The Advanced-Guard

by Sydney C. Grier

“What, Murtiza Khan! so lately saved and so soon anxious to destroy? Let the creature escape, as God has allowed us.”

“As the Presence wills,” said Murtiza Khan, with resignation, while the antelope, catching the sound of human voices, took alarm and bounded away. “I was but desirous of providing food, for we have here only some broken chapatis. Is it the will of the Presence that we should leave this place, and seek to find some dwelling of men in these mountains?”

“No,” said Lady Haigh shortly, “we wait here for the Sahib. If he is alive he will seek us; if not, we will seek him.”

The trooper did not venture to offer any opposition, and Lady Haigh returned to her former attitude, gazing over the smoky waste, from which the blackened trunk of a tall tree protruded here and there. She had some biscuits in her plant-case, which she shared with Penelope, and Murtiza Khan and the grooms made a meal of the fragments discovered in the trooper’s saddle-bags, after which the three men went to sleep, having duly asked and received permission. Lady Haigh and Penelope scarcely spoke at all through the long hot thirsty hours that followed. The sun beat down on them, reflected from the steep walls of the nullah; but if they moved into the shade lower down, they would lose the view. The fire had long burned itself out, and the smoke-clouds lifted gradually, disclosing a gloomy expanse of black ashes. The ground had been cleared so thoroughly that it seemed as if it ought to be possible to see as far as the spot where the camp had been, but the air was still too hazy, a dull grey taking the place of the ordinary intense blue of the sky. There was no sign of life anywhere on the plain which had been forest, but as the afternoon wore on Penelope started suddenly.

“Did you see, Elma?” she cried. “I am sure I saw a man’s face. He was looking at us over those rocks,” and she pointed to the crest of the cliff on the opposite side of the nullah.

“It can’t be one of our men, for why should they want to hide?” said Lady Haigh gloomily, returning to her watch. “I don’t see anything.”

“But it must be one of the tribesmen, then, and they will attack us. Do wake up Murtiza Khan, and let him go and look. Elma! you don’t want to be taken prisoner, do you?”

Thus adjured, Lady Haigh aroused the trooper, who descended into the dry bed of the nullah and scaled the opposite height with due precaution, but found no one, and reported that he could see nothing but more rocks and barren hills. In returning, he ventured out on the plain, at Lady Haigh’s order, that he might see whether it was yet possible to traverse it. But when he turned up the black ashes with the toe of his boot, they showed red and fiery underneath.

“It may not be, Highness,” he said. “Neither man nor horse can cross the forest to-day. Is it permitted to us to leave this spot?” Lady Haigh’s gesture of dissent was sufficient answer. “Then have I the Presence’s leave to send the grooms, one each way, along the edge of these cliffs? It may be that the Sahib is looking for us round about the place of the fire, and one of them may meet him.”

To this Lady Haigh consented, and the two men started, rather unwillingly, since both were afraid of going alone. The one who had gone to the right returned very quickly, saying that he had seen a man’s face in a bush, which turned out, however, to be perfectly normal when he reconnoitred cautiously behind it, and that he was going no farther, since the place was evidently the haunt of afrit. The other was longer absent, and when he appeared he was accompanied by another man, who was rapturously recognised by the fugitives as one of the grass-cutters from the camp, who had gone with Sir Dugald to Rajkot. Carefully hidden in his turban he bore a note, very dirty and much crumpled, and evidently written on the upper margin of a piece of newspaper which Sir Dugald had taken with him to provide wadding for his guns. Lady Haigh read it eagerly, but as she did so her face changed.