The Voice in the Drum

by Harold Lamb

THE VOICE IN THE DRUM

By HAROLD LAMB
Author of "Two Thousand Years," "The Last Cabin," etc.

 

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WATER POURED ON THE DESERT SANDS SEEPS IN AND IS LOST; WATER GIVEN TO A MAN OF THE DESERT MAY WORK MUCH MAGIC—BACK THERE AT THE EARTH'S END, THE HINTERLANDS OF CHINA

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BILL GORDON, called Black Gordon because he had sun bleached hair and light eyes, was in a hurry. For one thing, he wished to be out of the desert. It was no longer safe for him. And then, too, he wanted to meet up with his chum, Tom Eldridge.

It is not so easy to leave the Gobi desert in a hurry. Gordon knew this. He did not try to make speed, but he made time. For a night and the better part of a day he had been in the saddle of the shaggy Mongolian pony. His compass had been stolen, and for two days he had not seen the sun.

"Might as well give a guy his tombstone as take his compass, here in this Gobi," he grumbled, thinking of Mo Yan and his men, who had run off his own followers, and, for good measure, all but one of his pack animals.

He did not want to think of Mo Yan, for the present—or of the cupful of warm water that sloshed around in the canteen on his hip. Because he had no more water, and it was hard to tell just how far he was from the edge of the barren plateau, the rock pinnacles and the clay gullies, the dry river beds and the piercing winds that made the Gobi the most desolate thing in the world.

True, he knew that he was heading nearly due east toward the hills that form the backdoor of China—knew it by the shape of the wind ridges where sandy stretches were met with. Marco Polo probably, had guided himself to Cathay by these same ridges in the marching sands. And since the day of Marco Polo the Gobi had not changed.

It was an ancient world, wherein rivers had vanished and the ruins of cities older than China itself had been covered by the sands. Early explorers related that stragglers from caravans had died when they followed after beings that sought them from the wastes. There was a tale, too, that at night the thunder of rushing hoofs could be heard, the blare of elephants, the roll of kettle drums—in short that the spectral horde of Genghis Khan moved again over the barrens.

"Bunk," Gordon had said of this, and he knew the Gobi as few men did, "all of that. There isn't any magic. Anyone who gets himself lost in the Gobi is gone, sure enough. And as for the noises—the moving sands sound queer, sometimes."

But then he thought of Mo Yan and the horsemen he had seen passing at night against the stars on the skyline when he was camped in a hollow out of reach of the wind. He did not speak of that. In fact he seldom had anyone to talk to except himself. Black Gordon, a man of his hands, and a crack shot, had a level head. Then, too, the spell of the desert was on him, as it does hold a man, whether in the uplands of Arizona or the Gobi.

So long as he was alone, he was king of the open spaces. From city or seaport he headed back, eventually to the barrens, as a sailor heeds the call of the sea and seeks out a ship. He made a living shooting big game and selling the rare heads, mountain sheep, musk deer or takin, in Hongkong.

He had done this until Mo Yan's men had sought out his camp a few days before and asked for tribute. Black Gordon had no money, but he had a rifle and showed it, speaking a few pointed words. That night all his followers, because they feared Mo Yan, disappeared and with them all the animals except the one tied in front of his dog tent.

 

GORDON reined in his tired pony and squinted under the brim of his hat. Rounding a shoulder of naked, purple basalt, he had sighted something moving in the gray level of clay in front of him. It looked very much like an animal rooting under a growth of withered tamarisk—one of the small and savage blue bears of Tibet.

Riding closer, the hunter made it out to be a man. Loosening the rifle in the saddle sheath, because he had by no means forgotten Mo Yan, he whistled. The man was no bigger than a dwarf, almost as broad as he was high, with tiny, twinkling eyes hidden under wide, bushy brows.

Under the bearskin that covered shoulders and head, long black hair hung, under this string after string of tiny iron ornaments shaped like animals. The skin of the face was wrinkled with age. The man ceased digging feebly in the hard clay and fell to staring banefully at Black Gordon.

Gordon knew the native to be a Mongol shaman. It was rather out of the country of the Mongol tribes, and the hunter had never known a conjurer to stray from his tribe before. Then he saw that the old man's mouth hung open, and the lips were dry.

"Thirsty," he reasoned, "damned thirsty. Lost his strength, but too proud to beg for a drink."

Dismounting, he gazed down into the hole, barely two feet deep and scanned the tamarisk growth keenly. "Either he's digging his own grave or he thinks he's magician enough to know where water is—if you dig far enough."

Satisfied, apparently, that the white man meant no harm, the native began prying at the clay with a stick and tugging it up with powerful, but enfeebled hands. The hunter stepped away and put his foot in the stirrup. Minutes were worth more than gold, and he needed every drop of water in his canteen. Glancing over his shoulder, he found that the Mongol was squatted on his haunches, gazing at him with silent appeal in the bloodshot eyes.

"O, hell," muttered the white man. "Whole hog or none, it is."

Taking up his canteen, he drew the cup from his bags and carefully poured it half full. Holding the cup out to the old native he nodded. The Mongol sucked it down and grunted. Then Gordon drank the other half cup himself. As he did so he noticed that the horse was sniffling around the hole in the clay.

Gordon pondered. If he mounted and went on, the pony would soon give out. Whereas if he stayed to work the hole deeper, and found no water, well that would be the end, and Mo Yan undoubtedly would be pleased.

The shaman was at his task again, but making little progress.

"Wish I knew if he thought it was a grave he was digging or a well," the hunter mused. Mongols, and Chinese also, have a horror of death without burial. It struck him suddenly that the old native would die anyway, if he went on. The half cup of water would not keep him alive long.

Gordon took off his coat and drew the small spade from behind his saddle. Pushing the conjurer aside he fell to work, standing in the hole and tossing out the loosened clay. After a while the native began to push and pull the piled up earth further from the hole, so that the white man would not have to throw it so high.

Overhead the blazing glory of sunset filled the sky behind the pinnacles of basalt, now black, resembling the inanimate fingers of a giant up-stretched from the earth. The air chilled, and the inevitable wind began to move the wisps of tamarisk and the pony's mane.

