Between Gentlemen

I

WHEN Baz Khan, on the voyage to India in the Domena, told the story of his feud with Faiz Ullah, there was little enough hope that I should hear the end of it, for in Bombay Baz Khan disappeared into the maze of streets and gullies off Sandhurst Road. One thing, however, was quite certain, and that was that Baz Khan, following the tradition of the Indian Northwest Frontier, would never give up his search for Faiz Ullah. The feud had started, of course, when they were both serving in the Fortieth Cavalry, a fine regiment which was known throughout the Indian Army by the name of ‘Mukwan Ki Risala.’ ‘Mukwan’ was the Indian troopers’ translation of the name of Captain Macklewhane, who had raised the regiment in Mutiny days.

Bound by the unwritten law of the Pathan, Faiz Ullah was safe while they both served in the regiment, and Baz Khan had to wait patiently for the Great War to end to deal quietly and efficiently with Faiz Ullah after the fashion of the Border. They both came from the village of Al’Stupr, and Baz Khan always hoped that some day he would be given the chance to shoot it out with Faiz Ullah in some red-hot cleft between the bare brown hills of the Tochi Valley.

Throughout the war Baz Khan nursed Faiz Ullah with most painstaking and tender care. When Faiz Ullah was wounded he gave him his own field dressing and even carried him out under fire. Faiz Ullah was his meat and no German artilleryman or machine gunner was going to be allowed to have the pleasure of doing what Baz Khan had reserved for himself.

Faiz Ullah, however, gave Baz Khan the slip. He deserted the regiment and shipped to sea as a fireman. Baz Khan, as soon as he could, took his discharge and followed. He hunted Faiz Ullah relentlessly over the Seven Seas. On the face of it his task was hopeless, but always eventually Faiz Ullah had to return to Bombay, and from Bombay Baz Khan could sometimes get news of him. On one occasion he missed Faiz Ullah by only a day in the Indian Seamen’s Home in the East India Dock Road in London, and in Penang Baz Khan would have caught up with him but for the fact that the southwest monsoon was blowing and his ship was delayed for sixteen hours off Acheen Head. Some day, however, Baz Khan was bound to find Faiz Ullah, and then so much the worse for Faiz Ullah.

All this came from Baz Khan himself. He told it a bit at a time when he came up for air between watches in the grilling and airless heat of the Red Sea.

In the natural course of events we parted in Bombay. I never really expected to hear of him again, but one Sunday after Church Parade in Peshawar an old Pathan came to my bungalow selling carpets. He spread his wares over the verandah and we dickered idly over rugs that I did not want. He showed me one piece — a strip of glowing Kermanshah carpet — and he smiled patronizingly at an offer.

‘I have others,’ he said, and called to the youth who was with him to bring up another bale which lay under a tree in the garden.

‘I have others,’ he said, ‘at the Sahib’s price —’ he looked cautiously round — ‘at the Sahib’s price. And one whom he knows has returned to his village of Al’Stupr. Insh’ Allah — if it is God’s wish — another of whom the Sahib has heard will return there. And then—’ His lips drew back, showing the gaps in his teeth in a wicked smile and he clicked his tongue significantly. ‘And this carpet the Sahib would buy,’ he went on smoothly as his lad returned, ’see the weave and the dyes — ’

No other word but that. He went with my check for the rug in his pocket.

And so Baz Khan was back, presumably to wait for the return of Faiz Ullah, and Baz Khan had not forgotten me and my interest. He was waiting — waiting for the unfortunate Faiz Ullah to put in an appearance. Either he had got word that Faiz Ullah was likely to return, or he was suffering from nostalgia for his hills and he knew that sooner or later Faiz Ullah would be afflicted in the same manner.

It was, however, Dallas, of all people, who was able to fill in the gaps of the story. Dallas was in the Archæological Survey and he was an expert on Alexander the Great. He used to spend all the time he could knocking round in the hills, hunting down traces of the Macedonian, talking with the hillmen and piecing legend on to fact; for somewhere up in the tangle of hills which now form the Border lay the Rock of Aornos. For some reason Dallas had the ambition to establish the site of the Rock, which in the days of Alexander had been an almost impregnable fortress. It is said that even Hercules failed to take it, and then came the great Alexander. He stormed it with comparative ease, as one may read in the pages of Callisthenes.

The hill people let Dallas come and go more or less as he would. It is possible that his enthusiasm for Alexander won their confidence, for Sikander Khan, as they call him, has become a Pathan legend, and his name is venerated to-day as a saintly but ruthless destroyer of idols — as a man after the heart of the hills.

