Hawk of the Hills | Page 2

and meat roasted; the next instant knives sinking home,
guns crashing, men falling in the smoke--Afridi men; his friends, struck
down about him, with their rifles laid aside, their knives in their
scabbards.
Only his steel-trap coordination had saved him--that instant, primitive
reaction to danger that is not dependent upon reason or any logical
thought process. Even before his conscious mind grasped what was
happening, Gordon was on his feet with both guns blazing. And then
there was no time for consecutive thinking, nothing but desperate
hand-to-hand-fighting, and flight on foot--a long run and a hard climb.
But for the thicket-choked mouth of a narrow gorge they would have
had him, in spite of everything.
Now, temporarily safe, he could pause and apply reasoning to the
problem of why Afdal Khan, chief of the Khoruk Orakzai, plotted thus
foully to slay the four chiefs of his neighbors, the Afridis of Kurram,
and their feringhi friend. But no motive presented itself. The massacre
seemed utterly wanton and reasonless. At the moment Gordon did not
greatly care. It was enough to know that his friends were dead, and to
know who had killed them.
Another tier of rock rose some yards behind him, broken by a narrow,
twisting cleft. Into this he moved. He did not expect to meet an enemy;
they would all be down there in the gorge, beating up the thickets for
him; but he carried the long knife in his hand, just in case.

It was purely an instinctive gesture, like the unsheathing of a panther's
claws. His dark face was like iron; his black eyes burned redly; as he
strode along the narrow defile he was more dangerous than any
wounded panther. An urge painful in its intensity beat at his brain like a
hammer that would not ease; revenge! revenge! revenge! All the depths
of his being responded to the reverberation. The thin veneer of
civilization had been swept away by a red tidal wave. Gordon had gone
back a million years into the red dawn of man's beginning; he was as
starkly primitive as the colossal stones that rose about him.
Ahead of him the defile twisted about a jutting shoulder to come, as he
knew, out upon a winding mountain path. That path would lead him out
of the country of his enemies, and he had no reason to expect to meet
any of them upon it. So it was a shocking surprise to him when he
rounded the granite shoulder and came face to face with a tall man who
lolled against a rock, with a pistol in his hand.
That pistol was leveled at the American's breast.
Gordon stood motionless, a dozen feet separating the two men. Beyond
the tall man stood a finely caparisoned Kabuli stallion, tied to a
tamarisk.
"Ali Bahadur!" muttered Gordon, the red flame in his black eyes.
"Aye!" Ali Bahadur was clad in Pathan elegance. His boots were
stitched with gilt thread, his turban was of rose-colored silk, and his
girdled khalat was gaudily striped. He was a handsome man, with an
aquiline face and dark, alert eyes, which just now were lighted with
cruel triumph. He laughed mockingly.
"I was not mistaken, El Borak. When you fled into the thicket-choked
mouth of the gorge, I did not follow you as the others did. They ran
headlong into the copse, on foot, bawling like bulls. Not I. I did not
think you would flee on down the gorge until my men cornered you. I
believed that as soon as you got out of their sight you would climb the
wall, though no man has ever climbed it before. I knew you would
climb out on this side, for not even Shaitan the Damned could scale

those sheer precipices on the other side of the gorge.
"So I galloped back up the valley to where, a mile north of the spot
where we camped, another gorge opens and runs westward. This path
leads up out of that gorge and crosses the ridge and here turns
southwesterly--as I knew you knew. My steed is swift! I knew this
point was the only one at which you could reach this trail, and when I
arrived, there were no boot prints in the dust to tell me you had reached
it and passed on ahead of me. Nay, hardly had I paused when I heard
stones rattling down the cliff, so I dismounted and awaited your coming!
For only through that cleft could you reach the path."
"You came alone," said Gordon, never taking his eyes from the Orakzai.
"You have more guts than I thought."
"I knew you had no guns," answered Ali Bahadur. "I saw you empty
them and throw them away and draw your knife as you fought your
way