THE SHEIK
PART 14
At the beginning of the ride they had passed several vedettes sitting motionless on their impatient horses. The men had swung their rifles high in the air in salute as she passed, and once or twice Gaston had shouted a question as he galloped after her. But for the last hour they had seen no one. The desert was undulating here, rising and falling in short, sharp declivities that made a wide outlook impossible.
Gaston spurred to Diana's side. "Will Madame please to turn?" he said respectfully. "It is late, and it is not safe riding amongst these slopes. One cannot see what is coming and I am afraid."
"Afraid, Gaston?" she rallied laughingly.
"For you, Madame," he answered gravely.
She reined in The Dancer as she spoke; but it was too late. Even as she turned her horse's head innumerable Arabs seemed to spring up on all sides of them. Before she realised what was happening her escort flashed past and wheeled in behind her, shooting steadily at the horde of men who poured in upon them, and, with a groan, Gaston seized her bridle and urged the horses back in the direction from which they had come. The noise was deafening, the raucous shouting of the Arabs and the continuous sharp crack of the rifles. Bullets began to whizz past her.
Gaston tucked his reins under his knee, and with one hand grasping The Dancer's bridle and his revolver in the other, rode looking back over his shoulder. Diana, too, glanced behind her, and mechanically her fingers closed over the shining little weapon that the Sheik had given her the previous week. She saw with a sudden sickening the six men who had formed her escort beaten back by the superior numbers that enclosed them on every side. Already two were down and the rest were on foot, and, as she watched, they were swallowed up in the mass of men that poured over them, and, at the same time, a party of about twenty horsemen detached themselves from the main body and galloped towards her and Gaston.
She seized his arm. "Can't we do something? Can't we help them? We can't leave them like that," she gasped, wrenching the revolver from the holster at her waist.
"No, no, Madame, it is impossible. It is a hundred to six. You must think of yourself. Go on, Madame. For God's sake, ride on. We may have a chance." He loosed her bridle and dropped behind her, interposing himself between her and the pursuing Arabs. A fierce yelling and a hail of bullets that went wide made Diana turn her head as she crouched low in the saddle. She realised the meaning of Gaston's tactics and checked her horse deliberately.
"I won't go first. You must ride with me," she cried, wincing as a bullet went close by her.
"Mon Dieu! What are you stopping for? Do you think I can face Monseigneur if anything happens to you, Madame?" replied Gaston fiercely. "Do as I tell you. Go on!" Deference was gone in the fear that roughened his voice.
He looked back and his face grew grey. For himself he had no fear, but for the girl beside him he dared not even think. They were Ibraheim Omair's men who had trapped them, and he cursed his folly in allowing Diana to come so far. Yet it had seemed safe enough. The scout's reports had lately proved that the robber Sheik had up to now respected the boundary line between the two territories. This must be a sudden tentative raid which had met with unlooked-for success. The bait would be too tempting to allow of any slackening on the part of the raiders. The white woman, who was Ahmed Ben Hassan's latest toy, and his servant, whom he was known to value so highly, would be a prize that would not be lightly let go. For himself it would be probably torture, certainly death, and for her——! He set his teeth as he looked at her and the perspiration poured down his face. He would kill her himself before it came to that. And as he looked she turned her head, and met his agonised eyes for a moment, smiling bravely. He had refrained up till now from shooting, trying to reserve his ammunition for a last resource, but he saw that he must delay no longer. He fired slowly and steadily, picking his men with careful precision. It was a forlorn hope, but by checking the leaders even for a few moments he might gain time. The accuracy of his aim, that every time proved effectual, might keep back the onrush until they got clear of the undulating country, until they got out into the open where the sounds of the firing might reach some of the outpost sentinels, until they got too near to the Sheik's camp for pursuit to be possible. The bullets pattered continuously round them, but the men who fired them were not Ahmed Ben Hassan's carefully trained marksmen. But still Gaston knew that their position was almost hopeless. Any moment a bullet might reach one of them.
Their pursuers, too, seemed to guess his thoughts and opened out into an irregular, extended line, swerving and manoeuvring continually, making accurate shooting impossible, while they urged their horses to a terrific pace trying to outflank them. Diana was shooting now. The thought of her escort's annihilation and her own and Gaston's peril had overcome the reluctance she had had at first, and she had even a moment to wonder at her coolness. She did not feel afraid, the death of Ahmed's men had made her angry, a fierce revengeful anger that made her see red and filled her with a desire to retaliate in kind. She fired rapidly, emptying her revolver, and she had just reloaded with steady fingers when The Dancer stumbled, recovering himself for a few steps, and then lurched slowly over on to his side, blood pouring from his mouth. Diana sprang clear, and in a moment Gaston was beside her, thrusting her behind him, shielding her with his own body, and firing steadily at the oncoming Arabs.
