suddenly into view within a few hundred yards of them, the Bedouins sprang up, shouting. Gordon drew his breath suddenly between clenched teeth.
“They are not Juheina! They’re Rualla! Allies of the Turks!”
Too late to retreat. A hundred and fifty wild men were on their feet, glaring, rifles cocked.
Gordon did the next best thing and went leisurely toward them. To look at him one would have thought that he had expected to meet these men here, and anticipated nothing but a friendly greeting. Olga tried to imitate his tranquility, but she knew their lives hung on the crook of a trigger finger. These men were supposed to be her allies, but her recent experience made her distrust Orientals. The sight of these hundreds of wolfish faces filled her with sick dread.
They were hesitating, rifles lifted, nervous and uncertain as surprised wolves, then:
“Allah!” howled a tall, scarred warrior. “It is El Borak!”
Olga caught her breath as she saw the man’s finger quiver on his rifle-trigger. Only a racial urge to gloat over his victim kept him from shooting the American, then and there.
“El Borak!” The shout was a wave that swept the throng.
Ignoring the clamor, the menacing rifles, Gordon made the camel kneel and lifted Olga off. She tried, with fair success, to conceal her fear of the wild figures that crowded about them, but her flesh crawled at the blood-lust burning redly in each wolfish eye.
Gordon’s rifle was in its boot on the saddle, and his pistol was out of sight, under his shirt. He was careful not to reach for the rifle—a move which would have brought a hail of bullets—but having helped the girl down, he turned and faced the crowd casually, his hands empty. Running his glance over the fierce faces, he singled out a tall stately man in the rich garb of a shaykh, who was standing somewhat apart.
“You keep poor watch, Mitkhal ibn Ali,” said Gordon. “If I had been a raider your men would be lying in their blood by this time.”
Before the shaykh could answer, the man who had first recognized Gordon thrust himself violently forward, his face convulsed with hate.
“You expected to find friends here, El Borak!” he exulted. “But you come too late! Three hundred Juheina dogs rode north an hour before dawn! We saw them go, and came up after they had gone. Had they known of your coming, perhaps they would have stayed to welcome you!”
“It’s not to you I speak, Zangi Khan, you Kurdish dog,” retorted Gordon contemptuously, “but to the Rualla—honorable men and fair foes!”
Zangi Khan snarled like a wolf and threw up his rifle, but a lean Bedouin caught his arm.
“Wait!” he growled. “Let El Borak speak. His words are not wind.”
A rumble of approval came from the Arabs. Gordon had touched their fierce pride and vanity. That would not save his life, but they were willing to listen to him before they killed him.
“If you listen, he will trick you with cunning words!” shouted the angered Zangi Khan furiously. “Slay him now, before he can do us harm!”
“Is Zangi Khan shaykh of the Rualla that he gives his commands while Mitkhal stands silent?” asked Gordon with biting irony.
Mitkhal reacted to his taunt exactly as Gordon knew he would.
“Let El Borak speak!” he ordered. “I command here, Zangi Khan! Do not forget that.”
“I do not forget, ya sidi,” the Kurd assured him, but his eyes burned red at the rebuke. “I but spoke in zeal for your safety.”
Mitkhal gave him a slow, searching glance which told Gordon that there was no love lost between the two men. Zangi Khan’s reputation as a fighting man meant much to the younger warriors. Mitkhal was more fox than wolf, and he evidently feared the Kurd’s influence over his men. As an agent of the Turkish government Zangi’s authority was theoretically equal to Mitkhal’s. Actually this amounted to little, for Mitkhal’s tribesmen took orders from their shaykh only. But it put Zangi in a position to use his personal talents to gain an ascendancy—an ascendancy Mitkhal feared would relegate him to a minor position.
“Speak, El Borak,” ordered Mitkhal. “But speak swiftly. It may be,” he added, “Allah’s will that the moments of your life are few.”
“Death marches from the west,” said Gordon abruptly. “Last night a hundred Turkish deserters butchered the people of El Awad.”
“Wallah!” swore a tribesman. “El Awad was friendly to the Turks!”
“A lie!” cried Zangi Khan. “Or if true, the dogs of deserters slew the people to curry favor with Feisal.”
“When did men come to Feisal with the blood of children on their hands?” retorted Gordon. “They have foresworn Islam and worship the White Wolf. They carried off the young women and the old women, the men and the children they slew like dogs.”
A murmur of anger rose from the Arabs. The Bedouins had a rigid code of warfare, and they did not kill women or children. It was the unwritten law of the desert, old when Abraham came up out of Chaldea.
But Zangi Khan cried out in angry derision, blind to the resentful looks cast at him. He did not understand that particular phase of the Bedouins’ code, for his people had no such inhibition. Kurds in war killed women as well as men.
“What are the women of El Awad to us?” he sneered.
“Your heart I know already,” answered Gordon with icy contempt. “It is to the Rualla that I speak.”
“A trick!” howled the Kurd. “A lie to trick us!”
“It is no lie!” Olga stepped forward boldly. “Zangi Khan, you know that I am an agent of the German government. Osman Pasha, leader of these renegades, burned El Awad last night, as El Borak has said. Osman murdered Ahmed ibn Shalaan, my guide, among others. He is as much our enemy as he is an enemy of the British.”
She looked to Mitkhal for help, but the shaykh stood apart, like an actor watching a play in which he had not yet received his cue.
“What if it is the truth?” Zangi Khan snarled, muddled by his hate and fear of El Borak’s cunning. “What is El Awad to us?”
Gordon caught him up instantly.
“This Kurd asks what is the destruction of a friendly village! Doubtless, naught to him! But what does it mean to you, who have left your herds and families unguarded? If you let this pack of mad dogs range the land, how can you be sure of the safety of your wives and children?”
“What would you have, El Borak?” demanded a gray-bearded raider.
“Trap these Turks and destroy them. I’ll show you how.”
It was then that Zangi Khan lost his head completely.
“Heed him not!” he screamed. “Within the hour we must ride northward! The Turks will give us ten thousand British pounds for his head!”
Avarice burned briefly in the men’s eyes, to be dimmed by the reflection that the reward, offered for El Borak’s head, would be claimed by the shaykh and Zangi. They made no move and Mitkhal stood aside with an air of watching a contest that did not concern himself.
“Take his head!” screamed Zangi, sensing hostility at last, and thrown into a panic by it.
His demoralization was completed by Gordon’s taunting laugh.
“You seem to be the only one who wants my head, Zangi! Perhaps you can take it!”
Zangi howled incoherently, his eyes glaring red, then threw up his rifle, hip-high. Just as the muzzle came up, Gordon’s automatic crashed thunderously. He had drawn so swiftly not a man there had followed his motion. Zangi Khan reeled back under the impact of hot lead, toppled sideways and lay still.
In an instant, a hundred cocked