THE PURSUIT
"But I shall die," said Arlee. "I shall simply die if I have to go
another step upon that creature."
She said it cheerfully, but firmly, a sleepy, sunburned little
nomad, sitting cross-legged in the sands, slowly plaiting her
honey-colored hair. "Even this," she announced, indicating the
slight gesture of braiding, "is agony."
"It's the morning after," said Billy, testing his shoulder with wry
grimaces. "It's yesterday's speed--and then this infernally cold
night. No wonder we're lame. Why, I have one universal crick
wherever I used to have muscles. But let me call your attention to
the fact that we are in the wilds of Egypt and that tangerines are
hardly a lasting breakfast. Something has to be done."
"Not upon camels," said Arlee fixedly.
"They say it doesn't hurt after an hour or so more."
"I shouldn't live to find out."
"A walk," he suggested, "a slow, swaying, gently undulating
walk----?"
"A long, lingering, agonizing death," the young lady translated.
She tossed the curly end of her braid over her shoulder and rose,
with sounds of lamentation. "I ought to have known better than to
sit down again when I was once up," she confided sadly.
"Just what," inquired her companion, "is your idea for the day? How
do you expect to reach Girgeh? It can't be very far away now----"
"Then we'll walk--_we'll_ walk," she emphasized, "and tow those
ships of the desert after us. That will be bad enough, but
better--_what's that?_"
Like a top, for all his stiffness, Billy spun about to stare where
her finger pointed. Over the crest of a hillock, far to the
north--yes, something was hurrying their way.
"A man on horseback," said Arlee anxiously. "They can't have traced
us, can they, all this way----?"
"Of course not--but we'll take no chances," returned Billy briskly;
"no more talk of pedestrian tours now!" and promptly he helped the
girl, no longer demurring, into the saddle, and thwacked her camel
into arising, just dodging the long, yellow teeth that the resentful
beast tried to fasten upon his shoulder.
They started at no soothing walk, but at a hurrying trot.
Worriedly, her delicate brows knitting, "It's absurd, but," said
Arlee, "they could have traced us, I suppose, from my telegraphing
at that little native station for my trunks to be sent."
"And mine," said Billy. "And from my trying to get my letter of
credit cashed."
"That Captain could have telegraphed to all the places down the
line to know if we'd been seen----"
"Even if we hadn't wired or tried to get money, our presence alone
and our buying food would have aroused talk. I told everybody," the
young man continued, "that I was an artist and you were my sister,
and that passed all right--but if Kerissen has been making
inquiries----"
"I'm desperately glad we didn't go back toward Assiout," she thrust
in. "We'd have walked right into some trap of his!"
"Lord knows what we ought to have done! Lord knows what we ought to
do now!"
"Just keep on going," she encouraged. "We can't be very far from
Girgeh, can we?"
"I don't know," said Billy soberly. "It may be half a day or a whole
day more--you remember how vague that old woman was last night...!"
Bitterly he added, "And I'm afraid you've got a chump of a guide."
"I've the best one in the world!" she flashed indignantly.
But her assurance brought no solace to the young man's troubled
soul. He reflected that they could have taken a train the day
before. To be sure, he had not money enough for tickets to Luxor,
yet he had enough for two to Girgeh. But Arlee had shrunk from
entering a train in her dishevelled costume, fearful of watching
eyes and gossiping tongues, and had advised riding on to Girgeh,
where shops and banks would help them, and he had yielded apparently
to her desires, but in reality to his own secret self that clung to
every joyful contraband moment of this magic time with her.
Sincerely he had thought their danger ended.... But those trailing
horsemen--"_Brute!_" he raged dumbly at himself. "Dolt! Idiot!"
Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. It was an ordeal of a ride.
They had ridden on in silence, occasionally glancing back over their
shoulders. At last Arlee said, quietly, "Do you see anything--over
there--to the left?"
Billy had been seeing it for fifteen minutes.
"Another horseman, isn't it?" he carelessly suggested.
"He seems to be riding the same way we are."
"Well, we've no monopoly of travel in this region."
She answered, after a moment, "There's another close behind him. I
just saw him on top of a little hill. I suppose they can see us?"
"Probably." Billy's face was grave. If they continued their winding
path in from the desert to the intervening hills that shut them from
the Nile valley, and the horsemen continued their course along the
base of those hills, they would soon meet.
