The House of the Falcon

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The House of the Falcon Page 8

by Harold Lamb


  Whereupon he trotted away to view the site selected for that evening's camp. Edith gazed after him hopelessly. So she was part of the caravan that had mystified beholders in the hills! Fraser-Carnie had said that Donovan Khan was a power in the hills. Was he master or slave of the caravan? Where was he? Was he alive or dead?

  At all events, she reflected, Iskander and Aravang were assuredly living men. And the camels and other natives were alive. But what had the Arab meant when he said that they might be too late?

  And why did the caravan hasten so—flitting among the defiles of the silent mountains?

  All at once she felt very lonely, very much disturbed. It was a misty evening, but the sun did not flame on the rolling clouds as at Srinagar. She had the fleeting illusion of having stood on the mountain slope before.

  Immediately, as if it had been waiting for just this moment, a sinister fancy gripped the mind of the girl. This was the mountain slope of the dream—kthat night in the Srinagar bungalow!

  It fastened upon her vividly—she recalled the implacable grip of Iskander, the hidden forms lying on the ground under the carpets, and the terrific voice that had cried, "These are no longer alive."

  And here before her was Iskander with his carpets.

  Edith shivered, cramped and numbed by the long day's ride. Yet the evening was far from chilly. Waves of heat emanated from the plain of sand below. The twilight air was hazy; somewhere behind the great mountain she knew that the sun was setting in a red ball of flame.

  Bravely she tried to throw off the deep impression of the dream as she approached the tents and the vague shapes of the natives moving about through the smoke of fresh fires. She thought of the hidden bodies of the dream. Then a startling thing came to her. Iskander, many days ago, had said:

  "A life already has been spent."

  Then another voice, this time not an echo of memory, came to her ears.

  "Missy khanum. O, missy khanum!"

  Startled, the girl turned her head. No men of the caravan, as she knew, were behind her—merely the two led camels carrying food, tied nose to tail with her own. And the native on the camel in front of her had neither spoken nor looked around. Plainly he had not heard the low words.

  Some twenty yards away in the sand on the slope below the caravan track was a thicket of stunted tamarisks. The branches of the nearer bushes had been carefully parted and she saw a native gazing at her and beckoning. It was not one of the followers of Iskander.

  Seeing that he was noticed the newcomer put finger to lips and held back the bush further so that Edith could see a white horse, saddled and bridled but without a rider. The man of the tamarisks pointed to the horse and to her.

  "Missy khanum (young lady mistress), you come—come queek, bime-by, yess!"

  He was a stout, powerful fellow in a dirty white suit with soiled crimson sash and a red fez. Grinning, he released his hold on the tamarisk which flew back into place, concealing him.

  Edith saw that the native in front of her had moved his head idly, not quite certain whether he had heard anything or not. She sat her camel rigidly, her pulse pounding, and breathed a sigh of relief as the caravaneer ahead of her, seeing nothing untoward in the tamarisk clump, turned back to the more interesting spectacle of the camp fire and its heating pot of meat—now near at hand.

  She bit her lip from sheer excitement. Friends were near at hand! The native who had signaled to her must have been sent by Major Fraser-Carnie or her father. They had managed to outstrip the caravan to the city that lay under the base of the mountain. The man and the horse had been waiting in concealment for her coming.

  Stiffly the girl clambered down from the camel after it had knelt. Every member of the caravan was busied setting up the tents or unloading the beasts. Aravang was making up her own bed. Iskander she saw beyond the camp engaged, after his custom, in evening devotions at the sunset hour. That she was watched she knew; but she had long been free to rove around the camps, and the tamarisk clump was not more than a hundred yards distant.

  The depression caused by Iskander's speech and the memory of her own dream made the unexpected prospect of liberty all the more alluring. It did not occur to Edith to hesitate, now that rescue seemed at hand. Who could have sent the man with the white horse, except her friends?

  Walking to the fire, she picked up an empty water jar and looked around, as if seeking the well that experience had taught her must be near the site of the camp. As carelessly as her rigid limbs permitted, she moved slowly in the direction of the tamarisk grove.

