Suddenly the end came. The dancer reached the climax of her gyrating and appeared to collapse. The drums died away into a sudden silence in which one could hear a heartbeat.
The silence seemed to hold everyone spellbound until Sheik Hassam El Zigli, with a gesture of his hands towards the Tiznet dancers who had stood in a semicircle, drew them forward.
Each girl ran towards the Sheiks, each choosing one to throw herself down at his feet, her head bowed, her hands pressed together in the traditional attitude of abject obedience.
Then, as Nevada watched, the dancer opened her eyes and Sheik Hassam, taking her hand, drew her to her feet and led her towards Tyrone Strome.
Nevada saw him look up at her, saw the smile on his lips and, with a feeling of horror and disgust, she turned away!
CHAPTER FIVE
Swaying in the litter on top of the camel’s back, Nevada wondered if she could sleep.
She was feeling exceedingly tired as she had been unable to rest during the night, but had tossed and turned, feeling that every sound from the other women in the room was an irritant.
Perpetually in front of her eyes she seemed to see the dancer performing her exotic gyrations as she danced la Guedra.
Never had Nevada imagined that any dance could be so sensuous, so provocative and at the same time so hypnotic.
Long after she and the women had returned to their quarters she saw how emotionally they had been aroused and affected by the music and the passionate climax of la Guedra.
Besides this, the youngest wife of the Sheik was in tears and the woman who spoke French explained that it was because she was jealous.
“She loves our master,” she whispered to Nevada, “and, after the dancers come, he will not send for her for perhaps two or three days.”
It seemed strange, Nevada thought, that the Sheik’s fourth wife who was very attractive and could not have been more than eighteen years of age should love him so much.
Then she remembered that, as he was in fact the only man the woman ever knew, she had no other choice.
It was impossible, once they were all settled down for the night, for Nevada not to think of Tyrone Strome and the way he had smiled at the dancer.
It seemed almost as if his face was sketched on the darkness and she could see only too clearly the movement of his lips and what she thought was a glimmer of fire in his eyes.
The Sheik’s mother had made Nevada as comfortable as possible, giving her a place of honour on the matelas, a low sofa that consisted of velvet-covered mattresses resting on long wooden supports.
It was actually very comfortable, but sleep eluded her and, when the morning came, she felt hollow-eyed and exhausted in a way she had never known before.
They were aroused early, being informed by a slave that Tyrone Strome wished to leave soon after dawn.
Nevada was touched by the manner in which the Sheik’s mother and the other women bade her farewell almost affectionately.
Their good wishes for the journey and the hope that she would visit them again were all conveyed to her by the woman who spoke French.
Then, with many salaams and hands pressed together, touching first the forehead, then the lips and the breast, Nevada followed a servant down the twisting passages to the room where the Sheik had received them on arrival.
When she arrived there, she was ignored, as indeed she had expected, both by the Sheik and by Tyrone Strome.
Only by a glance in her direction did he direct her to follow him when he went outside the house to where a horse and a camel were waiting for them.
The rest of the caravan joined them at the outer gate of the Kasbah and they left amongst a noisy farewell from the Sheik’s servants and the cries of children who ran excitedly beside them for a little distance in the desert itself.
There was a cold wind blowing as they set off, which soon died away as the sun rose and every hour they travelled the heat grew in intensity.
Soon they were in very different country from that which Nevada had seen before.
Huge rocks rose on either side of narrow stony valleys through which their path wound and climbed – there were dry gorges and crumbling granite hillsides, pock-marked with caves.
Once they crossed a shallow Souss river with the water pitiably scarce between rocky boulders. Soon there were hot and bare infertile hills where only argan trees grew.
The continuous motion caused Nevada’s eyelids to droop and she was in fact half-asleep when unexpectedly the caravan came to a halt.
She opened her eyes to see that they were in a rocky defile with great granite cliffs rising on either side of them.
Then she saw Tyrone Strome, who obviously had been riding far ahead of the rest of them, come hurrying back on his horse, passing the camels and the donkeys until he reached her side.
He gave a sharp order to her camel driver who in his turn ordered the camel to kneel.
Slowly, grunting as it did so, the animal obeyed and then Tyrone Strome said to Nevada,
“Get down and hurry!”
She looked at him in surprise. Then she thought that perhaps again he had something unpleasant to show her as he had the day before, when he had taken her to see the corpse of the man who had been murdered.
She wanted to argue, to protest, but now he was giving fluent commands to the camel driver and, even as she moved, the man started to take the litter from the top of the camel’s back.
Standing on the rough stony path, Nevada watched him in astonishment. Then she felt Tyrone Strome take her wrist. He had dismounted and his horse was being led away. “What is happening?” she asked.
“Come with me! I will explain later.”
He pulled her forward as she spoke, dragging her over the stones at a speed which again hurt her feet in their thin babouches.
