“Hukm hai! (It is an order),” said the camel with a gurgle; and Two Tails and the bullocks repeated, “Hukm hai!”
“Yes, but who gives the orders?” said the recruit-mule.
“The man who walks at your head—or sits on your back—or holds your nose-rope—or twists your tail,” said Billy and the troop-horse and the camel and the bullocks one after the other.
“But who gives them the orders?”
“Now you want to know too much, young’un,” said Billy, “and that is one way of getting kicked. All you have to do is to obey the man at your head and ask no questions.”
“He’s quite right,” said Two Tails. “I can’t always obey, because I’m betwixt and between; but Billy’s right. Obey the man next to you who gives the order, or you’ll stop all the battery, besides getting a thrashing.”
The gun-bullocks got up to go. “Morning is coming,” they said. “We will go back to our lines. It is true that we see only out of our eyes, and we are not very clever; but still, we are the only people tonight who have not been afraid. Good night, you brave people.”
Nobody answered, and the troop-horse said, to change the conversation, “Where’s that little dog? A dog means a man somewhere about.”
“Here I am,” yapped Vixen, “under the gun-tail with my man. You big, blundering beast of a camel, you, you upset our tent. My man’s very angry.”
“Phew!” said the bullocks. “He must be white!”
“Of course he is,” said Vixen. “Do you suppose I’m looked over by a black bullock-driver?”
“Huah! Ouach! Ugh!” said-the bullocks. “Let us get away quickly.”
They plunged forward in the mud, and managed somehow to run their yoke on the pole of an ammunition- wagon, where it jammed.
“Now you have done it,” said Billy calmly. “Don’t struggle. You’re hung up till daylight. What on earth’s the matter?”
The bullocks went off into the long, hissing snorts that Indian cattle give, and pushed and crowded and slued and stamped and slipped and nearly fell down in the mud, grunting savagely.
“You’ll break your necks in a minute,” said the troop-horse. “What’s the matter with white men? I live with ’em.”
“They—eat—us! Pull!” said the near bullock: the yoke snapped with a twang, and they lumbered off together.
I never knew before what made Indian cattle so scared of Englishmen. We eat beef—a thing that no cattle-driver touches—and of course the cattle do not like it.
“May I be flogged with my own pad-chains! Who’d have thought of two big lumps like those losing their heads?” said Billy.
“Never mind. I’m going to look at this man. Most of the white men, I know, have things in their pockets,” said the troop-horse.