Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/218

 Place of the Martyrs,” after a handful of Moslem braves who had once defended it, for over two years, against an army of savage, heathen Turkis.

“It is a stout place, easy to defend,” said the Arab, “and it is always in readiness. Often have I found there asylum and safety.”

“Good!”

And then they smiled and were silent again, and waited patiently, until, late in the afternoon, when a faint, silvery tinkle of camels' bells and a neighing of horses warned them that the caravan which they were expecting was approaching.

Not long afterwards it came into view, the camels jogging along Indian file, tied head to tail, looming up on the sky line like a grotesque scrawl of Arab hand writing. At the head of the caravan, followed by half-a-dozen mounted, armed tofanghees, irregular soldiers, rode the leader, a gigantic Baluchi. At the very end a shugduf litter was carried between two swaying, pacing dromedaries.

It was made of wicker and carved and painted deodar wood, elaborately ornamented with silk cord age and covered with a splendid Daghestan rug in heliotrope and rose. The curtains were open, giving a glimpse of the occupant, a young girl, fair haired, brown eyed; and by its side rode a man on a fiery Kabuli stallion that he found difficulty in controlling.

It may have been the fault of the saddle—an American McClellan, and not the huge, peaked affair to which Central Asian horses are used—and it was this saddle