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he can.ā€

ā€œDonā€™t interrupt, Tertius. It was about forty miles beyond Macā€™s before I found him; and my men pointed out gently, but firmly, that the country was risinā€™. What kind oā€™ country, Beetle? Well, Iā€˜m no word-painter, thank goodness, but you might call it a hellish country! When we werenā€™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 (donā€™t forget that, Pussy dear), sat behind rocks and took pot-shots at us. ā€˜Old, old story! We all legged it in search of Stalky. I had a feeling that heā€™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 Maloā€™t stone fort, with a watch-tower 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 gettinā€™ 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. Iā€™d only seen him for half a minute about three months before, but I might have met him yesterday. He waved his hand all sereno.

ā€œā€˜Hullo, Aladdin! Hullo, Emperor!ā€™ he said. ā€˜Youā€™re just in time for the performance.ā€™ā€

ā€œI saw his Sikhs looked a bit battered. ā€˜Whereā€™s your command? Whereā€™s your subaltern?ā€™ I said.

ā€œā€˜Hereā€”all there is of it,ā€™ said Stalky. ā€˜If you want young Everett, heā€™s dead, and his bodyā€™s in the watch-tower. They rushed our road-party last week, and got him and seven men. Weā€™ve been besieged for five days. I suppose they let you through to make sure of you. The whole countryā€™s up. ā€˜Strikes me youā€™ve walked into a first-class trap.ā€™ He grinned, but neither Tertius nor I could see where the deuce the fun was. We hadnā€™t any grub for our men, and Stalky had only four daysā€™ whack for his. That came of dependinā€™ upon your asinine Politicals, Pussy dear, who told us that the inhabitants were friendly.

ā€œTo make us quite comfy, Stalky took us up to the watch-tower to see poor Everettā€™s body, lyinā€™ in a foot oā€™ drifted snow. It looked like a girl of fifteenā€”not a hair on the little fellowā€™s face. Heā€™d been shot through the temple, but the Maloā€™ts had left their mark on him. Stalky unbuttoned the tunic, and showed it to usā€”a rummy sickle-shaped cut on the chest. ā€˜Member the snow all white on his eyebrows, Tertius? ā€˜Member when Stalky moved the lamp and it looked as if he was alive?ā€

ā€œYe-es,ā€ said Tertius, with a shudder. ā€œā€˜Member the beastly look on Stalkyā€™s face, though, with his nostrils all blown out, same as he used to look when he was bullyinā€™ a fag? That was a lovely evening.ā€

ā€œWe held a council of war up there over Everettā€™s body. Stalky said the Maloā€™ts and Khye-Kheens were up together; havinā€™ sunk their blood feuds to settle us. The chaps weā€™d seen across the gorge were Khye-Kheens. It was about half a mile from them to us as a bullet flies, and theyā€™d made a line of sungars under the brow of the hill to sleep in and starve us out. The Maloā€™ts, he said, were in front of us promiscuous. There wasnā€™t good cover behind the fort, or theyā€™d have been there, too. Stalky didnā€™t mind the Maloā€™ts half as much as he did the Khye-Kheens. He said the Maloā€™ts were treacherous curs. What I couldnā€™t understand was, why in the world the two gangs didnā€™t join in and rush us. There must have been at least five hundred of ā€˜em. Stalky said they didnā€™t trust each other very well, because they were ancestral enemies when they were at home; and the only time theyā€™d tried a rush heā€™d hove a couple of blasting-charges among ā€˜em, and that had sickened ā€˜em a bit.

ā€œIt was dark by the time we finished, and Stalky, always serene, said: ā€˜You command now. I donā€™t suppose you mind my taking any action I may consider necessary to reprovision the fort?ā€™ I said, ā€˜Of course not,ā€™ and then the lamp blew out. So Tertius and I had to climb down the tower steps (we didnā€™t want to stay with Everett) and got back to our men. Stalky had gone offā€”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 mornlnā€™.

ā€œMorninā€™ came. No Stalky. Not a sign of him. I took counsel with his senior native officerā€”a grand, white-whiskered old chapā€”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, accordinā€™ to him. He said Stalky ā€˜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 ā€˜em to pickinā€™ out loopholes.

ā€œAbout noon there was no end of a snow-storm, and the enemy stopped firing. We replied gingerly, because we were awfully short of ammunition. Donā€™t suppose we fired five shots an hour, but we generally got our man. Well, while I was talking with Rutton Singh I saw Stalky coming down from the watch-tower, rather puffy about the eyes, his poshteen coated with claret-colored ice.

ā€œā€˜No trustinā€™ these snow-storms,ā€™ he said. ā€˜Nip out quick and snaffle what you can get. Thereā€™s a certain amount of friction between the Khye-Kheens and the Maloā€™ts just now.ā€™

ā€œI turned Tertius out with twenty Pathans, and they bucked about in the snow for a bit 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 ā€˜em. There didnā€™t seem to be anybody about, but the snow was falling pretty thick.

