by Harold Lamb
It was now light enough to discern his companions’ faces, and Gray halted the cavalcade.
“We will let the mules breathe a bit,” he informed the Kirghiz, who glanced at him inquiringly. “I will speak with my friend.”
He led the animal the scientist was riding a few paces to one side, and tossed off the blanket that enveloped Delabar. The man had awakened, half blue with cold and with retarded circulation due to his cramped position and the effect of the liquor. He peered at Gray from bleared eyes, sobered by the exposure of the past night.
The officer undid the rope that confined Delabar’s legs, then seated himself on a stone and lit his pipe.
“Professor,” he said meditatively, “you don’t know it, but I’ve been thinking over things in the last few hours. And I’ve come to a decision. I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking, because I want you to understand just why I’m doing this.”
Delabar was silent, peering at him inquisitively.
“Back on the steamer,” resumed Gray, “you showed me that you had nerves—quite a few. Well, lots of men have ’em. Under the circumstances, I can’t say I blame you. But at Honanfu your nerves had a severe jolt. Back there”—he jerked his head at Liangchowfu—“you had a bad case of fright. You’re all in now.”
“I am hungry,” complained the scientist. “Why did you tie me to the mule?”
“That skirmish with Wu Fang Chien,” continued the officer, ignoring the question, “wasn’t more than a good sample of what we may have to face in the Gobi Desert. It showed me you aren’t able to go ahead with the trip. You’d be as sick in body as you are now in mind.”
“I am not a horse,” snapped Delabar. “The Buddhist priests—”
“Precisely, the Buddhist priests. They’ve got you scared. Badly. Let me tell you some more I’ve been thinking. Intentionally or not, you have done all you could at Liangchowfu to hinder me. Only luck and Mirai Khan got us out of the place with a whole skin. In the army, where I served for a while, they shot men who became drunk when on duty.”
“This is China, another world,” retorted the man moodily.
“China or not, its my duty to go to the Gobi Desert and find the Wusun if I can. I promised Van Schaick that, and drew up a contract that I signed. I’m going ahead. You, Professor, are going back to the coast and to the States. You can report our progress to Van Schaick.”
Mingled relief and alarm showed in the Syrian’s keen face.
“You can complain that I sent you back if you want to. I’ll answer to Van Schaick for this.” Gray held up his hand as the other tried to speak. “You’ll be all right. I’ve been quizzing Mirai Khan. The coolie can guide you back, to the north of Liangchowfu, where you’ll meet some missionaries. Wu Fang Chien will be looking for us to the west, not in the east. You’ll take the money you have on you, and two mules with half the supplies. Promise the coolie enough gold, and he’ll stick by you—as he’ll be safer going back than forward. Any questions?”
It was a long speech for Gray to make. Delabar studied him and shivered in the cold breeze that swept the plain. Hardship brings out the strength and weakness of men. In his case it was weakness. Yet he seemed curiously alarmed at leaving Gray. Twelve hours ago he had implored his companion to give up the venture into the Gobi.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“For two reasons. I don’t want a sick man on my hands. And—you tried to destroy the maps. There’s another reason—” Gray hesitated, and broke off. “I don’t claim to be your judge. Every man follows his own course in life. But yours and mine don’t fit any longer. It’s goodbye, Professor.”
He rose, knocking the ashes from his pipe. Delabar gave an exclamation of alarm.
“Suppose the men of Wu Fang Chien find me?”
“You’ll be safer than here with me.”
Delabar stared into the steady eyes of his companion, and his gaze shifted. “I can’t go back. I must go with you.”
“I’ve said goodbye. Your coolie knows what he’s to do. Choose your two mules.”
“No. I’ll be better now—”
Gray smiled slightly.
“I doubt it. I’ve been watching you. Closer than you thought. Which mules do you want?”
