Barclay of the Guides. Herbert Strang

The barricade at the foot of the winding stair had been blown up, and a fierce contest was now going on. Ahsan and his comrades were making a stout resistance, buoyed up by the belief that their chief was coming to their help; but they were on the point of being overpowered when a great shout arose from the street, and Rahmut and his men burst through the ranks of the onlookers and fell upon the rear of Minghal's force. The surprise was complete. The new-comers laid about them doughtily with their terrible swords; their enemies fell into a panic, and in a few minutes the whole crowd, save those who had already fallen, were running in every direction. Many of them were cut down as they fled. Some made straight for the gate, which the men stationed there had thrown open at the first sign of what was happening. Among the fugitives was Minghal Khan. Rahmut had ordered his men to take the rival chief alive, but in the darkness it was difficult to distinguish one from many, and Minghal made good his escape with a few of his followers, and fled away into the night.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

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The Return of Sherdil

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      To pursue the fugitives was impossible in the darkness; nor, indeed, were Rahmut's men capable of further exertions. They were worn out by two days and nights of hard riding. Before proceeding to carry out the prime object of his expedition, the old chief had turned aside to raid the village of an enemy near the frontier, and had scarcely completed his work there when he was spied by a troop of the Feringhis, who chased him with such pertinacity that he was forced to abandon his purposed quest. Having secured, therefore, those members of Minghal's band who had life in them and were not too severely wounded to escape, Rahmut ordered the gates to be again closed and the community to rest.

      Before he sought his own couch, however, the old chief heard from Ahsan the full story of what had happened during his absence. Enraged as he was at Minghal's action, he was still more delighted with the part Ahmed had played. He embraced the lad fondly, called him by endearing names in the extravagant Oriental way, and declared that, after punishing Minghal, he would devote himself in earnest to the quest of a suitable bride for his heir.

      In the morning he caused all the villagers to assemble in the open space before the tower, and bitterly upbraided those who had tamely submitted to the enemy. He ordered his nephew Dilasah, who had been severely wounded, to be brought out among the people, and, cursing him in the name of the Prophet, he bade all men to witness that he disowned him utterly. Then he waxed eloquent in praise of Ahmed, about whose neck he hung a chain of silver cunningly wrought, and called on the people to recognize him as their future chief. And, finally, he announced that Minghal Khan should not go unpunished. When the time was ripe his enemy should lick the dust.

      When the assembly was dismissed, Rahmut called his chief men about him to discuss the means of taking vengeance on Minghal. Ahmed felt a glow of pride at being admitted to the council. In the ordinary way he could not have expected so great an honour until he had proved himself in actual warfare and become a married man. But the old chief was so much pleased with his coolness and daring, that he was resolved to give the lad a real share in the activities of the tribe.

      There was a long discussion as to the method by which reprisal might be made on Minghal Khan. It was speedily agreed that to attack his village openly was impracticable, or would at least expose them to the risk of disaster. Minghal had lost some twenty men in the fight, but it was well known that he could still put eighty or ninety good warriors in the field, whereas Rahmut had but forty or fifty. Success could only be hoped for from a stratagem. But Minghal, while inferior as a warrior to Rahmut, was more than his match in wiles. Rahmut, indeed, disdained trickery of any kind; he had won his reputation by sheer prowess and skill in generalship, and if it came to a contest in cunning, Minghal would easily bear the palm. No doubt the wily chief would expect retaliation, and would be fully prepared to meet it. No one among the council was able to suggest a likely scheme, and it broke up without having come to a decision.

      Two days passed, and still no plan had suggested itself. On the third day, there rode up to the village a tall, black-bearded horseman clad in worn and tattered garments of dust colour, and carrying sword, lance and carbine. When he had come within a short distance of the gate Ahsan shouted—

      "Halt, there! Who are you, and what is your business?"

      "Knowst thou me not, Ahsan?" came the reply. "Dost not remember Sherdil, son of Assad? Thou didst thrash me often enough, and truly the soft part of me will never forget thy thwackings."

      "Why, Sherdil, thy beard has grown since those days. I remember thee well. Come in, and say why thou ridest in garments of so strange a make."

      Sherdil rode in, eyed curiously by the crowd of men and boys whom the brief conversation had drawn to the spot. He was a magnificent specimen of a Pathan, tall, handsome of feature, well made, and his horse was a match for him. Dismounting, he led his horse by the bridle and went to pay his respects to the chief.

      Sherdil had left the village nearly eight years before, when he was a youth of seventeen. He had been the wildest and most unruly boy of the tribe, always in mischief, showing no respect for his elders—one day he had called a holy sayad "old scaldhead," and laughed when his father thrashed him for it. He had been incorrigibly lazy at school: not all the mullah's thwackings drove into his thick head the scraps from the Koran which formed the greater part of his lessons, and he was always very rebellious at having to fast from sunrise to sunset in Ramzan, the ninth month. But in tent-pegging and racing and sword-play he beat all boys of his age, and indeed many of the men; and when he insisted on joining them in their expeditions, which happened at the age of sixteen, he excelled them all as a highway robber and a horse-thief.

      When he was seventeen he ran away, and nothing had since been heard of him. His mother grieved, for he was her firstborn; but his father, having three more sons, was not greatly distressed, for the boy had always been a trouble to him. And now he had come back, grown out of knowledge, with a fine black beard and the look of a seasoned warrior.

      His father, Assad, as in duty bound, made a great feast in honour of the returned prodigal. He invited a great number of his neighbours, and regaled them with the flesh of sheep and goats and—this was a great luxury—fowls, and beautifully light chapatis baked by his wife Fatima herself, and luscious sweetmeats made of honey and ghi; but the only drink was water. And having been well fed, Sherdil related the story of his life since he had left Shagpur—a good riddance, as most of the folk thought.

      It was a stirring tale, of wild doings on the borders, among men who kept the passes into the hills and lived amid inaccessible rocks, whence they swept down upon unsuspecting travellers and merchants in the plains, and even pushed their forays across the frontiers among the sahib-log. His audience uttered many an exclamation of wonderment and admiration as he recounted his exploits, and you may be sure he did not minimize them. The men about him were robbers and brigands and murderers themselves, but their deeds faded into insignificance beside the bold and desperate adventures of Sherdil. Ahmed, who was among the company, listened with all his frame thrilling. He had a faint recollection of Sherdil as a big fellow who, rough as he was, had treated him with a certain kindness, and had shown him first how to snare a rabbit. And he felt a good deal of envy of this fine stalwart fellow who had seen and done so much.

      One story of Sherdil's made the company hilarious. The chief to whom he for a time attached himself—one Dilawur, a native of Jahangia, a village on the Cabul river—heard one day that a wealthy Hindu shopkeeper was to be married. He instantly determined to profit by the bridegroom's happiness. With his men, among whom Sherdil was one, he lay in wait on the bank of the Indus at a place which the Hindu must pass on his way to the bride's house. When the expectant bridegroom came in sight, all bedizened with wristlets and chains and jewels, the brigands, armed with pistol, sword and dagger, fell upon the party, seized the luckless man, dragged him to the river bank, and thrust him into an inflated cow-hide. Then Sherdil