King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure, Talbot Mundy [ebook smartphone TXT] 📗

of himself, just as no one can be braver when he knows his ground.

Signals preceded them, and Courtenay himself rode up the Pass to greet them. But of course he was not very cordial to King, considering his disguise; and he chose to keep the Hillmen in doubt yet as to their eventual reception. But one of them, the Orakzai Pathan (for nothing could completely unman him), shouted to know whether it was true that pardons had been offered for deserters, and Courtenay nodded. They were less timid after that. Some of them pulled medals out and pinned them outside their shirts.

At Jamrud they were given food and their rifles were taken away from them and a guard was set to watch them. But the guard only consisted of two men, both of whom were Pathans, and they assured them that, ridiculous though it sounded, the British were actually willing to forgive their enemies and to pardon all deserters who applied for pardon on condition of good faith in the future.

That night they prayed to Allah like little children lost and found. The women crooned love-songs to their babies over the clear fires and the men talked--and talked--and talked until the stars grew big as moons to weary eyes and they slept at last, to dream of khaki uniforms and karnel sahibs who knew neither fear nor favor and who said things that were so. It is a mad world to the Himalayan Hillman where men in authority tell truth unadorned without shame and without consideration--a mad, mad world, and perhaps too exotic to be wholesome, but pleasant while the dream lasts.

Over in the fort Courtenay placed a bath at King's disposal and lent him clean clothes and a razor. But he was not very cordial.

“Tell me all the war news!” said King, splashing in the tub. And Courtenay told him, passing him another cake of soap when the first was finished. After all there was not much to tell--butchery in Belgium--Huns and guns--and the everlastingly glorious stand that saved Paris and France and Europe.

“According to the cables our men are going the records one better. I think that's all,” said Courtenay.

“Then why the stuffiness?” asked King. “Why am I talked to at the end of a tube, so to speak?”

“You're under arrest!” said Courtenay.

“The deuce I am!”

“I'm taking care of you myself to obviate the necessity of putting a sentry on guard over you.”

“Good of you, I'm sure. What's it all about?”

“I don't mind telling you, but I'd rather you'd wait. The minute you were sighted word was wired down to headquarters, and the general himself will be up here by train any minute.”

“Very well,” said King. “Got a cigar? Got a black one? Blacker the better!”

He was out of his bath and remembered that minute that he had not smoked a cigar since leaving India. Naked, shaved, with some of the stain removed, he did not look like a man in trouble as he filled his lungs with the saltpeterish smoke of a fat Trichinopoli.

And then the general came and did not wait for King to get dressed but burst into the bathroom and shook hands with him while he was still naked and asked ten questions (like a gatling gun) while King was getting on his trousers, divining each answer after the third word and waving the rest aside.

“And why am I arrested, sir?” asked King the moment he could slip the question in edgewise.

“Oh, yes, of course. Try the case here as well as anywhere. What does this mean?”

Out of his pocket the general produced a letter that smelt strongly of a scent King recognized. He spread it out on a table, and King read. It was Yasmini's letter that she had sent down the Khyber to make India too hot to hold him.

“Your Captain King has been too much trouble. He has taken money from the Germans. He adopted native dress. He called himself Kurram Khan. He slew his own brother at night in the Khyber Pass. These men will say that he carried the head to Khinjan, and their word is true. I, Yasmini, saw. He used the head for a passport to obtain admittance. He proclaims a jihad! He urges invasion of India! He held up his brother's head before five thousand men and boasted of the murder. The next you shall hear of your Captain King of the Khyber Rifles he will be leading a jihad into India. You would have better trusted me. Yasmini.”

“Too bad about your brother,” said the general.

“The body is buried. How much is true about the head?”

King told him.

“Where's she?” asked the general.

King did not answer. The general waited.

“I don't know, sir.”

“Ask the Rangar,” Courtenay suggested.

“Where is he?” asked King.

“Caught him coming down the Khyber on his black mare and arrested him. He's in the next room! I hope he's to be hanged. So that I can buy the mare,” he added cheerfully.

King whistled softly to himself, and the general looked at him through half-closed eyes.

“Go in and talk to him, King. Let me know the result.”

He had picked King to go up the Khyber on that errand not for nothing. He knew King and he knew the symptoms. Without answering him King obeyed. He went out of the room into a dark corridor and rapped on the door of the next room to the right. There was a muffled answer from within. Courtenay shouted something to the sentry outside the door and he called another man who fitted a key in the lock. King walked into a room in which one lamp was burning and the door slammed shut behind him.

He was in there an hour, and it never did transpire just what passed, for he can hold his tongue on any subject like a clam, and the general, if anything, can go him one better. Courtenay was placed under orders not to talk, so those who say they know exactly what happened in the room between the time when the door was shut on King and the time when he knocked to have it opened and called for the general, are not telling the truth.

What is known is that finally the general hurried through the door and ejaculated, “Well, I'm damned!” before it could close again. The sentry (Punjabi Mussulman) has sworn to that over a dozen camp-fires since the day.

And it is known, too, for the sentry has taken oath on it and has told the story so many times without much variation that no one who knows the man's record doubts any longer--it is known that when the door opened again King and