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Updated: June 19, 2025
He turned to Sookdee. "Your omens will avail little if there is prosecution over the disappearance of the merchant. I am supposed to be in command, the leader, but I am the led. But I will not withdraw, and it is not the place of the chief to handle the roomal.
"Indeed it is an omen," Sookdee corroborated; "if on our journeys to commit a decoity that is always a good omen." "And there is the voice!" Hunsa exclaimed, as the tremulous lowing of a cow issued from the village. He waved a beckoning hand to Guru Lal, for they had brought with them their tribal priest as an interpreter of omens chiefly.
"The footwear is of little value, but we will take the brass cooking pots of the merchant," Sookdee said, eyeing this performance; there was suspicion in his eyes lighted from the flare of their camp fires. "Sookdee," Hunsa said, "you have the Englay leather packet, but they do not send sowars through the land of the Mahratta with the real message written on the back of the messenger.
It was always the leader of a gang of decoits who was beheaded when captured, the others perhaps escaping with years of jail. And Hunsa himself, even Sookdee, would be safe, for they were in league with the Dewan.
Sookdee stared in affrighted silence, and Hunsa's bellow of rage was stilled by Ajeet, who whirling upon him, the jade-handled knife in his grip, commanded: "Still your clamour! The Gulab has but seen the truth. I, also, know that, but a soldier may not speak as may one of his women-kind." There was a sudden hush. A tremor of apprehension had vibrated from Bagree to Bagree; the jamadars felt it.
When questioned, the yogi told them where they would find the merchant; he was stopping with a friend in Poona. So the two set off, and the Bagrees prepared for their journey. For the ordeal a cannon ball was needed and a blacksmith to heat it. And as Hunsa had been the father of the scheme, Sookdee declared that he must procure these from the Mahratta camp. Hunsa agreed to this.
Sookdee, Ajeet Singh, and Hunsa, accompanied by twenty men, and Gulab Begum took the road, the Gulab travelling in an enclosed cart as befitted the favourite of a raja, and with her rode the wife of Sookdee as her maid. Ajeet rode a Marwari stallion, a black, roach-crested brute, with bad hocks and an evil eye. The Ajeet sat his horse a convincing figure, a Rajput Raja.
The Dewan's fat neck swelled with indignation; his big ox-like eyes bulged from their holding in anger: "Phut-t-t!" he spat in derision. "Bagrees!" he sneered; "descendants of Rajputs bah! Have you brought women with you that will lead this force? And danger!" he snarled he turned on Sookdee: "You are Sookdee, son of Bhart, so it was signed." "Yes, Dewan, it is true."
As Sookdee placed a broad pipal leaf upon the jamadar's palm, Ajeet repeated in a firm voice: "I take the ordeal. If I am guilty, Maha Kali, may the sign of thy judgment appear upon my flesh!" "We are ready," Sookdee declared, and the waiting blacksmith swung the instrument of justice from its heat in the glowing charcoal to the outstretched hand of the jamadar.
Once the deep sonorous bugling note of a saurus, like the bass pipe of an organ, smote the stillness as the giant crane winged his way up the river that lay beyond, a mighty ribbon of silver in the moonlight. A jackal from the far side of the village, in the fields, raised a tremulous moan. Sookdee looked into the eyes of Hunsa and he understood.
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