FullReads

About noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as a burning house will make in sunshine, and Sikandar Khan, who knows how to take a bearing across a hill, said, “At last we have burned the house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled.” And I said: “What need now that they have slain my child? Let me mourn.” It was a high smoke, and the old man, as I saw, came out into the verandah to behold it, and shook his clenched hands at it. So we lay till the twilight, foodless and without water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor to drink till we had accomplished the matter. I had a little opium left, of which I gave Sikandar Khan the half, because he loved Kurban Sahib. When it was full dark we sharpened our sabres upon a certain softish rock which, mixed with water, sharpens steel well, and we took off our boots and we went down to the house and looked through the windows very softly. The old man sat reading in a book, and the woman sat by the hearth; and the idiot lay on the floor with his head against her knee, and he counted his fingers and laughed, and she laughed again. So I knew they were mother and son, and I laughed, too, for I had suspected this when I claimed her life and her body from Sikandar Khan, in our discussion of the spoil. Then we entered with bare swords…. Indeed, these Boer-log do not understand the steel, for the old man ran towards a rifle in the corner; but Sikandar Khan prevented him with a blow of the flat across the hands, and he sat down and held up his hands, and I put my fingers on my lips to signify they should be silent. But the woman cried, and one stirred in an inner room, and a door opened, and a man, bound about the head with rags, stood stupidly fumbling with a gun. His whole head fell inside the door, and none followed him. It was a very pretty stroke–for a Pathan. They then were silent, staring at the head upon the floor, and I said to Sikandar Khan, “Fetch ropes! Not even for Kurban Sahib’s sake will I defile my sword.” So he went to seek and returned with three long leather ones, and said, “Four wounded lie within, and doubtless each has a permit from a General,” and he stretched the ropes and laughed. Then I bound the old man’s hands behind his back, and unwillingly–for he laughed in my face, and would have fingered my beard–the idiot’s. At this the woman with the swine’s eyes and the jowl of a swine ran forward, and Sikandar Khan said, “Shall I strike or bind? She was thy property on the division.” And I said, “Refrain! I have made a chain to hold her. Open the door.” I pushed out the two across the verandah into the darker shade of the thorn-trees, and she followed upon her knees and lay along the ground, and pawed at my boots and howled. Then Sikandar Khan bore out the lamp, saying that he was a butler and would light the table, and I looked for a branch that would bear fruit. But the woman hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke fast in her tongue, and I replied in my tongue, “I am childless to-night because of thy perfidy, and my child was praised among men and loved among women. He would have begotten men–not animals. Thou hast more years to live than I, but my grief is the greater.”

I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot’s neck, and flung the end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. One hand he held to his side, even where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And I said, “Wait a while, Child, and thou shalt sleep.” But he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my eyes, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And Sikandar Khan said, “Is it too heavy?” and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned to tally on the rope, the spirit of Kurban Sahib stood up within arm’s reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And a little wind blew out the lamp, and I heard Sikandar Khan’s teeth chatter in his head.