Price went into the tent.
7. AYSA OF THE GOLDEN LAND
THE BOUND GIRL glared at him, angry hate in her violet eyes. She did not recoil from his hands; she revealed no fear—only hot wrath. White teeth flashed at his hands again. He disregarded them, busied himself with the tightly drawn knots in the halter-ropes that held her.
Suddenly she was quiet; the rage in her eyes changed to silent wonder.
The ropes loosened, he chafed her wrists and ankles to restore circulation; then slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her to her feet from the rough shale upon which she had been thrown.
She stood watching him, curious speculation in her violet eyes.
“Aiee, Ali!” Price called, from the doorway of the tent.
The Arab approached, the garments that had been taken from the girl still in his arms.
“Give me this woman’s clothing,” demanded Price.
The Arab began whining protests. Price repeated the order in sterner tones, and the Arab reluctantly surrendered the garments. He kept the golden dagger thrust in his belt, and hung avidly near.
“Now go!” Price told him shortly.
He turned and proffered the clothing to the girl. Violet eyes wide in mute astonishment, she accepted them mechanically. He looked down at her white, fresh body. With a little cry, she began slipping into the garments, swiftly and without self-consciousness.
Price watched her until she had dressed, listening to the groans of de Castro and Pasic outside the tent, and the excited clamor of the gathering crowd. Knowing the Macanese would raise trouble as soon as he recovered consciousness, Price was anxious to get the girl away from his vicinity.
When she was ready, he took her hand, led her from the tent. After a questioning look at him, she followed willingly. Outside, however, at sight of her recent persecutors, her rage flared up again. Jerking away from him, she darted upon Ali, and snatched the golden dagger from his belt. In a moment she was above Joao, who was groaning and struggling to sit up.
“Bismillah! Laan’abuk!” cursed Ali, leaping after her to recover the dagger, which had struck his fancy because of the phenomenal hardness of its yellow metal. Seizing her arm, as she raised the blade above the Macanese, he twisted it back, painfully.
A suppressed cry of agony broke from the girl’s lips; her face went white. She dropped the weapon, just as Price’s fist crushed against Ali’s jaw.
The Bedouin staggered away, spitting blood. The girl was biting her lip; the twisted arm hung limp. But, with the other hand, she snatched for the golden dagger.
De Castro’s yellow claw was ahead of her.
Price put his foot on Joao’s wrist, bent and wrenched the weapon from his hand. Seizing the girl firmly by the shoulder, he led her unresisting away, toward his own tent.
Several of the watching men started to follow. He turned, ordered them curtly back. They gathered sympathetically around Joao. Though Price had won the girl’s release, he realized the victory was only for the moment; her position was still precarious.
As usual, the tank had been stopped near Price’s tent. Sam Sorrows, the lean old Kansan who drove it, was watching from beside it.
“Trouble in the camp, Sam,” Price told him briefly.
“Over the woman?”
Price nodded.
“Thought so. Damn’ queer place, this, for a woman. But I reckon one could make trouble anywhere.”
“It isn’t her fault.”
“It never is.”
“Sam, I’d like you to get back in the machine and stand guard with the machineguns for a while. There’s mutiny afoot.”
“Okay, Mr. Durand.” The lanky old man grinned, as if the likelihood of fighting were enjoyable, and climbed into the tank.
Price led the girl to his tent, indicated that she might enter. A moment she studied his face, with wondering violet eyes. Then she smiled, and slipped inside.
For a little time Price studied the disorganized confusion of the camp about him, on the little plain among red sand-dunes. He was near the center of the camp. Tents, piles of dunnage, saddles, kneeling camels, were scattered all around him. The crowd of men about de Castro was still increasing. Price’s heart sank as he realized the inevitability of conflict. Of all the seventy men about him, Sam Sorrows was the only one he trusted.