She tripped and gave a little cry.
He loosed his hold on her wrist and impatiently, without an explanation, picked her up in his arms.
She was too astonished to say anything as he climbed up the side of the cliff until, having reached some large boulders, he set her down behind them and knelt down to peer back into the valley at the caravan below them.
She followed the direction of his eyes and saw that the litter had now not only been removed from the camel on which she had been riding but had been smashed by the driver and the pieces thrown over some rocks where they were out of sight.
As the man finished doing this, he ordered the camel to its feet and the caravan began slowly to move forward again, Tyrone Strome’s horse, now with a large bundle on its back, being led by a boy.
“What is happening? Why are they leaving us?” Nevada asked nervously.
She could not understand what was occurring or why Tyrone Strome was behaving in such a strange manner.
For a moment she thought that he was not going to reply. Then he answered in a low voice,
“There are horsemen approaching us.”
“Horsemen?” she questioned. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I am taking no chances!” “But why? Do you think they might attack us?”
“They may be the servants of the Sheik who offered for you last night,” he said harshly. “A white woman is an attraction in this part of the world and later in the evening he increased the amount he was prepared to pay for you.”
There was something contemptuous in his voice that made Nevada feel ashamed.
“I am – sorry,” she murmured.
“On the other hand they may just be thieves intent on robbing a caravan,” he continued. “There are quite a large number of marauding bands of that sort and we might be unfortunate enough to encounter one.”
As he spoke, he drew a revolver from beneath his white robes.
“You mean – to fight them?”
“If I have to. It will mean bloodshed and death, but doubtless you will find that interesting.”
Nevada looked down at the colourful caravan beneath them moving thr
ough the pass between brown rocks.
“Please – don’t say that again,” she pleaded in a low voice. “You have punished me enough for what I said to David without – thinking. I shall never forget the – skeleton we saw yesterday.”
There was a note in her voice that told Tyrone Strome she spoke in all sincerity and, because they were close to each other, he was aware of the little shudder that went through her as she remembered the empty eye sockets in the skull and bared teeth.
There was no time to reply for at that moment at the far end of the defile there appeared a number of horsemen wearing traditional floating robes, each of them bearing in their hands a long barrelled black gun.
They drew in their horses in front of the caravan, pulling them sharply back on their haunches in the manner that Arab riders had perfected in their wild charge known as the fantasia.
Then the leader began to talk to the man leading the caravan.
Tyrone Strome listened intently to what was being said and Nevada, watching his grim expression, felt suddenly more afraid than she had ever been in her whole life.
Almost instinctively she moved nearer to him and as she did so he realised she was trembling convulsively.
He was holding his revolver in his right hand. Now he put his left arm around Nevada and, although she was not certain whether it was an action of protection or merely to prevent her from making any movement which might attract attention, it was curiously comforting.
It was no use trying to be an independent woman in a situation like this, she told herself. She wished she could cling even closer to Tyrone Strome and hide her face against him so that she would not see what happened when the shooting started.
Her heart was beating frantically in her breast and she expected every moment to see the men in the valley beneath them shot down by the horsemen and Tyrone Strome forced to join in.
But, as she held her breath the conversation in which by then several of the other horsemen had joined, came to an end.
Having given a shout which seemed to combine an order and at the same time to be a cry of elation, they were moving at what seemed a dangerous speed down the defile in the direction of the Kasbah.
Because she was close against him, Nevada felt the sigh of relief Tyrone Strome gave, which made no sound between his lips, but which released the tension of his body.
“They have – gone,” she said in a voice that was hardly above a whisper.
“To look for you,” he answered. “I was right, the Sheik who saw you last night without your litham is determined to include you in his harem!”
Nevada drew in her breath and then she said,
“I am sorry – forgive me. I realise now it was a – foolish thing to do.”
“It was not only foolish but also exceedingly dangerous,” Tyrone Strome answered. “Come, we must get out of this.”
He pulled her to her feet and hurrying ahead of her down the side of the cliff to where the caravan was waiting, he spoke to the men.
Then, as the bundle was taken from his horse’s saddle and a boy brought it to their side, he said to Nevada,
“As it will be easy for the Sheik’s horsemen to discover you are not as they now think at the Kasbah, you and I must take the risk of travelling alone without an escort.”
As Nevada looked at him questioningly, he picked her up in his arms and lifted her onto the saddle of his horse.
She sat sideways as an Eastern woman would and he sprang up behind her encircling her once again with his left arm while he took the reins in his right hand.
He gave some further orders to the leader of the caravan and Nevada thought that he told them to make all possible speed towards where they were going.
Then he spurred the horse into action and it moved sure-footedly over the rough stones and out of the defile onto the uneven stony ground that lay ahead of them.
They rode for some way before Nevada said,
“Have we far to go?”
