Читать книгу The Adventure MEGAPACK ® - Уильям Хоуп Ходжсон - Страница 4
ОглавлениеSON OF THE WHITE WOLF, by Robert E. Howard
CHAPTER I
THE BATTLE STANDARD
The commander of the Turkish outpost of El Ashrat was awakened before dawn by the stamp of horses and jingle of accoutrements. He sat up and shouted for his orderly. There was no response, so he rose, hurriedly jerked on his garments, and strode out of the mud hut that served as his headquarters. What he saw rendered him momentarily speechless.
His command was mounted, in full marching formation, drawn up near the railroad that it was their duty to guard. The plain to the left of the track where the tents of the troopers had stood now lay bare. The tents had been loaded on the baggage camels which stood fully packed and ready to move out. The commandant glared wildly, doubting his own senses, until his eyes rested on a flag borne by a trooper. The waving pennant did not display the familiar crescent. The commandant turned pale.
“What does this mean?” he shouted, striding forward. His lieutenant, Osman, glanced at him inscrutably. Osman was a tall man, hard and supple as steel, with a dark keen face.
“Mutiny, effendi,” he replied calmly. “We are sick of this war we fight for the Germans. We are sick of Djemal Pasha and those other fools of the Council of Unity and Progress, and, incidentally, of you. So we are going to the hills to build a tribe of our own.”
“Madness!” gasped the officer, tugging at his revolver. Even as he drew it, Osman shot him through the head.
The lieutenant sheathed the smoking pistol and turned to the troopers. The ranks were his to a man, won to his wild ambition under the very nose of the officer who now lay there with his brains oozing.
“Listen!” he commanded.
In the tense silence they all heard the low, deep reverberation in the west.
“British guns!” said Osman. “Battering the Turkish Empire to bits! The New Turks have failed. What Asia needs is not a new party, but a new race! There are thousands of fighting men between the Syrian coast and the Persian highlands, ready to be roused by a new word, a new prophet! The East is moving in her sleep. Ours is the duty is to awaken her!
“You have all sworn to follow me into the hills. Let us return to the ways of our pagan ancestors who worshipped the White Wolf on the steppes of High Asia before they bowed to the creed of Mohammed!
“We have reached the end of the Islamic Age. We abjure Allah as a superstition fostered by an epileptic Meccan camel driver. Our people have copied Arab ways too long. But we hundred men are Turks! We have burned the Koran. We bow not toward Mecca, nor swear by their false Prophet. And now follow me as we planned—to establish ourselves in a strong position in the hills and to seize Arab women for our wives.”
“Our sons will be half-Arab,” someone protested.
“A man is the son of his father,” retorted Osman. “We Turks have always looted the harims of the world for our women, but our sons are always Turks.
“Come! We have arms, horses, supplies. If we linger we shall be crushed with the rest of the army between the British on the coast and the Arabs the Englishman Lawrence is bringing up from the south. On to El Awad! The sword for the men—captivity for the women!”
His voice cracked like a whip as he snapped the orders that set the lines in motion. In perfect order they moved off through the lightening dawn toward the range of saw-edged hills in the distance. Behind them the air still vibrated with the distant rumble of the British artillery. Over them waved a banner that bore the head of a white wolf—the battle-standard of most ancient Turan.
CHAPTER II
MASSACRE
When Fräulein Olga von Bruckmann, known as a famous German secret agent, arrived at the tiny Arab hill-village of El Awad, it was in a drizzling rain, that made the dusk a blinding curtain over the muddy town.
With her companion, an Arab named Ahmed, she rode into the muddy street, and the villagers crept from their hovels to stare in awe at the first white woman most of them had ever seen.
A few words from Ahmed and the shaykh salaamed and showed her to the best mud hut in the village. The horses were led away to feed and shelter, and Ahmed paused long enough to whisper to his companion:
“El Awad is friendly to the Turks. Have no fear. I shall be near, in any event.”
“Try and get fresh horses,” she urged. “I must push on as soon as possible.”
“The shaykh swears there isn’t a horse in the village in fit condition to be ridden. He may be lying. But at any rate our own horses will be rested enough to go on by dawn. Even with fresh horses it would be useless to try to go any farther tonight. We’d lose our way among the hills, and in this region there’s always the risk of running into Lawrence’s Bedouin raiders.”
Olga knew that Ahmed knew she carried important secret documents from Baghdad to Damascus, and she knew from experience that she could trust his loyalty. Removing only her dripping cloak and riding boots, she stretched herself on the dingy blankets that served as a bed. She was worn out from the strain of the journey.
She was the first white woman ever to attempt to ride from Baghdad to Damascus. Only the protection accorded a trusted secret agent by the long arm of the German-Turkish government, and her guide’s zeal and craft, had brought her thus far in safety.
She fell asleep, thinking of the long weary miles still to be traveled, and even greater dangers, now that she had come into the region where the Arabs were fighting their Turkish masters. The Turks still held the country, that summer of 1917, but lightning-like raids flashed across the desert, blowing up trains, cutting tracks and butchering the inhabitants of isolated posts. Lawrence was leading the tribes northward, and with him was the mysterious American, El Borak, whose name was one to hush children.
She never knew how long she slept, but she awoke suddenly and sat up, in fright and bewilderment. The rain still beat on the roof, but there mingled with it shrieks of pain or fear, yells and the staccato crackling of rifles. She sprang up, lighted a candle and was just pulling on her boots when the door was hurled open violently.
Ahmed reeled in, his dark face livid, blood oozing through the fingers that clutched his breast.
“The village is attacked!” he cried chokingly. “Men in Turkish uniform! There must be some mistake! They know El Awad is friendly! I tried to tell their officer that we are friends, but he shot me! We must get away, quick!”
A shot cracked in the open door behind him and a jet of fire spurted from the blackness. Ahmed groaned and crumpled. Olga cried out in horror, staring wide-eyed at the figure who stood before her. A tall, wiry man in Turkish uniform blocked the door. He was handsome in a dark, hawk-like way, and he eyed her in a manner that brought the blood to her cheeks.
‘Why did you kill that man?” she demanded. “He was a trusted servant of your country.”
“I have no country,” he answered, moving toward her. Outside the firing was dying away and women’s voices were lifted piteously. “I go to build one, as my ancestor Osman did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she retorted. “But unless you provide me with an escort to the nearest post, I shall report you to your superiors, and—”
He laughed wildly at her. “I have no superiors, you little fool! I am an empire builder, I tell you! I have a hundred armed men at my disposal. I’ll build a new race in these hills.” His eyes blazed as he spoke.