The same feeling of unreality that she had experienced once before the first day in the Sheik's camp came over her. The intense stillness—for the Arabs had ceased shouting—the hot, dry sand with the shimmering heat haze rising like mist from its whispering surface, the cloudless deep blue sky overhead, the band of menacing horsemen circling nearer and nearer, the dead Dancer, with Gaston's horse standing quietly beside his prostrate companion, and lastly, the man beside her, brave and devoted to the end, all seemed fantastic and unreal. She viewed it dispassionately, as if she were a spectator rather than a participant in the scene. But for a moment only, then the reality of the situation came clearly to her again. Any minute might mean death for one or other or both of them, and with an instinctive movement she pressed closer to Gaston. They were both silent, there seemed nothing to say. The valet's left hand clenched over hers at the involuntary appeal for companionship that she made, and she felt it contract as a bullet gashed his forehead, blinding him for a moment with the blood that dripped into his eyes. He let go her hand to brush his arm across his face, and as he did so the Arabs with suddenly renewed shouting bore down upon them.
Gaston turned sharply and Diana read his purpose in the horror in his eyes. She held up her head with a little nod and the same brave smile on her white lips. "Please," she whispered, "quickly!" A spasm crossed his face, "Turn your head," he muttered desperately. "I cannot do it if you——"
There was a rattle of shots, and with a gasp he crumpled up against her. For a moment it was pandemonium. Standing over Gaston's body she fired her last shot and flung the empty revolver in the face of a man who sprang forward to seize her. She turned with a desperate hope of reaching Gaston's horse, but she was hemmed in, and for a second she stood at bay, hands clenched and teeth set, braving the wild faces that surrounded her, and were closing in upon her, with flashing defiant eyes. Then she was conscious of a crashing blow on her head, the ground heaved up under her feet, everything went black before her eyes, and without a sound she fell senseless.
Late in the afternoon Saint Hubert was still writing in the big tent. Henri had deciphered the notes that had baffled his master in the morning, and the Vicomte had taken advantage of the solitude to do some long-neglected work. He had forgotten the time, forgotten to be surprised at Diana's continued absence, immersed in the interesting subject he was dealing with, and not realising the significance of her delayed return. Ahmed had spoken of the proximity of his hereditary enemy, but Saint Hubert had not grasped how near the robber Sheik had ventured.
He was too engrossed to notice the usual noise in the camp that heralded the Sheik's arrival, and he looked up with a start when Ahmed Ben Hassan swept in. The Sheik's dark eyes glanced sombrely around the tent and without a word he went through into the inner room. In a moment he came hack.
"Where is Diane?"
Saint Hubert got up, puzzled at his tone. He looked at his watch. "She went for a ride this morning. Dieu! I had no idea it was so late."
"This morning!—and not back yet?" repeated the Sheik slowly. "What time this morning?"
"About ten, I think," replied Saint Hubert uneasily. "I'm not sure. I didn't look. There was an accident, and she delayed to watch me tie up one of your foolish children who had been playing with a worthless gun."
The Sheik moved over to the doorway. "She had an escort?" he asked curtly.
"Yes."
Ahmed Ben Hassan's face hardened and the heavy scowl contracted his black brows. Had she all these weeks been tricking him—feigning a content she did not feel, lulling his suspicions to enable her to seize another opportunity to attempt to get away? For a moment his face grew dark, then he put the thought from him. He trusted her. Only a week before she had given him her word, and he knew she would not lie to him. And, besides, the thing was impossible. Gaston would never be caught napping a second time, and there were also the six men who formed her guard. She would never be able to escape the vigilance of seven men. But it was the trust he had in her that weighed most with him. He had never trusted a woman before, but this woman had been different. The others who had come and gone so lightly had not even left a recollection behind them; they had faded into one concrete cause of utter boredom. There had never been any reason to trust or mistrust them, or to care if they came or went. Satiety had come with possession and with it indifference. But the emotion that this girl's uncommon beauty and slender boyishness had aroused in him had not diminished during the months she had been living in his camp. Her varying moods, her antagonism, her fits of furious rage, and, lastly, her unexpected surrender, had kept his interest alive. He had grown accustomed to her. He had come to looking forward with a vague, indefinite pleasure, on returning from his long expeditions, to seeing the dainty little figure curled up among the cushions on the big divan. Her presence seemed to pervade the atmosphere of the whole tent, changing it utterly. She had become necessary to him as he had never believed it possible that a woman could be. And with the change that she had made in his camp there had come a change in himself also.
