Part 6

"Are you awfully excited?" she asked shyly.

His thoughtful eyes came round to her.

"Awfully!" he said, smiling.

He signed to the doolie to follow them, and led the way back along the road, which rose slowly for about a mile. There was nowhere any sign of life, and the fight and the scene behind them seemed suddenly to have passed out of being.

They went a little way in silence, and then Rose Chantry said gravely:

"Captain Terrington, do you _really_ think we shall beat them?"

He put a hand on the saddle behind her.

"Are you afraid, child?" he asked.

She nodded pensively.

"I can't help it," she broke out with a sort of petulance; "I do so love being alive: and I've had so little of it; only just the last few years."

He looked up into her face, with its gay air of beauty softened and sobered by the thought of death.

"Yes," he said, "I understand."

She searched his expression doubtfully.

"Only for _me_?" she questioned.

"Oh, _I'm_ not a lovely woman," he smiled.

"Who told you that _I_ was?" she asked him.

"Ah! I've found it out for myself," he sighed.

"Have you?" she said without conviction. "And aren't _you_ afraid to die?"

"A man has to be afraid of other things more," he told her quietly.

A sharp turn of the road brought them suddenly into the Dogra's camp. Though no fires were burning the men were round their cooking-pots finishing a meal; food and sleep in Terrington's conception going half way always towards winning a fight.

He lifted Rose out of the saddle, asked her if she were equal to a climb, and together they clambered up the ridge of shale on the north of the valley at the head of which Hussain Shah had his post of observation.

The track was steep and the stones slippery, so that for most of the way Rose's hand was in his, and when they came to a spot where the shale slope was half afloat in water he stooped, with the remark that he must carry her, and lifted her on his arm; setting her feet down, an instant later, upon a rock, in order to seat her for greater ease upon his shoulder.

She sat erect, with one hand under his chin, rejoicing in the air of mastery that never thought to ask her leave, and in his strength which was more severely tried than she suspected by the shifting stone and slush.

Hussain's post overlooked the ridge where Dore was lying, and commanded a view of the valley towards Bewal; but the eastern trend of the road hid Walcot's doings beyond the Gul.

Hussain at once began an elaborate explanation in Pukhtu, Terrington nodding his head and following the indications of the other's hands, but Rose could not tell by any outward sign how the recital affected him. He turned to her when it ended, and told her they were going higher for a wider view. She pleaded to go with him, but he merely shook his head, smiling at the chaos of rocks above them, over which a goat only could go in safety.

Rose sat herself down in a corner of the sangar opposite the three signallers, and watched Terrington and Hussain haul themselves up the scarp, taking cover as warily as though they were stalking sambur, yet never hesitating nor halting for an instant, the Risaldar a length in front, and Terrington swinging hand and foot after him in absolute accord.

They disappeared behind a buttress, and Rose fell to watching the signallers, two bronzed and splendid sepoys and a havildar of the Guides, whose blue and white flag slapped ceaselessly in the air.

Far away upon a spur above the road by which they had come she could make out the flutter of an answering signal, and, while she tried to follow it, suddenly a star of light winked like a sunlit window on the hill-side far down the defile.

It stirred the little group like the fall of a shell. The havildar thrust his paper and pencil on the unoccupied sepoy, hoisted the heliograph over his shoulder, and scrambled out of the sangar with his head turning as he went for a glimpse of the unexpected sun. He had his tripod settled, and an answering shaft of light was flying from his mirror down the valley before the flag had ceased its flapping behind him, but not before the nearer station had also found the sunlight and set a second star in the gray sameness of the hills. The flag fell, the click of the mirror took up the speech of its shaken folds, and dazzling lances of sunlight flung from ten miles away began tilting with the lashes of Rose Chantry's eyes. She was so absorbed by the strangeness of their silent language, that she was startled to find that Terrington had dropped alone and unnoticed from the rocks above her, and was scribbling a message which he handed as he finished it to the havildar.

He stood watching intently the answering flashes, twice prompting the reader when he was at fault. Rose, conscious of a certain still determination which had come into his manner, went over and stood beside him.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, as the answer to his order sparkled in the air.

He wrote a second message before replying; then he put his hand in her arm and walked her back to the sangar.

"Yes," he said; "Mir Khan is proving himself to be a good soldier. He's going to take no risks."

"Are you taking any?" she asked.

"Oh, yes!" he smiled; "I'm taking them all. That's the worst of being the weaker side."

He stopped, and looked out again over the Bewal valley, where the enemy's forces could be seen dividing in the form of a Y, one arm leading towards the Sorágh Gul and the other towards the entrance of the Sar defile, where Dore was lying.

"He's coming this way?" she suggested.

"Yes," he assented, "he's coming this way--half of him. He's either found out our little game, or he's going to make sure we're not playing it. So we've got to fight him here."

