g, "Salaam, Major Sahib--you ride alone?"

Barlow said: "My salaams, Risiladar, and I am but a captain. I ride at
night because the days are hot. My two men have gone before me because
my horse dropped a shoe which had to be replaced. Did the Risiladar see
my two servants that were mounted?"

"I met none such," the commander answered. "Perhaps in some village they
have rested for a drink of liquor; they of the army are given to such
practices when their Captain's eye is not upon them. I go with
this"--and he waved a gauntleted hand back toward the thing that loomed
beyond the bullocks that had now come to a halt. "It is the brass
cannon, the like of which there is no other. We go to the camp of the
Amil, who commands the Sindhia troops, taking him the brass cannon that
it may compel a Musselman zemindar to pay the tax that is long past due.
Why the barbarian should not pay I know not for a tax of one-fourth is
not much for a foreigner, a debased follower of Mahomet, to render unto
the ruler of this land that is the garden of the world. He has shut
himself and men up in his mud fort, but when this brass mother of
destruction spits into his stronghold a ball or two that is not opium he
will come forth or we will enter by the gate the cannon has made."

"Then there will be bloodshed, Risiladar," Barlow declared.

"True, Captain Sahib; but that is, after a manner, the method of
collecting just dues in this land where those who till the soil now,
were, but a generation or two since, men of the sword,--they can't forget
the traditions. In the land of the British Raj six inches of a paper,
with a big seal duly affixed, would do the business. That I know, for I
have travelled far, Sahib. As to the bloodshed, worse will be the
trampling of crops, for in the district of this worshipper of Mahomet the
wheat grows like wild scrub in the jungle, taller than up to the belly of
my horse. That is the whyfore of the cannon, in a way of speaking,
because from a hill we can send to this man a slaying message, and leave
the wheat standing to fill the bellies of those who are in his hands as a
tyrant. Sirdar Baptiste was for sending a thousand sepoys to put the
fear of destruction in the debtor; but the Dewan with his eye on revenue
from crops, hit upon this plan of the loud-voiced one of brass."

Then the commander ordered the advance, and saluting, said: "Salaam,
Captain Sahib, and if I meet with your servants I will give