Nobody seemed to be for India, except Mahommed Gunga; and he said
little, but asked ever-repeated questions as he rode. There were men
who would like to weld Rajputana into one again, and over-ride the rest
of India; and there were other men who planned to do the same for the
Punjaub; there were plots within plots, not many of which he learned
in anything like detail, but none of which were more than skin-deep
below the surface. All men looked to the sudden, swift, easy whelming
of the British Raj, and then to the plundering of India; each man
expected to be rich when the whelming came, and each man waited with
ill-controlled impatience for the priests' word that would let loose
the hundred-million flood of anarchy.

"And one man--one real man whom they trusted--one leader--one man
who had one thousand at his back--could change the whole face of
things!" he muttered to himself. "Would God there we a Cunnigan! But
there is no Cunnigan. And who would follow me? They would pull my
beard, tell me I was scheming for my own ends!--I, who was taught by
Cunnigan, and would serve only India!"

He would ride before dawn and when the evening breeze had come to cool
the hot earth a little through the blazing afternoons he would lie in
the place of honor by some open window, where he could watch a hireling
flick the flies off his lean, road-hardened horse, and listen to the
plotting and the carried tales of plots, pretending always to be
sympathetic or else open to conviction.

"A soldier? Hah! A soldier fights for the side that can best reward
him!" he would grin. "And, when there is no side, perhaps he makes
one! I am a soldier!"