Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/334

318 echoes playing back and forth from kubbas and mountains to add their weird contribution to the scene. Then they fired at random, some into the air, some toward the ground, so that ragged clouds of smoke and dust seemed in flight among the riders.

But what will become of the crowd, if these wild steeds of the desert, with their bloodshot eyes and foaming mouths and excited to a point approaching madness, galloping within ten feet of the line of onlookers, lose their heads and break for the open? A shout, and the question is answered; for the horses are on their haunches, and the laughing riders have formed the perfect line again, are reloading their rifles, as they trot back to the end of the place, and are throwing, in magnificent gesture, coins to the lesser beings who must stay down on the ground and make music to which warriors may ride.

Other groups repeated the same general performance, but what a variety in the way they shot and rode and cried! One could watch them for hours on end and always discover new details. When the fantasia was nearly finished, the commanding spirit on the little hillock, who turned out to be a local caid, descended from his staff-position and entered himself into the wild display. The fantasia now reached its highest pitch of abandon, just as the sun was splashing its last rays against the oasis which it had flooded with molten gold throughout the day. The kubbas seemed wrapped in brilliant flames, the river was turned into a ruby ribbon and the now-scarlet figures of the riders seemed to be the draft that stirred the flame. One moment more and all this glory was lost forever in the unbreakable caverns of the