As he thought! For, persistent as bloodhounds, that avenging band held steadily upon his track. Finally they came up with him. Umar Khan was in a tent asleep. Stealthily the pursuers drew up in crescent formation, and their commander summoned Umar to come forth. For a moment there was dead silence. Then swift as thought, a rifle muzzle was poked through the flap of the tent. A loud report, and a bullet sang past the official’s ear. The latter, more than ever bent on securing his prisoner alive, reiterated the summons, with the alternative in the event of noncompliance, of ordering a volley to be fired into the tent. The reply came as before, in the shape of another bullet, which this time killed the horse of one of the sowars. The order was given to fire.
The rattle and smoke of the volley rolled away—and lo! the sides of the tent were riddled like a sieve. There was a moment or two of silence, and again the officer challenged any who might be left alive to come forth. There emerged from the tent door, a figure clad in the full voluminous draperies and close veil of an Afghan woman.
She did not even look at the troop. She fled away over the plain as fast as her legs could carry her, uttering shrill screams. Those who looked on were filled with wild amaze. How could any living thing have escaped that volley? A movement made to pursue her was simultaneously checked, and then the Political Agent and some of the sowars entered the tent, but cautiously.
Their caution in this instance was unnecessary. One human being alone was in that tent—lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Such rude furniture and utensils as there were had been riddled, and the ground itself ploughed up with bullets. The human figure was limp and lifeless, and—it was that of another woman.
An idea struck the official. He leaped outside the tent; his gaze directed at the fast fleeing figure, now some distance away. He—and those present—saw it drag out a horse from among the rocks and stones of a dry nullah, and, flinging off the female attire, spring upon the animal’s back. Then darting forth a hand with defiant gesture, and hurling back a final curse and menace, the fugitive—a wiry, muscular male—flogged his steed into a furious gallop, and was speedily out of range of the hurried volley sent after him.
The officer stared, and, we fear, cursed. The Levy sowars stared, and certainly invoked Allah and his Prophet; while laughing at both, yet storing up deeper vengeance for the slaughter of one of his most faithful wives—who had shared and aided his flight, and eventually laid down her life for him—fled Umar Khan far over the plains of Afghanistan—further and further into that welcome land of refuge.
There lay the rub. They dare not pursue him further. Already a violation of international law had been committed in carrying the pursuit thus far. Well might the official feel foolish. That their bird should be allowed to skip off right under their very noses in the garb of the supposed female whom they had so very humanely spared was enough to make him feel foolish. But he was destined to feel more so subsequently, when an acrid representation from the Amir of Kâbul entailed upon him a Departmental wigging, although but a technical one. After all, a man may be too zealous.
After that Umar Khan disappeared for a while. The Amir of Kâbul, when mildly requested to hand him over, declined crustily, on the ground that an armed force had pursued a fugitive over his border without so much as a by-your-leave. If the English attempted to police his country and failed, he was not going to step in where they left off.
So the years went by, and Umar Khan was lost sight of and forgotten. Then, suddenly, he reappeared in his old haunts.
Changes of administration had supervened. The Government did not care to bother itself over a man who had been a desperate outlaw under its predecessors, as long as he behaved himself and showed a disposition to amend the error of his ways. Moreover, he was a member of one of the most powerful and turbulent tribes in Baluchistan. The Sirkâr concluded to let sleeping dogs lie. So it shut its eyes, and Umar Khan was left in peace.