“Do you prefer to argue or obey?”

Mahommed Gunga flushed and rode back.  Alwa grinned and started after him.  Cunningham, without another glance at the dead Prince, rode up to Rosemary McClean, who was picking herself up and looking bewildered; she had watched the duel in speechless silence, lying full length in the dust, and she still could not speak when he reached her.

“Put your foot on mine,” he said reassuringly; “then swing yourself up behind me if you can.  If you can’t, I’ll pick you up in front.”

She tried hard, but she failed; so he put both arms under hers and lifted her.

“Am I welcome?” he asked.  And she nodded.

Fresh from killing a man—­with a man’s blood on his broken sword and the sweat of fighting not yet dry on him—­he held a woman in his arms for the first time in his life.  His hand had been steady when it struck the blow under Jaimihr’s ribs, but now it trembled.  His eyes had been stern and blazing less than two minutes before; now they looked down into nothing more dangerous than a woman’s eyes and grew strangely softer all at once.  His mouth had been a hard, tight line under a scrubby upper lip, but his lips had parted now a little and his smile was a boy’s—­not nervous or mischievous—­a happy boy’s.

She smiled, too.  Most people did smile when young Cunningham looked pleased with them; but she smiled differently.  And he, with that blood still wet on him, bent down and kissed her on the lips.  Her answer was as characteristic as his action.

“You look like a blackguard,” she said—­“but you came, and I knew you would!  I told Jaimihr you would, and he laughed at me.  I told God you would, and you came!  How long is it since you shaved?  Your chin is all prickly!”

They were interrupted by a roar from the three waiting squadrons.  He had ridden without caring where he went, and his mare had borne the two of them to where the squadrons were drawn up with their rear to the great gap in the wall.  The situation suited every Rangar of them!  That was, indeed, the way a man should win his woman!  They cheered him, and cheered again, and he grinned back, knowing that their hearts were in the cheering and their good will won.  Red, then, as a boiled beet, he rode over to the six-horse carriage and dismounted by her father—­picked him up—­called two troopers—­and lifted him on to the rear seat of the great old-fashioned coach.

“Get inside beside him!” he ordered Rosemary, examining the missionary’s head as he spoke.  “It’s a scalp wound, and he’s stunned —­no more.  He’s left off bleeding already.  Nurse him!” He was off, then, without another word or a backward glance for her—­off to his men and the gap in the wall that waited an investigation.