"If the officers should recognize me," he growled to the German,
though seeming not to talk to him at all, "I should be arrested at
once, and shot later. But the men _will_ recognize me, and you
shall see what you shall see!"
Three small boys came with a coin to spend, but Ranjoor Singh drove
them away with his long stick; they argued shrilly from a distance,
and one threw a stone at him, but finally they decided he was some
new sort of plain-clothes "constabeel," and went away.
One after another, several natives came to make small purchases,
but, not being boys any longer, a gruff word was enough to send them
running. And then came the clatter of hoofs of the advance-guard, and
the German looked up to see a fire in Ranjoor Singh's eyes that a
caged tiger could not have outdone.
All this while the bullock-cart in which they had come remained in
the middle of the road, its driver dozing dreamily on his seat and
the bullocks perfectly content to chew the cud. At the sound of the
hoofs behind him, the driver suddenly awoke and began to belabor and
kick his animals; he seemed oblivious of another cart that came
toward him, and of a third that hurried after him from underneath the
gate.
In less than sixty seconds all three carts were neatly interlocked,
and their respective drivers were engaged in a war of words that
beggared Babel.
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