by Harold Lamb
“I DON’T know,” said Arthur Aymon, when I dropped in on him a year or so later in his New York office. “I don’t know.” He stopped to fill his pipe. “And Milton never could understand it. He thought she was going to marry him. He showed me the solitary postcard she wrote him all the months she was gone. All it said was: ‘I've missed you dreadfully. I'll be in Beirut the first week in October.’”
I thought of the other card Tug Donovan had carried with him all the way out to The Watcher. I thought of a number of things, but I only asked where Aymon kept that crusader shield of arms that they had talked about. It was not visible on the walls.
“Jane’s got it,” he said, and his eyes gleamed through the pipe smoke, “hanging in the hall of their two-room flat in Newark.” He smiled, reflectively. “She says it’s bunk, like Santa Claus and jingle bells. But she likes to look at it, sometimes.”
The Hour of the Ghosts
ALAI BAI prayed to the ghosts. When she could find a scrap of paper she carried it off and burned it. “Send me,” she asked, “a great hunter. Let him be a Khan, riding a white horse, with a banner carried behind him. Let him be mighty, and merry.”
Before the coming of the ghosts, her people moved down from the higher pastures—driving the shaggy Bactrians, the fat-tailed sheep and innumerable goats. They had done so, these Kara Kirghiz, since the day of Genghis Khan—following the grass. Every autumn they pitched their domed tents in the long valley of the Taghdumbash, where the river did not freeze, and the animals could get at the grass beneath the snow.
Here Alai Bai had spent the fifteen winters of her life ... in the valley of the Taghdumbash on the Roof of the World. But this autumn she did not work as usual—although the older women screamed at her. She ran away from them and looked at her face, in the mirror of a pool. The eyes of a deer looked back at her. And her skin was soft as ivory.
In the evening she liked to put on the robe of China silk embroidered with peacocks, to dance before the older men, who smiled and gave her sugar. They said she was wild as a ghil of the wastes, and no doubt there was a horned devil in her and still she was beautiful. Alai Bai knew this very well, and she paid no heed when the women scolded.
SHE was off with the goats, perched on a rock above the trail, when she saw the rider of the white horse—a man riding at the head of a small column of horsemen carrying rifles.
They rode in at a footpace on wearied beasts. Alai Bai had never seen men like them—wearing long gray overcoats, with knives fixed to the rifles slung to their shoulders. They pitched a small tent, and the rider of the white horse dismounted and disappeared into it. Before this tent the strange soldiers set up a tripod and fastened an odd-looking gun to it. One of them spoke a word of warning to the Kirghiz tribesmen.
“Eh, stand back, brothers.” He pointed at the gun. “That will slay a hundred men in a moment.”
By then it was growing dark. Alai Bai, consumed with curiosity, crept close to the tent, watching while the soldiers cooked mutton and carried a plate in to their leader.
She could see him, through the opened flap, sitting on a box, as he ate alone— not with his fingers but with shining implements a servant handed him. He was a powerful man and his gray eyes moved restlessly as he ate. When he was done, the servant handed him a black weed, striking a match and holding it until the white man began to smoke the weed.
Then he unfolded a colored paper, and bent over it, making marks with a pen on it—looking at times into a round silver box. Alai Bai edged herself closer— and gasped with fright.
The white man looked at her and spoke a command. A soldier seized her before she could run, and dragged her into the tent. The girl fell on her knees, but she did not cry out.
For a moment the great white Khan gazed into her eyes. Then he smiled, and took something else from the leather saddlebag by him. A small box that began to tinkle musically when he touched it. Alai Bai listened, fascinated in spite of her fear. She had never seen a white man before, and this one was certainly a magician.
To himself the white man said, “Children tell the truth—nicht wahr?” To the soldier he said something else, and the man interpreted. “Have no fear. The effendi will not hurt a child.”
“I am no longer a child,” Alai Bai answered promptly.
The white Khan laughed.
“THEN, woman,” the soldier translated, “tell him one thing. He will trust you and believe you. Is the road to the north open? Are the passes clear of snow?”
