Little Lost Lambs From the Colliery Read online

  “In my face. Already there is talk in Aragh that they have been carried off by thy men. If that talk reaches to Teheran, there will be calamity. The Persian army will come with the wheeled guns. They will fire upon thy people, be­cause of my guests who are here. My face would be made black. Now”— Bevan thrust an accusing finger toward the Khan—“one of my friends is a lady. If that is known in Teheran, the gov­ernment will send a machine that flies with the army.”

  Ali Khan fingered his beard, a sign of uneasiness. It was an old custom of the Lurs to carry off men, but he knew and Bevan knew that no Lur had ever lifted hand against a foreign woman. Pres­ently he summoned a servant, who carried in a tray with two glasses of tea. Bevan seated himself in the chair brought out in his honor and sipped his tea while the Khan and his councilors discussed the situation in noisy whis­pers. Curtly he refused a suggestion that he take away the woman without the man.

  “Will the Sarkar,” inquired Ali Khan respectfully, “take the two guests away in his car?”

  In this way did the Lur avoid men­tioning the new American car upon which he had set his heart and which reposed at the moment in the courtyard of his harem, where his wives took turns at sitting in it, the curtains being discreetly drawn.

  “Yes, certainly,” Bevan agreed.

  “And will the Sarkar promise not to speak to the government about the—the entertainment of his guests at my house?”

  “Yes.”

  Ali Khan rose up, all smiles, and struck hands upon the bargain. His heart was expanded, he said, because the American Highness had come at last to claim his guests. And he led the way himself to the room in which the man was confined.

  Bevan’s first impression, in the dim lantern light, was of a Hercules in a sheepskin. The Lurs had stripped the man and had given him a ragged pair of breeches and a sheepskin in exchange.

  “I’m Bevan,” he explained, “of the Kangavar camp. Sorry the Lurs have been making life miserable for you. We can go down to my place now.”

  “God, to hear English again! Have you a cigarette on you? Thanks.” The Hercules inhaled deeply and grinned. He had the smooth muscles and tanned skin of one who exercises regularly in the sun, and the alert lined eyes of a city-dweller. A two days' growth of beard and a sleeveless sheepskin coat did not make him look less striking. “Say, what are these devils trying to do to us? When I bent the camera on them, they staged a mob scene.” He pointed at a motion picture camera. “I’m Hew Macalister—Hewland Macalister.”

  Several times in his years of exile Bevan had encountered tourists in distress, and he recognized the signs of overexcitement and fatigue. “Yes,” he assented, “they would be afraid of the eye in the camera. Shall we go down?”

  “Let’s go!” Macalister pounced on the camera and followed the explorer through the street to the gate where Ali Khan, flanked by his guards, awaited them. “For two days and two nights,” Macalister was repeating, “the bugs—hello, Shirley!”

  FROM the front seat of Bevan’s car a girl smiled at them, a girl in a tan polo coat who seemed to be amused at herself and the crowd that had escorted her from the women’s quarters.

  “Shirley Anderson,” Macalister’s deep voice went on, “this is the Samaritan who has lifted us out of stir.”

  “How did you do it?” she asked.

  And Bevan, who had not heard a low-cadenced woman’s voice speaking his own speech in years, stood tongue-tied. Dark eyes looked gravely into his.

  “Hold on," exclaimed the wearer of the sheepskin. “Where’s my bus and things? These natives took six hundred dollars from me, with my clothes and two bags. Shirley’s bag, too.”

  They had not, Bevan noticed, touched the girl’s clothes. “I know,” he said, “but we’d better go to my camp now and claim the things later.”

  “Why not here and now?” demanded Macalister. “That car cost me three thousand.”

  “These Lurs are as friendly and harmless as children three times out of four. But I'd rather argue with them from my camp. If we hang around here much longer, they’ll begin to re­member that we are really helpless in their hands, with two cars.”

  “Well, all right. But look here—it must be pretty close to sunrise now. Can’t we wait and take a few shots of this crowd lined up at the gate?” Mac­alister patted the camera. “I need a shot of them.”

  “No.”

  The big man thrust out his chin. “What are you afraid of?”

