Part 70

“‘That’s good enough,’ said Stalky when we got dinner ready and he was chewin’ mutton-kababs off a cleanin’ rod. ‘There’s no sense riskin’ men. They’re holding a pow-wow between the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts at the head of the gorge. I don’t think these so-called coalitions are much good.’

“Do you know what that maniac had done? Tertius and I shook it out of him by instalments. There was an underground granary cellar-room below the watch-tower, and in blasting the road Stalky had blown a hole into one side of it. Being no one else but Stalky, he’d kept the hole open for his own ends; and laid poor Everett’s body slap over the well of the stairs that led down to it from the watch-tower. He’d had to move and replace the corpse every time he used the passage. The Sikhs wouldn’t go near the place, of course. Well, he’d got out of this hole, and dropped on to the road. Then, in the night and a howling snow-storm, he’d dropped over the edge of the khud, made his way down to the bottom of the gorge, forded the nullah, which was half frozen, climbed up on the other side along a track he’d discovered, and come out on the right flank of the Khye-Kheens. He had then--listen to this!--crossed over a ridge that paralleled their rear, walked half a mile behind that, and come out on the left of their line where the gorge gets shallow and where there was a regular track between the Malôt and the Khye-Kheen camps. That was about two in the morning, and, as it turned out, a man spotted him--a Khye-Kheen. So Stalky abolished him quietly, and left him--with the Malôt mark on his chest, same as Everett had.

“‘I was just as economical as I could be,’ Stalky said to us. ‘If he’d shouted I should have been slain. I’d never had to do that kind of thing but once before, and that was the first time I tried that path. It’s perfectly practicable for infantry, you know.’

“‘What about your first man?’ I said.

“‘Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett, and I went out lookin’ for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me. I abolished him--privatim--scragged him. But on thinkin’ it over it occurred to me that if I could find the body (I’d hove it down some rocks) I might decorate it with the Malôt mark and leave it to the Khye-Kheens to draw inferences. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khye-Kheens are shocked at the Malôts perpetratin’ these two dastardly outrages after they’d sworn to sink all bleed feuds. I lay up behind their sungars early this morning and watched ’em. They all went to confer about it at the head of the gorge. Awf’ly annoyed they are. Don’t wonder.’ You know the way Stalky drops out his words, one by one.”

“My God!” said the Infant, explosively, as the full depth of the strategy dawned on him.

“Dear-r man!” said McTurk, purring rapturously.

“Stalky stalked,” said Tertius. “That’s all there is to it.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Dick Four. “Don’t you remember how he insisted that he had only applied his luck? Don’t you remember how Rutton Singh grabbed his boots and grovelled in the snow, and how our men shouted?”

“None of our Pathans believed that was luck,” said Tertius. “They swore Stalky ought to have been born a Pathan, and--’member we nearly had a row in the fort when Rutton Singh said Stalky was a Pathan? Gad, how furious the old chap was with my Jemadar! But Stalky just waggled his finger and they shut up.

“Old Rutton Singh’s sword was half out, though, and he swore he’d cremate every Khye-Kheen and Malôt he killed. That made the Jemadar pretty wild, because he didn’t mind fighting against his own creed, but he wasn’t going to crab a fellow Mussulman’s chances of Paradise. Then Stalky jabbered Pushtu and Punjabi in alternate streaks. Where the deuce did he pick up his Pushtu from, Beetle?”

“Never mind his language, Dick,” said I. “Give us the gist of it.”

“I flatter myself I can address the wily Pathan on occasion, but, hang it all, I can’t make puns in Pushtu, or top off my arguments with a smutty story, as he did. He played on those two old dogs o’ war like a--like a concertina. Stalky said--and the other two backed up his knowledge of Oriental nature--that the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts between ’em would organize a combined attack on us that night, as a proof of good faith. They wouldn’t drive it home, though, because neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutton Singh put it, of the little accidents. Stalky’s notion was to crawl out at dusk with his Sikhs, manoeuvre ’em along this ungodly goat-track that he’d found, to the back of the Khye-Kheen position, and then lob in a few long shots at the Malôts when the attack was well on. ‘That’ll divert their minds and help to agitate ’em,’ he said. ‘Then you chaps can come out and sweep up the pieces, and we’ll rendezvous at the head of the gorge. After that, I move we get back to Mac’s camp and have something to eat.”

“You were commandin’?” the Infant suggested.

“I was about three months senior to Stalky, and two months Tertius’s senior,” Dick Four replied. “But we were all from the same old Coll. I should say ours was the only little affair on record where some one wasn’t jealous of some one else.”

“We weren’t,” Tertius broke in, “but there was another row between Gul Sher Khan and Rutton Singh. Our Jemadar said--he was quite right--that no Sikh living could stalk worth a damn; and that Koran Sahib had better take out the Pathans, who understood that kind of mountain work. Rutton Singh said that Koran Sahib jolly well knew every Pathan was a born deserter, and every Sikh was a gentleman, even if he couldn’t crawl on his belly. Stalky struck in with some woman’s proverb or other, that had the effect of doublin’ both men up with a grin. He said the Sikhs and the Pathans could settle their claims on the Khye-Kheens and Malôts later on, but he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain-climbing job, because Sikhs could shoot. They can, too. Give ’em a mule-load of ammunition apiece, and they’re perfectly happy.”

