Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/260

  had kept Monsey or Abbas from coming to stare at her during the afternoon. It was with a start that Edith realized Aravang must have begun his climb. The shadowy vapor of the ravine would conceal him and he could still see after a fashion to find his way up the face of the cliff, clinging to the crevices and spurs of the almost sheer rock.

"If Aravang is not on time, he'll have fallen."

The sentence returned to her mind with the force of a blow. Aravang was on his way and she must be prepared to act. She did not know what to do. How was she to reach the rampart over the cliff? Could Aravang, if he survived the climb, gain the interior of the Kurgan? What could a stupid native and a helpless girl manage to do against two such men as Monsey and Abbas and their armed followers?

Edith tried to think. They could not return—if escape from the Kurgan were possible—down the face of the cliff in the dark. Even if it had been possible, she would not leave John Donovan.

Iskander, Donovan had said, might aid her. But Iskander would not gain the interior of the Kurgan, owing to the trap that had been set for the Sayaks. No, Edith could not plan, could not see any way out of the trap. Donovan himself had—so she thought—merely taken a last chance, heedless of himself,—had done his utmost to protect her until the end that would come with the fighting and the revolver.

"He did it for me," she thought.

Edith found that she was unable to realize the truth of the revolver, the Kurgan, and her enemies. The whole thing was fantastic, impossible. It was another evil dream, and she must surely waken. She, Edith