"I would speak a few words with your chief."
"He does not want either to buy or to sell," the man said shortly.
"I do not seek to sell," Angus said. "I have a message of importance to him."
One of them went into the tower, and returning in a minute, motioned to Angus to follow him. The chief, a tall and powerful man of middle age, was seated on the floor of a room in the upper story of the tower. Near him was a large earthenware pan, in which a charcoal fire was burning.
"Why come you here, Persian?" he said, "and what message can one like you bear to me?"
Angus repeated the message that Sadut Khan had given him. The chief rose to his feet suddenly. "You lie!" he said fiercely, "he is dead. The news came to us a week since."
"Nevertheless, he gave me that message; and if you will come with me to Bamian you will see for yourself that he is not dead, though it is true that he has been sorely hurt."
"I go not into Bamian," the chief said. "I have not put foot in the town since the accursed infidels came there. They have held no communication with me, nor I with them. This may be a trick to lure me there and make me prisoner."
"If they had desired to do so," Angus said quietly, "they would have sent a hundred men with a gun or two, and not a mere trader. Besides, how could they have told that a Momund chief had been here with Dost Mahomed when he passed through?"
"Many could have told you that," the chief said, "seeing that, next to the Ameer himself, he was the most observed of the party."