would never be touched, that their wounded would be nursed, not
mutilated, and that as soon as each man's bag of corn was spent they
could surrender and palaver with the English General as though they
had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years afterwards, they would pay
the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the Government and tell their
children how they had slain the redcoats by thousands. The only
drawback to this kind of picnic-war was the weakness of the redcoats
for solemnly blowing up with powder their fortified towers and keeps.
This the tribes always considered mean.

Chief among the leaders of the smaller tribes--the little clans who
knew to a penny the expense of moving white troops against them--was
a priest-bandit-chief whom we will call the Gulla Kutta Mullah. His
enthusiasm for border murder as an art was almost dignified. He
would cut down a mail-runner from pure wantonness, or bombard a mud
fort with rifle fire when he knew that our men needed to sleep. In
his leisure moments he would go on circuit among his neighbours, and
try to incite other tribes to devilry. Also, he kept a kind of hotel
for fellow-outlaws in his own village, which lay in a valley called
Bersund. Any respectable murderer on that section of the frontier was
sure to lie up at Bersund, for it was reckoned an exceedingly safe
place. The sole entry to it ran through a narrow gorge which could be
converted into a death-trap in five minutes. It was surrounded by
high hills, reckoned inaccessible to all save born mountaineers, and
here the Gulla Kutta Mullah lived in great state, the head of a
colony of mud and stone huts, and in each mud hut hung Some portion
of a red uniform and the plunder of dead men. The Government
particularly wished for his capture, and once invited him formally to
come out and be hanged on account of a few of the murders in which he
had taken a direct part. He replied:--