Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/20

 the natives. His horse was dark with sweat and he was covered with dust. There was a good rifle slung over his shoulder and a native servant followed him. So the white men in Kashgar, when they heard what had happened to him, thought he must have been a big game hunter.

Still, they wouldn't understand why a hunter should off-saddle and go wandering through the bazaar as this one did, guided by his servant. White men, even ovis poli and wapiti hunters, are not frequent visitors in Kashgar, you know. It's a city on the old caravan route from China into India and Persia. It's sort of stuck up there under the hills that overlook Tibet, Turkestan and Kashmir, and the hills themselves are rather a no man's land—tribal areas.

I have said he was looking for something, or some one. And he didn't find what he was looking for. That seems to be clear. So he let his servant take him to a serai, an inn for travelers in the bazaar quarter. For a hunter he was traveling awfully light, and with no heads at all in his baggage. He'd made a long trek, too, judging by the condition of his beasts.

It sounds just like a story, of course. The white man—we'll call him that for want of a better name—was sitting in a corner of the serai with his back to the mud wall smoking a pipe and watching the other inmates—a fine lot they were, too—when a big black-faced native in sheepskins, blind in one eye, got up and went over to him.

"Effendi," the fellow said, "your slave who is the dust beneath your feet (he meant himself) has heard that there is danger and trouble in store for you here. Will the effendi ride hence at once and swiftly?"