The Beatrice Daily Express

King of the Khyber Rifles
A Romance of Adventure
By TALBOT MUNDY
(Copyright by Bobbs-Merrill Company)

Synopsis

CHAPTER I--At the beginning of the World war Capt. Athelstan King of the British Indian army, and of its secret service, is ordered to Delhi to meet Yasmini, a dancer, and go with her to Khinjan to quiet the outlaws there who are said by spies to be preparing for a jihad or holy war.

CHAPTER II--On his way to Delhi King quietly foils a plan to assassinate him and gets evidence that Yasmini is after him.

CHAPTER III--In Delhi he is met by Rewa Gunga, Yasmini's man, who tells him that she has already gone North and that he, the Rangar, has been left to escort King.

CHAPTER IV--In Yasmini's house the Rangar attempts to outwit King, but fails. Ismail, an Afridi belonging to Yasmini, is given to King for a servant.

CHAPTER V--King rescues some of Yasmini's men and takes them North with him, tricking the Rangar into going ahead of him

CHAPTER VI--Joined by the Rangar at the mouth of the Khyber pass, King and party start through the pass for Khinjan.

CHAPTER VII--The Rangar deserts King and Ismail, with three others, in the pass.

CHAPTER VIII--King sends to his brother at Ali Masjid fort, meets him alone in the pass, and with his aid transforms himself into a native hakim, or man of medicine.

CHAPTER IX--Calling Ismail and the men back he at first puzzles and then astonishes and delights them by his transformation. Ismail grows friendly and seems appalled at the thought that Yasmini may love King.

CHAPTER X--In Khinjan King is taken into the mosque, and Ismail and another falsely witnessing for him that he has slain an Englishman, he is admitted through the mosque wall into the celebrated caves.

CHAPTER XI--He holds a clinic for the cave's inhabitants, and hears of a lashkar by Bull-with-a-beard's men.

CHAPTER XII--Next night Ismail takes him to a vast cave through which an underground river pours--"Earth's Drink"--and finds gathered there thousands of men, among whom he has pointed out to him the mullah Muhammad Anim, or Bull-with-a-Beard.

CHAPTER XIII--After a wild dance begins the trial of three of the mullah's men who have gained admission by claiming to have killed an Englishman, but cannot produce the victim's head as proof. Yasmini appears, a lovely vision on a rock bridge above the crowd, and orders the men thrown into Earth's Drink

CHAPTER XIV--King, in his disguise as Kurram Khan, is placed on trial, and at the critical moment has a human head thrust into his hands from behind. As he holds it up he sees that it is the head of his own brother. He throws it in Earth's Drink to keep it from the savage mob. Yasmini dances and the mob goes crazy under her spell.

CHAPTER XV--Ismail leads King away through dark passages to a rock door guarded by ancient curtains with red shining lamps before them. He pushes through the curtains. Before him on an ancient bed lie the bodies of a Roman warrior and a Grecian woman, dead 2,000 years, yet perfectly preserved. The woman is the perfect double of Yasmini. Yasmini herself appears and shows King that he is like the dead warrior in every feature.

CHAPTER XVI--She tells King how she found the Sleepers and used the mystery to control the lawless men of the Hills. There is gold, there are arms and munitions in the caves. She and King are to take up the Sleepers' work and together conquer India and perhaps the world.

CHAPTER XVII--She uses every effort to bend King to her will and at last writes and shows him a letter to his general, telling that King has turned traitor. They go back again to the Sleepers and at last she mesmerizes and leaves King asleep.