“You’re mad!” she exclaimed.
“Mad? It’s you who are mad not to recognize the possibilities as I have! This war is bleeding the life out of Europe. When it’s over, no matter who wins, the nations will lie prostrate. Then it will be Asia’s turn!
“If Lawrence can build up an Arab army to fight for him, then certainly I, an Ottoman, can build up a kingdom among my own peoples! Thousands of Turkish soldiers have deserted to the British. They and more will desert again to me, when they hear that a Turk is building anew the empire of ancient Turan.”
“Do what you like,” she answered, believing he had been seized by the madness that often grips men in time of war when the world seems crumbling and any wild dream looks possible. “But at least don’t interfere with my mission. If you won’t give me an escort, I’ll go on alone.”
“You’ll go with me!” he retorted, looking down at her with hot admiration.
Olga was a handsome girl, tall, slender but supple, with a wealth of unruly golden hair. She was so completely feminine that no disguise would make her look like a man, not even the voluminous robes of an Arab, so she had attempted none. She trusted instead to Ahmed’s skill to bring her safely through the desert.
“Do you hear those screams? My men are supplying themselves with wives to bear soldiers for the new empire. Yours shall be the signal honor of being the first to go into Sultan Osman’s seraglio!”
“You do not dare!” She snatched a pistol from her blouse.
Before she could level it he wrenched it from her with brutal strength.
“Dare!” He laughed at her vain struggles. “What do I not dare? I tell you a new empire is being born tonight! Come with me! There’s no time for lovemaking now. Before dawn we must be on the march for Sulaiman’s Walls. The star of the White Wolf rises!”
CHAPTER III
THE CALL OF BLOOD
The sun was not long risen over the saw-edged mountains to the east, but already the heat was glazing the cloudless sky to the hue of white-hot steel. Along the dim road that split the immensity of the desert a single shape moved. The shape grew out of the heat-hazes of the south and resolved itself into a man on a camel.
The man was no Arab. His boots and khakis, as well as the rifle-butt jutting from beneath his knee, spoke of the West. But with his dark face and hard frame he did not look out of place, even in that fierce land. He was Francis Xavier Gordon, El Borak, whom men loved, feared or hated, according to their political complexion, from the Golden Horn to the headwaters of the Ganges.
He had ridden most of the night, but his iron frame had not yet approached the fringes of weariness. Another mile, and he sighted a yet dimmer trail straggling down from a range of hills to the east. Something was coming along this trail—a crawling something that left a broad dark smear on the hot flints.
Gordon swung his camel into the trail and a moment later bent over the man who lay there gasping stertorously. It was a young Arab, and the breast of his abba was soaked in blood.
“Yusef!” Gordon drew back the wet abba, glanced at the bared breast, then covered it again. Blood oozed steadily from a blue-rimmed bullet-hole. There was nothing he could do. Already the Arab’s eyes were glazing. Gordon stared up the trail, seeing neither horse nor camel anywhere. But the dark smear stained the stones as far as he could see.
“My God, man, how far have you crawled in this condition?”
“An hour—many hours—I do not know!” panted Yusef. “I fainted and fell from the saddle. When I came to I was lying in the trail and my horse was gone. But I knew you would be coming up from the south, so I crawled—crawled! Allah, how hard are thy stones!”
Gordon set a canteen to his lips and Yusef drank noisily, then clutched Gordon’s sleeve with clawing fingers.
“El Borak, I am dying and that is no great matter, but there is the matter of vengeance—not for me, ya sidi, but for innocent ones. You know I was on furlough to my village, El Awad. I am the only man of El Awad who fights for Arabia. The elders are friendly to the Turks. But last night the Turks burned El Awad! They marched in before midnight and the people welcomed them—while I hid in a shed.
“Then without warning they began slaying! The men of El Awad were unarmed and helpless. I slew one soldier myself. Then they shot me and I dragged myself away—found my horse and rode to tell the tale before I died. Ah, Allah, I have tasted of perdition this night!”
“Did you recognize their officer?” asked Gordon.
“I never saw him before. They called this leader of theirs Osman Pasha. Their flag bore the head of a white wolf. I saw it by the light of the burning huts. My people cried out in vain that they were friends.
“There was a German woman and a man of Hauran who came to El Awad from the east, just at nightfall. I think they were spies. The Turks shot him and took her captive. It was all blood and madness.”
“Mad indeed!” muttered Gordon. Yusef lifted himself on an elbow and groped for him, a desperate urgency in his weakening voice.
“El Borak, I fought well for the Emir Feisal, and for Lawrence effendi, and for you! I was at Yenbo, and Wejh, and Akaba. Never have I asked a reward! I ask now: justice and vengeance! Grant me this plea: Slay the Turkish dogs who butchered my people!”
Gordon did not hesitate.
“They shall die,” he answered.
Yusef smiled fiercely, gasped: “Allaho akbar!” then sank back dead.
Within the hour Gordon rode eastward. The vultures had already gathered in the sky with their grisly foreknowledge of death, then flapped sullenly away from the cairn of stones he had piled over the dead man, Yusef.
Gordon’s business in the north could wait. One reason for his dominance over the Orientals was the fact that in some ways his nature closely resembled theirs. He not only understood the cry for vengeance, but he sympathized with it. And he always kept his promise.
But he was puzzled. The destruction of a friendly village was not customary, even by the Turks, and certainly they would not ordinarily have mishandled their own spies. If they were deserters they were acting in an unusual manner, for most deserters made their way to Feisal. And what was that wolf’s head banner?
Gordon knew that certain fanatics in the New Turks party were trying to erase all signs of Arab culture from their civilization. This was an impossible task, since that civilization itself was based on Arabic culture; but he had heard that in Istambul the radicals even advocated abandoning Islam and reverting to the paganism of their ancestors. But he had never believed the tale.
The sun was sinking over the mountains of Edom when Gordon came to ruined El Awad, in a fold of the bare hills. For hours before he had marked its location by black dots dropping in the blue sky. That they did not rise again told him that the village was deserted except for the dead.
As he rode into the dusty street, several vultures flapped heavily away. The hot sun had dried the mud, curdled the red pools in the dust. He sat in his saddle a while, staring silently.
He was no stranger to the handiwork of the Turk. He had seen much of it in the long fighting up from Jeddah on the Red Sea. But even so, he felt sick. The bodies lay in the street, headless, disemboweled, hewn asunder—bodies of children, old women and men. A red mist floated before his eyes, so that for a moment the landscape seemed to swim in blood. The slayers were gone; but they had left a plain road for him to follow.
