"Very well, are you, or are you not?"

"We are supposed to act in concert, sahib."

"It doesn't say so in the letter! Yes, or no? Are you going to obey
orders, or aren't you? In other words, are you coming with me, or do you
stay behind?"

"I come with you, sahib!"

"Then you obey my orders!"

"But the letter says--"

"That I'm to take your advice whenever possible! I don't need advice
just at the moment, thanks! I've got orders here to march, and I'm off
at once! You can please yourself whether you come with me or not, but if
you come you come on my terms."

"I go with you, sahib."

"Under my orders?"

"Yes, sahib."

"All right, Juggut Khan. Here's my hand on it. Now, we'll swoop down on
that village, and take the fakir with us, with a halter round his neck
for the sake of argument. We'll get two bullock-carts down there, and
we'll stick him in one of them, with Sidiki the interpreter tied to him.
Sidiki won't like it, but he's only a Beluchi anyway! You get in the
other, and get all the sleep you can. You and I'll take turns sleeping
all the way to Jailpore, so's to be fresh, both of us, and fit for
anything by the time that we get there!"

"I am ready, sahib."

"You two men who carried old Stinkijink before, pick him up again!"
shouted Brown. "Let him feel the bayonet if he makes a noise, but carry
him gently as though you loved him. The rest--'Tshun! Form two-deep--on
the center--close order, march. Ri' dress. Eyes front. Ri' turn. By the
left--quick march."

The Rajput strode beside Brown, wondering wearily whether it was worth
his while to offer him advice or not, and keeping his tired eyes ever
moving in the direction of the distant huts.

"They have rifles, sahib?" he queried.

"Lots of 'em! Three that they took from my men, among others."

"It would not be well to march into a trap at this stage."

"As well now as later." "True, sahib! And my time has not come yet; I
know it. Else had I died of weariness, as my horse did."

Brown kept rigidly to that point of view in everything he did, from that
time on until he reached Jailpore. He believed himself to be engaged on
a forlorn hope that was so close to being an absolute impossibility as
to be almost the same thing. He had no doubt whatever in his own mind
but that his own death, and the death of those with him, was a matter
now of hours, or possibly of minutes. His one resolute determination
was to die, and make the others die, in a mann