Then the mullah led the way into the tunnel, and he seemed in deadly fear. The echo of the hoof-beats irritated him. He eyed each hole in the roof as if Yasmini might be expected to shoot down at him or drench him with boiling oil and hurried past each of them at a trot, only to draw rein immediately afterward because the noise was too great.
It became evident that his men had been at work here too, for at intervals along the passage lay dead bodies. Yasmini must have posted the men there. but where was she? Each of them lay dead with a knife wound in his back and the mullah's men possessed themselves of rifles and knives and cartridges, wiping off blood that had scarcely cooled yet.
When they came to the end of the tunnel it was to find the door into the mosque open in front of them, and twenty more of Muhammad Anim's men standing guard over the eyelashless mullah. They had bound and gagged him. At a word from Muhammad Anim they loosed him; and at a threat the hairless one gave a signal that brought the great stone door sliding forward on its oiled bronze grooves
Then, with a dozen jests thrown to the hairless one for consolation, and an utter indifference to the sacredness of the mosque floor, they sought outer air, and Muhammad Anim led them up the Street of the Dwellings toward Khinjan's outer ramparts. They reached the outer gate without incident and hurried into the great dry valley beyond it. As they rode across the valley the mullah thumbed a long string of beads. Unlike Yasmini, he was praying to one god; but he seemed to have many prayers. His back was a picture of determined treachery--the backs of his men were expressions of the creed that "he shall keep who can!" King rode all but last now and had a good view of their unconsciously vaunted blackguardism. There was not a hint of honor or tenderness among the lot, man, woman or mullah. Yet his heart sang within him as if he were riding to his own marriage feast!
Last of all, close behind him, marched his friend, the Orakzai Pathan, and as they picked their way among the boulders across the mile-wide moat the two contrived to fall a little to the rear. The Pathan began speaking in a whisper and King, riding with lowered head as if he were studying the dangerous track, listened with both ears.
"She sent her man Rewa Gunga toward the Khyber with a message," he whispered. "He took a few men with him, and he is to send them with the message when they reach the Khyber but he is to come back. All he went for is to make sure the message is not intercepted, for Bull-with-a-beard is growing reckless these days. He knew what was doing and said at once that she is treating with the British, but there were few who believed that. There are more who wonder where she hides while the message is on its way. None has seen her. Men have swarmed into the Cavern of Earth's Drink and howled for her, but she did not come. Then the mullah went to look for his ammunition that he stored and sealed in a cave. And it was gone. It was all gone: And there was no proof of who had taken it!
"Hakim, there be some who say--and Bull-with-a-beard is one of them--that she is afraid and hides.
"His men say he is desperate. His own are losing faith in him. He snatched thee to be a bait for her, having it in mind that a man whom she hides in her private part of Khinjan must be of great value to her. He has sworn to have thee skinned alive on a hot rock should she fail to come to terms!"

CHAPTER XIX.

