King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure by Talbot Mundy (fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

“Is there any among you who would care to come--?”

“Ah-h-h-h!”

“--at the price of strict obedience?”

“Eh-h-h-h-h!”

It seemed there was no word in Pashtu that could express their willingness.

“We be very, very weary for our Hills!” explained the nearest man.

“Aye!” King answered. “And ye all owe Ali!”

“Uh-h-h-h-h!”

But he knew better than to browbeat them on that account just then, for the men of the North are easier led than driven--up to a certain point. Yet it is no bad plan to remind them of the fundamentals to begin with.

“Will ye obey me, and him?” he asked, laying his hand on Ismail's shoulder, as much to let them see the bracelet again as for any other reason.

“Aye! If we fail, Allah do more to us!”

King laughed. “Ye shall leave this place as my prisoners. Here ye have no friends. Here ye must obey. But what when ye come to your 'Hills' at last? Can one man hold thirty men prisoners then? In the 'Hills' will ye still obey me?”

They answered him in chorus. Every man of the thirty, and Ismail into the bargain, threw his right hand in the air.

“Allah witness that we will obey!”

“Ah-h-h!” said King. “I have heard Hillmen swear by Allah many a time! Many a time!”

The answer to that was unexpected. Ismail knelt--seized his hand--and pressed the gold bracelet to his lips!

In turn, every one of them filed by, knelt reverently and kissed the bracelet!

“Saw ye ever a Hillman do that before?” asked Ismail. “They will obey thee! Have no fear!”

“Kutch dar nahin hai!” King answered. “There is no such thing as fear!” and Ismail grinned at him, not knowing that King was feeling as Aladdin must have done.

“I have heard you swear,” said King; “be ye true men!”

“Ah-h-h!”

“Have they belongings that ought to be collected first?” he asked, and Ismail laughed.

“No more than the dead have! A shroud apiece! Ali gave them bitterness to eat and picked their teeth afterward for gleanings! They stand in what they own!”

“Then, come!” ordered King, turning his back confidently on thirty savages whom Saunders, for instance, would have preferred to drive in front of him, after first seeing them handcuffed. But when he is not pressed for time neither pistols, nor yet handcuffs, are included in King's method.

“Each lock has a key, but some keys fit all locks,” says the Eastern proverb. King has been chosen for many ticklish errands in his time, and Saunders is still in Delhi.

Through the great iron door into dim outer darkness King led them and presently made them squat in a close-huddled semicircle on the paving stones, like night-birds waiting for a meal.

“I want blankets for them--two good ones apiece--and food for a week's journey!” he told the astonished Saunders; and he spoke so decidedly that the other man's questions and argument died stillborn. “While you attend to that for me, I'll be seeing his dibs and making explanations. You look full of news. What do you know?”

“I've telephoned all the other stations, and my men swear Yasmini has not left Delhi by train!”

King smiled at him.

“If I leave by train d'you suppose she'll hear of it?”

“You bet! Bet your boots! Man alive--if she's interested in you by so much,”--he measured off a fraction of his little finger end--“she knows your next two moves ahead, to say nothing of your past half-dozen! I crossed her bows once and thought I had her at a disadvantage. She laughed at me. On my honor, my spine tingles yet at the mere thought of it! You've never met her? Never heard her laugh? Never seen her eyes? You've a treat in store for you--and a mauvais quat' d'heure! What'll you bet me she doesn't laugh you out of countenance the very first time you meet? Come now--what'll you bet?”

“Not in the habit,” King answered, glancing at his watch. “Will you see about their rations, please, and the blankets? Thanks!”

They went then in opposite directions and the prisoners were left squatting under the eyes and bayonets of a very suspicious prison guard, who made no secret of being ready for all conceivable emergencies. One enthusiast drew the cartridge out of his breech-chamber and licked it at intervals of a minute or two, to the very great interest of the Hillmen, who memorized every detail that by any stretch of imagination might be expected to improve their own shooting when they should get home again.

King found his way on foot through a maze of streets to a palace where he was admitted through one door after another by sentries who saluted when he had whispered to them. He ended by sitting on the end of the bed of a gray-headed man who owns three titles and whose word is law between the borders of a province. To him he talked as one schoolboy to a bigger one, because the gray-haired man had understanding, and hence sympathy.

“I don't envy you!” said he under the sheet. “There was an American here not long ago--most amusing man I ever talked to. He had the right expression. 'I do not desiderate that pie!' was his way of putting it. Good, don't you think?”

All the while he talked the older man was writing on a pad that he held propped by his knees beneath the bedclothes, holding the paper tight to keep it from fluttering in the breeze of a big electric fan.

“There's the release for your prisoners. Take it--and take them! Whatever possessed you to want such a gift?”

“Orders, sir.”

“Whose?”

“His. He sent for me to Peshawur and gave me strict orders to work with, not against her. This was obvious.”

“How obvious? It seems bewildering!”

“Well, sir,--first place, she doesn't want to seem to be connected with me. Otherwise she'd have been more in evidence. Second place, she has left Delhi--his telegram and Saunders' men on oath notwithstanding--and she did not mean to leave those men. I imagine her best way to manage Hillmen is to keep promises, and they say she promised them. Third place, if those thirty men had been anything but her particular pet gang they'd either have been over the border or else in jail before now,--just like all the others. For some reason that I don't pretend to understand, she promised 'em more than she has been able to