El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  Even as he meditated a white-clad figure burst from among the ridges and raced across the trail, bending low in the saddle and flogging his mount. It was a long shot, but Gordon’s nerves did not quiver. At the exact instant that the white-clad figure was limned against the distant rock, the American pulled the trigger. For a fleeting moment he thought he had missed; then the rider straightened convulsively, threw up two wide-sleeved arms and reeled back drunkenly. The frightened horse reared high, throwing the man heavily. In an instant the landscape showed two separate shapes where there had been one — a bundle of white sprawling on the ground, and a horse racing off southward.

  Gordon lay motionless for a few minutes, too wary to expose himself. He knew the man was dead; the fall alone would have killed him. But there was a slight chance that other riders might be lurking among the sand dunes.

  The sun beat down savagely; vultures appeared from nowhere — black dots in the sky, swinging in great circles, lower and lower. There was no hint of movement among the ridges or the dunes.

  Gordon rose and glanced down at the dead camel. His jaws set a trifle more grimly; that was all. But he realized what the killing of his steed meant. He looked westward, where the heat waves shimmered. It would be a long walk, a long, dry walk, before it ended.

  Stooping, he unslung water skin and food bag and threw them over his shoulder. Rifle in hand he went up the trail with a steady, swinging stride that would eat up the miles and carry him for hour after hour without faltering.

  When he came to the shape sprawling in the path, he set the butt of his rifle on the ground and stood briefly, one hand steadying the bags on his shoulder. The man he had killed was a Ruweila, right enough; one of the tall, sinewy, hawk-faced and wolf-hearted plunderers of the southern desert. Gordon’s bullet had caught him just below the armpit. That the man had been alone, and on a horse instead of a camel, meant that there was a larger party of his tribesmen somewhere in the vicinity. Gordon shrugged his shoulders, shifted the rifle to the crook of his arm and moved on up the trail. The score between himself and the men of Shalan ibn Mansour was red enough already. It might well be settled once and for all at the Well of Amir Khan.

  As he swung along the trail he kept thinking of the man he was going to warn: Al Wazir, the Arabs called him, because of his former capacity with the Sultan of Oman. A Russian nobleman, in reality, wandering over the world in search of some mystical goal Gordon had never understood, just as an unquenchable thirst for adventure drove El Borak around the planet.

  But the dreamy soul of the Slav coveted something more than material things. Al Wazir had been many things. Wealth, power, position, all had slipped through his unsatisfied fingers. He had delved deep in strange religions and philosophies, seeking the answer to the riddle of existence, as Gordon sought the stimulation of hazard. The mysticisms of the Sufis had attracted him, and finally the ascetic mysteries of the Hindus.

  A year before Al Wazir had been governor of Oman, next to the sultan the wealthiest and most powerful man on the Pearl Coast. Without warning he had given up his position and disappeared. Only a chosen few knew that he had distributed his vast wealth among the poor, renounced all ambition and power, and gone like an ancient prophet to dwell in the desert, where, in the solitary meditations and self-denials of a true ascetic, he hoped to read at last the eternal riddle of life — as the ancient prophets read it. Gordon had accompanied him on that last journey, with the handful of faithful servants who knew their master’s intentions — old Salim among them; for between the dreamy philosopher and the hard-bitten man of action there existed a powerful tie of friendship.

  But for the traitor and fool, Dirdar, Al Wazir’s secret had been well kept. Gordon knew that ever since Al Wazir’s disappearance, adventurers of every breed had been searching for him, hoping to secure possession of the treasure that the Russian had possessed in the days of his power — the wonderful collection of perfectly matched rubies, known as the Blood of the Gods, which had blazed a lurid path through Oriental history for six hundred years.

  These jewels had not been distributed among the poor with the rest of Al Wazir’s wealth. Gordon himself did not know what the man had done with them. Nor did the American care. Greed was not one of his faults. And Al Wazir was his friend.

  The blazing sun rocked slowly down the sky, its flame turned to molten copper; it touched the desert rim, and etched against it, a crawling black tiny figure, Gordon moved grimly on, striding inexorably into the somber immensities of the Ruba al Khali — the Empty Abodes.

