El Borak and Other Desert Adventures Read Online Free PDF Page B

of it thundered on down the mountain.

II

    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 ofthe avalanche had quickly spent its force there, but Gordon still saw the slanting floor littered with boulders which had tumbled down from the higher levels. And suddenly he stopped short, his pistol snapping to a level.
    On the ground before him lay a man such as he had never seen in the Afghan mountains or elsewhere. He was young, but tall and strong, clad in short silk breeches, tunic and sandals, and girdled with a broad belt which supported a curved sword.
    His hair caught Gordon’s attention. Blue eyes, such as the youth had, were not uncommon in the hills; but his hair was yellow, bound about his temples with a band of red cloth, and falling in a square-cut mane nearly to his shoulders. He was clearly no Afghan. Gordon remembered tales he had heard of a tribe living in these mountains somewhere who were neither Afghans nor Muhammadans. Had he stumbled upon a member of that legendary race?
    The youth was vainly trying to draw his sword. He was pinned down by a boulder which had evidently caught him as he raced for the shelter of the cliff.
    “Slay me and be done with it, you Moslem dog!” he gritted in Pushtu.
    “I won’t harm you,” answered Gordon. “I’m no Moslem. Lie still. I’ll help you if I can. I have no quarrel with you.”
    The heavy stone lay across the youth’s leg in such a way that he could not extricate the member.
    “Is your leg broken?” Gordon asked.
    “I think not. But if you move the stone it will grind it to shreds.”
    Gordon saw that he spoke the truth. A depression on the under side of the stone had saved the youth’s limb, while imprisoning it. If he rolled the boulder either way, it would crush the member.
    “I’ll have to lift it straight up,” he grunted.
    “You can never do it,” said the youth despairingly. “Ptolemy himself could scarcely lift it, and you are not nearly so big as he.”
    Gordon did not pause to inquire who Ptolemy might be, nor to explain that strength is not altogether a matter of size alone. His own thews were like masses of knit steel wires.
    Yet he was not at all sure that he could lift that boulder, which, while not so large as many which had rolled down the gorge, was yet bulky enough to make the task look dubious. Straddling the prisoner’s body, he braced his legs wide, spread his arms and gripped the big stone. Putting all his corded sinews and his scientific knowledge of weight-lifting into his effort, he uncoiled his strength in a smooth, mighty expansion of