El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (72 page)

The grimness and desolation of the night had its effect on the American. A foreboding of disaster oppressed him. There was something about Afzal Khan he could not fathom — something unpredictable.

The man had lived too long outside the bounds of ordinary humanity to
be judged by the standards of common men. In his present state of mind the bandit chief assumed monstrous proportions, like an ogre out of a fable.

O’Donnell shook himself angrily. Afzal Khan was only a man, who would die if bitten by lead or steel, like any other man. As for treachery, what would be the motive? Yet the foreboding remained.

“Tomorrow we will feast,” he told his men. “Afzal Khan has said it.”

They stared at him somberly, with the instincts of the black forests and the haunted steppes in their eyes which gleamed wolfishly in the firelight.

“The dead feast not,” muttered one of them.

“What talk is this?” rebuked O’Donnell. “We are living men, not dead.”

“We have not eaten salt with Afzal Khan,” replied the Turkoman. “We camp here in the open, hemmed in by his slayers on either hand. Aie, we are already dead men. We are sheep led to the butcher.”

O’Donnell stared hard at his men, startled at their voicing the vague fears that troubled him. There was no accusation of his leadership in their voices. They merely spoke their beliefs in a detached way that belied the fear in their eyes. They believed they were to die, and he was beginning to believe they were right. The fires were dying down, and there was no more fuel to build them up. Some of the men wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down on the hard ground. Others remained sitting cross-legged on their saddle cloths, their heads bent on their breasts.

O’Donnell rose and walked toward the first outcropping of the rocks, where he turned and stared back at the inclosure. The fires had died down there to a glow. No sound came from the sullen walls. A mental picture formed itself in his mind, resultant from his visit to the redoubt for water.

It was a bare wall inclosing a square space. At the northwest corner rose a tower. At the southwest corner there was a well. Once a tower had protected the well, but now it was fallen into ruins, so that only a hint of it remained. There was nothing else in the inclosure except a small stone hut with a thatched roof. What was in the hut he had no way of knowing. Afzal Khan had remarked that he slept alone in the tower. The chief did not trust his own men too far.

What was Afzal Khan’s game? He was not dealing straight with O’Donnell; that was obvious. Some of his evasions and pretenses were transparent; the man was not as clever as one might suppose; he was more like a bull that wins by ferocious charges.

But why should he practice deception? What had he to gain? O’Donnell had smelled meat cooking in the fortalice. There was food in the valley, then, but for some reason the Afghan had denied it. The Turkomans knew that; to them it logically suggested but one thing — he would not share the salt with men he intended to murder. But again, why?

“Ohai
, Ali el Ghazi!”

At that hiss out of the darkness, O’Donnell wheeled, his big pistol jumping into his hand, his skin prickling. He strained his eyes, but saw nothing; heard only the muttering of the night wind.

“Who is it?” he demanded guardedly. “Who calls?”

“A friend! Hold your fire!”

O’Donnell saw a more solid shadow detach itself from the rocks and move toward him. With his thumb pressing back the fanged hammer of his pistol, he shoved the muzzle against the man’s belly and leaned forward to glare into the hairy face in the dim, uncertain starlight. Even so the darkness was so thick the fellow’s features were only a blur.

“Do you not know me?” whispered the man, and by his accent O’Donnell knew him for a Waziri. “I am Yar Muhammad!”

“Yar Muhammad!” Instantly the gun went out of sight and O’Donnell’s hand fell on the other’s bull-like shoulder. “What do you in this den of thieves?”

The man’s teeth glimmered in the tangle of his beard as he grinned.
“Mashallah!
Am I not a thief, El Shirkuh?” he asked, giving O’Donnell the name by which the American, in his rightful person, was known to the Moslems. “Hast thou forgotten the old days? Even now the British would hang me, if they could catch me. But no matter. I was one of those who watch the paths in the hills.

