Wearing British clothes as a second-generation aristocrat

27. Attacked on a street corner

After the three-point agreement with the maintenance committee was finalized, various tasks were quickly implemented and promoted.

Prasad, Rajesh, and Agarwal dared not slacken their efforts in the slightest.

To demonstrate his loyalty and to dispel Dugan's doubts, Prasad offered to have his son Megawa stay with Dugan as a translator.

After all, Dugan did not speak the local language, while Megawa was fluent in English and Hindi. He could not only help with communication, but was also essentially a hostage placed by Prasad with Dugan to prove that the maintenance council had no ulterior motives.

Megawa was about twenty years old, handsome, well-educated, and calm. Although he was dissatisfied with the British occupation, he dared not disobey his father's wishes, much less challenge Dugan's authority.

Dressed in a neat cotton robe, he respectfully followed Dugen every day, conveying the villagers' demands tactfully, and being careful in his words and actions, for fear of making a mistake that would implicate his family.

Dugan was fully aware of this, but did not point it out. He accepted Megawa as a "translator and hostage," which facilitated communication and also gave him leverage over Prasad.

At the same time, the various responsibilities of the maintenance committee were gradually rolled out:

Agarwal spearheaded the creation of a tax list and, along with members of the joint defense team, went door-to-door collecting taxes. Although some villagers secretly resisted, they dared not openly defy him.

Rajesh was busy selecting able-bodied young men to form a joint defense team. In just three days, he gathered more than two hundred villagers and handed them over to Lieutenant Joffrey to begin basic training.

Prasad moved between various temporary settlements and safe villages under construction, trying to calm the villagers and convey Dugan's rules, but he also repeatedly encountered the villagers' subtle hostility, who called him a lackey of the British behind his back.

Initially, neither the villagers in the town nor the relocated residents took Dugen's strict rules seriously.

In their view, the British army has always been untrustworthy, and those warnings of "hanging criminal soldiers" and "implicating them to death" are nothing more than a means of intimidation.

Many villagers still clung to a sliver of hope, constantly plotting to secretly collude with the Maratha guerrillas in the mountains to relay information about the British army's deployments.

Some British soldiers also disregarded Duggan's ban, secretly oppressing the villagers and extorting money. Two of them even broke into a villager's home at night and raped a young woman.

The incident was quickly discovered by patrolling soldiers and reported to Dugan.

Upon learning of this, Dugan did not hesitate and immediately ordered the two British soldiers to be arrested and taken to the central square of Omarachi. He then summoned all the villagers, members of the maintenance committee, and British soldiers to the scene and publicly announced the two men's crimes.

In the square, the gallows were quickly erected. Two British soldiers, pale with fright, knelt down and begged for mercy, claiming that they had acted foolishly and pleading with Dugan to be lenient.

Dugan stood on the high platform and said coldly, "Everyone is equal before the law, whether it's my soldiers or you..." Dugan looked down and swept his riding whip across the Indians below the platform.

"Sir, we are British, we are our compatriots, why are you protecting these natives?" A soldier, with a noose around his neck, was still making a last-ditch effort.

Dugan ignored him completely, and with a wave of his hand, the soldiers immediately took action, sending the two soldiers to the gallows and kicking away the ammunition boxes that were placed under their feet.

As the rope tightened, the screams of the two gradually faded. Their tongues lolled out, their eyes bulged out, and finally, they breathed their last. Their deaths were gruesome.

The entire area was deathly silent; the villagers were too frightened to even breathe.

Prasad, Rajesh, and Agarwal had to admire Dugan's boldness.

They never expected that this young British major would actually dare to hang his own soldiers in public. Their previous sense of luck was instantly replaced by deep fear.

The British soldiers also took it seriously, knowing that their superiors were not joking, and secretly became vigilant, no longer daring to easily violate the order.

This incident solidified Dugan's authority.

The villagers no longer dared to disregard his rules, and began to behave themselves and actively cooperate with the maintenance committee's tax collection and resettlement work.

The British soldiers also strictly adhered to discipline and dared not oppress the villagers again. The order in and around Omarachi gradually stabilized.

The construction of the safe village has also accelerated significantly. Watchtowers, fences, and moats have been completed one after another. Villagers have been resettled in the safe village in batches, and the distribution and verification of identity tags are also proceeding in an orderly manner.

