“Then I’ll tell you, old fellow. When I find a thing’s too big for me to think out I let it go, and I find it often comes afterwards. We can’t tackle this, so let’s leave it and do the best we can. By-and-by perhaps we shall find it out. Drop it now.”
So it was dropped, and the days wore on without any more alarms. The two injured men improved fast, and Hulton seemed stronger, but quite unfit still for duty.
“Never mind,” he said, with a smile full of resignation; “it doesn’t matter. The troop couldn’t be better managed, and I shall get well sooner up here in the hills than I should down in the plains.”
One thing troubled the party in the old palace, though, and that was the apparent change on the part of the Rajah, who kept quite aloof from them now; while the people, after a period of comparative friendliness, began to grow aggressive.
“Seems to me,” said Wyatt, “that we might as well be back at cantonments. The Rajah cuts us; nobody wants us here; there’s no fighting to do, unless we set to and drive the fighting part of the population out and take possession of Soojeepur in the name of the Company. I want exercise, and I should just like that job. We could do it, too, with a bit of scheming. What do you say to a try, Dick, and being made Rajah pro tem?”
“Nothing,” said Dick.
The very next day a larger present than usual of the produce of the country was brought for the use of the troop by the Rajah’s orders, but there was no friendly advance.
“Doesn’t seem as if he was tired of us yet,” said Wyatt, “Look here; we shall have to send out a party to meet our reinforcements with the ammunition, for I don’t like their not coming. It looks as if they had had a check somewhere.”
“Do you think the Rajah of Singh could have sent a force round and captured them?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Wyatt. “If he had been on the move, our chief here must have heard of it. Perhaps it’s all right, though, and they’ll be here soon.”