"What—the same sized bet?"
"No, a hundred."
"Dollars ?"
"Rupees!" she laughed. "I'm not so rich as my husband."
"Can't refuse a lady!" Samson answered, noting the bet down. "I shall be a rich man tonight. They play a brilliant game, those fellows, but we always beat them in the end."
"How do you account for that?" Dick asked, suspecting what was coming.
"Oh, in a number of ways, but chiefly because they lack team-loyalty among themselves. They're all jealous of one another, whereas our fellows play as a unit."
As if in confirmation of Samson's words the Rajput team seemed rather to go to pieces in the third chukker. There was the same brilliant individual hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there. In vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it. He was not backed up in the nick of time, and before the end of the third minute the English scored.
"You'd better go and hedge those bets," laughed Samson when the chukker ended. "There are plenty of the native gentry over yonder who'd be delighted to gamble a fortune with you yet!"
Dick scarcely heard. He was watching Utirupa, who stood by the pony-line where a sais was doing something to a saddle girth. A rangar came up to the prince and spoke to him—a slim, young-looking man, a head the shorter of the two, with a turban rather low over his eyes, and the loose end of it, for some reason, across the lower half of his face. Dick nudged Tess, and she nodded. After that Utirupa appeared to speak in low tones to each member of his own team.