Ranjoor Singh rode up on Bagh, mud-plastered after an afternoon's
work teaching scouts. He clung to the risaldar-major's stirrup, and
was dragged ten feet, slobbering and bubbling incoherencies, before
the savage charger could be reined in and made to stand.

"What is it, oh, _babuji?_" laughed Ranjoor Singh. "Are the
Moslems out after your temple gods?"

"Aha! Run! Gallop! Bring all the guns!" This in English, all of it.
"Blood in the gutter--blood like water--twentee policemen are already
dead, and your men have done it! Gallop quicklee. _Jaldee,
jaldee!_"

"Go and get twenty more policemen to wipe away the blood!" advised
Ranjoor Singh, sitting back in the saddle to get a better look at
him, and reining back the impatient Bagh. "I am not a constabeel; I
am a soldier."

"Aha! Yes. You better hurry. All your men are underneath--what-you-
call-it?--bottom dog. You better hurry like slippery! One Afridi is
beginning things, and where is one Afridi with a long knife are many
more kinds of trouble!"

The babu was recovering his breath, and with it his yearning to
behold a regiment careering through the barrack gate to the rescue.
He still clung to the stirrup, and since he would not let go, Ranjoor
Singh proceeded to tow him, with a cautious, booted right leg ready
to spur Bagh away to the left should the brute commence to kick.

"You are hard-hearted person, and your fate is forever sealed if you