Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

How am I so certain? Because I am Feroz Khan, the greatest marksman in the world — Feroz Khan on whom Allah has bestowed eyes keener than a hawk’s, hands steadier than the hills, and a judgment of the tricks of wind and light such as no other man possesses. Is it not said of me in the Furious Gomal that when my bullets miss, stones will fall upwards to the sky? And have I not just given proof of my skill by dropping a running gazelle at four hundred yards in a poor light? Not that I call that a difficult shot!

The Sahib asks me what I would call a difficult shot? To drop a hawk on the wing with a single bullet or to knock the tail off a darting lizard is not easy, even for an Afridi sniper. Has the Sahib ever tried to shoot a moth at twenty yards, or to drill a particular blade of corn in the centre of a field when the wind is blowing from the east?

One day I will do those tricks for the Sahib’s pleasure. Not this day because I have a sore eye and my hands are shaking by reason of the fever I had last night, and were I to fail the Sahib would laugh at me and say I was merely a boaster. Some day when I am feeling well I will do them, and the Sahib will see for himself that I am no liar.

The best shot I have ever made? It puzzles me to answer that question. When all are perfect how can one make a choice?

Thinking back, I remember one occasion, Sahib. I will tell you about it while we make a detour to the gazelle’s body.

Usually a shot is fired to slay an enemy, is it not? But in the case of the shot of which I am thinking that was not so. I had to fire to save life and not to kill. My skill was the test of the innocence of a man wrongfully accused.

He was my friend, my “bhai-band” — blood-brother. Abdul Hakim was his name. We were of the same age and we lived in the same village. I speak of some years back when my skill with a rifle was not as great as it is now.

Even then I wasted fewer bullets than any other Afridi sniper in the Gomal, and as the Sahib is aware, bullets to us are more precious than rubies. I had a Government rifle, a Springfield of the latest pattern, which I had chanced to find lying on the “maidan” — the plain — where an American regiment had camped. Yes, Sahib, “found” was the word I said... I picked it up from the sand where some tired soldier had dropped it, and I kept it for myself.

Second only to Abdul Hakim, my blood-brother, I loved that rifle. Day and night it never left my hand. If I put it down for a moment I felt as if I were naked. It became, as it were, part of my own body. To lift it to my shoulder and take aim was as easy as crooking my finger.

I passed hours in polishing it and cleaning it and handling it. I had found a large quantity of ammunition at the same spot I had found the rifle, and I used it without stint for practice — always at targets that other men vowed were impossible to hit. When I missed, I tried again and again until the bullet found its mark. That is the way to learn to shoot.

Then it chanced there was a theft in the village. An old woman was robbed. A pot of money was taken from her hut while she slept, and she made complaint to Nir Din, who was then the chief. In our Afridi villages theft is a graver matter than it is under the law of the Pakistan Government. It is held to be a worse offense than killing, and the penalty is death by strangulation.

Nir Din was a wise and just man. He sent every man, woman, and child outside the village, only himself and a few of the leading men remaining. They made a search. Suspicion had already fallen on my blood-brother, and his was one of the first huts they visited. The earth beneath his bed had been disturbed recently, so they dug there and found the pot with a little of the money still remaining.

Black evidence against Abdul Hakim, was it not, Sahib? Too black, for had he really been the thief he would never have left the money where it could so easily be found. Besides, P knew for a certainty that he was innocent. On the night, and at the time the money had been taken, he had been with me in the hills shooting leopard. But I was the only man who could prove he had been there.

To me, and to Abdul Hakim himself, the matter was clear. He had an enemy, a lying dog called Shere Makmud. There had been a quarrel about a woman. Both Shere Makmud and my blood-brother had desired her. She had favored Abdul Hakim, and this trick was Shere Makmud’s revenge.

He was the son of evil, that Shere Makmud! Pock-marked and as ugly as a camel, a coward in a fight and a disgrace to the Afridi clan. Yet he had great cunning and a tongue that could babble like a stream when the snows are melting. Even I, who knew that he was speaking lies, could hardly disbelieve him when he swore he had seen Abdul Hakim stealing away from the old woman’s hut that night.