"Is that worse for us?" she enquired anxiously.

He nodded.

"And who's over there?" she asked, with a tilt of her head towards the distant hills.

"Subadar Afzul Singh and the Guides," he said; "but thanks to Mir Khan, they can move up now, which is a point to us. And now we must go down to lunch."

It was all so evidently the playing of a game to him, though the stakes were life and death, that she was infected for the moment by his incentive to the forgetfulness of her own fears, and asked eagerly of Afzul's march as they went down the hill together.

Terrington expected the Guides in three hours, and though he had no fear of being unable to hold out until they joined him, it was a question if he could delay his counter attack so long without rendering Dore's position too precarious. Everything would depend on the pace at which the enemy advanced and the force employed for his first attack.

When they came again to the water, Terrington knelt down without a word, and Rose seated herself with a laugh upon his shoulder.

But he did not set her down when the wet space was crossed, but carried her on to the little green tent which Gholam had pitched above the road, laughing to her protests that it was one of the disadvantages of being so light that people would insist on carrying her.

The signal which had dropped from the ridge had set all the camp in motion.

Men were building sangars; boxes of ammunition were being unloaded from mules and carried up the hill; all signs of a camp had disappeared and the transport was slowly toiling back by the way it had come.

Rose declared herself to be too excited to eat, but Terrington insisted on her finishing what he thought sufficient, and set her an example in appetite in spite of numerous interruptions.

No one could say, he reminded her, where nor of what their next meal might be.

Then he found her a place from which she could see, as she insisted, the progress of the fight in the greatest safety, posted her doolie with its bearers behind, and left the faithful Gholam in charge of her.

"I mayn't see you again," he said, taking her hand, "but word will be sent to him, and you must do as he tells you, as we may have to make a dash to get over to the Gul."

"And if we're beaten will we go back?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"If we're beaten we shall die here," he said quietly.

She held out her other hand to him.

"I'm not afraid now," she said under her breath.

An hour of anxious waiting followed, then the enemy's scouts began to appear on the road in the gap of the ridge that Dore was holding.

As the ridge offered them no advantages and the searching of it entailed exposure, they kept to the lower ground and came on slowly on either side of the road. An advance-guard followed, and then a body of horsemen, the valley growing slowly brown with them.

They halted with evident suspicion of Terrington's tactics, but came on again, reassured by the safety of the scouts, who were within a few yards of the lower sangars, before, following the signal stammer of the Maxim from the road, fire opened from the whole line at once upon the packed mass in the valley.

The result should have been disastrous to the attackers had the shooting been even fairly accurate, which unfortunately it was not. The Dogras included a very small proportion of marksmen, and the Bakót men had not outlived their remembrance of the matchlock, and probably fired over the heads of everything. Some score of the scouts were turned over, and a few men and horses fell in the main body, chiefly to the Maxim. The remainder scampered for cover in all directions, followed by an independent fusillade which did very little harm. At the sound of the firing, reinforcements began to pour through the gap above which the Sikhs lay, silent but excited spectators, and in a very short time the attack was more cautiously renewed.

The high ground which Terrington was holding on either wing converged forward from his centre, so that the Saris in trying to force the road found themselves exposed to a crescent of fire, and after a vain attempt to rush the Maxim, fell back, and by creeping up the sides of the valley began a movement to outflank him from above.

For this they only needed time to be successful, as the defenders' line was already stretched beyond the limits of safety, and Terrington watched with varying anxiety the progress of this movement, the gathering mass of the enemy on the road beneath him, and the slow closing up of the Guides in his rear.

He gained some time by a sortie from either flank, cutting off the men who were climbing above him, but this only forced them to make a wider circuit and postponed their eventual success. He returned from this sally, a smoking carbine in his hand, his face smeared with heat and dust, and a bullet-hole through his helmet, to find Rose standing in the sangar which he had quitted, watching him with proud admiration.

The enemy's centre was following the sortie back with every rifle that could bear upon it, and bullets were striking in front of the sangar and flying over it like brazen winged bees. Two or three men had been hit, and Terrington stooped to lift one of them into safety before he could speak to Rose.

"Go back!" he said almost angrily. "What are you doing here?"

"I shan't!" she returned defiantly. "I'm going to be with you."

Terrington turned to direct the carrying of the wounded down to the road: then he put his hand upon her shoulder and said quietly.

"Go back, please, for my sake, to the doolie, we're all going forward in a few minutes."

Gholam, who had been standing beside her, with an expression, turned towards Terrington, of absolute impotence, gave a little jump and clapped his hand to his elbow.

"Are you hit?" said Terrington.

The man withdrew his hand, looked at it, all smeared with blood, and salaamed.

"The Sahib's servant has the honour," he replied gravely.

Terrington placed himself more completely between Rose and the enemy's fire.

