But the smile turned to a frown of sudden passion as she saw Will land on the ground and Fred get ready for reprisals.  She screamed defiance—­burst through the ranks of the nearest Zeitoonli—­set her stallion straight at us—­burst between Fred and me—­beat Fred savagely across the face with her sap-softened branch—­and wheeled on her beast’s haunches to make much of Will.  He laughed at her, and tried to take the whip away.  Seeing he was neither hurt nor indignant, she laughed at Fred, spat at him, and whipped her stallion forward in pursuit of Kagig, breaking between him and Monty to pour news in his ear.

“A curse on Rustum Khan!” laughed Fred, spitting out red buds.  “He didn’t do his duty!”

He had hardly said that when the Rajput came spurring and thundering along from the rear.  He seemed in no hurry to follow farther, but drew rein between us and saluted with the semi-military gesture with which he favored all who, unlike Monty, had not been Colonels of Indian regiments.

“I tracked Umm Kulsum through the dark!” he announced, rubbing the burned nodules out of his singed beard and then patting his mare’s neck.  “I saw her ride away alone an hour before you reached that fork in the road and turned up this watercourse.  ’By the teeth of God,’ said I, ’when a good-looking woman leaves a party of men to canter alone in the dark, there is treason!’ and I followed.”

I offered the Rajput my cigarette case, and to my surprise he accepted one, although not without visible compunction.  As a Muhammadan by creed he was in theory without caste and not to be defiled by European touch, but the practises of most folk fall behind their professions.  A hundred yards ahead of us Maga was talking and gesticulating furiously, evidently railing at Kagig’s wooden-headedness or unbelief.  Monty sat listening, saying nothing.

“What did you see, Rustum Khan?” asked Fred.

“At first very little.  My eyes are good, but that gipsy-woman’s are better, and I was kept busy following her; for I could not keep close, or she might have heard.  The noise of her own clumsy stallion prevented her from hearing the lighter footfalls of my mare, and by that I made sure she was not expecting to meet an enemy.  ’She rides to betray us to her friends!’ said I, and I kept yet farther behind her, on the alert against ambush.”

“Well?”

“She rode until dawn, I following.  Then, when the light was scarcely born as yet, she suddenly drew rein at an open place where the track she had been following emerged out of dense bushes, and dismounted. >From behind the bushes I watched, and presently I, too, dismounted to hold my mare’s nostrils and prevent her from whinnying.  That woman, Maga Jhaere, knelt, and pawed about the ground like a dog that hunts a buried bone!”

In front of us Maga was still arguing.  Suddenly Kagig turned on her and asked her three swift questions, bitten off like the snap of a closing snuff-box lid.  Whether she answered or not I could not see, but Monty was smiling.