  A horse, and a real city near at hand! She wanted to fling away the jar and run. Instead, the girl paused to glance back at the tents. Aravang, shading his eyes against the sunset glow, was watching her. As she looked he beckoned imperatively. Edith measured the distance to the yearned-for thicket and decided that she was halfway to her goal. Whereupon, drawing a deep breath she dropped the jar in the sand and ran, blessing her short walking skirt.

  Aravang's shout reached her ears, without inducing her to look around. Gone was the stiffness she had suffered on descending from the camel—gone, her customary quiet. Edith fairly flew over the sand to the tamarisks and darted in among them.

  A hand reached out and grasped her arm. She was drawn toward the waiting horse by the native and assisted bodily in her leap into the saddle. The horse reared, but Edith—expert horsewoman as she was—had the reins in hand in a second. The man pulled the beast's head about, and pointed down a gully hidden by the scrub and leading away from the camp.

  "Kashgar!" he cried. "You go queek as hell—yess!" He slapped the horse on a hind quarter and Edith started down the gully at a swift trot. She saw the native turn and dive into the thicket on the further side of the gully.

  CHAPTER XI

  EDITH RIDES ALONE

  In the varied collection of guidebooks and tourist schedules in the possession of Miss Catherine Rand there had been one pamphlet that described briefly the location, climate, picturesqueness, points of interest, population, and means of travel of the mountain city of Kashgar.

  Four kingdoms, said the guidebook in florid phrases, met at the center of the Himalayas. But the makers of maps hesitated over the Himalayas. They were a no man's land. Only in Kashgaria did the slovenly, quilted, musket-bearing soldiers of the Celestial Republic emerge from guardhouses of mud and cry "Halt!"

  But the guidebook did say that there were two Kashgars, two cities: the old and the new, some five miles apart. In the new were progressive Chinese merchants, silk-clad magistrates, and the Taotai with all his pomp and power; likewise Samarkand and Punjabi traders, two isolated but indefatigable British missionaries, and even a native officer of British India who acted as a makeshift chargé d'affaires.

  Edith Rand had not seen the guidebook. She was ignorant of the nature of the two towns of Kashgar. Iskander of Tahir would have said that destiny drew her to the older city, away from the men of her own race.

  To tell the truth, Edith came to the crossroads leading to the two towns and chose the walled town swiftly—swiftly because she feared pursuit, and because the wall suggested to the girl, who was not acquainted with the vagaries of architecture in the Orient, more of a sanctum than the rambling streets of the modern Kashgar.

  Not that she fancied, even in her agitation, that the men of the caravan were immediately behind her. Experience had taught Edith the utmost speed of the powerful Bactrian camels, and the length of time needed to propel, beat, and curse the protesting beasts into momentum; and Iskander's horse, even if the Arab had set out at once on her track, was tired. The white stallion was fleet of gait. The high-peaked saddle afforded the girl a rough pommel for her knee.

  Her spirits rose as rider and horse swept downhill through broken brush, past cypress clumps tranquil in the quiet of evening, into the dust haze that hung over the sandy expanse, with its spots of verdure lining rough canals.

  The beat of the white stallion's hoofs struck an echo of joy in Edith's heart. She was
free! Surely, there would be somebody in Kashgar to appeal to for protection from Iskander—local authorities, perhaps even Arthur Rand.

  They had passed outlying huts by the canals where ragged children stood at gaze, peering through the soft dust which is ever in the air of Kashgar. The stallion's hoofs left a trail of denser dust. Now, he slowed obstinately to a walk, panting and grinding at the bit.

  Edith urged him on under an archway through the wall of the town. They pounded over a ramshackle wooden bridge which spanned the ancient moat under the wall. And a myriad smells assailed horse and rider. Edith grimaced and the stallion fought for his head.

  It was by then the last afterglow of evening. Purple and velvety crimson overspread the sky. Stars glimmered into being and slender minarets uprose against the vista of distant mountains. There was a great quiet in the atmosphere; but in the streets of the old city of Kashgar pandemonium reigned.