Picking up a canteen of water, Price entered the tent. The girl was waiting, tense, white-faced, just within. He unscrewed the top of the canteen, shook it so that the water sloshed audibly, and held it out to the girl. Eagerly she put her lips to it, drank until Price, fearing she would make herself sick with too much water, took it away.
She laughed at him questioningly; he grinned.
Then it happened: her tortured nerves gave way. She broke suddenly into a storm of weeping. Understanding that it was only the natural reaction to her relief, and yet uncertain what to do, he went toward her, touched her shoulder, pityingly.
Shaken with uncontrollable sobs, she buried her face trustfully against his shoulder. Her brown hair, fragrantly soft, brushed against his face. Then she was in his arms.
The tempest of weeping ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The girl slipped away from Price, composed again, drying her eyes upon the corner of her cherchis. Seeing that she looked exhausted, Price spread a blanket on the tent-floor and invited her, with a gesture, to sit down; which she did, with a grateful glance.
“Do you speak Arabic?” Price asked her, kindly.
A moment she hesitated; then understanding dawned in her violet eyes.
“Yes!” she affirmed. “That is the tongue of my people, though you speak it oddly.”
Her Arabic was clearly comprehensible, though it had a curious inflection. It was more nearly akin, plainly, to the classic language than to any modern dialect that Price knew. But its forms were older, even, than the classic. The girl spoke the Arabic of many centuries ago!
“You are welcome,” Price told her. “I am truly sorry you were treated so. I hope to make amends.”
“Birkum [I thank you],” she replied, with so close an approximation to the modern accent that Price followed without difficulty. “I am very grateful for your rescue.”
It was on his lips to tell her that the rescue was still far from complete. But it would be unkind, he thought, to worry her needlessly with the true gravity of the situation. He smiled, then asked:
“Your people are near?”
She pointed northward. “That way lies El Yerim. It is three days by camel.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he urged. “I’ll see that you get safely back.”
Her violet eyes widened with fear. “But I can not go back,” she cried. “They would give me up to the golden folk.”
“You are in trouble, besides this?” She nodded.
Price invited: “Tell me about it.”
“You are strangers. You know not the golden folk?”
“No. We come from a far land.”
“Well,” she explained, “the golden folk are beings of gold that dwell in a mountain near El Yerim. Malikar, who is a man of gold—or a god. Vekyra, who is his—well, wife. The golden tiger, upon which they ride to hunt. And the yellow snake, which is the ancient god, and the greatest of the four.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Every harvest season, Malikar comes down to El Yerim upon the tiger, to select the grain and the dates, the young camels, and the slaves, that shall be sent as offering to the snake-god.
“Five days ago he came. All the people of El Yerim were gathered by Yarmud, the king. And Malikar rode among them on the tiger, choosing those he would take for slaves. He saw me, and commanded that I be sent with the camels and the grain, on the next day.
“That night my house was guarded. Though the priests say it is an honor to be offered to the snake, few take it so.” The girl smiled wearily. “I tricked the guards, and slipped out into the night. In the fields I found the camel that was my father’s, and rode away into the desert.
“Four days I have ridden. And I was able to bring little water or food.”
Price squatted on his heels, lighting a cigarette—which operation she watched with evident astonishment—as he digested her words. Her story excited his curiosity immensely; but he felt that it would be unkind to question her at much length, dead-tired as she obviously was. But one thing he must ask:
“This tiger, and the golden people—are they really gold? Living metal?”
“I know not. It is strange that metal should have life. But they are the color of gold. They are stronger than men. They do not die—they have lived since Anz was great.”
“Anz?” Price caught eagerly at the name of the lost city of the legends. Was Anz, after all, no myth, but sober fact?
“Anz,” the girl explained, “was the great city where once my people lived; they still call themselves the Beni Anz. Long ago the rains came every year, and all this land was green. But a thousand years ago the desert conquered Anz, and the sands rolled over it, and my people came to the oasis at El Yerim.”
And the girl added, “I was searching for Anz.”