It had been dark for some time before Gordon felt mud under his feet. An hour later a shallow pool of water stood in the excavation. Before midnight the hunter had a brisk fire going and was roasting antelope steak over it. The old native proved to be as hungry as he had been thirsty. He sat in his bearskin, huddled close to the fire, chewing at the shreds of meat in his hand, and as soon as the last of it was gone, hollowed out a sleeping place in the layer of sand that topped the clay, where he could feel the warmth of the embers.

Although Gordon watched for a great part of the night and slept lightly, he did not hear the shaman leave the water hole. When he looked around, in the morning mists, there was no sign of his late companion except the imprint of a small bear's tracks in the sand. This surprised him only a moment, because it soon appeared that the animal tracks and the marks of his own boots were the only traces visible.

"Bunk," thought Gordon. "As a water finder Sham's right there but his magic's old stuff."

In many out of the way places Black Gordon had seen the conjuring of the natives, the famous mango trick performed before the veranda of a white man's hotel in Calcutta, the unpleasant voodoo of the Haiti plantation blacks. Be the magic black or white, Gordon reasoned, the fundamentals were the same—"three cards, now you see 'em, now you don't."

It was all wrong, he thought, the saying that the hand was quicker than the eye. Some said that Black Gordon gained his nickname from a deadly temper, and that the man had known how to manipulate three cards, as well as the five of a poker hand in his youth. Too, it was said that Black Gordon was quick on the draw; in former days he had carried a derringer slung under one armpit. For years, however, no man had seen the desert rider carry anything except a rifle, and now he was quiet—slow to anger.

But before twenty-four hours passed Black Gordon's mood altered, and within a week he admitted that there was something in magic that he had overlooked. This was on account of the drum, and here is how it happened.

 

II
The Half Way House

RIDING in from the open plains, Black Gordon always stopped at Tom Eldridge's house. By the very few white men who ventured beyond the Kansu mountains to the Gobi and returned to China, the go-down of Eldridge was known as the Half Way House because it was the last abode of a white man.

Eldridge, always hospitable, was a Standard Oil agent. Gordon had formed the habit of bringing in some kind of a present for Betty, Tom's eleven-year-old daughter, a mite of a child, pretty and quiet.

Now, as he threaded down the narrow paths of the China side of the Kansu hills—having found himself in familiar surroundings the day after leaving the Mongol—Gordon was looking forward to the greeting of the Half Way House.

Passing through the gate of the compound he shouted cheerfully, and, when no house boy came, stamped up the steps to the screened veranda. Eldridge was not there, but a slender, stooped shouldered man stood peering at him from thick spectacles. Gordon thought that the stranger looked like a bird—if a bird ever wore a cartridge belt.

"Where's Eldridge?" the hunter asked.

"Down the river at Chengtu, in the hospital of the Mission college," the other answered precisely.

"What for?" Black Gordon was impatient, a little tired and more than a little hungry. "What's the matter? Is Betty with him?"

"Dysentery," said the visitor gravely. "No, Betty is gone."

The hunter started to swear, but checked the words as he scanned the intent face behind the big lenses. "You'll have to talk louder, I'm a little deaf. Where are the house boys, and why is Betty gone?"

For an instant the stranger scanned the big frame of the hunter coldly, resenting the other's manner. Then, seeing Gordon's fatigue, he shrugged and explained concisely that he was Rand, of the College, that Eldridge was his friend, and that he had come to the Half Way House to search for Betty.

The child had been missing for three weeks. The only thing Eldridge could say of her was that one afternoon she had mounted a favorite pony and had gone up into the Kansu hills, accompanied by one of the Chinese servants. The boy, however, who brought the Standard Oil agent down to Chengtu, had told Rand that Betty had been carried off by riders from the Gobi.

"He said they were Mo Yan's men," added the man from Chengtu, watching the lined face of the hunter curiously.

The face did not change, but the eyes narrowed, and all impatience, born of weariness, fell from Black Gordon. He walked almost casually through the empty rooms of the bungalow, and, when he emerged, measured the height of the sun over the western hills. The day was nearly ended.

Realizing this, the desert rider sat down and began to fill his pipe. He knew now that the child of Tom Eldridge had been in his thoughts since he left the water-hole; that he had been watching for the first glimpse of her brown face. And she had been carried away from the Half Way House.

It happened three weeks ago, Rand summed up, in his placid manner. Eldridge had been too ill to search for her, and so he, Rand, had come.

"How did the boy know it was Mo Yan who made off with Betty?"

"He would say very little, except that at the time Betty was lost on the hill trail he heard a drum, beaten in the woods nearby. It was an angry drum, he maintains, and one that heralded a mission of vengeance."

Black Gordon frowned over his pipe, studying the flood of ruddy orange over the knobs of the hill summits as it changed to a dull purple pierced by the glimmer of stars. Betty had not come back from the far side of those hills, and she was a mite of a thing, pretty as a flower.

"The kerosene trade," went on the level voice of Rand, pitched so that the hunter could hear, "in the towns of the Kansu range was handled by poor Tom. About a year ago there came to this house a Chinese merchant, an affable man, who demanded one fifth of the net price of the kerosene sales, to be paid to Mo Yan, a new taotai or ruler of the Gobi."

Rising, he found matches and lit the lamp on the table between them. "Tom refused to pay bribery—had to, you know, because he did not own the goods he was handling. Then he began to have trouble getting carts or camels to carry his products, until he took to hiring the desert Mongols to carry his stuff."

Gordon nodded. He knew the Mongol tribesmen, nomads, uncertain as gypsies and violent at times.

"After that," resumed White, "the agent found a note on his desk. It was simply a bill, written in excellent English, reminding him that he had not paid an account due the town of Lanchow. It puzzled him a good deal, until he remembered that the taotai of the Gobi lived in Lanchow, one of the old caravanserais, about a day's ride from the hills out into the desert."

"Yes," said Gordon suddenly, "a walled town, made out of the ruins of Lord knows what, on the caravan track from China to India. Did the merchant who called for the rake-off see Betty?"

"I presume so. Tom tore up the bill and carried on as usual. And then, during his illness, Betty disappeared."

"Then it was Mo Yan who carried her off." Gordon related his experience in the desert, after he had refused to pay a bribe to the master of Lanchow.

"I rather feared it," assented Rand. "Who is Mo Yan—exactly? I have heard some rather tall tales."