A few days later, at dawn, Dugan, along with Megawa, Tom, Joffrey, five British soldiers, and ten members of the garrison, went to inspect the town of Omarazi.

On the one hand, it was to check the implementation of the maintenance committee's work and to inspect the resettlement of villagers and the defense deployment of the safe village.

On the other hand, it was also to investigate the guerrillas hiding in the town and prevent them from carrying out sabotage in secret.

On the street, the villagers walked cautiously, bowing and giving way to Dugen and his group, their eyes filled with awe.

The members of the maintenance committee, along with members of the joint defense team, patrolled the streets, carefully checking suspicious individuals. They were not equipped with firearms, but rather carried large wooden sticks or Indian machetes.

British soldiers were stationed at various intersections, checking the identity cards of passing villagers; everything was proceeding according to Dugan's plan.

As Dugan walked, he listened to Megawa relay the work report of the maintenance committee. Occasionally, he would stop and kick the newly built fence a few times to check if there was any shoddy workmanship.

When the group reached the entrance of a secluded alley in the west of the town, Dugen suddenly stopped and looked into the alley.

Deep in the alley, two figures lurked furtively in a corner, peeking out from time to time to observe the activity on the street, standing out from the villagers around them who were only focused on walking with their heads down.

One of them was tall with dark skin and a thick mustache, while the other was tall and thin, but agile and seemed to be hiding something in his hand.

"You!" Dugan roared, shattering the alley's tranquility. "Come out! Show me your identification badges!"

Megawa immediately shouted it out in Hindi as well.

The two people in the alley froze upon hearing the shout, a flicker of panic in their eyes, and they turned and ran.

"Halt!" Joffrey immediately led his soldiers in pursuit.

Suddenly, the tall, thin man pulled a dagger from his waist and turned to throw it at Joffrey.

Lieutenant Joffrey dodged the dagger, but a British soldier next to him was not so lucky; the dagger pierced his shoulder.

"Protect the Major!" Tom shouted, immediately standing in front of Dugan. Other British soldiers and members of the garrison also reacted quickly, surrounding Dugan in the middle.

Bang

Lieutenant Joffrey fired at the tall, thin man.

The bullet struck the tall, thin man precisely in the chest. He groaned, his body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.

Just as several other British soldiers were about to fire at the man with the mustache, Duggan shouted, "Take him alive!"

As a result, the man with the mustache was surrounded and attacked by British soldiers and Indian garrison members.

He was tall and incredibly strong, wielding his short knife with tremendous force.

"Fuck!" Lieutenant Joffrey, enraged at the sight, strode forward and fired again at the man with the mustache's shoulder.

Bang

The man with the eight-character mustache screamed as his shoulder was pierced by an arrow. He staggered, and the dagger in his hand slipped from his grasp.

A British soldier seized the opportunity to rush forward and smashed him to the ground with a rifle butt. Several other Indian garrison members immediately stepped forward, held his hands and feet down, and subdued him.

The wounded British soldier was helped aside by his comrades, and Joffrey immediately had a medic brought to bandage his wounds.

Dugan pushed aside the people surrounding him, walked up to the man with the mustache, and looked down at him. "Speak! Who are you? Why are you hiding here?"

The man with the mustache lay on the ground, blood streaming from his shoulder, yet his eyes remained fierce as he stared intently at Dugan, speaking in Hindi that Dugan couldn't understand.

Megawa quickly stepped forward and translated the man with the mustache's words into English, whispering to Dugan, "Major, it's all swearing. He's cursing you and saying he'll never yield to you."

Dugan sneered and said to Lieutenant Joffrey, "Lieutenant, do you have a way to get him to confess?"

Joffrey grinned maliciously and said, "Sir, don't worry, I guarantee that it won't be long before he honestly tells you which hand he used to poison himself."

Dugan nodded and said to Megawa, "Megawa, as you can see, the guerrillas have entered the village, and your maintenance committee knew nothing about it, nor did any of the villagers report it. Now, I've been attacked in the street, and a British soldier has been wounded..."

Megawa began to realize the hidden meaning in Major Dugan's words.

Dugan said, "Have everyone gather in the town center."