r Singh was as
much dependent on good-will as if we had had the choosing of him. So
he had to create it, and that which has once been lost, for whatever
reason, is doubly and redoubly hard to make again. He did what he
did in spite of us, although I tried to help.

Of us seven, first in seniority came I; and as I have tried already
to make clear I was Ranjoor. Singh's man (not that he believed it
altogether yet). If he had ordered me to make black white, I would
have perished in the effort to obey; but I had yet to prove that.

Next in order to me was Gooja Singh, and although I have spared the
regiment's shame as much as possible, I doubt not that man's spirit
has crept out here and there between my words--as a smell creeps
from under coverings. He hated me, being jealous. He hated Ranjoor
Singh, because of merited rebuke and punishment. He was all for
himself, and if one said one thing, he must say another, lest the
first man get too much credit. Furthermore, he was a BADMASH,
[Footnote: Low ruffian.] born of a money-lender's niece to a man
mean enough to marry such. Other true charges I could lay against
him, but my tale is of Ranjoor Singh and why should I sully it with
mean accounts; Gooja Singh must trespass in among it, but let that
be all.

Third of us daffadars in order of seniority was Anim Singh, a big
man, born in the village next my father's. He was a naik in the
Tirah in '97 when he came to the rescue of an officer, splitting the
skull of an Orakzai, wounding three others, and making prisoner a
fourth who sought to interfere. Thus he won promotion, and he held
it after somewhat the same manner. A blunt man. A fairly good man. A
very good man with the saber. A gambler, it is true--but whose
affair is that? A ready eye for rustling curtains and footholds near
open windows, but that is his affair again--until the woman's
husband intervenes. And they say he can look after himself in such
cases. At least, he lives. Behold him, sahib. Aye, that is he
yonder, swaggering as if India can scarcely hold him--that one with
his arm in a sling. A Sikh, sahib, with a soldier's heart and ears
too big for his head--excellent things on outpost, where the little
noises often mean so much, but all too easy for Gooja Singh to
whisper into.

Of the other four, the next was Ramnarain Singh, the shortest as to
inches of us all, but perhaps the most active on his feet. A man
with a great wealth of beard and too much dignity