  III

  Etched against a white streak of dawn, motionless as figures on a tapestry, Gordon saw the clump of palms that marked the Well of Amir Khan grow up out of the fading night.

  A few moments later he swore, softly. Luck, the fickle jade, was not with him this time. A faint ribbon of blue smoke curled up against the whitening sky. There were men at the Well of Amir Khan.

  Gordon licked his dry lips. The water skin that slapped against his back at each stride was flat, empty. The distance he would have covered in a matter of hours, skimming over the desert on the back of his tireless camel, had taken him the trudging of a whole night, though he had held a gait that few of the desert’s sons could have maintained unbroken. Even for him, in the coolness of the night, it had been a hard trek, though his iron muscles resisted fatigue like a wolf’s.

  Far to the west a low, blue line lay on the horizon. It was the range of hills that held the Caves of El Khour. He was still ahead of Hawkston, forging on somewhere far to the south. But the Englishman would be gaining on him at every stride.

  Gordon could swing wide to avoid the men at the well and trudge on. Trudge on, afoot, and with empty water bag? It would be suicide. He could never reach the caves on foot and without water. Already he was bitten by the devils of thirst.

  A red flame grew in his eyes, and his dark face set in wolfish lines. Water was life in the desert; life for him and for Al Wazir. There was water at the well, and camels. There were men, his enemies, in possession of both. If they lived, he must die. It was the law of the wolf pack, and of the desert. He slipped the limp bags from his shoulder, cocked his rifle and went forward to kill or be killed—not for gold, nor the love of a woman, nor an ideal, nor a dream, but for as much water as could be carried in a goatskin bag.

  A wadi or gully broke the plain ahead of him, meandering to a point within a few hundred feet of the well. Gordon crept toward it, taking advantage of every bit of cover. He had almost reached it, at a point a hundred yards from the well, when a man in white kafieh and ragged abba materialized from among the palms. Discovery in the growing light was instant. The Arab yelled and fired. The bullet knocked up dust a foot from Gordon’s knee, as he crouched on the edge of the gully, and he fired back. The Arab cried out, dropped his rifle and staggered drunkenly back among the palms.

  The next instant Gordon had sprung down into the gully and was moving swiftly and carefully along it, toward the point where it bent nearest the well. He glimpsed white-clad figures flitting briefly among the trees, and then rifles began to crack viciously. Bullets sang over the gully as the men fired from behind their saddles and bales of goods, piled like a rampart among the stems of the palms. They lay in the eastern fringe of the clump; the camels, Gordon knew, were on the other side of the trees. From the volume of the firing it could not be a large party.

  A rock on the edge of the gully provided cover. Gordon thrust his rifle barrel under a jutting corner of it and watched for movement among the palms. Fire spurted and a bullet whined off the rock — zingggg — dwindling in the distance like the dry whir of a rattler. Gordon fired at the puff of smoke and a defiant yell answered him.

  His eyes were slits of black flame. A fight like this could last for days. And he could not endure a siege. He had no water; he had no time. A long march to the south the caravan of Hawkston was swinging relentlessly westward, each step carrying them nearer the Caves of El Khour and the unsuspecting man who dreamed h
is dreams there. A few hundred feet away from Gordon there was water, and camels that would carry him swiftly to his destination; but lead-fanged wolves of the desert lay between.

  Lead came at his retreat, thick and fast, and vehement voices rained maledictions on him. They let him know they knew he was alone, and on foot, and probably half mad with thirst. They howled jeers and threats. But they did not expose themselves. They were confident but wary, with the caution taught by the desert deep ingrained in them. They held the winning hand and they intended to keep it so.

  An hour of this, and the sun climbed over the eastern rim, and the heat began — the molten, blinding heat of the southern desert. It was fierce already; later it would be scorching hell in that unshielded gully. Gordon licked his blackened lips and staked his life and the life of Al Wazir on one desperate cast of Fate’s blind dice.

  Recognizing and accepting the terrible odds against success, he raised himself high enough to expose head and one shoulder above the gully rim, firing as he did so. Three rifles cracked together and lead hummed about his ears; the bullet of one raked a white-hot line across his upper arm. Instantly Gordon cried out, the loud agonized cry of a man hard hit, and threw his arms above the rim of the gully in the convulsive gesture of a man suddenly death-stricken. One hand held the rifle and the motion threw it out of the gully, to fall ten feet away, in plain sight of the Arabs.

