Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/27

Allah, I myself will shoot him." And I picked up the rifle.

But he put his hand across its muzzle.

"But why, why?" he asked. "He is blood-cousin to Bibi Halima. Also does it seem that reason has departed his mind. He is a madman, a man beloved by Allah. Shall I thus burden my soul with a double sin because of your bidding? Why should I shoot him?" he asked again.

And then, before I found speech, the answer came, stark, crimson, in the hillman's mad chant:

"Bibi Halima was her name, and she mated with a rat of the cities, a rat of an Herati speaking Persian. Now she is dead. I drew my cheray, and I struck. The blade is red with the blood of my loved one; the death-gongs are ringing—"

Then Ali-Khan understood. He shivered and swayed like a tree cut away from its supporting roots.

"Allah!" he shouted. And the long, lean Afghan knife leaped to his hand like a sentient being. "Allah!" he said again, and a deep rattle was in his throat.

The grief in the man's eyes was horrible to see. I put my hand on his arm.

"She is not dead," I said.

"Is that the truth?" he asked; then, pitifully, as I did not reply, "we have spoken together with naked hearts before this. Tell me, is the tale true?"

"The child will be born," I said, quoting the English doctor's words, "but Bibi Halima will assuredly die."

And then—and at the time it seemed to me that the great sorrow had snatched at the reins of his reason—Ali-Khan sheathed his knife, with a little dry metallic click of finality.