For the first time a shadow had risen between him and the man whose friendship had meant everything to him since, as a lad of fifteen, he had come under the influence of the young Frenchman, who was three years his senior. He realized that since the night of Raoul's arrival he had been seething with insensate jealousy. He had relied on the Western tendencies that prompted him to carry off the difficult situation, but his ingrained Orientalism had broken through the superficial veneer. He was jealous of every word, every look she gave Saint Hubert. Pride had prevented an open rupture with the Vicomte this morning, but he had ridden away filled with a cold rage that had augmented every hour and finally driven him back earlier than he had intended, riding with a recklessness that had been apparent even to his men. The sight of Raoul sitting alone absorbed in his work had in part allayed his suspicions, and he had gone on into the other room with a feeling of new expectancy that had changed to a sudden chill at its emptiness. The vacant room had brought home to him abruptly all that the girl meant to him. A latent anxiety crept into his eyes.
He went out under the awning and clapped his hands, and a servant answered the summons almost immediately. He gave an order and waited, his hands thrust into the folds of his waist-cloth and his teeth clenched on a cigarette that he had forgotten to light.
Saint Hubert joined him. "What do you think?" he asked, with a touch of diffidence.
"I don't know what to think," replied the Sheik shortly.
"But is there any real danger?"
"There is always danger in the desert, particularly when that devil is abroad." He motioned to the south with an impatient jerk of his head.
Saint Hubert's breath whistled sharply through his teeth. "My God! You don't imagine——"
But the Sheik only shrugged his shoulders and turned to Yusef, who had come up with half-a-dozen men. There was a rapid interchange of questions and answers, some brief orders, and the men hurried away in different directions, while Ahmed Ben Hassan turned again to Saint Hubert.
"They were seen by three of the southern patrols this morning, but of course it was nobody's business to find out if they had come back or not. I will start at once—in about ten minutes. You will come with me? Good! I have sent for reinforcements, who are to follow us if we are not back in twelve hours." His voice was expressionless, and only Raoul de Saint Hubert, who had known him since boyhood, could and did appreciate the significance of a fleeting look that crossed his face as he went back into the tent.
For a moment the Vicomte hesitated, but he knew that not even he was wanted inside that empty tent, and a half-bitter, half-sad feeling that the perfect friendship and confidence that had existed between them for twenty years would never again be the same came to them, the regretful sense of inevitable change, the consciousness of personal relegation. Then fear for Diana drove out every other consideration, and he went to his own quarters with a heavy heart.
When he came back in a few minutes with Henri following him the camp had undergone a transformation. With the promptness of perfect discipline the hundred men who had been chosen to go on the expedition were already waiting, each man standing by his horse, and the Sheik, quiet and impassive as usual, was superintending the distribution of extra ammunition. A groom was walking The Hawk slowly up and down, and Yusef, whose gloomy eyes had been fixed reproachfully on his chief, chafing against the order to remain behind to take command of the reinforcements should they be needed, went to him and took the horse's bridle from him and brought him to the Sheik. Even as he held the stirrup Saint Hubert could see that he was expostulating with an unusual insistence, begging for permission to accompany them. But the Sheik shook his head, and the young man stood sullenly aside to avoid The Hawk's hoofs as he reared impatiently.
Ahmed Ben Hassan motioned Saint Hubert to his side and in silence the cavalcade started at the usual swift gallop. The silence impressed Raoul, who was accustomed to the Arab's usual clamour. It affected his sensitive temperaments, filling him with a sinister foreboding. The silent band of stern-faced horsemen riding in close and orderly formation behind them suggested something more than a mere relief party. The tradition of reckless courage and organised fighting efficiency that had made the tribe known and feared for generations had been always maintained, and under the leadership of the last two holders of the hereditary name to so high a degree that the respect in which it was held was such that no other tribe had ventured to dispute its supremacy, and for many years its serious fighting capacities had not been tested.
