it."

"No, he didn't," said Dick Four. "Don't you remember how he insisted
that he had only applied his luck? Don't you remember how Rutton Singh
grabbed his boots and grovelled in the snow, and how our men shouted?"

"None of our Pathans believed that was luck," said Tertius. "They swore
Stalky ought to have been born a Pathan, and--'member we nearly had a
row in the fort when Rutton Singh said Stalky was a Pathan? Gad, how
furious the old chap was with my Jemadar! But Stalky just waggled his
finger and they shut up.

"Old Rutton Singh's sword was half out, though, and he swore he'd
cremate every Khye-Kheen and Malo't he killed. That made the Jemadar
pretty wild, because he didn't mind fighting against his own creed, but
he wasn't going to crab a fellow Mussulman's chances of Paradise. Then
Stalky jabbered Pushtu and Punjabi in alternate streaks. Where the deuce
did he pick up his Pushtu from, Beetle?"

"Never mind his language, Dick," said I. "Give us the gist of it."

"I flatter myself I can address the wily Pathan on occasion, but, hang
it all, I can't make puns in Pushtu, or top off my arguments with a
smutty story, as he did. He played on those two old dogs o' war like
a--like a concertina. Stalky said--and the other two backed up his
knowledge of Oriental nature--that the Khye-Kheens and the Malo'ts
between 'em would organize a combined attack on us that night, as
a proof of good faith. They wouldn't drive it home, though, because
neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutton Singh put it,
of the little accidents. Stalky's notion was to crawl out at dusk with
his Sikhs, manoeuvre 'em along this ungodly goat-track that he'd found,
to the back of the Khye-Kheen position, and then lob in a few long shots
at the Malo'ts when the attack was well on. 'That'll divert their minds
and help to agitate 'em,' he said. 'Then you chaps can come out and
sweep up the pieces, and we'll rendezvous at the head of the gorge.
After that, I move we get back to Mac's camp and have something to eat."

"_You_ were commandin'?" the Infant suggested.

"I was about three months senior to Stalky, and two months Tertius's
senior," Dick Four replied. "_But_ we were all from the same old Coll.
I should say ours was the only little affair on record where some one
wasn't jealous of some one else."

"_We_ weren't," Tertius broke in, "but there was another row between Gul
Sher Khan and Rutton Singh. Our Jemadar said--he was quite