“That is all very well, Ibrahim, who art a Moslem,” said the fat Hindu, whose distressed impatience was painfully manifest. “None will harm thee. But I—”
The words died in his throat, choked there by the sight of a number of stealing figures, flitting down from rock to rock. The countenance of the unfortunate trader grew a dirty leaden white. Already the road before him was barred. Wildly he gazed around. That behind him was barred too. His companion, quite unmoved, was still examining the hoof of his horse. High overhead, a speck in the ether, above the gnomelike crags, the black vulture still turned his head from side to side and croaked.
Already the marauders had seized the pack animals. The two young men who drove them had fallen flat and were grovelling and wailing for mercy. Rough hands had flung the Hindu from his saddle, and he lay on the ground, moaning with fear, and quaking in every limb, as he stared frantically at the dull flash of razor-edged tulwars, brandished over him, the savage, hairy faces glowering down upon him, fell and threatening with religious hate and racial contempt.
“Rise up, fat dog,” said one of the marauders, kicking him. “Rise up, and come with us.”
“Mercy, Sirdar Sahib, and suffer me to go my way,” whined the terrified man, as he tremblingly obeyed the first clause of the injunction. “I am but a poor trader, but have ever been generous to such as ye. Take therefore of my poor store, yet leave me a little that I may begin life again.”
The leader of the band laughed evilly and spat.
“Thy poor store! Ha! We will take all and afterwards skin thee of yet more, thou usurer, who comest into our country but to leave it poorer.”
“Not so, Sirdar Sahib,” expostulated the trader, plucking up a little courage by virtue of the name he was about to invoke. “What I have, I have from the Nawab—the Nawab Mushîm Khan—given in honest trade. Shall I then suffer ill-treatment at the Nawab’s very gates?”
“The Nawab. Ha—ha!” jeered the leader, spitting again. “Walk, fat infidel dog. Dost hear?”
And a buffet on the side of the head, which nearly felled him, convinced the unfortunate trader that this was no time for further expostulation; and, accordingly, panting, wheezing, stumbling, he strove his painful utmost to keep pace up the steep hill with his perilous and unwelcome escort. His attendants were undergoing but little ill-treatment. They were young and lithe, and gave no trouble; moreover, they had little or nothing to lose, so feared nothing. Ibrahim, who happened to be a mullah, and whom the other had subsidised for the supposed protection of his own company, to whom no violence whatever had been offered, was leading his steed tranquilly over the rough, stony slope, chatting and laughing familiarly with the band; and at the sight the unhappy Chand Lall’s soul grew more bitter within him. Why had he been so ready to accept this plausible rogue’s benevolent sanctity, he thought, as now fifty instances occurred to him of delays, slight at the time, but on colourable pretext, to retard him more and more—to increase subtly and imperceptibly more and more the distance between him and the armed force with which he had obtained permission to travel. Bitterly he reproached himself. He saw through it now—in fact, he did not believe that Ibrahim was a mullah at all; but mullah or not, certain it was that he was the confederate and decoy of the ferocious and predatory gang who had so daringly swooped down upon himself and his goods, almost within call of the Political Agent’s armed escort.