What the signs they had left did not show him, he guessed. The slayers had loaded their female captives on baggage camels, and had gone eastward, deeper into the hills. Why they were following that road he could not guess, but he knew where it led—to the long-abandoned Walls of Sulaiman, by way of the Well of Achmet.
Without hesitation he followed. He had not gone many miles before he passed more of their work—a baby, its brains oozing from its broken head. Some kidnapped woman had hidden her child in her robes until it had been wrenched from her and brained on the rocks, before her eyes.
The country became wilder as he went. He did not halt to eat, but munched dried dates from his pouch as he rode. He did not waste time worrying over the recklessness of his action—one lone American dogging the crimson trail of a Turkish raiding party.
He had no plan; his future actions would depend on the circumstances that arose. But he had taken the death-trail and he would not turn back while he lived. He was no more foolhardy than his grandfather who single-handed trailed an Apache war party for days through the Guadalupes and returned to the settlement on the Pecos with scalps hanging from his belt.
The sun had set and dusk was closing in when Gordon topped a ridge and looked down on the plain whereon stands the Well of Achmet with its straggling palm grove. To the right of that cluster stood the tents, horse lines and camel lines of a well-ordered force. To the left stood a hut used by travelers as a khan. The door was shut and a sentry stood before it. While he watched, a man came from the tents with a bowl of food which he handed in at the door.
Gordon could not see the occupant, but he believed it was the German girl of whom Yusef had spoken, though why they should imprison one of their own spies was one of the mysteries of this strange affair. He saw their flag, and could make out a splotch of white that must be the wolf’s head. He saw, too, the Arab women, thirty-five or forty of them herded into a pen improvised from bales and pack-saddles. They crouched together dumbly, dazed by their misfortunes.
He had hidden his camel below the ridge, on the western slope, and he lay concealed behind a clump of stunted bushes until night had fallen. Then he slipped down the slope, circling wide to avoid the mounted patrol, which rode leisurely about the camp. He lay prone behind a boulder till it had passed, then rose and stole toward the hut. Fires twinkled in the darkness beneath the palms, and he heard the wailing of the captive women.
The sentry before the door of the hut did not see the cat-footed shadow that glided up to the rear wall. As Gordon drew close he heard voices within. They spoke in Turkish.
One window was in the back wall. Strips of wood had been fastened over it, to serve as both pane and bars. Peering between them, Gordon saw a slender girl in a travel-worn riding habit standing before a dark-faced man in a Turkish uniform. There was no insignia to show what his rank had been. The Turk played with a riding whip and his eyes gleamed with cruelty in the light of a candle on a camp table.
“What do I care for the information you bring from Baghdad?” he was demanding. “Neither Turkey nor Germany means anything to me. But it seems you fail to realize your own position. It is mine to command, you to obey! You are my prisoner, my captive, my slave! It’s time you learned what that means. And the best teacher I know is the whip!”
He fairly spat the last word at her and she paled.
“You dare not subject me to this indignity!” she whispered weakly.
Gordon knew this man must be Osman Pasha. He drew his heavy automatic from its scabbard under his armpit and aimed at the Turk’s breast through the crack in the window. But even as his finger closed on the trigger he changed his mind. There was the sentry at the door, and a hundred other armed men, within hearing, whom the sound of a shot would bring on the run. He grasped the window bars and braced his legs.
“I see I must dispel your illusions,” muttered Osman, moving toward the girl who cowered back until the wall stopped her. Her face was white. She had dealt with many dangerous men in her hazardous career, and she was not easily frightened. But she had never met a man like Osman. His face was a terrifying mask of cruelty; the ferocity that gloats over the agony of a weaker thing shone in his eyes.
Suddenly he had her by the hair, dragging her to him, laughing at her scream of pain. Just then Gordon ripped the strips off the window. The snapping of the wood sounded loud as a gunshot and Osman wheeled, drawing his pistol, as Gordon came through the window.
The American lit on his feet, and leveled his automatic, checking Osman’s move. The Turk froze, his pistol lifted shoulder high, muzzle pointing at the roof. Outside the sentry called anxiously.
“Answer him!” grated Gordon below his breath. “Tell him everything is all right. And drop that gun!”
The pistol fell to the floor and the girl snatched it up.
“Come here, Fräulein!”
She ran to him, but in her haste she crossed the line of fire. In that fleeting moment when her body shielded his, Osman acted. He kicked the table and the candle toppled and went out, and simultaneously he dived for the floor. Gordon’s pistol roared deafeningly just as the hut was plunged into darkness. The next instant the door crashed inward and the sentry bulked against the starlight, to crumple as Gordon’s gun crashed again and yet again.
With a sweep of his arm, Gordon found the girl and drew her toward the window. He lifted her through as if she had been a child, and climbed through after her. He did not know whether his blind slug had struck Osman or not. The man was crouching silently in the darkness, but there was no time to strike a match and see whether he was living or dead. But as they ran across the shadowy plain, they heard Osman’s voice lifted in passion.
By the time they reached the crest of the ridge, the girl was winded. Only Gordon’s arm about her waist, half-dragging, half-carrying her, enabled her to make the last few yards of the steep incline. The plain below them was alive with torches and shouting men. Osman was yelling for them to run down the fugitive, and his voice came faintly to them on the ridge.
“Take them alive, curse you! Scatter and find them! It’s El Borak!” An instant later he was yelling, with an edge of panic in his voice: “Wait. Come back! Take cover and make ready to repel an attack! He may have a horde of Arabs with him!”
“He thinks first of his own desire, and only later of the safety of his men,” muttered Gordon. “I don’t think he’ll ever get very far. Come on.”
He led the way to the camel, helped the girl into the saddle, then leaped up himself. A word, a tap of the camel wand, and the beast ambled silently off down the slope.
“I know Osman caught you at El Awad,” said Gordon. “But what’s he up to? What’s his game?”
“He was a lieutenant stationed at El Ashraf,” she answered. “He persuaded his company to mutiny, kill their commander, and desert. He plans to fortify the Walls of Sulaiman, and build a new empire. I thought at first he was mad, but he isn’t. He’s a devil.”
“The Walls of Sulaiman?” Gordon checked his mount and sat for a moment motionless in the starlight.
“Are you game for an all-night ride?” he asked presently.
“Anywhere! As long as it is far away from Osman!” There was a hint of hysteria in her voice.
“I doubt if your escape will change his plans. He’ll probably lie about Achmet all night under arms expecting an attack. In the morning he will decide that I was alone, and pull out for the Walls.
