strong then-about seven feet high and four feet through."

Adequate chap. Infernally adequate," said Tertius, pulling his mustache and staring into the fire.

66

'Got very near court-martialed and broke in Egypt in '84," the Infant volunteered. "I went out in the same trooper with him-raw as he was. Only I showed it, and Stalky didn't."

"What was the trouble?" said McTurk, reaching forward absently to twitch a dress-tie into position.

"Oh, nothing. His colonel weakly trusted him to take twenty Tommies out to wash, or groom camels, or something at the back of Suakin, and Stalky got embroiled with Fuzzies five miles in the interior. Conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of 'em. He knew jolly well he'd no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was frothing at the mouth, complaining of the paucity of support accorded to him in his operations.' Gad, it might have been one fat brigadier slangin' another! Then he went into the Staff Corps."

"That is entirely - Stalky," said Abanazar from his armchair.

"You've come across him, too?" I

said.

"Heavens!"

he said. "And

it's you and your likes govern Ireland. Tertius, aren't you ashamed?"

"Well, I can't tell a yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts buhking. Ask him." He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over the rug.

"I knew you wouldn't," said Dick Four. "Give me a whisky and soda. I've been drinking lemonade squash and ammoniated quinine while you chaps were bathin' in champagne, and my head's singin' like a top."

He wiped his ragged mustache above the drink; and, with his teeth chattering in his head, began:

"You know the Khye-Kheen-Malôt expedition, when we scared the souls out of 'em with a field force they daren't fight against? Well, both tribes-there was a coalition against us-came in without firing a shot; and a lot of hairy villains, who had no more power over their men than I had, promised and vowed all sorts of things. On that very slender evidence, Pussy dear-"

"I was at Simla," said Abanazar, has

tily.

Never mind, you're tarred with the same brush. On the strength of those tuppenny-ha'penny treaties, your asses of Politicals reported the country pacified, and the Government, being a fool, as usual, began road-makin'-dependin' on local supply for labor. 'Member that, Pussy? Rest of our chaps who'd had no look in

during the campaign didn't think there'd be any more of it, and were anxious to get back to India. But I'd been in two of these little rows before, and I had my suspicions. I engineered myself, summo ingenio, into command of a road patrol-no shovelin', only marching up and down genteely with a guard. They'd withdrawn all the troops they could, but I nucleused about forty Pathans, recruits chiefly, of my regiment, and sat tight at the base-camp while the road parties went to work, as per Political survey.'

Had some rippin' sing-songs in camp, too," said Tertius.

"My pup"-thus did Dick Four refer to his subaltern-“ was a pious little beast. He didn't like the sing-songs, and so he went down with pneumonia. I rootled round the camp, and found Tertius gassing about as a D.A.Q.M.G., which, any one knows, he isn't cut out for. There were six or eight of the old school at base-camp (we're always in force for a frontier row), but I'd heard of Tertius as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his D.A.Q.M.G. breeches and help me. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went-forty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road parties. Macnamara's -'member old Mac, the Sapper, who played the fiddle so horribly at Umballa? -Mac's party was the last but one. The last was Stalky's. He was at the head of the road with some of his pet Sikhs. Mac said he believed he was all right."

"Stalky is a Sikh," said Tertius. "Takes his men to pray at the Durbar Sahib at Amritzar, regularly as clockwork, when he can.'

"Don't interrupt, Tertius. It was about forty miles beyond Mac's before I found him; and my men pointed out gently, but firmly, that the country was risin'. What kind o' country, Beetle? Well, I'm no word-painter, thank goodness, but you might call it a hellish country! When we weren't up to our necks in snow, we were rolling down the khud. The well-disposed inhabitants, who were to supply labor for the road-making (don't forget that, Pussy dear), sat behind rocks and took pot-shots at us. Old, old story. We all legged it in search of Stalky. I had a feeling that he'd be in good cover, and about dusk we found him and his road party, as snug as a bug in a rug, in an old Malôt stone fort, with a watchtower at one corner. It overhung the road they had blasted out of the cliff fifty

feet below; and under the road things went down pretty sheer, for five or six hundred feet, into a gorge about half a mile wide and two or three miles long. There were chaps on the other side of the gorge scientifically gettin' our range. So I hammered on the gate and nipped in, and tripped over Stalky in a greasy, bloody old poshteen, squatting on the ground, eating with his men. I'd only seen him for half a minute about three months before, but I might have met him yesterday. He waved his hand all serene.

"Hullo, Aladdin! Hullo, Emperor!' he said. 'You're just in time for the performance.'

"I saw his Sikhs looked a bit battered. 'Where's your command? Where's your subaltern?' I said.

"Here-all there is of it,' said Stalky. If you want young Everett, he's dead, and his body's in the watch-tower. They rushed our road party last week, and got him and seven men. We've been besieged for five days. I suppose they let you through to make sure of you. The whole country's up. Strikes me you've walked into a first-class trap.' He grinned, but neither Tertius nor I could see where the deuce the fun lay. We hadn't any grub for our men, and Stalky had only four days' whack for his. That came of dependin' upon your asinine Politicals, Pussy dear, who told us the inhabitants were friendly.

