A Soldier of the Legion Part 25

"I think she is here! But thou canst not protect her from me. Try, and thou and every man with thee shall perish."

"Search our camp," said Max.

As he spoke, Sanda appeared at the door of the mean little tent hired for her at Touggourt. From the shelter of the ba.s.sourah, close by on the sand, Khadra peeped out. The search was made quickly and almost without words. If the power of France had not been behind the soldier and the girl whom Ben Raana now hated, he would have reverted--"enlightened" man as he was--to primitive methods. He would have killed the pair with his own hand, while the men of his _goum_ put the Arabs to death, and all could have been buried under the sand save the camels, which would have been led back to Djazerta. But France was mighty and far reaching, and he and his tribe would have to pay too high for such indulgence.

When he was sure that Oureda and Manoel Valdez were not concealed in the camp, with cold apologies and farewells he turned with his men and rode off toward the south--a band of shadows in the night. The visit had been like a dream, the desert dream that Sanda had had of Max, Max of Sanda. Yet dimly it seemed to both that these dreams had meant more than this. The girl let her "Soldier St. George" warm her small, icy hands, and comfort her with soothing words.

"You were _not_ treacherous," he said. "You did exactly right. You deserve happiness for helping to make that girl happy. And you'll have it! You must! You shall! I couldn't stand your not being happy."

"Already it's to-day," she half whispered, "to-day that we come to Touggourt. The greatest thing in my father's life happened there. I thought of that when I pa.s.sed through before, and wondered what would happen to me. Nothing happened. But--_what about to-day_?"

"May it be something very good," Max said steadily. But his heart was heavy, as in his hands her own grew warm.

CHAPTER XXIII

"WHERE THE STRANGE ROADS GO DOWN"

Shadows of evening flowed over the desert like blue water out of whose depths rose the golden crowns of the dunes. The caravan had still some miles of sand billows between them and Touggourt, when suddenly a faint thrill of sound, which might have been the waking dream of a tired brain, or a trick of wind, a sound scarcely louder than heart-throbs, grew definite and distinct: the distant beating of African drums, the shriek of raitas, and the sighing of ghesbahs. The Arabs on their camels came crowding round Max, who led the caravan, riding beside Sanda's mehari.

"Sidi," said their leader, "this music is not of earth, for Touggourt is too distant for us to hear aught from there. It is the devil. It comes from under the dunes. Such music we have heard in the haunted desert where the great caravan was buried beneath the sands, but here it is the first time, and it is a warning of evil. Something terrible is about to happen. What shall we do--stop here and pray, though the sunset prayer is past, or go on?"

"Go on, of course," ordered Max. "As for the music, it must be that the wind brings it from Touggourt."

"It is not possible, Sidi," the camel-man, husband of Khadra, persisted.

"Besides, there is no great feastday at this time, not even a wedding or a circ.u.mcision, or we should have heard before we started away that it was to be. Such playing, if from the hands of man, would mean some great event."

Even as he spoke the music grew louder and wilder. Max hurried the caravan on as fast as it could go among the sand billows, fearing that the Arabs' superst.i.tion might cause a stampede. With every stride of the camels' long, four-jointed legs, the music swelled; and at the crest of a higher dune than any they had climbed, Sanda, leaning out of her ba.s.sourah, gave a cry.

"A caravan--oh! but a huge caravan like an army," she exclaimed, "or like a troop of ghosts. What if--what if it should be Sir Knight just starting away?"

"I think it is he," Max answered heavily. "I think it must be Stanton getting off."

"We shall meet him. I can wish him good-bye and G.o.dspeed! Soldier" (this was the name she had given Max), "it does seem as if heaven must have timed our coming and his going for this moment."

"Or the devil," Max amended bitterly in his heart. But aloud he said nothing. He knew that if he had spoken Sanda would not have heard him then.

"Let's hurry on," she begged, "and meet him--and surprise him. He can't be angry. He must be glad for father's sake, if not for mine. Oh! come, Soldier, come, or I will go alone!"