“Well, I happen to know that an Arab force is there, waiting for an order from Lawrence to move on to Ageyli. Three hundred Juheina camel-riders, sworn to Feisal. Enough to eat Osman’s gang. Lawrence’s messenger should reach them some time between dawn and noon. There is a chance we can get there before the Juheina pull out. If we can, we’ll turn them on Osman and wipe him out, with his whole pack.
“It won’t upset Lawrence’s plans for the Juheina to get to Ageyli a day late, and Osman must be destroyed. He’s a mad dog running loose.”
“His ambition sounds mad,” she murmured. “But when he speaks of it, with his eyes blazing, it’s easy to believe he might even succeed.”
“You forget that crazier things have happened in the desert,” he answered, as he swung the camel eastward. “The world is being made over here, as well as in Europe. There’s no telling what damage this Osman might do, if left to himself. The Turkish Empire is falling to pieces, and new empires have risen out of the ruins of old ones.
“But if we can get to Sulaiman before the Juheina march, we’ll check him. If we find them gone, we’ll be in a pickle ourselves. It’s a gamble, our lives against his. Are you game?”
“Till the last card falls!” she retorted. His face was a blur in the starlight, but she sensed rather than saw his grim smile of approval.
The camel’s hoofs made no sound as they dropped down the slope and circled far wide of the Turkish camp. Like ghosts on a ghost-camel they moved across the plain under the stars. A faint breeze stirred the girl’s hair. Not until the fires were dim behind them and they were again climbing a hill-road, did she speak.
“I know you. You’re the American they call El Borak, the Swift. You came down from Afghanistan when the war began. You were with King Hussein even before Lawrence came over from Egypt. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s my status?” she asked. “Have you rescued me or captured me? Am I a prisoner?”
“Let us say companion, for the time being,” he suggested. “We’re up against a common enemy. No reason why we shouldn’t make common cause, is there?”
“None!” she agreed, and leaning her blond head against his hard shoulder, she went soundly to sleep.
A gaunt moon rose, pushing back the horizons, flooding craggy slopes and dusty plains with leprous silver. The vastness of the desert seemed to mock the tiny figures on their tiring camel, as they rode blindly on toward what Fate they could not guess.
CHAPTER IV
WOLVES OF THE DESERT
Olga awoke as dawn was breaking. She was cold and stiff, in spite of the cloak Gordon had wrapped about her, and she was hungry. They were riding through a dry gorge with rock-strewn slopes rising on either hand, and the camel’s gait had become a lurching walk. Gordon halted it, slid off without making it kneel, and took its rope.
“It’s about done, but the Walls aren’t far ahead. Plenty of water there—food, too, if the Juheina are still there. There are dates in that pouch.”
If he felt the strain of fatigue he did not show it as he strode along at the camel’s head. Olga rubbed her chill hands and wished for sunrise.
“The Well of Harith,” Gordon indicated a walled enclosure ahead of them. “The Turks built that wall, years ago, when the Walls of Sulaiman were an army post. Later they abandoned both positions.”
The wall, built of rocks and dried mud, was in good shape; and inside the enclosure there was a partly ruined hut. The well was shallow, with a mere trickle of water at the bottom.
“I’d better get off and walk too,” Olga suggested.
“These flints would cut your boots and feet to pieces. It’s not far now. Then the camel can rest all it needs.”
“And if the Juheina aren’t there—” She left the sentence unfinished.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe Osman won’t come up before the camel’s rested.”
“I believe he’ll make a forced march,” she said, not fearfully, but calmly stating an opinion. “His beasts are good. If he drives them hard, he can get here before midnight. Our camel won’t be rested enough to carry us by that time. And we couldn’t get away on foot, in this desert.”
He laughed, and respecting her courage, did not try to make light of their position.
“Well,” he said quietly, “let’s hope the Juheina are still there!”
If they were not, she and Gordon were caught in a trap of hostile, waterless desert, fanged with the long guns of predatory tribesmen.
Three miles further east the valley narrowed and the floor pitched upward, dotted by dry shrubs and boulders. Gordon pointed suddenly to a faint ribbon of smoke feathering up into the sky.
“Look! The Juheina are there!”
Olga gave a deep sigh of relief. Only then, did she realize how desperately she had been hoping for some such sign. She felt like shaking a triumphant fist at the rocky waste about her, as if at a sentient enemy, sullen and cheated of its prey.
Another mile and they topped a ridge and saw a large enclosure surrounding a cluster of wells. There were Arabs squatting about their tiny cooking fires. As the travelers came suddenly into view within a few hundred yards of them, the Bedouins sprang up, shouting. Gordon drew his breath suddenly between clenched teeth.
“They are not Juheina! They’re Rualla! Allies of the Turks!”
Too late to retreat. A hundred and fifty wild men were on their feet, glaring, rifles cocked.
Gordon did the next best thing and went leisurely toward them. To look at him one would have thought that he had expected to meet these men here, and anticipated nothing but a friendly greeting. Olga tried to imitate his tranquility, but she knew their lives hung on the crook of a trigger finger. These men were supposed to be her allies, but her recent experience made her distrust Orientals. The sight of these hundreds of wolfish faces filled her with sick dread.
They were hesitating, rifles lifted, nervous and uncertain as surprised wolves, then:
“Allah!” howled a tall, scarred warrior. “It is El Borak!”
Olga caught her breath as she saw the man’s finger quiver on his rifle-trigger. Only a racial urge to gloat over his victim kept him from shooting the American, then and there.
“El Borak!” The shout was a wave that swept the throng.
Ignoring the clamor, the menacing rifles, Gordon made the camel kneel and lifted Olga off. She tried, with fair success, to conceal her fear of the wild figures that crowded about them, but her flesh crawled at the blood-lust burning redly in each wolfish eye.
Gordon’s rifle was in its boot on the saddle, and his pistol was out of sight, under his shirt. He was careful not to reach for the rifle—a move which would have brought a hail of bullets—but having helped the girl down, he turned and faced the crowd casually, his hands empty. Running his glance over the fierce faces, he singled out a tall stately man in the rich garb of a shaykh, who was standing somewhat apart.
“You keep poor watch, Mitkhal ibn Ali,” said Gordon. “If I had been a raider your men would be lying in their blood by this time.”
Before the shaykh could answer, the man who had first recognized Gordon thrust himself violently forward, his face convulsed with hate.
“You expected to find friends here, El Borak!” he exulted. “But you come too late! Three hundred Juheina dogs rode north an hour before dawn! We saw them go, and came up after they had gone. Had they known of your coming, perhaps they would have stayed to welcome you!”