“An hour ago I was relieved, and when I returned to the
sangar
I heard men talking of the Turkomans who camped in the valley outside, and it was said their chief was the Kurd who slew the infidel Kurovitch. So I knew it was El Shirkuh playing with doom again. Art thou mad, sahib? Death spreads his wings above thee and all thy men. Afzal Khan plots that thou seest no other sunrise.”

“I was suspicious of him,” muttered the American. “In the matter of food —”

“The hut in the inclosure is full of food. Why waste beef and bread on dead men? Food is scarce enough in these hills — and at dawn you die.”

“But why? We saved Afzal Khan’s life, and there is no feud —”

“The Jhelum will flow backward when Afzal Khan spares a man because of gratitude,” muttered Yar Muhammad.

“But for what reason?”

“By Allah, sahib, are you blind? Reason? Are not fifty Turkish steeds reason enough? Are not fifty rifles with cartridges reason enough? In these hills firearms and cartridges are worth their weight in silver, and a man will murder his brother for a matchlock. Afzal Khan is a robber, and he covets what you possess.

“These weapons and these horses would lend him great strength. He is ambitious. He would draw to him many more men, make himself strong
enough at last to dispute the rule of these hills with Orkhan Bahadur. Nay, he plots some day to take Shahrazar from the Turkoman as he in his turn took it from the Uzbeks. What is the goal of every bandit in these hills, rich or poor?
Mashallah!
The treasure of Khuwarezm!”

O’Donnell was silent, visualizing that accursed hoard as a monstrous loadstone drawing all the evil passions of men from near lands and far. Now it was but an empty shadow men coveted, but they could not know it, and its evil power was as great as ever. He felt an insane desire to laugh.

The wind moaned in the dark, and Yar Muhammad’s muttering voice merged eerily with it, unintelligible a yard away.

“Afzal Khan feels no obligation toward you, because you thought it was Ahmed Shah you were aiding. He did not attack you at the Pass because he knew you would slay many of his men, and he feared lest the horses take harm in the battle. Now he has you in a trap as he planned. Sixty men inside the
sangar;
a hundred more at the head of the valley. A short time before moonrise, the men among the spurs will creep down the valley and take position among these rocks. Then when the moon is well risen, so that a man may aim, they will rake you with rifle fire.

“Most of the Turkomans will die in their sleep, and such as live and seek to flee in the other direction will be shot by the men in the inclosure. These sleep now, but sentries keep watch. I slipped out over the western side and have been lying here wondering how to approach your camp without being shot for a prowler.

“Afzal Khan has plotted well. He has you in the perfect trap, with the horses well out of the range of the bullets that will slay their riders.”

“So,” murmured O’Donnell. “And what is your plan?”

“Plan? Allah, when did I ever have a plan? Nay, that is for you! I know these hills, and I can shoot straight and strike a good blow.” His yard-long Khyber knife thrummed as he swung it through the air. “But I only follow where wiser men lead. I heard the men talk, and I came to warn you, because once you turned an Afridi blade from my breast, and again you broke the lock on the Peshawar jail where I lay moaning for the hills!”

O’Donnell did not express his gratitude; that was not necessary. But he was conscious of a warm glow toward the hairy ruffian. Man’s treachery is balanced by man’s loyalty, at least in the barbaric hills where civilized sophistry has not crept in with its cult of time-serving.

“Can you guide us through the mountains?” asked O’Donnell.

“Nay, sahib; the horses cannot follow these paths; and these booted Turks would die on foot.”

“It is nearly two hours yet until moonrise,” O’Donnell muttered. “To
saddle horses now would be to betray us. Some of us might get away in the darkness, but —”

He was thinking of the papers that were the price of his life; but it was not altogether that. Flight in the darkness would mean scattered forces, even though they cut their way out of the valley. Without his guidance the
Turkomans would be hopelessly lost; such as were separated from the main command would perish miserably.

“Come with me,” he said at last, and hurried back to the men who lay about the charring embers.

At his whisper they rose like ghouls out of the blackness and clustered about him, muttering like suspicious dogs at the Waziri. O’Donnell could scarcely make out the hawklike faces that pressed close about him. All the stars were hidden by dank clouds. The fortalice was but a shapeless bulk in the darkness, and the flanking mountains were masses of solid blackness. The whining wind drowned voices a few yards away.

