All men looked to the sudden, swift, easy whelming of the British Raj, and then to the plundering of India; each man expected to be rich when the whelming came, and each man waited with ill-controlled impatience for the priests' word that would let loose the hundred-million flood of anarchy.
"And one man--one real man whom they trusted--one leader--one man who had one thousand at his back--could change the whole face of things!" he muttered to himself.

"Would God there we a Cunnigan! But there is no Cunnigan.

And who would follow me?
They would pull my beard, tell me I was scheming for my own ends!--I, who was taught by Cunnigan, and would serve only India!" He would ride before dawn and when the evening breeze had come to cool the hot earth a little through the blazing afternoons he would lie in the place of honor by some open window, where he could watch a hireling flick the flies off his lean, road-hardened horse, and listen to the plotting and the carried tales of plots, pretending always to be sympathetic or else open to conviction.
"A soldier?
Hah! A soldier fights for the side that can best reward him!" he would grin.

"And, when there is no side, perhaps he makes one! I am a soldier!" If they pressed him, he would point to his medal ribbons, that he always wore.

"The British gave me those for fighting against the northern tribes beyond the Himalayas," he would tell them.