Breathing quickly, in time with the thumping of her heart, Alai Bai pondered. “Kai, the road to where?”
“To China.”
“To Kitai?” the girl’s eyes widened. “Beyond the Roof of the World? In truth, now it is open, but soon the spirits will come down from the upper air and dwell in the passes, and after that no man may go through.”
Again the white man studied the map on his knee, with the compass, and puffed at his cigar. The music tinkled on, while the Turkish soldier swayed on his bandaged feet from weariness. “The spirits,” the officer murmured, “perhaps . . .”
The sky was clear, except for the usual mists around the snow summits. In eight days—six with luck—he could be through the higher passes, and safe in Kashgar. Chinese territory, beyond the last front of the war. Safe, with fourteen horseloads of Mausers, some fifty thousand rounds of ammunition and, best of all, a quarter million marks, in gold.
He had come through the broken Erzerum front, with his Turkish askaris. Through the thieving Kurds, over the salt desert, into the East where the World War had stirred up a kaleidoscope of little wars, to the frontier of India where he had done as much harm as he could to the stupid English.
Yes, he—Major Vogel, once attached to the Turkish fourth army—had carried out the suggestion of Liman von Sanders. Not an order, only the suggestion that one German officer on the border of India, sowing disaffection among the tribes, was worth a hundred at Constantinople. Last March, that had been, before the start of the offensive in France that was to push the British into the sea and end the war. Since then, Vogel had heard only rumors. The British had hunted him away from Afghanistan; they were hunting him now.
Of course he could make a stand here in the valley. But it would be irrational, stupid, to risk combat and several days delay. An Englishman might do that, but Vogel would not. He would leave nothing to chance. While the way of escape to the north was open, he would take it. . . .
Having decided, Vogel ordered his servant to find him a sheet of clean paper.
Upon this he wrote briefly, smiling to Alai Bai as he composed the message.
Alai Bai watched, fascinated. Even so had the lama done. Even so had the paper been folded and given to her.
“In a day or another day,” the German informed her, “other white men will come to this valley. Keep this paper, unharmed, and give it to them.”
The girl’s face fell. She had hoped the paper would be hers, to burn as an offering to the ghosts. “Is it not a charm?” she asked, holding it gingerly in her fingers.
The German did not understand. “This other who will come is a devil,” he vouchsafed.
“Yes,” Alai Bai breathed. “A devil. I will give him the message.”
The next morning the white man broke camp, and went away.
Against the coming of the promised devil, Alai Bai made preparations of her own. After putting the folded paper carefully in a jade box, she washed her hair in sour milk, until it gleamed. She blackened her brows with juice of woad leaves. Her cheeks and fingernails she stained with balsam root and henna. Finally she coated her face white with rice powder, and scented herself freely all over with musk.
Often of evenings Alai Bai had listened to the tales of the old men by the fire of Toghrul Khan, and she had heard how the most dreaded of Khans had yielded to the fair young girls.
But the devil came silently, in the dark of the second night. Shadows drifted through the dung smok
e, under the pines. Lean riders with turbaned heads and rifles held across their knees. When Alai Bai made her way through the frightened Kirghiz to the tent of Toghrul Khan, the devil was there before her, with two others. Alai Bai barely glanced at them—a shaven Cossack smoking a pipe, and a grizzled Pathan in uniform.
The devil held a bamboo stick, and poked at the fire. He wore a sheepskin jacket, his boots were polished. And Alai Bai forgot to sway gracefully. For the devil had eyes as blue as far-off ice. Young eyes, weary from lack of sleep.
FEARING him, and yet fascinated, Alai Bai edged nearer. The Cossack was questioning Toghrul Khan about the first white man, and no one heeded her until she stood full in the glow of the dung fire, wreathed in the smoke. The Cossack leered.
“It is only Alai Bai,” said Toghrul Khan. “Go away, girl.”
Instead, she held out the folded paper, kneeling at the feet of the blue-eyed devil. He took it, opened it, and made a whistling sound.
