Though the three dalul had seemed equally matched, one now led the other two by some ten yards. Reaching the gulley's floor, the leading rider halted his mount, swung him abruptly and shouted, "He has gone another way!"
As the truth forced itself on Ali, his first thought was that the rider of the leading dalul must be a very giant among the Druse.
Noted trackers, most Druse would have some trouble trailing a single camel on a sun-baked desert. But, incredible though it seemed, the leading pursuer had been tracking Ali while riding at full speed. He had raced on because he had thought exactly what Ali hoped he would—that Ali and Ben Akbar were already out of sight behind the next hill. But he had stopped when he no longer saw tracks.
While the two remaining riders of dalul swung unquestioningly in behind him, and the Druse mounted on baggage camels halted wherever they happened to be, the tracker trotted his dalul back up the hill. His eyes were fixed on the ground as he sought to pick up the trail he had lost.
With Ben Akbar behind him, Ali stole through the thicket toward the far end. He clutched the dagger tightly. He would mount and ride when he was clear of the thicket; nobody could ride a camel through such a place. But it was questionable as to how long he'd ride with such a tracker on his trail.
Ali was almost out of the thicket when a man who swung a wicked-looking scimitar seemed to rise from the earth and bar his path. Ali gazed upon the countenance of an old acquaintance.
The man was a Druse that Ali knew as The Jackal!
