Frowning over Jamrud were the lean “Hills,” peopled by the fiercest fighting men on earth, and the clouds that hung over the Khyber's course were an accent to the savagery.
But King smiled merrily as he jumped out of the train, and Rewa Gunga, who was there to meet him, advanced with outstretched hand and a smile that would have melted snow on the distant peaks if he had only looked the other way.
“Welcome, King sahib!” he laughed, with the air of a skilled fencer who admires another, better one. “I shall know better another time and let you keep in front of me! No more getting first into a train and settling down for the night! It may not be easy to follow you, and I suspect it isn't, but at least it jolly well can't be such a job as leading you! I trust you had a comfortable journey?”
“Thanks,” said King, shaking hands with him, and then turning away to unlock the carriage doors that held his prisoners in. They were baying now like wolves to be free, and they surged out, like wolves from a cage, to clamor round the Rangar, pawing him and struggling to be first to ask him questions.
“Nay, ye mountain people; nay!” he laughed. “I, too, am from the plains! What do I know of your families or of your feuds? Am I to be torn to pieces to make a meal?”
At that Ismail interfered, with the aid of an ash pick-handle, chance-found beside the track.
“Hill-bastards!” he howled at them, beating at them as if they were sheaves and his cudgel were a flail. “Sons of nameless mothers! Forgotten of God! Shameless! Brood of the evil one! Hands off!”
King had to stop him, not that he feared trouble, for they did not seem to resent either abuse or cudgeling in the least--and that in itself was food for thought; but broken shoulders are no use for carrying loads.
Laughing as if the whole thing was the greatest joke imaginable, Rewa Gunga fell into stride beside King and led him away in the direction of some tents.
“She is up the Pass ahead of us,” he announced. “She was in the deuce of a hurry, I can assure you. She wanted to wait and meet you, but matters were too jolly well urgent, and we shall have our bally work cut out to catch her, you can bet! But I have everything ready--tents and beds and stores--everything!”