“It’s not to you I speak, Zangi Khan, you Kurdish dog,” retorted Gordon contemptuously, “but to the Rualla—honorable men and fair foes!”
Zangi Khan snarled like a wolf and threw up his rifle, but a lean Bedouin caught his arm.
“Wait!” he growled. “Let El Borak speak. His words are not wind.”
A rumble of approval came from the Arabs. Gordon had touched their fierce pride and vanity. That would not save his life, but they were willing to listen to him before they killed him.
“If you listen, he will trick you with cunning words!” shouted the angered Zangi Khan furiously. “Slay him now, before he can do us harm!”
“Is Zangi Khan shaykh of the Rualla that he gives his commands while Mitkhal stands silent?” asked Gordon with biting irony.
Mitkhal reacted to his taunt exactly as Gordon knew he would.
“Let El Borak speak!” he ordered. “I command here, Zangi Khan! Do not forget that.”
“I do not forget, ya sidi,” the Kurd assured him, but his eyes burned red at the rebuke. “I but spoke in zeal for your safety.”
Mitkhal gave him a slow, searching glance which told Gordon that there was no love lost between the two men. Zangi Khan’s reputation as a fighting man meant much to the younger warriors. Mitkhal was more fox than wolf, and he evidently feared the Kurd’s influence over his men. As an agent of the Turkish government Zangi’s authority was theoretically equal to Mitkhal’s. Actually this amounted to little, for Mitkhal’s tribesmen took orders from their shaykh only. But it put Zangi in a position to use his personal talents to gain an ascendancy—an ascendancy Mitkhal feared would relegate him to a minor position.
“Speak, El Borak,” ordered Mitkhal. “But speak swiftly. It may be,” he added, “Allah’s will that the moments of your life are few.”
“Death marches from the west,” said Gordon abruptly. “Last night a hundred Turkish deserters butchered the people of El Awad.”
“Wallah!” swore a tribesman. “El Awad was friendly to the Turks!”
“A lie!” cried Zangi Khan. “Or if true, the dogs of deserters slew the people to curry favor with Feisal.”
“When did men come to Feisal with the blood of children on their hands?” retorted Gordon. “They have foresworn Islam and worship the White Wolf. They carried off the young women and the old women, the men and the children they slew like dogs.”
A murmur of anger rose from the Arabs. The Bedouins had a rigid code of warfare, and they did not kill women or children. It was the unwritten law of the desert, old when Abraham came up out of Chaldea.
But Zangi Khan cried out in angry derision, blind to the resentful looks cast at him. He did not understand that particular phase of the Bedouins’ code, for his people had no such inhibition. Kurds in war killed women as well as men.
“What are the women of El Awad to us?” he sneered.
“Your heart I know already,” answered Gordon with icy contempt. “It is to the Rualla that I speak.”
“A trick!” howled the Kurd. “A lie to trick us!”
“It is no lie!” Olga stepped forward boldly. “Zangi Khan, you know that I am an agent of the German government. Osman Pasha, leader of these renegades, burned El Awad last night, as El Borak has said. Osman murdered Ahmed ibn Shalaan, my guide, among others. He is as much our enemy as he is an enemy of the British.”
She looked to Mitkhal for help, but the shaykh stood apart, like an actor watching a play in which he had not yet received his cue.
“What if it is the truth?” Zangi Khan snarled, muddled by his hate and fear of El Borak’s cunning. “What is El Awad to us?”
Gordon caught him up instantly.
“This Kurd asks what is the destruction of a friendly village! Doubtless, naught to him! But what does it mean to you, who have left your herds and families unguarded? If you let this pack of mad dogs range the land, how can you be sure of the safety of your wives and children?”
“What would you have, El Borak?” demanded a gray-bearded raider.
“Trap these Turks and destroy them. I’ll show you how.”
It was then that Zangi Khan lost his head completely.
“Heed him not!” he screamed. “Within the hour we must ride northward! The Turks will give us ten thousand British pounds for his head!”
Avarice burned briefly in the men’s eyes, to be dimmed by the reflection that the reward, offered for El Borak’s head, would be claimed by the shaykh and Zangi. They made no move and Mitkhal stood aside with an air of watching a contest that did not concern himself.
“Take his head!” screamed Zangi, sensing hostility at last, and thrown into a panic by it.
His demoralization was completed by Gordon’s taunting laugh.
“You seem to be the only one who wants my head, Zangi! Perhaps you can take it!”
Zangi howled incoherently, his eyes glaring red, then threw up his rifle, hip-high. Just as the muzzle came up, Gordon’s automatic crashed thunderously. He had drawn so swiftly not a man there had followed his motion. Zangi Khan reeled back under the impact of hot lead, toppled sideways and lay still.
In an instant, a hundred cocked rifles covered Gordon. Confused by varying emotions, the men hesitated for the fleeting instant it took Mitkhal to shout:
“Hold! Do not shoot!”
He strode forward with the air of a man ready to take the center of the stage at last, but he could not disguise the gleam of satisfaction in his shrewd eyes.
“No man here is kin to Zangi Khan,” he said offhandedly. There is no cause for blood feud. He had eaten the salt, but he attacked our prisoner, whom he thought unarmed.”
He held out his hand for the pistol, but Gordon did not surrender it.
“I’m not your prisoner,” said he. “I could kill you before your men could lift a finger. But I didn’t come here to fight you. I came asking aid to avenge the children and women of my enemies. I risk my life for your families. Are you dogs, to do less?”
The question hung in the air unanswered, but he had struck the right chord in their barbaric bosoms, that were always ready to respond to some wild deed of reckless chivalry. Their eyes glowed and they looked at their shaykh expectantly.
Mitkhal was a shrewd politician. The butchery at El Awad meant much less to him than it meant to his younger warriors. He had associated with so-called civilized men long enough to lose much of his primitive integrity. But he always followed the side of public opinion, and was shrewd enough to lead a movement he could not check. Yet, he was not to be stampeded into a hazardous adventure.
“These Turks may be too strong for us,” he objected.
“I’ll show you how to destroy them with little risk,” answered Gordon. “But there must be covenants between us, Mitkhal.”
“These Turks must be destroyed,” said Mitkhal, and he spoke sincerely there, at least. “But there are too many blood feuds between us, El Borak, for us to let you get out of our hands.”
Gordon laughed.
“You can’t whip the Turks without my help, and you know it. Ask your young men what they desire!”
“Let El Borak lead us!” shouted a young warrior instantly. A murmur of approval paid tribute to Gordon’s widespread reputation as a strategist.
