The House of the Falcon/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
CONCERNING A YASHMAK
"Whither?"
That was the question Edith Rand asked herself ceaselessly, and there was no answer. More than two weeks had passed, she calculated, since her abduction. Her first long sleep and the spell of unconsciousness that followed had confused her count of the days.
She had asked Iskander the question, and he had replied:
"To one who waits."
That was all. But Edith, watching keenly, had noticed two things: this caravan, the one that had come to meet her, was not an ordinary caravan; and it traveled in haste.
Moving upward along rocky defiles that skirted the glacier slopes of the mountains where the route was marked along by ibex horns upright in the snow and by an occasional native shrine adorned with fluttering rags, they had met at times other caravans.
Always the other caravan had made a detour into screening timber, or down into blind gorges. More than once the girl was sure she had seen native shepherds fleeing away from them.
Again, a leper beggar sitting at the roadside had groveled in the dust when he sighted the brown men of the caravan.
Puzzling the matter, her quick eyes had noticed certain differences existing between her caravan and the others, seen at a distance. While the approaching strings of camels kept to the majestic, supercilious gait of the loaded Bactrian animal, hers pressed onward swiftly; while the others were conducted invariably by a patient, plodding Mongol, hers was led by Iskander on his active horse; the others enjoyed a raucous escort of mongrel dogs; no dogs followed Iskander's beasts, nor were there any bells to give out a rusty clang-cling.
There was something methodical in the speed with which the camels and the wiry, brown-skinned men passed over the waste of the Himalayas, heads down against the winds that buffeted them, drawing their gray woolen garments closer when the sudden hailstorms burst from an angry sky.
They were fearless, but fear was written in the faces of those who saw them pass.
"It's so pitiless," she had murmured to herself—wonderingly.
Iskander, sitting his peaked saddle with centaur-like grace, seldom glanced behind. Often she searched the back-trail down the gorges below which lay the City of the Sun, and her heart sank when she saw that they were not followed.
She hated Iskander.
In the soft-mannered Arab she recognized the personality that played the part of her master. To be sure, it was Iskander's attentive care that kept Edith so well. He seemed to understand her needs without being told. Her food he inspected carefully every night he saw to the erecting of her stout felt tent, braced on willow poles, the earth beneath it covered with splendid rugs and numdahs. A clean mattress had somehow been procured for her use, and the blankets were of the softest Kashmir wool. Always, men went ahead to pitch the tent and light therein a fire among stones skillfully arranged—a fire that had rid itself of smoke and subsided to comfortable embers by the time she arrived at the camp site.
Edith knew, that while she slept, Aravang—the big man with the scar—or Iskander himself watched before the entrance of her shelter. By now it was clear to her that Iskander and the others intended no immediate harm to her. In fact, the girl had never feared them. Raised as she had been in an environment of total safety and comfort, it was inconceivable to her that these men should molest a white woman.
To Edith Rand they appeared as unruly servants who had rebelled against their mistress—except for Iskander. Aravang was a hideous sort of watchdog, more her slave than guardian.
"So, kapra wallah," she had ventured after long pondering, "you are not even a merchant, a seller of cloth—but a slave, to Monsey."
It was a bold stroke. Experience had taught Edith that the Arab was most outspoken when angered; her own pride goaded her to anger him. Her scorn was by no means a trivial thing, and more than once she had fancied that the inscrutable Iskander had writhed mentally under the lash of her words.
Now he had urged his horse to her camel's side—a horse never willingly approaches a camel—and Edith had found time to admire the splendid ability with which the man handled the beast.
"No! God forbid!" he had scowled. "I am as my father and his father before him—a soldier."
By this Edith was reasonably sure that Monsey had had no hand in her abduction. At his ease, the liquid-tongued Oriental baffled her; provoked, Iskander was an open book to the quick-witted girl.
If not Monsey—who? Who was the one that awaited her? Iskander? Hardly. In spite of his boast she felt that the Arab was the agent of another man. Once, when she had overslept—the exertion in the high altitude always made her intensely drowsy from sunset to sunrise—he had upbraided her vehemently through the tent.
"Are you a sultan's favorite, to linger in this manner? By the honor of Tahir—uprise and haste! On the sword of my fathers have I sworn that I would bring you, in time. We are late—late. If we are too late you shall know sorrow."
