Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

‘The Making of the Morning Star Robert noticed that the minstrel rode in a strange fashion with a longer stirrup than the Arabs and with his weight eased well forward. He picked his course by the stars —for they covered most of their way at night. Robert had a habit of watching the constellations and judged by the position of the Great Bear that they were working steadily east. The Milky Way—which Ab- dullah called the Path of the Wild Geese— was directly overhead as they dropped down into a country of-baked clay, where the tents of the desert tribes were no longer to be seen. Here whea the moon waned they crossed py swimming a sluggish, reed-bordered river that Abdullah called the Frat and Robert thought was the Euphrates. It was well for the knight that long years in the saddle had nardened him for such a journey. Abdullah seemed to be made of iron, and Will Buns- ley, ever on the lookout for traces of the raiders whom they followed, moaned and cursed with the weariness of the saddle and the plaguing of midges and huge ilies. Abdullah had bartered in a Kurd village another pony for the archer and Bunsley changed saddle from one to the other, com- plaining bitterly that it was a sin to ask one man to do the work of two nags. Yet the hope of coming up with the men from Khar kept him from falling behind. Once they passed around a hamlet of merchants on the river that had been sacked and burned by the raiders, and Robert waxed thought- ful at seeing that the riders from Khar took spoil from Moslem and Christian alike. But in those days upon the desert floor he gave little heed to aught but the necessity for keeping pace with the minstrel, who rode recklessly through the night, and while the two Nazarenes slept, utterly wearied in the mid-day hours, played softly upon his lute and sang in a guttural speech that Robert had never heard before. And this flight across a strange and bar- ren land did much to ease the bitterness that had been in Robert. They hunted where they could and avoided the villages, and daily covered stretches that the cru- sader would: not have thought possible. So the three rode from Palestine, one seeking the price of his life, another searching for a captive girl and the third intent on keeping a rendezvous with his master, whose name he would not reveal. Unexpectedly, late one afternoon, they 23 came to a muddy stream swift running be- tween low, sandy banks—the boundary line of Khar, Abdullah said; and, pointing to clusters of skin tents on the far bank where some hundred horses were turned loose to graze, he added— “The riders from Khar.” CHAPTER V THE REDBEARD {Tt WAS too late to go back out of sight, for watchers on the other bank had seen them, and their horses were too weary to escape pursuit. Hesitation would have been fatal, and Robert urged his horse into the river, to be followed promptly by the minsirel. Once they: had climbed out on the sand drifts they were surrounded by dark-skinned warriors in silvered helmets—lean, slow- moving men who swaggered in crimson and white kaftans and polished hauberks, who took in every detail of the newcomers’ steeds and trappings at a single glance and bared their teeth at Bunsley—who returned their scowls with interest. “Kankalis, these,’ whispered Abdullah meaningly, “hillmen, Turkomans and the best of the light cavalry of the master of Khar—our companions on the road to the Iron Gates, O Arslan. Be wily in talk, O Egyptian, and think before each word. Do not try to aid the redbeard if they seek him out for sport for their long knives,” Two mounted warriors who had been posted at the river pushed in between the strangers and the crowd, heedless of the in- sults hurled at them by those who were jostled by the ponies. Commanding Robert to follow, they conducted the three to a large tent where sat the leader of the band— an old man with a beak of a nose, his sword girdled high on his middle. He knelt on a silk carpet, casting knuckle-bones idly, and though he appeared scarcely to notice the strangers he looked them over carefully. Abdullah related the tale agreed upon, that he, a minstrel wandering from Khar, had fallen in with an ameer out of Cairo who journeyed to the court of the Throne of Gold, and with him one Nazarene, a cap- tive taken in the valley of the Orontes. Inalzig Khan, as the leader of the Kankalis was called, did not see fit to ask them to sit as yet, although they had dismounted. COnmicloool< EO