SNOW UPON THE DESERT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21342, 17 November 1932, Page 19

SNOW UPON THE DESERT

By J. RUSSELL WARREN

CHAPTER IV.—(Continued)

A little later, voices hailed them from the moon-bathed space, and dark figures of half-a-dozen horsemen became visible. Clanking and clinking they rode up and swung out of their saddles. The leader came forward—a tall, olive-skinned man in a long blue coat, a many-coloured sash, and a gourd-shaped hat of black felt, with oily black ringlets hanging down from it on either side of his oval, smooth face. He salaamed to each of the white peoplo in turn; his white teeth and bright, restloss eyes shone in the glow of the Dietz lanterns.

Elisabeth, although knowing nothing of the East and its peoples, distrusted this escort from the very beginning. Corcoran's men were wild and shaggy, but these Persians wero oily. They all looked at Elisabeth with a curious, speculative expression that gave her a little shudder of discomfort.

She was too shy to mention her distrust to Lady Susan or Corcoran. The explorer was so accustomed to dealing with tribesmen of different kinds, trustworthy and otherwise, that she had no fear of them; she scarcely thought of them as human. If Corcoran had any doubts about the reliability of their escort he did not betray the fact. After all, Susan Dangerfield was fairly capable of looking ofter herself and keeping the men she hired in their proper place.

But Elisabeth did not sleep well that night.

At dawn they struck camp. While the coolies were packing the loads and the drabis were loading the mules, Elisabeth and Susan and Corcoran breakfasted on bacon and eggs—they were not the freshest *of eggs—and Elisabeth thought bacon unsuitable, but Lady Susan disregarded climate; she would have no other breakfast, except from sheer necessity. It was rather a silent meal. Elisabeth was for the first time experiencing a vague apprehension, almost an intuition, that something definitely unpleasant lay ahead; Lady Susan was preoccupied; she was endeavouring to keep an eye on the whole of her retinue at once; the trend of Corcoran's thoughts Elisabeth could not guess, but ho was unusually silont; more than once she found him watching her with a curious, wondering expression. It seemed to Elisabeth, sitting thero in her roorkhi chair, that lifo was now a succession of sudden meetings and swift partings; the people on the two liners; the people at Ashar—and especially Jerry Tresilian —and now Corcoran. They met upon the road, travelled it in company a little distance, and then went their different wcys. Only Lady Susan remained, journeying with her all the way. As, a few days before, she had, with a little tug at her heartstrings, looked back across the river at Ashar sinking out of hor view, so now, with an unexpected regret, she looked back across the desert at Corcoran, sitting still upon his horse at the frontier line. A curiously statuesque, impassive figure he seemed, almost colourless in the sharp sunlight .against the negative background, with his shaggy men grouped about him; nothing of them seemed to move but their horses' heads, tossing impatiently, and their fretting hoofs kicking little puffs of dust.

As she turned her head away and rode on, Elisabeth had a queer little feeling of loneliness such as she had never felt before. She tried not to look back again, but simply had to, just to see if he had ridden away. He was still there, and the horses seemed to be standing in pools of water; although it-was still early in the morning, the mirage had risen.

CHAPTER V DISASTER They rode through foothills all that morning, and after the mid-day break until dusk. Their way led along a stony track, marked by the occasional skeleton of a horse or mule, that undulated, though steadily rising, across the foothills, and then up into the mountains. Later they descended into another stretch of desert, and then, two days later, began to asiVid the high range of mountains. Mile by mile the track grew steeper, winding between steep hillsides, or sheer walls, of sterile rock, slanting up slopes as slippery as ice, skirting precipices. Four of their escort rode ahead and two brought, up the rear; most of the way Elisabeth saw nothing of them but the backs of the advance guard, and was thankful for it; but at tiffin, although the Persians squatted well apart from the women, Elisabeth felt their dark, bold eyes watching her steadfastly. The night, moonlit, starlit and still, passed. Another dawn came, and again they took the road. Higher yet they climbed, and the air grew cooler, though the sun soemed to blaze down more fiercely than ever, and the passes, with the heat radiating from the walls of scorched rock, were like gates into hell. They camped that night in a pass, hommed in on either side by walls of rock, with only a narrow outlet ahead and a narrower one behind them. If Susan Dangerfield had felt any approhension whatever, she would have refused to stay in so lamentably bad ,1 strategic position, but her egotism and self-confidenco left no room for either fear or suspicion. Sho had carried through so many expeditions without any trouble that she could not conceive it possible that any but sheer savages would attack a column under her command.

