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!”
&nbs
p; 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 fleetin
g 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.
Adventure Tales, Volume 4 Page 17