“Why, if it is deserted?”
She hesitated, reluctantly. Her weary eyes studied him.
“No matter—” Price began, and her words rushed swiftly:
“You may think me foolish—but there is a prophecy. The last great king of Anz was Iru. A brave warrior he was, and a just man. Tall, like you.” The violet eyes dwelt upon Price. “And his eyes were blue, like yours, and his hair red. The legend speaks of those matters, for most of my people are dark,” she explained.
“And the prophecy?” Price asked.
“Perhaps it is an idle tale.” Again she paused, then continued with a rush: “But according to the legend, Iru is not dead. He still sleeps in the halls of his palace, in the lost city. He waits for some one to come and wake him. Then he will come out again with his great ax, and slay the golden folk, and free the Beni Anz.”
“Do you believe the legend?” asked Price, smiling.
“No,” she denied. “Yet I do not know. It might be true. By the legend, you see, it is a woman of my name who should go to wake the king.” and she added: “When I had fled from El Yerim, I had nowhere else to go.”
The girl caught herself nodding, jerked back upright, smiling wanly at Price.
“One thing more, and you may sleep,” he said. “What is your name?”
“Aysa,” she whispered. “And I shall call you—”
“Price Durand.” And he murmured softly, “Aysa. Aysa of the golden land.”
She smiled, and was suddenly asleep, sitting half upright. Price rose and laid her softly upon his blankets, in a comfortable position. She did not wake when he moved her, but she smiled vaguely in her sleep.
“See here, Durand, we want to stop this muddle before it makes more trouble,” Jacob Garth greeted Price, as he walked up to the tent. Joao de Castro and Pasic were close behind him, nursing bruised faces, muttering unpleasantly together. Fouad followed, and a crowd of other men, whites and Arabs, most of them eyeing Price with unconcealed hostility.
Price stepped to meet them, trying to assume a confidence that he did not feel. “Of course,” he agreed, “we don’t want any trouble.”
“You’ll have to return Joao’s woman,” said Garth, his voice blandly sonorous, expressionless. His pouchy, broad face, still oddly tallow-white, as if the desert sun had never touched it, was blank as a mask. Unwinking, unfeeling, the small, pale eyes stared at Price.
“The girl isn’t his property,” Price stated, stiffly.
“Dios!” howled de Castro. “Do I pay for d’ bitch, to ’ave heem rob me?”
Jacob Garth waved a puffy, white hand. “That’s all right, Joao. We’re going to settle this… Durand, he did trade fairly for the woman. You can’t appropriate her for yourself, in this high-handed way. The men won’t stand for it.”
“I don’t propose,” said Price, “to have the girl mistreated.”
Garth moved ponderously forward, his voice rolled out persuasively:
“Listen, Durand. We’re after big stakes. A fortune is waiting for us. Many fortunes! A bigger strike than men have ever dreamed of. We’ve got to stand together; we can’t afford a quarrel.”
“I’m willing to do anything reasonable. I’ll pay de Castro whatever you think he should have.”
“It isn’t a question of money. Not with the gold practically at our finger-tips. Surely you don’t want to spoil our chances, for the sake of a woman. What’s one native slut, against the loot of the golden land?”
“Please don’t refer to her that way!” Price demanded, sharply. “After all, I’m the leader of this expedition. When I say hands off, it is hands off! De Castro is not going to have the girl!”
He was immediately sorry for the flare of anger, for it brought lowering looks from the men. To repair the damage, he turned to the little knot of whites and spoke pleadingly:
“See here, fellows, I want to do the right thing by all of you. I don’t want to deal unfairly by de Castro. I’ll give him my binoculars in place of those he traded for the girl. I don’t want her for myself—”
Rude, derisive laughter broke out. Trying to hide his rising anger beneath a smile, he went on:
“Surely you don’t want to see a helpless woman manhandled—”
“Enough of that,” Garth cut in. “You must realize that these are men, not Sunday school children.”