“Very well!” Mitkhal took the tide. “Let there be truce between us—with conditions! Lead us against the Turks. If you win, you and the woman shall go free. If we lose, we take your head!”
Gordon nodded, and the warriors yelled in glee. It was just the sort of a bargain that appealed to their minds, and Gordon knew it was the best he could make.
“Bring bread and salt!” ordered Mitkhal, and a giant black slave moved to do his bidding. “Until the battle is lost or won there is truce between us, and no Rualla shall harm you, unless you spill Rualla blood.”
Then he thought of something else and his brow darkened as he thundered:
“Where is the man who watched from the ridge?”
A terrified youth was pushed forward. He was a member of a small tribe tributary to the more important Rualla.
“Oh, shaykh,” he faltered, “I was hungry and stole away to a fire for meat—”
“Dog!” Mitkhal struck him in the face. “Death is thy portion for failing in thy duty.”
“Wait!” Gordon interposed. “Would you question the will of Allah? If the boy had not deserted his post he would have seen us coming up the valley, and your men would have fired on us and killed us. Then you would not have been warned of the Turks, and would have fallen prey to them before discovering they were enemies. Let him go and give thanks to Allah, Who sees all!”
It was the sort of sophistry that appeals to the Arab mind. Even Mitkhal was impressed.
“Who knows the mind of Allah?” he conceded. “Live, Musa, but next time perform the will of Allah with a vigilance and a mind to orders. And now, El Borak, let us discuss battle-plans while food is prepared.”
CHAPTER V
TREACHERY
It was not yet noon when Gordon halted the Rualla beside the Well of Harith. Scouts sent westward reported no sign of the Turks, and the Arabs went forward with the plans made before leaving the Walls—plans outlined by Gordon and agreed to by Mitkhal. First the tribesmen began gathering rocks and hurling them into the well.
“The water’s still beneath,” Gordon remarked to Olga, “but it’ll take hours of hard work to clean out the well so that anybody can get to it. The Turks can’t do it under our rifles. If we win, we’ll clean it out ourselves, so the next travelers won’t suffer.”
“Why not take refuge in the sangar ourselves?” she asked.
“Too much of a trap. That’s what we’re using it for. We’d have no chance with them in open fight, and if we laid an ambush out in the valley, they’d simply fight their way through us. But when a man’s shot at in the open, his first instinct is to make for the nearest cover. So I’m hoping to trick them into going into the sangar. Then we’ll bottle them up and pick them off at our leisure. Without water they can’t hold out long. We shouldn’t lose a dozen men, if any.”
“It seems strange to see you solicitous about the lives of these Rualla, who are your enemies, after all,” she laughed.
“Instinct, maybe. No man fit to lead wants to lose any more of them then he can help. Just now these men are my allies, and it’s up to me to protect them as well as I can. I’ll admit I’d rather be fighting with the Juheina. Feisal’s messenger must have started for the Walls hours before I supposed he would.”
“And if the Turks surrender, what then?”
“I’ll try to get them to Lawrence—all but Osman Pasha.” Gordon’s face darkened. “That man hangs if he falls into my hands.”
“How will you get them to Lawrence? The Rualla won’t take them.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. But let’s catch our hare before we start broiling him. Osman may whip the daylights out of us.”
“It means your head if he does,” she warned, with a shudder.
“Well, it’s worth ten thousand pounds to the Turks,” he laughed, and moved to inspect the partly ruined hut. Olga followed him.
Mitkhal, directing the blocking of the well, glanced sharply at them, then noted that a number of men were between them and the gate, and turned back to his overseeing.
“Hsss, El Borak!” It was a tense whisper, just as Gordon and Olga turned to leave the hut. An instant later they located a tousled head thrust up from behind a heap of rubble. It was the boy Musa, who obviously had slipped into the hut through a crevice in the back wall.
“Watch from the door and warn me if you see anybody coming,” Gordon muttered to Olga. “This lad may have something to tell.”
“I have, effendi!” The boy was trembling with excitement. “I overheard the shaykh talking secretly to his black slave, Hassan. I saw them walk away among the palms while you and the woman were eating, at the Walls, and I crept after them, for I feared they meant you mischief—and you saved my life.”
“El Borak, listen! Mitkal means to slay you, whether you win this battle for him or not! He was glad you slew the Kurd, and he is glad to have your aid in wiping out these Turks. But he lusts for the gold the other Turks will pay for your head. Yet he dares not break his word and the covenant of the salt openly. So, if we win the battle, Hassan is to shoot you, and swear you fell by a Turkish bullet!”
The boy rushed on with his story:
“Then Mitkhal will say to the people: ‘El Borak was our guest and ate our salt. But now he is dead, through no fault of ours, and there is no use wasting the reward. So, we will take off his head and take it to Damascus, and the Turks will give us ten thousand pounds.’”
Gordon smiled grimly at Olga’s horror. That was typical Arab logic.
“It didn’t occur to Mitkhal that Hassan might miss his first shot and not get a chance to shoot again, I suppose?” he suggested.
“Oh, yes, effendi, Mitkhal thinks of everything. If you kill Hassan, Mitkhal will swear you broke the covenant yourself, by spilling the blood of a Rualla, or a Rualla’s servant, which is the same thing, and will feel free to order you beheaded.”
There was genuine humor in Gordon’s laugh.
“Thanks, Musa! If I saved your life, you’ve paid me back. Better get out now, before somebody sees you talking to us.”
“What shall we do?” exclaimed Olga, pale to the lips.
“You’re in no danger,” he assured her.
She colored angrily.
“I wasn’t thinking of that! Do you think I have less gratitude than that Arab boy? That shaykh means to murder you, don’t you understand? Let’s steal camels, and run for it!”
“Run where? If we did, they’d be on our heels in no time, deciding I’d lied to them about everything. Anyway, we wouldn’t have a chance. They’re watching us too closely. Besides, I wouldn’t run if could. I started to wipe out Osman Pasha, and this is the best chance I see to do it. Come on. Let’s get out in the sangar before Mitkhal gets suspicious.”
As soon as the well was blocked the men retired to the hillsides. Their camels were hidden behind the ridges, and the men crouched behind rocks and among the stunted shrubs along the slopes. Olga refused Gordon’s offer to send her with an escort back to the Walls, and stayed with him taking up a position behind a rock, Osman’s pistol in her belt. They lay flat on the ground and the heat of the sun-baked flints seeped through their garments.