Even Ibraheim Omair had inherited a feud that was largely traditional. Only once during the lifetime of the last Ahmed Ben Hassan had he dared to come into open conflict, and the memory of it had lasted until now. Skirmishes there had been and would always be inevitably sufficient to keep the tribesmen in a state of perpetual expectancy, and for this Ahmed Ben Hassan preserved the rigid discipline that prevailed in his tribe, insisting on the high standard that had kept them famous. The life-work that his predecessor had taken over from his father the present Ahmed Ben Hassan had carried on and developed with autocratic perseverance. The inborn love of fighting had been carefully fostered in the tribe, the weapons with which they were armed were of the newest pattern. Raoul knew with perfect certainty that to the picked men following them this hasty expedition meant only one thing—war, the war that they had looked forward to all their lives, precipitated now by an accident that gave to a handful of them the chance that hundreds of their fellow-tribesmen were longing for, a chance that sent them joyfully behind their chief, careless whether the reinforcements that had been sent for arrived in time or not. The smallness of their numbers was a source of pleasure rather than otherwise; if they won through to them would be the glory of victory; if they were annihilated with them would rest the honour of dying with the leader whom they worshipped, for not one of them doubted that Ahmed Ben Hassan would not survive his bodyguard, the flower of his tribe, the carefully chosen men from whose ranks his personal escort was always drawn. With them he would crush his hereditary enemy or with them he would die.
The short twilight had gone and a brilliant moon shone high in the heavens, illuminating the surrounding country with a clear white light. At any other time the beauty of the scene, the glamour of the Eastern night, the head-long gallop in company with this band of fierce fighting men would have stirred Saint Hubert profoundly. His artistic temperament and his own absolute fearlessness and love of adventure would have combined to make the expedition an exciting experience that he would not willingly have foregone. But the reason for it all, the peril of the girl whom he loved so unexpectedly, changed the whole colour of the affair, tinging it with a gravity and a suspense that left a cold fear in his heart. And if to him, what then to the man beside him? The question that Ahmed Ben Hassan had negatived so scornfully a week before had been answered differently in the swift look that had crossed his face this evening. He had not spoken since they started, and Saint Hubert had not felt able to break the silence. They had left the level country and were in amongst the long, successive ranges of undulating ground, the summits standing out silver white in the gleaming moonlight, the hollows filled with dark shadow, like black pools of deep, still water. And at the bottom of one of the slopes the Sheik pulled up suddenly with a low, hissing exclamation. A white shape was lying face downwards, spread-eagled on the sand, almost under The Hawk's feet, and at their approach two lean, slinking forms cantered away into the night. The Sheik and Henri reached the still figure simultaneously and Saint Hubert almost as quickly. He made a hurried examination. The bullet that had stunned Gaston had glanced off, leaving an ugly cut, and others that had hit him at the same time had ploughed through his shoulder, breaking the bone and causing besides wounds that had bled freely. He had staggered more than a mile before he had fainted again from loss of blood. He came to under Saint Hubert's handling, and lifted his heavy eyes to the Sheik, who was kneeling beside him.
"Monseigneur—Madame—Ibraheim Omair," he whispered weakly, and relapsed into unconsciousness.
For a moment the Sheik's eyes met Raoul's across his body, and then Ahmed Ben Hassan rose to his feet. "Be as quick as you can," he said, and went back to his horse. He leaned against The Hawk, his fingers mechanically searching for and lighting a cigarette, his eyes fixed unseeingly on the group around Gaston. The valet's broken words had confirmed the fear that he had striven to crush since he discovered Diana's absence.
He had only seen Ibraheim Omair once when, ten years before, he had gone with the elder Ahmed Ben Hassan to a meeting of the more powerful chiefs at Algiers, arranged under the auspices of the French Government, to confer on a complicated boundary question that had threatened an upheaval amongst the tribes which the nominal protectors of the country were afraid would be prejudicial to their own prestige, as it would have been beyond their power to quell. He had chafed at having to meet his hereditary enemy on equal terms, and only the restraining influence of the old Sheik, who exacted an unquestioning obedience that extended even to his heir, had prevented a catastrophe that might have nullified the meeting and caused infinitely more complications than the original boundary dispute. But the memory of the robber Sheik remained with him always, and the recollection of his bloated, vicious face and gross, unwieldy body rose clearly before him now.
