Part 17 (2/2)
After a while King's cheroot went out, and he threw it away A little later Rewa Gunga threay his cigarette After that, the veriest five-year-old a sleepless over the rim of some stone watch-tower, could have taken oath that the Khyber's unburied dead were prowling in search of eraves Probably their uncanny silence was their best protection; but Rewa Gunga chose to break it after a ti it louder andheard hi did not check speed by a fraction, but the Rangar legged his mare into a canter and forced him to pull out to the left of the track andthose boulders, and to go too fast is to make them think you are afraid! To seem afraid is to invite attack! Can we defend ourselves, with three firearms between us? Look! What was that?”
They were at the point where the road begins to lead up-hill, ard, leaving the bed of a ravine and ascending to join the highway built by British engineers Below, to left and right, was pit-s, and King felt the short hair on his neck begin to rise
So he urged his horse forward, because what Rewa Gunga said is true There is only one surer key to trouble in the Khyber than to seem afraid-and that is to be afraid And to have sat his horse there listening to the Rangar's whisperings and trying to see through shadoould have been to invite fear, of the sort that grows into panic
The Rangar followed him, close up, and both horse and mare sensed excitement Theturned to rebuke the Rangar Yet he did not speak Never, in all the years he had known India and the borderland beyond, had he seen eyes so suggestive of a tiger's in the dark! Yet they were not the saer's, nor the same size, nor the same shape!
”Look, sahib!”
”Look at what?”
”Look!”
After a second or two he caught a gliain, soht Then all at once the flarow
”Halt!” King thundered; and his voice was as sharp and unexpected as a pistol-crack This was soible, that a man could tackle-a perfect antidote for nerves
The blue light continued on a zigzag course, as if aboulders with an unusual sort of torch; and as there was no answer King drew his pistol, took about thirty seconds' aiht
It vanished instantly, into measureless black silence
”Now you've jolly well done it, haven't you!”' the Rangar laughed in his ear ”That was her blue light-Yas answered, for both animals were all but frantic with their sense of their riders' state of et theht it was?” King deain
”It was prearranged She pronal at the point where I auide?” deht, with his rifle cocked and ready
”Did she not say Khinjan is the destination?”'
”Aye!” the felloered
”I know the way to Khinjan That is not it Get down there and find out what that light was Shout back what you find!”
Thehad hardly given the order when sha for hio”
But thenoiselessly in the dark fro drove both spurs ho doard at an angle he could not guess, into blackness he could feel, trusting the ani where his own eyes could