"All we can go on is that he has come out of nowhere, apparently, and appointed himself dictator of this part of the world, and a law unto himself," Gordon replied. "He has a fast-moving bunch of horsemen, well trained, and writes English."

"When I first came to this house," continued the professor, "I found upon Tom's desk another paper. Appearances led me to believe it was left here after he had gone." He extended a slip of plain paper to the hunter.

"‘The Wisdom of the East. … What is lost is lost. A fool will lose what he has in seeking that which he has not.’"

"Clear as mud," grunted the hunter. "No Mongol ever wrote that."

"And yet, the Chinese around here fear Mo Yan. Witness their flight from this house, and the fact that they refuse to talk in the villages about him."

"Add to Mo Yan's pedigree," nodded Gordon, "that he beats a drum."

Recalling the Mongol shaman that he had befriended, Gordon paused, but only for an instant. Surely it could not be that the surly creature of the water hole had written, or caused to be written, that last missive. "We'll start for Lanchow after daybreak."

Rand looked up quizzically. He saw that the desert rider was tired bodily and mentally, but Gordon's face reassured him. "It may not be the safest trek in the world, you know. We are about a thousand miles from the nearest British consul."

"Two thousand from an American gun-boat, which is more to the point," grinned Gordon. "And I know that Lanchow lies outside the back door of China. And that's a first-rate reason for not pestering the Chinese authorities about an investigation. I have a debt to square with Mo Yan, I think. Did you ever shoot a rifle, Professor?"

Rand started, and blinked. "I don't recollect—why, not to my knowledge."

"And you were going to look up Mo Yan just like that?" The hunter pointed at the heavy cartridge belt and the new-looking Enfield resting against the wall. His opinion of Rand went up several points. "I want to take back my remark, a while ago. Will you shake hands with me?"

In this way the two men, so ill matched in natures and experience, became warm friends. Black Gordon sometimes said curtly that it was because Rand did the listening, and he did the watching that they managed to work together. He had seen almost at once that the professor was so near sighted as to be almost blind, except at close range.

"I really did not plan," explained the slender man, "to go direct to Lanchow. The villagers about here say that a Mongol shaman has taken up his stand on the further side of the hills, near the caravan route and beats his drum regularly. They say it is a message of some kind, an angry message. He must be the drummer Betty and the boy heard, and he can tell us something."

 

III
The Man in the Cage

IT WAS noon the next day when they saw the blue bear. Gordon's keen sight recognized it as one of a rare species, commonly called the little blue bear of Tibet—an active animal, fierce and unusually savage in attack, but no larger than a stocky Airedale.

Gordon had had a bath and a good sleep and showed few traces of the three days and one night in the saddle. They had locked up the station, the house and store-room, and set out with their rifles and two good ponies. For a moment the hunter scanned the animal watching them from the edge of the brush ahead of them, at a turn in the trail, and Gordon wondered why it endured their near approach. Then he swore heartily.

From a yard behind him Professor Rand had fired hurriedly at the blue bear. The shot went wide. So much Gordon saw as he urged his reluctant pony forward, to see where the animal went. Contrary to general belief a bear can move very swiftly on its feet, and the hunter had no desire to be rushed from the screen of the thicket, especially by the blue bundle of sinews and temper that had just vanished from in front of him.

The animal's trail led along a faintly marked path, through a shallow gully. Rounding the shoulder of the mountain, both men reined in silently. They had emerged from the trees upon the edge of a precipice overlooking the brown plain of the Gobi. A few feet to their left the path ended where the cliff rose sheer overhead. Under this overhang of rock, squatting at the brink of the precipice, was the gnome-like figure of Sham, the Mongol conjurer. A few steps more and they would have ridden him down, because there was no way to leave the spot except by the trail up which they had come.

On its side, beneath his hand, was a large drum of leather stretched inside a carved wooden framework.

"Here's our man!" Rand dismounted to peer at the sturdy dwarf, who glared back with interest, moving his head like a hunted animal, to follow the two white men. The professor spoke to him in Tatar and Manchu without drawing an answer to questions about the missing white child.

"Ask him where the bear went," suggested Gordon.

No response was forthcoming. For a moment the hunter stared into the yellow eyes, unblinking and malevolent. Then he turned to peer down the cliff, observing that the drop was over a hundred feet, sheer. "What gets me," he ruminated aloud, "is for why a chap should want to come up here to beat a drum?"

"It's some ceremonial," explained Rand. "These beggars always come to the high places for that. You ought to be able to make out Lanchow from here. The place is like a pulpit, with the cliff for sounding-board. Look!"

Far out in the haze of the heat-ridden plain, the hunter could see a gray blur. He tightened his reins. "Let's be going. This guy is hard boiled. If he won't answer a civil question for the man that gave him a drink—I reckon Mo Yan is what we want, anyway."

For the first time the lips of the squatting man moved. Rand translated the guttural clucking.

"Our friend says literally, 'Not go house of Mo Yan.’"

"And why?"

Sham's reply was brief and pointed. It was better, he assured them, not to have their bodies eaten by jackals. Sham's tongue began to clack again and Rand listened with growing interest.

"The beggar's giving us his pedigree. Says he's a shaman of the desert Mongols, and has a son who is wiser than he. As nearly as I can make out he learned from his son that it would be dangerous for us to go to Lanchow. Sham, as you call him, came to this place because tez bazin-yat, the ancestor spirit, called. Tez basin-yat was or is angered.

"Sham's family deity is the bear. He was running, in spirit, with the bear spirit when we interrupted the magic. When he runs like that he is hungry. At such times, he feeds. Just now he was on the pursuit of blood, to avenge an injury of some kind. Our coming brought him back from the spirit world to his own body."

"You mean," Gordon's frown deepened, "that Sham says he was running about in the body of a bear a while ago?"

"Right you are. More to it than that, though. I've seen these old Mongols do curious things. They have lived with animals for so long that they have a kind of understanding with them. Laps and Finns, their kinsmen, for instance, are the only human beings who know how to manage reindeer——"

"Bunk," said the hunter impatiently. "All magic is bunk."

He would have said more just then, but Sham, as if grasping the meaning behind his words, took his hand from the drum. As he did so the big leather cylinder rolled over half way and stopped. Rand stepped back as if he had seen a snake.

