The opportunity for vengeance came sooner than he could have expected. In the spring of the next year, when a civil servant named Vans Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay army were escorting a new diwan or governor to the city of Multan, they were treacherously attacked, and their murder was the signal for a general uprising of the Sikh soldiery. News of the rebellion was carried through the country with wonderful speed; it came to the ears of Rahmut and Minghal, and, fretting as they were under the restraints imposed upon them by the proximity of the British, they resolved at once to make common cause with the revolted Sikhs. It happened that Mr. Barclay had lately "gone into camp" at a spot very near the place where he had given his decision against Minghal. The Pathan chiefs set off with their armed followers, rushed Mr. Barclay's almost unprotected camp, for he had as yet heard nothing of the revolt at Multan, and the deputy-commissioner, without a moment's warning, was shot through the heart. His little son would have suffered the same fate, so bitter was the tribesmen's enmity against all the Feringhis, but for Rahmut, who remembered how much he had been attracted by the boy, and saw an opportunity for which he had yearned—of providing himself with an heir. One of his wives, now dead, had borne him two sons, but both had died fighting against Ranjit Singh, and his two living wives had given him only daughters. In such cases it was common for a chief to adopt a son and make him his heir. Rahmut, now getting on in years, had envied the English sahib who was blessed with a boy so sturdy and frank and fearless. While Minghal, therefore, was wreaking his vengeance on the father, Rahmut caught up the son, set him on his saddlebow, and forbade any of his men to lay hands on him. He had resolved to take the boy back with him by and by to Shagpur, to bring him up as a Pathan, and if he proved worthy, to proclaim him his heir.
Minghal was very indignant when the old chief announced his intention. The boy, he protested, was an infidel dog: it was shame to a Pathan and a follower of the Prophet to show kindness to any of the hated race who had laid their hands on this land, claiming tribute from the free-men of the hills, deposing and setting up governors at their will. But Rahmut would not be denied. Minghal dared not cross the old warrior; for the moment he appeared to acquiesce, but in his heart he hated his neighbour chief, and resolved from that time to set himself in rivalry against him. If he could not remove the boy, he could at least bide his time, and when Rahmut's time came to die, it should be seen whether he could not rely on racial and religious prejudice to prevent the scandal of a tribe being ruled by an infidel Feringhi.
Rahmut kept the boy with him in the Panjab through the campaign. He joined forces with the troops sent by the king of Kabul to the assistance of the Sikhs. He fought in the terrible battle of Chilianwala, and when Gough signally routed his brave enemy at Gujarat, he fled with the Afghans and Pathans to their inaccessible hills, escaped the pursuit of the Company's troops, and reached in safety his mountain home at Shagpur.
Then he carried out his intention. He called the boy Ahmed, and had him trained in the Mohammedan faith by the mullah of his village, who taught him to read the Koran (though, being in Arabic, he never understood a word of it). Ahmed wore a white turban, kept the Musalman fasts and feasts, and though he was at first very miserable, and wept often for the father he had lost, he gradually forgot his early life, and delighted his new father's heart as he grew up a straight, sturdy Pathan boy. Rahmut was wonderfully kind to him. His wives were at first jealous of the boy, and there were some in the village who never lost their first distrust and envy of him; but as years passed by, and Ahmed proved himself to be as bold and daring as he was sunny-tempered, as good at hunting and warlike exercises as he was in the ritual of religion, he became a favourite with most. The chief visited with heavy punishment some who dared to give expression to their resentment at his adoption of a Feringhi boy, and after that the ill-feeling died down, and if any remained it found an outlet only in murmurs which the envious ones were careful to keep from their chief's ears.
Ahmed was now sixteen. He was his adoptive father's constant companion at home; but the old chief, while he allowed the boy to take part in his hunting expeditions, would never permit him to share in the raids which he sometimes made on the villages of his neighbours, nor in the horse-stealing enterprises he ventured in the British lines. He seemed to be beset by a fear lest the boy should be snatched from him, and in particular he dreaded lest any contact with the British should awake dormant recollections in his mind and be the means of carrying him back to his own people. The only experience Ahmed had of contests with men had been gained in occasional attacks on caravans of merchants as they passed between Persia and Afghanistan. But now that the boy was sixteen, Rahmut thought it was high time, he should be married in accordance with the customs of his country, and was looking about for a suitable bride. The old chief argued that when Ahmed was married there would be less likelihood of his ever wishing to leave his tribe, and he might then be given a greater freedom and take a full share in all their activities.
Though Ahmed thus had few enemies in Shagpur itself, there was one in Minghal's village of Mandan who caused Rahmut Khan some anxiety. This was his nephew Dilasah, a man near forty years old. Dilasah had expected to succeed his uncle in the chiefship, but he was an idle, ill-conditioned fellow, not without a certain fierce bravery when roused, but little inclined to bestir himself without great cause, exceedingly fond of eating, and very fat. For him Rahmut had the deepest contempt. There was a stormy scene between uncle and nephew when the Feringhi boy was brought to the village and formally adopted by the old chief; Rahmut poured out his scorn upon Dilasah, and the latter withdrew in high wrath and indignation from the village and joined himself to Minghal's folk. Rahmut was at first glad to be rid of him, but as years passed, and Minghal, by cunning wiles and stealthy diplomacy, increased his influence in the country and drew more and more men into his tribe, the chief of Shagpur foresaw that one day he might have serious trouble with his rival, and that the succession of Ahmed would be disputed. But he hoped that he would live long enough to see the boy develop into a full-grown warrior, able to hold his own by force of arms if the need should arise.
If he had guessed that his absence on the horse-stealing expedition would be taken advantage of by his enemy, he would without doubt have remained at home. But he had heard that Minghal had gone westward to intercept a caravan of cloth merchants on the road to Kabul; it was a trick of Minghal's to draw the old man out of the way; and thus it happened that the village was so poorly defended when Minghal made his attack.