Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/21

 The white man laughed and said he liked it where he was. At this the chap of the sheepskins went out of the serai and began to run as if the devil were after him, through the twisting alleys of the bazaar, out past the mosque and up the road to the hills.

He didn't stop running as long as he was visible from the balcony where the taotai, the governor, was having dinner. They noticed that, because those natives never run unless necessary, and then they ride.

In an hour, after he'd eaten a little dinner, the white man was knocked out. Not actually, of course, but by fever or food poisoning. It was so quick in coming, it must have been poisoning.

He still sat in the corner of the serai with his rifle across his knees and his face drawn with pain. He couldn't move except to put his finger on the trigger of his piece and watch the crowd in the serai with his eyes. This was necessary, because his servant had left him and he hadn't tried to get word to the few Europeans who were near by in the new Kashgar.

Perhaps he did try to get word to them; still, there was no evidence that he did. A Kashgar crowd is harmless for the most part; but not when a foreign barbarian with his kit and rifle is helpless in their hands. Well—this chap kept watching the crowd and the crowd watched him. Waiting for him to die, most likely, so they could appropriate his kit and rifle. Evidently while he was still alive they didn't dare touch him. And it wasn't dark yet. The Chinese governor, who was very conscientious—a fine fellow and a scholar, too—and investigated the affair to the best of his ability, says that this was before the namaz