Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/205



And after a pause, a silence broken only by the gurgling sounds of the hubble-bubbles, he went on, with sudden, frank, naïve simplicity:

“Abderrahman—I do not trust thy saheb!”

“Higgins saheb?”

“No. The other saheb—-who looks like a lance at rest.”

“Ah?” breathed the governor, without looking up.

“Indeed. There is about him a lean and nasty wolfishness of expression that, if I had a herd of sheep to protect, would cause me to double my sticks and treble my swords and quadruple my camp fires—that would induce me to surround myself with nine teen times nineteen traps. Good, sound traps that snap the wolf's legs and keep him—where he belongs!”

And when Abderrahman Yahiah Khan raised his eyebrows, questioningly, he stabbed a finger through the half-open tent flap toward the purpling night sky where a big, detached cloud was floating across the face of the moon.

“The moon careth not for the cloud,” he said, “and the saheb-log careth not for me—or thee—unless it be to use us for personal benefit.”

He was silent.

From the outside came a soft, throaty gurgle of camels jerking at their headstalls, and a feeble, dry sound of a sentinel's rifle dragging against the withered, tufted desert grass; and, presently, the tail end of an English song flung to the night in Tollemache Wade's frank, untrained voice:

“