  Into a narrow alley, flanked with canopies stretched across the odorous fronts of booths and stalls, the horse paced protesting. Figures stepped aside reluctantly, only to hasten after. Glancing back, the girl saw that a crowd was following her—a crowd made up of motley and grotesque forms: smocked, wizened Chinamen; sheepskin-clad, swaggering youths, hideously degenerate of face; bulky women with giant, gray headdresses; half-naked urchins—all shrilling and chuckling in a dozen tongues and with a hundred gestures.

  Laden donkeys pressed against her knees. She heard the curses of the donkeys' owners. Peering about for sign of a clean and European-looking house, she saw only square gray and brown huts of dried mud with some loftier edifices of blank stone walls.

  A yelling lama, beating about him with a heavy staff, his body grotesquely dressed in white and black squares of cloth with a peaked cap of brightest orange, pushed her horse back, staring at her with a louder yell of surprise. Behind him grunted and squealed a line of laden camels, tied nose to rump. Dust swelled and swathed all in the alley.

  In a fury of irritation at the camels, the white stallion backed obstinately against the open front of a structure covered with grass matting from which lights gleamed. In the reflection, Edith could see a leprous beggar mouthing at her.

  "Baksheesh—plentee baksheesh. O my God! Baksheesh. O my God!"

  This parrotlike ritual emerging from lips half eaten away from the toothless mouth was his one stock in trade. Perhaps this unfortunate plied his trade solely with the missionaries. But in Edith's appearance, he sensed the opportunity of a declining life.

  No!" she cried, motioning him away frenziedly. No baksheesh." To the crowd she appealed eagerly. "English! Where are the English? Don't you understand? Does any one speak English? Sahib log!

  A Chinese merchant of the higher ranks would undoubtedly have gone to Edith's help, from various motives—perhaps from the instinctive good manners of his race. A Punjabi would have defended the girl against a mob, so strong is the bond between Briton and Indian. Even a group of Afghans might have assisted her boldly, enjoying the excellent pretext for beating the despised Sarts and Chinese and perhaps letting a little blood. Later they would have claimed a small ransom from the chargé d'affaires.

  But there was no Afghan to take the center of the street against the throng of bazaar scum, indolent Sartish townsmen, idiotic Taghlik shepherds, and staring, ignorant Kirghiz, and all manner of diseased filth.

  All were intent on her, all gazing, all talking. She could not move the white horse forward against these trouards of the bazaar of a—to all intents—mediaeval city. Instead, her mount backed against the reed matting that covered the enclosure front.

  A fat man in a fez ran out in his slippers and started a tirade against the invader of his premises. Then, seeing the American girl, he fell voiceless, with his great jaws agape. He backed into the house, through the matting, still staring.

  "English! I will pay!" Edith faced her tormentors stoically. "Oh, can't you understand? Go—Boro! Boro!"—a phrase borrowed from Iskander, in anger. "Take me to the sahibs, the effendi!"

  She paused, biting her lips. The bleared eyes stared through the dust, emotionless. The passing camels coughed and grunted. Vile odors swept into the girl. From behind her through the matting billowed a pungent scent of frying fish, mutton fat, dirt, smoke, stale human breath wine-laden, and a penetrating, sweetish aroma she did not recognize as opium.

  "Nakir el kadr!"

  A voice bellowed near her. At once a snapping, snarling chorus of dogs arose as the curs of the alley felt encouraged to annoy the frantic horse. Edith saw a beast with the body of a dachshund and the head of a mastiff snap at the stallion's flank; a brown mixture of terrier and setter with a Pekingese tail slunk near her. A giant wolfhound bared vicious teeth.

  The mob paid no attention, never ceasing to watch her.

  It was hideous for Edith to think that in another street Englishmen might be sitting down to dinner, or the governor of the city dining upon his terrace. Perhaps an American missionary was walking near by. She could not move toward them—if, indeed, she knew where to go.

  For the first time in her life Edith knew the meaning of real fear. Long-nailed hands felt of the silver that ornamented the elaborate saddle of the horse; a greasy, pudgy fist clutched suddenly the bracelet on her arm and wrenched it off. A parchment-hued face, wrinkled and evil as sin itself, peered up at her, a claw-like hand holding a paper lantern to her face. Other lanterns moved jerkily along the alley as their owners joined the assembly of spectators.

