Rung Ho! | Page 7

to persuade them to come and meet him in Howrah City to discuss matters; the mere fact that he had thought it worth his while to leave his own little holding in the north had satisfied them that he would be well worth listening to - for no man rode six hundred miles on an empty errand. But they needed something more than words before they pledged the word that no Rajput gentleman will ever break.
"Find us a Cunnigan - bring him to us - prove him to us - and if a blade worth having from end to end of Rajputana is not at his service, I myself will gut the Hindoo owner of it! That is my given word!" said Alwa.
"He had a son," said Mahommed Gunga quietly.
"True. Are all sons like their fathers? Take Maharajah Howrah here; his father was a man with whom any soldier might be proud to pick a quarrel. The present man is afraid of his own shadow on the wall - divided between love for the treasure-chests he dare not broach and fear of a brother whom he dare not kill. He is priest-ridden, priest-taught, and fit to be nothing but a priest. Who knows how young Cunnigan will shape? Where is he? Overseas yet! He must prove himself, as his father did, before he can hope to lead a free regiment of horse!"
"Then Cunnigan-bahadur's watch-word 'For the peace of India,' is dead-died with him?" asked Mahommed Gunga. "We are each for our own again?"
"I have spoken! " answered Alwa. As the biggest clan-chief left on all that countryside, he had a right to speak before the others, and he knew that what he said would carry weight when they had all ridden home again, and the report had gone abroad in ever-widening rings. "If the English can hold India, let them! I will not fight against them, for they are honest men for all their madness. If they cannot, then I am for Rajputana, not India - India may burn or rot or burst to pieces, so long as Rajputana stands! But - " He paused a moment , and looked at each man in turn, and tapped his sabre-hilt, " - if a Cunnigan-bahadur were among us - a man whom I could trust to lead me and mine and every man - I would lend him my sword for the sheer honor of helping him hack truth out of corruption! I have nothing more to say!"
"One word more, cousin!" said Mahommed Gunga. "I was risaldar in Cunnigan-bahadur's regiment of horse. There was more than mere discipline between us. I ate his salt. Once - when he might have saved himself the trouble without any daring to reproach him - he risked his own life, and a troop, and his reputation to save a woman of my family from capture, and something worse. There was never a Rajput or any other native woman wronged while he was with us."
"Well?"
"I am no friend of Christian priests - of padres. But- "
"She who rode by just now? What, then?"
"I ride northward now, and then very likely South again. I can do nothing in the matter, yet - were he in my shoes, and she a native woman at the mercy of the troops - Cunnigan-bahadur would have assigned a guard for her."
"Ho! So I am thy sepoy?" sneered Alwa, standing sideways - looking sideways - and throwing out his chest. "I am to do thy bidding, guarding stray padres" (he spoke the word as though it were a bad taste he was spitting from his mouth), "and herding women without purdah, while thou ridest on assignations Allah knows where? Since when?"
"I have yet to refuse to guard thy back, or thy good name, Alwa!" Mahommed Gunga eyed him straight, and thrust his hilt out. "The woman is nothing to me - the padre-sahib less. It is because of the debt I owe to Cunnigan that I ask this favor."
"Oh. It is granted! Should she appeal to me, I will rip Howrah into rags and burn this city to protect her if need be! She must first ask, though, even as thou didst."
Mahommed Gunga saluted him, bolt-upright as a lance, and without the slightest change in his expression.
"The word is sufficient, cousin!"
Alwa returned his salute, and raised his voice in a gruff command. A saice outside the window woke as though struck by a stick - sprang to his feet - and passed the order on. A dozen horses clattered in the courtyard and filed through the arched passage to the street, and Alwa mounted. The others, each with his escort, followed suit, and a moment later, with no further notice of one another, but with as much pomp and noise as though