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Updated: May 10, 2025
A large number of sirdars, chiefs, and maliks were present, some of whom had fought stoutly against us in December.
The Pathan tribes along the North-west Frontier were straining at the leash; Afridis, Yusufzais, Mohmands, all the Pukhtana, were restless and excited. The mullahs were preaching a holy war; and the maliks, or tribal elders, could not restrain their young men. Raids into British Indian territory were frequent. There was worse menace behind.
So willing to be of service on this matter was he that when the march was decided on he sent influential persons of his party in advance to arrange with the local maliks to have supplies collected for the column.
Lower down, under the lee of the village wall, a local jirgah sat watching the influx of troops with non-committal indifference, waiting to come forward and protest their devotion to the White Queen and the Burra Sahib; their entire readiness to be bound over by the Maliks' proposals, and, in effect, to behave themselves till next time!
For Dudley Norton, no novice at Frontier work, had long since made himself wholesomely feared and respected throughout the Derajat; while, among the Maliks of his district, his hawk-like eyes gleaming under heavy brows were accredited with the power of watching a man's thoughts at their birth. A reputation too useful to be discouraged!
Such commonplaces of Frontier government as the enforcing of a fine, and the choosing of a site for an outpost manned by friendly tribesmen, was unlikely to cause friction or stir up strife; and Norton, standing apart from the group of officers in khaki, was listening politely to Nussar Ali Khan and his friends, some half a dozen Maliks from the fortified villages scattered among the hills.
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