Some authorities contended that the Rock of Aornos lay up in the Pir Sar, but Dallas had his own ideas on the subject. He was determined that the site was somewhere in the valley at the head of which lay Baz Khan’s village of Al’Stupr, and one day he returned from his wanderings excitedly exclaiming that he had found the true Rock. Possibly he had — but he brought back also the end of the tale of Faiz Ullah and Baz Khan.

II

Dallas, hot on the trail of Alexander the Great, was three days out from the last of the police posts on the Kurram River. He was making toward Safed Koh, — the White Hill, — for he was sure that there at last success was to be granted to him. With him was Zaffer Khan, an elderly ruffian who had been with him on these expeditions for years. One gathers that Zaffer Khan cared nothing for Alexander and his Aornos, but some queer bond of loyalty bound him strongly to Dallas. Dallas was unarmed; Zaffer Khan, however, had no illusions about his fellow tribesmen. Through bitter experience he was more cynical about their natures, and he carried his weapons, rifle and knife, beautifully oiled and ready for immediate action.

This is not, of course, the way Dallas told the story. His account was too incoherent, bound up as it was with the technical details of his search. It is rather a piecing together of the information and a filling in of details.

They were walking up the valley of the Kurram, Dallas in front and Zaffer Khan behind. It was early afternoon and Zaffer Khan was cursing himself for a fool for letting Dallas be out even as late as this, for the frontier with dusk approaching was not his idea of the safest place in the world. He grunted as he picked his way among the sharp rocks of the river bed.

It was hot, too, for it was the month of May — a stupid time of year to choose to go hunting round the Safed Koh for traces of men long dead and gone. Zaffer Khan grunted as he wiped the sweat from his eyes. He had an uneasy feeling that something might be going to happen, and he surreptitiously eased the rifle slung over his shoulder and drew back the bolt to see that it was properly loaded.

He watched the valley walls suspiciously. This was just the kind of place for someone to be waiting for someone else to come up the Kurram Valley. A hundred and fifty yards ahead a dead bush lay beside the path. He eyed it with dislike. It was too much like a ranging mark for the waiting someone sitting safely behind a rock in the wall of the valley. Such a one would curl his finger round the warm metal of the trigger, and, knowing the range to a yard, nothing more would be needed than a rock to steady the rifle, a wait until fore sight and back sight came into line, a gentle pressure of the trigger — and he who came would never know a thing as he lay coughing blood under the spiny branches of the little dead bush.

' Wait, Sahib,’ said Zaffer Khan. ‘ Let us go round a little. That dead bush is there for a purpose. Let us go round.’

‘Nonsense,’ Dallas replied. He had had experience with that kind of nervousness before, and nothing ever happened.

They passed the bush in safety, little thrills running down Zaffer Khan’s spine. A hundred yards up the valley Dallas sat down on a rock and pulled out his pipe.

‘Ho, Zaffer Khan,’ he said, ‘go on ahead and tell the folk at Al’Stupr that I am coming. I’m going up that hill to see the country. I may see the Rock from there.’

‘But, Sahib,’ said Zaffer Khan, ‘it is not good to be alone and unarmed in these hills.’

‘It is an order,’ Dallas said indifferently, and, lighting his pipe, he turned up the hillside. Zaffer Khan knew him too well to argue, so, looking after him for a moment, he toiled on up the hot sun-baked valley. His thoughts soon turned to cool water drawn from the well and poured into cupped hands from a goatskin — to the cool dusk of the village fort of Al’Stupr, whose thick stone walls could keep out any heat. He looked forward to gossip in the dark, when the sun had set and the women cooked the evening meal over a twinkling fire in the courtyard, where the goats, shut in for safety, stamped and shuffled, noisily chewing the cud.

Dallas found the hill weary work. It was very hot. The sun in his face sent the sweat trickling into his eyes, and he hoped that he might find some little breeze on the rocky hilltop to ease the stifling heat of the airless valley. He halted for a moment in his arduous climb, and as he did so he heard the rattle of a dislodged stone. He wheeled round to find himself looking down a rifle barrel held by a man who sat crouched behind a rock.

Dallas stood still and said nothing. He wondered what was going to happen next. He glanced up the valley. Zaffer Khan was out of sight. He was conscious of annoyance at the interruption of his day’s work.

