A gun , sayest thou ? Ten good years in jail . ' ` Then they both lay still , but I think they were nearly dead when they were put on the te-train . Their heads moved thus . And there is much blood on the line . Come and see ? ' ' I have seen blood before . Jail is the sure place -- and assuredly they will give false names , and assuredly no man will find them for a long time . They were unfriends of mine . Thy fate and mine seem on one string . What a tale for the healer of pearls ! Now swiftly with the saddle-bags and the cooking-platter . We will take out the horses and away to Simla . ' Swiftly -- as Orientals understand speed -- with long explanations , with abuse and windy talk , carelessly , amid a hundred checks for little things forgotten , the untidy camp broke up and led the half-dozen stiff and fretful horses along the Kalka road in the fresh of the rain-swept dawn . Kim , regarded as Mahbub Ali 's favourite by all who wished to stand well with the Pathan , was not called upon to work . They strolled on by the easiest of stages , halting every few hours at a wayside shelter . Very many Sahibs travel along the Kalka road ; and , as Mahbub Ali says , every young Sahib must needs esteem himself a judge of a horse , and , though he be over head in debt to the money-lender , must make as if to buy . That was the reason that Sahib after Sahib , rolling along in a stage-carriage , would stop and open talk . Some would even descend from their vehicles and feel the horses ' legs ; asking inane questions , or , through sheer ignorance of the vernacular , grossly insulting the imperturbable trader . ` When first I dealt with Sahibs , and that was when Colonel Soady Sahib was Governor of Fort Abazai and flooded the Commissioner 's camping-ground for spite , ' Mahbub confided to Kim as the boy filled his pipe under a tree , ' I did not know how greatly they were fools , and this made me wroth .
As thus -- , ' and he told Kim a tale of an expression , misused in all innocence , that doubled XXXXX up with mirth .
Kim Orientals Sahib Sahibs hours saddle-bags stage-carriage unfriends wroth years