But next minute the lightning showed the true facts, and he came and sat beside me with his back to the hail, grinning like an ape.
"That was a good thrust of mine!" he bellowed in my ear.

"But for me that Turk would have had your life!" When I had cursed his mother's ancestors for a dozen generations in some detail the truth dawned on him at last.

I took his weapon away from him while he bound a strip of cloth about my thigh, for I knew the thought had come into his thick skull to finish me off and so save explanation afterward.

I would gladly have let him go with nothing further said, for I knew the man's first intention had been honest enough, but did not dare do that because he would certainly suppose me to be meditating vengeance.

So I flew into a great rage with him, and drove him in front of me until we found a dead mule--whether killed by hail or bullet I don't know--and he and I lay between the mule's legs, snuggling under its belly, until the storm should cease and I could take him before Ranjoor Singh.
I did not know where the gold was, nor where anything or anybody was.