ama's teeth.

'So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I
have already looked into their baskets--but we will make fair division
at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His
heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the
chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this
would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then
it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?'

'One is paid, I think, already,' said Kim between his teeth. 'I kicked
him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!'

'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,' said one
whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace. 'If we
get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any
more.'

'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs--not merry-minded men like Fostum
Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners--they cannot speak
Angrezi as do Sahibs.'

Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.

'There shall be no killing,' he murmured. 'Just is the Wheel! Evil on
evil--'

'Nay, Holy One. We are all here.' The Ao-chung man timidly patted his
feet. 'Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We
will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to
Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.'

'After a blow,' said a Spiti man sententiously, 'it is best to sleep.'

'There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a
pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. I am an old
man, but not free from passion ... We must think of the Cause of
Things.'

'Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.'

'Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.'

This was the nervous Rampur man.

'I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's
shikarri. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this
cursed beegar [the corvee]. Let two men watch below with the guns lest
the Sahibs do more foolishness. I shall not leave this Holy One.'

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening
awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and
Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from
hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese
cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark