Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 16, 1921 — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

EYES saw that his pale, lean face had taken on an oddly cold pallor under the moon’s faint sheen. Yet the black beard of him rip- pled onto ‘his white tunic, and the motion of his threatening arm was vigorous. ‘“‘ Peace; let the stranger come forward,” a mellow, even voice called from the near- est tent, one larger than the others. The voice had in ‘it, with its mellowness, a hollow, echoing overtone that made Pierre start, for it was akin to the distant sound of the jackal in the silvered wastes without the camp. He went forwarl, and before that larger tent saw a man sitting, his face toward the east, the scant moonbeams falling softly upon it. He motioned Pierre to a seat on the rug beside him, and La Forge, after a few words .of greeting, sat down. Clap- ping his hands softly, the man ordered a black servant who appeared to serve the guest with sweetmeats, and soon, having eaten dates, honey-cakes, and drank thick, heavy coffee, La Forge sat smoking, at ease. The sheik placed a tiny pinch of some aromatic atop Pierre’s pipe’s glowing dottle, and he found it soothing; talk be- tween the two men was aslant, on subjects distant from the immediate ‘hour. Pierre found the Sheik Ben Yousef ready to listen to his phrases, explaining his mixed blood, the urge that came upon him at times to meet and touch hands with the desert-born. He wagged his great white beard as Pierre told of his talent and profession. Ben You- sef did not eat with Pierre. His face, wan, ivorylike, and his great sunken eyes, held the knife-thrower’s regard. The lean, eager fingers, picking at the folds of his gray-dun robe, seemed never still. Except that he sat erect, his age, his long silences, his wan face, the picking of the fingers at ‘his robe, suggested the actions of one touched with the spirit of the Great Change. ‘“ And this woman of yours, who stands up and lets you cast your great knives at her! Is she, then, so brave?” the old Arab asked. ‘“ As I have said, O father of many faith- fall?) = ‘“* Allah, what a woman!” His eager, bleached hands stroked his huge, flowing white beard. . OF THE DEAD. 59 All about them was a ring of silence. No one from the camp had approached since La Forge had been bidden to the seat of honor. The old man fell to musing, and La Forge watched him, head cupped on hand, elbow on the sand at the rug’s edge. The dromedaries grumbled; afar the jackal howled his dislike of life and his homage to death that gave him food. “He does well to howl,” the grim sheik said, as if to himself. Again the grave-robber gave tongue in . the wastes. “It is a strange. way to live; to appear before crowds, to cast death-blades, to be joined to a woman, yet not her mas- ter,” the old man_said suddenly. ‘“ What would you say, son, were I to show you a stranger way still?” ‘Say on,” Pierre answered, his body atingle with the sense of a coming adven- ture. He inhaled deeply of the aromatic- scented tobacco, that the sheik had re- newed. He found it soothing, yet it aroused vagrant thoughts. ‘T live by death, like the jackal.” He stroked his great beard softly and low he laughed, and again Pierre sensed in his laughter that which he had sensed in the mellowness of his voice when he first had heard his voice—kinship with the voice of the skulking animal. “Come,” Ben Yousef said suddenly, springing up with vigor surprising; “ you have come to me trustfully, have eaten with me. Come!” He strode off between the tents, toward the greatest of the sand hills. Pierre found it hard to keep pace with the old man. None of the camp-followers attempted to follow them; all continued to chat about their reeking fires. Within several of the tents faint lights gleamed and soft laughter seemed to float out onto the cool air. The old man sat bending over, drabbling his lean, ghastly hands into the sand’s tiniest waves at the foot of the great hill, before Pierre could catch him up. The little camp was distant a few hundred paces. As Pierre stepped to his side the sheik grunted with muscular stress and then in the tawny floor of the desertSyawned a COmiclbooks C@©