  “Bullets.”

  Then Ali Khan, who had been read­ing faces shrewdly, thrust himself for­ward. “O Sarkar, behold,” he ex­claimed, “this woman of your race is young and clean. Ay, she has a face like a moon and a form like a slender willow. This man will make trouble—take a knife from my men and slay him upon the road. Take the woman into thy house.” And he stared at Shirley with the admiration of a man who knew the degrees of feminine charm.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He admires you very much.”

  As Bevan started the motor and turned the car downhill, the Lur chief­tain came forward, laying his hand on his breast and forehead, while the torches waved behind him.

  “He says,” Bevan interpreted—“God grant you a safe journey.”

  “Oh,” she laughed, “it’s all impos­sible. I don’t feel that this is really me.”

  “What a picture!” muttered Macal­ister, looking back. When they crawled out of the gully and the red sun rose to meet them, he lay back on the cushions singing.

  But it was to Andy Bevan, driving against the dawn wind, that the girl at his side and the events of the night seemed fantastic.

  HE slept on his cot. Hassan had heated the water for her bath in the tin tub, and while she slept between clean sheets Bevan took all of her cloth­ing over to the camp women, who re­moved from it the insect life of the Lur village and washed what could best be washed. Then Bevan went over it painstakingly, removing the vagrant fleas that had parted company from the Kurdish women.

  He had not meant to glance at the slim brown arm lying across his blanket, or the throat that pressed so confidingly into his pillow. He had tiptoed out awkwardly after depositing the clothes, unaware that the girl’s eyes opened, to watch him interestedly.

  “Thanks so much,” she said to him gratefully at dinner that night, “for delousing me. What a keen dining hall!”

  “It’s Alexander’s,” responded Bevan, trying to put his cot out of his mind.

  For that evening, knowing how hun­gry the castaways would be, he had prepared a feast. Hassan had cooked the pilaf himself, and had placed melons, slabs of native bread and cheese on a clean tablecloth. They drank hot tea and lukewarm whisky from glasses—sitting in the moonlit courtyard of the excavated palace. Above the candle­light a giant bull’s head looked down at them from the summit of a marble col­umn. Discreetly hidden in the shadows, most of Bevan’s workmen watched the three foreigners dining.

  “The great Alexander’s?” asked Mac­alister. “The chap who sighed for more worlds to conquer?”

  “Yes.”

  Macalister nodded. He had clad him­self in clean trousers and shirt from Bevan’s belongings, and he had rolled back the sleeves of the shirt from his forearms. “So I heard in Bagdad. That’s why I looked in here. Isn’t this the place where Alexander marched with his host and met the queen of the Amazons, What’s-Her-Name? The story is, the queen heard what a man this great conqueror was, and she paid him a formal visit at the head of her wild women. Her intentions were strictly dishonorable. Isn’t that right, Bevan?”

  “Not quite. She really met Alexander up north of here and, after all, her intentions were honorable. She wanted a child."

  “Well, it’s near enough.” He grinned. “What do you think, Shirley?”

  “I don’t think, Hew, on a night like this.”

  “Where’s the old spirit, Shirley?” Macalister turned to Bevan. “It’s not like Shirley to be quiet when she’s ship­wrecked. She’s game, this girl is. I met her at
St. Moritz last winter sports. She put on a man's suit and went down the Cresta-run toboggan. Ran into her in Bagdad last week when she was stranded there with some globe-circlers. When I told her I was driving alone into Persia, she said 'Give me a lift, will you, mister?’ It earned the girl a ride.”

  Bevan tried to piece together the stac­cato words. Shirley seemed incredibly young to be knocking about the world. She belonged, then, to the play-children of the new generation who followed their whims from New York to Cali­fornia, and Switzerland—and Bagdad. Her own particular sphere would be the dance floor, the opera box, and a saddle in the hunting field.

  “WHAT brought you to Persia?” he asked Macalister.

  They both seemed surprised. “Why," the erstwhile captive explained, “I’m following the trail of Alexander the Great. Everywhere. The consul in Bagdad told me how you were digging up this palace of his at Kangavar. I’d like some pictures here.”