“Hearken and speak not,” O’Donnell ordered. “This is Yar Muhammad, a friend and a true man. We are betrayed. Afzal Khan is a dog, who will slay us for our horses. Nay, listen! In the
sangar
there is a thatched hut. I am going into the inclosure and fire that thatch. When you see the blaze, and hear my pistol speak, rush the wall. Some of you will die, but the surprise will be on our side. We must take the
sangar
and hold it against the men who will come down the valley at moonrise. It is a desperate plan, but the best that offers itself.”

“Bismillah!”
they murmured softly, and he heard the rasp of blades clearing their scabbards.

“This is work indeed for cold steel,” he said. “You must rush the wall and swarm it while the Pathans are dazed with surprise. Send one man for the warriors at the horse pen. Be of good heart; the rest is on Allah’s lap.”

As he crept away in the darkness, with Yar Muhammad following him like a bent shadow, O’Donnell was aware that the attitude of the Turkomans had changed; they had wakened out of their fatalistic lethargy into fierce tension.

“If I fall,” O’Donnell murmured, “will you guide these men back to Shahrazar? Orkhan Bahadur will reward you.”

“Shaitan eat Orkhan Bahadur,” answered Yar Muhammad. “What care I for these
Turki
dogs? It is you, not they, for whom I risk my skin.”

O’Donnell had given the Waziri his rifle. They swung around the south side of the inclosure, almost crawling on their bellies. No sound came from the breastwork, no light showed. O’Donnell knew that they were invisible to whatever eyes were straining into the darkness along the wall. Circling wide, they approached the unguarded western wall.

“Afzal Khan sleeps in the tower,” muttered Yar Muhammad, his lips close to O’Donnell’s ear. “Sleeps or pretends to sleep. The men slumber beneath the eastern wall. All the sentries lurk on that side, trying to watch the Turkomans. They have allowed the fires to die, to lull suspicion.”

“Over the wall, then,” whispered O’Donnell, rising and gripping the coping. He glided over with no more noise than the wind in the dry tamarisk,
and Yar Muhammad followed him as silently. He stood in the thicker shadow of the wall, placing everything in his mind before he moved.

The hut was before him, a blob of blackness. It looked eastward and was closer to the west wall than to the other. Near it a cluster of dying coals glowed redly. There was no light in the tower, in the northwest angle of the wall.

Bidding Yar Muhammad remain near the wall, O’Donnell stole toward the embers. When he reached them he could make out the forms of the men sleeping between the hut and the east wall. It was like these hardened killers to sleep at such a time. Why not? At the word of their master they would rise and slay. Until the time came it was good to sleep. O’Donnell himself had slept, and eaten, too, among the corpses of a battlefield.

Dim figures along the wall were sentinels. They did not turn; motionless as statues they leaned on the wall staring into the darkness out of which, in the hills, anything might come.

There was a half-burned fagot lying in the embers, one end a charring stump which glowed redly. O’Donnell reached out and secured it. Yar Muhammad, watching from the wall, shivered though he knew what it was. It was as if a detached hand had appeared for an instant in the dim glow and then disappeared, and then a red point moved toward him.

“Allah!” swore the Waziri. “This blackness is that of Jehannum!”

“Softly!” O’Donnell whispered at him from the pit darkness. “Be ready; now is the beginning of happenings.”

The ember glowed and smoked as he blew cautiously upon it. A tiny tongue of flame grew, licking at the wood.

“Commend thyself to Allah!” said O’Donnell, and whirling the brand in a flaming wheel about his head, he cast it into the thatch of the hut.

There was a tense instant in which a tongue of flame flickered and crackled, and then in one hungry combustion the dry stuff leaped ablaze, and the figures of men started out of blank blackness with startling clarity. The guards wheeled, their stupid astonishment etched in the glare, and men sat up in their cloaks on the ground, gaping bewilderedly.