His remembrance of it pleased her far more than her possession.
"It's not very warm," she murmured.
"Well, it's a good deal warmer than these flimsy things," he said, lifting the laces that lay round her neck; "and we'll turn a feather quilt into a petticoat for you, cut you a boa out of the mess-room bearskin, and put the poshteen on top of all. Mind, you'll have to parade in full marching order, or we'll leave you behind for Mir Khan to take care of."
An orderly entering with a chit at that moment made an end to the boyish talk that was meant to put fresh heart into her, and Terrington, after a glance at the scrap of paper, left her at once with a smile and a nod and an instant's tightening of his fingers upon her shoulder.
At sunset he read the sentences of the burial service over the trench beside the Residency in which the bodies of the three Englishmen were laid. The dusk was spreading under the autumn twilight, while the pale spaces of eternal snow beyond Rashát were veiled with rose in the clear heaven above the purple ramparts of the valley and the flames of the pyres on which the dead Hindus were burned blazed in clear spires of light through the increasing gloom.
Rose Chantry stood next to Terrington, in a shooting costume of golden-brown tweed, with a leather hunting-belt, a broad band of leather about the short skirt, brown leather boots that laced half way to the knee, and a brown tam-o'-shanter pinned tight upon her curls. She hardly knew what he was reading as she looked across the miles of evening to the tinted snows, and heard the crackle of the funeral fires on either side of her. Life had been suddenly changed altogether into something hard and glaring and stale and ugly like a ball-room opened to the dawn, and she felt to be growing hard and plain and matter of fact to match it.
The melancholy volleys were fired above the grave, the level flash of orange light splitting the darkness like the sweep of a sword, for Terrington, well aware that he was watched, would omit nothing which might by its absence suggest a desire for concealment. While the ostentation of the funeral was distracting the attention of Mir Khan's spies, all the outward openings in the walls were being closed, so that when the funeral party returned to the Fort the arrangements for immediate departure could be pushed forward with continued speed and in complete concealment. The twinkle of lanterns everywhere made the labyrinth of the old mud walls look as if invaded by a flight of fire-flies. In ordered lines across the courtyard the bearers squatted, brown and impassive, beside their burdens; line after line, hour after hour, filing forth from the dark doorways of the Fort, till half the space between its walls was full. The other half was covered with accoutrements and bristled with piled arms. In the stables the Lancers were removing every needless detail from their equipment, and a wisp of rag was twisted round any piece of metal from which a sound might be shaken. In the long gully between the stable and the Fort stood strings of mules with a few zabus, snorting and shuffling under the loads that were being heaped upon their backs.
An hour after midnight the gate of the courtyard was thrown open, and a dark stream of horsemen poured silently out and turned north-east towards the river. They had left their lances broken behind them, but took every ounce of food that they could carry and three hundred rounds a man. Hard on the dust of their hoofs followed the Sikhs and Bakót levies under Dore; the Sikhs, long and lithe, fine marchers and good fighters all of them; the Bakót men short and square, very doubtful shooters and untried in fight, but hard hill-men, at home in the snow, and equal to almost any labour. After them came the long lines of mules out of the gully snorting and shaking their packs and harness, and kicking up more dust than the horsemen. Rose Chantry's doolie followed in rear of these. It had been padded for her with quilts of Armak wool and lined with camel's hair curtains fastened down to keep out the wind, and carried a mattress of feathers, a span in depth, to save her from the joltings of the road. Terrington had literally sketched its construction with one hand while he wrote a despatch with the other, and had himself gone down to the yard to explain away the carpenter's difficulties. But he shook his head at the boxes in which Rose had packed what she considered "absolutely necessary."
"No good!" he said. "Even if we got them to the Palári, we'd have to leave them in the snow."
"How many bearers have I?" Rose demanded.