Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/54

intolerable note of appeal, half choked, accompanied by a rattling and crackling of steel, a crunching and stamping and snorting—curious, flat, dragging noise—and for a moment the hadji's heart was as still as freezing water. "Father!" came the cry again, and again: "Fa——" cut off in mid-air. Like his son's last cry, the cry of a dead soul trying to span the gulf of consciousness to the living heart!

Then once more the snorting and stamping, the steely jar, coming from the stables of the blooded horses.

The hadji gulped his fear and looked.

Beyond the stunted garden he saw a little curly, red-tinged bullethead peep above the wall, a small brown leg stretching up, the heel, helpless, foolish, trying to find hold on the smooth stone coping. Once more the cry, agonized—the little head jerking, the little heel slipping—a soft thud … and the hadji, the hair on his neck bristling as though Death had whispered in his ear, ran across courtyard and garden. He cleared the stone wall at a jump.

Inside, at the open door of the stables, he saw the Red Chief's son, a small, huddled bundle, the neck strangely twisted, the hands grasped clawlike about the left front fetlock of a slate-blue, mottled stallion. It was clear to the hadji what had happened.

The boy had sneaked out, very early, to take a look at the Kabuli stallion which his father had lifted from Jehan Tugluk Khan. He had tried to undo the steel chain by which the horse was fastened. The animal had become frightened, had reared and plunged and kicked; the boy had become entangled in the steel halter, had tried to jerk himself free; the stallion had become more frightened than ever.

"Patience, little Moslem. Patience, little brother!"