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The column of the centre, acting from Kohat as a base against the Kurram Valley, was commanded by a general destined to win renown in the later phases of the war. Major-General Roberts represented all that was noblest and most chivalrous in the annals of the British Army in India.
It gave him a curious thrill to open his camphor-drenched uniform case left behind with Lance and unearth the familiar khaki of Kohat and Mespot days; to ride out with his men in the cool of early morning to the gardens at the far end of Lahore. The familiar words of commands, the rhythmic clatter of hoofs, were music in his ears. A thousand pities he was not free to join the Indian Army.
Had Lance Desmond shared Roy's gift for visions, he might have seen, in spirit, the ghosts of his mother and father, in the pride of their youth, and that first legendary girl-wife, of whom Thea had once told him all she knew, and whose grave he had seen in Kohat cemetery with a queer mingling of pity and resentment in his heart.
It must be Kohat first, because of Paul. Now things are calming down, he is getting away to be married. The quietest possible affair, of course; but he's keen I should be best man in place of Lance. And I needn't say how I value the compliment. "No more trouble here or Amritsar, thank God and a few courageous men. Martial Law arrangements are being carried through to admiration.
The Mohammedans, on the other hand, Afghans from the far side of the Khyber, men of the Hassan and the Aka and the Adam Khel tribes, Afridis from Kohat and Tirah and the Araksai country, any who happened to be in that wild and crowded town, turned out, too to keep order, as they pleasantly termed it, when their leaders were subsequently asked for explanations.
Lance classified him comprehensively as 'one of the War lot'; liked him, and was sorry for him, although perhaps because he was 'no soldier. Roy also liked him; and enjoyed verbal fencing-bouts with him when the mood was on. Still he would have preferred, beyond measure, the Kohat arrangement, with the Colonel for an unobtrusive third.
Christmas itself was over. From the adjacent borders of British India, five lonely ones had been gathered in. There was Mr Mayne, Commissioner of Delhi, Vincent's old friend of Kohat days, unmarried and alone in camp with a stray Settlement Officer, whose wife and children were at Home. There was Mr Bourne in the Canals large-boned and cadaverous, with a sardonic gleam in his eye.
Three strategic passes lead from Afghanistan into India: the Khyber Pass, the Bolan Pass, and the Kuram Valley. When, in 1878, the English marched into Afghanistan they proceeded in three columns from Peshawar, Kohat, and Quetta to Cabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar respectively. These three roads have also been laid down as our lines of march. Public opinion considers them the only possible routes.
There was also by now, a certain bungalow in Kohat known as 'Desmond's bungalow, occupied at present by Colonel Paul Desmond, now in Command. That is no uncommon story in India. She has laid her spell on certain families; and they have followed one another through the generations, as homing birds follow in line across the sunset sky.
Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to "inquire into" the big-seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District.
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