‘Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,’ the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a breech-loader, the lama hesitated.  Then he rose to his feet, and laid a finger on the man’s shoulder.

’Hast thou heard?  I say there shall be no killing — I who was Abbot of Such-zen.  Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat,or a snake under the eaves — a worm in the belly of the most mean beast?  Is it thy wish to -’

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a Tibetan devil-gong.

‘Ai! ai!’ cried the Spiti men.  ’Do not curse us — do not curse him.  It was but his zeal, Holy One! ...  Put down the rifle, fool!’

’Anger on anger!  Evil on evil!  There will be no killing.  Let the priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts.  Just and sure is the Wheel, swerving not a hair!  They will be born many times — in torment.’  His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim’s shoulder.

‘I have come near to great evil, chela,’ he whispered in that dead hush under the pines.  ’I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ...  He struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...’  He slid to the ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart bump and check.

‘Have they hurt him to the death?’ said the Ao-chung man, while the others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear.  ‘Nay,’ he cried passionately, ‘this is only a weakness.’  Then he remembered that he was a white man, with a white man’s camp-fittings at his service.  ‘Open the kiltas!  The Sahibs may have a medicine.’

‘Oho!  Then I know it,’ said the Ao-chung man with a laugh.  ’Not for five years was I Yankling Sahib’s shikarri without knowing that medicine.  I too have tasted it.  Behold!’

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky — such as is sold to explorers at Leh — and cleverly forced a little between the lama’s teeth.

’So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor.  Aha!  I have already looked into their baskets — but we will make fair division at Shamlegh.  Give him a little more.  It is good medicine.  Feel!  His heart goes better now.  Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest.  If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this would never have come.  But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here.  Then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?’

‘One is paid, I think, already,’ said Kim between his teeth.  ’I kicked him in the groin as we went downhill.  Would I had killed him!’

‘It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,’ said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah’s rickety palace.  ’If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more.’