“And you?” asked Pango Dooni.
“I come to hold the road against Pango Dooni, as the Dakoon bade me.”
Pango Dooni laughed. “Your words are large,” said he. “What could you, one man, do against Pango Dooni and his hillsman?”
“I could answer the Dakoon here or elsewhere, that I kept the road till the hill-wolves dragged me down.”
“We be the wolves from the hills,” answered Pango Dooni. “You would scarce serve a scrap of flesh for one hundred, and we are seven.”
“The wolves must rend me first,” answered the man, and he spat upon the ground at Pango Dooni’s feet.
A dozen men started forward, but the chief called them back.
“You are no coward, but a fool,” said he to the horseman. “Which is it better: to die, or to turn with us and save Cumner and the English, and serve Pango Dooni in the Dakoon’s Palace?”
“No man knows that he must die till the stroke falls, and I come to fight and not to serve a robber mountaineer.”
Pango Dooni’s eyes blazed with anger. “There shall be no fighting, but a yelping cur shall be hung to a tree,” said he.