“Hunt them! Hunt them!” the officer shouted as Leonard fell. He drew a pistol from his saddle holster and rode towards the officers’ tents. His men were screaming their war cries as they spread through the small fort to chase down every last sepoy of Chasalgaon’s garrison. They had been ordered to leave the women and children to the last and hunt down the men first.
Crosby had been staring in horror and disbelief, and now, with shaking hands, he started to load one of his pistols, but suddenly the door of his tent darkened and he saw that the tall officer had dismounted from his horse.
“Are you Crosby?” the officer demanded.
Crosby found he could not speak. His hands quivered. Sweat was pouring down his face.
“Are you Crosby?” the man asked again in an irritated voice.
“Yes,” Crosby managed to say.
“And who the devil are you?”
“Dodd,” the tall man said, “Major William Dodd, at your service.” And Dodd raised his big pistol so that it pointed at Crosby’s face.
“No!” Crosby shouted.
Dodd smiled.
“I assume you’re surrendering the fort to me, Crosby?”
“Damn you,” Crosby riposted feebly.
“You drink too much, Major,” Dodd said.
“The whole Company knows you’re a sot. Didn’t put up much of a fight, did you?” He pulled the trigger and Crosby’s head was snatched back in a mist of blood that spattered onto the canvas.
“Pity you’re English,” Dodd said.
“I’d much rather shoot a Scotsman.” The dying Major made a terrible gurgling sound, then his body jerked uncontrollably and was finally still.
“Praise the Lord, pull down the flag and find the pay chest,” Dodd said to himself, then he stepped over the Major’s corpse to see that the pay chest was where he expected it to be, under the bed.
“SubadaA’ “Sahib?”
“Two men here to guard the pay chest.”
“Sahibr Major Dodd hurried back onto the parade ground where a small group of redcoats, British redcoats, were offering defiance, and he wanted to make sure that his sepoys took care of them, but a havildar had anticipated Dodd’s orders and was leading a squad of men against the half-dozen soldiers.
“Put the blades in!” Dodd encouraged them.
“Hard in!
Twist them in! That’s the way! Watch your left! Left!” His voice was urgent for a tall sergeant had suddenly appeared from behind the cook house a white man with a musket and bayonet in his hands, but one of the sepoys still had a loaded musket of his own and he twisted, aimed and fired and Dodd saw another mist of bright blood sparkle in the sunlight. The sergeant had been hit in the head. He stopped, looked surprised as the musket fell from his hands and as blood streamed down his face, then he fell backwards and was still.
“Search for the rest of the bastards!” Dodd ordered, knowing that there must still be a score of the garrison hidden in the barracks. Some of the men had escaped over the thorn wall, but they would be hunted down by the Mahratta horsemen who were Dodd’s allies and who should by now have spread either side of the fort.
“Search hard!” He himself went to look at the horses of the garrison’s officers and decided that one of them was marginally better than his own. He moved his saddle to the better horse, then led it into the sunlight and picketed it to the flagpole. A woman ran past him, screaming as she fled from the red-coated killers, but a sepoy caught and tripped her and another pulled the said off her shoulder. Dodd was about to order them away from the woman, then he reckoned that the enemy was well beaten and so his men could take their pleasure in safety.
“Subadar?” he shouted.
“Sahib?”
“One squad to make sure everyone’s dead. Another to open the armoury. And there are a couple of horses in the stable. Pick one for yourself, and we’ll take the other back to Pohlmann. And well done, Gopal.”
“Thank you, sahib,” Subadar Gopal said.
Dodd wiped the blood from his sword, then reloaded his pistol. One of the fallen redcoats was trying to turn himself over, so Dodd crossed to the wounded man, watched his feeble efforts for a moment, then put a bullet into the man’s head. The man jerked in spasm, then was still.