  Then the voice bellowed again behind her. The wrinkled face spat, and vanished. The thieving hands fell away reluctantly. She saw the man in the fez bowing and holding her rein. He pointed into the house. Edith shook her head. Bad as the alley was, she preferred it to the walls of such a building.

  Whereupon the fat man jerked down a portion of the matting, revealing a spacious room with a stone floor and a huge pot hung over a fire in the great hearth. Shadowy figures of veiled women were visible, and one or two men, also stout, sitting against the wall on cushions. It seemed to be an inn, and the perspiring proprietor made a herculean effort at English, or rather European speech.

  "Serai—yah! Entrrez, surre—verree good, my word! Serai, good, yah!"

  But Edith would not forsake the vantage point of her horse. Her woman's wit assured her that afoot she would be helpless in the hands of the mob.

  Instead, she signed to the serai-keeper to send away the mob. He nodded readily and pounced upon a half-naked boy to whom he whispered urgently. The youth slipped out into the shadows of the alley. Edith noticed this byplay but could not judge whether evil or good inspired it.

  Then the fat innkeeper summoned the sitting men with a single word. They leaped up, grasping staves, and flew at the throng. It was fez against turban, with objurgation rising to the roofs of the alley, slippered feet planted against broad buttocks and staves thrust into spitting faces.

  Apparently the alley scum were not disposed to fight for the chance of plundering the girl. They seemed listless in defense as well as attack. The men from the inn cleared a small ring around the now passive horse and squatted there, apparently to wait.

  To Edith the pause was intolerable. She could not ride free of the alley. The tired horse would not budge—disliking, beyond doubt, the presence of skirts upon his back. The actions of the serai-keeper suggested that he had sent for some one. For whom? Iskander?

  Edith decided to wait and see. Every muscle in her slender body ached with fatigue. She dared not dismount to ease her cramped limbs.

  Where were Iskander and Aravang? Had they traced her to the walled city? She hoped that they had taken the other turning. Every minute increased the suspense.

  Then swaggering men bearing scimitars pushed through the throng that gave back readily. The leader of the file gripped Edith's reins and led the stallion into the serai and she recognized her friend of the tamarisk grove. At this, the innkeeper placed matting across the front of his room with care. One of the newcomers with bared scimitar remai
ned at the entrance.

  "Mees Rand!" smiled the man at Edith's side, adding to himself: "Verily is the luck of Monsey good, for here is the woman herself, alone and quite harmless."

  In this fashion he of the leadership, the soiled fez, the immense shawl girdle and the very dirty drill suiting introduced himself—Abbas Abad, just arrived in Kashgar—and gave sharp command to one of his men to seek out Monsey in the new town."

  To Edith, it was clear that Abbas Abad was turning a deaf ear to her pleas that he take her to the sahibs—if, indeed, he understood.

  Her heart had leaped when she heard her name spoken. Eagerly she stared at Abbas, trying to place him. Then her heart sank.

  The whole appearance of the man—oily black hair, moist, bloodshot eyes, and flabby mouth— was against him. He met her gaze boldly and grinned, muttering to himself.

  "Who is your master?" she asked.

  Abbas shrugged his shoulders, not understanding. When Edith drew back, he gripped her arm in an iron clasp and pulled downward. Instinct warned the girl to keep to the saddle. Abbas only grinned the more and dragged her down with the calm assurance of a constrictor coiled about a gazelle. She slid from the saddle. And Abbas passed a tentative hand across her slim shoulders and the breast of her jacket, after the manner of a skilled Kirghiz feeling a sheep.

  "If the American father will not pay," he muttered to himself, "you will be worth much—much, but otherwise. A beautiful slave."

  Edith shrank back from the smiling Alaman in angry revolt. The followers of Abbas looked on apathetically but with some curiosity at the dilemma of the white woman. Usually in Abbas' seizure of women there had been wrangling and a price to pay. This was different. They gazed idly at the girl's flushed face and indignant eyes.

  She saw the serai-keeper approach Abbas servilely and the Alaman toss him some silver coins. It was as if a price had been paid for her capture. The cold expanse of the wall touched her back and Edith leaned against it wearily, as she understood the true nature of these men and the futility of her escape.

 

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