'Good. Go back to the camp and lie down. I do not die tonight.'

Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the ditch
till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place, slipped
across the road like a weasel, and re-coiled himself in the
blanket.

'At least Mahbub knows,' he thought contentedly. 'And certainly he
spoke as one expecting it. I do not think those two men will profit
by tonight's watch.'

An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake
all night, he slept deeply. Now and again a night train roared
along the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the
Oriental's indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a
dream through his slumber.

Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that
people outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should
pursue him for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross
the line lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers
from behind, summarily slay them. Here, he reflected with sorrow,
another branch of the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel
Creighton, might demand explanations which would be hard to supply;
and he knew that south of the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is
made about a corpse or so. He had not been troubled in this way
since he sent Kim to Umballa with the message, and hoped that
suspicion had been finally diverted.