r. You can sleep in it too."

"Sleep with a fakir? I? Allah! I am a Rajput, sahib! A sergeant of the
Rajput Horse, retired!"

"I wouldn't want to sleep with him myself!" admitted Brown. "Come and
look at him. You can smell him from here, but the sight of him's the
real thing!"

The Rajput swaggered up beside Brown, after loosening his horse's girths
and lifting the saddle for a moment.

"He's not the only one that needs a drink!" said Brown. "We're all dry
as brick-dust here, except the fakir!"

"He must wait a while before he drinks. Show me the fakir. Why, Brown
sahib, know you what you have there?"

"The father of all the smells, and all the dirt and all the evil eyes
and evil tongues in Asia!" Brown hazarded.

"More than that, sahib! That is the nameless fakir--him whom they know
as HE! Has there been no attempt made to rescue him?"

"They rescued him once, and murdered three of my men to get him. When
they tried again, I put a halter round his neck and he and I arranged a
sort of temporary compromise."

"And the terms of it?"

"Oh, he's supposed to have performed a miracle. He made us unslip the
halter, and fall down flat, and he's supposed to be keeping us by him,
by a sort of spell, so's to give us something extra-special in the line
of ghastly deaths at his own convenience. That way, I was able to wait
for news from Bholat--see?"

"You could have captured no more important prisoner than that, sahib,
let me tell you! They believe him to be almost a god; so nearly one
that the gods themselves obey his orders now and then! It was he, and no
other, that told the men of Jailpore that he would make them impervious
to bullets. If we have him, sahib, we have the key to Jailpore!"

"We, have certainly got him," said Brown. "You can see him, and you can
smell him. I'll order one of the men to prick him with a bayonet, if you
want to hear him, too! I wouldn't feel him, if I were you!"

"He must come, too, to Jailpore!"

"Of course he comes!"

"Then, sahib, let us move away from here to where there is water. There
let us rest until sundown, and then march, in the cool of the evening.
It will be better so. And of a truth I must sleep, or else drop dead
from weariness."

"Does that message put you in command?" asked Brown, a trifle
truculently.

"No, sahib! But it orders you to listen to my advice whenever possible."

"That means that you are under my orders?"

"That letter does not say so, sahib!"