El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (49 page)

Gordon, bleeding from a gash across the breast muscles, ducked the swinging stock, shifted his grip on his own rifle and drove the blood-smeared butt, like a dagger, full into the bearded face. Teeth and bones crumpled and the man toppled backward into the shaft, carrying with him the men who were just clambering out.

Snatching the instant’s respite Gordon sprang to the mouth of the shaft, whipping out his automatic. Wild bearded faces crowding the shaft glared up at him, frozen with the recognition of doom — then the cave reverberated deafeningly to the thundering of the big automatic, blasting those wild faces into red ruin. It was slaughter at that range; blood and brains spattered, nerveless hands released their holds; bodies went sliding down the shaft in a red welter, jamming and choking it.

Gordon glared down it for an instant, all killer in that moment, then whirled and ran out on the ledge. Bullets sang past his head, and he saw Hawkston stuffing fresh cartridges into his rifle. No living Arab was in sight, but half a dozen new forms between the ridge and the foot of the trail told of a determined effort to storm the cliff, defeated only by the Englishman’s deadly accuracy.

Hawkston shouted: “What the hell’s been going on in there?”

“They’ve found a shaft leading up from somewhere down below,” snapped Gordon. “Watch for another rush while I try to jam it.”

Ignoring lead slapped at him from among the rocks, he found a sizable boulder and rolled it into the cave. He peered cautiously down the well. Handholds and footholds niched in the rock formed precarious stair steps in the slanting
side. Some forty feet down the shaft made an angle, and it was there the bodies of the Arabs had jammed. But now only one corpse hung there, and as he looked it moved, as if imbued with life, and slid down out of sight. Men below the angle were pulling the bodies out, to clear the way for a fresh attack.

Gordon rolled the boulder into the shaft and it rumbled downward and wedged hard at the angle. He did not believe it could be dislodged from below, and his belief was confirmed by a muffled chorus of maledictions welling up from the depths.

Gordon was sure this shaft had not been in existence when he first came to the caves with Al Wazir, a year before. Exploring the caverns in search of the madman, the night before, it was not strange that he had failed to notice the narrow mouth in a dark corner of the cave. That it opened into some cleft at the foot of the cliff was obvious. He remembered the men he had seen stealing along the gully to the south. They had found that lower cleft, and the simultaneous attack from both sides had been well planned. But for Gordon’s keen ears it might have succeeded. As it was it had left the American with an empty pistol and a broken rifle.

Gordon dragged the bodies of the four Arabs he had killed to the ledge and heaved them over, ignoring the ferocious yells and shots that emanated from the rocks. He did not bother to marvel that he had emerged the victor from that desperate melee. He knew that fighting was half speed and strength and wit, and half blind luck. His number was not up yet; that was all.

Then he set out on a thorough tour of investigation through the lower tiers, in search of other possible shafts. Passing through the Eagle’s Nest, he glanced at Al Wazir, sitting against the pillar. The man seemed to be asleep; his hairy head was sunk on his breast, his hands folded limply over the rope about his waist. Gordon set food and water beside him.

His explorations revealed no more unexpected tunnels. Gordon returned to the ledge with tins of food and a skin of water, procured from the stream which had its source in one of the caves. They ate lying flat on the shelf, for keen eyes were watching with murderous hate and eager trigger finger from ridge and rock. The sun had passed its zenith.

Their frugal meal finished, the white men lay baking in the heat like lizards on a rock, watching the ridge. The afternoon waned.

“You’ve got another rifle,” said Hawkston.

“Mine was broken in the fight in the cave. I took this one from one of the men I killed. It has a full magazine, but no more cartridges for it. My pistol’s empty.”

“I’ve got only the cartridges in my guns,” muttered Hawkston. “Looks like our number’s up. They’re just waiting for dark before they rush us again. One of us might get away in the dark, while the other held the fort, but since you
won’t agree to that, there’s nothing to do but sit here and wait until they cut our throats.”

“We have one chance,” said Gordon. “If we can kill Shalan, the others will run. He’s not afraid of man or devil, but his men fear the
djinn
. They’ll be nervous as the devil after night falls.”

Hawkston laughed harshly. “Fool’s talk. Shalan won’t give us a chance at him. We’ll all die here. All but Al Wazir. The Arabs won’t harm him. But they won’t help him, either. Damn him! Why did he have to go mad?”

