Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/107

a tight knot, heaving, straining, wrestling, pulling down their lonely opponent as hounds pull down a stag.

But the lonely man fought well. Time and again he jerked himself loose. Time and again his sword flashed free and tasted blood.

Time and again he drove his assailants before him towards the boundary of the Red Village.

But always, rallied by Yar Zaddiq's warring shouts, they hurled themselves back at him before he had a chance to cross the line.

And then came the end.

A jagged rock crashed on his head and he fell down, unconscious, bleeding from a dozen flesh wounds, curled up like a sleeping dog, his right hand across his forehead as if to ward off the blows of Fate.

Yar Zaddiq bent over him.

"You are a brave man, Ebrahim Asif," he said quite gently, "and doubtless you were a swashbuckler and a brawler in the tumult of the packed Kabul bazaars! Doubtless the gods have dowered your heart with stanch courage and your body with the strength of bunched muscles! But there is no wisdom in your soul, young Chief. Ahee! Your caution is as uncertain as a Tartar's beard, as rare as wings upon a cat!"

He laughed.

But, with utter, dramatic suddenness, just as the moon stabbed down with a sharp wedge of silvery light that brought the features of the unconscious man into crass relief, his laugh changed to a howl of disappointment and rage, cracked, high-pitched and ludicrous.

He kicked the prostrate form with all his might, turned, and rushed back across the bridge as fast as his gnarled old legs would let him, while his clansmen, wondering, astonished, cluttered after him.