The man spoke, gently and quietly. ‘ Will the Sahib please drop behind the rock? I have no wish to injure him, but there are reasons.’

Dallas dropped. There was nothing else for it. As he did so he was amazed at the wonderful command the place gave of the valley. He could see it winding away, with here and there the gleam of water in the bottom where the Kurram lay very small among the dry rocks. The valley unwound away to the south, and beneath him he could see the path which he had followed so laboriously with Zaffer Khan.

‘I see the Sahib is unarmed,’ the man said. ‘I am sorry, but I must ask him to stay here hidden awhile. I wait for one who comes, and I am afraid of scaring the game.’

Dallas said nothing, but did as he was told, and presently the man spoke again.

‘I am Baz Khan, lately Sergeant Major of Mukwan Ki Risala, the Fortieth Cavalry. I wait for Faiz Ullah, who was once my friend and also in Mukwan Ki Risala. I have waited for fifteen years for this, Sahib. I watched you and your man come up the valley, and I thought that perhaps Faiz Ullah had tied himself to you to return for a time to our village of A1 ’Stupr. Faiz Ullah thinks I am far away, but he is not a fool to take risks. As your man passed that bush, which is my ranging mark, I saw that it was not he. I had my sights on his chest, and if I had not seen in time, the Sahib would have continued his journey alone.’

Dallas still said nothing, for he had nothing to say. He realized that he had stumbled into an affair of gentlemen and that Baz Khan would best be left alone to right his own wrongs.

‘This is no place for a Sahib alone, or for anyone who is not one of us,’ Baz Khan went on. ‘Nor is it safe sometimes for those who are of us. What does the Sahib do here? We may talk now, and when my work is done we can go to Al ’Stupr and I will send men to see the Sahib safely on his way.’

‘I search for the Rock of Sikander Khan,’ said Dallas simply.

‘Of Sikander Khan? Well, Sikander Khan is long dead and such work is harmless, but you have a long search. Who knows where Sikander Khan set foot? We are both men with a search. You for one long dead and I — and I for one who lives, but, insh’Allah, who will soon be as dead as Sikander himself.’

There was another long pause before Baz Khan spoke again. ‘ Ya Allah, my man is coming. This is the second time I have waited long in the heat.’

III

Dallas looked round the corner of the rock. He could make out a figure crawling up the valley.

Baz Khan watched him over the sights of his rifle. ‘Six hundred paces,’ he said. ‘Too far. Five hundred now. At that bush it will be three hundred.'

Faiz Ullah was moving cautiously. He peered at every rock and bush. In his mind Dallas formed a plan. Before Faiz Ullah reached the bush he would leap to his feet and shout to him to take cover. He could not see a man slaughtered in cold blood. He braced himself as, craning round his rock, he saw Faiz Ullah stop to make sure that the coast was clear. As he did so there was a rattle of shots from the other side of the valley, the sharp crack of rifles mingling with the heavy soft plop of a muzzle loader. Faiz Ullah dropped.

‘Shaitan ! ’ snapped Baz Khan angrily. ‘There are others who have stolen my game from under my nose.’

There was the crack of a rifle from the bottom of the valley. Faiz Ullah, apparently unhit, was firing on his own account. He had wriggled in under cover of a stone and, hidden from the other side, lay in full view of Dallas and Baz Khan.

‘He is spared for me,’ sighed Baz Khan in relief. He sighted on Faiz Ullah, but, thinking better of it, turned his attention to the honey-colored rocks of the far hillside lit by the lowering rays of the sun. It could hardly be expected that any reluctance to shoot Faiz Ullah in the back had drawn off his attention. Rather he must have known that those who would attack Faiz Ullah, probably for his precious rifle, which on the Border was worth its weight in silver, would be equally ready to shoot at him. They were both of the Orakzai, and raids from neighboring clans were what gave the hills their unsavory reputation.

Dallas marveled at his own escape. This new turn of affairs seemed to have come about at some time since he was made to crouch beside Baz Khan. He pulled out and lit his pipe. There was nothing he could do except watch Baz Khan search the opposite side of the valley.

‘Afridi raiders,’ said Baz Khan as he pressed the trigger. A man appeared from a cleft and stood up, his arms widespread. He walked giddily a few paces dowm the hillside until his hands went up and he fell in a loose heap.

‘Good,’ said Baz Khan thoughtfully as he reloaded. There was a soft plop, and a puff of white smoke showed for a moment as a bullet from the muzzle loader bumbled leisurely overhead. Baz Khan laughed.

