Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/72

and then a clear voice called to him. "Ho, cousin!"—it was the voice of Kumar Jan.

He looked. She was standing behind a massive, white-bearded man who was squatting at the head of the durbar, evidently her father, Rahmet Ullah, chief of the tribe; and Yar Khan's flagging spirits rose, and he walked up to Rahmet Ullah, kissing the hem of his robe in sign of fealty.

Then—and often in his thoughts, since he had ridden out of Bokhara, had he enacted the scene—he threw the goatskin bag at the feet of the chief so that the gifts which he had brought tumbled out on the barren gray ground.

"Presents for all of you, my cousins," he cried; "silks from Bokhara and sweetmeats from China …"—suddenly he was silent. A hot red flushed his cheeks.

For the uncomfortable thought came to him that he was praising the gifts as he had praised bartered wares across his father's dusty counter in the Gamalyieh; and there was a tense pause while some of the men and women stooped leisurely and fingered the presents, with now and then a short grunt of wonder at the touch of the glittering Northern silks, but with never a word to him—of thanks or joy or pleasure.

Even Kumar Jan, to whom he had given a fine Khivan shawl with his own hands, took the offering in a matter-of-fact way. She threw it about her shoulders without a word, and Yar Khan was hurt and saddened; his soul seemed charged to the brim with an overpowering loneliness, and terror came to his heart—the terror of the mountains, of the far places which he did not understand.