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Updated: June 6, 2025
A little cloud of tobacco smoke came curling out of a window of the Residency. It was sniffed up by the orderly, whose pipe was in barracks, and must lie there untouched until evening at least; for he had stood at this door since seven that morning, waiting orders; and he knew by the look on Colonel Cumner's face that he might be there till to-morrow.
He had flung the knife at the dog with a wish in his heart that it was Cumner's Son instead. As he stood looking after the English lad, he said between his teeth with a great hatred, though his face showed no change: "English dog, thou shalt be dead like thy brother there when I am Dakoon of Mandakan."
"When I told her what the Dakoon bade me do, and what I had sworn to perform when the Dakoon was dead, she said: "'But no. Go forth as the Dakoon hath bidden. Stand in the road and oppose the hillsmen. If Cumner's Son be with them, thou shalt tell him all.
"I am here, Mami," said he. "Friend of my heart," she answered. "It is so long!" Then he told her how, through Cumner's Son, he had been turned from his visit two days before, and of the journey down, and of the fighting, and of all that had chanced. She smiled, and assented with her eyes her father had told her. "My father knows that thou dost come to me, and he is not angry," she said.
"Nay, but in the Palace," interrupted Cumner's Son, "and thy daughter also, who hath the wisdom of heaven, that there be always truth shining in these high places." An hour later the Dakoon passed through the Path by the Bazaar. "Whither goes the Dakoon?" asked a native chief of McDermot.
Cumner's Son had not looked behind after the first few miles, for then he had given up thought that he might be followed. He sat in his saddle like a plainsman; he listened like a hillsman; he endured like an Arab water-carrier.
"By the Old Well of Jahar, which has one side to the mountain wall, and one to the cliff edge, I halted and took my stand. The mare and the sorrel of Cumner's Son I put inside the house that covers the well, and I lifted two stones from the floor and set them against the entrance. A beggar lay dead beside the well, and his dog licked his body.
The sorrel sprang forward, sniffed the air, and threw up his head. His feet struck the resounding timbers of the bridge, and, as they did so, he shied; but Cumner's Son, looking down sharply, could see nothing to either the right or left no movement anywhere save the dim trees on the banks waving in the light wind which had risen.
It was half-way towards noon when the hoof-beats drummed over the Brown Hermit's cave, and they rested not there; but it was noon and no more when they rode through Pango Dooni's gates and into the square where he stood. The tall hillsman dropped to the ground, and Cumner's Son made to do the same. Yet he staggered, and would have fallen, but the hillsman ran an arm around his shoulder.
These last showed alertness at the sound of the flying sorrel's hoofs, and all at once a tall, keen-eyed horseman sprang to the broad doorway and strained his eyes into the night after Cumner's Son. He waited a few moments; then, as if with a sudden thought, he ran to a horse tethered near by and vaulted into the saddle.
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