‘He is a bold man who uses black powder and a jezail on the Border to-day. Some youth, perhaps, who has borrowed a gun and begged to be allowed to come. Well, well, children must be taught manners,’ he said as he pressed the trigger again.

For an hour they watched across the valley while the heat haze made the hills dance and shimmer. Stones appeared like rocks and bushes like forest trees.

A figure on the far side leaped from cover and made for the hilltop. He was followed by another and another. Below them Faiz Ullah fired, and the bullet kicked up a spurt of dust and, singing, ricocheted off into space. Baz Khan clicked his tongue and forebore to press the trigger himself. He hated to see good ammunition thrown away with cartridges at a rupee apiece. The distance and the speed of the moving figures were too great for certain aim.

IV

For half an hour more they lay, and then Baz Khan raised himself cautiously until he stood in full view. There was no movement from the other side.

‘Come, Sahib,’ he said, ‘they have gone. Let us go. It is just possible that we can get to Al’Stupr after dark. If we are not quick they will try to cut us off from home. But first let us call Faiz Ullah — we may need him.’

Dallas looked hard at Baz Khan.

‘No, Sahib,’ Baz Khan laughed.

‘ Faiz Ullah is safe — until you are safe — as he was when we were in Mu kwan Ki Risala. They say do not trust a Pathan, but I swear by Allah, by the Koran, by my life, that Faiz Ullah is safe — until you are safe. When this is settled — then at last I shall have Faiz Ullah to myself. Now we may have need of him, but he will not come for me. Stand up and call him by name. If we are to get to Al’Stupr, we shall need him.’

Below them Faiz Ullah lay prone behind his rock watching the hillside, unaware of what went on behind him.

‘Ai! Faiz Ullah!’ Dallas shouted. The man whipped round at the cry, rifle ready.

‘Ai! Faiz Ullah — all is now safe! Come up here and we will go together to Al’Stupr!'

Dallas watched Faiz Ullah clamber up the hill. He came cautiously, with constant glances to his rear. He reached the rock, and of a sudden Baz Khan stood up, his rifle aimed at Faiz Ullah. For a moment Dallas thought that Baz Khan would break his oath, and some idea entered his head of stepping between them.

Faiz Ullah’s hand flew to his rifle.

‘Stay, my brother,’ said Baz Khan in tones of sweetness. ‘Stay, my brother. For fifteen years I have waited for you, and now you are denied me as if we were in barracks at Risalpur with the regiment. We have the Sahib here — until he is safe, you are safe from me. I have sworn it. After that — who knows? Do you swear, as I have sworn, that, until then I am safe from you?’

‘I swear it,’ said Faiz Ullah, and Dallas saw his face change like that of a man reprieved at the foot of the gallows. Baz Khan lowered his rifle.

‘Let us go, then,’ he said. ‘We have no time to waste if we are to reach Al’Stupr. It is possible that our brethren from over the valley have already got across our line, but if we hurry, with God’s help we shall be home to-night.’

He led the way up the hill, making use of every fold in the ground and every scrap of cover. Baz Khan went first, Dallas followed, and Faiz Ullah brought up the rear. The pace was killing, for it was the long swing of the true hillman. At the top Baz Khan reconnoitred carefully and they cleared the crest, slipping on hands and knees from rock to rock over the sky line.

If the pace was cruel going up, it was worse going down. Anyone can climb, but few can descend. And Dallas had to cry out for a slower pace as his pumping lungs and aching knees became torture unbearable.

Below them there was a gleam of water.

‘The Darafshan River,’ said Baz Khan. ‘It is said that where the stream divides, your Sikandcr Khan found a great fort and took it.’

‘Aornos!’ exclaimed Dallas, and the mere idea, however vague, gave him fresh energy.

The sun’s rays were level and the shadows lengthening as they dropped down to the water. They drank deeply of the cool, busy river rippling over the stones. They were about to cross when a bullet struck a stone at their feet and ricocheted off into space.

‘Run, Sahib!’ shouted Baz Khan, and they splashed through the stream to the far side.

‘We are under cover here,’ said Baz Khan, ‘but they have cut us off. Well, well — we will make for the top of this rock. We can spend the night up there and we may see a way out at dawn.’

Ahead of them rose a sheer rock cliff with no apparent way to the top.

‘We must go to where the waters divide to find a way up,’ put in Faiz Ullah, and, hugging the cliff, they felt their way upstream.

