“That everlasting Umar Khan, I suppose?” said Fleming, somewhat shortly, for he was not a little nettled at her disparaging, almost jeering, tone.
“I think he is going to be the ‘everlasting’ Umar Khan,” she retorted quickly. “Why don’t some of you try and catch him, Captain Fleming? There are enough of you, at any rate.”
“We must wait for orders, Miss Cheriton,” he replied stiffly.
“If I were a man, and a soldier, I wouldn’t wait for orders if there was anything of that sort to be done,” she retorted, with delightful inconsistency. “I’d get leave to raise a troop, and I’d never rest till I brought in that Ghazi. All our jolly bicycle picnics are knocked on the head, and then Mr Upward has constantly to go into camp, and of course Mrs Upward will insist on going with him, and—I’m very fond of her.”
Fleming, who had been twirling his moustache eyeward somewhat viciously, suddenly quit that refuge for the perturbed. An idea had struck him. By George, it was not merely on Campian’s account she wanted Umar Khan run to earth! Vastly relieved, he said:
“There’s a good deal in what you say, Miss Cheriton. I must think out how the thing may be done.” Then he talked on other and indifferent matters, and shortly took his leave.
Meanwhile the bi-annual jirgeh, or tribal council, was in progress at Shâlalai, and representatives of all the tribes and clans and septs gathered daily in the durbar hall to meet the Sirkâr and ventilate grievances and settle disputes, and in short to discuss matters generally between themselves and the Executive. Stately chiefs and their retinues—tall, dignified men, picturesque in their snowy turbans and long hair and flowing beards, wending thither beneath the plane-shaded avenue—passed in strange contrast the dapper sub skimming along on his bicycle, or fashionably attired ladies in their high-wheeled dogcart flashing by at a hard trot, bound for club or gymkhana ground. Such, however, they eyed as impassively as they did the crowd of low caste Hindus which thronged the bazaar; for the training of their wild desert home had left no room for the display of emotions. Now and then, recognising some official, they might utter a grave “Salaam,” accompanied by a slight raising of the hand, but that was all. A contrast indeed! The unchanging East, in its melancholy dignity and fund of awe-suggesting power—because power held in the mystery of reserve—jostled by fussy, domineering, up-to-date civilisation; the fierce, wild, untamable spirits masked by those copper-hued and dignified countenances, side by side with the careless, pleasure loving, yet intensely pushing and practical temperament underlying the fresh, tawny-haired Anglo-Saxon faces. Even the very headgear suggested a vivid contrast—the multitudinous folds of the snowy and graceful turban expressive of absence of all capacity for flurry—cool deliberateness, repose, wisdom—even as the cock of the perky “bowler” seemed a very object lesson in itself of push and bounce and “there-to-stay” tenacity.
Now and then one or two of the sirdars would visit Upward to talk officially on forest matters in their respective districts, or to view his multifold trophies of the chase, which keenly interested them. These visits Upward encouraged, hoping to learn something of Campian’s fate. But it was of no avail. Of the massacre at Mehriâb station, and the doings of Umar Khan in general, the wily Asiatics professed the profoundest ignorance, not with effusive reiteration, but in a grave, nonchalant, dignified way, as though the matter were entirely unworthy of their notice or cognisance, once and for all. But to Vivien Wymer, who never lost an opportunity of studying these people, such visits were of untold interest; moreover, they seemed to result in a certain degree of hope renewed. These stately, courteous-mannered potentates had not got cruel faces. There was a noble look about most of them, even a benevolent one. Surely these were not the men to sanction a coldblooded murder.
Meanwhile, during the jirgeh, the matter of Umar Khan was receiving the full attention of the Executive. It was one thing for the chiefs to protest ignorance in private and unofficial conversation with Upward, with whom, diplomatically, they had no earthly concern. Carefully and with due deliberation the authorities narrowed the net—and it was decided to arrest Yar Hussain Khan, who, as the outlaw’s feudal chief, was responsible for his behaviour—and a sirdar of the Brahuis who was proved to have sheltered and screened him.
The chiefs in question made no trouble over the decision of the Sirkâr. With Oriental impassibility they accepted the situation, and were placed under guard accordingly. But two nights later Umar Khan swooped down upon a Levy post within ten miles of Shâlalai, surprised and massacred the handful of Hindu sepoys in charge, and rolled a couple of field pieces down the mountain side, retiring as swiftly as he had appeared: while the Brahui clans in the neighbourhood began to make themselves disagreeable by various small acts of aggression which rendered it unsafe to venture many miles beyond the lines.