"You have done well enough," said he, "except that if attacked you would have hard work to gather your forces and control them. But never mind, you did quite well enough for this first time!" said Ranjoor Singh.
"Sahib!" I said. "But I thought you were in a cart, dying!"
"In a cart, yes!" he said. "Dying, no—although that was no fault of somebody's!"
I begged him to explain, and while we watched the camels cross our track—(God knows, sahib, why they did not grow suspicious and follow along it)—he told me how he had sat on the great rock, not very sleepy, but thinking, chin on knee, when suddenly some man crawled up from behind and struck him a heavy blow.
"Feel my head," said he, and I felt under his turban. There was a bruise the size of my folded fist. I swore—as who would not? "Is it deep?" I said, still watching the camels, and before he answered me he sent the trooper to go and find his horse.
"Superficial," he said then. "By the favor of God but a water bruise. My head must have yielded beneath the blow."
"Who struck it?" said I, scarcely thinking what I said, for my mind was full of the camels, now flank toward us, that would have served our purpose like the gift of God could we only have contrived to capture them.
"How should I know?" he answered. "See—they pass within a half-mile of where I sat. Is not that the rock?" And I said yes.
"Had you lingered there," he said, "word about us would have gone back to Angora at top camel speed. What possessed you to come away?"
"God!" said I, and he nodded, so that I began to preen myself. He noticed my gathering self-esteem.