The march went on in single file until the sun died down in splendid fury. Then there began to be a wind that they had to lean against, but the women were allowed no rest.
At last at a place where the trail began to widen, the mullah beckoned King to ride beside him. It was not that he wished to be communicative, but there were things King knew that he did not know, and he had his own way of asking questions.
"D--n hakim!" he growled. "Pill-man! Poulticer! That is a sweeper's trade of thine! Thou shalt apply it at my camp! I have some wounded and some sick."
King did not answer, but buttoned his coat closer against the keen wind. The mullah mistook the shudder for one of another kind.
"Did she choose thee only for thy face?" he asked. "Did she not consider thy courage? Does she love thee well enough to ransom thee?"
Again King did not answer, but he watched the mullah's face keenly in the dark and missed nothing of its expression. He decided the man was in doubt--even racked by indecision.
"Should she not ransom thee, hakim thou shalt have a chance to show my men how a man out of India can die! By and by I will lend thee a messenger to send to her. Better make the message clear and urgent! Thou shalt state my terms to her and plead thine own cause in the same letter. My camp lies yonder."
He motioned with one sweep of his arm toward a valley that lay in shadow far below them. As they approached it the rock clove in two and became two great pillars, with a man on each And between the pillars they looked down into a valley lit by fires that burned before a thousand hide tents with shadows by the hundred flitting back and forth between them. A dull roar, like the voice of an army, rose out of the gorge.
"More than four thousand men!" said the mullah proudly.
"What are four thousand for a raid into India?" sneered King, greatly daring.
"Wait and see!" growled the mullah; but he seemed depressed.
He led the way downward, getting off his horse and giving the reins to a man. King copied him, and partway sliding, part stumbling down they found their way along the dry bed of a water-course between two spurs of a hillside, until they stood at last in the midst of a cluster of a dozen sentries. close to a tamarisk to which a man's body hung spiked. That the man had been spiked to it alive was suggested by the body's attitude.
Without a word to the sentries the mullah led on down a lane through the midst of the camp, toward a great open cave at the far side, in which a bonfire cast fitful light and shadow. Watchers sitting by the thousand tents yawned at them, but took no particular notice.
The mouth of the cave was like a lion's, fringed with teeth. There were men in it, ten or eleven of them, all armed, squatting round the fire.
"Get out!" growled the mullah. But they did not obey. They sat and stared at him.
"Have ye tents?" the mullah asked in a voice like thunder.
"Aye!" But they did not go yet One of the men, he nearest the mullah, got on his feet, but he had to step back a pace, for the mullah would not give ground and their breath was in each other's faces.
"Where are the bombs? And the rifles? And the many cartridges?" he demanded. "We have waited long. Muhammad Anim. Where are they now?"
The others got up, to lend the first man encouragement. They leaned on rifles and surrounded the mullah, so that King could only get a glimpse of him between them. They seemed in no mood to be treated cavalierly--in no mood to be argued with. And the mullah did not argue.
"Ye dogs!" he growled at them, and he strode through them to the fire and chose himself a good, thick burning brand. "Ye sons of nameless mothers!"
Then he charged them suddenly. beating them over head and face and shoulders, driving them in front of him, utterly reckless of their rifles. His own rifle lay on the ground behind him, and King kicked its stock clear the fire
"Oh, I shall pray for you this night!" Muhammad Anim snarled. "What a curse I shall beg for you! Oh, what a burning of the bowels ye shall have! What a sickness! What running of the eyes! What sores! What boils! What sleepless nights and faithless women shall be yours! What a prayer I will pray to Allah!"
They scattered into outer gloom before his rage, and then came back to kneel to him and beg him withdraw his curse. He kicked them as they knelt and drove them away again. Then, silhouetted in the cave mouth, with the glow of the fire before him, he stood with folded arms and dared them shoot. He lacked little in that minute of being a full-grown brute at bay.
King admired him, with reservations.
After five minutes of angry contemplation of the camp he turned on a contemptuous heel and came back to the fire, throwing on more fuel from a great pile in a corner. There was an iron pot in the embers. He seized a stick and stirred the contents furiously, then set the pot between his knees and ate like an animal. He passed the pot to King when he had finished, but fingers had passed too many times through what was left in it and the very thought of eating the mess made his gorge rise; so King thanked him and set the pot aside.
Then, "That is thy place!" Muhammad Anim growled, pointing over his shoulder to a ledge of rock, like a shelf in the far wall. But though he was allowed to climb up and lie down, he was not allowed to sleep--nor did he want to sleep--for more than an hour to come.
The mullah came over from the fire again and stood beside him, glaring like a great animal and grumbling in his beard.
"Does she surely love thee?" he asked at last, and King nodded, because he knew he was on the trail of information.
"So thou art to ape the Sleeper in his bronze mail, eh? Thou art to come "So Thou Art to Ape the Sleeper in His Bronze Mail, Eh!"
to life, as she was said to come to life, and the two of you are to plunder India? Is that it?"
King nodded again, for a nod is less committal than a word; and the nod was enough to start the mullah off again.
"I saw the Sleeper and his bride before she knew of either! It was I who fet her into Khinjan! It was I who told the men she is the Heart of the Hills' come to life! She tricked me! But this is no hour for bearing grudges. She has a plan and I am minded to help."
King lay still and looked up at him, sure that treachery was the ultimate end of any plan the mullah Muhammad Anim had. India has been saved by the treachery of her enemies more often than ruined by false friends. So has the world, for that matter.
"A jihad when the right hour comes will raise the tribes," the mullah growled. "She and thou, as the Sleeper and his mate, could work wonders. But who can trust her? She stole that head! She stole all the ammunition! Does she surely love thee?"
King nodded again, for modesty could not help him at that juncture. Love and boastfulness go together in the "Hills."
"She shall have thee back, then, at a price!"
King did not answer. His brown eyes watched the mullah's, and he drew his breath in little jerks, lest by breathing aloud he should miss one word of what was coming.
"She shall have thee back against Khinjan and the ammunition! She and thou shall have India, but I shall be the power behind you! I have men in Khinjan! I have as many as she! On the day I march there will be a revolt within. She would better agree to terms!"
King lay looking at him, like a prisoner on the rack undergoing examination. He did not answer.
"Write thou a letter. Since she loves thee, state thine own case to her. Tell her that I hold thee hostage, and that Khinjan is mine already for a little fighting. In a month she cannot pick out my men from among her own. Her position is undermined. Tell her that. Tell her that if she obeys she shall have India and be queen. If she disobeys, she shall die in the Cavern of Earth's Drink!"
"She is a proud woman, mullah," answered King. "Threats to such as she--?"
The mullah mumbled and strode back and forth three times between King's bed and the fire, with his fists knotted together behind him and his head bent, as Napoleon used to walk When he stood beside the bed again at last it was with his mind made up, as his clenched fists and his eyes indicated.
"Make thine own terms with her!" he growled. "Write the letter and send it! I hold thee: she holds Khinjan and the ammunition. I am between her and India. So be it. She shall starve in there! She shall lie in there until the war is over and take what terms are offered her in the end! Write thine own letter! State the case, and bid her answer!"
"Very well," said King. He began to see now definitely how India was to be saved. It was none of his business to plan yet, but to help others' plans destroy themselves and to sow such seed in the broken ground as might bear fruit in time.
The mullah left him, to squat and gaze into the fire, and mutter, and King lay still. After a while the mullah went to the mouth of the cave, to stand and stare out at the camp where the thousand fires were dying fitfully and wood smoke purged the air of human nastiness. The stars looked down on him and he seemed to try to read them, standing with fists knotted together at his back.
And as he stood so, six other mullahs came to him and began to argue with him in low tones, he browbeating them all with furious words hissed between half-closed teeth. They were whispering still when King fell asleep. It was courage, not carelessness, that let him sleep--courage and a great hope born of the mullah's perplexity.