  “Haven’t you really heard,” Shirley asked, “of Hewland Macalister?”

  “No.”

  “I thought everyone had been to his talks or his movies. Haven’t you seen the newspaper serialization of his Veiled Women of Constantinople? He’s been everywhere, you know, and he has done some really priceless things. Like climbing the Jungfrau or crossing the Channel alone in an open boat. He's brought back tigers from Sumatra.”

  “My public,” Macalister explained, “expects it of me.”

  “They like you, Hew. We all do.”

  “They like to hear about adventures. You see why I want pictures of those bandits, the Lurs as you call them, Bevan. I’m particularly keen on this footsteps-of-Alexander journey. How are the chances on getting my film packs back with the car and other stuff?”

  Bevan considered. “The chances are rather good. After a day or so Ali Khan will be tired of looking at the car.”

  “I had a letter of credit for five thou­sand with my passport.”

  “Ali Khan knows that will be no use to him. You’ll never see your loose cash again, of course. What did Miss Ander­son have?”

  “Express checks,” Shirley said, “for about fourteen hundred dollars. I don’t remember just how much. They were in a pocket of my bag.”

  Before Shirley went to bed that night Bevan wrote a letter at his work-table. It required both time and cogitation, be­cause it was to a master thief and it had to be written in a dialect of Persian. When he had finished and reread it care­fully, he summoned Hassan, showed him the letter and sealed it.

  “Start now for Ali Khan’s village,” he instructed his overseer, “on a mule. There will be no harm, because this let­ter will protect thee. Do not come back without the car, and the round metal boxes of films, and all the papers of the gentleman and the lady.”

  Hassan touched the missive to his forehead and pinned it carefully in a pocket. Then he smiled knowingly.

  “Ai, Sarkar, I understand. For the return of the car and the valuable papers, these ones-without-wisdom will pay us thousands and thousands of tomans? Is it not true?”

  Slowly Bevan shook his head. “They will pay us nothing!”

  “But then, we will have nothing. By my beard and my father’s head, have we not risked our lives in Ali Khan’s house to set them free? Ali Khan, the dog, will keep something. Why must we have nothing?”

  “Perhaps, Hassan, they will give thee baksheesh for bringing back the car, with the other things I have named to thee.”

  “Baksheesh—that is almost nothing.” But the prospect of a tip relieved Hassan’s gloom. “It is our fate to have only a little good with much evil.”

  Shirley had been looking on while they talked, and now she seated herself on the table by the green dagger. “How in the world can you get back our things, Mr. Bevan, by writing a letter?”

  “It’s merely a question of compara­tive values—in Ali Khan’s mind, if you happen to know how his mind works. I wrote him that Macalister was so angry at being robbed that he would report the robbery and Persian cavalry would be sent to raid the village unless the car and belongings were returned by Hassan. Now a raid by cavalry means some Lurs shot and the village burned. Ali Khan will keep the loose money and send back the rest.”

  “And what promise did you make—if he did?”

  “Only to keep our mouths shut. That is, not to mention the kidnapping officially.”

  “And will he trust you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Q. E. D.,” said Shirley maliciously. “Haven’t you ever rubbed a magic lamp?” She nodded at the row of clay lamps on the work-table, all numbered. “It would be so nice to see a smoky djin come out of one.”

  Bevan did not sleep well that night, in the stark moonlight of the courtyard. The next morning he drove his Kurds at the digging. Macalister prowled around the ruins taking pictures, even changing back to his sheepskin and hillman breeches, so that Shirley could take some shots of him sitting among the natives. This done, the adventurer turned his attention to Bevan’s library, and the girl made friends with the small Kurdish children.

  Strange, Bevan thought, how Shirley seemed to be at home in the camp. The children, after the first moments of awe, tagged after her. Yet, except when she was with Macalister, she seldom spoke. She laughed with the tall adventurer; but when she was near Bevan she seemed to draw into herself, and away from him, as if she were listening to another voice which frightened her a little. . . . Bevan cursed his wakefulness, and forced himself to stay in the ex­cavations where he could see nothing of the other two. After she had gone what would he do? She would go, of course, as soon as Hassan came with the car, although Macalister still talked about trying to get pictures of Ali Khan and the Lurs.

