Adventure Magazine Cover — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Witch of Aleppo 6b Ah?” Michael offered his arm, and she took it, though sure of foot as a mountain goat. An imp of mischief danced in her dark eyes. “Why does the young warrior always seek your” She questioned gravely. “He never came for me but once and then he struck me.” From beneath lashes her eyes searched his face, and Michael did not answer because just then his ear caught the rasping of gravel displaced behind him. Lali’s lips hardened. “You are always with him, and your werds have turned him against me,” she accused hotly. : “Tt? Not so!” Michael glanced at her, puzzled, and, as he did so, the light was shut out. A heavy bear-skin fell upon his head, thrown from behind. A man standing with his toes over a sheer fall of some thousand feet does not move haphazard. Michael reached swiftly enough for his sword, but before his fingers touched the hilt he heard the steel blade slither out. Lali had drawn it from the leather sheath. = 3 He threw himself back, groping at the thick folds of the skin, and stumbled over his scabbard. A fiery wave passed up and down his spine as his feet slipped in the loose stones. Then powerful hands caught his wrists and ankles, and a rope was passed around his neck, binding the bear- skin upon his head. The assailants lifted him, and bound his hands behind his back, passing the ends of the rope through his belt in front. Steel pricked his shoulder, and he heard Lali’s contented laugh. “Farewell, O my companion of the road. You go the way of an offender, but down the cliff path, so do not think to run away.” The rope attached to his belt tugged him to one side; another cord, tied-to his bound wrists, swung him into the path—as his groping feet assured him. Muffled as he was, Michael did not think of shouting for aid, judging that if he did he would be thrust over the rock. Men’s voices reached him and feet crunched before and behind. The bear-skin, as the sun grew stronger, nearly smothered him, while he felt his way down the path. It was noon by the sun when the skin was pulled from his head. Michael was stand- ing in the valley under Sivas, looking up at the tiny spots that were the huts against the 43 glitter of the snow. Around him were the bare stalks of a vineyard, and within it he saw three Armenians taking money from a pock-marked merchant who kept glancing at him, doling out a silver coin after each glance, more slowly, until he stopped and the four fell to railing, until the Armenians finally left the merchant. As they passed Michael—one was the boy who had served as guide from the Black Sea—he called out— “The Cossacks will give more if you take me back.” ; But the boy turned his head away. Michael’s lips stiffened. “Where will they take me?” One of the Sivas men looked over his shoulder. “Bagdad—I don’t know.” Michael opened his lips to call again, then squared his shoulders: and turned to the two Turkomans who were leaning on their spears and looking at the line of laden mules standing near the vineyard— the caravan of the merchant who had bought Michael. They untied his wrists, led him to a mule and when he was on the animal’s back, bound his ankles together under its belly. A word of command was passed down the line of the caravan, saddles creaked, dogs barked, and voices rose in vituperation without which nothing is ever done in that bedlam of the world—Asia Minor. Michael took off his hat and bowed to-the distant height. “YT wish you well of the silver, Mistress Lali,’ he cried in English. “Twas a slender price for such a man as I—who wished you well. If God sends we meet again I shall weigh you with more care.” He struck the mule with the flat of his leather scabbard and moved on with the caravan, the guards finding amusement in this antic of the Frank. It occurred to him that Demid had been wise to keep him with the Cossacks. A WEEK later they threaded 4} through the last mud of the foot- - hills and dropped down below the snow line, having passed under the ruins of Zeitoon once the stronghold of the Ar- menians, now razed on its crags by order of Sidi Ahmad. . Some of the merchants of the caravan drew off here, to take the highway to Damascus, but Michael’s owner remained oO comicloooks (©