Accordingly I sat down, with Sanders and the Sarhad-dar on either side, whilst the cavalry accompanying us dismounted and remained behind the tree. The infantry-escort formed up on our right.
Murad, who appeared greatly distressed, came forward and told me that all the bhusa he had collected for us had been burned down, thus confirming the report I had already received.
"Who did it?" I thundered. "Can you produce the man who dared to burn my property?"
To my great surprise Murad said he could. He had captured the man, a Yarmahommedzai.
Scarcely had the man been brought forward when, from every quarter, appeared men armed with rifles. A moment before the place, excepting for ourselves, had been empty. These men seemed to have sprung out of the ground, but must, actually, have been concealed in the adjoining fields. In an instant I could tell that they were picked men of Jiand's lashkar. There must have been between one hundred and fifty and two hundred of them. They came forward and squatted down in a circle close in front of us; Jiand, and his kinsman and evil genius, a man named Nur-Mahommed, placing themselves well in the foreground.
In a flash I realised the tactical error I had made in leaving the main force three-quarters of a mile away, and before I had made certain that Jiand's men had not occupied Karsimabad. These men held their magazine rifles, which were always loaded, across their knees. From where we sat, I now realised, and too late, that I could not see, or signal to, my own small force, and that, except by a miracle, it would be equally ignorant of these proceedings. I glanced quickly behind me at the fifteen or sixteen cavalrymen I had brought, saw that they had dismounted and were holding their lances in their hands, whilst their rifles remained in the buckets on the off-sides of the horses. A bad position for getting at them when dismounted and at a moment's notice.
It was obvious that I had allowed myself to be caught in a trap. We all knew it, though not one man with me showed it by the quiver of an eyelid.
I turned to the man whom Murad had brought forward and placed before me as the burner of the stacks of straw.
"How dare you burn my bhusa? What reason had you for doing it, and who told you to do it?"