Once she turned her head, and shuddered to see the blank black countenance of Hassan regarding them from some bushes a few yards behind them. The black slave, who knew no law but his master’s command, was determined not to let Gordon out of his sight.
She spoke of this in a low whisper to the American.
“Sure,” he murmured. “I saw him. But he won’t shoot till he knows which way the fight’s going, and is sure none of the men are looking.”
Olga’s flesh crawled in anticipation of more horrors. If they lost the fight the enraged Ruallas would tear Gordon to pieces, supposing he survived the encounter. If they won, his reward would be a treacherous bullet in the back.
The hours dragged slowly by. Not a flutter of cloth, no lifting of an impatient head betrayed the presence of the wild men on the slopes. Olga began to feel her nerves quiver. Doubts and forebodings gnawed maddeningly at her.
“We took position too soon! The men will lose patience. Osman can’t get here before midnight. It took us all night to reach the Well.”
“Bedouins never lose patience when they smell loot,” he answered. “I believe Osman will get here before sundown. We made poor time on a tiring camel for the last few hours of that ride. I believe Osman broke camp before dawn and pushed hard.”
Another thought came to torture her.
“Suppose he doesn’t come at all? Suppose he has changed his plans and gone somewhere else? The Rualla will believe you lied to them!”
“Look!”
The sun hung low in the west, a fiery, dazzling ball. She blinked, shading her eyes.
Then the head of a marching column grew out of the dancing heat waves: lines of horsemen, grey with dust, files of heavily laden baggage camels, with the captive women riding them. The standard hung loose in the breathless air; but once, when a vagrant gust of wind, hot as the breath of perdition, lifted the folds, the white wolf’s head was displayed.
Crushing proof of idolatry and heresy! In their agitation, the Rualla almost betrayed themselves. Even Mitkhal turned pale.
“Allah! Sacrilege! Forgotten of God. Hell shall be thy portion!”
“Easy!” hissed Gordon, feeling the semi-hysteria that ran down the lurking lines. “Wait for my signal. They may halt to water their camels at the Well.”
Osman must have driven his people like a fiend all day. The women drooped on the loaded camels; the dust-caked faces of the soldiers were drawn. The horses reeled with weariness. But it was soon evident that they did not intend halting at the Well with their goal, the Walls of Sulaiman, so near. The head of the column was even with the sangar when Gordon fired. He was aiming at Osman, but the range was long, the sun glare on the rocks dazzling. The man behind Osman fell, and at the signal the slopes came alive with spurting flame.
The column staggered. Horses and men went down and stunned soldiers gave back a ragged fire that did no harm. They did not even see their assailants save as bits of white cloth bobbing among the boulders.
Perhaps discipline had grown lax during the grind of that merciless march. Perhaps panic seized the tired Turks. At any rate, the column broke and men fled toward the sangar without waiting for orders. They would have abandoned the baggage camels had not Osman ridden among them. Cursing and striking with the flat of his saber, he made them drive the beasts in with them.
“I hoped they’d leave the camels and women outside,” grunted Gordon. “Maybe they’ll drive them out when they find there’s no water.”
The Turks took their positions in good order, dismounting and ranging along the wall. Some dragged the Arab women off the camels and drove them into the hut. Others improvised a pen for the animals with stakes and ropes between the back of the hut and the wall. Saddles were piled in the gate to complete the barricade.
The Arabs yelled taunts as they poured in a hail of lead, and a few leaped up and danced derisively, waving their rifles. But they stopped that when a Turk drilled one of them cleanly through the head. When the demonstrations ceased, the besiegers offered scanty targets to shoot at.
However, the Turks fired back frugally and with no indication of panic, now that they were under cover and fighting the sort of a fight they understood. They were well protected by the wall from the men directly in front of them, but those facing north could be seen by the men on the south ridge, and vice versa. But the distance was too great for consistently effective shooting at these marks by the Arabs.
“We don’t seem to be doing much damage,” remarked Olga presently.
“Thirst will win for us,” Gordon answered. “All we’ve got to do is to keep them bottled up. They probably have enough water in their canteens to last through the rest of the day. Certainly no longer. Look, they’re going to the well now.”
The well stood in the middle of the enclosure, in a comparatively exposed area, as seen from above. Olga saw men approaching it with canteens in their hands, and the Arabs, with sardonic enjoyment, refrained from firing at them. They reached the well, and then the girl saw the change that came over them. It ran through their band like an electric shock. The men along the walls reacted by firing wildly. A furious yelling rose, edged with hysteria, and men began to run madly about the enclosure. Some toppled, hit by shots dropping from the ridges.
“What are they doing?” Olga started to her knees, and was instantly jerked down again by Gordon. The Turks were running into the hut. If she had been watching Gordon she would have sensed the meaning of it, for his dark face grew suddenly grim.
“They’re dragging the women out!” she exclaimed. “I see Osman waving his saber. What? Oh, God! They’re butchering the women!”
Above the crackle of shots rose terrible shrieks and the sickening chack of savagely driven blows. Olga turned sick and hid her face. Osman had realized the trap into which he had been driven, and his reaction was that of a mad dog. Recognizing defeat in the blocked well, facing the ruin of his crazy ambitions by thirst and Bedouin bullets, he was taking this vengeance on the whole Arab race.
On all sides the Arabs rose howling, driven to frenzy by the sight of that slaughter. That these women were of another tribe made no difference. A stern chivalry was the foundation of their society, just as it was among the frontiersmen of early America. There was no sentimentalism about it. It was real and vital as life itself.
The Rualla went berserk when they saw women of their race falling under the swords of the Turks. A wild yell shattered the brazen sky, and recklessly breaking cover, the Arabs pelted down the slopes, howling like fiends. Gordon could not check them, nor could Mitkhal. Their shouts fell on deaf ears. The walls vomited smoke and flame as withering volleys raked the oncoming hordes. Dozens fell, but enough were left to reach the wall and sweep over it in a wave that neither lead nor steel could halt.
And Gordon was among them. When he saw he could not stop the storm he joined it. Mitkhal was not far behind him, cursing his men as he ran. The shaykh had no stomach for this kind of fighting, but his leadership was at stake. No man who hung back in this charge would ever be able to command the Rualla again.
Gordon was among the first to reach the wall, leaping over the writhing bodies of half a dozen Arabs. He had not blazed away wildly as he ran like the Bedouins, to reach the wall with an empty gun. He held his fire until the flame spurts from the barrier were almost burning his face, and then emptied his rifle in a point-blank fusillade that left a bloody gap where there had been a line of fierce dark faces an instant before. Before the gap could be closed he had swarmed over and in, and the Rualla poured after him.
