Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/89

The Black Rock was the fortune of the Red Village.

Forming the end and pinnacle of a chain of ragged, slippery stones that spanned three-fourths of the river's breadth and rose and fell to the rise and fall of the water, it was within fifteen feet of the southern bank, and in winter, when rain had been heavy in the mountains and the River of Hate surged up a man's height in a couple of hours, it acted like a natural dam.

But in summer, when, freed from snow, the higher range limned ghostly out of the purple-gray distance and drouth shrunk the river, the Black Rock peaked to a height of thirty feet and caused the water to drop into a great whirlpool, not far from the Red Village, where it blossomed like a gigantic waxen flower.

Too, it is in summer that the khirli fish, obeying their ancient tribal customs, come from their spawning, and when they return down the River of Hate on their way to the Persian Gulf, they are tired and weary with the many miles. So they lie down to rest in the bottom of the whirlpool of the Black Rock where the fishing rights, by immemorial law, antedating the law of the Koran, belong to the people of the Red Village; and the villagers catch them and feast, while the men of the White Village bemoan their fate and take the name of Allah and—if the Afghan priests be not listening—the names of various heathen gods decidedly in vain.

But they do not fight the people of the Red Village, except with an occasional stone or stick hurled from ambush and not meant to kill. For a law is a law.

When, after seven years service in the Ameer's army—during which he had learned to shoot straight, to substitute a tall black fur cap, worn rakishly over