Delabar flushed, and turned his animal back to the waiting group. He was muttering to himself uncertainly. Gray walked beside him. Once he spoke. “Buddhism, Professor, is a bad thing to think about. As Wu Fang Chien said, it is bad to enter forbidden ground. Well, good luck, Delabar. It’s better to part now—than later—”
But Delabar passed out of hearing. He did not look again at Gray, who remained talking to the Kirghiz. Later, Gray regretted that he had not watched Delabar.
The Syrian wasted no time in selecting two animals, and turned back at once. Mirai Khan followed the cavalcade with puckered brows as they passed out of sight among the hillocks. Gray waved his hand once when he thought Delabar looked back. But the man did not turn, humping himself forward over his beast, his head between his shoulders.
“It is a pity,” said Mirai Khan, stroking his gray beard reflectively, “to lose the two mules, and so much money. However, what will be, will be. Come, I know a davan nearby where we can rest until we are ready to go forward, at night.”
He conducted Gray along a sheep track for some miles to a ravine well into the hillocks. Here there was a grove of cedars, and a small spring. While Gray built a fire, Mirai Khan, acting on the white man’s instructions, unburdened the two remaining mules.
“We have little food, Excellency,” he observed suggestively.
“Open one of the boxes,” said Gray.
Presently Mirai Khan appeared beside the fire, carrying a heavy object.
“What manner of food is this?” he asked contemptuously. “I have tasted and the flavor is a mingling of salt and sour wine.”
Gray stared at the object in surprise. It was one of the boxes, with the cover removed. It was filled with an array of long bottles. One of these had the cork removed, and effused an acrid odor. Gray picked it up.
It was a bottle of a very good kind of vinegar.
Hastily Gray went to the other boxes and opened them, after noting that the fastenings and the seal were intact. They were all filled with vinegar.
Gray gave a soft whistle of bewilderment. These were the boxes that were supposed to contain their emergency rations that Delabar had purchased in San Francisco. The Syrian’s name was written on them.
He wondered fleetingly if Wu Fang Chien had been tampering with their baggage. But the boxes had clearly not been opened since they were packed. Also, the vinegar was of American make, and bore the name of a San Francisco firm.
Had there been a mistake in shipping the order? It might be. Yet Delabar should have checked up the shipment. No, the Syrian must have known what was in the boxes. He had chosen the other two mules—knowing these few boxes were worthless.
“I should have looked at ’em before I let Delabar go,” thought Gray. “He is too far away now to follow. Now why—”
That was the question—why? Delabar, from the first, had placed every obstacle in the way of the expedition. Even to buying bogus supplies.
Delabar had not wanted Gray to succeed. He had used every means to keep the American from the Gobi Desert. He had tried to instill into Gray the poison of his own fear. He had attempted to seize the maps, showing the location of Sungan, which were of vital importance.
Delabar had been Gray’s enemy. Why?
Gray had guessed much of this, when he ordered the other back to the coast. But he did not know the answer to this “why?” He puzzled over it much in the following days, and gleaned some light from his reasoning.
It was long before he knew the answer to the “why?” It did not come until he had gained the desert, and seen the liu sha. Not until he had met with Mary Hastings and seen the guards of Sungan. Not until he had learned the explanation of much that he as yet dimly imagined.
CHAPTER IX
Mirai Khan agreed with Gray that it would be useless to stay where they were until dark. They had no food. In spite of the risk of discovery, they must go forward.
“If we sleep,” the hunter agreed, “we will waken with empty bellies and our strength will be less than now. The time will come when we shall need meat; and there is none here. To the west, we may see a village or shoot a gazelle.”
Without further delay they unhitched the mules, packing the small remainder of Gray’s outfit—a tent, and his personal kit—on one animal. The American mounted the other, not without protest from the beast that scented water and forage.
With Mirai Khan leading on his shaggy pony, they made their way westward out of the hillocks, to the plain. They were now on the Mongolian plain—a barren tableland of brown hills and stony valleys. No huts were to be seen.
They had left teeming China behind, and were entering the outskirts of Central Asia and the Gobi Desert. A steady wind blew at their backs. The blue sky overhead was cloudless.