  An instant’s silence, in which Gordon crouched below the rim, then bloodthirsty yells echoed his cry. He dared not raise himself high enough to look, but he heard the slap-slap-slap of sandaled feet, winged by hate and blood lust. They had fallen for his ruse. Why not? A crafty man might feign a wound and fall, but who would deliberately cast away his rifle? The thought of a Feringi, lying helpless and badly wounded in the bottom of the gully, with a defenseless throat ready for the knife, was too much for the blood lust of the Bedouins. Gordon held himself in iron control until the swift feet were only a matter of yards away — then he came erect like a steel spring released, the big automatic in his hand.

  As he leaped up he caught one split-second glimpse of three Arabs, halting dead in their tracks, wild-eyed at the unexpected apparition — even as he straightened his gun was roaring. One man spun on his heel and fell in a crumpled heap, shot through the head. Another fired once, with a rifle, from the hip, without aim. An instant later he was down, with a slug through his groin and another ripping through his breast as he fell. And then Fate took a hand again — Fate in the form of a grain of sand in the mechanism of Gordon’s automatic. The gun jammed just as he threw it down on the remaining Arab.

  This man had no gun; only a long knife. With a howl he wheeled and legged it back for the grove, his rags whipping on the wind of his haste. And Gordon was after him like a starving wolf. His strategy might go for nothing if the man got back among the trees, where he might have left a rifle.

  The Bedouin ran like an antelope, but Gordon was so close behind him when they reached the trees that the Arab had no time to snatch up the rifle leaning against the improvised rampart. He wheeled at bay, yowling like a mad dog, and slashing with the long knife. The point tore Gordon’s shirt as the American dodged, and brought down the heavy pistol on the Arab’s head. The thick kafieh saved the man’s skull from being crushed, but his knees buckled and he went down, throwing his arms about Gordon’s waist and dragging the white man down as he fell. Somewhere on the other side of the grove the wounded man was calling down curses on El Borak.

  The two men rolled on the ground, ripping and smiting like wild animals. Gordon struck once again with his gun barrel, a glancing blow that laid open the Arab’s face from eye to jaw, and then dropped the jammed pistol and caught at the arm that wielded the knife. He got a grip with his left hand on the wrist and the guard of the knife itself, and with his other hand began to fight for a throat hold. The Arab’s ghastly, blood-smeared countenance writhed in a tortured grin of muscular strain. He knew the terrible strength that lurked in El Borak’s iron fingers; knew that if they closed on his throat they would not let go until his jugular was torn out.

  He threw his body frantically from side to side, wrenching and tearing. The violence of his efforts sent both men rolling over and over, to crash against palm stems and carom against saddles and bales. Once Gordon’s head was driven hard against a tree, but the blow did not weaken him, nor did the vicious drive the Arab got in with a knee to his groin. The Bedouin grew frantic, maddened by the fingers that sought his throat, the dark face, inexorable as iron, that glared into his own. Somewhere on the other side of the grove a pistol was barking, but Gordon did not feel the tear of lead, nor hear the whistle of bullets.

  With a shriek like a wounded panther’s, the Arab whirled over again, a knot of straining muscles, and his hand, thrown out to balance himself, fell on the barrel of the pistol Gordon had dropped. Quick as a flash he lifted it, just as Gordon found the hold he had been seeking, and crashed the butt down on the American’s head with every ounce of strength in his lean sinews, backed by the fear of death. A tremor ran through the American’s iron frame, and his head fell forward. And in that instant the Ruweila tore free like a wolf breaking from a trap, leaving his long knife in Gordon’s hand.

  Even before Gordon’s brain cleared, his war-trained muscles were responding instinctively. As the Ruweila sprang up, he shook his head and rose more slowly, the long knife in his hand. The Arab hurled the pistol at him, and caught up the rifle which leaned against the barrier. He gripped it by the barrel with both hands and wheeled, whirling the stock above his head; but before the blow could fall, Gordon struck with all the blinding speed that had earned him his name among the tribes.

