She has discovered that this mullah Muhammad Anim is no true muslim, but an unbelieving dog of a foreigner from Farangistan! She has discovered that he plans to make himself an emperor in these Hills, and to sell Hillmen into slavery!" Might as well serve the mullah up hot while about it! Beyond any doubt not much more than a mile away the mullah was getting even by condemning the lot of them to death. "An eye for the risk of an eye!" say the unforgiving Hills.

"If one of us should go back into his camp now he would be tortured. Be sure of that."

Breathing deeply in the darkness, they nodded, as if the dark had eyes. Ismail's chin drove a fraction deeper into his shoulder.

"Now ye know—for all men know—that the entrance into Khinjan Caves is free to any man who can tell a lie without flinching. It is the way out again that is not free. How many men do ye know that have entered and never returned?"

They all nodded again. It was common knowledge that Khinjan was a very graveyard of the presumptuous.

"She has set a trap for the mullah. She will let him and all his men enter and will never let them out again!"

"How knowest thou?" This from two men, one on either hand.

"Was I never in Khinjan Caves?" he retorted. "Whence came I? I am her man, sent to help trap the mullah! I would have trapped all you, but for being weary of these 'Hills' and wishful to go back to India and be pardoned! That is who I am! That is how I know!"

Their breath came and went sibilantly, and the darkness was alive with the excitement they thought themselves too warrior-like to utter.

"But what will she do then?" asked somebody.

King searched his memory, and in a moment there came back to him a picture of the hurrying jezailchi he had held up in the Khyber Pass, and recollection of the man's words.

"Know ye not," he said, "that long ago she gave leave to all who ate the salt to be true to the salt? She gave the Khyber jezailchis leave to fight against her. Be sure, whatever she does, she will stand between no man and his pardon!"

"But will she lead a jihad? We will not fight against her!"

"Nay," said King, drawing his breath in. Ismail's chin felt like a knife against his collar bone, and Ismail's iron fingers clutched his arm. It was time to give his hostage to dame Fortune. "She will go down into India and use her influence in the matter of the pardons!"

"I believe thou art a very great liar indeed!" said the man who lacked part of his nose. "The Pathan went, and he did not come back. What proof have we."

"Ye have me!" said King. "If I show you no proof, how can I escape you?"

They all grunted agreement as to that. King used his elbow to hit Ismail in the ribs. He did not dare speak to him; but now was the time for Ismail to carry information to her, supposing that to be his job. And after a minute Ismail rolled into a shadow and was gone. King gave him twenty minutes start, letting his men rest their legs and exercise their tongues.

Now that he was out of the mullah's clutches—and he suspected Yasmini would know of it within an hour or two, and before dawn in any event—he began to feel like a player in a game of chess who foresees his opponent mate in so many moves.

If Yasmini were to let the mullah and his men into the Caves and to join forces with him in there, he would at least have time to hurry back to India with his eighty men and give warning. He might have time to call up the Khyber jezailchis and blockade the Caves before the hive could swarm, and he chuckled to think of the hope of that.