Golden Blood (18 page)

His thought was broken off by a sudden rattle of rifle-fire, from the direction Fouad had taken. Bullets hummed and whined above his head, singing toward the tiger.

The running beast stopped suddenly, stood motionless. It was not five hundred yards away. Price could see the
howdah,
and Vekyra sitting in it. She stood up, looked for a moment after Fouad, with the bullets whistling about her.

Then she crouched low; the tiger turned and fled. The yellow bulk of it paused for an instant upon a distant ridge; then it seemed to melt away in the moonlight.

Price got to his feet, swearing in astonished relief. The abrupt reaction to his extreme nervous tension of a few moments before made him feel curiously weak and shaken. He had an odd desire to laugh.

Cunning as Vekyra’s plot had been, to raise the hopes of her victims by allowing
them
to make that miraculous escape, then to run them down upon the tiger, she had bungled it. She had actually given them the freedom with which she had planned to tantalize them.

Walking in the direction Fouad had fled, Price came soon in view of half a dozen men, rifles in hand, standing about the old Arab. One of them challenged him; he shouted out his name, and old Sam Sorrows, the rangy, long-faced Kansan, came hastening to meet him.

“Howdy, Mr. Durand,” he called, surprised. And when he was nearer: “What’s it all about, anyhow?”

“The lady on the tiger was out for a bit of sport.
Hunting, with Fouad and me for the game.
Lucky we ran into you.”

“Maybe.”
Sam Sorrows lowered his voice to a whisper. “Better keep an eye peeled for that half-breed de Castro, Mr. Durand. The skunk hasn’t actually loved you, ever since you took that girl out of his yellow hands. Say, have you found out anything—”

“Yes, Sam, I saw her.
Down in the mountain.
That golden devil, Malikar—he’s turning
her
to gold. But about de Castro?”

“Well, he doesn’t worship the ground you walk on. And the men are pretty well with him. And—well, you see—that is to say—”

The old man paused, doubtful, fumbling his Lebel in the moonlight.

“What is it, Sam?”

“Well, Mr. Durand, you see—anyhow,
we saw you yesterday, in the mirage.”

“Oh!” Price recalled his weird experience in the hall of illusion. “What of it?”

“Well, sir, I don’t like to say it. But it was plain to see you and the yellow woman were spying on us.
Looked like she was on pretty good terms with you.
The men were saying—”

“Saying what?” Price prompted him again.

“Of course
I
don’t doubt you, Mr. Durand.” Price was shocked to note the faintest uncertainty in the old man’s tones, as if he were not quite convinced. “But the men think you’ve sold us out. De Castro was making some unpleasant remarks about what would happen if we got hold of you again. Thought I’d put you on guard.”

“Thanks, Sam.” Price squeezed his gnarled hand.

“You’ll have to talk, sir. It looks queer, you happening to run into us this way, with the woman making out to chase you. The men will think you planned the thing, to get back in camp, and find out what we’re planning.”

“But Fouad was with me, too.”

“What does he amount to?” The old Kansan turned back toward the others. “Good luck, sir. Remember, I’m
for
you.”

In a shallow
wadi
beyond the ridge Price found a small, fireless camp. There were no tents. The white men, an even score of them, were mostly sprawled or squatting about the camel packs. Fouad’s Arabs, now numbering a little over thirty, were gathered in a clamoring group about their new-returned sheikh. Close about were the dromedaries, kneeling or awkwardly sprawling.
And the gray, silent bulk of the tank.

Jacob Garth came to meet Price, as Sam Sorrows walked with him past the little group of sentinels on the ridge. A huge, gross man, his fat head bared to the night breeze, his
topi
slung about his neck.

“Don’t trust him too far,” the lanky Kansan whispered again. “He’ll do anything to humor de Castro and the men—till he gets the gold in his own fat hands!”

The man was near; Price did not reply.

“So
you’re
back again, Durand?” boomed Garth’s voice, sonorous and emotionless as ever.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that you have been deserting and appearing again rather too often to be convincing?”

“I think not. I can explain.”