Gray had left the useless boxes of vinegar behind. And as he went, he puzzled over the riddle of Arminius Delabar. It was a riddle. Van Schaick and Balch had said little about the man, for they had been in a hurry to get Gray started on his voyage. He remembered they said Delabar was a Syrian or Persian by birth, an inveterate traveler who had been in most of the corners of the earth, and—the only man in America who could speak Chinese, Turki, Persian and Russian, the four languages a knowledge of which might be necessary on their expedition, and who thoroughly understood anthropology, with the history of Central Asia.
This being the case, Gray had taken a good deal on himself when he sent Delabar back. But he had done right. The vinegar boxes proved it.
Gray had a steady, logical mind that arrived at decisions slowly, but usually accurately. He now reasoned out several things.
Delabar, he guessed, had not come willingly on the expedition. Even on the steamer he had shown fear of the Gobi. Why? He must have known something about the desert that he did not tell Gray. What was that? Gray did not know.
This led to another question. Why, if the man was afraid, had he come at all? He might have refused to start. Instead he had bought, purposely, a shipment of worthless stores; he had worked on Gray’s mind to the best of his ability.
Gray suspected that Delabar had come because he wanted to prevent him—Gray—from reaching the Gobi. But Delabar might have stated his objections before they left San Francisco. Why had he not done so?
Possibly because, so reasoned Gray, Delabar had thought if he prevented Gray from starting on the mission, Van Schaick and Balch would engage another man.
Gray checked up the extent of his reasoning so far. He had decided that Delabar had been bent on preventing not him, but any American, from undertaking the trip to the Gobi. And to do that the Syrian had come along himself, although he was afraid.
Yes, Delabar had certainly been afraid. Of what? Of Wu Fang Chien, for one thing; also the Buddhists. He had been on the verge of a breakdown at the inn at Liangchowfu after their experience in the temple.
Gray recalled a number of things he had passed over at the time: Delabar’s pretext of purchasing supplies at Shanghai. The scientist had been absent from him for many hours, but had bought nothing. Then the incident of the Chinese steward on the river steamer of the Yang-tze. Something had been thrown overboard, which a passing junk had picked up. Had this something been information about Gray’s route? It was more than possible.
And the attack at Honanfu. How had the Chinese known that Gray kept a rifle under his bed—unless Delabar had so informed them? Delabar had been frightened at the attack. Perhaps because it failed.
Lastly, at Liangchowfu Delabar had tried to steal the all-important maps. Failing that, the man had, literally, collapsed. And—Gray whistled softly—it might have been Delabar who gave the information that led to the delayal of McCann, whom Gray needed, at Los Angeles. No one else, except Van Schaick and Balch, had known that Gray had sent for McCann.
It was reasonably clear that Delabar had sought to turn back Gray. When the American had ordered him back, instead, the man had protested. Obviously, he dreaded this. Yet he was safer than here with Gray. Delabar had said, in an unguarded moment, that he feared to be caught by Wu Fang Chien. Why?
What was Delabar’s relation to Wu Fang Chien? When drunk, he had said that the mandarin was only a slave of an unknown master. Who was the master? Obviously a man possessing great power in Central Asia—if a man at all.
This was what Delabar had feared, the master of Wu Fang Chien. Was Delabar also a slave? Gray laughed. His reasoning was going beyond the borders of logic. But he was convinced that his late companion had been serving not Van Schaick, but another; that he feared this other; and that his fear had increased instead of diminished when Gray ordered him back.
Gray looked up as Mirai Khan turned, with a warning hiss. The Kirghiz had reined in his mount and Gray did likewise.
A short rise was in front of them. Over this the hunter had evidently seen something that aroused him.
“Look!” he growled. “Take the windows of long sight and look.”
It took a moment’s puzzling before the American realized that his companion referred to the field glasses slung over his shoulder. He dismounted and crept with Mirai Khan to the top of the rise. Through the glasses he made out, at the hunter’s directions, a pair of gazelles moving slowly across the plain some distance away.
