Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/78

over five miles an hour, up-hill or down.

There was peace with the Suni Pathans who squatted on the upland pastures and so he had left his rifle at home, carrying only a broad-bladed dagger. He was glad of it, for a rifle meant weight, weight in the hills meant lack of speed, and speed was essential. All last night his wife had moaned terribly, and the village wise-woman, at the end of her remedies, had told him that he needed the English hakim's skill before the day was out if he wanted his wife to live: his wife, and the little son—he hoped it would be a son—whom she was bringing into the world with such anguish.

Three hours he figured to Ghuzni. Three back. Rather a little more, since the foreigner was not hill-bred. Thus he would safely reach his village before the sun had raced to the west; and by night his wife would hold another little son in her arms.

Of course there would be a wrangle with the hakim, Mortazu Khan thought—and smiled at the thought.

First was spoken the ceremonious Afghan greeting, cut short by the Englishman's impatient, "Why haven't you come sooner?" and his reply that his wife was a stout hill woman who had borne children before this; also that he had called in the wise-woman.

"What did she do?"

"She gave her fish sherbet to cool her blood. She put leeches on her chest. She wrote a Koran verse on a piece of paper, lit it, and held it smoking under Azeena's nose—"

And then the hakim's furious bellow: "Of all the damned—! Good God! man, let's hurry, or your wife 'll go out before we get there!"

At the end of the imagined scene Mortazu Khan's