Himalayas bore with it intermittent thunder from four thousand hoofs
as, split in three and swooping from three different directions, the
squadrons viewed, gave tongue, and launched themselves, roaring, at the
half-awakened plotters of the night before.

There was a battle, of a kind, in a bowlder-lined valley where the
early morning sun had not yet reached to lift the chill. Long lances
--devils' antennae--searched out the crevices where rock-bred
mountain-men sought cover; too suddenly for clumsy-fingered Hillmen to
reload, the reformed troops charged wedgewise into rallying
detachments. In an hour, or less, there were prisoners being herded
like cattle in the valley bottom, and a sting had been drawn from the
border wasp that would not grow again for a year or two to come.

But Khumel Khan was missing. Khumel Khan, the tulwar man--he whose
boast it was that he could hew through two men's necks at one whistling
sweep of his notched, curved cimeter--had broken through with a dozen
at his back. He had burst through the half-troop guarding the upper
end of the defile, had left them red and reeling to count their dead,
and the overfolding hill-spurs swallowed him.

"Mr. Cunningham! Take your troop, please, and find their chief! Hunt
him out, ride him down, and get him! Don't come back until you do!"

The real thing! The real red thing within a year! A lone command--
and that is the only thing a subaltern of spunk may pray for!--
eighty-and-eight hawk-eyed troopers asking only for the opportunity to
show their worth--lean, hungry hills to hunt in, no commissariat,
fair law to the quarry, and a fight--as sure as God made mountains, a
fight at the other end! There are men here and there who think that