Immediately Mirai Khan became a marvel of activity. He tethered the beasts to a stunted tamarisk, loaded his long musket, cut himself a stick in the form of a crotch, and struck out to one side of the trail, beckoning the American to follow.
The gazelles had been feeding across the trail, and Mirai Khan trotted steadily to the leeward of them, keeping behind sheltering hummocks. It was a long run.
From time to time Mirai Khan halted and peered at the animals. Then he pressed forward. Gray was not easily tired; but he had been long without food and he stumbled as he ran after the hardy Kirghiz, who was afire with the spirit of the chase.
“Allah has given us meat for our pot this night,” he whispered to Gray, “if we are clever and the animals do not get wind of us.”
Gray understood how important their quest was. Their shadows were lengthening swiftly on the sand, and the sun, like a red brazier, was settling over the horizon in front of them. If they did not bag a gazelle, they would have no food that night, and both men were weakened by hunger.
Mirai Khan stalked his prey with the skill of long experience, pushing ahead patiently until the wind blew from the gazelles to them. But darkness falls fast at the edge of the Gobi. The sky had changed from blue to purple when Mirai Khan threw himself in the sand and began to crawl to the summit of a rise, pushing his crotched stick in front of him.
Following, Gray made out the gazelles feeding some hundred and fifty yards in front of them. The light brown and white bodies were barely discernible against the brown plain, but Mirai Khan arranged his stick, and laid the musket on it carefully.
Gray, stretched out beside him, hazarded a guess as to the distance. The hunter touched him warningly.
“Let me have the shot, Excellency,” he whispered. “If I cannot slay—even at this distance—no other man can.”
He said a brief prayer and sighted, gripping his long weapon in a steady hand. He had removed his sheepskin cap and his white hair and bushy eyebrows gave him the appearance of a keen-eyed bird of prey.
Gray waited, watching the gazelles. As Mirai Khan had claimed the first shot, Gray humored him, but at the same time threw a cartridge into the chamber of his own weapon.
The gazelles had sighted or smelled something alarming, for they quickened their pace away from the hunters. Mirai Khan fired, and swore darkly. Both animals were unhurt, and they had broken into a swift run, gliding away into the twilight.
Gray had laid his own sights on the game, and when the Kirghi
z missed the difficult shot, the American pressed the trigger.
A spurt of dust this side of the fleeing animals told him his elevation was wrong. Calmly, he raised his rear sight and fired again, as the gazelles appeared in the eye of the sun on a hillock.
The animal at which he had aimed stumbled and sank to earth. It had been a difficult shot at three hundred yards in a bad light, but Gray was an expert marksman and knew his weapon.
A wild yell broke from Mirai Khan. He flung himself at Gray’s feet and kissed his shoes.
“A miracle, Excellency!” he chattered joyously. “That was a shot among a thousand. Aye, I shall tell the hunters of the desert of it, but they will not believe. Truly, I have not seen the like. By the beards of my fathers, I swear it! I did well when I followed you from Liangchowfu—”
Still babbling his exultation, he hurried to the slain animal and whipped out his knife.
By nightfall, the two had made camp in a gully near the tethered animals. Mirai Khan had dug a well, knowing that water was to be found in this manner, and, over a brisk fire of tamarisk roots, was cooking a gazelle steak.
Gray stretched a blanket on the sand near the fire, watching the flicker of the flames. The gully concealed them from observation. He was reasonably sure by now that they had escaped any pursuing party Wu Fang Chien had sent from Liangchowfu—if one had been sent.
Mirai Khan ate enormously of the steak. When the hunger of the two was satisfied and the white man’s pipe was alight, he turned to the Kirghiz thoughtfully.
“Have you ever heard,” he asked, “of the city of Sungan?”
Mirai Khan, Gray gathered, was a Mohammedan, a fatalist, a skilled horse-thief, and a dweller at the edge of the Gobi, where life was gleaned from hardship. He was a man of the yurts, or tents, a nomad who ranged from the mosques of Bokhara to the outskirts of China. Somewhere, perhaps, Mirai Khan had an aul, with a flock of sheep, a dog, and even a wife and children.