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BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

No. MCXXX.

DECEMBER 1909. VOL. CLXXXVI.

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH NOTCH.

SUBEDAR HAIDER was taking his ease seated on a bedstead made of twisted strands of the dwarf palm in the verandah of his quarters in the Dozak Post, one of the innumerable small forts strung along the North-West Frontier of India from the Black Mountain to the confines of the Persian deserts, in which, among barren hills, on wide stony plateaus, or on pine-clad mountain - tops, in scorching heat or biting winds sweeping down from Central Asia, a body of servants of the Empire live hard lives, fight, die, and are forgotten. They are men of the Border tribes, for none other could stand the hardship and monotony or the strain of life in the shadow of battle, murder, and sudden death. They enlist from both sides of the Border in these Levies, Militias, and Military Police (which are not part of the Indian Army), for various

VOL. CLXXXVI.-NO. MCXXX.

motives not to be too closely investigated, and, on the whole, serve loyally under the handful of British officers who control them. Of such was Subedar Haider, and the short LeeEnfield rifle lying ready to his hand on the bedstead beside him was the symbol of his reasons for joining the service of the British Government. Sleeping or waking, this rifle never left him except when it was hung over his shoes on a peg on the outer wall of the Masjid, where Haider said his prayers five times in the day.

For this there was good reason. On the beautifully polished stock of the rifle were twenty-six notches of various sizes each recording the death of an enemy. The nineteenth notch was the biggest. It was notched six years back, when, in the grey of the early morning, Haider had taken careful aim at the figure of a woman emerging from a neighbouring

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tower. The wailing of women, audible from Haider's own tower, told him that his bullet had found its billet in the body of his uncle, for which he had intended it. Over a quarrel about water-rights for irrigation, his uncle had slain Haider's father, and Haider's only brother had been shot by his cousins in the attempt to take revenge. After that, Haider and the men of his uncle's family had been unable for nine long months to leave for any purpose their respective towers, built on the bare slope of the hill within rifle-range of each other, though the women were by invariable custom exempt from the feud. A mutual friend informed Haider that his uncle had, for the purpose of leaving his tower for a few minutes in the early morning, taken to the habit of disguising himself as one of the women: hence the successful shot.

Haider had made his notch, but his own country had become too hot to hold him, and he travelled far south down the Border to where the South Yagistan Militia are posted in a chain of mud-built forts, stretched along ninety miles of hilly frontier, and are charged with the duty of preventing a mountain tribe from following their hereditary trade-that of raiding the fat British villages of the plains.

To the Commandant of the Militia Haider told his story with engaging candour, and was enlisted on the spot.

Notches twenty to twentysix, which marked Haider's successive steps in promotion from

Sepoy to Subedar, were added in the service of the Sirkar-in duty combined with pleasure— in skirmishes with raiding gangs, in the pursuit of armed cattle-lifters, in desperate attempts to arrest some bloodstained offender. These notches were not gained without incurring the mortal enmity of at least half-a-dozen sections of the mountain tribe-Pathans like himself. This was, however, child's play to Haider, backed by the Militia rifles, and aided by sporting sights of the latest pattern added to his cherished rifle by a friendly Master Armourer from the Arsenal, who had come to inspect the Martinis of of the Militia, and earned the admiration of Haider as a fellowexpert in arms. The Master Armourer had recognised Haider's rifle as one stolen from the arms-rack in the barrack - room of a British Mountain Battery, and Haider gave him full details of the exploit in happy and wellplaced confidence that, as the rifle was again in the service of Government, the irregularity of its temporary "conveyance (as the wise call it) across the Border would be overlooked.

Haider was now a man of position and responsibility, a Native officer in command of fifty rifles and the Dozak Post, which blocked a pass leading across the Border, and was only connected with the world by a telegraph wire and fifteen miles of mountain bridle-path to the next Post. Dozak Post is a square mud fort with faces one hundred yards in length,

and with two stone towers at opposite angles to flank the faces and guard the gateways. In the middle of the square are the magazine, the Masjid, the telegraph office, the standings for the horses of the mounted infantry section, with the men's quarters under the parapet along the loopholed faces. A barbed-wire entanglement surrounds the whole of the outer walls.

From his seat in the verandah Haider could watch the two gateways and most of the interior of the post, but the high walls shut out all view beyond the perimeter.

Although it was near sundown the heat inside the fort was fierce, the relentless heat of the hottest corner of the globe, and Haider had touched neither food nor drink since sunrise; for it was the month of Ramzan, and he, a rigid Moslem, was strict in the observance of the fast. He watched the men of mounted infantry section go down to the standings with the nosebags, and was satisfied to hear the horses whinny and to see them kick out at the heel-ropes in pleasure of anticipation. The heat was evidently not affecting them. The nosebags were tied on,

and four or five of the men moved close behind the horses and fired the rifles they had brought with them for the purpose into the air. Only a dun country-bred gelding at the end of the line plunged and reared, and was at once made much of by his master.

But at the sound of the

shots the door of the telegraph office was thrown open and the telegraphist rushed out bareheaded.

"Ma'uzbillah," he cried to the Subedar, "what has happened? what has happened?"

"Nothing, Babuji,' replied the Subedar from his bed, "only the sowars accustoming their horses to sudden firing. Razza Khan, fix the nosebag on the dun again: he is of a stout-hearted colour, and will not lose a mouthful another time. And you, O Babu, will not forget your hat." (No self-respecting Muhammadan goes bareheaded.)

A laugh went round the sowars, and the telegraph clerk withdrew into his office.

The telegraph clerk was a down country Muhammadan from Delhi, calling himself a Moghul, educated in a Mission School, and hating the Government he served. Now the name of Moghul still carries with it on the Frontier some pride of descent from the conquerors of India and connection with the profession of arms, though at Delhi itself the descendants of the Grand Moghul bear no enviable reputation.

Recently transferred to the Dozak Post, the Clerk had already sounded Haider as to his opinion on the legal point -whether service under the English unbelievers could be reconciled with strict obedience to the precepts of the Koran, and had received from him

an equivocal answer. Each suspected the other's ortho

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