n
would collectively put its thumb to its nose and answer rudely. Then
the Government would say: 'Hadn't you better pay up a little money
for those few corpses you left behind you the other night?' Here the
tribe would temporise, and lie and bully, and some of the younger
men, merely to show contempt of authority, would raid another
police-post and fire into some frontier mud fort, and, if lucky, kill
a real English officer. Then the Government would say: 'Observe; if
you really persist in this line of conduct you will be hurt.' If the
tribe knew exactly what was going on in India, it would apologise or
be rude, according as it learned whether the Government was busy with
other things, or able to devote its full attention to their
performances. Some of the tribes knew to one corpse how far to go.
Others became excited, lost their heads, and told the Government to
come on. With sorrow and tears, and one eye on the British taxpayer
at home, who insisted on regarding these exercises as brutal wars of
annexation, the Government would prepare an expensive little
field-brigade and some guns, and send all up into the hills to chase
the wicked tribe out of the valleys, where the corn grew, into the
hill-tops where there was nothing to eat. The tribe would turn out in
full strength and enjoy the campaign, for they knew that their women
would never be touched, that their wounded would be nursed, not
mutilated, and that as soon as each man's bag of corn was spent they
could surrender and palaver with the English General as though they
had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years afterwards, they would pay
the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the Government and tell their
children how they had slain the redcoats by thousands. The only
drawback to this kind of picnic-war was the weakness of the redcoats
for solemnly blowing up with powder their fortified towers and keeps.
This the tribes always considered mean.

Chief among the leaders of the smaller tribes--the little clans who
knew to a penny the expense of moving white troops against them--was
a priest-bandit-chief whom we will call the Gulla Kutta Mullah. His
enthusiasm for border murder as an art was almost dignified. He
would cut down a mail-runner from pure wantonness, or bombard a mud
fort with rifle fire when he knew that our men needed to sleep. In
his leisure moments he would go on circuit among his neighbours, and
try to incite other tribes to devilry. Also, he kept a ki