Told in the East | Page 6

something intangible and noiseless and threatening which they felt was
there in a darkness, but which one could not see.
Baines was one of them--Lieutenant-General Baines, commanding at
Bholat. His troops were in the center of a spider's web of roads that
criss-crossed and drained a province. There were big trunk arteries,
which took the flow of life from city to walled city, and a mass of
winding veins in the shape of grass-grown country tracks. He could feel,
if any man could, the first faint signs of fever rising, and he was placed
where he could move swiftly, and cut deep in the right spot, should the
knife be needed.
He was like a surgeon, though, who holds a lancet and can use it, but
who lacks permission. The poison in India's system lay deep, and the
fever was slow in showing itself. And meanwhile the men who had the
ordering of things could see neither necessity nor excuse for so much as
a parade of strength. They refused, point-blank and absolutely, to admit
that there was, or, could be, any symptom of unrest.
He dared not make new posts for officers, for officers would grumble at
enforced exile in the country districts, and the Government would get
to hear of it, and countermand. But there were non-commissioned
officers in plenty, and it was not difficult to choose the best of
them--three men--and send them, with minute detachments, to three
different points of vantage. Non-commissioned officers don't grumble,
or if they do no one gets to hear of it, or minds. And they are just as
good as officers at watching crossroads and reporting what they see and

hear.
So where a little cluster of mud huts ached in the heat of a right angle
where the trunk road crossed a native road some seventy miles from
Bholat, Bill Brown--swordsman and sergeant and strictest of martinets,
as well as sentimentalist--had been set to watch and listen and report.
There were many cleverer men in the non-commissioned ranks of
Baine's command, many who knew more of the native languages, and
who had more imagination. But there was none who knew better how
to win the unqualified respect and the obedience of British and native
alike, or who could be better counted on to obey an order, when it came,
literally, promptly and in the teeth of anything.
Brown's theories on religion were a thing to marvel at, and walk
singularly wide of, for he was a preacher with a pair of fists when
thoroughly aroused. And his devotion to a girl in England whom no
one in his regiment had ever seen, and of whom he did not even
possess a likeness, was next door to being pitiable. His voice was like a
raven's, with something rather less than a raven's sense of melody; he
was very prone to sing, and his songs were mournful ones. He was not
a social acquisition in any generally accepted sense, although his
language was completely free from blasphemy or coarseness. His ideas
were too cut and dried to make conversation even interesting. But his
loyalty and his sense of duty were as adamant.
He had changed the double guard at the crossroads; and had posted two
fresh men by the mud-walled guardroom door. He had lit his pipe for
the dozenth time, and had let it go out again while he hummed a verse
of a Covenanters' hymn. And he had just started up to wall over to the
cell and make a cursory inspection of his prisoner, when his ears caught
a distant sound that was different from any of the night sounds, though
scarcely louder.
Prompt as a rifle in answer to the trigger, he threw himself down on all
fours, and laid his ear to the ground. A second later, he was on his feet
again.
"Guard!" he yelled. "Turn out!"
Cots squeaked and jumped, and there came a rush of hurrying feet. The
eight men not on watch ran out in single file, still buttoning their
uniforms, and lined up beside the two who watched the guardroom
door.

"Stand easy!" commanded Brown. Then he marched off to the
crossroads, finding his way in the blackness more by instinct and sense
of direction than from any landmark, for even the road beneath his feet
was barely visible.
"D'you mean to tell me that neither of you men can hear that sound?"
he asked the sentries.
Both men listened intently, and presently one of them made out a very
faint and distant noise, that did not seem to blend in with the other
night-sounds.
"Might be a native drum?" he hazarded.
"No, 'tain't!" said the other. "I got it now. It's a horse galloping. Tired
horse, by the sound of him, and coming