“Impossible, my good fellow,” Brace used to say. “I can’t spare you—the smartest sergeant in the troop.”
“Smartest, sir?” repeated Craig, with a piteous smile. “A helpless invalid, too weak to lift a sword, let alone use it, or sit a horse.”
“Wait, Craig, and you will sit a horse yet, and help me to redeem this terrible reverse.”
The days wore slowly on, and we seemed no nearer; and, but for the energy and knowledge of Dost, we should have starved; but his knowledge of the natives of the country people enabled him somehow or another to provide for our commissariat, and we marched on with the sepoys always bearing poor Craig’s dhooly, and making no attempt to escape.
I said something about it one night to Brace.
“Wait,” he said, “and then we shall have to be doubly watchful. They will try to escape when we have overtaken the enemy; and our great peril will be their betraying our presence; for we cannot play the lion now, Gil; we must play the fox.”
It was a wonder to me that we did not come upon any stragglers from the force we were pursuing; but we did not overtake any; neither did we come upon a broken-down horse.
“Plain proof,” said Brace, “that they are taking care of them. Gil, my lad, if we do not recapture those guns, they will prove to be deadly in their injury to our side; for, depend upon it, those daring fellows will train themselves to use them, and they will be terrible weapons in an enemy’s hands.”
“More need for us to get them back,” I said. “You don’t despair of overtaking them?”
“I will not,” he said firmly; and then, to change the subject, “How did you think our horses looked?”