Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

~ BY CHRISTOPHER LANDON ! y F you look at a map of Egypt and run your finger south down it the River Nile, you come to a town called Asyut. South-west of this is a spot marked as the Kharga Oasis; below it, a large blank space. If it is an enlightened map, there may be one or By two dots there with names like Shebb, Safsaf, and Bir Mirr. -Just possibly, there may be a wavering dotted line that comes q ‘up out of Africa and cuts across through Kharga to Asyut. If it _is there it will be marked Darb el Arba’in, the Forty Day Road. _.. When the war was over and all the shooting and shouting a finished, it should have been easy for me to walk out of the -Demob Centre , shaking the sand from my shoes for ever, and go _ back in complete content to Fort William to sell the Company’ S lorries until the end of my days. But I couldn’t forget the desert. E - I was home—among the purple and grey, the mists and the _ shining water—but all the time the other thing, the contrast, was reaching out in my thoughts to draw me back. I used to dream fi it; the open horizon, the play of all the shades of colour, the - dawns, the cleanliness, and the timelessness. I knew that some day, somehow, I should have to go back. Chance came to help me within a year. It was luck that I read f the advertisement: a rival concern wanted urgently a sales _ representative in Cairo. [ didn’t wait to write. I telephoned there and then. By the time I had finished with their personnel ¢ 1G anager, I was an expert on desert transport and Egypt in s. pe general. About a third of what I said was true, and I managed _ to remember a sufficient number of the names of those in autho- pity to prove my points. To my delight and surprise, I was air- _ bound for Cairo within three weeks. It was quite different there, of course: uneasy—we were the servants now, not the masters— _ but I put up with that, and the routine, for the time off. ‘Then, - sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, I would set out in a _ demonstration truck to re- -explore all the old loneliness. : One day the General Manager sent for me. He said, “* Do you know the desert south-west of Kharga Oasis?” I didn’t—but I had always wanted to go there. With a quick salve to my * ° ‘a i : : ‘ ri —. 3 ~ - A - - , “ - i <_ ~~. i" “ Fem ee es, at Oe ate er or + ‘ Pare es “ . “ na rd * ; C iy as ” - = 4 ~~, * ah ig 7 = agg! ~~: > w) Me « ~* - : egret My on ( 4sy ns Win aay, ’ Es ; 'e}; ~ here (Bee a i ptt ee Pt) — Agitt, eee Site i oe SS a4 FL eee oo ea ay Y comiclbooks. Com . ae + “J % 4 The a eg EOE mn, > eae + a et od itt Ait ?; PY. i