She and Elisabeth were just sitting down to dinner when ihe disaster happened, and it was so sudden that tlipro was no time for anyone to do anything; before they fully realised what was happening, it was too late. Perhaps you can visualise the scene; the little camp in the pass, with the steep slope on one side shining in«pale green moonlight, and the one on tho other a black shadow, with tho deep, velvety sky, star-studded, stretched above, the ghostly shapes of tho women's tents, the red glow of the little fires, and the dark shapes of tho men squatting and sitting round them, in the acrid reek of the wood smoke, with only the low-pitched chatter of tho drabis disturbing the still silence. There were Elisabeth and Susan, clean and neat, sitting in their roorkhi chairs as if they were thrones, before tho little folding camp table, waiting for tho servant to bring their dinner. Susan had her favourite sundown " bamboo " on the table before her, and her cherx'ywood cigarette-holder between her white teeth. And as silent as shadows, invisible in the darkness, tribesmen wero sliding down that back slope, impassable to any but born hillmen, and creeping down the track ahead and up the trail behind. Then, sudden as a snap of the fingers, there was a sharp cry of alarm from ahead, where the escort were sitting. A cry that was cut short, to end in a gurgle, tho clatter of a falling rifle. Instantly a shot; then another from behind. For a moment the two women sat absolutely still, as if they were paralysed. Everybody seemed to sit still; everything was absolutely silent. It was all so sudden and unexpected. Actually, this silence and frozen stillness could only have lasted a fraction of a second, but it seemed to Elisabeth like an ago; she felt incapable of movement, of making a sound. And then Lady Susan jumped to her feet and turned to. dive into the tent for her revolver, and instantly the camp seemed full of men, great shaggy figures swarming in. They made no sound as they moved; not a footfall, uttered not

AN INTRIGUING STORY OF THE EAST

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a word. They scorned to have come from nowhere. One leaped at Lady Susan from behind, grabbed her arms, twisting them behind her and held her. Elisabeth took half a step toward her, and was grabbed and held in the same way. She could not see the man who held her, but his breath was hot on her neck.

And then there was a stampede. All the drabis and coolies scrambled to their feet, screaming, and tried to run for it. Elisabeth saw them scuttling past, but none of them got far. Some were seized and brought down; some were cut down: sword blades shimmered in the moonlight. Some tried to climb the slope, but none succeeded. The horses and mules were kicking and squealing in terror. The escort did not seem to have put up anything of a fight; perhaps, like the sentry, most of them wero knifed before they could fire a shot. One tried to run past Elisabeth, but a rifle crashed somewhere behind her, and he toppled over and fell, and lay still. And Lady Susan and she could do nothing. They struggled and wriggled, "but the men who Held them wero too strong for mere women to break their grip. Elisabeth found, to her amazement, that she was only furious. Never in her life had she been so fiercely, helplessly furious. She felt that she would have killed the man who held her if she could.

It was all over very quickly. A tall man, who seemed to be the leader of the brigands, came striding along, giving orders. The drabis and coolies who were left were made to load up the mules again with the baggage; they packed up tiie tents and beds and everything. Then the womon wero released, but there was a ring of men round them, and nothing in the shape of escape was possible. Lady Susan spoke to the leader in fairly fluent and very vigorous Arabic, but he only grinned at her, his teeth and eyes shining. At last he made a gesture, curiously courteous, that they should walk on, and there was nothing else to do. They went, with a guard of men all round them, and the mules and wretched drabis trudging behind.

CHAPTER VI. THE WALI The old saying that " you never know what you can do until you have to " is very true. It is particularly true of those quiet, shy litle women such as Elisabeth was; they are scared of a mouse or a thunderstorm, but they will face a real danger, or endure pain and privation with amazing fortitude. One would think that all through that long, moonlight march up the mountain track, with those utterly ruthless tribesmen all round her, taking her heaven knew whither, she would have boen utterly terrified. She was frightened, really, but her main thought was that it was no use making a fuss; that she must put up with whatever happened; and even at the very worst she must not, simply must not, let these shaggy, oily ruffians know that she was afraid of them.

