rides to betray us to her friends!' said I, and I kept yet farther
behind her, on the alert against ambush."

"Well?"

"She rode until dawn, I following. Then, when the light was scarcely
born as yet, she suddenly drew rein at an open place where the track
she had been following emerged out of dense bushes, and dismounted.
>From behind the bushes I watched, and presently I, too, dismounted
to hold my mare's nostrils and prevent her from whinnying. That
woman, Maga Jhaere, knelt, and pawed about the ground like a dog
that hunts a buried bone!"

In front of us Maga was still arguing. Suddenly Kagig turned on her
and asked her three swift questions, bitten off like the snap of
a closing snuff-box lid. Whether she answered or not I could not
see, but Monty was smiling.

"I suspect she was making signals!" growled Rustum Khan. "To whom
--about what I do not know. After a little while she mounted and
rode on, choosing unerringly a new track through the bushes. I went
to where she had been, and examined the ground where she had made
her signals. As I say, my eyes are good, but hers are better. I
could see nothing but the hoof-marks of her clumsy gray brute of
a stallion, and in one place the depressions on soft earth where
she had knelt to paw the ground!"

Monty was beginning to talk now. I could see him smiling at Kagig
over Maga's head, and the girl was growing angry. Rustum Khan was
watching them as closely as we were, pausing between sentences.