About this time Colonel Creighton at Simla was advised from Lucknow by wire that young O’Hara had disappeared. Mahbub Ali was in town selling horses, and to him the Colonel confided the affair one morning cantering round Annandale racecourse.
“Oh, that is nothing,” said the horse-dealer. “Men are like horses. At certain times they need salt, and if that salt is not in the mangers they will lick it up from the earth. He has gone back to the Road again for a while. The madrissah wearied him. I knew it would. Another time, I will take him upon the Road myself. Do not be troubled, Creighton Sahib. It is as though a polo-pony, breaking loose, ran out to learn the game alone.”
“Then he is not dead, think you?”
“Fever might kill him. I do not fear for the boy otherwise. A monkey does not fall among trees.”
Next morning, on the same course, Mahbub’s stallion ranged alongside the Colonel.
“It is as I had thought,” said the horse-dealer. “He has come through Umballa at least, and there he has written a letter to me, having learned in the bazaar that I was here.”
“Read,” said the Colonel, with a sigh of relief. It was absurd that a man of his position should take an interest in a little country-bred vagabond; but the Colonel remembered the conversation in the train, and often in the past few months had caught himself thinking of the queer, silent, self-possessed boy. His evasion, of course, was the height of insolence, but it argued some resource and nerve.
Mahbub’s eyes twinkled as he reined out into the centre of the cramped little plain, where none could come near unseen.
“ ‘ The Friend of the Stars, who is the Friend of all the World— ’ ”