"It moved up-hill!" he whispered.

"Some string attached," said Gordon brusquely. For the second time his eyes challenged the conjurer, studying the small eyes under shaggy brows, the bearskin, with paws dangling over each high shoulder, the hands of the man that were like claws. He would have liked to see the under side of Sham's feet, to know if the old native wore boot soles or the pads and claws of a bear.

Because, clear to the eye, the marks of claws came up the trail to the rock ledge, where Sham sat. But there was something ominous about the man, and Gordon's instinct warned him that it would not be well to touch the leather apron that hung from the conjure 's loins, covering his knees and feet.

"If ever I saw a man honing himself for a fight," the hunter muttered, "Sham is that man. He's making war medicine, drum and all. Come along, Rand, we are losing time."

"Good heavens!" The professor looked up anxiously. "Do you think it could have been Sham I shot at, on the caravan road? These Mongols are like gypsies; they never forget a kindness or an injury. And, look here, Gordon, if it was a real animal, what became of it? This place is an impasse. Yet you are sure the bear ran up to this ledge."

"Absolutely sure. It had me guessing."

Rand blinked thoughtfully. "Gordon, you have to admit either one of two things. Either it was Sham, back on the caravan trail——!"

"It was not. I know a bear when I see one.

"—or Sham has made the animal vanish and taken its place himself."

"I know just one thing," replied the hunter savagely; "we must get to Mo Yan, pay him his money and bring Betty back to Chengtu. If we do not manage to do that, somehow, Tom Eldridge will die of grieving for his child."

Twilight had settled upon the plain before they sighted the first outpost of Lanchow. It was a tapering pagoda temple, black against the sunset. Beside the road loomed up what appeared to be a signpost—a thing like a crate with a round object projecting from its top.

From it came a gripping and disgusting smell that Black Gordon knew. With difficulty he reined his pony close enough to inspect the box. He was looking into the swollen face of a dead man, its chin perched on the logs at the top of the wooden cage that had kept the unfortunate a prisoner until he died of hunger or thirst.

Gordon was uncomfortably conscious of small, animate things that had slipped out of the cage, away from the body at his approach. Rats, he supposed. The body itself was small in stature and covered with a sheepskin alive with ants.

Until then the twilight had been without sound except the labored breathing of the tired horses and the sigh of the light airs that passed over the desert floor. Rand, however, held up his hand and raised his head.

"What is it?" Gordon heard nothing.

"Behind us, Sham is beating his drum."

 

IV
Mo Yan's Hospitality

THE desert rider and Rand had agreed that their best course of action was to approach Lanchow as if chance had taken them there. It would not do to make their purpose understood at once. Nor could they hope to discover Betty, if she were hidden away in the village.

They must see Mo Yan, talk with him if possible, and then decide how to deal with him.

So they agreed, and by the next morning they had to confess that Mo Yan was as great a mystery as ever.

In the first place they had been met by Chinese boys carrying lanterns outside the gates of Lanchow. They were escorted through the winding alleys where crumbling clay structures loomed dark and odorous; passing through the central market place where the caravans halted, they found that the yamen of Mo Yan was a massive building, surrounded, however, by the inevitable courtyard which was in turn guarded by a high stone wall, loop-holed. Against the wall, on the inside, was built a series of low barracks. By sound and smell Gordon knew that stables were nearby. The place was like a citadel, of four centuries ago.

A major-domo, a tall Chinese, with a persuasive smile, announced that his excellency, Mo Yan, taotai of the Gobi, felt that his poor and insufficient house was rich indeed in such guests. They were served with an excellent dinner, European dishes mingled with the countless Chinese tid-bits of ancient usage; their room had a real bed and mosquito netting.

"It beats me," Black Gordon confessed the next day. "Mo Yan has taken a caravanserai and made it into a palace hotel. Did you see that ebony parlor with the collection of ivories? I'll swear he has a gun-room—got half a look into it before breakfast."

They were, however, given more than half a look. The major-domo appeared and smilingly exhibited the racks of rifles, with several shotguns and one or two revolvers of ancient vintage. Gordon noticed that the weapons were nearly all of different makes.

"Ask the butler if Mo Yan goes after much big game around here," he suggested to Rand.

"The Mongols of the desert are unruly, honorable sirs," their guide informed them blandly, but meaningly. "In such a place as this, beyond the authority of Pekin, one must take thought for personal safety. Outlaws must be punished. But one who is not a fool will not seek to attack Mo Yan. Come, I will show you why."

Outside the house—the keep, as it were, of the castle—they found a company of infantry mustered before the barracks, an orderly and capable set of men, armed with Mausers; on every corner of the wall was a machine-gun, in its cover. In the pagoda tower rising over the yamen, a sentry kept watch with field glasses, while the bronze wind bells of old China chimed at his very ear. Behind the house, servants were grooming ponies. The citadel of the night before was now disclosed as a modern stronghold.

"Very often," observed the tall Chinese, who wore the red button of a mandarin of the second rank, "Mo Yan hunts big game." Deprecatingly he waved two fingers of one hand. "He does not claim your skill—with—the rifle Mr. Gordon. I see your rifle is fouled with sand. May I suggest that Mo Yan has an excellent gunsmith who will take down your pieces and clean them."

Rand was about to object, when Gordon checked him. The hunter observed that the rifles were, in fact, filled with sand, though he did not know how it had been done.

"Listen, Professor," he whispered. "So far we are a set-up for Mo Yan. These beggars are laughing at us. That butler guy is no servant; he's a mandarin. Instead of us getting a look at the taotai, he's probably been spying on us, let alone listening to what we say. Mo Yan knows English. This six-footer has a revolver up his sleeve—see where it sags? He may be Mo Yan, or he may not. Anyway, there's half a company of super Chinese infantry going through the manual of arms behind us, and if we tried to put up a fight we'd be crow meat in ten seconds. Do as he says."

Accordingly they surrendered their weapons to a Lascar in one of the chambers off the courtyard.

After Rand had been persuaded by the major-domo to look at some Khotanese manuscripts in the library of Mo Yan's house, Black Gordon went for a stroll. They decided that it would not do to try to keep together; there was no indication that they would meet with violence, for the present, at least, at the hand of the master of the Gobi.

