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He strode toward the waters, the soldiers, still a hand on either arm, marching beside him. On the clay bank he put his hands to his forehead, calling in a loud voice: "Kali Mia, receive me!" Then he plunged head first into the pool. A cry of "Allah! Allah!" went up from ten thousand throats as the Bagree shot from view, smothered in the foam of the ruffled stream.
Three times the goat's head was thrust downward in obeisance to the black goddess; there was a flash of steel in the sunlight, and hot blood gushed forth, to dye with its crimson flood the base of the idol. A Bagree darted forward and with a stroke of his tulwar clipped the neck from a pitcher and held it beneath the gurgling flood till it was filled.
He raised a knee and drove it into the groin of the jamadar; then in the slight slackening of the holding arms as the Bagree shrank from the blow, he struck at the bearded chin; it was the clean, trained short-arm jab of a boxer. But even as the gorilla wavered staggeringly under the blow, a soft something slipped about Barlow's throat and tightened like the coils of a python.
Then he staggered to his feet and looked wonderingly at the form of the Bagree behind who lay sprawled on the road, a great red splash across the white jacket on his breast. In the Gulab's hand was still clutched the dagger she had drawn from her girdle and driven home to save the sahib who had sat like a god in her heart.
A peacock perched high in the feathery top of a giant sal tree was crying "miaow, miaow!" to the dipping sun when, in the centre of the Bagree camp the blacksmith, sitting on his haunches in front of a charcoal fire in which nested the iron cannon ball, fanned the flames with his pair of goat-skin hand-bellows.
We are but servants of Bhowanee, and if we make vow to sacrifice a buffalo at her temple perhaps she will keep us in her protection." Ajeet knew that he had been tricked somehow, but to dispute the ordeal, the judgment of the black goddess, would be like an apostacy it would turn every Bagree against him it would be a shatterment of their tenets. So he said nothing but accepted mutely the decree.
But Bootea's eyes went wide now with a new fear; the sound of the shot would travel faster even than the fleeing Hunsa: and if the decoits came for already they would be making ready for the road this beautiful god, with eyes like stars and a voice of music, would be killed, would be no more than the Bagree lying on the road who was but carrion. In her heart was a new thing.
She felt the strong arm press her body closer, and heard him laugh. But still he did not answer, did not say why he was interested in the two horsemen. If it were vital, and she believed it was, for him to know that they lay dead at the Bagree camp, it was wrong for her to not tell him this, he who was a preserver. But to tell him would send him to his death.
Besides, unity among the Bagree leaders, leading to much loot, would bring him tribute for the gods. "It may be," he was saying to Sookdee, "that the blacksmith, who is not of our tribe, nor of our nine castes, but is of the Sumar caste, has sought to put shame upon our gods by a trick. At best he was a surly rascal of little thought.
Half-a-dozen Pindaris darted forward, and poised in waiting for the command to bind to the fingers of the Bagree oil-soaked torches; but Kassim moved them back, and stood, his brow wrinkled in pondering, his black eyes sullenly fixed on the face of the Bagree.
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