Then wounded and all gathered together, with Ranjoor Singh in the midst of us, and sang the Anand, our Sikh hymn of joy, our Kurdish friends standing by and wondering (not forgetting nevertheless to watch for opportunity to snatch that gold and run!)

And there, on the very ridge dividing Persia from Asiatic Turkey, it was given to us to understand at last a little of the why and wherefore of our marching unmolested.  We came to a crack in a rock by the wayside.  And in the crack had been thrust, so that it stood upright, a gnarled tree-trunk, carried from who knows how far.  And there, crucified to the dry wood was our daffadar Gooja Singh, with his flesh all tortured and torture written in his open eyes—­not very long dead, for his flesh was scarcely cold—­although the birds had already begun on him.  Who could explain that?  We sat our horses in a crowd, and gaped like fools!

At last I said, “Leave him to the birds’.” but Ranjoor Singh said “Nay!” Ramnarain Singh, who had ever hated Gooja Singh for reasons of his own, joined his voice to mine; and because they had no wish to offend me the other daffadars agreed.  But Ranjoor Singh rose into a towering passion over what we said, naming me and Ramnarain Singh in one breath as men too self-righteous to be trusted!

“What proof have we against him?” he demanded.

“Try him by court martial!” Ramnarain Singh screwed up courage to answer.  “Call for witnesses against him and hear them!”

“Who can try a dead man by court martial?” Ranjoor Singh thundered back.  “He left us to go and be our hostage, for our safety—­for the safety of your ungrateful skins!  He died a hostage, given by us to savages.  They killed him.  Are ye worse savages than they?  Which of our dead lie dishonored anywhere?  Have they not all had burning or else burial?  Are ye judges of the dead?  Or are ye content to live like men?  Take him down, and lay him out for burial!  His brother daffadars shall dig his grave!”

Aye, sahib.  So he gave the order, and so we obeyed, saying no more, but digging a trench for Gooja Singh with bayonets, working two together turn and turn about, I, who had been all along his enemy, doing the lion’s share of the work and thinking of the talks he and I had had, and the disputes.  And here was the outcome!  Aye.

It was not a very deep trench but it served, and we laid him in it with his feet toward India, and covered him, and packed the earth down tight.  Then we burned on the grave the tree to which he had been crucified, and piled a great cairn of stone above him.  There we left him, on the roof of a great mountain that looks down on Persia.

It was perhaps two hours, or it may have been three, after burying Gooja Singh (we rode on in silence, thinking of him, our wounded groaning now and then, but even the words of command being given by sign instead of speech because none cared to speak) that we learned the explanation, and more with it.