One of the litter-men stared across the river and caught a faint twinkle of light on the far side. He whispered to Tallantire, “There are his camp-fires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning, for they have better boats. Can he live so long?”
Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was very near to death. What need to vex his soul with hopes of a meeting that could not be? The river gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of sand, and snarled the more hungrily. The litter-men sought for fuel in the waste—dried camel-thorn and refuse of the camps that had waited at the ford. Their sword-belts clinked as they moved softly in the haze of the moonlight, and Tallantire’s horse coughed to explain that he would like a blanket.
“I’m cold too,” said the voice from the litter. “I fancy this is the end. Poor Polly!”
Tallantire rearranged the blankets; Khoda Dad Khan, seeing this, stripped off his own heavy-wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the pile. “I shall be warm by the fire presently,” said he. Tallantire took the wasted body of his chief into his arms and held it against his breast. Perhaps if they kept him very warm Orde might live to see his wife once more. If only blind Providence would send a three-foot fall in the river!
“That’s better,” said Orde faintly. “Sorry to be a nuisance, but is—is there anything to drink?”
They gave him milk and whiskey, and Tallantire felt a little warmth against his own breast. Orde began to mutter.
“It isn’t that I mind dying,” he said. “It’s leaving Polly and the district. Thank God! we have no children. Dick, you know, I’m dipped—awfully dipped—debts in my first five years’ service. It isn’t much of a pension, but enough for her. She has her mother at home. Getting there is the difficulty. And—and—you see, not being a soldier’s wife——”
“We’ll arrange the passage home, of course,” said Tallantire quietly.
“It’s not nice to think of sending round the hat; but, good Lord! how many men I lie here and remember that had to do it! Morten’s dead—he was of my year. Shaughnessy is dead, and he had children; I remember he used to read us their school-letters; what a bore we thought him! Evans is dead—Kot-Kumharsen killed him! Ricketts of Myndonie is dead—and I’m going too. ‘Man that is born of a woman is small potatoes and few in the hill.’ That reminds me, Dick; the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our border want a one-third remittance this spring. That’s fair; their crops are bad. See that they get it, and speak to Ferris about the canal. I should like to have lived till that was finished; it means so much for the North-Indus villages—but Ferris is an idle beggar—wake him up. You’ll have charge of the district till my successor comes. I wish they would appoint you permanently; you know the folk. I suppose it will be Bullows, though. ’Good man, but too weak for frontier work; and he doesn’t understand the priests. The blind priest at Jagai will bear watching. You’ll find it in my papers,—in the uniform-case, I think. Call the Khusru Kheyl men up; I’ll hold my last public audience. Khoda Dad Khan!”
The leader of the men sprang to the side of the litter, his companions following.