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Shortly after the departure of the visitors Burke contrived to effect an exchange to another station, to the regret of all in the little outpost, and he was replaced by a young Scots surgeon, named Macdonald, his opposite in every way. The annual Durbar for the reception of the Bhutan Envoy and the payment of the subsidy had come and gone again.
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Dermot knew that he could very well leave the routine work of the little post to his Second in Command. The fort was practically a block of fortified stone barracks, easily defensible against attacks of badly armed hillmen and accommodating a couple of hundred sepoys. It was to hold the duar or pass of Ranga through the Himalayas against raiders from Bhutan that the little post had been built.
From all parts of Bhutan west of the dividing line of the great Black Mountain Range, from Tibet, even from far-distant Ladak, the faithful had made pilgrimage to be present at the great festival in this most famous and sacred gompa of the land.
Chunerbutty had given their story correctly. But Dermot elicited two new facts which they had not mentioned to the engineer. One raider at least was armed with a revolver, which was unusual for a Bhuttia, the difficulty of procuring firearms and ammunition in Bhutan being so great that even the soldiers of the Maharajah are armed only with swords and bows.
Besides British officers and a few British troops, there were among the soldiers Sikhs, Pathans, Gurkhas, a few Bengalis, a few Rajputs and Dogras; and among the followers were Bhutias and Lepchas from Sikkim, Baltis from Kashmir, Bhutanese from Bhutan.
They were in the southern zone of Bhutan lying nearest the Indian frontier, a region of precipitous hills ten or twelve thousand feet high, their sides clothed with dense vegetation, of deep, fever-laden valleys of awe-inspiring gorges, of rivers liable to sudden floods and rising in a few hours thirty or forty feet.
But darkness shielded them effectively when the herd swept at length through a rocky pass on the frontier-line between India and Bhutan, and with cries of fear and dismay armed men seated around watch-fires fled in panic before the earth-shaking host. The screen was penetrated.
This led up towards the Bhutan Frontier, which runs among the hills at an average elevation of six thousand feet above the sea. As the Assistant Political Officer anticipated, the party had headed for the portion of the border under the control of the Amban's friend, the Penlop of Tuna.
And it haunted him in his sleep when in dreams tiny arms were clasped around his neck and baby lips touched his lovingly. From the frontier of Bhutan, six thousand feet up on the face of the mountains, a line of men wound down the serpentining track that led to Ranga Duar.
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