Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/106

eyes in the Red Village were watching his progress from bowlders and trees.

Half a mile below the natural bridge, he disappeared behind the shoulder of a basalt ledge that jutted out from the river and entered a thick clump of dwarf acacia.

Five minutes later, the watchers of the Red Village saw once more the braggard sheen of peach-colored silk—and Yar Zaddiq whispered a last word to the Kafiri who crowded at his heels as jungle wolves to the tiger's kill.

Another ten minutes. The sun was hissing out in a sea of blood. The heavens were melting into a quiet night of glowing dark-violet with a pale moon peaking its lonely horn in the North, and up at the natural bridge where the two villages met, there was the sudden yelling of war cries, the rattle of stones, the throwing of thorn sticks,—and, above the noise, Yar Zaddiq's voice stabbed out as, flanked by the pick of his fighting men, he hurled himself upon the peach-colored khalat before its wearer had had time to cross the bridge.

"When you set foot in the Red Village, Ebrahim Asif! I swore it! By the Koran did I give oath, and by the ancient gods of the Kafiri! When you set foot in the Red Village! True I am to the double oath!"—and his stick came down, tearing a great gash in the bridegroom's silken finery, brought from far Kabul.

The men of the Red Village closed in, with exultant, savage shouts.

Night had dropped, suddenly, completely, as it does in the tropics, with a burnous of black velvet.

Nothing was visible except the shadowy, fantastic outline of a dozen human bodies balled together into