“It wasn’t very considerate,” Gordon agreed with biting irony. “But then, you see he didn’t know you wanted to torture him into telling where he hid the Blood of the Gods.”

“It wouldn’t have been the first time a man has been tortured for them,” retorted Hawkston. “Man, you have no real idea of the value of those jewels. I saw them once, when Al Wazir was governor of Oman. The sight of them’s enough to drive a man mad. Their story sounds like a tale out of ‘The Arabian Nights.’ No one knows how many women have given up their souls or men their lives because of them, since Ala ed-din Muhammad of Delhi plundered the Hindu temple of Somnath, and found them among the loot. That was in 1294. They’ve blazed a crimson path across Asia since then. Blood’s spilled wherever they go. I’d poison any man to get them —” The wild flame that rose in the Englishman’s eyes made it easy for Gordon to believe it, and he was swept by a revulsion toward the man.

“I’m going to feed Al Wazir,” he said abruptly, rising.

No shots had come from the rocks for some time, though they knew their foes were there, waiting with their ancient, terrible patience. The sun had sunk behind the hills; the ravines and ridges were veiled in great blue shadows. Away to the east a silver-bright star winked out and quivered in the deepening blue.

Gordon strode into the square chamber — and was galvanized at the sight of the stone pillar standing empty. With a stride he reached it, bent over the frayed ends of the severed rope that told their own story. Al Wazir had found a way to free himself. Slowly, painfully, working with his clawlike finger nails through the long day, the madman had picked apart the tough strands of the heavy rope. And he was gone.

Gordon stepped to the door of the nest and said curtly: “Al Wazir’s got away. I’m going to search the caves for him. Stay on the ledge and keep watch.”

“Why waste the last minutes of your life chasing a lunatic?” growled Hawkston. “It’ll be dark soon and the Arabs will be rushing us —”

“You wouldn’t understand,” snarled Gordon, turning away.

The task ahead of him was distasteful. Searching for a homicidal maniac through the darkening caves was bad enough; but the thought of having forcibly to subdue his friend again was revolting. But it must be done. Left to run at large in the caves, Al Wazir might do harm either to himself or to them. A stray bullet might strike him down.

A swift search through the lower tier proved fruitless, so Gordon mounted by the ladder into the second tier. As he climbed through the hole into the cave above he had an uncomfortable feeling that Al Wazir was crouching at the rim to break his head with a rock. But only silence and emptiness greeted him. Dusk was filling the caves so swiftly he began to despair of finding the madman. There were a hundred nooks and corners where Al Wazir could crouch unobserved; and Gordon’s time was short.

The ladder that connected the second tier with the third was in the chamber into which he had come, and glancing up through it Gordon was startled to see a circle of deepening blue set with a winking star. In an instant he was climbing toward it.

He had discovered another unsuspected exit from the caves. The ladder of handholds led through the ceiling, up the wall of the cave above, and up through a round shaft that opened in the ceiling of the highest cave. He went up, like a man climbing up a chimney, and a few moments later thrust his head over the rim.

He had come out on the summit of the cliffs. To the east the rock rim pitched up sharply, obstructing his view, but to the west he looked out over a jagged backbone that broke in gaunt crags outlined against the twilight. He stiffened as somewhere a pebble rattled down, as if dislodged by a groping foot. Had Al Wazir come this way? Was the madman somewhere out there, climbing among those shadowy crags? If he was, he was courting death by the slip of a hand or a foot.

As he strained his eyes in the deepening shadows, a call welled up from below: “I say, Gordon! The blighters are getting ready to rush us! I see them massing among the rocks!”

With a curse Gordon started back down the shaft. It was all he could do. With darkness gathering Hawkston would not be able to hold the ledge alone.

Gordon went down swiftly, but before he reached the ledge darkness had fallen, lighted but little by the stars. The Englishman crouched on the rim, staring down into the dim gulf of shadows below.

“They’re coming!” he muttered, cocking his rifle. “Listen!”

There was no shooting, this time — only the swift purposeful
slap
of sandaled feet over the stones. In the faint starlight a shadowy mass detached itself from the outer darkness and rolled toward the foot of the cliff. Steel clinked on the rocks. The mass divided into individual figures. Men grew up
out of the darkness below. No use to waste bullets on shadows. The white men held their fire. The Arabs were on the trail, and they came up with a rush, steel gleaming dully in their hands. The path was thronged with dim figures; the defenders caught the glitter of white eyeballs, rolling upward.