“Cocky beggar,” he exclaimed in English to his companions. “Listen to this: ‘To my enemy who follows: I admire your persistence, but not your wisdom. Why do you try to follow me in neutral territory? If you continue your present course, I must kill you, some time’”
“Nial Sahib,” said the bearded Pathan, “let him go. It is not good to follow, yonder.”
“My orders,” Nial grinned, “are to use vigorous measures to stop the activities of this Hun. How can we stop him, ’less we catch him? We’ll follow on, Havildar. He's only two days ahead, with heavy loads. We’ll start at four.” Then he noticed Alai Bai. “Thank her, Ivan Aglau.”
EIGHTY miles Captain Nial covered the next day, with his detachment of Gilgit rifles and two pack horses. Eighty miles over three passes, and he camped without a fire where water gurgled from the foot of a glacier, and the last sunlight showed behind him the round white summit of Muztagh Ata, the Father of Snow-mountains.
When the night cold gripped the camp, the water ceased flowing. In the silence, the men slept heavily. Ivan Aglau, wrapped in his sheepskins, turned restlessly and came awake in the middle of the night, listening.
A moon silvered the mist above him, and he turned his head until he could see the black shapes on the ground, and the shadow that knelt at Captain Nial’s feet. The shadow rocked gently on its heels, and its voice murmured a chant. Ivan Aglau listened, until he caught the words:
“Ay—lay—hay—lay!
High, high and far are they.
Mighty are they!
Spare him, O Spirits
From the Gate of the Sky”
For a moment the skin crawled over the Cossack's shaven skull. Then he chuckled, recognizing the voice of Alai Bai. How she had got there and how she had passed the pickets, he did not know. But she had certainly changed her shape.
In the morning he saw her in her new shape. The Kirghiz girl had clad herself for cold, in a sable jacket and a hood of fox bellies. Her legs were wrapped in felt and thrust into soft red leather boots. She clutched the bridle of a shaggy pony.
“What is this?” Nial asked, amazed.
“She says,” Ivan Aglau explained, “that her horse is a kabarda, a good horse. She has meat under the saddle, and she will not trouble you.”
Nial smiled. “Send her back.”
To the Cossack’s explosive command, Alai Bai paid no attention. Her eyes were on Nial’s face, as a dog watches its master. She answered in one word. “Yok—no.”
Impatiently, Nial gave the order to mount. When the detachment started up the trail he glanced back. Behind the pack animals, Alai Bai was following.
They had passed, in that first day’s forced march, two spots where the German had halted to sleep. So they were covering two miles to the German’s one.
In a few hours, Nial knew, he would be in sight of his enemy. And the German would certainly put up a fight.
He took three men forward with him, as an advance point. A trooper a hundred yards behind. Then the main body with the N. C. O.’s and the Lewis guns, the pack animals, Ivan Aglau and the girl.
AS THEY went on, the ravine opened into a bare plateau, with pinnacles of black rock rising from it like giants on watch. Looking ahead through his glasses Nial could see no sign of the German’s party. But he did see, through the veil of the gray sky, a white wall of snow and ice ahead.
It was then that he heard the wind coming.
Ivan Aglau came to his side. “The girl says we have left the trail.”
“No,” Nial shouted against the wind, “we haven’t.”
“The caravan track.” The Cossack pointed off to his right. “The German turned off, this way.”
“What of it? We’re following him, and he went this way.”
The Cossack fell back, grumbling. Moments passed before Nial realized what had happened. The German had gone astray. The fugitives might find their way blocked, or turn back to search for the caravan track. They were lost, here, on the top of the world.
Nial led the way with one trooper, straining his eyes into the welter of rocks and gray ice for a glimpse of a man moving.
Trudging behind him, Alai Bai watched the sky, tense with excitement. It changed strangely; fantastic shapes flitted over it—coming toward her, and racing past.
It was the hour of the ghosts, she knew. The time when the spirits of the high and distant places lighted their round lanterns-there the light showed between the shapes—and sped toward the earth more swiftly than the wings of the wild birds. They were coming now.
