These men had some money with them, and weapons hidden underneath their clothes; for, having betted largely on the quail-fight at Abdul's stables, the squadron was in funds.

"In case of trouble one can bribe the police," counseled Nanak Singh, and he surely ought to know, for he was the oldest trooper, and trouble everlasting had preserved him from promotion. "But weapons are good, when policemen are not looking," he added, and the squadron agreed with him.

It was Tej Singh, not given to talking as is rule, who voiced the general opinion.

"Now we are on the track of things. Now, perhaps, we shall know the meaning of field exercises during the monsoon, with our horses up to the belly in blue mud! The winds of all the world blow into Yasmini's and out again. Our risaldar-major knows nothing at all of women—and that is the danger. But he can listen to the wind; and, what he hears, sooner or later we shall know, too. I smell happenings!"

Those three words comprised the whole of it. The squadron spent most of the night whispering, dissecting, analyzing, subdividing, weighing, guessing at that smell of happenings, while its risaldar-major, thinking his secret all his own, investigated nearer to its source.

Have you heard the dry earth shrug herself

For a storm that tore the trees?

Have you watched loot-hungry Faithful

Praising Allah on their knees?

Have you felt the short hairs rising

When the moon slipped out of sight,

And the chink of steel on rock explained

That footfall in the night?

Have you seen a gray boar sniff up-wind

In the mauve of waking day?

Have you heard a mad crowd pause and think?

Have you seen all Hell to pay?