There was silence then—­the grim, good silence of Mohammedan approval —­while a native officer closed up a sword-cut with his fingers and tore ten-yard strips from his own turban to bind the youngster’s head.  They rode back without boast or noise and camped without advertisement.  There was no demonstration made; only-a colonel said, “I like things done that way, quickly, without fuss,” and a brigadier remarked, “Hrrrumph!  ’Gratulate you, Mr. Cunningham!”

Later, when they camped again outside Peshawur, a reward of three thousand rupees that had been offered on the border outlaw’s head was paid to Cunningham in person—­a very appreciable sum to a subaltern, whose pay is barely sufficient for his mess bills.  So, although no public comment was made on the matter, it was considered “decent of him” to contribute the whole amount to a pension fund for the dependents of the regiment’s dead.

“You know, that’s your money,” said his Colonel.  “You can keep every anna of it if you choose.”

“I suppose I needn’t be an officer unless I choose?” suggested Cunningham.

“I don’t know, youngster!  I can’t guess what your troop would do if you tried to desert it!”

That was, of course, merely a diplomatic recognition of the fact that Cunningham had done his duty in making his men like him, and was not intended seriously.  Nobody—­not even the Brigadier—­had any notion that the troop would very shortly have to dispense with its leader’s services whether it wanted to or not.

But it so happened that one troop at a time was requisitioned to be ornamental body-guard to such as were entitled to one in the frontier city; and the turn arrived when Cunningham was sent.  None liked the duty.  No soldier, and particularly no irregular, likes to consider himself a pipe-clayed ornament; but Cunningham would have “gone sick” had he had the least idea of what was in store for him.

It was bad enough to be obliged to act as body-guard to men who had jockeyed him away because they were jealous of him.  The white scar that ran now like a chin-strap mark from the corner of his eye to the angle of his jaw would blaze red often at some deliberately thought-out, not fancied, insult from men who should have been too big to more than notice him.  And that, again, was nothing to the climax.

Mahommed Gunga chose to polish up his silver spurs and ride in from his “estates” on a protracted visit to Peshawur, and with an escort that must have included half the zemindars on the countryside as well as his own small retinue.  Glittering on his own account like a regiment of horse, and with all but a regiment clattering behind him, he chose the occasion to meet Cunningham when the youngster was fuming with impatience opposite the club veranda, waiting to escort a general.

On the veranda sat a dozen men who had been at considerable pains to put and keep the officer of the escort in his place.  If the jingle and glitter of the approaching cavalcade had not been sufficient to attract their notice, they could have stopped their cars and yet have been forced to hear the greeting.