It was almost dark in the river bottom when they reached the point where the Darafshan divided. It was cleft by a spur of boulders above which the cliff rose to what was apparently a flat top. Dallas stopped. The great flat-topped Rock of Aornos was before him, looking just as he had expected.

He forgot his surroundings, he forgot the urgency of their danger. His years of search were at an end.

‘“And so they came to the Rock of Aornos,” ’ Dallas quoted. He knew the sentences from Callisthenes by heart. Sheer rock walls — surrounded by the river, flat-topped — an impregnable fortress until Alexander came and took it. Of course it was the Rock for which he searched; here Alexander had led his men in the assault up the only accessible path.

‘Come, Sahib, hurry,’ said Baz Khan. ‘We must reach the top before dark.’

The blue shadows were high up the hillside, only the very tops of the hills were lit by the setting sun, but Dallas did not move. It was a little cooler, and a small hot breeze from the north made his sweat-soaked shirt sticking to his skin feel cold and clammy.

It is about all this part that Dallas became vague. For him the thing was over. He was able to set foot on Aornos and that was all he cared about. Anything that interfered with his enjoyment of the discovery was more annoyance.

‘Come, hurry, Sahib,’ Baz Khan repeated urgently,and to give point to his words a bullet whipped into the water and the report of a rifle was thrown back and forth by the echoes in the hills. They ran for the path and scrambled up.

‘We must build a sangar of stone,’ said Baz Khan when they reached the top.

He chose a place on the very edge of the cliff, where it came to a V above the division of the river. It commanded the one path up which they had come.

For an hour they bent their backs in the dark to collecting stones, and Baz Khan took care to inspect the erection for holes through which a bullet might come. He had bitter recollections of the carelessly built, bullet-spattered sangars on the Black Mountain. They left the top uneven in a rough crenelation of boulder, so that a man might raise his head and fire with less chance of being seen.

Baz Khan appointed the watches. He had taken command — the veteran Sergeant Major — and they accepted his orders without question.

Once during the night they heard a noise at the river and the rattle of stones on the path. They fired a shot, and after that there was silence.

V

Dawn came, slowly ripening the sky from pale lemon to scarlet, and with the first rays of sun the heat became unbearable. At that hour the air was still and stifling. By eleven they might expect the wind from the southeast to add to the torture, searing hot and gritty with dust as it would be.

Faiz Ullah exposed himself incautiously and a bullet sent a shower of rock splinters flying. Those on the far hillside were still watching. They could do nothing but lie and pant, getting what shade they could from their sangar walls. Baz Khan showed Dallas how to ease the pain of hunger by lying on a round flat stone, and Dallas told them the story of Sikander Khan and his taking of the Rock on which they lay grilling.

‘ Shabash ’ (Well done), said Baz Khan gravely at the end, as he peered cautiously at the far hillside, jagged black and yellow in the contrasts of sunshine and shadow.

Dallas grew dizzy with heat. His tongue filled his mouth and the sound of the river below was torture. Faiz Ullah kept watch with red-rimmed, burning eyes, his turban wound over his mouth to keep out the dust, and Baz Khan slept or pretended to sleep in the full sun glare.

They did not speak, and over them the bitter, burning wind blew, carrying with it all the dust of India. The dust devils danced and swirled and the rocks of the sangar were too hot to touch. Opposite them the rocky range of hills took queer distorted shapes in the heat.

Dallas concentrated on Aornos. In the bubble of the Darafshan he heard the beat of marching feet as Alexander’s hoplites manœuvred down the valley. Sikander Khan himself, in a brazen helmet and breastplate that reflected the sun, led his clattering hosts up the path. The shouts of the attackers beat in Dallas’s brain and he struggled to his feet wildly waving his arms. The world was filled with sounds.

Baz Khan caught his leg and pulled him under cover. Bullets spattered on the rocks, the cough of the old muzzleloader joining in the more urgent crack of the rifles. The heavy ball moaned overhead and Faiz Ullah fired at a white puff of black powder smoke which hung for a moment over a rock on the hillside five hundred yards away.

‘It’s the sun,’ said Baz Khan tersely as he listened to Dallas babbling of Alexander and his Greeks. He rigged some sort of shade with his turban and made Dallas get under it, but in doing so he must have shown himself, for again bullets smacked on the rocks.

‘Shaitan!’ he said. ‘They are closing on us, — the swine, — and we must have water for the Sahib or he will die.’

