"This man, Sahib, hath even now crossed over from Darkót village," the Pathan explained, indicating the wizened leader of a forlorn hope with the air of a showman exhibiting a curiosity. "He came to fetch the remains of his sister, who died in this valley, that she may be buried among her own people. I have therefore engaged him as guide, to take the Sahib over on his return."
"The thing can be done?" Lenox asked, with an eagerness not to be repressed; and the small man bowed his head upon his hands.
"Allah alone can answer the question of the Heaven-born. For one man to travel safely among glaciers and crevasses without number, it was no easy matter—and as for a company of men and ponies, how can this slave tell? Nevertheless, if the Sahib wills, and there is no snow before morning, I go before, showing the way; and that which will fall—will fall."
"Good. That is a bargain. Fulfil it, and thy reward shall be worth the winning. Let yaks be ordered from the nearest aul; and at daylight we set out."
The man from Yasin salaamed and departed; but at the tent door Zyarulla paused, a glitter of triumph in his eyes.
"Captain Sahib,—was it well done?"
"Excellently done," Lenox answered, smiling. "Thou art worth thy weight in tobacco of the first quality!"
And the Pathan, knowing that to his master the value of tobacco was above all the rupees ever minted, went out to patronise lesser mortals, and impress them with the fact that he was not as other men, since he had rendered signal service to "the first-best Sahib in all India, whose eyes pierce the earth, and whose feet tread upon the necks of mountains even as those of common Sahibs scatter the dust of cities!"
That night, ominous pains in his limbs and a sensation as of cold water down his spine drove Lenox to open his second and last bottle of brandy. Stimulated by the kindly spirit, he wrestled with a fowl tougher than india-rubber, and slept as a doomed man might sleep on the night of his reprieve.
But he woke to hear the tread of his sentry muffled by new-fallen snow; and hope died in him at the sound. Outside, the world was white with it; the whole air thick with it; yet his men were striking camp and loading up, confident in the white man's reputation for achieving the impossible. Only the little guide demurred, trembling at his own audacity.