Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/98



That was the question Edith Rand asked herself ceaselessly, and there was no answer. More than two weeks had passed, she calculated, since her abduction. Her first long sleep and the spell of unconsciousness that followed had confused her count of the days. She had asked Iskander the question, and he had replied:

"To one who waits."

That was all. But Edith, watching keenly, had noticed two things: this caravan, the one that had come to meet her, was not an ordinary caravan; and it traveled in haste.

Moving upward along rocky defiles that skirted the glacier slopes of the mountains where the route was marked along by ibex horns upright in the snow and by an occasional native shrine adorned with fluttering rags, they had met at times other caravans.

Always the other caravan had made a detour into screening timber, or down into blind gorges. More than once the girl was sure she had seen native shepherds fleeing away from them.

Again, a leper beggar sitting at the roadside had groveled in the dust when he sighted the brown men of the caravan.

Puzzling the matter, her quick eyes had noticed