“I have thy missionary and his daughter, three horses for thee, and thy man,” he smiled.
“Did Ali Partab bring them?”
“Nay. It was I brought Ali Partab and the rest! My promise is redeemed!”
Mahommed Gunga thrust his sword-hilt out and smiled back at him. “I present Raff-Cunnigan-sahib—son of Pukka-Cunnigan-bahadur!” he announced.
Alwa drew himself up to his full height and eyed young Cunningham as a buyer eyes a war-horse, inch by inch. The youngster, who had long since learned to actually revel in the weird sensation of a hundred pairs of eyes all fixed on him at once, felt this one man's gaze go over him as though he were being probed. He thanked his God he had no fat to be detected, and that his legs were straight, and that his tunic fitted him!
“Salaam, bahadur,” said Alwa slowly. “I knew thy father. So—thou—art—his—son. Welcome. There is room here always for a guest. I have other guests with whom you might care to speak. I will have a room made ready. Have I leave to ask questions of my cousin here?”
Cunningham bowed in recognition of his courtesy, and walked away to a point whence he could look from the beetling parapet away and away across desert that shone hot and hazy-rimmed on every side. If this were a man on whom he must depend for following—if any of all the more than hints dropped by the risaldar were true—it seemed to him that his reception was a little too chilly to be hopeful.
After a minute or two he turned his eyes away from the dazzling plain below and faced about to inspect the paved courtyard. Round it, on three sides of a parallelogram, there ran a beautifully designed and wonderfully worked-out veranda-fronted building, broken here and there by cobbled passages that evidently led to other buildings on the far edge of the rock. In the centre, covered by a roof like a temple-dome in miniature, was the ice-cold spring, whose existence made the fort tenable. Under the veranda, on a long, low lounge, was a sight that arrested his attention—held him spell-bound—drew him, tingling in a way he could not have explained—drew him—drew him, slow-footed, awkward, red—across the courtyard.
He heard Mahommed Gunga swear aloud; he recognized the wording of the belly-growled Rangar oath; but it did not occur to him that what he saw—what was drawing him—could be connected with it. He looked straight ahead and walked ahead—reached the edge of the veranda—took his helmet off—and stood still, feeling like an idiot, with the sun full on his head.
“I'd advise you to step into the shade,” said a voice that laughed more sweetly than the chuckling spring. “I don't know who you are, but I'm more glad to see you than I ever was in my life to see anybody. I can't get up, because I'm too stiff; the ride to here from Howrah City all but killed me, and I'm only here still because I couldn't ride another yard. My father will be out in a moment. He's half-dead too.”