Talbot Mundy

“ If he was lying he was much too big a fool to be a chieftain in those hills, for almost any tale would have sufficed to make us spare his life for at least a little while. And I do like a man who can face death in a dark hole without flinching. I would surely not have killed him that way, without more proof than I had that he had slain Joan Angela. Perhaps he guessed that.
I bade Narayan Singh put up his saber, and he obeyed me, for a wonder, for he was pretty well beside himself. He stood waiting with the saber raised, to see what I would order next. ”

“ There are always plenty of friends to dissuade a fellow from the proper course. I turned my back on him, and started forward.
In a second he was in pursuit of me again, jumping and sliding down the ramp in a little avalanche of loose stones.
“Come!” he insisted. “King sahib sends for you!”
And before I could ask for an explanation he was gone again, scrambling up the slide on hands and knees. Far up above me I could see King standing in the moonlight on the ledge before the cavern, talking to about a dozen men, of whom one looked like Kangra Khan, our prisoner. ”

“ NARAYAN SINGH praised a number of gods for what befell, and himself not at all. Grim and I thanked the wind, that tore down the ravine in gusts of fury a man could hardly stand against, making Kangra Khan believe Allah had sent the blast to favor his own retreat northward under cover of darkness. Even the fierce tribesmen of that region were hardly likely to stir on such a night, and he reasoned, as we learned afterwards, that the Waziris would take advantage of the fury, of the elements to scoot for home. ”

“ My mental processes are no man's business but my own, and King's opinion of me, though I value it, was not the issue. I am the man who must live with myself.
I waited an interminable time, listening to the scattered shots of some of King's Waziris, who were peppering the enemy's retreat and making it as difficult as possible to get away with the remaining baggage. Every minute seemed priceless, yet the Sikh did not come. ”

“ Reason, argument, conviction are alike dangerous on dark nights, when the actual facts are obscure.
His men ignored all possibility of danger. Believing what they wanted to believe—that they were well-guarded against surprize by their allies in the ravine, they began to troop out of the cavern and down the ramp carrying the few odds and ends of loads that had not already been stacked at the foot of the ramp in readiness. ”

“ He was frantic—worse than I–neither man nor beast in that hour, but more like the embodiment of some ungoverned element.
“Krishna!” he screamed, and broke loose. The night swallowed him.
Then some one lighted a torch down there among the loads—I suppose to give the Pathans a point to rally on. The Waziris yelled, and the man—or the woman, maybe-who held the torch went down under a hail of bullets. But before the light died I had seen Kangra Khan and three men on a rock at the foot of the ramp. No sign of Joan Angela. ”

“ The next I recall I was crouched beside Narayan Singh in pitch darkness under the bulge of the rock on which Kangra Khan stood, with the rifle like a club in one hand, and the other hand on the Sikh's shoulder, to take the time from him.
WE SPRANG together, like fiends out a hell-hole. He ran a man clean through from behind with his saber, and I clubbed another. A third swung for me with a tulwar, but missed his footing and fell off the rock. Kangra Khan fired a pistol and jumped for his life, but the Sikh caught his foot, and I closed with him. ”

“ I heard Joan Angela cry aloud, and as I tore in to her aid she thrust out blindly with the tulwar and ran the point through the skin over my left ribs. I don't know how a man sees at a time like that. Forgotten, latent senses function. Two Pathans seized Joan Angela to carry her off. One clapped his hand over her mouth from behind, and the other seized her legs to stop her kicking. I used the pistol and missed both of them. The second man let go her legs and closed with me, groping for my eye to stick a thumb in it. I took him around the waist, up-ended him, and flung him into the ravine. ”

“ And those who were first at the bottom crouched down behind the loads to shelter themselves from the wind; coming out of a warm cavern they doubtless felt it even more than we did.
Some of them carried lighted torches made of the resinous wood no longer needed for the fire—proof enough that they meant to march far and furiously, as otherwise they would have heaped the unburned fuel on the women. One group of six torch men stood at the end of the ledge where the ramp began, perhaps to keep tally of the men who passed ”

“ There could not possibly be more than twenty men making the assault, and perhaps ten firing from the dark to cover it, because there were some of King's Waziris still shooting into the scrimmage where the loads were being shouldered, and King had said he only had about fifty men all told. But it doesn't need great numbers to make a fierce affair.
One man hurled a stone from the ramp that apparently hit the mark, for the Pathans broke cover and danced and yelled in chorus. But I heard King's shrill whistle below, and another attack began immediately, covered by a hotter fire than ever. ”

“ I bent my knee for Grim to mount by, and he had his hand on my shoulder when the Pathan's face grinned again within a foot of mine, and he almost screamed at me:
“The Tooth, Ram-is-den! Have you the Tooth?” ”

“ So I charged into the moonlight, at the risk of being hit by the Waziri bullets, and the first the Pathans knew of my coming was when the butt of the rifle smacked like a pole-ax on the nearest man's head and he toppled over-side, leaving room for my swing at the next, and the next. ”