"Do you mind speeding up a little?" he asked. "I'd rather like to
cross to the Nile ahead of that gentry."
But as they speeded up the pursuers did the same, and from mere dots
they grew to tiny figures, clearly discernible, furiously galloping
over the sands.
Billy thought hard about his cartridges, wishing he had more in his
clothes. When he had left the hotel that Tuesday evening he had
thrust the loaded revolver in his pocket, but he had already
discharged it twice at the beginning of their flight.... And then he
startlingly reflected that the Captain could easily cause their
arrest for stealing those camels, and wild and dreadful thoughts of
native jails and mixed tribunals darted into his harassed and
anxious mind. As a long ridge of sand intervened between them and
their pursuers he made a sudden decision.
"Let's turn off," he said quickly, and from the little winding path,
edging southeast, they struck directly south over the trackless
sand.
"You see, they'll expect us to make a railroad station as soon as
possible," he explained, "and they are probably trying to nab us on
the way to it--if those men have anything to do with us at all." He
said nothing about his vivid fear of arrest for the camels and the
tool such an arrest would be for Kerissen's designs. He merely
added, "I think we'd better try to give them the slip and steer
clear of all the little native joints until we get to Girgeh, which
is big enough to give us some protection. There must be an English
something-or-other there.... I really think we ought to go as fast
as we can now, and when the way is clear, hurry across the hills
into the Nile valley."
But the way did not become clear. Disconcerted by that unexpected
dash off the path, and reduced for a time to mere dots again, the
horsemen, three in a row now, hung persistently upon their left
flank, keeping a parallel course between them and the hills.
The day had dawned with a promise of sultry heat, and as the sun
rose higher and higher in the heavens the heat grew more and more
intolerable to their ill-protected heads and thirsty tongues. The
gaiety of yesterday was gone; the enchantment had vanished from the
waste spaces, and the desert was less a friend now than an enemy.
Chokingly the dust rose about them, and glaringly the gold of the
burning sands beat back the glare of the down-pouring sun. From such
a heat the landscape seemed to shrink and veiled itself with a faint
and swimming haze.
By noon the flask of water in Billy's pocket was empty. By noon
their mouths were parched and their skins burning. And still on
their left there hung the hounding dots, like prowling jackals.
Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. This was an ordeal of a ride that
tried the stuff the girl was made of. She was no princess of mystery
now, crossing the moonlit sands; she was no gossamer wraith of a
girl miraculously with him for a time; she was a very hot and human
companion, worried and tired, shutting her dry mouth over any word
of complaint, smiling pluckily at him with dusty lips from the
shrouding hood of her veil. She was completely and thoroughly a
brick.
And Billy's heart ached for her, even while his spirit exulted in
her spirit.
"Beastly hot, isn't it?" he gasped, pulling his insufficient cap
down over his bloodshot eyes.
Valiantly she smiled. "What's a little--heat?" came joltingly back.
"And rough going."
"What's a little--roughness?"
There wasn't any word good enough for her. There wasn't any word
good enough to describe such superhuman courage and sweetness. Billy
had credited all beauties with being spoiled. All he had known had
been distinctly spoiled, even the near-beauties, and the not-so-near
ones, yet here was the most radiantly lovely girl he had ever seen
behaving like an angel of grit.
He didn't quite know what else he expected her to do--have
hysterics, perhaps, or weep, or reproach him for having taken a
wrong way and elected a rash course. He had known that this girl
could be a very minx when piqued. But in the graver crises of life
she proved herself a thoroughbred. She would go till she dropped and
never whimper.
He thought of all she must have been through in that horrible
palace, and he marvelled at the swiftness with which her spirit had
reverted to blitheness again. The disaster, that might have been so
stunning, so irremediable, had passed over her head like lightning
that had not struck.... Even the horror of it had seemed yesterday
to fade in her like the horror of an evil dream. That was what it
had been to her--an evil dream. She was so young, so much of her was
still a child, that the full terror had not touched her.
* * * * *
They had come to a road at last, a road which seemed to be leading
in from the desert very gradually to the hills upon their left, and
it seemed to Billy that it must be a caravan road to Girgeh, and he
felt themselves upon the right track. They must keep their lead, and
when that lead seemed sufficient, they must put on all possible
speed to make the crossing through the hills into the Nile valley
ahead of their pursuers. Once more he stirred their lagging camels
into a jogging trot....
