We left that chief under arrest. Not long, however, was he detained. It was found practically impossible on investigation to hold him responsible for the doings of Umar Khan; moreover he represented, and with perfect truth, that the hostage’s interests were likely to suffer from such detention—even if it did not entail upon him actual peril. So he was released.
Even then, however, he was in an ugly and vindictive frame of mind, and whether his intervention or protection would have been extended to the captive under ordinary circumstances, it is hard to say. As it was, the mere accidental glimpse of the ring worn by Campian had worked wonders.
The fact was that Campian seldom wore this ring. He had done so of late, thinking it in keeping with the Eastern dress he had assumed, but formerly he had hardly remembered that it was in his possession. Even of late, however, it had passed unnoticed, partly from the fact of Aïn Asrâf’s sight being dim with age partly that none of those who custodied him were of the family of Dost Hussain. Fortunate, indeed, that it had been upon his finger at that critical moment.
At a village on their road they fell in with Aïn Asrâf. The old Syyed was genuinely rejoiced at beholding his neophyte once more. The latter, in spite of his own protests, anger, menaces even, had been spirited off by the lawless and irreligious followers of Umar Khan, nor had he been able to learn his whereabouts.
“Ah, my son,” he said at the close of their cordial greeting, “Allah watches over His own—and His Prophet holds hell in store for they who oppress them. Yet, it is well. I may no more be with thee to instruct thee in the fair flowers of the faith. Yet forget not that Allah has delivered thee in thine extremity, and that not once.”
Then he signed that the hour of prayer was at hand, and all dismounted, and the same orisons—uttered alike by chief and lowest herdsman—by the upright and the criminal—by the true ally and treacherous outlaw—went up from the desert sand from that group with their faces to the setting sun.
The old Syyed attached himself to their band, being readily provided, by the people of the village, with a camel, for they had no horses, and was treated with great deference by all—both as the uncle of the chief, and in his capacity of saint. Through the medium of Sohrâb Khan, the English speaking Baluchi, Campian was able to while away the monotony of the road in converse. He learnt much of what had befallen since his captivity—of the arrest of the Sirdar, the anxiety as to his own fate, and the doings of Umar Khan, with whom his present friends seemed not altogether out of sympathy—in fact, he decided that if it depended upon their aid, the chances of capturing that redoubted freebooter were infinitesimal. Thus they fared onward, day after day, through tangi and over kotal, threading deep mountain valleys, and traversing sun-baked plains; now resting for the night at mud-walled villages, now camping out in the open beneath the desert stars.
The Kachîn valley at last! How well he remembered its long, deep configuration. Now after his enforced wanderings over those grim deserts, even its sparse foliage was like a cool and refreshing oasis. And what experiences, strange and startling, had he not known within its narrow limits. There, above the juniper growth rose the mass of rock wherein was the markhôr cave. It seemed strange to think that the face of that ordinarily rugged mountain side should contain what it did.
Then a misgiving seized him. What if it should contain nothing? What if he had been allowing his over-wrought imagination to run away with him? The chest was there—no doubt about that, but what if it contained nothing more than a lot of old parchments, or a storage of ordinarily trumpery trinkets? Things might, in that event, take an awkward turn. But no, he would not believe it. The strength of the chain, the weight of the chest, the weird, unheard of place of its concealment, the care and labour involved in designing such a hiding place, all pointed to this being the object of his search. And then, too, the topographical features of the surroundings were all exactly as set forth in his father’s instructions. Every piece of the puzzle seemed to fit in to a nicety.
And this chief was the son of the refugee Afghan whose life his father had saved, and in the inscrutable workings of time it had come about that the debt should be repaid twofold, that his own life should be saved, first by the brother, then by the son of Dost Hussain. On the eventual slaughter of the latter by the Brahuis, Yar Hussain then an infant, had found refuge with the Marri tribe, and by dint of descent on his mother’s side, had, on reaching years of manhood, claimed and seized the position he now held. All this Campian learned as they travelled along; and a very stirring—if complicated—tale of Eastern intrigue, and fierce, ruthless tribal feud it was.