"Whatever it is, I won't pass it by."
"Then hear me now, while our horses labor up the hill, for when we gain its crest we must ride fast. There I found the hoofprints of a horse going straight north. They had been made since sundown, for before then there was light wind that would have effaced them with blown sand. The horse had not veered in his course for rough ground or smooth, and once had crushed through a thicket of tamarisk that he could have avoided by swerving no more than twenty strides."
"If he were blind, he wouldn't keep a straight course. He would go mad and run into the rocks and die. It must be his rider is blind."
"No, for the horse can turn right or left enough to avoid a single rock or bush. That I saw. I think the horse is still in his right mind, although his rider may be dead. I think he wears a thing that I had never seen, but which I heard of long ago—which certain tribes on the far deserts use when one of their number is sent into banishment forever. It is two rods of wood or iron fixed under the edge of the saddle on both sides and miming forward to the rings on each end of the bit. Thereby the horse cannot turn his head to right or left except for such play as the rods might give. The banished one is set in the saddle with his hands tied, and the horse headed in the direction the tribe wishes him to go. Sometimes he is seen and stopped before he runs over a cliff or into a cul-de-sac, but on deserts such as these, usually not."
"Can't we go faster?"
"Is that my good teaching, or has all I've taught you run out of your head when you need it most? If we wind our horses on this climb, how may they run when the race is to the swift?"
"Yoiu pardon, O Mullah!"
"Aye. And in the tamarisk thicket, I found this." He took a small bundle from under his burnoose and put it in my hand. It was a tattered scarf of heavy Kashmir, richly embroidered.
Neither of us spoke again till we gained the height. At once we slipped into the easy, seemingly effortless canter of the trained, true-bred Arab, the gait we call "the wind off the hills of Hejaz." It was the pace that would take us farthest fastest between now and dawn.
Timor led until we came to that strange straight line of footprints, then turned out to let me pass. My first comfort was, the horse that had come up out of the south into our domains was walking, not running, and at a steady pace. I saw no footprint out of line to show reefing and staggering. Of equal importance, his northward course had brought him onto the gently rolling Plain of Jerdaz, with low bush scattered here and there, but no rocks and no deep-cut wadis for thirty or more miles. The bare ground showed clean tracks about two inches deep. It was of yellow clay that blasted a man's eyes at midday, and its fantastic mirages were the wonder of our tribe, but now it lay cool and luminous, silent and empty; and now my soul became serene—open to any wonder—and my mind worked better.
"If the rider is a Tuareg, why isn't he on a camel?" I called back to Timor. These pale-colored nomads of the Sahara were cameleers second to none, and rarely seen on horseback.
"Their emirs keep a few fine horses for show," Timor answered.
A little later a patch of clay damp from underground springs showed the prints perfectly sharp.
"I've never seen a horse shod like that one," I told my companion.
"I think the shoes are silver or gold."
Thereafter we rode in silence for about two hours, cantering or trotting fast. The horse we were tracking was not quite as steady as at first. I pulled up for a quick glance at an unfavorable sign about a thicket of asla bushes. The horse had tangled his feet in the growth and fallen—plain proof he was close to exhaustion—and had staggered badly before he had gained good foothold. Yet this evidence raised a thrilling question in my mind. Would he have risen at all except by the strong will of his rider?
I did not waste breath putting it to Timor. Anyway, our wasteland horses know the necessity of marching on—knew that immobility on the desert spells death—and the dauntless beast might have won the fight alone. He had fetched up heading in a slightly different direction, so now his course was more to the west. That way lay rougher ground and, not far off, rocky gullies.
I made a calculation for the twentieth time. If the tracks we had intercepted had been made after sundown, the horse could have walked thirty miles by now. We had followed the trail for about twenty miles. If we came on her in the next mile, he had traveled, perhaps trotting a good part of the way, at least eighty miles, for the caravan road crossed sixty miles south of our camp. The rider had been bound in the saddle perhaps as long as twenty hours, certainly through the heat of the day, and might be an hour's ride further on.
"Omar, we draw close," Timor called.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"By the tracks. These are very fresh."
"I can't see any difference."
"Your eyes are younger than mine—but mine are older than yours." This was a typical Bedouin mot. And I did not really doubt, in spite of its seeming improbability, that although there was no breath of wind to stir the dust, those old trained eyes could see a clearer shaping of the print than at first.
When we had ridden another mile, he called again.
"By Allah, this horseman is no weakling."
"You speak as though you know he's still alive."
"If he's not, his ghost still keeps the beast in good control, in spite of his thirst and his head shafts, enough to drive him mad."
I tried not to strain my eyes peering ahead, because I had learned long ago that an easy glance will catch an obscure object or distant glimmer of light that will escape an intent stare. When the eyes are relaxed, half-seen things signal the brain. I craved the sight of the strange traveler and felt a deep need to discover him before Timor did This was a superstitious urge and something more. Timor had vested in me the good or evil fortune of the venture; if he were the first to spy the quarry, it would be a sign that fate had not sanctioned the appointment and the main consequences must fall to him. He wanted me to succeed, but he did not look away.
Then, almost before my brain acknowledged the discovery, i raised a triumphant cry.
"There he is!"
At the far frontier of vision a shadow among the shadows tucked and faded out.
"Allah be praised!"
We rode another hundred yards before a speck on my eyeballs became the merest moving smudge in the silvery dimness ahead; then it swiftly took shape as a horse and rider. The latter was leaning forward against the horse's neck, but his head was up instead o lopping; and as we let our horses run, their hooves beat a joyful cadence on the hard ground.
"The horse must be bigger than his tracks showed," I called to my companion.
"Nay, it's a small rider, and that is a strange thing, for the tuareg are tall people. Even their women are tall—"
The rider had sat up straight. "Timor, is it a woman?"
"My son, I think it is."
In a few seconds more we knew. I rode upon the flank of the trammeled animal and seized his bridle. The rider turned her face full into mine. It was not that of a man or a woman either, or an afrite, but of a girl of about thirteen.
Her left wrist was strapped tight to the pommel of her saddle. Her right arm was fixed in a kind of sling, whereby she could unstop and drink from a water jug hung on her breast. Her ankles had been fastened with a strap running under the horse's belly.
I put my jug to her lips while she swallowed thrice. In a few quick slashes of my kris, I had cut all her bonds. Then the sensible thing would have been to lift her off and set her on the ground, for I saw terror and hope in desperate conflict in her face, and back of these an unbelievable struggle to conceal them both, but I could not keep from bringing her to my saddle and holding her a little while in my arms.