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 by dry, rock-strewn watercourses that had once been used for irrigation purposes—watercourses on which both Mr. Preserved Higgins and Mr. Warburton were figuring in their hunt after “concessions”—water courses the eastern end of which an Afghan guide was just then pointing out to the American as the caravan which had brought him and his daughter from India, was reaching the eastern plains of Tamerlanistan.

On they rode, the robber chief's immense bulk bobbing up and down like a meal sack, the governor perched on his peaked saddle like a lean, ironic monkey, and as they rode, they talked, and as they talked they laughed—riotously, exaggeratedly.

Yet, had Koom Khan or the Cockney millionaire taken the precaution of having them followed, they would have noticed that, a few days later, the two repentant sinners seemed suddenly to forget all about their pilgrimage to the shrine of the canonized Clarified-Butter Seller.

For, a day's journey from the Afghan border where it dips toward the Persian Gulf, they turned due north, through an alluvial plain studded with basalt rocks and jagged green stone; above, a sky like polished, blue steel, with a tremendous blaze of orange sunlight that glared down without the thinnest veil of mist cloud.

There were few signs of life, and they were glad of it, as their plan depended as much on secrecy as on speed; only once in a while a carrion kite poised high in the parched heavens, or, silently, sulkily jogging