g time,
considering whether there were not excuse enough for war in any case
and listening to the intricately detailed information brought by the
deserting watchmen. And as they discussed things, but before they had
time to decide on any plan, the Brigadier commanding the Irregulars got
wind of them.

He was a man who did not worry about the feelings of senile heads of
red-tape-bound departments; nor was he particularly hidebound by respect
for the laws of evidence. When he knew a thing, he knew it; then he
either acted or did not act, as the circumstances might dictate. And
when the deed was done or left undone, and was quite beyond the reach of
criticism, he would send in a verbose, voluminous report, written out in
several colored inks, on all the special forms he could get hold of. The
heads of departments would be too busy for the next twelvemonth trying
to get the form of the report straightened out to be able to give any
attention to the details of it; and then it would be too late. But he
was a brigadier, and what he could do with impunity and quiet amusement
would have brought down the whole Anglo-Indian Government in awful wrath
on the head of a subordinate.

He heard of the tribesmen under Khumel Khan one evening. At dawn his
tents stood empty and the horse-lines were long bands of brown on the
green grass. The pegs were up; only the burying beetles labored where
the stamping chargers had neighed overnight.

The hunger-making wind that sweeps down, snow-sweetened, from the
Himalayas bore with it intermittent thunder from four thousand hoofs
as, split in three and swooping from three different directions, the
squadrons viewed, gave tongue, and launched themselves, roaring, at the
half-awakened plotters of the night before.

There was a battle, of a kind, in a bowlder-lined valley where the early
morning sun had not yet reached to lift the chill. Long lances--devils'
antennae--searched out the crevices where rock-bred mountain-men sought
cover; too suddenly for clumsy-fingered Hillmen to reload, the reformed
troops charged wedgewise into rallying detachments. In an hour, or less,
there were prisoners being herded like cattle in the valley bottom, and
a sting had been drawn from the border wasp that would not grow again
for a year or two to come.

But Khumel Khan was missing. Khumel Khan, the tulwar man--he whose boast
it was that he could hew through two men's necks at one whistling sweep
of his notched,