"Take him down, dear, will you, and tie him up?" he said.

The little endearing word moved her more than the command.

"Come!" she said, as though it were rather the servant than herself that was responsible for the trouble, and walked straight down to the doolie.

The enemy had made another dash on the centre after the sortie, and as it was driven back the signal was given Dore for which he had so eagerly been waiting, Terrington's hand having been forced by the increasing number of the enemy in front of him, the Guides being still a long way to the rear.

A bugle call replied to the signal, and Dore's men opened fire instantly on the crowded road beneath them.

The Saris turned at the sound, to find themselves penned between two lines of fire and the precipices of the defile.

It was little wonder that panic seized them; the long deferred disclosure of the trap adding to their apprehensions. Those nearest Dore's ridge dashed for the gap without an attempt at resistance, and those in front, seeing their supports in flight, fell back, firing wildly in both directions.

The Bakót men finding the foe in retreat began to shoot with more effect, but Terrington, trusting rather to their knives for slaughter and feeling that the decisive moment was come, signalled to the Guides, still three miles away, to press forward, and ordered a general advance.

The Dogras, being on the lower ground, were the first to get within thrusting distance, and closed on a terrified huddle of men swinging this way and that in frenzied efforts to escape like a frightened flock of sheep, and crying out for mercy from the bayonets that pierced them from behind. The mercy meted out to them was the mercy of the Durbar--a swift end, and the scorn of born fighters in their ears; and, as the Bakót levies descended with their crooked knives upon the scurrying flanks, the Saris flung away their arms and fought with each other to escape the avengers.

Terrington stopped the pursuit with the utmost difficulty as it came under the fire which Dore was pouring upon the fugitives, and sent volley after volley with deadly effect into the maddened wedge of men penned in the gap. It was absolute butchery, and the struggling men fell to the bullets in sheaves across the road, the life blown out of them at three hundred paces.

The Sikhs continued to fire despite Terrington's attempt to stop them so long as any of the flying mob remained beneath them, and then, scampering over to the other side of the ridge, opened on the runaways as they emerged from the defile.

Terrington pushed the Dogras forward into the gap as soon as the bullets of the Sikhs had ceased to search it, and discovered at once, in spite of his advantage, the greatness of the task in front of him.

Mir Khan, realizing from the sound of battle in the defile the trick which had been played him, was throwing forward every man he could spare to shut Terrington within it till he could extricate the force which Walcot had skilfully drawn after him up the road to Rashát.

Terrington gathered at a glance that the disorder which the flight of the panic-stricken Saris was creating in the ranks of the reinforcements offered him the one chance of getting his transport out of the defile and of holding a fighting position on the ground beyond it.

So, though the Guides were not yet in sight, and his force utterly inadequate to the task before it, he pressed on upon the heels of the fugitives which were blinding the enemy's front, in order to give Dore's men on the south of the road an opening to descend from the ridge and crumple the broken flank back upon the centre. So soon as he saw that the Sikhs were in motion he pushed the Dogras forward in the centre to maintain touch with them, and cover the egress of his transport from the defile, taking the Bakót men along himself to prevent an enveloping movement on the other flank. This, the extreme right, was the weak point in his advance, since he had not sufficient men for an extension to gain the support of the hill-side, and the enemy's line was long enough to overlap him, and, by passing round his right, to force him off the road and close the entrance to the defile behind him while the Guides were still within it. This was the critical hour of the day, for Mir Khan, who had hurried back from the Gul to direct the attack, at once realized his advantage, and leaving his right to take care of itself, swung all his horsemen round to the other wing, and sent them dismounted clambering over the further slopes of the valley, while he himself advanced against Terrington in front. Sending word to the half of Dore's force, which still lined the ridge on the north of the gap, to get still higher up the hill and threaten in turn to outflank the enemy's flankers, Terrington set himself to hold the half-trained Bakót levies in a position which would have tried the morale of the best disciplined troops.

In this, without the special help of Heaven, he certainly would not have succeeded, since in order to keep his men together he had to expose himself in a fashion that should have brought death to him twenty times in the day.

Rose Chantry who, with the rest of the transport, had been hurried through the gap and left to find what cover they could in the open ground beyond it, watched him through her glasses, standing erect amongst the men who were crawling and slithering at his feet, with a growing wonderment of appreciation for the manner of man he was. She saw him pounce upon one skulker who was trying to slink away, lift him like a dog by the neck to his full length, march him forward in the face of the bullets, and fling him down again in the firing line.

