Part 12 (1/2)
It wasdown to General Baines' reuard of Colonel Kendrick's colus were not brisk enough in that place to keep it busy Kendrick hi with the cavalry detachment that led the way southward
”Who's in command now?” he asked, for they had told hiray-haired officer who rode up at that moment
”I'm your senior, sir, by two years,” answered Kendrick
”Then you coh time's been wasted The column can wait here until my main body reaches us Then we'llJailpore to its fate is nonsense! The rebels are in strength there, and they have perpetrated an aboe There ill punish them, or else we'll all die in the atteround, and put every man in it to the sword before we find the four Europeans supposed to be left alive there, our duty is none the less obvious! Here comes my column Tell the men to be ready to march in ten h the dust at the approaching column, but the man who had been superseded touched him on the sleeve
”What's that? Better have a rest? Tired out, you say? Oh! Form them all up in hollow square, then, and I'll say a feords to the-weary colu it lie down”
Ten h a steel-shot dust-cloud, and three thousand hel in the sun Three thousand weary iven him his answer! There was no kind of handle to it; no reserve-nothing but generous and unconditional allegiance unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death It takes a real commander to draw that kind of answer from a tired-out column, but it is a kind of answer, too, that makes commanders! It is not mere talk, on either side Itood in each other
XI
”You'veto meet him where the men and the fakir and the interpreter would not be able to Overhear
”Sahib, I killed one horse-the horse you looted for ht ao from Bholat One of theed to this one, leaving the other on the road I have orders for you, sahib”
”Hand 'em over then,” said Brown ”Orders first, and talk afterward, when there's time!”
The Rajput drew out a sealed envelope, and passed it to hi at the half-sheet of paper as though it were a death-sentence
”Where's the general?”
”With his column-twenty or thirty miles away to the northward by now!”
”And he's left me, with this handful, in the lurch?”
”Nay, sahib! As I understood the orders, he has left you with a very honorable mission to fulfil!”
Brown stared hard at the half-sheet of notepaper again Reading was not his longest suit by any means, and at that he infinitely preferred to wrestle with printed characters
”Have you read it, Juggut Khan?” he asked
”Nay, sahib I can speak English, but not read it”
”Then we're near to being in the sarin ”I'll have another try! It looks like a good-by ood-by' written at the end above his signature”
”There were other matters, sahib There was an order I can not read, but I knohat is in the e”
”Well?”
”You, and your twelve-”