Kim

policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off

evil spirits. Then rapped the shod feet of a horse.

'Ah! This is more like Mahbub,' thought Kim, as the beast shied at the

little head above the culvert.

'Ohe', Mahbub Ali,' he whispered, 'have a care!'

The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards

the culvert.

'Never again,' said Mahbub, 'will I take a shod horse for night-work.

They pick up all the bones and nails in the city.' He stooped to lift

its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim's.

'Down--keep down,' he muttered. 'The night is full of eyes.'

'Two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks. They will shoot thee

at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head. I heard,

sleeping near the horses.'

'Didst thou see them? ... Hold still, Sire of Devils!' This

furiously to the horse.

'No.'

'Was one dressed belike as a fakir?'

'One said to the other, "What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a

little watching?"'

'Good. Go back to the camp and lie down. I do not die tonight.'

Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the ditch

till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place, slipped

across the road like a weasel, and re-coiled himself in the blanket.

'At least Mahbub knows,' he thought contentedly. 'And certainly he

spoke as one expecting it. I do not think those two men will profit by

tonight's watch.'

An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake all

night, he slept deeply. Now and again a night train roared along the

metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental's

indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream through

his slumber.

Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that people

outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should pursue him

for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross the line

lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers from behind,

summarily slay them. Here, he reflected with sorrow, another branch of

the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel Creighton, might

demand explanations which would be hard to supply; and he knew that

south of the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is made about a corpse

or so. He had not been troubled in this way since he sent Kim to

Umballa with the message, and hoped that suspicion had been finally

diverted.

Then a most brilliant notion struck him.

'The English do eternally tell the truth,' he said, 'therefore we of

this country are eternally made foolish. By Allah, I will tell the

truth to an Englishman! Of what use is the Government police if a poor

Kabuli be robbed of his horses in their very trucks. This is as bad as

Peshawur! I should lay a complaint at the station. Better still, some

young Sahib on the Railway! They are zealous, and if they catch

thieves it is remembered to their honour.'

He tied up his horse outside the station, and strode on to the platform.

'Hullo, Mahbub Ali' said a young Assistant District Traffic

Superintendent who was waiting to go down the line--a tall, tow-haired,

horsey youth in dingy white linen. 'What are you doing here? Selling

weeds--eh?'

'No; I am not troubled for my horses. I come to look for Lutuf Ullah.

I have a truck-load up the line. Could anyone take them out without

the Railway's knowledge?'

'Shouldn't think so, Mahbub. You can claim against us if they do.'

'I have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks

nearly all night. Fakirs do not steal horses, so I gave them no more

thought. I would find Lutuf Ullah, my partner.'

'The deuce you did? And you didn't bother your head about it? 'Pon my

word, it's just almost as well that I met you. What were they like,

eh?'

'They were only fakirs. They will no more than take a little grain,

perhaps, from one of the trucks. There are many up the line. The

State will never miss the dole. I came here seeking for my partner,

Lutuf Ullah.'

'Never mind your partner. Where are your horse-trucks?'

'A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for

the trains.'--

'The signal-box! Yes.'

'And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand

side--looking up the line thus. But as regards Lutuf Ullah--a tall man

with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound Aie!'

The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman;

for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from depredations in the

goods-yard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.

'They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will

wonder why there are no fakirs. They are very clever boys--Barton

Sahib and Young Sahib.'

He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the

line girt for action. A light engine slid through the station, and he

caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab.

'I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool,' said

Mahbub Ali. 'To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!'

When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth

while to tell him any news of the night. No one, at least, but one

small horseboy, newly advanced to the great man's service, whom Mahbub

called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing.

'It is all known to me,' whispered Kim, bending above saddlebags. 'Two

Sahibs came up on a te-train. I was running to and fro in the dark on

this side of the trucks as the te-train moved up and down slowly. They

fell upon two men sitting under this truck--Hajji, what shall I do with

this lump of tobacco? Wrap it in paper and put it under the salt-bag?

Yes--and struck them down. But one man struck at a Sahib with a

fakir's buck's horn' (Kim meant the conjoined black-buck horns, which

are a fakir's sole temporal weapon)--'the blood came. So the other

Sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a

short gun which had rolled from the first man's hand. They all raged

as though mad together.'

Mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation. 'No! That is not so much

dewanee [madness, or a case for the civil court--the word can be punned

upon both ways] as nizamut [a criminal case]. A gun, sayest thou? Ten

good years in jail.'

'Then they both lay still, but I think they were nearly dead when they

were put on the te-train. Their heads moved thus. And there is much

blood on the line. Come and see?'

'I have seen blood before. Jail is the sure place--and assuredly they

will give false names, and assuredly no man will find them for a long

time. They were unfriends of mine. Thy fate and mine seem on one

string. What a tale for the healer of pearls! Now swiftly with the

saddle-bags and the cooking-platter. We will take out the horses and

away to Simla.'

Swiftly--as Orientals understand speed--with long explanations, with

abuse and windy talk, carelessly, amid a hundred checks for little

things forgotten, the untidy camp broke up and led the half-dozen stiff

and fretful horses along the Kalka road in the fresh of the rain-swept

dawn. Kim, regarded as Mahbub Ali's favourite by all who wished to

stand well with the Pathan, was not called upon to work. They strolled

on by the easiest of stages, halting every few hours at a wayside

shelter. Very many Sahibs travel along the Kalka road; and, as Mahbub

Ali says, every young Sahib must needs esteem himself a judge of a