Sikandar Khan wept till daybreak--even he, a Pathan, a
Mohammedan! All that night we heard firing to the southward, and when the
dawn broke the valley was full of Boer-log in carts and on horses. They
gathered by the house, as we could see through Kurban Sahib's glasses, and
the old man, who, I take it, was a priest, blessed them, and preached the
holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought coffee; and the idiot
capered among them and kissed their horses. Presently they went away in
haste; they went over the hills and were not; and a black slave came out
and washed the door-sills with bright water. Sikandar Khan saw through the
glasses that the stain was blood, and he laughed, saying, "Wounded men lie
there. We shall yet get vengeance."
About noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as a
burning house will make in sunshine, and Sikandar Khan, who knows how to
take a bearing across a hill, said, "At last we have burned the house of
the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled." And I said: "What need now that
they have slain my child? Let me mourn." It was a high smoke, and the old
man, as I saw, came out into the verandah to behold it, and shook his
clenched hands at it. So we lay till the twilight, foodless and without
water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor to drink till we had
accomplished the matter. I had a little opium left, of which I gave
Sikandar Khan the half, because he loved Kurban Sahib.
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