The tunnel that led to the left was pierced in twenty places in the roof for rifle-fire; a score of men with enough ammunition could have held it forever against an army. But the right-hand way looked undefended. Nevertheless, the guide led to the left, and King followed him, filled with curiosity.
“Many have entered!” sang the lashless mullah in a sing-song chant. “More have sought to enter! Some who remained without were wisest! I count them! I keep count! Many went in! Not all came out again by this road!”
“Then there is another road?” King wondered, but he held his tongue and followed the guide.
It proved to be fifty yards through part natural, part hand-hewn, tunnel to the neck of the fork where the left- and right-hand passages became one again. He stopped at the fork and looked back, for none of his men was following.
He caught the sound of scuffling--of clattering hoofs, and grunts and shouted oaths--and started to run back, since even a native hakim may protect his own, should he care to, even in the “Hills.”
For the sake of principle he chose the other passage, for Cocker says, “Look! Look! Look!” But the guide seized him by the arm from behind and swung him back again.
“Not that way!” he growled. But he offered no explanation.
In the “Hills” it is not good to ask “why” of strangers. It is good to be glad one was not knifed, and to be deferent until more suitable occasion. King started to run again, but this time along the same defended passage down which they had come. And now the guide made no objection but leaned on his long gun and waited.
The charger proved to be making the trouble--the horse that King had exchanged with the jezailchi in the Khyber. The terrified brute was refusing to enter the passage, and all the men, including Ismail and the mullah, were shoving, or else tugging at the reins.
At the moment King appeared the united strength of six men was beginning to prevail. The mullah let go the reins, and in that instant the horse saw King advance toward him out of the tunnel; so, after the manner of horses, he chose the other passage. King ran at full speed round the corner after him, remembering that the guide had admitted responsibility, and therefore that the chances were he would be rescued should he run into a trap.