Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/73

His lips quivered. He was about to turn, to leave The Hoof of the Wild Goat, to rush down the steep path and to take the trail—the long trail, to Bokhara, to Cairo—when the voice of Rahmet Ullah cut sharply into his reverie.

The chief welcomed him into the tribe with a few simple words, and, indicating the whole assembly, he added: "These be thy cousins, Yar Khan, son of Ali Khan! Their laws be thy laws, their customs thy customs, their weal thy weal, their woes thy woes, their feuds thy feuds! Thou art blood of our blood and bone of our bone! Whatever is ours is thine!"—and, one after the other, the villagers rose and walked up to him.

They greeted him, pressing palm against palm, coldly, impassively, with short, rasping "Salaam Alekhum's" and now and then a graybeard's querulous reflection as to manners learned among foreigners and infidels—reflections spiced and sharpened with Afghan proverbs.

"If a man be ugly what can the mirror do?" croaked a battle-scarred grandfather who walked heavily with the aid of a straight-bladed British cavalry saber doubtless stolen during a raid across the Indian border; another chimed in with the even, passionless statement that the cock went to learn the walk of the goose and forgot his own, while a third—a gaunt old warrior with the bilious complexion of the hashish-smoker—inquired of the world at large why it was that in the estimation of some people the strings of their cotton drawers rivaled in splendor the Ameer's silken breeches.

The girls and the children tittered at the last remark; and when the younger tribesmen came up to