Shamlegh's summer population is only three families--four women and eight or nine men.

They were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks, from ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they had taken their full share in the overnight loot.

The neat Continental tents had been cut up and shared long ago, and there were patent aluminium saucepans abroad.
But they considered the lama's presence a perfect safeguard against all consequences, and impenitently brought Kim of their best--even to a drink of chang--the barley-beer that comes from Ladakh-way.

Then they thawed out in the sun, and sat with their legs hanging over infinite abysses, chattering, laughing, and smoking.

They judged India and its Government solely from their experience of wandering Sahibs who had employed them or their friends as shikarris.