It was around the middle of the afternoon now, and it had been noon
since their tongues had tasted water. Arlee felt her mouth parched
and her tongue dry and curling; her skin was feverishly hot; her
whole body burned and ached, and her head was giddy with the heat
and the hunger. But she thought how little a thing it was to be hot
and hungry and tired--when one was free. And she drew the silver
shawl closer over her head and wrapped the silken tunic of her frock
about her scorching shoulders, and clung tight to the pommel of her
big saddle as her beast pounded on and on in his lurching stride.
* * * * *
It had been some time since they had seen the dots, and now the road
ahead of them, like the former path they had abandoned, was turning
more and more to the left, winding in and out the low and broken
foothills, and as they followed its course with increasing security,
Billy began to tell himself that their fears had been unfounded and
the alarming horsemen were merely following their own route south.
And then he heard a whistle.
A prescience of danger shot through him. His fears returned a
hundredfold. Sharply he scanned the way about them, but nothing was
in sight. The whistle was not repeated; he could have imagined that
he dreamed it. An utter stillness possessed the wilderness.
And then around the corner of a jutting rock ahead of them a
horseman trotted, a big black man on a gray horse, and reined in,
waiting, facing them. Arlee gave a choking cry.
"The eunuch!" she gasped out.
Behind them Billy flung a lightning glance, and over the heads of
the dunes two more riders appeared, converging down upon them from
the rear. Three in sight--how many more behind the rocks?
Desperately Billy gripped his bridle rope, and with a wrenching pull
and a whack of his guiding stick he turned his camel sharply to the
left, snatching at Arlee's bridle rope as the beasts bumped against
each other in their surprise.
"Quick--this way," Billy commanded, and with the left hand clutching
the girl's rope, with the right he wielded the stick furiously. Out
over the sand both camels plunged, goaded into wild speed by such
violent measures, and a cheated yell broke from the horsemen and the
outcries of pursuit.
While rage at such unreason lasted the camels went like mad, but
such speed could not be for long. They had been hard ridden for two
days and they were nearly spent. The horsemen behind had drawn
together and hung on their trail like three hounds, riding
cautiously in the rear, but easily keeping the distance. It occurred
to Billy that these pursuers could have changed horses on the way,
and must inevitably tire them out. And then?
On and on he beat his poor beasts, racing toward the hills that,
just ahead of them, rose sharply from the broken ground, seeking
among them some fortress of rocks for a defiant stand.
A tug on the bridle rope nearly jerked it from his hand. Arlee's
camel had stumbled; the poor thing was lurching wearily.
"He can't go--any more," the girl cried out pitifully. "He--he's
sobbing. Don't beat him--I won't have him beaten!"
"We must get there," he called back, waving at the cliff-like rocks.
"Then go--on foot. I could--run faster."
"No, you couldn't," he shouted fiercely back.
She flared. "Don't you hit him again!"
The maddening absurdity of the quarrel in the face of hostile Africa
filled Billy with the futile fury of exasperation. He ground his
teeth, glowering at her, and wound her halter rope about his
smarting hand. All his hope was concentrated upon the necessity of
winning to that rocky shelter before their pursuers overtook them.
To him the camels were nothing in the face of such necessity.
They were going slower and slower; his blows had no avail now on
either beast. They plodded on. He turned suddenly in his saddle and
saw the three riders spreading fan-shape around them, the one in the
center nearest. He whipped out his gun and fired at the horse.
His own motion made the ball fly wild, but the horseman drew up
instantly, and the other edged discreetly away. And in the ensuing
moments the two fugitives gained the base of those cliff-like hills
and perceived the dark oblong of a cave mouth.
Down from their exhausted camels they flung themselves, and hand in
hand raced to the entrance of the cave. Coolness and blackness
received them. Their eyes discovered nothing of the tunnel-like
interior.
Putting Arlee some distance within, Billy went to the mouth and
stood, his gun in his hand, peering watchfully out. He saw the
horsemen draw together for a parley, then one remained on guard
while the others circled on separate ways beyond his range of sight.
His fear was that one of them might steal alongside the cave and
leap unexpectedly into its very mouth upon him, so with taut nerves
he crouched expectant.
Behind him Arlee gave a sudden shriek.
[Illustration: "Billy went to the mouth, peering watchfully out"]