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"Allah made all men," he affirmed. "Mayhap the Franks and we be brothers. Have ye come by way of Mecca?" "Yea. And sorry brotherhood did the Mecca men offer us, O Sheik! So, too, the men of Beni Harb. Together, they slew five of us. But we be fighting-men, Bara Miyan. We took a great vengeance. All that tribe of Beni Harb we brushed with the wing of Azraël, save only the Great Apostate.
Let me subject myself " He waved her away, and making no answer, turned to the Olema. "Hast thou, O Bara Miyan," he asked in a steady voice, "a swordsman who can with one blow split a man from crown to jaw?" "Thou speakest to such a one, White Sheik!" "Take, then, a simitar of the keenest, and cut me down!"
Deliver him unto me, and thy people and mine shall be as brothers!" "First let us share the salt!" Speaking, the Master slid his hand into the same pocket that contained the Great Pearl Star, and took out a small bag of salt. This he opened, and held out. Bara Miyan likewise felt in a recess of his many-hued burnous. For a moment he hesitated as if about to bring out something.
Brodeur turned a knurled disk, and from one of the boxes on the grass a sudden, whining hum arose, like millions of angry hornets. "Fire!" repeated the Master. Six rifle-hammers fell with dull clicks. Nothing more. The Master smiled in mockery. "O Bara Miyan," said he, "let thy men reload and fire again! Perhaps the sweat of a great anxiety hath wet their powder!"
And the peace be unto thee, O Bara Miyan, master of the gold!" Tension as of a wire about to snap contracted the Master's nerves, strong as they were. Leclair leaned forward, his face pale, teeth set hard into his lip. "Yea, gold!" the Master repeated with hard-forced calm. "This is the gift we ask of thee, for the Myzab and the holy Black Stone and Kaukab el Durri the gift of gold!"
"Let us speak of the gifts, O Bara Miyan," answered the Master, while Leclair listened intently and all the Arabs gave close heed. "We have not many hours more to stay in this paradise of thine. We must be away to our own Feringistan, in our flying house. Let us speak of the gifts. But first, I would ask thee something." "Speak, in Allah's name, and it shall be answered thee!"
Raising the torch, the Olema thrust it into one of the embrasures. There the Master beheld a human skull. The empty eye-sockets, peering out at him, seemed to hold a malevolent malice. That the skull had been but freshly cleaned, was obvious. "Abd el Rahman?" asked the Master. "Yea, the Apostate," answered Bara Miyan. "At last, Allah hath delivered him to us of El Barr."
It was archaic, patriarchal, dramatic in the extreme. No incensed courts, massed audiences, tapestried walls, trumpeting heralds, genuflexions, could have conveyed half the sense of free, virile power that this old Bara Miyan gave as he stood there on the close turf, under the ardent sun, and with a wave of his slim hand gave the order: "The magic! To the testing of the magic!"
"We have come to bring ye wondrous gifts," the Master volunteered, wanting to strike while the iron was hot. "That is well," assented Bara Miyan. "But never before have the Franks come to this center of the Empty Abodes." "Even Allah had to say 'Be! before anything was!" This answer, pat from a favorite verse of the Koran, greatly pleased Bara Miyan. He smiled gravely, and nodded.
Thirsts were on his Celtic soul that longed for dalliance with the Orient; but he well knew that tone of voice, and sadly resigned himself to abstinence. "Keep your revolvers loose in the holsters, men," the Master added, as Bara Miyan gestured toward the slowly opening entrance of the citadel a massive door as all doors seemed in Jannati Shahr; a door of gold reinforced with huge teak beams.
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