“You can explain why we saw you in the mirage yesterday morning?
And on evidently intimate terms with the golden woman—whom you now pretend to be running away from?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“Listen, Garth. You may think me a traitor. I admit that I did have a chance—or rather two chances—to double-cross you. I was running from that tiger because I didn’t do it. Garth, I’ve been pretty well through the mountain. I know a good deal, I imagine, that might be useful, if you are planning another attack on the mountain—I suppose you are?”

“So it’s both ends against the middle, eh?”

Price flushed, struggled to control his voice.

“Garth, I have given you no reason to doubt my honor. I’ll tell you honestly what I have learned about our enemies. But first I must have assurance that you—and your men—will respect my life and freedom.”

Pale and icy in the moonlight, the man’s eyes glittered at Price from the broad white mask of his pouchy face.

“Very well, Durand,” he said at length. “I’ll tell you this much: We are striking about sunrise. In a few minutes Sam Sorrows is riding back to El Yerim with orders for the planes. They’re to bomb the castle. That will finish that accursed mirage?”

“If they can hit the machine.
A complicated lot of mirrors and such in the dome of the highest tower.”

“Good. Your information may be worth while, after all. With the planes, the tank, and the guns, we can smash any other opposition. We are going to dynamite our way into the mountain. You tell me what you know. Go over the plan with me. I’ll promise you safety. But I’ll want to keep you under guard until after the battle.”

“One other thing—” began Price.

“
You thinking
about that girl? Well, Mr. Durand, you had better understand right now that I’ve promised her to de Castro, if we happen to come across her. You’ll have to forget her.”

“The injustice of the thing—”

“Justice isn’t worrying me, Durand. Gold is what I’m after. Tell me your story, if you like, and I’ll give you protection from the men. If you don’t like it, I’ll turn you over to de Castro. He’d like well enough to twist a knife in you. He’s asleep. Shall I call him?”

Argument was in vain; Price at last submitted. He was still relating the tale of his adventures, and describing the interior passages of the mountain, when there was a sudden stir among the sentries on the ridge above the camp. A warning shot, a shouted challenge.

“Jacob Garth! Jacob Garth! Jacob Garth!”

A silver voice was pealing through the moonlight.
Vekyra’s voice.
Price’s heart thudded. What did this mean?

“Come along.” Garth took his arm. They went back to the crest. Two hundred yards across the moon-bathed lava stood Vekyra, a vague figure, almost spectral in the argent light. She was on foot; the tiger was not visible.

“Is that
she?”
Garth asked Price.

“Yes.
The golden woman.
Name’s Vekyra.”

“What do you want?” Garth bellowed in Arabic.

The liquid voice floated back, “Jacob Garth! Jacob Garth!”

The big man hesitated. He looked back at the camp, and then peered around over the tawny, white-lit desert. His voice rolled out suddenly, calm, serene as always:

“I’m going out to talk to her. If anything goes wrong, shoot. And keep
him
here.” He nodded at Price. “Take good care of him; he may be useful.”

Jacob Garth strode out across the desert. The sentries stood ready on the hill, Price among them. They saw Garth stop as he came near the woman; heard a faint murmur of voices. The two presently moved a little farther away, and sat down on the ground, face to face.

It was nearly an hour later that they rose. The woman’s ghostly form ran fleetly away, until it dissolved in the moonlight, reappeared, and was gone. Jacob Garth stalked deliberately back to the sentries. Though all of them must have been bursting with curiosity, none dared address him.

“Did you satisfy yourself about my status with the woman?” asked Price.

Garth looked at him, rumbled slowly.
“Yes, Durand.
You must have played the fool with
her.
Come here.”

The man led him a little away from the sentries, lowered his voice:

“Durand, we won’t
be needing
you any further. And I’m convinced, from what the woman tells me, that you won’t—can’t—do us any harm. You can go.”

“Go?” asked Price, blankly.

“Get out of camp, as you came.
And the quicker the better.
Joao de Castro doesn’t like you. And the woman doesn’t. Better get out while you can.”

He turned to the sentries, and boomed:

“Mr. Durand is leaving us, men. Give him ten minutes to get out of bullet range.”

