him. Who could explain that? We sat our horses
in a crowd, and gaped like fools!

At last I said, "Leave him to the birds'." but Ranjoor Singh said
"Nay!" Ramnarain Singh, who had ever hated Gooja Singh for reasons
of his own, joined his voice to mine; and because they had no wish
to offend me the other daffadars agreed. But Ranjoor Singh rose into
a towering passion over what we said, naming me and Ramnarain Singh
in one breath as men too self-righteous to be trusted!

"What proof have we against him?" he demanded.

"Try him by court martial!" Ramnarain Singh screwed up courage to
answer. "Call for witnesses against him and hear them!"

"Who can try a dead man by court martial?" Ranjoor Singh thundered
back. "He left us to go and be our hostage, for our safety--for the
safety of your ungrateful skins! He died a hostage, given by us to
savages. They killed him. Are ye worse savages than they? Which of
our dead lie dishonored anywhere? Have they not all had burning or
else burial? Are ye judges of the dead? Or are ye content to live
like men? Take him down, and lay him out for burial! His brother
daffadars shall dig his grave!"

Aye, sahib. So he gave the order, and so we obeyed, saying no more,
but digging a trench for Gooja Singh with bayonets, working two
together turn and turn about, I, who had been all along his enemy,
doing the lion's share of the work and thinking of the talks he and
I had had, and the disputes. And here was the outcome! Aye.

It was not a very deep trench but it served, and we laid him in it
with his feet toward India, and covered him, and packed the earth
down tight. Then we burned on the grave the tree to which he had
been crucified, and piled a great cairn of stone above him. There we
left him, on the roof of a great mountain that looks down on Persia.

It was perhaps two hours, or it may have been three, after burying
Gooja Singh (we rode on in silence, thinking of him, our wounded
groaning now and then, but even the words of command being given by
sign instead of speech because none cared to speak) that we learned
the explanation, and more with it.

We found a good place to camp, and proceeded to make it defensible
and to gather fuel. Then some of the women belonging to our Kurdish
friends overtook us, and with them a few of our Kurdish wounded and
some unwounded ones who had returned to glean again on the
battlefield. These brought with them two prisoners whom we set in the
midst,