It was the inborn arrogance of the Mohammedan, who is monarch of his womenfolk, breaking through the studied courtesy with which Iskander had sought to ease her journey. And it stirred a thrill of revolt in Edith's breast. She had remained where she was, lying in the blankets.
Iskander's will matched her own. He had ordered Aravang to take down the tent and to pack it; then to remove her outer garments from her side.
Edith had watched this, dangerously quiet.
"Now," he had said calmly, "you will clothe yourself in garments of my choosing. If you refuse, you will ride as you are—tied to a camel's humps. Decide!"
The girl had stood up, in petticoat and underclothing, her long hair whipping about her in the wind and the sun beating against her flushed face. Iskander studied her with the measured glance of the Oriental philosopher who reads a woman's beauty as a priest reads an open book.
"Coward!" she had gasped. "Boor! Thug!"
She had stamped her stockinged foot and Iskander's dark face became a mask of stifled vindictiveness. The word "thug" in India has a meaning deeper than in our language and symbolizes something below human caste. It acted upon the Arab as acid upon water.
He had thrust the apparel he held about her bare shoulders. "Are you without shame, woman? Have I read you wrongly?"
She saw that he had given her a cloak with a hood to cover her hair—also a woman's veil for the lower portion of her face.
Edith had promptly torn off the offending articles. She had never seen the usually emotionless Arab so aroused. Fiery oaths fairly flew from his twisted lips, and his black eyes snapped furiously.
"Once you were a European madame," he observed, "Now, you are otherwise. You will obey me, and I command that you shall be robed in decency—thus. In the path we follow a woman covers her face—thus."
Whereupon Edith tossed the veil into the dying camp fire.
"And I will not—thus!"
With tightly clenched hands and rigid lips she faced Iskander, whose lean face darkened with anger. In his hand he held a knotted whip. At once he lifted the whip. Edith's eyes blazed. She did not shrink back, but looked full into the Arab's eyes. For a long second her gaze challenged him hotly, but his eyes did not soften.
Then came Aravang between them. The big native spoke vehemently to Iskander, gesturing much with powerful hands. He seemed to be arguing something feelingly.
The Arab lowered his whip and swung away, to spring into the saddle of his horse. At this, Aravang held out the cloak and hood to Edith, signifying by dumb show that she should put them on. His dark, oxlike eyes wheedled her mutely. He looked so ridiculously unlike a lady's maid that Edith smiled and put on the garment. For the time being the question of the veil was ignored. But, later, Edith donned the Mohammedan yashmak of her own accord.
For a while she wondered at the necessity of the cloak. Being quick of thought, however, she did not fail to see that Iskander wished to disguise her.
So it was to escape prying eyes as the caravan flitted among the defiles—no longer ascending, as she noticed—that Iskander had given her the cloak! Then either one of two things had happened: they were pursued, at last; or they were approaching some point where Edith might be observed and her presence might provoke curiosity.
Drowsily Edith wondered whether she herself had not changed in aspect; the life of the caravan had become her life. She wore the cloak quite naturally.
She was always sleepy. If it had not been for her bodily strength, bred of an active outdoor life, the girl would have sickened and, perhaps, have died before this. Cold head winds, the swaying motion of the clumsy beast, the inevitable smells—one by one these things had stripped the softness of life's luxury from the girl.
From day to day she had dreamed, in a kind of stupor, of her other life, of the warmth and tranquil friendship of Louisville. Momentarily she had expected to awaken to see her servants about her—but only the brown faces of the caravaneers met her eyes, and she shrank from the camel and the rough food.
In this coma of fatigue the girl's innate vitality had come to her aid. Her cheeks became firmer, her eyes brighter. The mocking illusions receded—thanks to the constant care of Iskander.
One day she observed a box strapped on the side of the camel in front of her. She knew that box. It was the one containing the kit of Donovan Khan.
"Iskander," she smiled, "are you a thief as well as a—thug?"
The seller of rugs looked up warningly. He saw a rosy face, brown-tinted by sun and wind, turned toward him under shadow of the burnoose hood—a face rare as the wine-inspired art of a Persian painter. So he looked away. The woman was unveiled and she was not for him.
"That box," challenged his prisoner. "You took it from the house of Major Fraser-Carnie."