The man whose duty it was to guide her camel had dropped behind, as had often happened before at her wish and Max's order, for the mehari was a well-trained and gentle beast, knowing by instinct the right thing to do. Now Sanda leaned far out and touched him on the neck. Squatting in the way of camels brought up among dunes, he slid down the side of a big golden billow, sending up a spray of sand as he descended. Below lay a valley, where the blue dusk poured in its tide; and marching through the azure flood a train of dark forms advanced rhythmically, as if moving to the music which they had outstripped. It was a long procession of men and camels bearing heavy loads, so long that the end of it had not yet come into sight behind the next sand billow; but at its head a man rode on a horse, alone, with no one at his side. Already it was too dark to see his face, but Max knew who it was. He _felt_ the man's ident.i.ty with an instinct as unerring as Sanda's.

Also he longed to hasten after her and catch up with the running camel, as he could easily do, for his horse, though more delicate and not as enduring, could go faster. But, though Sanda had cried "Come!" he held back. She had hardly known what she said. She did not want him to be with her when she met Stanton; and if he--Max--wished to be there, it was a morbid wish. Whether Stanton were kind or unkind to the girl, he, the outsider, would suffer more than he need let himself suffer, since he was not needed and would only be in the way. Riding slowly and keeping back the men of his own little caravan, who wished to dash forward now their superst.i.tious fears were put to flight, Max saw Stanton rein up his horse as the mehari, bearing a woman's ba.s.sourah, loped toward him; saw him stop in surprise, and then, no doubt recognizing the face framed by the curtains, jump off his horse and stride forward through the silky mesh of sand holding out his arms. The next instant he had the girl in them, was lifting her down without waiting for the camel to kneel, for she had sprung to him as if from the crest of a breaking wave; and Max bit back an oath as he had to see Ahmara's lover crush Sanda DeLisle against his breast.

It was only for an instant, perhaps, but for Max it was a red-hot eternity. He forgot his resolution to efface himself, and whipped his horse forward. By the time he had reached the two figures in the sand, however, the big, square-shouldered man in khaki and the slim girl in white had a little s.p.a.ce between them. Stanton had released Sanda from his arms and set her on her feet; but he held both the little white hands in his brown ones; and now that Max was near he could see a look on the square sunburnt face which might have won any woman, even if she had not been his in heart already. Max himself was thrilled by it. He realized as he had realized in Algiers, but a thousand times more keenly, the vital, compelling magnetism of the man.

No need for Sanda to wonder whether "Sir Knight" would be glad to see her! He was glad, brutally glad it seemed to Max, as the lion might be glad after long, lonely ways to chance upon his young and willing mate.

"Curse him! How dare he look at her like that, after Ahmara!" thought Max. His blood sang in his ears like the wicked voice of the raita following the caravan. All that was in him of primitive man yearned to dash between the two and s.n.a.t.c.h Sanda from Stanton. But the soldier in him, which discipline and modern conventions had made, held him back.

Sanda was Mademoiselle DeLisle, the daughter of his colonel. He who had been Max Doran was now n.o.body save Maxime St. George, a little corporal in the Foreign Legion, with hardly enough money left to buy cigarettes.

Ahmara had been an episode. Now the episode was over, and in all probability Sanda, like most women, would have forgiven it if she knew.

She was happy in Stanton's overmastering look. She did not feel it an insult, or dream that the devouring flame in the blue eyes was only a spurt of new fire in the ashes of a burnt-out pa.s.sion.

She must be mistaking it for love, and her heart must be shaken to ecstasy by the surprise and joy of the miracle. Max knew that if he rudely rode up to them in this, Sanda's great moment, nothing he could say or do would really part them, even if he were cad enough to speak of Ahmara, the dancer. Sanda would not believe, or else she would not care; and always, for the rest of her life, she would hate him. He pulled up his horse as he thought, and sat as though he were in chains. He was, according to his reckoning, out of earshot, but Stanton's deep baritone had the carrying power of a 'cello. Max heard it say in a tone to reach a woman's heart: "Child! You come to me like a white dove. G.o.d bless you! I needed you. I don't know whether I can let you go."

Slowly Max turned his horse's head, and still more slowly rode back to the caravan which he had halted fifty feet away. For an instant he hoped against hope that Sanda would hear the sound of his going, that she would look after him and call. But deep down in himself he knew that no girl in her place, feeling as she felt, would have heard a cannon-shot.

