But the food isn't--good reason, too; there isn't any. Pockets
full of gems!" He slapped one hard pocket. "I'd swap the lot for a
proper pair of shoes and a skin o' that wine! Faith--that wine, now--"
The woman suddenly sat up, too, one hand on the hot gravel, the other
raised for silence.
"Hark!" she whispered. "Sh!"
"What now?" demanded the Master.
"Bells! Camel-bells!"
"_Nom d'un, nom!_" And the lieutenant drew his gun.
The five fugitives stiffened for another battle. They looked well to
their weapons. The Master's weariness and pain were forgotten as he
crawled on hands and knees up the side of the little wady. The sound
of distant camel-bells, a thin, far quiver of sound, had now reached
his ears and those of the other men, less sensitive than the woman's.
Over the edge of the wady he peered, across a _wa'ar_, or stony ground
covered with mummified scrub. Beyond, a blanched salt-plain gleamed
hoar-white in the on-coming dusk; and farther off, the dunes began
again.
Strangely enough, the Master laughed. He turned and beckoned,
silently. The others joined him.
"From the west!" he whispered. "This is no pursuit! It is a caravan
going to Jannati Shahr!"
Bohannan chuckled, and patted his revolver.
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