“Men, I hope, and not beasts.”
His appeal met no sympathy. These were a hard sort: no others would have been attracted by this desperate raid into the desert’s heart. Many of them were outside the law. Hardship and fear and greed had ridden down whatever of chivalry they might have had.
The faintest hint of a sardonic smile crossed Jacob Garth’s placid, red-bearded face.
“Has it occurred to you, Durand,” his question rolled out deliberately, “that you have just about lived out your usefulness as our leader? It’s possible, you know, that we could do without you—now there are no more checks to be signed.”
“The double-cross, eh?” said Price, scornfully.
Garth heaved his massive shoulders. “If you like. I came into this infernal desert for gold. I’m not going to let any native hussy stop me. Or any foolish convention.”
“De Castro will not touch the girl,” Price said evenly, in steel-cold tones, “so long as I am alive. Now what do you say?”
“I don’t want any bloodshed, Durand. And I see that Sorrows is covering us from the tank. We’ll make a peaceable bargain.”
“What’s that?”
“You can keep the jade tonight. I talked de Castro into letting you have her first. In the morning, you can turn her over to him.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind.”
“Think it over,” Garth advised blandly. “If you don’t decide to be reasonable, we’ll take her. I’ll hate to part company with you, Durand. You’re a good man, and that’s what we need. But you can’t wreck the expedition. Think it over!”
8. “LA SIWA HU”
PRICE DURAND was not the kind who can surrender gracefully, even to overwhelming opposition. He had sometimes wished that he could give way meekly to circumstances as some men do; it would have made life, at times, much more convenient. But some obscure quirk, deep in his nature, made him a fighter. Resistance to his will had always roused in him a dogged determination not to yield.
Submission was left out of his nature. When opposed, it was impossible for him to do anything but fight, with every resource at his command. Nor was he given to weighing the consequences of defeat. His fatalistic faith in the Durand luck was supreme. And that luck had never failed—probably because invincible resourcefulness had never given it a chance.
When the men had gone, Price looked back into his tent. Aysa lay still upon the blankets, breathing quietly. Her oval face was half toward him, fresh, lovely, pomegranate lips a little parted. Long lashes lay on her ch
eeks, ruddy brown.
One glance was enough to steel his determination not to surrender her to the insidious Macanese. His blood boiled at thought of such sleeping loveliness despoiled by the swarthy Eurasian. No, he was not going to give her up. He had until morning to find some way to save her—unless Joao de Castro, in the meantime, found an opportunity to murder him.
The yellow moon, at the first quarter, hung near the zenith at dusk. Through the first half of the night, Price waited impatiently at his tent, near the slumbering, exhausted girl.
Sam Sorrows had cheerfully offered to remain on guard, in the tank. Price accepted gratefully, and gave him, as a dubious token of appreciation, the key to the chest of gold in the tank. Price had decided to leave the caravan, with the girl; that seemed the only course open except disgraceful submission: two men could not fight the whole expedition.
The camp slowly fell into sleep, until the only movement was that of the regular sentries, two whites and two Arabs, pacing along their beats beyond the kneeling camels, hailing one another occasionally.
Near midnight the reddened moon sank beyond undulating dunes, its brief glow faded; and Price was ready to put his plan into action.
With a whispered word to Sam Sorrows, he slipped noiselessly away into starlight darkness. Silently, he saddled his own camel, which was kneeling near, found two full skins of water and slung them to the high pommels, with a small bag of grain for the beast.
Returning to the tent, he packed his saddle-bags. Chocolate. Hard-tack. Dried meat. Rolls of the tough, dried apricot pulp which the Arabs call “mare’s hide.” Emergency medical kit. Binoculars. Extra ammunition for rifle and automatic.
When all was ready, he sat listening to the girl’s regular breathing, reluctant to disturb her. At last he dared delay no longer. Gently he roused her, cautioning her to silence.
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