  Under the descending butt he lunged, and his knife, driven with all his strength and the momentum of his charge, plunged into the Arab’s breast and drove him back against a tree, into which the blade sank a hand’s breadth deep. The Bedouin cried out, a thick, choking cry that death cut short. An instant he sagged against the haft, dead on his feet and nailed upright to the palm tree. Then his knees buckled and his weight tore the knife from the wood. He pitched into the sand.

  Gordon wheeled, shaking the sweat from his eyes, glaring about for the fourth man — the wounded man. The furious fight had taken only a few minutes. The pistol was still cracking dryly on the other side of the trees, and an animal scream of pain mingled with the reports.

  With a curse Gordon caught up the Arab’s rifle and burst through the grove. The wounded man lay under the shade of the trees, propped on an elbow, and aiming his pistol — not at El Borak, but at the one camel that still lived. The other three lay stretched in their blood. Gordon sprang at the man, swinging the rifle stock. He was a second too late. The shot cracked and the camel moaned and crumpled even as the butt fell on the lifted arm, snapping the bone like a twig. The smoking pistol fell into the sand and the Arab sank back, laughing like a ghoul.

  “Now see if you can escape from the Well of Amir Khan, El Borak!” he gasped. “The riders of Shalan ibn Mansour are out! Tonight or tomorrow they will return to the well! Will you await them here, or flee on foot to die in the desert, or be tracked down like a wolf? Ya kalb! Forgotten of Allah! They will hang thy skin on a palm tree! Laan’ abuk—”

  Lifting himself with an effort that spattered his beard with bloody foam, he spat toward Gordon, laughed croakingly, and fell back, dead before his head hit the ground.

  Gordon stood like a statue, staring down at the dying camels. The dead man’s vengeance was grimly characteristic of his race. Gordon lifted his head and looked long at the low, blue range on the western horizon. Unerringly the dying Arab had foretold the grim choice left him. He could wait at the well until Shalan ibn Mansour’s wild riders returned and wiped him out by force of numbers, or he could plunge into the desert again on foot. And whether he awaited certain doom at the well or sought the uncertain doom of the desert, inexorably Hawkston would be marching westward, steadily cutting down the lead Gordon had had at the beginning.
r />   But Gordon never had any doubt concerning his next move. He drank deep at the well and bolted some of the food the Arabs had been preparing for their breakfast. Some dried dates and crusted cheese balls he placed in a food bag, and he filled a water skin from the well. He retrieved his rifle, got the sand out of his automatic and buckled to his belt a scimitar from the girdle of one of the men he had killed. He had come into the desert intending to run and hide, not to fight. But it looked very much as if he would do much more fighting before this venture was over, and the added weight of the sword was more than balanced by the feeling of added security in the touch of the lean, curved blade.

  Then he slung the water skin and food bag over his shoulder, took up his rifle and strode out of the shadows of the grove into the molten heat of the desert day. He had not slept at all the night before. His short rest at the well had put new life and spring into his resilient muscles, hardened and toughened by an incredibly strenuous life. But it was a long, long march to the Caves of El Khour, under a searing sun. Unless some miracle occurred, he could not hope to reach them before Hawkston now. And before another sunrise the riders of Shalan ibn Mansour might well be on his trail, in which case — but all he had ever asked of Fortune was a fighting chance.

  The sun rocked its slow, torturing way up and down the sky; twilight deepened into dusk, and the desert stars winked out; and on, grimly on, plodded that solitary figure, pitting an indomitable will against the merciless immensity of thirst-haunted desolation.

  IV

  The caves of El Khour pit the sheer eastern walls of a gaunt hill range that rises like a stony backbone out of a waste of rocky plains. There is only one spring in the hills; it rises in a cave high up in the wall and curls down the steep rocky slope, a slender thread of silver, to empty into a broad, shallow pool below. The sun was hanging like a blood-red ball above the western desert when Francis Xavier Gordon halted near this pool and scanned the rows of gaping cave mouths with bloodshot eyes. He licked heat-blackened lips with a tongue from which all moisture had been baked. Yet there was still a little water in the skin on his shoulder. He had economized on that grueling march, with the savage economy of the wilderness-bred.