“Oho! Then I know it,” said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. “Not for five years was I Yankling Sahib’s shikarri without knowing that medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!”
He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky—such as is sold to explorers at Leh—and cleverly forced a little between the lama’s teeth.
“So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I have already looked into their baskets—but we will make fair division at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?”
“One is paid, I think, already,” said Kim between his teeth. “I kicked him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!”
“It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,” said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah’s rickety palace. “If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more.”
“Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs—not merry-minded men like Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners—they cannot speak Angrezi as do Sahibs.”
Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.
“There shall be no killing,” he murmured. “Just is the Wheel! Evil on evil—”
“Nay, Holy One. We are all here.” The Ao-chung man timidly patted his feet. “Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.”