dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border, as has been our custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji’s tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us, and rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He has helped two score of us into Paradise this night. Let him therefore accompany his flock, and we will build over his body a dome of the blue tiles of Mooltan, and burn lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall be a saint: we shall have a shrine: and there our women shall pray for fresh seed to fill the gaps in our fighting-tale. How think you?’

A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion, and met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet, glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and calling down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a game of blind man’s buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.

They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back of his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his adherents to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for Khoda Dad Khan had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men described to him the glories of the shrine they would build, and the little children clapping their hands cried, ‘Run, Mullah, run! There’s a man behind you!’ In the end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan’s brother sent a knife home between his ribs. ‘Wherefore,’ ‘said Khoda Dad Khan with charming simplicity, ‘I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!’ No man gainsaid him; and they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.

On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in leash so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald’s right ear had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its unskilled rider, Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and sobbed till Tommy Dodd made him lie down and rest.

‘We must wait about till the morning,’ said he. ‘I wired to the Colonel just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He’ll be furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the hills won’t give us any more trouble.’

‘Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar on the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You’re quite sure, Tommy, that—that stuff was—was only the skewbald’s ear?’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Tommy. ‘You just missed cutting off his head. I saw you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.’

Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother officers demanding the court- martial of Tommy Dodd for ‘spoiling the picnic,’ and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris, Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a dozen of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the Beshaklis restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section of the Khusru Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming with life as usual, while such of their men as had taken refuge in the water-courses and ravines were being driven out by the troopers. By sundown began the remorseless patrol of the Border by police and trooper, most like the cow-boys’ eternal ride round restless cattle.

‘Now,’ said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of twinkling fires below, ‘ye may see how far the old order changes. After their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown the hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire Sahib—who loves me—and see if I can stave off at least the blockade. Do I speak for the tribe?’