a fire-ringed scorpion.

"Call on him to surrender!" ordered Cunningham.

A chevroned black-beard half a horse-length behind him translated the
demand into stately Pashtu, and for answer the hill chieftain mounted
his stolen horse and shook his tulwar. He had pistols at his belt, but
he did not draw them; across his shoulder swung a five-foot-long jezail,
but he loosed it and flung it to the ground.

"Is there any here dare take me single-handed?" he demanded with a grin.

Of the eight-and-eighty, there were eighty-eight who dared; but there
was an eighty-ninth, a lad of not yet twenty-two, whom Indian chivalry
desired to honor. The troop had heard but the troop had not yet seen.

"Ride in and take him!" ordered Cunningham and there was a
thoroughly well acted make-believe of fear, while every eye watched
"Cunnigan-bahadur," and the horses, spurred and reined at once, pranced
at their bits for just so long as a good man needs to make his mind up.
And Cunningham rode in.

He rode in as a Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a
silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself. Green though he
was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him--had rounded up for
him--had made him his opportunity; so he took it, right under their
eyes, straight in the teeth of the stoutest tulwar man of the lower
Himalayas.

He, too, had pistols at his belt, but there was no shot fired. There
was nothing but a spur-loosed rush and a shock--a spark-lit, swirling,
slashing, stamping, snorting melee--a stallion and a mare up-ended--two
strips of lightning steel that slit the wind--and a thud, as a lifeless
border robber took the turf.

There was silence then--the grim, good silence of Mohammedan
approval--while a native officer closed up a sword-cut with his fingers
and tore ten-yard strips from his own turban to bind the youngster's
head. They rode back without boast or noise and camped without
advertisement. There was no demonstration made; only-a colonel said,
"I like things done that way, quickly, without fuss," and a brigadier
remarked, "Hrrrumph! 'Gratulate you, Mr. Cunningham!"

Later, when they camped again outside Peshawur, a reward of three
thousand rupees that had been offered on the border outlaw's head was
paid to Cunningham in person--a very appreciable sum to a subaltern,
whose pay is barely sufficient for his mess bills. So, although no
public comment was made on the matter, it was considered "decen