Page:In Black and White - Kipling (1890).djvu/20

 thou shalt come upon Daoud Shah". Listen, my brother and chiefest among friends—listen! Is the tale a long one? Think how it was long to me. I have trodden every league of the road from Pubbi to this place; and from Nowshera my guide was only the Voice and the lust of vengeance.

To the Uttock river I went, but that was no hindrance to me. Ho! Ho! A man may turn the word twice even in his trouble. The Uttock was no uttock to me; and I heard the Voice above the noise of the waters beating on the big rock, saying:—"Go to the right". So I went to Pindigheb, and in those days my sleep was taken from me utterly, and the head of the woman of the Abazai was before me night and day, even as it had fallen between my feet. ''Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee!'' Fire, ashes and my couch, all three are one—all three are one!

Now I was far from the Winter path of the dealers who had gone to Sialkot and so south by the rail and the Big Road to the line of cantonments; but there was a Sahib in camp at Pindigheb who bought from me a white mare at a good price, and told me that one Daoud Shah had passed to Shahpur with horses. Then I saw that the warning of the Voice was true, and made swift to come to the Salt Hills. The Jhelum was in flood, but I could not wait, and, in the crossing, a bay stallion was washed down and drowned. Herein was God hard to me—not in respect of the beast, of that I had no care—but in this snatching. While I was upon the right bank urging the horses into the water, Daoud Shah was upon the left; for—''Alghias! Alghias!''—the hooves of my mare scattered the hot ashes of his fires when we came up the hither bank in the light of the morning. But he had fled. His feet were made swift by the terror of Death. And I went south from Shahpur as the kite flies. I dared not turn aside, lest I should miss my vengeance—which is my right. From Shahpur I skirted by the Jhelum, for I thought that he would avoid the Desert of the Rechna. But, presently, at Sahiwal I turned away upon the road to Jhang, Samundri