“That’s what comes of sending the escort on ahead,” said Varne Coates. “If they’d been along we needn’t have stood any nonsense from Mr Allah-din Khan. It would have been man for man then, or very nearly, and a good deal more than rifle for rifle.”
“Don’t know it isn’t a good thing that we did,” answered the other with some conviction. “The evenness of numbers would probably have brought on a row. And I’m perfectly certain any one of those chaps is equal to any two of ours, if not three.”
“But the rifles?”
“Even then, they wouldn’t have given us time to use them. No. I think we’re well out of that racket, Coates.”
“All right. I shall be glad to see camp anyhow. I’m yearning for a long, stiff, cool peg. Wrangling and getting into a wax is very dry work. Well, we’re not far off now, thank the Lord.”
The tangi was widening out considerably. The cliffs no longer rose sheer and facing each other, but had changed into tumbling crags and pinnacles, and terraced ledges, while beyond lay a glimpse of more open country. But on one hand the mouth of the pass was dominated by a huge, magnificent cliff wall.
“Look there,” cried Coates, glancing at a point halfway up this where some objects were moving. “Markhôr—three of them! But they are wild. At that height they ought to be standing calmly staring at us, and they’re off already as if the devil was after them.”
And as the words left his mouth, the answer—the explanation—came, startlingly, unpleasantly.
For an echoing roar broke from the cliff front just below the point they had been scanning, and something heavy and vicious and convincing thudded hard with a “klopf” against a boulder just to the right of Helston. The rock face was marked as with the splatter of blue lead.
“We’re being sniped, by God?” exclaimed Coates, reining in. The syce had instinctively drawn behind the nearest boulder, and had dismounted.