Lighting his pipe, Gordon extended his walk through what the mandarin had smilingly termed the Chinatown of Lanchow. Here the usual medley of beggars and coolies bearing mules' load crowded against him. He was aware of hostile stares, but no affront was offered. The bazaar interested him, and for a long time he stood at one of the gates, eyed by a blue smocked soldier with an old flintlock, typical more of the Chinese warrior of the old days.

Walking smartly forward, out of the gate, and rounding a nest of dung heaps, Gordon stopped and glanced back. The man had disappeared. With a grin the hunter resumed his promenade, presently returning to the archway, now filled with a crowd. The loiterers had formed a circle and were staring at something within.

While he hesitated, he heard the thin scream of a woman in pain. Taking his pipe in his left hand, Gordon pushed through the crowd that gave way to him readily—too readily to be honest about it. He feared that Mo Yan was up to some of his deviltry and Betty Eldridge had been the victim.

But the girl who whimpered with down-drooping hands was a Mongol woman, more than usually pretty. All the fingers of each hand had been cut off. They lay scattered on the reddened earth in front of Gordon, and as he stared in horror, the girl slumped forward on her knees. Beside her the man of the smock was cleaning a sharp, curved sword on her dress.

"The swine!" grunted Gordon, flushing. He took a step toward the soldier, only to halt thoughtfully, as he saw the shrewd, slant eyes gazing at him expectantly.

A sixth sense told him that men behind him were pushing forward. His right hand crept upward toward the region of his heart, then fell to his side. These men, he knew, expected him to make a hostile movement, perhaps to knock down the torturer with the sword. The whole thing had been staged, as it were, to arouse his anger to the fighting pitch.

Nothing he could do would make whole again the injured girl. So, reluctantly, Black Gordon walked through the circle, seeking his friend, and wondering whether the crippling of the Mongol woman was not intended to warn him of the fate that awaited Betty Eldridge. The effect upon the desert rider was to stir within him a cold wave of anger that would not endure further delay in coming to grips with Mo Yan.

"Rand," he said crisply as he entered their room, "fix it so we can talk to Mo Yan tonight."

 

AN HOUR after sun-down, Red Button, as they termed the mandarin, ushered them through the gun room and opened a door into an interior chamber of the house. Carefully, Red Button closed the door and stood with his back against it.

Shelves, filled with European text books and oriental cylinder books stood against the further wall. Over these shelves was hung a large map of the Gobi. At a plain ebony table with carved dragons for legs sat Mo Yan, an American phonograph beside him.

For a full moment the two white men gazed at the taotai in puzzled surprise. He appeared taller than Gordon, and the bones of a mighty body showed under a black alpaca office coat. A skull cap of the same hue covered a broad head, above features small and shrunken as those of a sick child—the bleared eyes set close together, the lips thin as the edges of parchment.

"Be seated, gentlemen," he said in good English. "I was expecting visitors, though not Mr. Gordon."

His voice was shrill, belying the bulk of the man's body. Professor Rand sat down near the desk, but Gordon preferred to stand where the mandarin would not be behind his back.

"Whom did you expect, Mo Yan?" asked Rand mildly.

"Envoys from Chengtu. Men have come to pay their respects to me from the Mongol tribes, and from the Chinese villages of Kansu. You delayed—almost too long."

Gordon remembered that while he stood at the gate that afternoon, apparently idling, he had noticed several officials in carts and litters. One at least did not care to be recognized, because he had held his fan in front of his face. So the clans at the Gobi's edge were gathering, at Mo Yan's command. Why?

"Too long?" murmured Rand. "And why, pray?"

"My feast of justice," Mo Yan's tiny eyes went from one to the other, "is tomorrow. Other khans, taotais and headmen have traveled a long distance to hear me raise the voice of authority. I am glad you have come. Have you decided to pay for your hunter's license, Mr. Gordon?"

It would be hard to picture the insolent irony of the man's words, under the appearance of business-like courtesy. In fact Gordon and Rand found it difficult to believe that this modern office and alpaca coat could be the outward semblance of Mo Yan, whose name was whispered in fear beyond the back door of China.

"No," responded Gordon shortly. "I'm here to offer you six hundred dollars—a hundred and twenty-five pounds—for an American child, Elizabeth Eldridge."

"I do not sell slaves." There was a slight accent on the word "sell."

"What Mr. Gordon means," explained Rand quickly, "is that we will pay the money owed you by Mr. Eldridge, in payment of a certain duty on kerosene. We hope that this will enable you to make search for the child, who is missing, and who may be in Lanchow."

As he spoke he glanced warningly at the hunter. If Mo Yan were Chinese, they must offer him the chance to escape from blame, if they were to recover the missing girl; he must be allowed to save his face. The European garments, the sallow skin of the tall man at the desk, made it difficult to judge his race, or nationality. He lacked the slant eyes of the Chinese, or the high cheek bones and receding brow of the Mongol.

Rand, an expert in languages, was hard put to in determining the accent of Mo Yan, with its strident, harsh syllables. He would have liked to try Mo Yan with Hindustani, but decided to stick to English.

"Have you the money?"

Gordon nodded dryly. Rand had taken up a collection at Chengtu, and had made up the rest out of the safe at the Half Way House, judging that this was what the master of Lanchow sought from them, and that for this he was holding Betty.

The lean fingers of Mo Yan tapped upon the table top. "Probably one of the Mongol bands carried her off. I am doing my best to teach them the meaning of my law. A week ago I executed one of their leaders."

Again the hunter nodded. "We saw the man. But I've an idea the American missy was fetched to Lanchow. If your men will search, you can find her. Then we'll pay you the money."

"I am sorry. I know nothing about an American girl-child."

"But," persisted Rand, frowning, "you can search the bazaars of Lanchow."

Mo Yan shook his head slightly, and his eyes flickered at the mandarin by the door. "If this child of Mr. Eldridge is in Lanchow I would know it. The time to pay my men money to search is when the money is due. Now it is too late, as I said."

Malicious triumph rang in the words, and Gordon's teeth set with an audible snap. "You mean—has anything happened to Betty?" The fingers of his right hand twitched upward as Mo Yan's lifeless eyes met his. "If you got any reason for thinking like that," he drawled, and this, in him was a danger signal, "you'd better say so now."

