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Updated: June 9, 2025
I left my people and hid, and changed myself that no one should know me, and I came to Mandakan. It was noised abroad that I was dead. Little by little I grew in favour with the Dakoon, and little by little I gathered strong men about me-two hundred in all at last. It was my purpose, when the day seemed ripe, to seize upon the Palace as the Dakoon had seized upon my little city.
He turned to his father, but saw no help in his eyes for refusal. The lad read the whole story of his father's face, and he turned again to the people. "If ye will have it so, then, by the grace of God, I will do right by this our land," said he. A half-hour later he stood before them, wearing the costly robe of yellow feathers and gold and perfect silk of the Dakoon of Mandakan.
At a word his chestnut mare got away with telling stride in pursuit of the unknown rider, passing up the Gap of Mandakan like a ghost. Cumner's Son had a start by about half a mile, but Tang-a-Dahit rode a mare that had once belonged to Pango Dooni, and Pango Dooni had got her from Colonel Cumner the night he escaped from Mandakan.
He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for him, and he only found peace for his mind upon the point by remembering that he had told no secrets, had given no information of any use to the foes of the Dakoon or the haters of the English.
Yet silken banners of gorgeous colours flew above the pink terraces, and the call of the silver horn of Mandakan, which was made first when Tubal Cain was young, rang through the long vacant avenues.
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."
There was trouble at Mandakan. You could not have guessed it from anything the eye could see.
By this the lad knew that he was now brother-in-blood to the son of Pango Dooni. "You travel near to Mandakan!" said the lad. "Do you ride with a thousand men?" "For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone and safe," answered Tang-a-Dahit. "To thrust your head in the tiger's jaw," said Cumner's Son. "Did you ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?"
Yet, too, the keen observer could have seen gathered into shaded corners here and there, a few sombre, low-voiced men talking covertly to each other. They were not the ordinary gossipers; in the faces of some were the marks of furtive design, of sinister suggestion. But it was all so deadly still. The gayest, cheeriest person in Mandakan was Colonel Cumner's son.
"For this was it you risked your life going to Mandakan," said Pango Dooni, angrily, to his son; "for a maid with a body like a withered gourd." Then all at once, with a new look in his face, he continued softly: "Thou hast the soul of a woman, but thy deeds are the deeds of a man. As thy mother was in heart so art thou." Day was breaking over Mandakan, and all the city was a tender pink.
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