Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/292

 times before now. But he isn't—thanks to some Providence that looks after his kind. Edith, do you realize you saved my life?" He was talking quickly, anxiously, his eyes fixed on the vista of the room below, with its array of broken men that he shielded carefully from her sight.

"I? How?"

"Well," he laughed again, not altogether steadily, "your first shot knocked the brains out of that Tartar on top of me. The others ran from your barrage after Aravang tackled their chief. So did I—run. You creased the back of my jaw just a little with a bullet, besides singeing my neck. I fancy your last shot got Aravang in the leg. I heard him swear"

"Oh, dear! I meant to shoot Abbas."

She looked up, her lips trembling with a smile. For the first time she saw Donovan's tired face, spotted with blood—from his slain antagonist—and with a dark line running down from his own injured chin.

"Oh!"

Edith fainted in his arms.

Aravang's mighty strength had held the stairs at the head of the pile of wood until Donovan's rifle came to his aid; but by then the kul was grappling with an agile Kurd who slashed at him with a knife and tore at his face with fanglike teeth. The two had rolled to the floor under Donovan's feet and out into the opening through which the men of Abbas were pressing warily against the swinging rifle butt over their heads. Fortunately for Aravang, his foes were half-mad with panic born of the peril that had overwhelmed the walls of the stronghold. For not alone had the fighting men of Yakka Arik come to the assault under cover