As his feet hit the ground a rush of men knocked him against the wall and a blade, thrusting for his life, broke against the rocks. He drove his shortened butt into a snarling face, splintering teeth and bones, and the next instant a surge of his own men over the wall cleared a space about him. He threw away his broken rifle and drew his pistol.
The Turks had been forced back from the wall in a dozen places now, and men were fighting all over the sangar. No quarter was asked—none given. The pitiful headless bodies sprawled before the bloodstained hut had turned the Bedouins into hot-eyed demons. The guns were empty now, all but Gordon’s automatic. The yells had died down to grunts, punctuated by death-howls. Above these sounds rose the chopping impact of flailing blades, the crunch of fiercely driven rifle butts. So grimly had the Bedouins suffered in that brainless rush, that now they were outnumbered, and the Turks fought with the fury of desperation.
It was Gordon’s automatic, perhaps, that tipped the balance. He emptied it without haste and without hesitation, and at that range he could not miss. He was aware of a dark shadow forever behind him, and turned once to see black Hassan following him, smiting methodically right and left with a heavy scimitar already dripping crimson. Even in the fury of strife, Gordon grinned. The literal-minded Soudanese was obeying his instructions to keep at El Borak’s heels. As long as the battle hung in doubt, he was Gordon’s protector—ready to become his executioner the instant the tide turned in their favor.
“Faithful servant,” called Gordon sardonically. “Have care lest these Turks cheat you of my head!”
Hassan grinned, speechless. Suddenly blood burst from his thick lips and he buckled at the knees. Somewhere in that rush down the hill his black body had stopped a bullet. As he struggled on all fours a Turk ran in from the side and brained him with a rifle-butt. Gordon killed the Turk with his last bullet. He felt no grudge against Hassan. The man had been a good soldier, and had obeyed orders given him.
The sangar was a shambles. The men on their feet were less than those on the ground, and all were streaming blood. The white wolf standard had been torn from its staff and lay trampled under vengeful feet. Gordon bent, picked up a saber and looked about for Osman. He saw Mitkhal, running toward the horse-pen, and then he yelled a warning, for he saw Osman.
The man broke away from a group of struggling figures and ran for the pen. He tore away the ropes and the horses, frantic from the noise and smell of blood, stampeded into the sangar, knocking men down and trampling them. As they thundered past, Osman, with a magnificent display of agility, caught a handful of flying mane and leaped on the back of the racing steed.
Mitkhal ran toward him, yelling furiously, and snapping a pistol at him. The shaykh, in the confusion of the fighting, did not seem to be aware that the gun was empty, for he pulled the trigger again and again as he stood in the path of the oncoming rider. Only at the last moment did he realize his peril and leap back. Even so, he would have sprung clear had not his sandal heel caught in a dead man’s abba.
Mitkhal stumbled, avoided the lashing hoofs, but not the down-flailing saber in Osman’s hand. A wild cry went up from the Rualla as Mitkhal fell, his turban suddenly crimson. The next instant Osman was out of the gate and riding like the wind—straight up the hillside to where he saw the slim figure of the girl to whom he now attributed his overthrow.
Olga had come out from behind the rocks and was standing in stunned horror watching the fight below. Now she awoke suddenly to her own peril at the sight of the madman charging up the slope. She drew the pistol Gordon had taken from him and opened fire. She was not a very good shot. Three bullets missed, the fourth killed the horse, and then the gun jammed. Gordon was running up the slope as the Apaches of his native Southwest run, and behind him streamed a swarm of Rualla. There was not a loaded gun in the whole horde.
Osman took a shocking fall when his horse turned a somersault under him, but rose, bruised and bloody, with Gordon still some distance away. But the Turk had to play hide-and-seek for a few moments among the rocks with his prey before he was able to grasp her hair and twist her screaming to her knees, and then he paused an instant to enjoy her despair and terror. That pause was his undoing.
As he lifted his saber to strike off her head, steel clanged loud on steel. A numbing shock ran through his arm, and his blade was knocked from his hand. His weapon rang on the hot flints. He whirled to face the blazing slits that were El Borak’s eyes. The muscles stood out in cords and ridges on Gordon’s sun burnt forearm in the intensity of his passion.
“Pick it up, you filthy dog,” he said between his teeth.
Osman hesitated, stooped, caught up the saber and slashed at Gordon’s legs without straightening. Gordon leaped back, then sprang in again the instant his toes touched the earth. His return was as paraly- zingly quick as the death-leap of a wolf. It caught Osman off balance, his sword extended. Gordon’s blade hissed as it cut the air, slicing through flesh, gritting through bone.
The Turk’s head toppled from the severed neck and fell at Gordon’s feet, the headless body collapsing in a heap. With an excess spasm of hate, Gordon kicked the head savagely down the slope.
“Oh!” Olga turned away and hid her face. But the girl knew that Osman deserved any fate that could have overtaken him. Presently she was aware of Gordon’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder and she looked up, ashamed of her weakness. The sun was just dipping below the western ridges. Musa came limping up the slope, bloodstained but radiant.
“The dogs are all dead, effendi!” he cried, industriously shaking a plundered watch, in an effort to make it run. “Such of our warriors as still live are faint from strife, and many sorely wounded. There is none to command now but thou.”
“Sometimes problems settle themselves,” mused Gordon. “But at a ghastly price. If the Rualla hadn’t made that rush, which was the death of Hassan and Mitkhal—oh, well, such things are in the hands of Allah, as the Arabs say. A hundred better men than I have died today, but by the decree of some blind Fate, I live.”
Gordon looked down on the wounded men. He turned to Musa.
“We must load the wounded on camels,” he said, “and take them to the camp at the Walls where there’s water and shade. Come.”
As they started down the slope, he said to Olga:
“I’ll have to stay with them till they’re settled at the Walls, then I must start for the coast. Some of the Rualla will be able to ride, though, and you need have no fear of them. They’ll escort you to the nearest Turkish outpost.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Then I’m not your prisoner?”
He laughed.
“I think you can help Feisal more by carrying out your original instructions of supplying misleading information to the Turks! I don’t blame you for not confiding even in me. You have my deepest admiration, for you’re playing the most dangerous game a woman can.”
“Oh!” She felt a sudden warm flood of relief and gladness that he should know she was not really an enemy. Musa was well out of earshot. “I might have known you were high enough in Feisal’s councils to know that I really am—”
“Gloria Willoughby, the cleverest, most daring secret agent the British government employs,” he murmured. The girl impulsively placed her slender fingers in his, and hand in hand they went down the slope together.