"To make us quite comfy, Stalky took us up to the watch-tower to see poor Everett's body, lyin' in a foot o' drifted snow. It looked like a girl of fifteennot a hair on the little fellow's face. He'd been shot through the temple, but the Malôts had left their mark on him. Stalky unbuttoned the tunic, and showed it to us-a rummy sickle-shaped cut on the chest. 'Member the snow all white on his eyebrows, Tertius? 'Member when Stalky moved the lamp and it looked as if he was alive?"

64

"Ye-es," said Tertius, with a shudder. 'Member the beastly look on Stalky's face, though, with his nostrils all blown out, same as he used to look when he was bullyin' a fag? That was a lovely evening.'

"We held a sort of council of war up there over Everett's body. Stalky said the Malôts and Khye-Kheens were up together, havin' sunk their blood feuds to settle us. The chaps we'd seen across the gorge were Khye-Kheens. It was about half a mile from them to us as a bullet

flies, and they'd made a line of sungars under the brow of the hill to sleep in and starve us out. The Malôts, he said, were in front of us promiscuous. There wasn't good cover behind the fort, or they'd have been there, too. Stalky didn't mind the Malôts half as much as he did the Khye-Kheens. Said the Malôts were treacherous curs. What I couldn't understand was, why in the world the two gangs didn't join in and rush us. There must have been at least five hundred of 'em. Stalky said they didn't trust each other very well, because they were ancestral enemies when they were at home, and the only time they'd tried rushin' he'd hove a couple of blasting charges among 'em, and that had sickened 'em a bit.

"SO STALKY ABOLISHED HIM QUIETLY,

"It was dark by the time we finished, and Stalky, always serene, said: 'You command now. I don't suppose you mind my taking any action I may consider necessary to reprovision the fort?' I said, 'Of course not,' and then the lamp blew out. So Tertius and I had to climb down the tower steps (we didn't want to stay with Everett) and got back to our men. Stalky had gone off-to count the stores, I supposed. Anyhow, Tertius and I sat up in case of a rush (they were

plugging at us pretty generally, you know), relieving each other till the mornin'.

"Mornin' came. No Stalky. Not a sign of him. I took counsel with his senior native officer-a grand, white-whiskered old chap-Rutton Singh, from Jullunder way. He only grinned, and said it was all right. Stalky had been out of the fort twice before, somewhere or other, accordin' to him. He said Stalky 'ud come back unchipped, and gave me to understand that Stalky was an invulnerable Guru of sorts. All the same, I put the whole command on half rations, and set 'em pickin' out loop-holes.

"About noon there was no end of a snow-storm, and the enemy stopped firing. We replied gingerly, because we were aw

man.

fully short of ammunition. Don't suppose we fired five shots an hour, but we generally got our Well, while I was talking with Rutton Singh I saw Stalky coming down from the watchtower, rather puffy about the eyes, his poshteen coated with claretcolored ice.

"No trustin' these snowstorms,' he said. 'Nip out quick and snaffle what you can get. There's a certain amount of friction between the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts just now.'

"I turned Tertius out with twenty Pathans, and they bucked about in the snow for a while till they came on to a sort of camp about eight hundred yards away, with only a few men in charge and half a dozen sheep by the fire. They finished off the men, and snaffled the sheep and as much grain as they could carry, and came back. No one fired a shot at 'em. There didn't seem to be anybody about, but the snow was falling pretty thick.

"That's good enough,' said Stalky when we got dinner ready and he was chewin' mutton kababs off a cleanin' rod. 'No sense riskin' men. They're holding a pow-wow between the Khye-Kheens and the Malôts at the head of the gorge. I don't think these so-called coalitions are much good.'

"Do you know what that maniac had done? Tertius and I shook it out of him by installments. There was an underground granary cellar-room below the watch-tower, and in blasting the road Stalky had blown a hole into one side of

it. Being no one else but Stalky, he'd kept the hole open for his own ends; and laid poor Everett's body slap over the well of the stairs that led down to it from the watch-tower. He'd had to move and replace the corpse every time he used the passage. The Sikhs wouldn't go near the place, of course. Well, he'd got out of this hole, and dropped on to the road. Then, in the night and a howling snowstorm, he'd dropped over the edge of the khud, made his way down to the bottom of the gorge, forded the nullah, which was half frozen, climbed up on the other side along a track he'd discovered, and come out on the right flank of the KhyeKheens. He had then-listen to this!crossed over a ridge that paralleled their rear, walked half a mile behind that, and come out on the left of their line where the gorge gets shallow and where there was a regular track between the Malôt and the Khye-Kheen camps. That was about two in the morning, and, as it turned out, a man spotted him-a Khye-Kheen. So Stalky abolished him quietly, and left him -with the Malôt mark on his chest same as Everett had. "I was just be,' said Stalky.

