Ben Akbar obeyed. Ali mounted and gave the command to rise, then to
run. He unsheathed the dagger and held it in his hand. The Druse were
armed with guns, which they knew how to use, but there were good reasons
why they would hesitate to shoot one lone man. In the first place,
powder and shot were expensive and to be used only when nothing else
sufficed. In the second, when the odds were twenty-three to one, the
Druse who shot when he might have killed his enemy with sword or dagger
must lose face as a warrior.
The dagger in his hand was Ali's only concession to the possibility that
he might be overtaken. When and if he was, might Allah frown if at least
one of the Druse did not join his ancestors before Ali did likewise.
Other than that, the race was not unpleasant. Weary though he was, the
power and strength that Ali had seen in Ben Akbar when the young _dalul_
stood captive in the Druse camp were manifest now. Ben Akbar flowed
along, seeming to do so almost without effort, and Ali thought with
wonder of the magnificent creature this _dalul_ would be when properly
fed and rested. Only when Ben Akbar stumbled where he should have run on
was his rider recalled to the grim realities of the situation.
He did not have to look behind him because he knew what lay there.
Having been detected when they appeared over the crest of the far
hillock, the Druse must still descend it, cross the gulley and climb the
opposite hill before they could be where Ali had been when they saw him.
Though they must know that Ben Akbar was not in condition to run his
best, they certainly knew the quality of such a camel. Looking from the
crest of the hill upon which Ali had been sighted and seeing nothing,
they could by no means be certain that camel and rider had not already
gone out of sight on the hill beyond. A terrified fugitive would
logically run in a straight line.
A third of the way down the hill, Ali gave Ben Akbar the command to turn
left. He was about three hundred yards from the floor of the gulley and
the same distance from its head, where a thick copse of mingled Aleppo
pine and scrub brush offered more than enough cover to hide a whole
caravan. Reaching the thicket, Ali halted Ben Akbar and dismounted. Then
he turned and waited for the Druse to appear.
Led by the three riders of _dalul_, they broke over the crest at the
exact spot where Ali had been sighted. They did exactly as he had hoped
they would and raced straight on. A smile of satisfaction flitted across
Ali's lips as the advance riders swept past that place where he had
turned Ben Akbar.
Then something went amiss.
Though the three _dalul_ had seemed equally matched, one now led the
other two by some ten yards. Reaching the gulley's floor, the leading
rider halted his mount, swung him abruptly and shouted, "He has gone
another way!"
As the truth forced itself on Ali, his first thought was that the rider
of the leading _dalul_ must be a very giant among the Druse.
Noted trackers, most Druse would have some trouble trailing a single
camel on a sun-baked desert. But, incredible though it seemed, the
leading pursuer had been tracking Ali while riding at full speed. He had
raced on because he had thought exactly what Ali hoped he would--that
Ali and Ben Akbar were already out of sight behind the next hill. But he
had stopped when he no longer saw tracks.
While the two remaining riders of _dalul_ swung unquestioningly in
behind him, and the Druse mounted on baggage camels halted wherever they
happened to be, the tracker trotted his _dalul_ back up the hill. His
eyes were fixed on the ground as he sought to pick up the trail he had
lost.
With Ben Akbar behind him, Ali stole through the thicket toward the far
end. He clutched the dagger tightly. He would mount and ride when he was
clear of the thicket; nobody could ride a camel through such a place.
But it was questionable as to how long he'd ride with such a tracker on
his trail.
Ali was almost out of the thicket when a man who swung a wicked-looking
scimitar seemed to rise from the earth and bar his path. Ali gazed upon
the countenance of an old acquaintance.
The man was a Druse that Ali knew as The Jackal!