Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/245

 and there was more than one, peasant and noble, merchant and green-turbaned, wide-stepping shareef, who threw leg across saddle and was off after Al Nakia's flying figure to help.

But they did not catch up with him, who was riding as he had never ridden before, his left hand twisted in the horse's braided mane after the rein had broken under the strain and the surcingle was beginning to split, sliding the huge saddle to a dangerous angle.

On!—past bazaar and mosque and scarlet-flaming garden, with the gray dust swirling up in spirals, and doorways and posterns echoing the click-click-clicketty-click of the horse's feet; straight through a kafila of shaggy, northern dromedaries dragging along their loads over the cobble-stoned pavement, scattering on the market-place a desert man's impromptu camp fire, frightening the tiny donkeys that tripped under their burdens of charcoal and fiery-colored vegetables and onyx-eyed Persian pussy cats, pirouetting dangerously amongst the two-wheeled country carts that cluttered the souk!

Off and away!—kicking loose his feet from his stirrups and letting the saddle drop to the ground from underneath him, as girth and surcingle burst completely, jerking the horse to one side so that its frantic feet did not strike the saddle's horn nor become en tangled in the leathers, and riding the animal bare-back, sitting tight and hard on the high-peaked withers.

The ancient Oriental blade was in his hand as he jumped from the horse and rushed thorough the open door of the mausoleum.