ā€œā€˜Thatā€™s good enough,ā€™ said Stalky when we got dinner ready and he was chewinā€™ mutton-kababs off a cleaninā€™ rod. ā€˜Thereā€™s no sense riskinā€™ men. Theyā€™re holding a pow-wow between the Khye-Kheens and the Maloā€™ts at the head of the gorge. I donā€™t think these so-called coalitions are much good.ā€™

ā€œDo you know what that maniac had done? Tertius and I shook it out of him by instalments. 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, heā€™d kept the hole open for his own ends; and laid poor Everettā€™s body slap over the well of the stairs that led down to it from the watch-tower. Heā€™d had to move and replace the corpse every time he used the passage. The Sikhs wouldnā€™t go near the place, of course. Well, heā€™d got out of this hole, and dropped on to the road. Then, in the night and a howling snow-storm, heā€™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 heā€™d discovered, and come out on the right flank of the Khye-Kheens. He had thenā€”listen to this!ā€”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 Maloā€™t and the Khye-Kheen camps. That was about two in the morning, and, as it turned out, a man spotted himā€”a Khye-Kheen. So Stalky abolished him quietly, and left himā€”with the Maloā€™t mark on his chest, same as Everett had.

ā€œā€˜I was just as economical as I could be,ā€™ Stalky said to us. ā€˜If heā€™d shouted I should have been slain. Iā€™d never had to do that kind of thing but once before, and that was the first time I tried that path. Itā€™s perfectly practicable for infantry, you know.ā€™

ā€œā€˜What about your first man?ā€™ I said.

ā€œā€˜Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett, and I went out lookinā€™ for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me. I abolished himā€”privatimā€”scragged him. But on thinkinā€™ it over it occurred to me that if I could find the body (Iā€™d hove it down some rocks) I might decorate it with the Maloā€™t mark and leave it to the Khye-Kheens to draw inferences. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khye-Kheens are shocked at the Maloā€™ts perpetratinā€™ these two dastardly outrages after theyā€™d sworn to sink all bleed feuds. I lay up behind their sungars early this morning and watched ā€˜em. They all went to confer about it at the head of the gorge. Awfā€™ly annoyed they are. Donā€™t wonder.ā€™ You know the way Stalky drops out his words, one by one.ā€

ā€œMy God!ā€ said the Infant, explosively, as the full depth of the strategy dawned on him.

ā€œDear-r man!ā€ said McTurk, purring rapturously.

ā€œStalky stalked,ā€ said Tertius. ā€œThatā€™s all there is to it.ā€

ā€œNo, he didnā€™t,ā€ said Dick Four. ā€œDonā€™t you remember how he insisted that he had only applied his luck? Donā€™t you remember how Rutton Singh grabbed his boots and grovelled in the snow, and how our men shouted?ā€

ā€œNone of our Pathans believed that was luck,ā€ said Tertius. ā€œThey swore Stalky ought to have been born a Pathan, andā€”ā€˜member we nearly had a row in the fort when Rutton Singh said Stalky was a Pathan? Gad, how furious the old chap was with my Jemadar! But Stalky just waggled his finger and they shut up.

ā€œOld Rutton Singhā€™s sword was half out, though, and he swore heā€™d cremate every Khye-Kheen and Maloā€™t he killed. That made the Jemadar pretty wild, because he didnā€™t mind fighting against his own creed, but he wasnā€™t going to crab a fellow Mussulmanā€™s chances of Paradise. Then Stalky jabbered Pushtu and Punjabi in alternate streaks. Where the deuce did he pick up his Pushtu from, Beetle?ā€

ā€œNever mind his language, Dick,ā€ said I. ā€œGive us the gist of it.ā€

ā€œI flatter myself I can address the wily Pathan on occasion, but, hang it all, I canā€™t make puns in Pushtu, or top off my arguments with a smutty story, as he did. He played on those two old dogs oā€™ war like aā€”like a concertina. Stalky saidā€”and the other two backed up his knowledge of Oriental natureā€”that the Khye-Kheens and the Maloā€™ts between ā€˜em would organize a combined attack on us that night, as a proof of good faith. They wouldnā€™t drive it home, though, because neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutton Singh put it, of the little accidents. Stalkyā€™s notion was to crawl out at dusk with his Sikhs, manoeuvre ā€˜em along this ungodly goat-track that heā€™d found, to the back of the Khye-Kheen position, and then lob in a few long shots at the Maloā€™ts when the attack was well on. ā€˜Thatā€™ll divert their minds and help to agitate ā€˜em,ā€™ he said. ā€˜Then you chaps can come out and sweep up the pieces, and weā€™ll rendezvous at the head of the gorge. After that, I move we get back to Macā€™s camp and have something to eat.ā€

ā€œYou were commandinā€™?ā€ the Infant suggested.

ā€œI was about three months senior to Stalky, and two months Tertiusā€™s senior,ā€ Dick Four replied. ā€œBut we were all from

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