Page:Harold Lamb--Marching Sands.djvu/121

 The camels were moving uneasily. Gray could have sworn he heard a muffled exclamation near him. He turned his head, and a form uprose from the ground and gripped him.

Gray wrenched himself free from the man and struck out. The newcomer slipped under his arm and caught him about the knees. Other forms sprang from among the camels and lean arms twined around the American.

"Look out, Mirai Khan!" he cried in Chinese. "These are enemies."

A powerful white man who can handle his fists is a match for a round half dozen Mongolians, unarmed—if he has a clear footing and can see where to hit. Gray was held by at least four men; his rifle slung to one shoulder by a sling hampered him. He was cast to earth at once.

His face was ground into the sand, and his arms drawn behind his back. He heard his adversaries chattering in a strange tongue. Cold metal touched his wrists. He felt the click of a metal catch and realized that handcuffs had been snapped on him.

He wondered vaguely how handcuffs came to be in a Central Asian caravan, as he was pulled roughly to his feet. In the dark he could not make out the men who held him. But they advanced toward one of the tents—the same he had been trying to see into.

Gray, perforce, made no further resistance. He