Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/216

 along, an Afghan or Baluchi camel rider, whose jaws and brows were bound mummy fashion against the stinging sand of the desert; and late one afternoon they overtook a gigantic cotton wain that was drawn by twenty bullocks about the size of Newfoundland dogs—a sign that they were drawing nearer to the capital.

A few words with the driver of the wain elicited the information that the weekly caravan from India was due in twenty-four hours, and so, having decided, for reasons of their own, to go to the capital; having furthermore decided, for reasons connected with the safety of their heads, that it would be unwise to do so in their characters of rebel leader and robber chief, they kept on to the north, and, the following day, reached the Darb-al-Sharki, the highway that enters Tamerlanistan from the east, having made a sweeping detour around the city and debouched on a spot far removed from the direction of the western marches.

There they dismounted, took off their clothes, opened their saddle-bags, and, inside of half an hour, faced each other looking for all the world like a couple of ruffianly Afghan charpadars, drovers, with their beards shaved off, their mustaches well trimmed, their heads crowned with immense fur caps that came down over their brows, their bodies in tattered shirts, indigo-dyed, and girt with twisted camel-hair ropes, their legs sheathed in loose muslin trousers, their feet protected from the stones of the road by sandals of thick leather kept in place by narrow thongs tied to the ankles, great iron spurs strapped to their naked