Rand heard a sound behind him, the mandarin's hand on the door knob. Mo Yan was silent, watchful as a cat.

"You took that little girl," went on the hunter slowly, "and you have her here. As things stand, we'll pay you what you want and take her home. We're making this offer just once. Do you accept or not?"

Mo Yan closed his eyes as if thinking, and gently shook his head. It took courage to do that, but the man seemed not to have the least fear. "I said it was too late. You white men are stupid, you cannot learn from the wisdom of others. You must be taught. The Mongol boy who lost his life last week was wiser than you. Read this!"

Reaching out a long arm, he drew down a volume from the shelves be- hind him, opened it at a marked page, and indicated a paragraph with a steady forefinger. Rand leaned forward, and gave a visible start.

"It is a book of ancient sayings," explained Mo Yan. "I commend to you this sentence: What is lost is lost. … A fool will lose what he has in seeking that which he has not.’"

When he said this neither Gordon nor Rand doubted that Mo Yan had taken captive the child of Tom Eldridge, and wished them to know it, without openly admitting the fact. Furthermore, that he would not give Betty back for the money. Rand wanted to think this over. Gordon, on the other hand, was accustomed to think quickly in tight moments. If he should attack Mo Yan now, he might overcome the two Lanchow leaders, and by keeping close to Mo Yan could keep the man helpless for a while and Rand and himself immune from harm, while he tried to force the surrender of the child.

It was almost certain, however, that Mo Yan would have Betty hidden away effectively, and it would be useless to act until he should see the child within reach. Mo Yan did not seem to scare easily; then, too, if anything happened to Gordon, Betty was lost.

Mo Yan, he guessed, had something planned for them, and he wanted to find out what this something was.

"What do you advise us to do, your excellency?" he asked curiously.

"Tomorrow, at the feast of justice—as we call it—in this house, I will have some thieving Mongols brought before me. Perhaps you can learn from them what happened to your friend's child. You must not fail to be present."

"We'll be there," Gordon promised.

Mo Yan rose and bowed. "Permit me to return your rifles."

In the open door stood the Lascar, smiling, with their two weapons, cleaned and oiled, even the stocks glistening. Gordon took his—an old army Springfield—and swiftly looked it over, drawing out the bolt and trying the spring. Then he peered into the magazine, snapped it open and worked the trigger a time or two. Then, as if he had found what he was looking for, he smiled.

"A good gunsmith you have, Mo Yan. He has filed down the sear notch so the trigger functions beautifully—without setting off the gun. They are no good to us."

Stepping outside he placed both weapons in one of the racks. "Accept 'em with my compliments. Quite a collection you have, Mo Yan. Lots of travelers passing through Lanchow lately and leaving their rifles, I suppose?" He took Rand's arm, drawing him away. "Oh, Mo Yan, did you ever hear this? We'll call it the Wisdom of the West. ‘Honesty is the best policy.' No? Well, think it over, before tomorrow."

 

ONCE within their room, the door locked, and assured—by Rand's keen ears at the crack—that no listeners were pad-padding into position outside Black Gordon's mask of cheerfulness fell from his brown face and he sat heavily down on the bed, taking out pipe and tobacco pouch as he did so.

"Mo Yan," said the professor thoughtfully, "is a most dangerous nature to deal with—an Eastern mind, tutored in a European university. I think he is a Tibetan."

"What! Not a chap from the land of lamas and dirt and——"

"And ignorance and hatred; and bottomless cruelty. The one nation, you know, that shut itself off from the world, as if it were still the Middle Ages. Only Mo Yan is no longer ignorant. He knows the white man's magic—weapons. Machine guns."

"And, he has the white man's learning. He's a mixed breed, Rand."

Mildly the man from Chengtu blinked at the moths buzzing around the lamp. "Billy, he's the breed that built the pyramids."

Applying a match to the bowl of his pipe, Gordon waited for an explanation of this.

"Mo Yan," went on Rand, "is making himself a power, through fear. The kings who built the pyramids of Egypt glorified their names by working to death some tens of thousands of slaves. Mo Yan is sacrificing lives to make himself dreaded—witness that unfortunate Mongol in the cage, and the girl you saw at the gate. And—Betty Eldridge."

"But he won't take money for her."

"That's just the point, Billy. It's worse than that. He may want to keep her for a slave in his household, or to sell her; but first he wants to show off his power to the chieftains of the clans that are gathering in Lanchow."

Black Gordon nodded. "By sending us away empty handed? He's guessed wrong."

"No, Billy, I think he wants to kill us."

"No doubt. Will he risk it, though?"

"Think how it would increase his prestige among the wild tribes of the desert. And the Chinese officials would be more afraid of him than ever. A good sprinkling of them have drifted into Lanchow. He knew that a white man was bound to come out to him, sooner or later, to look for the child. When we appeared, he began to summon his neighboring chiefs, to see the white men dished and served up."

Again Black Gordon nodded, thinking of the bleak eyes and the reptile mouth of the Tibetan, Mo Yan. That was why their rifles were returned—useless. So that they might make a move to use them, if Mo Yan angered them enough, and thus afford a shallow excuse for shooting them down.

"He'll try to get us to make the first move, Professor," reasoned the hunter. "We'll have to be almighty careful to keep our tempers."

Rand smiled. "Rather. Don't you see how it all fits in with Mo Yan's pet quotation: ‘A fool will lose what he has in seeking that which he has not.’ He means that by looking for Betty, we will only lose our lives." His smile went a little awry. "Have you any plan, for tomorrow?"

The imagination of the man from Chengtu could make clear what was in the mind of their enemy, but it was the hunter's task to say what they must do.

"I've a hunch," responded Gordon slowly. "We'll see Betty tomorrow at the court session, I think. We'll watch for our chance. Then, when and if I start shooting, you go for the child and I'll cover the two of you as you go out the door to the courtyard. Head for the stables. I've noticed they always keep three or four horses saddled. Go for them. I'll join you. That's all the plan we can make."

"But Mo Yan has our rifles."

"I know it. We want him to have 'em, because they wouldn't do us any earthly good in a close packed room. We have something better."

