"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?
CHAPTER II
Yasmini bears a reputation that includes her gift for dancing and
her skill in song, but is not bounded thereby, Her stairs illustrated
it--the two flights of steep winding stairs that lead to her
bewildering reception-floor; they seem to have been designed to take
men's breath away, and to deliver them at the top defenseless.
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