"Come!" commanded Ranjoor Singh, and the German got out of the cart, looking not so very much unlike the poor Mohammedan who had gone away.
"Get in there!" The German slipped into the real owner's place. So far as appearances went, he was a very passable sweetmeat and lemonade seller, and Ranjoor Singh proved competent to guard against contingencies.
He picked a long stick out of the gutter and took his stand near by, frowning as he saw a carriage he suspected to be Yasmini's drive under the gate and come to a stand at the roadside, fifty or sixty yards away.
"If the officers should recognize me," he growled to the German, though seeming not to talk to him at all, "I should be arrested at once, and shot later. But the men will recognize me, and you shall see what you shall see!"
Three small boys came with a coin to spend, but Ranjoor Singh drove them away with his long stick; they argued shrilly from a distance, and one threw a stone at him, but finally they decided he was some new sort of plain-clothes "constabeel," and went away.
One after another, several natives came to make small purchases, but, not being boys any longer, a gruff word was enough to send them running. And then came the clatter of hoofs of the advance-guard, and the German looked up to see a fire in Ranjoor Singh's eyes that a caged tiger could not have outdone.
All this while the bullock-cart in which they had come remained in the middle of the road, its driver dozing dreamily on his seat and the bullocks perfectly content to chew the cud. At the sound of the hoofs behind him, the driver suddenly awoke and began to belabor and kick his animals; he seemed oblivious of another cart that came toward him, and of a third that hurried after him from underneath the gate.
In less than sixty seconds all three carts were neatly interlocked, and their respective drivers were engaged in a war of words that beggared Babel.
The advance-guard halted and added words to the torrent. Colonel Kirby caught up the advance-guard and halted, too.
"Does he look like a man who commands a loyal regiment?" asked Ranjoor Singh; and the German studied the bowed head and thoughtful angle of a man who at that minute was regretting his good friend the risaldar-major.