It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their
night attack on the lowland villages. The Mullah
had promised an easy victory and unlimited plunder;
but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out
of the very earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down
under the stars, so that no man knew where to turn,
and all feared that they had brought an army about
their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the
panic of that flight more men were seen to drop from
wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife jabbed upwards,
and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then
there rose a cry of treachery, and when they reached
their own guarded heights, they had left, with some
forty dead and sixty wounded, all their confidence
in the Blind Mullah on the plains below. They
clamoured, swore, and argued round the fires; the women
wailing for the lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses
on the returned.
Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for
he had taken no part in the fight, rose to improve
the occasion. He pointed out that the tribe owed
every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah,
who had lied in every possible particular and talked
them into a trap. It was undoubtedly an insult
that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should presume
to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as
the Mullah pretended, herald a general time of license
and lifting; and the inexplicable madness of the English
had not in the least impaired their power of guarding
their marches. On the contrary, the baffled and
out-generalled tribe would now, just when their food-stock
was lowest, be blockaded from any trade with Hindustan
until they had sent hostages for good behaviour, paid
compensation for disturbance, and blood-money at the
rate of thirty-six English pounds per head for every
villager that they might have slain. ’And
ye know that those lowland dogs will make oath that
we have slain scores. Will the Mullah pay the
fines or must we sell our guns?’ A low growl
ran round the fires. ’Now, seeing that all
this is the Mullah’s work, and that we have gained
nothing but promises of Paradise thereby, it is in
my heart that we of the Khusru Kheyl lack a shrine
whereat to pray. We are weakened, and henceforth
how shall we dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border,
as has been our custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji’s
tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us, and rightly.
But our Mullah is a holy man. He has helped two
score of us into Paradise this night. Let him
therefore accompany his flock, and we will build over
his body a dome of the blue tiles of Mooltan, and burn
lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall
be a saint: we shall have a shrine; and there
our women shall pray for fresh seed to fill the gaps
in our fighting-tale. How think you?’
A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft
wheep, wheep of unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle.
It was an excellent notion, and met a long felt want
of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet,
glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he
could not see, and calling down the curses of God
and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a game of
blind man’s buff round and between the fires,
whereof Khuruk Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in
verse that will not die.