Black Gordon's right hand strayed up toward the breast of his coat. Then he shook his head slightly, glancing at the lattice of the open window, and blowing out the lamp. In the darkness he drew from a shoulder sling under his coat a heavy thirty-eight caliber Colt, double action.

Every hour of the day this weapon had remained slung against his body, concealed by his heavy corduroy jacket. At night he slept on it. Black Gordon was not one of those who trust a weapon under a pillow—when he had a pillow. Mo Yan did not know he had it. That was the one card he could play and he was going to make the most of it.

Throughout the remainder of the night he slept quietly, while Rand tossed wakefully, his nerves aquiver. When the openings in the lattice showed gray, the man from the college sat up, his heart pounding.

So lightly does sleep touch those who are tired, toward dawn, that Rand could not know whether he had been dreaming or not. He fancied that he had heard the sonorous throbbing of a big drum. It might have been the blood beating in his ears. Still, he was sure that he had heard the soft cry of a child in distress. And he was reasonably certain it was the voice of Betty Eldridge.

 

V
The Cord of Mercy

MO YAN had the wisdom of ancient people and profited by it. His hall, where he held the judgment on the following day, was not a part of the yamen that Gordon and Rand had seen. It was under the house. Before the moving sands of the Gobi had covered this chamber it had been a castle, perhaps, or a temple of sandstone.

The modern yamen had been built upon the walls of the judgment hall; a winding stair led down to it, and guards were stationed at the stair entrance—two men with loaded rifles. Since the judgment hall was underground, it was lighted by four candles, two placed in niches in the walls at either side of the chair of Mo Yan, and two on the ebony table directly in front of him.

The taotai, in a ceremonial robe of blue silk, sat in a huge ebony chair, the arms carved into dragons, raised a yard or so from the floor. Near his right hand a silk cord hung, coming from a hole in the ceiling.

Gordon and Rand were ushered by Red Button to a bench in front of the tables, the candles and Mo Yan. They could see, in the dim light, lines of men squatting on the floor near one wall, and servants and women on the other side. But the space around them was clear. As far as Gordon could see, none of the visiting chieftains were armed. Nor was there a sign of a weapon about the massive form of Mo Yan.

But the hunter's instinct warned him that he was being watched—watched and covered by deadly weapons. The feeling grew on him, and he scanned the walls, and the entrance-way behind him. The two guards apparently, were still at their post on the floor above.

Then he raised his eyes, though not his head. Mo Yan was trying the case of a bedraggled sheepherder, accused of stealing from the flocks of the taotai; without being heard, he was sentenced to forfeit half his flocks and to the bastinado.

"It's worse than I thought, this room," Gordon whispered softly. "You can't see 'em, but there are three—no, four—beggars with rifles lying on that balcony over Mo Yan."

Rand could only make out the blacker line of the gallery where the candles cast a shadow against the arched ceiling. Gordon smiled, thinking how cleverly Mo Yan had arranged the mise en scene. The glare of the candles, standing on the table, was full on the two white men, confusing their sight and making their slightest movement plain to the men who watched from above. The floor around them was cleared, so that if they should take alarm they would have to run some distance to shelter.

Waving his fan gently, Mo Yan regarded them, pleased. He laid down the fan to clap his hands.

"The child, whose dishonorable father failed to pay the taxes due Lanchow," he said in Chinese, consulting an ivory tablet.

An attendant led forward a slim girl and placed her in a sitting position on the dais directly at Mo Yan's feet. Her black hair was tightly coiled over each ear in the desert fashion, and the dark garments she wore were of Mongol cut, but even Rand's poor sight recognized her as Betty Eldridge. A slight shifting of Gordon's big body showed that the hunter knew her.

The girl started at sight of them, and her tear-stained eyes widened. Silk bands wrapped about her head, over her mouth, prevented her from crying out their names.

Mo Yan took up his fan again.

"In the oldest of laws," his high voice proclaimed, "it is written that those who pay not the debts owing to a prince shall have their families seized. This child must pay for the fault of her father. She shall go to join the sleepers who walk the earth no more."

Fleetingly, he glanced at the white men, and Rand translated his speech to the hunter.

"The criminals who die in Lanchow will be put in the cage of oblivion by the caravan way, after execution, so that all who pass may know it is the will of Mo Yan. Unbind the maid and place on her throat the cord of mercy."

Gordon had time to realize that the taotai was probably speaking the truth. Clad perhaps in native garments, he planned to place their three bodies where the rats, and the ants could obliterate all traces of their identity.

So swiftly did the two powerful men who emerged from the shadows of the side wall loosen the silk bandage and slip it down about the slender throat of the girl, that Betty could only utter a strangled cry before the tightening cord silenced her tongue.

"Stop, you yellow devil!" Gordon did not move. "That is the child we claim as ours."

The expressionless eyes of the Tibetan glowed, and, craving to hear the white men beg for mercy, he signed to the men to loosen the strangler's cord. Gordon was edging his end of the seat nearer the table where the candles stood. "Talk to him, Rand," he whispered fiercely.

Before the professor could move there was a loud interruption—a series of thuds on the stairs, and a round object rolled out on the floor. It continued to roll, bumping against the table, causing the candles to flicker, and bouncing off, to collide with the dais. Then it trundled off and slowed to a stop near Gordon.

It proved to be the drum of Sham, and at the same moment the Mongol conjurer appeared, escorted by the two guards from the stairs. Mo Yan frowned angrily, but seemed appeased when he heard that the old native had been found in the process of burying the body of the criminal that had stood in the cage by the pagoda for a week.

Sham looked even more tousled and tattered than usual; his drawn face and overbright eyes showed that he had had no food for days. His voice grated harshly.

"Great Scot!" whispered Rand, "the old chap says it was the body of his son he was burying, and that his drum rolled in front of him to point the way to his murderer. Do you suppose this is more of Mo Yan's deviltry?"

Gordon hardly heard, intent on getting nearer the candles. Presently Sham spoke again, and, at first Mo Yan waved his fan aside, in token of denial. But, glancing at the harrassed Rand, the taotai changed his mind and nodded.

"The shaman's going to finish his ceremonial before he is sentenced," Rand explained.

"Mo Yan wants to watch us suffer a bit," grunted the hunter.