He explained to the astonished men that this was the great explorer, the Sidi who found new countries where no other white men had ever been, and the young Roumia lady had known him ever since she was a child. The Sidi was starting out on a dangerous expedition, and it was well that chance had brought them together, for now the daughter of the explorer's oldest friend could bid him good-bye. They must wait until the farewell had been given, then they would go on again.

The camel-men a.s.sented politely, without comment. But Max heard Khadra say to her husband, "It is the Sidi who loved Ahmara. One would think he had forgotten her now. Or is it that he tries this way to forget?"

Max wished angrily that his ears were less quick, and that he had not such a useless facility for picking up words out of every _patois_.

Half an hour pa.s.sed, and the blue shadows deepened to purple. It was night, and Touggourt miles away. Still the two were talking, and the darkness had closed around them like the curtains of a tent. They had halted not only the little caravan returning from the south, but the great caravan starting for the far southeast. Nothing was of importance to Stanton and Sanda except each other and themselves. Max hated Stanton, yet was fascinated by the thought of him: virile, magnetic, compelling; a man among men; greater than his fellows, as the great stars above, flaming into life, were brighter than their dim brothers.

The music, which still throbbed and screamed its notes of pa.s.sion in the desert, seemed to be beating in Max's brain. A horrible irritation possessed him like a devil. He could have yelled as a man might yell in the extremity of physical torture. If only that music would stop!

When he had almost reached the limit of endurance there came a soft padding of feet in the sand and a murmur of voices. Then he saw Stanton walking toward him with the girl. Sanda called to him timidly, yet with a quiver of excitement in her voice:

"Monsieur St. George, mon ami!"

Not "Soldier" now! That phase was over. Max got off his horse and walked to meet the pair.

"You know each other," Sanda said. "I introduced you last March in Algiers. And perhaps you met again here in Touggourt with my father, not many days ago. I've told Mr. Stanton all about you now, mon ami; he knows how good you have been. He knows how I--confided things to you I never told to anybody else. Do you remember, Monsieur St. George, my saying how, when I was small, I used to long to run away dressed like a boy, and go on a desert journey with Richard Stanton? Well, my wish has come true! Not about the boy's clothes, but--_I am going with him_! He has asked me to be his wife, and I have said 'yes.'"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MAD MUSIC

Max was struck dumb by the shock. He had expected nothing so devastating as this. What to do he knew not, yet something he must do. If he had not loved the girl, it would have been easier. There would have been no fear then that he might think of himself and not of her. Yet she had been put under his charge by Colonel DeLisle. He was responsible for her welfare and her safety. Ought he to const.i.tute himself her guardian and stand between her and this man? On the other hand, could he attempt playing out a farce of guardians.h.i.+p--he, almost a stranger, and a boy compared to Stanton, who had been, according to Sanda, informally her guardian when she was a little girl? Max stammered a few words, not knowing what he said, or whether he were speaking sense, but Stanton paid him the compliment of treating him like a reasonable man. Suddenly Max became conscious that the explorer was deliberately focussing upon him all the intense magnetism which had won adherents to the wildest schemes.

"I understand exactly what you are thinking about me," Stanton said.

"You must feel I am mad or a brute to want this child to go with me across the desert, to share the fate all Europe is prophesying."

"It's glory to share it," broke in Sanda, in a voice like a harp. "Do I care what happens to me if I can be with you?"

Stanton laughed a delightful laugh.

"She _is_ a child--an infatuated child! But shouldn't I be more--or less--than a man, if I could let such a stroke of luck pa.s.s by me? You see, she wants to go."

"_He_ knows I love you, and have loved you all my life," said Sanda. "I told him in Algiers when I was so miserable, thinking that I should never see you again, and that you didn't care."

"Of course I cared," Stanton contradicted her warmly; yet there was a difference in his tone. To Max's ears, it did not ring true. "Seeing a grown-up Sanda, when I'd always kept in my mind's eye a little girl, bowled me over. I made excuses to get away in a hurry, didn't I? It was the bravest thing I ever did. I knew I wasn't a marble statue. But it was another thing keeping my head in broad daylight on the terrace of a hotel, with a lot of dressed-up creatures coming and going, from what it is here in the desert at night, with that mad music playing me away into the unknown, and a girl like Sanda flas.h.i.+ng down like a falling star."