Cunningham drew rein and looked him in the eyes.  Gray eyes met brown and neither flinched; each read what men of mettle only can read when they see it—­the truth, the fearlessness, the thought they understand because it lives with them.  Cunningham held out his hand.

Some thirty minutes later Cunningham, Mahommed Gunga, and the five, with a much-diminished mule-train bumping in their wake, were headed westward on a dry, hot trail, while the time-expired and convalescent escort plodded south.  The escort carried word that Cunningham had heard of trouble to the west, and had turned off to investigate it.

CHAPTER XXIII

    Quoth little red jackal, famishing, “Lo,
    Yonder a priest and a soldier go;
    You can see farthest, and you ought to know,—­
    Which shall I wander with, carrion crow?”
    The crow cawed back at him, “Ignorant beast! 
    Soldiers get glory, but none of the feast;
    Soldiers work hardest, and snaffle the least. 
    Take my advice on it—­Follow the priest!”

It was two hours after sunrise on the second day that followed Cunningham’s desertion of his party when he and Mahommed Gunga first caught sight of a blue, baked rock rising sheer out of a fringe of green on the dazzling horizon.  It was a freak of nature—­a point pushed through the level crust of bone-dry earth, and left to glitter there alone.

“That is my cousin Alwa’s place!” exclaimed Mahommed Gunga, and he seemed to draw a world of consolation from the fact.

The sight loosed his tongue at last; he rode by Cunningham, and deigned an explanation now, at least, of what had led to what might happen.  He wasted little breath on prophecy, but he was eloquent in building up a basis from which Cunningham might draw his own deductions.  They had ridden through the cool of the night in easy stages, and should have camped at dawn; but Mahommed Gunga had insisted that the tired animals could carry them for three hours longer.

“A soldier’s horse must rest at the other end sahib,” he had laughed.  “Who knows that they have not sent from Abu to arrest both thee and me?” And he had not vouchsafed another word until, over the desert glare, his cousin’s aerie had blazed out, beating back the molten sun-rays.

“It looks hotter than the horns of hell!” said Cunningham.

“The horns of hell, sahib, are what we leave behind us!  They grow hot now!  Thy countrymen—­the men who hated thee so easily—­heated them and sit now between them for their folly!”

“How d’you mean?  ’Pon my soul and honor, Risaldar, you talk more riddles in five minutes than I ever heard before in all my life!”

“There be many riddles I have not told yet—­riddles of which I do not know the answer.  Read me this one.  Why did the British Government annex the state of Oudh?  All the best native soldiers came from Oudh, or nearly all.  They were loyal once; but can a man be fairly asked to side against his own?  If Oudh should rise in rebellion, what would the soldiers do?”