“Far enough,” Tyrone Strome replied.
“You mean that the horsemen may – overtake us when they find I am not at the Kasbah?”
“It is a possibility.”
“And if they – do?”
There was silence for a moment and then Tyrone Strome said,
“You will have the choice of either going with them or dying at my hand.”
Because she could not help herself Nevada turned and hid her face against his shoulder.
“There is no – question of there being any – choice,” she said when she could control her voice. “You know – I would rather – die.”
“That is what I expected you to say,” he answered. “But if we are lucky and the Gods are propitious, we shall reach Tafraout and safety before they can return.”
Her face was still hidden against his shoulder and after a moment she whispered,
“I am sorry – I am really – I did not – understand that a Sheik might feel like that about me – I only wanted – help.”
“And you really imagined that was what they would give you?” Tyrone Strome asked and now there was a note of amusement in his voice.
“I read in your books that they were – uncivilised, but I suppose because I am so – ignorant it meant nothing.”
“It is not so much a question of their being uncivilised,” he answered, “but the fact is that women have little value in their eyes except as creatures of pleasure. That women may have feelings or preferences as to who becomes their Master is a consideration that never arises.”
Nevada did not reply.
She was thinking that perhaps that was what he himself felt about women.
He had certainly never considered her feelings and yet at the moment he was risking his life and the lives of a number of other men to save her from the consequences of her own stupidity.
She was well aware that, if it came to a fight, the camel drivers could easily be gunned down by the armed horsemen and Tyrone Strome’s revolver was not likely to prove very effective for long.
She wondered what he would feel if he was forced to kill her as he had offered to do.
Then she told herself that he must have killed many people in his life and one woman more would not be of much consequence one way or the other.
Because her conflicting thoughts were mingled with fear, they were more upsetting than anything she had ever experienced in her life.
She could only close her eyes and lie limply in his arms as they moved more swiftly than it seemed possible over the uneven rocky ground.
‘I am safe for the moment,’ Nevada told herself, ‘safe because he is holding me and because he will protect me – while he can.’
She tried to reckon how many miles they had progressed since leaving the Kasbah and it seemed to her it could not be very many because the caravan moved so slowly.
The horsemen on their fiery Arab steeds would reach it in a quarter of the time, then they would return.
She felt her heart beating tumultuously at the fear such thoughts engendered and yet, even though she was frightened, she could not really visualise what she feared becoming reality.
Could it be possible that she, Nevada van Arden, a pampered rich American, could die in this stony desert and no one would even know it had happened?
When she thought of it, she realised with a sense of horror how little her death would matter.
How many real friends had she who would mourn the fact that she was no longer with them? How many people loved her enough to weep one tear when they heard that she was dead?
For the first time Nevada saw herself as she was, without the frame of her wealth, without even the relevance of her beauty.
If she died, as the man Tyrone Strome had shown her yesterday had died, the vultures would pick the flesh from her bones and she would only be another skeleton lying bleached in the sunshine.
What she was feeling and indeed suffering must have communicated itself in some way to Tyrone Strome, for his arm tightened aro
und her and he said in a kinder voice than he had used to her before,
“It’s a good principle when one is in danger never to anticipate the worst.”
“It is – difficult – not to,” she said in a smothered voice. “I know,” he replied, “but my luck has never failed me in the past and I cannot believe it will desert me now.”
“I – hope not,” she whispered, “I don’t wish – to die.”
“Nor do I, as it happens,” Tyrone Strome answered, “because I still have quite a lot to do.”
“Your book to finish – for one thing.”
“Exactly!”
She felt he was smiling above her head as he added,
“Don’t forget that if we survive this will be an adventure which will read extremely well in our memoirs.”
“I doubt if anyone would wish to read mine.”
“That, of course, depends on how many more adventures you have.”
Because he spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone, she felt the fear that had possessed her receding a little and she managed to say in quite an ordinary voice,
“I think after this I shall be content – to sit at home with my knitting.”
“You might find it preferable to learn to cook.”
For a moment she thought he was insulting her, then she realised that he was teasing.
“I shall certainly take lessons – if we ever get back to – civilisation.”
“At the moment I cannot offer you anything very civilised,” he replied, “but we are in fact in sight of safety.”
There was a note of triumph in his voice that made her raise her head and, as she did so, she saw perhaps a mile away an enormous pink granite cliff silhouetted against the sky and at its foot the feathery green of palm trees.
“Tafraout!” she exclaimed excitedly.
She looked at him as she spoke and saw the smile on his lips. ‘Once again he has won!’ she told herself.
Now it seemed that her terror and her fears had been senseless because she should have known it was inevitable that in anything he undertook, Tyrone Strome would always be successful.
They drew nearer and she saw that besides palms there were olive and almond trees encircling a small town whose walls and houses were all pink.
The Punishment of a Vixen Page 9