CHAPTER XX.

Next morning the Orakzai Pathan sat and sunned himself in the cave mouth, emitting worldly wisdom unadulterated with divinity. As King went toward him to see to whom he spoke he grinned and pointed with his thumb, and King looked down on some sick and wounded men who sat in a crowd together on the ramp, ten feet or so below the cave.
They seemed stout soldierly fellows. Men of another type were being kept at a distance by dint of argument and threats. Away in the distance was Muhammad Anim with his broad back turned to the cave. In altercation with a dozen other mullahs. For the time he was out of the reckoning.
"Some of these are wounded," the Pathan explained. "Some have sores. Some have the bellyache. Then again, some are sick of words, hot and cold by day and night. All have served in the army. All have medals. All are deserters, some for one reason, some for another and some for no reason at all. Bull-with-a-beard looks the other way. Speak thou to them about the pardon that is offered!"
So King went down among them, taking some of the tools of his supposed trade with him and trying to crowd down the triumph that would well up. The seed he had sown had multiplied by fifty in a night. He wanted to shout, as men once did before the walls of Jericho. Possibility of pardon and reinstatement, though only heard of at second hand, had brought unity into being. And unity brought eagerness.
"Let us start tonight!" urged one man.
"Nay!" the Pathan objected at once. "Many of you can hardly march. Rest ye here and let the hakim treat your bellyaches. Bull-with-a-beard made me wait here for a letter that must go to Khinjan today. Good. He will take his letter. And in Khinjan will spread news about pardons. It is likely there are fifty there who will dare follow me back, and then shall march down the Khyber like full company of the old days!"
King got busy with his lancet, but the mullah came back and called him off and drove the crowd away to a distance; then he drove King into the cave in front of him, his mouth working as if he were biting bits of revengeance off for future use.
"Write thy letter, thou! Write the letter! Here is paper. There is a pen--take it! Sit! Yonder is ink--there--write, now, write!"
King sat at a box and waited, as if to take dictation, but the mullah, tugging at his beard, grew furious.
"Write thine own letter! Invent thine own argument! Persuade her, or die in a new way! I will invent a new way for thee!"
So King began to write, in Urdu, for reasons of his own. He had spoken once or twice in Urdu to the mullah and had received no answer. It was fair guess that Muhammad was ignorant of the scholars' language.
"Greeting," he wrote, "to the most beautiful and very wise Princess Yasmini, in her palace in the caves in Khinjan, from her servant Kurram Khan the hakim, from the camp of the mullah Muhammad Anim in the Hills."
"The mullah Muhammad Anim demands surrender of Khinjan Caves and of all his ammunition. Further, he demands full control of you and of me and of all your men.
"He threatens as a preliminary to blockade Khinjan caves, unless the answer to this prove favorable, letting none enter but calling his own men out to join him. This would suit the Indian government because while the Hills' fight among themselves they cannot raid India, and while he blockades Khinjan caves there will be time to move against him.
"Knowing that he dares begin and can accomplish what he threatens, I am sorry; because I know it is said how many services you have rendered of old to the government I serve. We who serve on raj are one--one to remember--one to forget--one to help each other in good time.
"It may be that vengeance against the British would seem sweeter to you than return to your former allegiance. In that case, Princess, you only need betray me to the mullah, and be sure my death would bring nothing to be desired by the spectator. At present he does not suspect me.
"Be assured, however, that not to betray me to him is to leave me free to deny my government and well able to do so.
"I invite you to return to India with me, bearing news that the mullah Muhammad Anim and his men are bottled in Khinjan caves, and to plan with me that end.
"If you will, then write an answer to Muhammad Anim, not in Urdu, but in language he can understand; seem to surrender to him. But to me send a secret message, either by the bearer of this or by some trustier messenger.
"India can profit yet by your services if you will. And in that case I pledge my word to direct the government's attention only to your good service in the matter. It is not yet too late to choose. It is not impertinent in me to urge you.
"Nor can I say how gladly I would subscribe myself your grateful and loyal servant."
The mullah pounced on the finished letter, pretended to read it, and watched him seal it up, smudging the hot wax with his own great dirty thumb. Then he shouted for the Orakzai Pathan, who came striding in, all grins and swagger.
"There--take it! Make speed!" he ordered, and with his rifle at the "ready" and the letter tucked inside his shirt, the Pathan favored King with a farewell grin and obeyed.
(To be Continued Tomorrow)