By a little fire kindled in the road, the bodies of their foe beside them, they vowed to each other, mingling their blood from dagger pricks in the arm. Then they mounted again and rode towards the Neck of Baroob.
In silence they rode awhile, and at last the hillsman said: “If fathers be brothers-in-blood, behold it is good that sons be also.”
By this the lad knew that he was now brother-in-blood to the son of Pango Dooni.
III. THE CODE OF THE HILLS
“You travel near to Mandakan!” said the lad. “Do you ride with a thousand men?”
“For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone and safe,” answered Tang-a-Dahit.
“To thrust your head in the tiger’s jaw,” said Cumner’s Son. “Did you ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?”
“A man will ride for a face that he loves, even to the Dreadful Gates,” answered Tang-a-Dahit. “But what is this of the men of my clan?”
Then the lad told him of those whose heads hung on the rear Palace wall, where the Dakoon lay dying, and why he rode to Pango Dooni.