So she just walked and walked in silence, a slim, white-faced little figure, dispirited and dejected, in an agony of apprehension, but with set lips and steady, level eyes. Ladv Susan, of course, talked all the time; she called their captors by every opprobrious ep'.thet she could remember, in every language she knew; she stormed &t them, she taunted them, she threatened them with wholesale massacre when the British Government lieaid of what had happened, but the tribesmen only laughed, and at last she fell sullenly silent. , . .. They marched about eight or nine miles, and then, skirting a precipice that made Elisabeth feel dizzy and rounding a shoulder of the mountain, came upon a big white stone wall, with turrets upon it, and the faint glow of fires behind. A voice hailed them from the top of the wall, and one of their guard answered. A hig wooden gate in the wall opened slowly, and they all filed through, into the bare courtyard. There was a crowd round them at once; men, women, and children, pushing and thrusting, jabbering and peering, but their guard forced a way through to a sort of big house built broking on to a precipice of rock. They were led through a small doorway into a kind of ante-chamber, furnished principally with rugs and full of armed tribesmen, and again into a bigger room. There were more tribesmen here, and at the far end a man seated upon a largo divan. Elisabeth shuddered at the sight of him. He was fat and bloated and greasy, with a flat, hook nose, and black ringlets, shiny with oil, hanging down on either side of his face, and thick lips under a heavy black moustache, and puffy, bloodshot, leering eves. She guessed at once, that ho was the Wali of Kishtu of whom Corcoran had spoken. He said something in Persian, and two men brought cushions and put them on the floor behind the two Englishwomen. Lady Susan promptly sat down and Elisabeth was glad to do the same. All through the march she had kept up, but now that there was a chance to rest, sho could have put her head down and gone straight off to sleep. The room was dreadfully stuffy, too, and she could scarcely keep her eyes open. But she felt she dare not sleep with the Wali looking her up and down, with his cruol, crafty leer.

Lady Susan seemed to be made of iron; sho sat bolt upright and talked to the man in French. The Wali did not understand the language well, but both he and Lady Susan spoke very slowly and by frequently saying the same thing two or threo times over, made each other understand. The exact words of that dialogue Elisabeth never knew, because she could not speak French at all, but Lady Susan afterwards gave her a general idea of what she had said. Sho began apparently, by telling the Wali her candid opinion of his manners, morals, appearance and ancestry, and then went on to explain in some detail the steps the British Government would take when they heard about the abduction of two Englishwomen. The Wali, apparently, chose to be indulgently amused. He said, with a suavity that concealed menace, that Lady Susan had been guilty of a breach of etiquette in passing through his territory without calling upon him; it was his practice to insist upon the observance of this convention, and if necessary lie used a certain amount of force to compel it. " And now that you've got us here," she asked, " what do you propose to do with us ?"

The Wali stroked his silky black moustacho and said that ho really had not made up his mind'; ho must think the matter over. In the meantime, an apartment had been prepared for them; tho most comfortable that tho limitations of his position allowed; would the English ladies be good enough to retire to it for the night? He would speak to them again in the morning. Lady Susan was furious at his insolence. She threatened him again, but he only looked at her under his heavy eyelids and said that ho did not care a snap of tho fingers for her threats. The British Government, he said, would liavo to make representations to the Persian 'Government, and tho Persian Government would procrastinate, because they knew they could do exactly nothing. Ho refused any allegiance to Teheran; ho was an independant chief and would not permit any interference with his actions. Once or twice, he explained airily, he had had trouble with Teheran, and troops had been sent against him. They had not penetrated far into his territory, he said, and very few of them had gone back. His mountain fort was impregnable, its approaches perilous. The Persian Government would not waste useful soldiers in any further attempts to annoy him and certainly they would not give the British Government permission to do anything of the kind for themselves. " I undei'stand," ho said slowly, " that you are a lady of high position in your own country: possibly your friends, or your Government, will pay a ransom for your release. As for the girl—l have not mad© up my mind." (To be continued dally)