"Hai!" said Sherdil. "Some low-born Rajput is breathing, and his foul breath blows the bullet away. But the next will be a bull's-eye; be ready, brothers, for Ahmed will win."
But when the marker signalled an outer the uproar became deafening. The scores of Wahid and Ahmed were equal. The partisans of each clamoured for the choice to fall on their man. Wahid was the father of two boys: therefore he was the better candidate. Ahmed was not so fat: therefore he would prove the better Guide. Wahid had stolen horses for twenty years: who so fit to catch horse-thieves? Ahmed had blown up fifty men with gunpowder (Sherdil did not stick at trifles): where would they find a Rajput who could say the same? Thus they bellowed against one another, urging more and more ridiculous reasons on behalf of their favourites, and then Lumsden cried for silence.
"There is only one place," he said, "and these two are equal as shots. For the life of me I don't know which of them to give it to. Come along, we'll try the riding test. Fetch out that unbroken colt; jaldi karo!"
The jabbering began afresh, while a sais went off to fetch the colt. The whole company repaired to a level stretch of about three hundred yards, where the men practised the game of nazebaze. A post stood at the further end. When the colt was brought up—a mettlesome beast with arab blood in it—Lumsden ordered the course to be cleared, and the excited throng having been pressed back on either side, told Ahmed to mount and ride the animal bareback to the post and back. Ahmed sprang on to the quivering horse, which bucked and reared, making frantic efforts to throw him. But the boy had been given his first lesson in riding in just this way; Rahmut Khan had set him on horseback and bade him look after himself. So now, gripping the reins firmly and pressing his knees into the animal's flanks, at the same time speaking soothing words that he used with his own horse Ruksh, he succeeded in turning its head towards the post, and in another moment was off like the wind. The shouts of the crowd terrified the horse; it reared and plunged, and then made a dash for the centre of the yelling mob on the right, which broke apart and scattered with shrieks of alarm. But Ahmed controlled his steed before it reached the edge of the course. He turned it once more into the straight; it ran on past the post at a mad gallop, which was only checked by a hillock in front of it. Then, giving it a minute to recover, Ahmed patted it and coaxed it, wheeled round, and rode straight back to the starting-point.
Sherdil and the Guides roared with applause.
"By Jove!" said Lieutenant Battye, turning to Kennedy, "what a seat the fellow has got! Better make him your riding-master, old chap."
"Don't want one," was the answer. "All my fellows can ride. Let's see what the Rajput can do."
Wahid was about the same height as Ahmed, but broader and heavier. He leapt on to the horse's back nimbly enough, and kept his seat, as it seemed, by sheer muscular force. The horse appeared to fear him, and started for the post with a docility that surprised everybody, and sent Sherdil's hopes once more down to zero. Wahid reached the post; then, instead of galloping past, he pulled the horse up with a violent tug on the reins, and wheeled it round to return. But the animal had a temper; this treatment did not please it at all; and when it had got half-way back to the starting-point, and the crowd was already yelling that the prize was to Wahid, because he had shown the better management, suddenly the horse stopped dead, planting his fore feet firmly in the sand; up flew its hind hoofs, and the Rajput went clean over its head, falling with a thwack just in front of its nose.
The roar that went up from the crowd might almost have been heard at Peshawar. The Guides to a man shouted Ahmed's name; the Pathans among the spectators danced a kind of war-dance, and some, losing their heads, fired off their jazails with imminent risk of blowing some one to pieces. Sherdil, after a glance at his commander's face, in which he read the verdict, called to a comrade, and Ahmed was hoisted on to their shoulders and carried in triumph back to the fort.
"Wah! Did I not say it?" cried Sherdil. "What a man seeketh happens to him. I said 'I, Sherdil, will teach thee, Ahmed, the right way and make thee a Guide.' And now we will have a tamasha. Lumsden Sahib will give us a sheep or a goat, and we will be very merry."