Indeed the Tibetan's stare was feverish in its eagerness; a sense of his own power seemed to intoxicate him. He paid little attention to the conjurer, who crouched down over the drum, letting his long hair fall over his face. Drawing the bearskin over his shoulders, he began to murmur.

"He is talking to tez bazin-yat, the ancestor spirit," interpreted Rand, "calling the bear spirit to run with his spirit."

Gordon gained another inch forward, welcoming the diversion which would put him within reach of the table. If he could knock down the candles, there would be a chance—a desperate chance—of shooting the men who stood by Betty and gaining the stair: There he would have to deal with the armed guards. Rand, interested, despite his tension, listened to the shaman. He was sure he had heard the conjurer give the harsh call of a falcon, and that an answer had come from the ceiling above.

The heavy head of Sham swayed over the drum. Animal calls now came from each quarter of the room. Each time this happened the men of Lanchow looked about in trepidation; only Mo Yan and the two white men were quiet. Betty was whimpering a little, for the stranglers had loosened the cord when Sham entered, and Gordon had made her a sign to keep quiet.

A loud growl was heard, and Sham rose, circling the drum and calling in a high, plaintive voice. The iron images about him jangled an accompaniment.

"He has heard the call of his kin," Rand went on, "and is looking for the way that leads to their meeting place."

Gordon thought fleetingly that if it was ventriloquism, it was well done, and wondered why Sham no longer beat his drum. Meanwhile, above the whirr of invisible wings, the old native's voice deepened to thunder, and Rand could no longer follow what he said.

Then Sham began to dance, grotesquely, yet swiftly, shaking his short, stocky arms in the air, and drawing the skin closer about him. His face was no longer visible under the hair. Gordon heard the whistle of wind, and saw the candles quiver, although the air of the room was still.

The watching natives began to draw back uneasily, while Sham moved around the drum, silent now, his body drooping toward the floor.

"It is enough!" Mo Yan commanded sharply. "Take this beast and bury him in the grave that he dug."

No one moved because just then Sham burst into a veritable outcry. Growls and snarls filled the air—the pent-up wrath of a beast, if Gordon heard aright. Rand fancied that the ceremonial was near an end, that Sham was voicing his hunger. He had scarcely time to think, for the old conjurer flung the bearskin full against the candles, sweeping them to the floor and putting them out.

In the obscurity, relieved only by the two points of light in the colored lanterns on either wall, Rand's near-sighted eyes saw Sham clasp the drum and break it in two parts. Mo Yan reached into his sleeve and drew out a long knife, his lips opening, to call to his men.

Sham had disappeared. From the place where he had been a furry body leaped upon the table. It was a bear, beyond any doubt, a blue bear of Tibet lean with hunger, its jaws aslaver, a snarl rending its throat.

The tall form of Mo Yan rose from the chair, one arm lifting the knife. The bear leaped, a paw swept the shoulder of Mo Yan, ripping the tensed muscles of the man's arm into harmless ribbons of flesh. The knife clanged on the floor. The left arm of the taotai caught at the silk tassel that led to the ceiling.

The lips of Mo Yan drew back from his teeth, and he screamed in horror as he was borne back on the chair by the furious animal, and in a second more his throat was torn out.

A rifle flashed from the gallery above, and the report thundered in the ears of the watchers. As swiftly as the animal had leaped upon Mo Yan, the right hand of Black Gordon went to the breast of his coat, and his Colt roared an answer. Flash darted at flash, and the murk of smoke filled the chamber.

Gordon caught the hand of the frightened child and pulled her bodily across the table, thrusting her into Rand's arms.

"Get out the door!" he ordered, pushing fresh shells into his weapon. The Chinese and Mongols—guards, prisoners and visitors—huddled back against the walls or rushed toward the prostrate master of Lanchow. Bewildered by the unexpected shooting, and unarmed—for Mo Yan allowed weapons in the hands of none except his sentries—they peered through the haze of smoke, beginning to realize that the man who had claimed the empire of the desert was dying. The two guards at the stair had run forward to the dais, so that Rand found his path clear to the sunlight of the courtyard.

Rand lost no time in reaching the saddled horses, and, mounting a sturdy pony, helped Betty into the saddle of another. This done, he reined his horse toward the door to the hall of judgment. Several servants were approaching, uncertainly, but the big figure of Gordon backed out of the door, his gun crashing as he came. Half blinded by the bright light, he felt behind him for the reins of the pony on which Betty sat. Seeing the desert rider with a weapon in his hand, the attendants of Mo Yan hung back.

Another minute and the two white men were through the gate of the courtyard, and, before the alarm could be spread through the alleys, they had passed beyond the walls and were streaking out into the desert toward the hills.

 

IT WAS long after nightfall before they halted to breathe the ponies and drink from a water hole in the first foothills of Kansu. Betty, exhausted, had fallen asleep in Gordon's arms, and Rand was pacing back and forth, wrestling with his thoughts.

"Look here, Billy," he said finally, "my nerves may not be normal just now, but I swear that it seemed to me—I can't dodge the fact that Sham somehow or other assumed the likeness of a bear when he killed Mo Yan. It was assuredly nothing human I saw."

Gordon turned his head to one side as if listening.

"Sham killed Mo Yan, right enough," he assented gravely. "And it was what you call magic. Sham's magic was sleight of hand, but it was the finest article of its kind I've ever known. That bear was a real bear, but it was Sham's bear—trained to obey him. We shot at it, and then he hid it——"

"In the drum?" Rand laughed.

"Right you are. In that over-size drum. The soldiers rolled it along into court, as evidence, I suppose. Probably that made the beast angry and Sham worked up its rage like a real artist; then he slipped the top off the drum and set the bear on Mo Yan. He saved our lives, I think."

Here Rand held up his hand for silence. Something was coming up the trail. To the near-sighted eyes of the man from Chengtu, two blurred shapes passed them, outlined against the after-glow of the sunset. The keen sight of the hunter, however, identified the passerby as the old Mongol, on a pony, and at his heels the shambling form of a small animal.

"The beggar and his friend got away," he whispered. "I believe now there is one kind of real magic loose in the world."

Rand gathered up the reins of his pony and laughed at Gordon's serious tone. "What is it, Billy?"

"Half a cup of water given to a thirsty man. It works wonders, and I'm for it every time."