Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/190

 "Sayak!" he called, in a long, high note that carried far. "Sayak! Zikr!"

As if an echo, a wailing cry answered from the upper forest. Another took up the word, more distant. Still another voice repeated faintly from a faroff height

"Sayak!"

"You see." Iskander shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I bleed a dog that flees, when there are those whose task it is? Presently you will hear the death of the dog. Ah!" He had noticed the telescope. Straightway he swung himself up into the branches, climbing swiftly, for all his loose robe. Edith waited, feeling like a criminal caught red-handed. She wished ardently for John Donovan, but the white man was below in the village.

The Arab swung himself beside her on the branch and took the telescope. Evidently he was familiar with such things. For some time, while the girl observed him and Mahmoud squatted patiently beneath them, Iskander swept the valley. When the tower came within his vision, his dark face tensed. His lips bore a slight smile as he turned to the girl, who was still nervous—an after-effect of the scene just enacted under the pines.

"Ohé, my little winged bird," murmured the Arab. "What do you think of those—riders upon the cliff, where you see the tower?"

Edith fancied that he was trying to sound her, to learn what she had seen.

With a snap Iskander closed the telescope and thrust it into his girdle, drawing at the cigarette he had not ceased to smoke.