“And out he gat,” said Dick Four. “As soon as it was dark, and he’d had a bit of a snooze, him and thirty Sikhs went down through the staircase in the tower, every mother’s son of ’em salutin’ little Everett where It stood propped up against the wall. The last I heard him say was, ‘Kubbadar! tumbleinga! [Look out; you’ll fall!] and they tumbleingaed over the black edge of nothing. Close upon 9 p.m. the combined attack developed; Khye-Kheens across the valley, and Malôts in front of us, pluggin’ at long range and yellin’ to each other to come along and cut our infidel throats. Then they skirmished up to the gate, and began the old game of calling our Pathans renegades, and invitin’ ’em to join the holy war. One of our men, a young fellow from Dera Ismail, jumped on the wall to slang ’em back, and jumped down, blubbing like a child. He’d been hit smack in the middle of the hand. ‘Never saw a man yet who could stand a hit in the hand without weepin’ bitterly. It tickles up all the nerves. So Tertius took his rifle and smote the others on the head to keep them quiet at the loopholes. The dear children wanted to open the gate and go in at ’em generally, but that didn’t suit our book.

“At last, near midnight, I heard the wop, wop, wop, of Stalky’s Martinis across the valley, and some general cursing among the Malôts, whose main body was hid from us by a fold in the hillside. Stalky was brownin’ ’em at a great rate, and very naturally they turned half right and began to blaze at their faithless allies, the Khye-Kheens--regular volley firin’. In less than ten minutes after Stalky opened the diversion they were going it hammer and tongs, both sides the valley. When we could see, the valley was rather a mixed-up affair. The Khye-Kheens had streamed out of their sungars above the gorge to chastise the Malôts, and Stalky--I was watching him through my glasses--had slipped in behind ’em. Very good. The Khye-Kheens had to leg it along the hillside up to where the gorge got shallow and they could cross over to the Malôts, who were awfully cheered to see the Khye-Kheens taken in the rear.

“Then it occurred to me to comfort the Khye-Kheens. So I turned out the whole command, and we advanced à la pas de charge, doublin’ up what, for the sake of argument, we’ll call the Malôts’ left flank. Even then, if they’d sunk their differences, they could have eaten us alive; but they’d been firin’ at each other half the night, and they went on firin’. Queerest thing you ever saw in your born days! As soon as our men doubled up to the Malôts, they’d blaze at the Khye-Kheens more zealously than ever, to show they were on our side, run up the valley a few hundred yards, and halt to fire again. The moment Stalky saw our game he duplicated it his side the gorge; and, by Jove! the Khye-Kheens did just the same thing.”

“Yes, but,” said Tertius, “you’ve forgot him playin’ ’Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby’ on the bugle to hurry us up.”

“Did he?” roared McTurk. Somehow we all began to sing it, and there was an interruption.

“Rather,” said Tertius, when we were quiet. No one of the Aladdin company could forget that tune. “Yes, he played ‘Patsy.’ Go on, Dick.”

“Finally,” said Dick Four, “we drove both mobs into each other’s arms on a bit of level ground at the head of the valley, and saw the whole crew whirl off, fightin’ and stabbin’ and swearin’ in a blindin’ snow-storm. They were a heavy, hairy lot, and we didn’t follow ’em.

“Stalky had captured one prisoner--an old pensioned Sepoy of twenty-five years’ service, who produced his discharge--an awf’ly sportin’ old card. He had been tryin’ to make his men rush us early in the day. He was sulky--angry with his own side for their cowardice, and Rutton Singh wanted to bayonet him--Sikhs don’t understand fightin’ against the Government after you’ve served it honestly--but Stalky rescued him, and froze on to him tight--with ulterior motives, I believe. When we got back to the fort, we buried young Everett--Stalky wouldn’t hear of blowin’ up the place--and bunked. We’d only lost ten men, all told.”

“Only ten, out of seventy. How did you lose ’em?” I asked.

“Oh, there was a rush on the fort early in the night, and a few Malôts got over the gate. It was rather a tight thing for a minute or two, but the recruits took it beautifully. Lucky job we hadn’t any badly wounded men to carry, because we had forty miles to Macnamara’s camp. By Jove, how we legged it! Half way in, old Rutton Singh collapsed, so we slung him across four rifles and Stalky’s overcoat; and Stalky, his prisoner, and a couple of Sikhs were his bearers. After that I went to sleep. You can, you know, on the march, when your legs get properly numbed. Mac swears we all marched into his camp snoring and dropped where we halted. His men lugged us into the tents like gram-bags. I remember wakin’ up and seeing Stalky asleep with his head on old Rutton Singh’s chest. He slept twenty-four hours. I only slept seventeen, but then I was coming down with dysentery.”

“Coming down? What rot! He had it on him before we joined Stalky in the fort,” said Tertius.

“Well, you needn’t talk! You hove your sword at Macnamara and demanded a drum-head court-martial every time you saw him. The only thing that soothed you was putting you under arrest every half hour. You were off your head for three days.”