28. THE SENTINEL SERPENT

“SORRY IT’S HAPPENING this way, Mr. Durand,”
grinned
Sam Sorrows. “But it might have been worse.”

He had gone down to his kneeling camel. He brought Price a small metal canteen full of water, stuffed his pockets with dates, dried camel-flesh, and hardtack.

“That will see you back to the oasis, sir. And good luck.”

Tears were almost in Price’s eyes as he gripped the old Kansan’s hand, and walked away beneath the menacing rifles of the sentries.

Half a mile away, a lava ridge
intervened,
shut him from sight of camp and sentries. He strode moodily along, through the swarthy and hostile loneliness of the moonlit lava-desert. He had fumbled everything; his last chance was gone.

But it was not in Price’s nature to quit. He never seriously intended to go meekly back to the oasis, as the others had supposed he would. And the desperate plan flashed suddenly into his mind.

He knew a way into the mountain—the way along which the unwilling snake-man, Kreor, had once guided him. He remembered it well enough to follow it alone. It might be guarded, now, but he could take the risk. And he still had the golden ax.

Within the mountain were perils that he did not like to contemplate.
The fanatic acolytes of Malikar.
The insidious golden man himself.
The yellow snake, that he would have to pass to reach Aysa—he shuddered again at memory of the cold, ancient evil that burned hypnotic in the serpent’s eyes.

Most of all, he dreaded the aureate mist. The sinister sleep of the golden vapor had overwhelmed him on the other occasion. Even if he escaped all the other dangers, he would not have time to reach Aysa and carry her above it before it overcame him.

But perhaps he could devise some sort of protection!
A rude gas mask.
He ransacked his knowledge of such things. The masks used against first German attacks, at Ypres, he recalled, were mere dampened cloths. A wet cloth would be worth trying, at any rate. If the yellow gas united with or replaced the water in the human body, it must have a special affinity for it.

Filled with new hope that ignored the overwhelming chances against the success of this newest enterprise, he hastened westward, circled around the west side of the mountain. Weary after a strenuous night, he flung himself down when he reached the point where Kreor and he had begun the climb up the sheer north precipice, and rested the hour until dawn, though he dared not sleep.

Sunrise found him toiling painfully and perilously up the cliff. Droning of airplane motors reached his ears, then thuds of heavy explosions that seemed to come to him through the very rock of the mountain.

Garth, then, had attacked; with Vekyra, probably, as an ally. Price’s heart sank at a vision of what would happen, in that case, if they reached the place of the snake ahead of him. Aysa, hated as she was by Vekyra, might meet a fate worse than Joao’s embrace.

At last he reached the fissure, slipped through into the dark, winding caverns of the mountain. Soon he was beyond all light, with nothing to guide him save memory. Many times he stumbled painfully against rugged, sharp-edged stone. But at last he came into the larger cavern, and through it, into the first hewn passage.

Onward, he found his way with comparative ease, counting his paces, and turning as he and Kreor had turned. He came finally into the sloping, spiral way, and hastened downward, still through utter darkness.

Again the mass of the mountain quivered to an explosion. Then, for a few moments, he heard confused shouting, and the distant rattle of small arms, borne to him down some corridor.

He had expected to meet watchmen. But perhaps the entire forces of Malikar had been drawn to some other part of the passage, to oppose the entrance of Jacob Garth and Vekyra. And, as he was to discover, Malikar had left a sentinel more terrible than any human.

Sounds of fighting ceased, and he came finally into air that was suffused with the faintest possible yellow light. Steadily it grew brighter as he descended, until he passed the end of the passage leading to the gallery from which he first had seen the lair of the snake.

There the light of sparkling, dancing golden atoms was strong in the air, the walls of the passage all a-glitter with rime of yellow crystals, elfin tracery of xanthic frost.

The passage flattened, straightened, and he came once more into the vast temple hall. The wonder of it smote him again. Circular, high-domed room, thick with shimmering yellow vapor, its black stone walls crusted with glittering gold.

A furious hissing roar greeted him as he ran out upon the vast, xanthic-frosted floor that lay between the entrance and the narrow bridge that spanned the giddy, green-golden abyss.