Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/184

 Iskander, must be peacefully inclined—if he is really a priest. Can't you ask him to make peace with the person you call the Vulture and to send word to Major Fraser-Carnie?"

"No, Edith. I have never tried to see the hadji of the mosque." Donovan did not want to explain that, in her present situation, any attempt to get the girl out of Yakka Arik must fail; and he knew that she would not understand the impossibility of checking the feud of the Sayaks against the man he had called the Vulture.

In the annals of the Moslem tribes of Central Asia there is a wrong that calls for vengeance, calls for what is termed in their own language the "pursuit of blood." It is a wrong that is handed down from father to son, and to grandson; a wrong that stains the honor of a man—and they hold personal honor very high—until it is wiped out.

And Donovan, in making good the task that had brought him from India, had paid a price. He had given his pledge to the Sayaks to aid them in striking down the Vulture and his mates. This had kept him an outcast for the last years and once, at Kashgar, had nearly resulted in his death.

Thus Donovan had widened the slight breach between him and the girl, without knowing it. How was he to understand her swift impulses and her yearning to be trusted?

Perhaps if she had not loved John Donovan she would not have sacrificed him and herself to the anger of the Sayaks.