Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/28

538 spare horse that had evidently been brought for the purpose. Then the entire company swung into their saddles, and galloped off into the dreary wastes that showed on the horizon.

So quietly and thoroughly had the entire matter been carried out, one might have thought them accustomed to finding and capturing a white man every day in the week.

Who these men were or what they intended doing with me I could not guess, nor did there seem to be any possible way of finding out. A filthy gag had been thrust into my mouth, and now the few shouted words I could catch were in an unknown tongue. Faint from hunger, my body aching from the blows and kicks I had received from the Arabs, I was hardly conscious of my surroundings. The sun had sunk, but still we pursued that weary journey.

For what seemed endless hours we rode across the great desert, a rough, uneven country of ravines, lumpy stretches and barren little hillocks.

Darkness had long fallen when we came to a douar of about fifty tents. A crowd of both sexes swarmed out to meet us, holding flaming torches and shouting. At the sight of a captive they redoubled their yells and assumed a threatening attitude. Several of the women had struck at me with sticks, and one young girl was edging through my guards with every intention of dashing her lighted torch in my face, when an old sheik strode from his tent and came forward.

One of my captors released my gag, and spoke a few unintelligible words to the Arab chieftain, before the latter flashed two narrow eyes to mine.

"Arbul-Ben-Hamid tells me he found you on the shores of the great sea," said the sheik in excellent French—a tongue I both write and speak. "Who are you, and how does it come you are in my country?"

Then before I could answer his eyes flashed with a wild anger.

are the one," he cried. "You are the one for whom they were searching—that dog of a Frenchman who leads the warriors of The Wolf against my people, burning our tents and seizing our flocks!"

An angry murmur arose from the white-robed figures around me.

"I am an American," I answered.

"But you speak French," insisted the sheik.

"Nevertheless I am still an American," I replied. "I am not the man you want, nor do I as much as know him. As to The Wolf, if you mean Manuel De Costa, he is an enemy of mine also. I was on my way to Dakar to find him when your warriors seized and brought me here."

A sneer showed on the thin face of the sheik. "Dakar?" he asked. "Why should you go there?"

"Because it is there I shall find Manuel De Costa. Because it is there I shall find that which he has stolen from me. I have done nothing to you or any of your people. Up until now I have never seen a desert douar. Release me, then, that I may help you capture this man who is our enemy, and punish him."

I felt this was the best thing I could possibly say. If I were able to convince these people of my own hatred for De Costa, it might not only mean freedom, but enlist their support against a common enemy as well. It was a slow, cunning smile that answered me, one that plainly told I had failed.

"Your lies are many, dog of an unbeliever. You well know that none of