The charmed life which he seemed to wear had its effect at last upon the superstitions of the men he was leading, and a fatalist spirit took the place of their fears. This improved their pluck if it did not mend their shooting; yet Terrington was compelled none the less to retire them, leaving his dead and badly wounded behind him, as the enemy's flankers had worked round far enough to enfilade him. He was thus compelled to fall back slowly for the better part of a mile, until his supports became entangled with the head of the transport column. This caused the officer in charge of the transport to attempt an immediate withdrawal, forgetting that the ground over which they had reached their present cover was now swept by the bullets which were passing over Terrington's head. The first two mules to emerge from the shelter of the rocks fell dead with their driver, and the significance of the little spirts of dust that barred the way was brought home to those that followed. The head of the column halted, the rest of it continued to advance, the mules becoming jammed into a huddled mass. Rose Chantry's bearers had picked her up when the retirement was ordered, and when it ceased and the crowding beasts began to accumulate round the doolie she put her head through the curtains and asked Gholam what had happened. He explained apologetically that the leaders of the transport were smitten with great fear.

"Go on," she shouted to her bearers, "and show them the way."

Gholam interpreted the order and the jampanis had shuffled timorously along for a few paces, when the enemy's flankers came in view of the disordered transport and with cries of triumph began to shoot down into it from the hill.

One of the jampanis was hit in the first fusillade, and, another dropping with fright, the doolie came with a crash to the ground, and Rose scrambled out of it, her teeth set and a little revolver in her hand, to face what would probably have proved the closing scene of the day's fight, had not, at that moment, the leading company of the Guides emerged from the defile.

They had come for three miles at the double and had no breath for shouting, but they extended with parade precision, and went straight for the scattered sharpshooters on the enemy's left.

But the day was too old for half measures. With a faith in reinforcements and a strong front, Terrington signalled Afzul Singh, who had, despite his forty-five years, outpaced on foot the youngest of his men, to keep his right shoulder up, thus ignoring the enemy's left and bringing the Guides through the broken Bakót men on the main road. Then, as the panting line came up to him, Terrington put himself in front of it and charged straight at Mir Khan's centre.

That part of the enemy's front, unaware, owing to the slope of the ground, of the Guides' arrival, only waited a snap of the trigger, as the wave of buff-clad men burst over the rise. Then it turned and ran.

Blown though his men were, Terrington carried them half a mile further before halting them. By doing so he cut in halves Mir Khan's line of battle and isolated his entire left wing, which did not need a second volley from the Guides to explain what had happened, and in an instant was leaping like a flock of goats over the shale slopes in wild retreat.

Leaving Afzul with half a company to complete the rout, Terrington wheeled the other half to the left, and, coming into line with the Dogras and Sikhs, fell upon the enemy's right, which had seen the defeat of the centre, and pressed it hotly down the hill.

He only carried the pressure far enough to clear the road, and, as soon as the second company of the Guides appeared in the gap to form his rear-guard a general movement began across the valley towards the Sorágh Gul; the Sikhs, Dogras and half a company of the Guides covering the transport on the south side, the second company of the Guides, breathless but athirst for battle, holding the road behind it, and the Bakót men still running like hounds over the great shale slopes on the north hacking down the flying Saris with their knives or shooting them like rabbits at a dozen yards.

It was a triumph of unhoped-for victory, but even yet was not complete. For the swiftness of Terrington's advance brought him to the Gul before the men who had been pursuing Walcot could recross it after the news of Mir Khan's defeat had reached their ears. The Gul was a ravine with sides almost precipitous and close upon two hundred feet in depth, with a torrent raging over its rocks which could only be forded at one place.

Walcot, reinforced by Freddy Gale with the garrison of Rashát had turned upon his pursuers, who reached in their flight one side of the Gul as Terrington's force appeared on the other.

Panic-stricken they plunged into its abyss to escape the bullets behind them, hoping to hide amongst the boulders in the torrent's bed.

But the river had risen behind them, and a foaming floor of water stretched from side to side of the chasm.

Clinging like conies to those bare declivities they were shot screaming for mercy or insane with fear, and fell like blood-gutted leeches into the flood beneath.

Terrington watched the slaughter, silent and stern, feeling to be but the avenging instrument of God, yet wishing for the qualities of a god to reconcile him to its pitilessness and inevitable injustice.

While he watched, his ear caught the click of little feet on the rocks, and he turned to find Rose Chantry beside him, gazing down upon the torment of that gulf of death.

"Go back!" he said hurriedly. "You mustn't see this."

She turned to him a little face fierce and white and ablaze with vengeance.

"I _shall_ see it," she cried imperiously; "they killed my husband."

Yet her vengeance came rather from the relief of long pent anxiety, and it was less of her husband that she was thinking than of the man who had come back to her out of mortal danger, his coat ripped by bullets in two places and a dark scum of dried blood across his face from a flesh-wound in the temple.

XI

After a brief halt for a meal, Terrington sent on the Dogras to convoy the wounded to Rashát, the Bakót levies following at midnight with the transport. He would rely only on his tried fighters for the long rearguard action which would begin on the morrow, and only end beyond the Paldri.