After a while King's cheroot went out, and he threw it away. A little later Rewa Gunga threw away his cigarette. After that, the veriest five-year-old among the Zakka Khels, watching sleepless over the rim of some stone watch-tower, could have taken oath that the Khyber's unburied dead were prowling in search of empty graves. Probably their uncanny silence was their best protection; but Rewa Gunga chose to break it after a time.

"King sahib!" he called softly, repeating it louder and more loudly until King heard him. "Slowly! Not so fast!"

"Why?"

King did not check speed by a fraction, but the Rangar legged his mare into a canter and forced him to pull out to the left of the track and make room.

"Because, sahib, there are men among those boulders, and to go too fast is to make them think you are afraid! To seem afraid is to invite attack! Can we defend ourselves, with three firearms between us? Look! What was that?"

They were at the point where the road begins to lead up-hill, westward, leaving the bed of a ravine and ascending to join the highway built by British engineers. Below, to left and right, was pit-mouth gloom, shadows amid shadows, full of eerie whisperings, and King felt the short hair on his neck begin to rise.

So he urged his horse forward, because what Rewa Gunga said is true. There is only one surer key to trouble in the Khyber than to seem afraid—and that is to be afraid. And to have sat his horse there listening to the Rangar's whisperings and trying to see through shadows would have been to invite fear, of the sort that grows into panic.

The Rangar followed him, close up, and both horse and mare sensed excitement. The mare's steel shoes sent up a shower of sparks, and King turned to rebuke the Rangar. Yet he did not speak. Never, in all the years he had known India and the borderland beyond, had he seen eyes so suggestive of a tiger's in the dark! Yet they were not the same color as a tiger's, nor the same size, nor the same shape!

"Look, sahib!"

"Look at what?"

"Look!"

After a second or two he caught a glimpse of bluish flame that flashed suddenly and died again, somewhere below to the right. Then all at once the flame burned brighter and steadier and began to move and to grow.

"Halt!" King thundered; and his voice was as sharp and unexpected as a pistol-crack. This was something tangible, that a man could tackle—a perfect antidote for nerves.

The blue light continued on a zigzag course, as if a man were running among boulders with an unusual sort of torch; and as there was no answer King drew his pistol, took about thirty seconds' aim and fired. He fired straight at the blue light.