Long-reaching, pile on pile, the over-lapping spurs leaned over them.

The wind blew through them amid silence that swallowed and made nothing of the din which rides with armed men.
But, with eyes that were made for hunting, on horses that seemed part of them, they tracked and trailed--and viewed at last.

Their shout gave Khumel Khan his notice that the price of a hundred murders was overdue, and he chose to make payment where a V-shaped cliff enclosed a small, flat plateau and not more than a dozen could ride at him at a time.

His companions scattered much as a charge of shrapnel shrieks through the rocks, but Khumel Khan knew well enough that he was the quarry--his was the head that by no conceivable chance would be allowed to plan fresh villainies.

He might have run yet a little way, but he saw the uselessness, and stood.
The troop, lined out knee to knee, could come within a hundred paces of him without breaking; it formed a base, then, to a triangle from which the man at bay could no more escape than a fire-ringed scorpion.
"Call on him to surrender!" ordered Cunningham.
A chevroned black-beard half a horse-length behind him translated the demand into stately Pashtu, and for answer the hill chieftain mounted his stolen horse and shook his tulwar.