"Yess, khannum—madame."
"Why?"
No answer. Long ago Edith had discovered the uselessness of asking direct questions. Dissimulation is second nature to the Orient So she probed for information as a skilled fisherman casts a light trout fly.
"And you stole the medicines of the mem-sahib, my aunt. So, you are no soldier, but a thief!"
Inwardly she was wondering what the seller of rugs could want with two such articles as the box of John Donovan and the medicines of Catherine Rand. If she knew this she would know something of Iskander's purpose
"Yess, khanum, we took them, Aravang and I. But it was not stealing. It is the word of God that a thief must eat the dirt of his dishonor." He nodded reflectively. The seller of rugs was in a philosophical mood that afternoon and his philosophy was a trenchant thing. "We took them because we could not buy them—in Srinagar or elsewhere. Likewise—and it is different as day is from dark—we took them not for ourselves but for another."
"Who?"
No answer, except an indulgent smile. Edith had committed a second breach of Moslem manners—the question direct.
"The medicines are for you to use."
For her use! The girl wondered at first whether the remedies of her aunt had been purloined against possible sickness on her part. Yet she was conscious of a deeper meaning in the man's words. The Arab expected that the time would come when she herself would have use for the medicines. Either that or she must administer the remedies to another person.
"As for the other box," the scion of Tahir resumed, "before our coming to the City of the Sun it was stolen by a faithless servant. Yess, Jain Ali Beg tasted the punishment he had stored up for himself—Aravang saw to it. We are carrying the box to him who owned it, before Jain Ali Beg stole it. Am I, then, a thief?"
"Why, perhaps not."
Here Edith had her first insight into a curious code of ethics—a code that was not her own, but one that was ancient as the hills under which they were passing. The son of Tahir might regret stooping to theft. His righteousness, however, was satisfied. And his pride. Certain things—and they were many—Iskander would have died rather than do.
Like the girl, he had an unyielding pride. Edith hated him cordially, yet with a good deal of respect. His unfathomable fatalism depressed her.
"Donovan Khan," she said. "You are going to take the box to him?"
For a long moment Iskander's brown eyes sought her gravely.
"What is written is written. And who can read what will come to pass?"
"A white man?"
"Once. Now—who knows?"
"You mean that Donovan may be dead?"
"It is all in the hand of God." The Arab swept a wide-sleeved arm against the infinite blue of the sky. "Dono-van Khan is like to the eagle that flies from mountain crag to tree top. Who will know when he is dead? Sometimes is he called khalga timur—the iron body—and sometimes"
"The Falcon?"
Iskander almost started. His words had recalled to Edith the message received by Monsey in Quebec—the Falcon has taken wing. Her response had been intuitive. Why were men—certain white men—termed eagles or falcons, in the Himalayas? It was absurd.
Monsey's letter had said that the Falcon was searching Srinagar. For what? Fraser-Carnie had related that Donovan had been in the City of the Sun. A sudden thought caused her to catch her breath.
"Tell me, Iskander," she cried. "You took the medicines, because they could not be bought. Why did you take me?"
They were rounding the broad base of a pine-clad mountain—its summit invisible above vistas of barren cliffs, mist-shrouded. And above the mist stretched expanses of moraine.
As they came to a bend in the trail Edith saw some distance below and to the right the flat roofs of a town, looking for all the world like miniature clay blocks sprinkled in a sandy plain. Delicate minarets rose over the roofs: she could discern the sweep of a city wall.
Now, she had no means of knowing—for Iskander did not see fit to enlighten her—that they were rounding Mustagh-Ata, the "father of mountains," and were looking down on the roofs of Kashgar.
"You were beyond price," observed the Arab gravely. He seemed anxious to screen her view of the town, and presently the vista of the roofs was blotted out by clumps of dry tamarisks.
Edith leaned down and boldly caught his rein.
"You must answer," she insisted, hungry now for a crumb of assurance. "Is this friend of Fraser-Carnie, sahib—this Donovan Khan—dead? Did he not ride after a caravan of—of spirits?"
Iskander laughed, baring white teeth.
"Eh, I was in that caravan. And these"—he indicated the tired camels and the gnomelike natives—"also. This is the caravan that came for Dono-van Khan. Now," he gathered up his reins, "it is time to halt."
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—that 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.