They began to work their rifles. The dark was cut with incessant spurts of flame. Lead thudded home. Men cried out. Bodies rolled from the trail, to strike sickeningly on the rocks below. Somewhere back in the darkness, Shalan ibn Mansour’s voice was urging on his slayers. The crafty
shaykh
had no intentions of risking his hide within reach of those grim fighters holding the ledge.

Hawkston cursed him as he worked his rifle.

“Thibhahum, bism er rassul!”
sobbed the blood-lusting howl as the maddened Bedouins fought their way upward, frothing like rabid dogs in their hate and eagerness to tear the infidels limb from limb.

Gordon’s hammer fell with an empty click. He clubbed the rifle and stepped to the head of the path. A white-clad form loomed before him, fighting for a foothold on the ledge. The swinging rifle butt crushed his head like an egg-shell. A rifle fired point-blank singed Gordon’s brows and his gunstock shattered the rifleman’s shoulder.

Hawkston fired his last cartridge, hurled the empty rifle and leaped to Gordon’s side, scimitar in hand. He cut down a Bedouin who was scrambling over the rim with a knife in his teeth. The Arabs massed in a milling clump below the rim, snarling like wolves, flinching from the blows that rained down from rifle butt and scimitar.

Men began to slink back down the trail.

“Wallah!”
wailed a man. “They are devils! Flee, brothers!”

“Dogs!” yelled Shalan ibn Mansour, an eery voice out of the darkness. He stood on a low knoll near the ridge, but he was invisible to the men on the cliff. “Stand to it! There are but two of them! They have ceased firing, so their guns must be empty! If you do not bring me their heads I will flay you alive! They — ahhh!
Ya allah —
” His voice rose to an incoherent scream, and then broke in a horrible gurgle.

That was followed by a tense silence, in which the Arabs clinging to the trail and massed at its foot twisted their heads over their shoulders to glare in amazement in the direction whence the cry had come. The men on the ledge, glad of the respite, shook the sweat from their eyes and stood listening with equal surprise and interest.

Someone called:
“Ohai
, Shalan ibn Mansour! Is all well with thee?”

There was no reply, and one of the Arabs left the foot of the cliff and ran toward the knoll, shouting the
shaykh’s
name. The men on the ledge could trace his progress by his strident voice.

“Why did the
shaykh
cry out and fall silent?” shouted a man on the path. “What has happened, Haditha?”

Haditha’s reply came back plainly.

“I have reached the knoll whereon he stood — I do not see him —
Wallah!
He is dead! He lies here slain, with his throat torn out! Allah! Help!” He screamed, fired, and then came sounds of his frantic flight. And as he ran he howled like a lost soul, for the flash of the shot had showed him a face stooping above the dead man, a wild grinning visage rendered inhuman by a matted tangle of hair — the face of a devil to the terrified Arab. And above his shrieks, as he ran, rose burst upon burst of maniacal laughter.

“Flee! Flee! I have seen it! It is the
djinn
of El Khour!”

Instant panic ensued. Men fell off the trail like ripe apples off a limb screaming: “The
djinn
has slain Shalan ibn Mansour! Flee, brothers, flee!” The night was filled with their clamor as they stampeded for the ridge, and presently the sounds of lusty whacking and the grunting of camels came back to the men on the ledge. There was no trick about this. The Ruweila, courageous in the face of human foes, but haunted by superstitious terrors, were in full flight, leaving behind them the bodies of their chief and their slain comrades.

“What the devil?” marveled Hawkston.

“It must have been Ivan,” muttered Gordon. “Somehow he must have climbed down the crags on the other side of the hill — what a climb it must have been!”

They stood there listening, but the only sound that reached their ears was the diminishing noise of the horde’s wild flight. Presently they descended the path, past forms grotesquely huddled where they had fallen. More bodies dotted the floor at the foot of the cliff, and Gordon picked up a rifle dropped from a dead hand, and assured himself that it was loaded. With the Arabs in flight, the truce between him and Hawkston might well be at an end. Their future relations would depend entirely upon the Englishman.