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Updated: June 14, 2025
Because of his big ears, that could detect a foot-fall in the darkness farther away than any of us, he had been sent to share the guard with me, and now he came looming up out of the night to share our counsels; for since the news of Gooja Singh's defection there was no longer even a pretense at awkwardness in approaching Ranjoor Singh.
Half-true and false be one and the same to-night!" So Gooja Singh made a wry face and laid down the rest of his money, and the others all followed him, not at all understanding, as indeed I myself did not understand, but coming one at a time to me and laying all their money on the cloth. "We are all true men!" said I, dumping it beside him. "Good!" said he. "Come!"
"Well he may!" said I, thinking furiously as a man in a burning house yet outwardly all calm. "He has done all our thinking for us all these days; he has borne alone the burden of responsibility. He has enforced the discipline," said I with a deliberate stare that made Gooja Singh look sullen, "and God knows how necessary that has been! He has let no littlest detail of the march escape him.
"Nay, sahib," I began; but I checked myself, and he noticed it. "Except ?" said he. "Except that when Gooja Singh came," I said, "he seemed unwilling to believe you were asleep." "How long was it before Gooja Singh came?" he asked. "He came almost before I had laid you under the tree and covered you," said I. "And you told him I was asleep?" he said.
Then Gooja Singh made bold, as he usually did when he judged the risk not too great. He was behind the men, which gave him greater courage; and it suited him well to have to raise his voice, because the men might suppose that to be due to insolence, whereas Ranjoor Singh must ascribe it to necessity.
"Now, which had the right of that Abdul or the wolves?" "We are no wolves!" said Gooja Singh in a whining voice. "We be true men!" "Then I will tell you another story," Ranjoor Singh answered him. And we listened again, as men listen to the ticking of a clock. "This is a story the same old woman, my mother's aunt, told me when I was very little.
Said I to Gooja Singh, who sat on my horse's rump, his own beast being disemboweled, "Who speaks now of a poor beginning?" said I. "I would rather see the end!" said he. But he never saw the end. Gooja Singh was ever too impatient of beginnings, and too sure what the end ought to be, to make certain of the middle part.
Then he gave up Gooja Singh in exchange for them; and Gooja Singh walked away among the Kurds without so much as a backward look, or a word of good-by, or a salute. "He should be punished for not saluting you," said I, going to Ranjoor Singh's side. "It is a bad example to the troopers." "KUCH KUCH ," said he. "No trouble. Black hearts beget black deeds. White hearts, good deeds.
He explained although he did not say how he knew that the Germans have kept for many years in Berlin an office for the purpose of intrigue in India an office manned by Sikh traitors. "That is where Ranjoor Singh will be," said he. "He will be managing that bureau." In those days Gooja Singh was Ranjoor Singh's bitterest enemy, although later he changed sides again. The night-time was the worst.
Then the fiercest gust of rain of all swept by like a curtain, and it was as if Europe had been shut off forever so that I recalled Gooja Singh's saying on the transport in the Red Sea, about a curtain being drawn and our not returning that way. My twenty men marched numbly, some seeming half-asleep.
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