“Where do you suppose we are going?” Ommony asked.
“To that old Lama’s roost, I take it. Between you and me, Ommonee, I am glad to go anywhere, so be I get away from this place. My wife is in Tilgaun and has sent two of her husbands to catch me and bring me to her!”
The sirdar grinned, watching Ommony’s face. “They practise polyandry in these hills,” he remarked.
That was no news, although there was less of it around Tilgaun since the Marmaduke influence had begun to make itself felt.
“Seven husbands are enough for her,” said Dawa Tsering. “I grew weary of planting her corn-fields and being beaten for my trouble. I am for Spiti, where a man can have as many wives as he can manage and they fear him! Let us be off before that she-wolf’s husbands catch the two of us, thou!”
Ommony nodded. The sirdar put the lights out and led the way to the outer gate, Dawa Tsering following, complaining bitterly about his knife.
“I am ashamed, Ommonee—I am ashamed to go back to Spiti without my belly-ripper! Where shall I find such another as that? Get it for me! I would pay its weight in gold for it—if I had that much gold,” he added sotto voce.
Once outside the gate, though, he was much too eager to be going to fret about anything else. The whites of his eyes showed alert in the darkness. There were two ponies; he held Ommony’s, urging him to mount in haste, then ran behind, slapping the pony’s rump, pursuing the sirdar’s beast, that cantered with a Tibetan clinging to its tail. Diana circled around and around the party, barking.
“Thou! Command thy she-dog!” Dawa Tsering panted. “We go through the village—she will awake my wife’s husbands—command her to be still, or we are lost!”