Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/100

 had somehow been procured for her use, and the blankets were of the softest Kashmir wool. Always, men went ahead to pitch the tent and light therein a fire among stones skillfully arranged—a fire that had rid itself of smoke and subsided to comfortable embers by the time she arrived at the camp site.

Edith knew, that while she slept, Aravang—the big man with the scar—or Iskander himself watched before the entrance of her shelter. By now it was clear to her that Iskander and the others intended no immediate harm to her. In fact, the girl had never feared them. Raised as she had been in an environment of total safety and comfort, it was inconceivable to her that these men should molest a white woman.

To Edith Rand they appeared as unruly servants who had rebelled against their mistress—except for Iskander. Aravang was a hideous sort of watchdog, more her slave than guardian.

"So, kapra wallah," she had ventured after long pondering, "you are not even a merchant, a seller of cloth—but a slave, to Monsey."

It was a bold stroke. Experience had taught Edith that the Arab was most outspoken when angered; her own pride goaded her to anger him. Her scorn was by no means a trivial thing, and more than once she had fancied that the inscrutable Iskander had writhed mentally under the lash of her words.

Now he had urged his horse to her camel's side—a horse never willingly approaches a camel—and Edith had found time to admire the splendid ability with which the man handled the beast.

"No! God forbid!" he had scowled. "I am as my father and his father before him—a soldier."