Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/107

 medicines, because they could not be bought. Why did you take me?"

They were rounding the broad base of a pine-clad mountain—its summit invisible above vistas of barren cliffs, mist-shrouded. And above the mist stretched expanses of moraine.

As they came to a bend in the trail Edith saw some distance below and to the right the flat roofs of a town, looking for all the world like miniature clay blocks sprinkled in a sandy plain. Delicate minarets rose over the roofs: she could discern the sweep of a city wall.

Now, she had no means of knowing—for Iskander did not see fit to enlighten her—that they were rounding Mustagh-Ata, the "father of mountains," and were looking down on the roofs of Kashgar.

"You were beyond price," observed the Arab gravely. He seemed anxious to screen her view of the town, and presently the vista of the roofs was blotted out by clumps of dry tamarisks.

Edith leaned down and boldly caught his rein.

"You must answer," she insisted, hungry now for a crumb of assurance. "Is this friend of Fraser-Carnie, sahib—this Donovan Khan—dead? Did he not ride after a caravan of—of spirits?"

Iskander laughed, baring white teeth.

"Eh, I was in that caravan. And these"—he indicated the tired camels and the gnomelike natives—"also. This is the caravan that came for Dono-van Khan. Now," he gathered up his reins, "it is time to halt."

Whereupon he trotted away to view the site selected for that evening's camp. Edith gazed after him hopelessly. So she was part of the caravan that had