HOBSON'S CHOICE
Sallie had made an effort to rise, but her knees had utterly failed her, and Reuben Yoxall had laid a heavy arm across her shoulders. The ceaseless uproar from within the camp had suddenly increased.
The Emir was standing up in his stirrups to listen. He sank into his saddle again, and issued some further orders, in Arabic. Most of his force on foot in the rear made off at a staggering run. The horses of his body-guard began to paw and curvet to free their feet as the loose reins tightened on their necks.
"I must be going now, my fine doctor," said the Emir most reluctantly, "but I'll leave you company enough for the few minutes you've left, although you're but a dumb dog!
"And you'll maybe think of me when you're swallowing your first mouthful. Till then you can mourn her-you-know-of."
The white horse leaped and plunged as though he had rowelled it cruelly, and then he was gone at a breakneck gallop, the white shadows that were his body-guard hard at his heels, with lances free.
The grave-diggers paused in their digging as he disappeared. A dozen or more tongues broke into eager talking, and a fiendish, squealing laugh out-shrilled them all. Sallie, with her face between her elbows, had thrust a finger into each ear, and her eyes were tightly closed.
She opened them a little, involuntarily, as the heavy arm that had been holding her down was taken away. Reuben Yoxall nudged her, and she looked round, with infinite caution.
A blue-light, like a corpse-candle in the distance, had suddenly flared up on the near ridge above the ravine that led to the camp. And in its ghastly glow an unforgettable picture was vaguely visible for a moment or two.
The last of the Emir's mounted men were streaming after him into the gorge, between whose open jaws lay three prone, trampled bodies, two very still, the other writhing round and round on the axis of a long lance.