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The mare is done, but the sorrel can make the Bar of Balmud." Cumner's Son opened his mouth to question, but stopped, for the eyes of the hillsman flared up, and Tang-a-Dahit said: "My arm in blood has touched thy arm, and thou art in my hills and not in thine own country. Thy life is my life, and thy good is my good. Speak not, but act.
The sorrel and the mare were fagged, the horses of their foes were fresh; and forty to one were odds that no man would care to take. It might be that some of Pango Dooni's men lay between them and the Bar of Balmud, but the chance was faint. "By the hand of Heaven," said the hillsman, "if we reach to the Bar of Balmud, these dogs shall eat their own heads for dinner!"
Of late years the agents for photo-enlarging companies have invaded the mountains and have reaped a harvest; for if there be one curse of civilization that our hillsman craves, it is a huge tinted "family group" in an abominable rococo frame. There is an almanac in the cabin, but no clock. "What does man need of a clock when he has a good-crowin' rooster?"
Those were the words of a hillsman who had followed him furiously in the night ready to kill, who had cloven the head of a man like a piece of soap, and had been riding even into Mandakan where a price was set on his head.
"By the word of a hillsman, but thou shalt have thy will," said the chief. "We are seven hundred men choose whom to fight." "The oldest or the youngest," answered the man. "Pango Dooni or Cumner's Son." Before the chief had time to speak, Cumner's Son struck the man with the flat of his sword across the breast. The man did not lift his arm, but looked at the lad steadily for a moment.
When he dismounted and came to her, and bent over her, he said something in a low tone for her ear alone, and she smiled at him, and whispered the one word "Peace!" Then the Dakoon, who once was known only as Cumner's Son, turned and embraced the prophet Sandoni, as he was now called, though once he had been called Tang-a-Dahit the hillsman.
Not a word was spoken as Pango Dooni and his company galloped towards the front of the Palace. Hundreds of the Dakoon's soldiers and terrified people who had taken refuge in the great court-yard, ran screaming into corners, or threw themselves in terror upon the ground. The walls were lined with soldiers, but not one raised his hand to strike so sudden was the coming of the dreaded hillsman.
A drowsy hillsman, muffled to his back hair in a long brown cloak, and with buskins on his legs such as a stage bandit wears, was dozing against the wall. He looked as though he had stepped right out of a comic opera to add picturesqueness to the scene.
When the plainsmen came to the cape of green, they paused not by the secret place, for it seemed to them that two had ridden past and not one. The Son of Pango Dooni had drawn pursuit after himself, for it is the law of the hills that a hillsman shall give his life or all that he has for a brother-in-blood. When Cumner's Son had gone a little way he understood it all!
He reined in his horse not ten feet away from the irregular columns. "You know me," said he. "I am Cumner's Son. I rode into the hills at the Governor's word to bring a strong man to rule you. Why do ye stand here idle? My father, your friend, fights with a hundred men at the Residency. Choose ye between Boonda Broke, the mongrel, and Pango Dooni, the great hillsman.
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