Page:Confessions of a Thug.djvu/77

 matchlock with the match lighted. He addressed my father as we came up.

"Salaam aleikoom! Ismail Sahib," said he, "is a quiet person like you coming out with us, and the Sahib zadah too?"

"Yes, Khan," replied my father, "it is incumbent on all good men to do their utmost in a case of need like this; who knows, if the brute is not killed, but that some one else may become food for it?"

"Inshalla!" said the Khan, twisting up his mustachios, and surveying himself, "we have determined that the brute dies to-day. Many a tiger has fallen from a shot from my good gun, and what is this brute that it should escape! May its sister be defiled; the only fear is, that it will not stand to allow us to prove that we are men, and not dogs before it."

"As to that," said my father, "we must take our chance; but say, Khan, how will you move with all those weapons about you? Why, you could not run away were she to rush out."

"Run away!" cried the Khan; "are our beards to be defiled by a brute? What are you thinking on this morning to suppose that Dildar Khan ever turned from anything in his life? Only let it come out, I say, and you will see