hief halted and swept an arm in an encompassing embrace of the
tent-studded plain.

"We are not a nation to muster an army because now the cannon that
belch forth a shower of death mow horsemen down like ripened grain. It
was the dead Chief's ambition, but it is wrong."

Barlow was struck with the wise logic of this tall wide-browed warrior,
it _was_ wrong. Massed together Pindaris and _Bundoolas_ assailed by
the trained hordes of Mahrattas, with their French and Portuguese
gunners and officers, would be slaughtered like sheep. And against the
war-trained Line Regiments of the British foot soldiers they would meet
the same fate. "You are right, Chief Kassim," Barlow declared; "even
if you cut in with the winning side, especially Sindhia, he would turn
on you and devour you and your people."

"Yes, Sahib. The trade of a Pindari, if I may call it so, has been
that of loot in this land that has always been a land of strife for
possession. I rode with Chitu as a jamadar when we swept through the
Nizam's territory and put cities under a tribute of many _lakhs_, but
that was a force of five thousand only, and we swooped through the land
like a great flock of hawks. But even at that Chitu, a wonderful
chief, was killed by wild animals in the jungle when he was fleeing
from disaster, almost alone."

They were now close to the palace, and as they entered, just within the
great hall Kassim said: "There will be nothing to say on thy part,
Captain Sahib; the officers will come even now to the audience and it
is all agreed upon. Thou wilt be given an assurance to take back to
the British, for by chance the others have great confidence in me, even
more in a matter of diplomacy than they had in the dead leader, may
Allah rest his soul!"

And to the audience chamber--where had sat oft two long rows of minor
chiefs, at their head on a raised dais the Rajput Raja, a Seesodia, one
of the "Children of the Sun," as the flaming yellow gypsum sun above
the dais attested--now came in twos and threes the wild-eyed whiskered
riders of the desert. They were lean, raw-boned, steel-muscled, tall,
solemn-faced men, their eyes set deep in skin wrinkled from the scorch
of sun on the white sands of the desert. And their eyes beneath the
black brows were like falcon's, predatory like those of birds of prey.
And the air of freedom, of self-reliance, of independence was in every
look, in the firm swinging stride, and erect set of the should