Rung Ho! | Page 3

through an opening, but trying, too, to seem unaware that
she was followed. She chose narrow, winding ways, where the awnings
almost met above the middle of the street, and where a cavalcade of
horsemen would not be likely to follow her - only to hear a roar behind
her, as the prince's escort started slashing at the awnings with their
swords.
There was a rush and a din of shouting beside her and ahead, as the
frightened merchants scurried to pull down their awnings before the
ruthless horse-men could ride down on them; the narrow street
transformed itself almost on the instant into a undraped, cleared defile
between two walls. And after that she kept to the broader streets, where
there was room in the middle for a troop to follow, four abreast, should
it choose. She had no mind to seek her own safety at the expense of
men whose souls her father was laboring so hard to save.
She got no credit, though, for consideration - only blame for what the
swordsmen had already done. One man - a Maharati trader - half-naked,
his black hair coiled into a shaggy rope and twisted up above his neck -
followed her, side-tracking through the mazy byways of the
bewildering mart, and coming out ahead of her - or lurking beside bales
of merchandise and waiting his opportunity to leap from shadow into
shadow unobserved.
He followed her until she reached the open, where a double row of
trees on each side marked the edge of a big square, large enough for the
drilling of an army. Along one side of the square there ran the high
brick wall, topped with a kind of battlement, that guarded the
Maharajah's palace grounds from the eyes of men.
Just as she turned, just as she was starting to canter her pony beside the
long wall, he leaped out at her and seized her reins. The old woman
screamed, and ran to the wall and cowered there.
Very likely the man only meant to frighten her and heap insults on her,
for in '56, though wrath ran deep and strong, men waited. There was to

be sudden, swift whelming when the time came, not intermittent
outrage. But he had no time to do more than rein her pony back onto its
haunches.
There came a clatter of scurrying hoofs behind, and from a whirl of
dust, topped by a rose-pink pugree, a steel blade swooped down on her
and him. A surge of brown and pink and cream, and a dozen rainbow
tints flashed past her; a long boot brushed her saddle on the off side.
There was a sickening sound, as something hard swished and whicked
home; her pony reeled from the shock of a horse's shoulder, and - none
too gently - none too modestly - the prince with the egret and the
handsome face reined in on his horse's haunches and saluted her.
There was blood, becoming dull-brown in the dust between them. He
shook his sabre, and the blood dripped from it then he held it
outstretched, and a horseman wiped it, before he returned it with a
clang.
"The sahiba's servant!" he said magnificently, making no motion to let
her pass, but twisting with his sword-hand at his waxed mustache and
smiling darkly.
She looked down between them at the thing that but a minute since had
lived, and loved perhaps as well as hated.
"Shame on you, Jaimihr-sahib!" she said, shuddering. A year ago she
would have fallen from her pony in a swoon, but one year of Howrah
and its daily horrors had so hardened her that she could look and loathe
without the saving grace of losing consciousness.
"The shame would have been easier to realize, had I taken more than
one stroke!" he answered irritably, still blocking the way on his great
horse, still twisting at his mustache point, still looking down at her
through eyes that blazed a dozen accumulated centuries' store of
lawless ambition. He was proud of that back-handed swipe of his that
would cleave a man each time at one blow from shoulder-joint to ribs,
severing the backbone. A woman of his own race would have been
singing songs in praise of him and his skill in swordsman-ship already;

but no woman of his own race would have looked him in the eye like
that and dared him, nor have done what she did next. She leaned over
and swished his charger with her little whip, and slipped past him.
He swore, deep and fiercely, as he spurred and wheeled, and cantered
after her. His great stallion could overhaul her pony in a minute, going
stride for stride; the wall was more than two miles long with no break
in it