“Spare him,” she breathed. “Ai, do not slay him.”
Nial heard her voice, and looked up from the track. As he did so, he heard the familiar rattling report of a machine gun. Bullets, from a ridge where the German had taken his stand, snapped over his head, and the echoes rolled back from the ice cliffs. Mechanically, he gave the proper orders—to take cover in a hollow beside the trail, to lead the horses out of the line of fire.
While his men, lying in the snow, opened fire at the ridge, he sent the Lewis guns off around each flank, with two rifles to cover each one.
“Work up as high as you can, and clear the ridge. Try to silence that gun.
He noticed that the ridge had disappeared. Then the gun flashes ceased. Tiny particles stung his face, and he knew that snow was driving down, heavily.
Groping his way back, he stumbled against the senior sergeant.
“We’ll go up to the ridge now, Afzel Bahadur,” he said. “Might as well keep together, don’t you think? They can’t see us/’
When his men were collected, Nial took the revolver from his belt, slipping the lanyard over his wrist. The steel burned his fingers as he stumbled forward, head bent against the rush of the storm. He thrust the weapon back into a pocket.
Trudging up the ridge, he felt his way around a boulder, and bumped into a stocky figure that rose up like a cow. He smelled sweat and garlic, and tried to pull the revolver from his pocket.
The shape peered at him, and wailed. “Aman, aman. Mercy—have mercy!” And it threw down the rifle it held. Other voices took up the shout, while the Pathans gathered about Nial, staring into the murk. No one fired a rifle.
The first prisoner was a Turk, and others came up at his call.
“Nial Sahib,” Afzel Bahadur asked, “what are we to do?”
“Take their rifles. Find that gun.”
TWO Turks were sitting by it, their coats drawn over their heads. They rose unsteadily, making no resistance. The storm had taken all the fight out of them. But Nial searched in vain for their officer.
He asked in English and French for their commander. Then for the effendi. One of the soldiers grunted and led him back a little way to some larger rocks, where the horses were huddled. Here the canvas of a tent had been propped up on poles. Out of the shelter a voice spoke.
“Congratulations.”
“Who in thunder are you?” Nial demanded.
“By force of circumstances—” the man coughed weakl
y—“your prisoner.”
The ray of an electric torch flashed out, and turned to light a flushed, unshaven face. “Major Vogel, of the fourth Turkish army.. . You have come a long way, my friend, to find me.”
His whole body quivered, and Nial took the torch to steady it. A heavy, stubborn man, wracked by fever.
“Laid me up,” Vogel said, “yesterday. My men carried me here, when the snow came down. Did you get my note? Yes? Then why did you continue to pursue?”
“Didn’t want to go back without you, Major,” Nial said. “How do you feel?”
“Splendid.” Vogel tried to sit up, and dropped back. “Have you any brandy, Captain?”
Snow swirled into the ray of light, and the tall figure of the Cossack bent over Nial.
“He’s done for,” Ivan Aglau whispered. “Listen, Excellency. I’ve found the gold. It’s in five leather chests—millions of rubles. Millions.”
His face, over the light, was sweating. “Don’t you see this German’s finished? You must hurry, Captain. Order your men to load the gold on two good horses. I know what horses to take. I’ll wait for you at the trail.”
“You mean—the two of us?”
“Yes—but hurry, Excellency. You don’t understand. This buran—this storm, it will last for days, and soon the snow will be too deep. You don’t know what it will be. You can’t get the men in the saddle again. They’ll die here like sheep—”
“You can go, Ivan Aglau,” Nial said.
“Not alone, Excellency.” Ivan Aglau breathed heavily. “What are these others—Turks, hillmen, sons of dogs? They will not face the storm. Make them load the gold, then come with me. I swear—”
“Oh, shut up.”
"NIAL was looking at another face. The round face of a woman, framed in fur. Alai Bai was kneeling by him, tugging at his arm. She still held to the rein of her pony, as if afraid of losing it.