Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/114

 wooden bridge which spanned the ancient moat under the wall. And a myriad smells assailed horse and rider. Edith grimaced and the stallion fought for his head.

It was by then the last afterglow of evening. Purple and velvety crimson overspread the sky. Stars glimmered into being and slender minarets uprose against the vista of distant mountains. There was a great quiet in the atmosphere; but in the streets of the old city of Kashgar pandemonium reigned.

Into a narrow alley, flanked with canopies stretched across the odorous fronts of booths and stalls, the horse paced protesting. Figures stepped aside reluctantly, only to hasten after. Glancing back, the girl saw that a crowd was following her—a crowd made up of motley and grotesque forms: smocked, wizened Chinamen; sheepskin-clad, swaggering youths, hideously degenerate of face; bulky women with giant, gray headdresses; half-naked urchins—all shrilling and chuckling in a dozen tongues and with a hundred gestures.

Laden donkeys pressed against her knees. She heard the curses of the donkeys' owners. Peering about for sign of a clean and European-looking house, she saw only square gray and brown huts of dried mud with some loftier edifices of blank stone walls.

A yelling lama, beating about him with a heavy staff, his body grotesquely dressed in white and black squares of cloth with a peaked cap of brightest orange, pushed her horse back, staring at her with a louder yell of surprise. Behind him grunted and squealed a line of laden camels, tied nose to rump. Dust swelled and swathed all in the alley.

In a fury of irritation at the camels, the white