spread out in a wide
ragged semi-circle, trying to surround him again. He did not have
enough ammunition to stop them. He dared shoot only when fairly
certain of scoring a hit. He dared not make a break for the gorge behind
him. He would be riddled before he could reach it. It looked like trail's
end for him, and while Gordon had faced death too often to fear it
greatly, the thought that those papers would never reach their
destination filled him with black despair.
A bullet whining off his boulder from a new angle made him crouch
lower, seeking the marksman. He glimpsed a white turban, high up on
the slope, above the others. From that position the Turk could drop
bullets directly into Gordon's covert.
The American could not shift his position, because a dozen other rifles
nearer at hand were covering it; and he could not stay where he was.
One of those dropping slugs would find him sooner or later. But the
Ottoman decided that he saw a still better position, and risked a shift,
trusting to the long uphill range. He did not know Gordon as Hunyadi
knew him.
The Hungarian, further down the slope, yelled a fierce command, but
the Turk was already in motion, headed for another ledge, his garments
flapping about him. Gordon's bullet caught him in mid-stride. With a
wild cry he staggered, fell headlong and crashed against a poised
boulder. He was a heavy man, and the impact of his hurtling body
toppled the rock from its unstable base. It rolled down the slope,
dislodging others as it came. Dirt rattled in widening streams about it.
Men began recklessly to break cover. Gordon saw Hunyadi spring up
and run obliquely across the slope, out of the path of the sliding rocks.
The tall supple figure was unmistakable, even in Turkish garb. Gordon
fired and missed, as he always seemed to miss the man, and then there
was no time to fire again. The whole slope was in motion now,
thundering down in a bellowing, grinding torrent of stones and dirt and
boulders. The Turks were fleeing after Hunyadi, screaming: "Ya
Allah!"
Gordon sprang up and raced for the mouth of the gorge. He did not
look back. He heard above the roaring, the awful screams that marked
the end of men caught and crushed and ground to bloody shreds under
the rushing tons of shale and stone. He dropped his rifle. Every ounce
of extra burden counted now. A deafening roar was in his ears as he
gained the mouth of the gorge and flung himself about the beetling jut
of the cliff. He crouched there, flattened against the wall, and through
the gorge mouth roared a welter of dirt and rocks, boulders bouncing
and tumbling, rebounding thunderously from the sides and hurtling on
down the sloping pass. Yet, it was a only a trickle of the avalanche
which was diverted into the gorge. The main bulk of it thundered on
down the mountain.
II. The Rescue of Bardylis of Attalus
GORDON PULLED AWAY from the cliff that had sheltered him. He
stood knee deep in loose dirt and broken stones. A flying splinter of
stone had cut his face. The roar of the landslide was followed by an
unearthly silence. Looking back on to the plateau, he saw a vast litter of
broken earth, shale and rocks. Here and there an arm or a leg protruded,
bloody and twisted, to mark where a human victim had been caught by
the torrent. Of Hunyadi and the survivors there was no sign.
But Gordon was a fatalist where the satanic Hungarian was concerned.
He felt quite sure that Hunyadi had survived, and would be upon his
trail again as soon as he could collect his demoralized followers. It was
likely that he would recruit the natives of these hills to his service. The
man's power among the followers of Islam was little short of
marvelous.
So Gordon turned hurriedly down the gorge. Rifle, pack of supplies, all
were lost. He had only the garments on his body and the pistol at his
hip. Starvation in these barren mountains was a haunting threat, if he
escaped being butchered by the wild tribes which inhabited them. There
was about one chance in ten thousand of his ever getting out alive. But
he had known it was a desperate quest when he started, and long odds
had never balked Francis Xavier Gordon, once of El Paso, Texas, and
now for years soldier of fortune in the outlands of the world.
The gorge twisted and bent between tortuous walls. The split-off arm of
the avalanche had quickly spent its force there, but Gordon still saw the
slanting floor littered with boulders which had stumbled down
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