  IT WAS the afternoon of the next day when Hassan appeared. He was at the wheel of a long brown car, driving slowly because on either hand rode an escort of mounted and armed Lurs, a dozen of them.

  “O Master,” he shouted. “I have ev­erything—papers and even a little money. But Ali Khan sent these riders to see that I did not steal this beautiful car.”

  The Lurs dismounted by the well, a hundred yards from the ruins, waiting to be fed and paid. Macalister whooped exultantly at finding most of his films still intact. He gave Hassan a lavish handful of the recovered money, and—discovering that Hassan understood a little English—promised him more if the Persian would help him take some shots of the Lurs. They hastened off to recharge the camera in the workroom, while the Kurds stopped digging to inspect the new car.

  It would only, Bevan told himself, be a few minutes before Shirley left. They would have time to reach Aragh before sunset. He returned to the excavation and began to rake over the loose dirt, sorting out the broken pottery mechan­ically. Minutes passed, and he had ar­ranged the fragments in a pile when he heard a step on the gravel behind him, and Shirley's voice.

  “Will you please stop work long enough to look at the battle. It's get­ting awfully real.”

  She explained as they went toward the opening trench. Macalister had promised both the camp Kurds and the Lur tribesmen baksheesh if they would pose by the car with weapons in their hands. Hassan had produced some rusty swords from the huts, and the Lurs had their long, curved knives. At first they had stood about awkwardly, afraid of the camera; but Macalister had got them to running about and slashing at each other's weapons, the Kurds against the Lurs. Now—

  “Gosh!” Shirley said fervently.

  :

  DUST swirled around the car and a din of shouting rose as suddenly as the baying of dogs. The tribesmen were in the saddle, circling through the dust, the steel of their knives flashing in the sun. And, as wolves leap at the hunting pack, the Kurds were assailing them with broadswords. A few paces away the women of the camp were screaming encouragement to their warriors.

  Although the Kurds dug at Kangavar for pay, they were fighters and they had an ancient feud with the Lurs. After one glance Bevan motioned Shirley back. “Stay here.”

  As he raced down the slope toward th
e car the shrill shouting of the women changed to wailing and they began to run toward the huts. One of the Kurds staggered back, with blood streaming from his arm. A rifle cracked.

  Macalister was standing clear of the dust, winding his camera steadily, his eyes alert. “God,” he said, seeing Bevan beside him, “what a show!”

  “Get back to the camp.”

  Jerking a key from the ring in his pocket, Bevan singled out Hassan, who was dancing excitedly and shouting, “Allah — Allah! Strike — slay!” He shook the Persian by the collar and thrust the key into his hand.

  “Hassan! Go to my room. Unlock the rifles and bring them to me.”

  “Ah, rifles!” The headman snatched the key and darted off, while Bevan called to his men to go back to the camp. The Lurs began shooting in deadly earnest. A Kurd dropped to his knees, bellowing, and his comrades sought shelter.

  Roused to the point of slaying, the dozen tribesmen could have rushed the camp on their horses, or dismounted to shoot down the fleeing men. But they were afire with eagerness—some tried to head off the Kurds with their knives, while others shot wild from the saddle. By the time they were all on the move toward the camp, Hassan had rushed up to Bevan, panting, holding out rifles and clips of cartridges.

  Bevan took a rifle, snapped in the clip, and brought the sights down on a tribesman who was bending over a wounded Kurd to gut him with a knife. The impact of the bullet sent the Lur rolling back. Then Bevan fired at a mounted man—missed once, and set the Lur reeling with a second shot.

  By now Hassan and his mates had managed to load the four remaining rifles, and their burst of fire, although it did no damage, drove the Lurs away at a gallop, their wounded snatched up haphazard as they rode. With yelps of exultation Hassan and his men emptied their guns after the tribesmen, and flocked down to the well to search, for loot.

  Bevan put down his rifle and looked at the adventurer silently. “You fool!” he said presently.