Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/35

on a pedestal to represent the power and arrogance of a race that will never grow old, that will never emerge from the sunlight of brazen freedom into the thrall and gloom of civilization.

Symbolic? In a way.

And that Hadji Rahmet should come into the Red Chief's life was also symbolic—and necessary: like the shadow in a light, to emphasize its harsh brightness.

Take the Red Chief up there in his stronghold, the Mahattah Ghurab, the Raven's Station, as the hill folk called it.

Above him the jagged, bitter rocks of the higher mountains where scrub oak met pine and where pine—to use the chief's words—met the naked heart of Allah. Still higher up the hard-baked, shimmering snows of the Salt Range, hooded and grim like the gigantic eye brow of some heathen Pukhtu god, a god mourning the clank and riot of the days before the Arabs pushed into Central Asia and whipped the land into the faith of Islam—alone there with his pride and his clan; clear away from the twitter and cackle of the city marts, from the turrets and bell-shaped domes of Kabul, from the strangling lash of the Ameer's decrees; sloughing his will and his passion as snakes cast their skin; brooking no master but himself and the black mountain thunder.

At his feet a cuplike valley devoured by sunshine; farther up the slopes the lean mountain pasture, smooth and polished with the faint snow haze, and slashing through, straight as a blade, the caravan road which leads to Kabul; the caravan road which, centuries ago, had echoed to the footsteps of Alexander's legions—the caravan road which is as old as strife and older than peace.