihr!" Mahommed Gunga turned to Ali Partab, who had been a shadow to him ever since he came. "Turn out my five, and bring my charger!" he commanded. "No, I say!" Alwa had his hand already on his sabre hilt. "There is room for eight and no more. Four following four abreast, and one ahead to lead them. I and my men know how to do this.
I don't mind telling you that I'm asking you, as British subjects, no more than I intend to ask Alwa and his Rangars. You can do as much as they are going to be asked to do. You can't do more. But you can do less if you like. You are being given the opportunity now to offer your services unconditionally that is to say in the only manner in which I will accept them.
No human being could have guessed the length of the gorge nor the number of the men who waited in it, for the restless chargers stamped in inch-deep sand that deadened sound without seeming to lessen its quantity. "Salaam, bahadur!" It was Alwa, saluting with drawn sabre, reining back a pedigreed mare to get all the spectacular emotion out of the encounter that he could.
Mahommed Gunga leaped to his feet, and came to attention with a military clatter. Alwa stared, inclining his head a trifle in recognition of the bow, but evidently taken by surprise. "Then, good-by, Alwa-sahib." Cunningham stretched out a hand.
"We might as well resume our conference," suggested Alwa, with the courtly air of a man just arisen from a chair. No one who had not seen him ride would have dreamed that he was fresh from snatching a prisoner at the bottom of a neck-breaking defile.
"Straight over to the woman!" he grinned. "This leader of thine seems in leading-strings himself already!" Mahommed Gunga cursed, and cursed again as his own eyes confirmed what Alwa said. "I tried him all the ways there are, except that one way!" he declared. "May Allah forgive my oversight! I should have got him well entangled with a woman before he reached Peshawur!
He ran to the parapet and watched in the fading light a little dust cloud that followed no visible track but headed straight toward them over desert. "How d'you know that's Mahommed Gunga?" he demanded. "Who else, huzoor? Who else would ride from that direction all alone and straight for this nest of wasps? Who else but Alwa or Mahommed Gunga? Alwa said he would not come, but would wait yonder."
"Eight hundred!" he exclaimed, as Cunningham drew near. "Eight hundred what, Mahommed Gunga? Come and see, sahib." Cunningham leaned over, and beheld a mounted column, trailing along the desert road in wonderfully good formation. "Where are they from?" he asked. "Jaimihr's men, from Howrah!" "That means," growled Alwa, "that the Hindoo pig Jaimihr has more than half the city at his back.
He waved away the offering much as Caesar may have waved aside a crown, with an air of condescending mightiness too proud to know contempt. "Go, help thyself!" growled Alwa; and Jaimihr walked to the spring without haste, knelt down, and dipped up water with his hand. "Now to a cell with him!" commanded Alwa, before the Prince had time to slake a more than ordinary thirst.
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