Faiz Ullah said nothing, but fired again at a fancied movement and then turned and looked at Baz Khan with bloodshot eyes.

‘We must all have water,’ he said thickly, and he passed his swollen tongue over his cracked lips. ‘We are fools to stay here. If we wait we die of the sun, or they will come in the dawn when we are too weak to move. If we go we die. The Sahib will die anyhow. Let’s go for water — at least we may drink before we die. I have only six rounds left.’

‘At dusk they will come, so that wc cannot get water. I have nine rounds left,’ Baz Khan replied. A splinter of rock had cut his cheek. The blood had run down and dried in a black streak on his face.

Faiz Ullah fired again.

‘Do not waste your ammunition, Faiz Ullah,’said Baz Khan.

The long afternoon dragged through. The sun began to dip toward the w est and the hot wind died away, and full consciousness returned to Dallas. The wish for food had left the men and their minds seemed to work with amazing clarity. It was only clogging thirst which made them less than supermen.

As the sun came level with the hilltops Baz Khan spoke. ‘Let us be ready. We must have water as soon as it is dark, for they will be there at the river as soon as they can be. We must reach it first.’

Dusk came, and with it the valley filled with shadow. The air seemed cool after the burning day.

‘Come,’ said Baz Khan. ‘Let us go. Take my rifle, Sahib. I will take the knife’ — and he felt the double edges of the long blade. Sitting on his heels, he whetted it gently on a stone, sucking the air between his teeth as he did so.

‘Have yours in hand, Faiz Ullah. Are you ready? Let us go,’ he whispered.

They crept over the wall of the sangar and down the hill. They moved a few yards at a time and waited to listen. At last they reached the river. They lay in it. They lapped it. They let the friendly water wash over them. It filled their stomachs and still they were thirsty.

‘Let us go back,’ said Baz Khan, ‘but first fill your kulla, Faiz Ullah, that we may have water through the night.’

They prepared to go, and as they did so the Afridi rose as if out of the ground between them and their path. There were flashes and shots as they stood for a moment dazed.

‘Shaitan, charge the swine!’shouted Baz Khan. ‘Mukwan — Allah!’ This last was the regiment’s old war cry.

‘Mukwan!’ echoed Faiz Ullah. ‘Yi hai! This is the way to do it!’ he cried, and his long knife soughed as he withdrew it.

Dallas said nothing. He beat instinctively about him with his rifle. Somehow they kept together. Steel clashed on steel, and there was a soggy sound as Baz Khan too got home with the knife.

‘We are through — Mukwan Allah!’ he shouted. ‘Make for the sangar,’ and they started up the hill. There were shots behind them, and as they neared the top Baz Khan grunted and staggered. Dallas threw his arm round him and somehow they got him over the wall. Faiz Ullah dropped behind the breastwork and fired into the flashes below merely by way of warning that they were safely home.

Dallas turned Baz Khan over. He was hit through the lung. His breath came short and fast with a catch in it as he tried to get air. He moaned for water. Dallas wiped his lips with his shirt, which was still wet.

Through the long night they watched, one with Baz Khan and one at the sangar wall. At intervals Baz Khan asked for water.

Dawn came, slowly lightening the east again, and with it Baz Khan recovered consciousness.

’I am dying, Sahib,’ he said. ‘You have come to the end of your search, Sahib, and you may live. I have come to the end of mine and I shall die.’

He sank back against the sangar wall.

There was silence until, as the first level rays of the sun lit the hilltops, there was the sound of shots from the north. Dallas seized Baz Khan’s rifle and lay beside Faiz Ullah at the wall. Behind them they could hear Baz Khan gasping as he fought for air.

The firing became more general and Faiz Ullah turned to Dallas, his eyes red-rimmed with dust and watching. ‘Ya Allah!’ he said. ‘It is those from Al’Stupr.’ As he spoke he fired at a man slipping from rock to rock. The bullet sent up a spurt of dust at his feet.

‘ Faiz Ullah — Faiz Ullah,’ whispered Baz Khan. Faiz Ullah went to him. Dallas stayed watching the far hillside.

‘Faiz Ullah, my brother,’ said Baz Khan. ‘Come near. I cannot see — I am dying. I must say good-bye to you.’

He took Faiz Ullah’s right hand in his left.

‘Faiz Ullah — the Sahib and I have each found something. You have found nothing but this.’

The long knife flashed once, and Faiz Ullah fell forward coughing.

‘God’s curse on you, Faiz Ullah — my brother,’ said Baz Khan.