Ibraheim Omair and the slender daintiness that he had prized so lightly. Diane! His teeth met through the cigarette in his mouth. His senseless jealousy and the rage provoked by Raoul's outspoken criticism had recoiled on the innocent cause. She, not Saint Hubert, had felt the brunt of his anger. In the innate cruelty of his nature it had given him a subtle pleasure to watch the bewilderment, alternating with flickering fear, that had come back into the deep blue eyes that for two months had looked into his with frank confidence. He had made her acutely conscious of his displeasure. Only last night, when his lack of consideration and his unwonted irritability had made her wince several times during the evening and after Saint Hubert had gone to his own tent, he, had looked up to find her eyes fixed on him with an expression that, in his dangerous mood, had excited all the brutality of which he was capable, and had filled him with a desire to torture her. The dumb reproach in her eyes had exasperated him, rousing the fiendish temper that had been hardly kept in check all the previous week. And yet, when he held her helpless in his arms, quivering and shrinking from the embrace that was no caress, but merely the medium of his anger, and the reproach in her wavering eyes changed to mute entreaty, the pleasure he had anticipated in her fear had failed him as it had before, and had irritated him further. The wild beating of her heart, the sobbing intake of her breath, the knowledge of his power over her, gave him no gratification, and he had flung her from him cursing her savagely, till she had fled into the other room with her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his slow, deliberate voice. And this morning he had left her without a sign of any kind, no word or gesture that might have effaced the memory of the previous night. He had not meant to, he had intended to go back to her before he finally rode away, but Saint Hubert's refusal to accompany him had killed the softer feelings that prompted him, and his rage had flamed up again.
And now? The longing to hold her in his arms, to kiss the tears from her eyes and the colour into her pale lips, was almost unbearable. He would give his life to keep even a shadow from her path, and she was in the hands of Ibraheim Omair! The thought and all that it implied was torture, but no sign escaped him of the hell he was enduring. The unavoidable delay seemed interminable, and he swung into the saddle, hoping that the waiting would seem less with The Hawk's restless, nervous body gripped between his knees, for though the horse would stand quietly with his master beside him, he fretted continually at waiting once the Sheik was mounted, and the necessity for soothing him was preferable to complete inaction.
Saint Hubert rose to his feet at last, and, leaving behind Henri and two Arabs, who were detailed to take the wounded man back to the camp, the swift gallop southward was resumed. On, over the rising and falling ground along which Gaston had stumbled, blind and faint with loss of blood and the pain of his wounds, past the dead body of The Dancer, ghostly white in the moonlight, lying a little apart from the semicircle of Arabs that proved the efficiency of Gaston's shooting where Diana and he had made their last stand. The Sheik made no sign and did not check the headlong gallop, but continued on, The Hawk taking the fallen bodies that lay in his path in his stride, with only a quiver of repugnance and a snort of disgust. Still on, past the huddled bundles of tumbled draperies that marked the way significantly, avoiding them where the moonlight illuminated brightly, and riding over them in the deep hollows, where once Raoul's horse stumbled badly and nearly fell, recovering himself with a wild scramble, and the Vicomte heard the dead man's skull crack under the horse's slipping hoof.
The distant howling of jackals came closer and closer until, topping one long rise and descending into a hollow that was long enough and wide enough to be fully lit by the moon, they came to the place where the ambush had been laid. Instinctively Ahmed Ben Hassan knew that amongst the jostling heaps of corpses and dead horses lay the bodies of his own men. Perhaps amongst the still forms from which the jackals, whose hideous yelling they had heard, had slunk away, there might be one left with life enough to give some news. One of his own men who would speak willingly, or one of Ibraheim Omair's who would be made to speak. His lips curled back from his white teeth in a grin of pure cruelty.
The silence that had prevailed amongst his men broke suddenly as they searched quickly among the dead. The Sheik waited impassively, silent amidst the muttered imprecations and threats of vengeance of his followers as they laid beside him the six remains of what had been Diana's escort, slashed and mutilated almost beyond recognition. But it was he who noticed that the last terrible figure stirred slightly as it was laid down, and it was into his face, grown suddenly strangely gentle, that the dying Arab looked with fast-filming eyes. The man smiled, the happy smile of a child that had obtained an unexpected reward, and raised his hand painfully in salute, then pointed mutely to the south.
The Sheik caught his follower's nerveless fingers as they fell in his own strong grasp, and with a last effort the Arab drew his chief's hand to his forehead and fell back dead.
To be continued
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