“Call on him to surrender!” ordered Cunningham.
A chevroned black-beard half a horse-length behind him translated the demand into stately Pashtu, and for answer the hill chieftain mounted his stolen horse and shook his tulwar. He had pistols at his belt, but he did not draw them; across his shoulder swung a five-foot-long jezail, but he loosed it and flung it to the ground.
“Is there any here dare take me single-handed?” he demanded with a grin.
Of the eight-and-eighty, there were eighty-eight who dared; but there was an eighty-ninth, a lad of not yet twenty-two, whom Indian chivalry desired to honor. The troop had heard but the troop had not yet seen.
“Ride in and take him!” ordered Cunningham and there was a thoroughly well acted make-believe of fear, while every eye watched “Cunnigan-bahadur,” and the horses, spurred and reined at once, pranced at their bits for just so long as a good man needs to make his mind up. And Cunningham rode in.
He rode in as a Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself. Green though he was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him—had rounded up for him—had made him his opportunity; so he took it, right under their eyes, straight in the teeth of the stoutest tulwar man of the lower Himalayas.
He, too, had pistols at his belt, but there was no shot fired. There was nothing but a spur-loosed rush and a shock—a spark-lit, swirling, slashing, stamping, snorting melee—a stallion and a mare up-ended—two strips of lightning steel that slit the wind—and a thud, as a lifeless border robber took the turf.
There was silence then—the grim, good silence of Mohammedan approval—while a native officer closed up a sword-cut with his fingers and tore ten-yard strips from his own turban to bind the youngster's head. They rode back without boast or noise and camped without advertisement. There was no demonstration made; only-a colonel said, “I like things done that way, quickly, without fuss,” and a brigadier remarked, “Hrrrumph! 'Gratulate you, Mr. Cunningham!”
Later, when they camped again outside Peshawur, a reward of three thousand rupees that had been offered on the border outlaw's head was paid to Cunningham in person—a very appreciable sum to a subaltern, whose pay is barely sufficient for his mess bills. So, although no public comment was made on the matter, it was considered “decent of him” to contribute the whole amount to a pension fund for the dependents of the regiment's dead.
“You know, that's your money,” said his Colonel. “You can keep every anna of it if you choose.”