There was genuine humor in Gordon’s laugh.
“Thanks, Musa! If I saved your life, you’ve paid me back. Better get out now, before somebody sees you talking to us.”
“What shall we do?” exclaimed Olga, pale to the lips.
“You’re in no danger,” he assured her.
She colored angrily.
“I wasn’t thinking of that! Do you think I have less gratitude than that Arab boy? That shaykh means to murder you, don’t you understand? Let’s steal camels, and run for it!”
“Run where? If we did, they’d be on our heels in no time, deciding I’d lied to them about everything. Anyway, we wouldn’t have a chance. They’re watching us too closely. Besides, I wouldn’t run if could. I started to wipe out Osman Pasha, and this is the best chance I see to do it. Come on. Let’s get out in the sangar before Mitkhal gets suspicious.”
As soon as the well was blocked the men retired to the hillsides. Their camels were hidden behind the ridges, and the men crouched behind rocks and among the stunted shrubs along the slopes. Olga refused Gordon’s offer to send her with an escort back to the Walls, and stayed with him taking up a position behind a rock, Osman’s pistol in her belt. They lay flat on the ground and the heat of the sun-baked flints seeped through their garments.
Once she turned her head, and shuddered to see the blank black countenance of Hassan regarding them from some bushes a few yards behind them. The black slave, who knew no law but his master’s command, was determined not to let Gordon out of his sight.
She spoke of this in a low whisper to the American.
“Sure,” he murmured. “I saw him. But he won’t shoot till he knows which way the fight’s going, and is sure none of the men are looking.”
Olga’s flesh crawled in anticipation of more horrors. If they lost the fight the enraged Ruallas would tear Gordon to pieces, supposing he survived the encounter. If they won, his reward would be a treacherous bullet in the back.
The hours dragged slowly by. Not a flutter of cloth, no lifting of an impatient head betrayed the presence of the wild men on the slopes. Olga began to feel her nerves quiver. Doubts and forebodings gnawed maddeningly at her.
“We took position too soon! The men will lose patience. Osman can’t get here before midnight. It took us all night to reach the Well.”
“Bedouins never lose patience when they smell loot,” he answered. “I believe Osman will get here before sundown. We made poor time on a tiring camel for the last few hours of that ride. I believe Osman broke camp before dawn and pushed hard.”
Another thought came to torture her.
“Suppose he doesn’t come at all? Suppose he has changed his plans and gone somewhere else? The Rualla will believe you lied to them!”
“Look!”
The sun hung low in the west, a fiery, dazzling ball. She blinked, shading her eyes.
Then the head of a marching column grew out of the dancing heat waves: lines of horsemen, grey with dust, files of heavily laden baggage camels, with the captive women riding them. The standard hung loose in the breathless air; but once, when a vagrant gust of wind, hot as the breath of perdition, lifted the folds, the white wolf’s head was displayed.
Crushing proof of idolatry and heresy! In their agitation, the Rualla almost betrayed themselves. Even Mitkhal turned pale.
“Allah! Sacrilege! Forgotten of God. Hell shall be thy portion!”
“Easy!” hissed Gordon, feeling the semi-hysteria that ran down the lurking lines. “Wait for my signal. They may halt to water their camels at the Well.”
Osman must have driven his people like a fiend all day. The women drooped on the loaded camels; the dust-caked faces of the soldiers were drawn. The horses reeled with weariness. But it was soon evident that they did not intend halting at the Well with their goal, the Walls of Sulaiman, so near. The head of the column was even with the sangar when Gordon fired. He was aiming at Osman, but the range was long, the sun glare on the rocks dazzling. The man behind Osman fell, and at the signal the slopes came alive with spurting flame.
The column staggered. Horses and men went down and stunned soldiers gave back a ragged fire that did no harm. They did not even see their assailants save as bits of white cloth bobbing among the boulders.
Perhaps discipline had grown lax during the grind of that merciless march. Perhaps panic seized the tired Turks. At any rate, the column broke and men fled toward the sangar without waiting for orders. They would have abandoned the baggage camels had not Osman ridden among them. Cursing and striking with the flat of his saber, he made them drive the beasts in with them.
“I hoped they’d leave the camels and women outside,” grunted Gordon. “Maybe they’ll drive them out when they find there’s no water.”
The Turks took their positions in good order, dismounting and ranging along the wall. Some dragged the Arab women off the camels and drove them into the hut. Others improvised a pen for the animals with stakes and ropes between the back of the hut and the wall. Saddles were piled in the gate to complete the barricade.
The Arabs yelled taunts as they poured in a hail of lead, and a few leaped up and danced derisively, waving their rifles. But they stopped that when a Turk drilled one of them cleanly through the head. When the demonstrations ceased, the besiegers offered scanty targets to shoot at.
However, the Turks fired back frugally and with no indication of panic, now that they were under cover and fighting the sort of a fight they understood. They were well protected by the wall from the men directly in front of them, but those facing north could be seen by the men on the south ridge, and vice versa. But the distance was too great for consistently effective shooting at these marks by the Arabs.
“We don’t seem to be doing much damage,” remarked Olga presently.
“Thirst will win for us,” Gordon answered. “All we’ve got to do is to keep them bottled up. They probably have enough water in their canteens to last through the rest of the day. Certainly no longer. Look, they’re going to the well now.”
The well stood in the middle of the enclosure, in a comparatively exposed area, as seen from above. Olga saw men approaching it with canteens in their hands, and the Arabs, with sardonic enjoyment, refrained from firing at them. They reached the well, and then the girl saw the change that came over them. It ran through their band like an electric shock. The men along the walls reacted by firing wildly. A furious yelling rose, edged with hysteria, and men began to run madly about the enclosure. Some toppled, hit by shots dropping from the ridges.
“What are they doing?” Olga started to her knees, and was instantly jerked down again by Gordon. The Turks were running into the hut. If she had been watching Gordon she would have sensed the meaning of it, for his dark face grew suddenly grim.
“They’re dragging the women out!” she exclaimed. “I see Osman waving his saber. What? Oh, God! They’re butchering the women!”
Above the crackle of shots rose terrible shrieks and the sickening chack of savagely driven blows. Olga turned sick and hid her face. Osman had realized the trap into which he had been driven, and his reaction was that of a mad dog. Recognizing defeat in the blocked well, facing the ruin of his crazy ambitions by thirst and Bedouin bullets, he was taking this vengeance on the whole Arab race.
On all sides the Arabs rose howling, driven to frenzy by the sight of that slaughter. That these women were of another tribe made no difference. A stern chivalry was the foundation of their society, just as it was among the frontiersmen of early America. There was no sentimentalism about it. It was real and vital as life itself.
The Rualla went berserk when they saw women