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466

as economical as I could If he'd shouted I should have been slain. I'd never had to do that kind of thing but once before, and that was the first time I tried that path. It's perfectly practicable for infantry, you know.' What about your first man?' I said. Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett, and I went out lookin' for a line of retreat for my men. I abolished him-privatim-scragged him. But on thinkin' it over it occurred to me that if I could find the body (I'd hove it down some rocks) I might decorate it with the Malôt mark and leave it to the KhyeKheens to draw inferences. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khye-Kheens were shocked at the Malôts perpetratin' these dastardly outrages after they'd sworn to sink all blood feuds. I lay up behind their sungars early this morning and watched 'em. They all went to confer about it at the head of the gorge. Awf'ly annoyed they are. Don't wonder. You know the way Stalky drops out his words, one by one.

"Wonderful!" said the Infant, explosively, as the full depth of the strategy dawned on him.

"Dear-r man!" said McTurk, purring rapturously.

Stalky stalked," said Tertius. "That's all there is to it.

"No, he didn't," said Dick Four. "Don't you remember how he insisted that he had only applied his luck? Don't you remember how Rutton Singh grabbed his boots and groveled in the snow, and how our men shouted?"

"None of our Pathans believed that was luck," said Tertius. "They swore Stalky ought to have been born a Pathan, and'member we nearly had a row in the fort when Rutton Singh said Stalky was a Sikh ? Gad, how furious the old chap was with my Jemadar! But Stalky just waggled his finger and they shut up.

"Old Rutton Singh's sword was half out, though, and he swore he'd cremate every Khye-Kheen and Malôt he killed. That made the Jemadar pretty wild, because he didn't mind fighting against his own creed, but he wasn't going to crab a fellow Mussulman's chances of Paradise. Then Stalky jabbered Pushtu and Punjabi in alternate streaks, Where the deuce did he pick up his Pushtu from, Beetle?"

Never mind his language, Dick," said I. "Give us the gist of it.

"I flatter myself I can address the wily Pathan on occasion, but, hang it all, I can't make puns in Pushtu, or top off my arguments with a smutty story, as he did. He played on those two old dogs o' war like a-like a concertina. Stalky saidand the other two backed up his knowledge of Oriental nature-that the KhyeKheens and the Malôts between 'em would organize a combined attack on us that night, as a proof of good faith. They wouldn't drive it home, though, because neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutton Singh put it, of the little accidents. Stalky's notion was to crawl out at dusk with his Sikhs, manoeuver 'em along this ungodly goat track that he'd found, to the back of the Khye-Kheen position, and then lob in a few long shots at the Malôts when the attack was well on. That'll divert their minds and help to agitate 'em,' he said. Then you chaps can come out and sweep up the pieces, and we'll rendezvous at the head of the gorge. After that, I move we get back to Mac's camp and have something to eat.".

"You were commandin'?" the Infant suggested.

I was about three months senior to Stalky, and two months Tertius's senior,' Dick Four replied. "But we were all from the same old school. I should say ours was the only affair on record where some one wasn't jealous of some one else."

"We weren't," Tertius broke in, "but there was another row between Gul Sher Khan and Rutton Singh. Our Jemadar said he was quite right-that no Sikh living could stalk worth anything; and that Koran Sahib had better take out the Pathans, who understood that kind of mountain work. Rutton Singh said that Koran Sahib jolly well knew every Pathan was a born deserter, and every Sikh was a gentleman, even if he couldn't crawl on his belly. Stalky struck in with some woman's proverb or other, that had the effect of doublin' both men up with a grin. He said the Sikhs and the Pathans could settle their claims on the Khye-Kheens and Malôts later on, but he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain-climbing job, because Sikhs could shoot. They can, too; give 'em a mule load of ammunition apiece, and they're perfectly happy."

"And out he gat," said Dick Four. "As soon as it was dark, and he'd had a bit of a snooze, him and thirty Sikhs went down through the staircase in the tower, every mother's son of 'em salutin' little Everett where it stood propped up against the wall. The last I heard him say was,

Kubbadar! tumbleinga!* and they tumbleingaed over the black edge of nothing. Close upon 9 P.M. the combined attack developed, Khye-Kheens across the valley, and Malóts in front of us, pluggin' at long range and yellin' to each other to come along and cut our infidel throats. Then they skirmished up to the gate, and began the old game of calling our Pathans renegades, and invitin' 'em to join the holy war. One of our men, a young fellow from Dera Ismail, jumped on the wall to slang 'em back, and jumped down, blubbing like a child. He'd been hit smack in the middle of the hand. Never saw a man yet who could stand a hit in the hand without weepin' bitterly. It tickles up all the nerves. So Tertius took his rifle and smote the others on the head to keep them quiet at the loopholes. The dear children wanted to open the gate and go in at 'em generally, but that didn't suit our book.

At last, near midnight, I heard the wop, wop, wop, of Stalky's Martinis across the valley, and some general cursing among the Malôts, whose main body was

"Look out; you'll fall!"