"Since that fellow is above taking a message, go you, and deliver it,"
roared Stanton, repeating in Arabic the orders flung at Max. "Her ladyship knows enough of your language to understand. Say to her, if she isn"t at my tent door in ten minutes I"ll fetch her. She won"t like that."
Max had not meant to go near Sanda, but fearing insult for her from the Arab woman, he changed his mind, and put himself between Ahmara and Sanda"s tent. As the tall figure in its full white robes came floating toward him in the moonlight, he blocked the way. But the dancer did not try to pa.s.s. She paused and whispered sharply: "Thinkest thou I want the girl to go to him? No, I"d kill her sooner. But he is watching. Let me only tell her to beware of him. If she is out of her tent when he searches, what can he do? And by to-morrow night I shall have had time to make him change his mind."
"You shan"t speak to Mrs. Stanton if I can help it," said Max. "Besides, I won"t trust you near her. You"re a she-devil and capable of anything."
"Speak to her at the door thyself, if thou art afraid my breath will wither thy frail flower," Ahmara sneered. "Tell her to escape quickly into the shadows of the oasis, for the master will not care to lose his dignity in hunting her. As for thee, thou canst run to guard her from harm, as thou hast done before when she wandered, and I will carry word to the Chief that the White Moon refuses to shine for him. In ten minutes he will set out to fetch her, according to his word; but when he finds her tent empty he will return to his own with Ahmara, I promise thee, to plan some way of punishment. Shelter thy flower from that also if thou canst, for it may not be to my interest to counsel thee then, as it is now."
Max turned from the dancer without replying, and she hovered near while he spoke at the door of Sanda"s tent, within which the light had now gone out.
"Mrs. Stanton!" he called in a low voice. "Mrs. Stanton!"
Sanda did not answer; and he called for the third time, raising his voice slightly, yet not enough for Stanton to hear at his distance.
Still all was silence inside the tent, though it was not five minutes since the light had been extinguished, and Sanda could hardly have fallen asleep. Could she have heard what he and Ahmara were saying? He wondered. It was just possible, for he had stepped close to the tent in barring the dancer away from it. If Sanda had heard hurrying footsteps and voices she might have peeped through the canvas flaps; and having made an aperture, it would have been easy to catch a few words of Ahmara"s excited whispers.
"Perhaps she took the hint and has gone," Max thought; and an instant later a.s.sured himself that she had done so, for the pegs at the back of the tent had been pulled out of the sand. The bird had flown, but Max feared that it might only be from one danger to another. In spite of the friendly reception given to the caravan at Darda, a young woman straying from camp into the oasis would not be safe for an instant if seen; and in the desert beyond Sanda might be terrified by jackals or hyenas. Bending down Max saw, among the larger tracks made by himself and the men who had helped him pitch the tent, small footprints in the sand: marks of little shoes which could have been worn by n.o.body but Sanda. The toes had pressed in deeply, while the heelprints were invisible after the first three or four. As soon as she was out of the tent, Sanda had started to run. She had gone away from the direction of the dying fire, in front of which the men of the caravan still squatted, and had taken the track that led toward the oasis. There was a narrow strip of desert to be crossed, and then a sudden descent over rocks, down to an _oued_ or river-bed, which gave water to the mud village high up on the other side. This was the way the oasis dwellers had taken after a visit of curiosity to the camp; and as the night was bright and not cold, some might still be lingering in the _oued_, bathing their feet in the little stream of running water among the smooth, round stones. Max followed the footprints, but lost them on the rocks, and would have pa.s.sed Sanda if a voice had not called him softly.
The girl had found a seat for herself in deep shadow on a small plateau between two jutting ma.s.ses of sandstone.
"I saw you," she said as he stopped. "I wondered if you would come and look for me."
"Weren"t you sure?" he asked. "When I found the tent-pegs up, I knew you"d gone; and I followed the footprints, because it"s not safe for you to be out in the night alone."
"Safer than in my tent, if he----" she began breathlessly, then checked herself in haste. She was silent for a minute, looking up at Max, who had come to a stand on the edge of her little platform. Then, for the first time since she had begged him to join the caravan instead of going back to Bel-Abbes, she broke down and cried bitterly.
"What am I to do, Soldier?" she sobbed. "You know--I never told you anything, but--you _know_ how it is with me?"
"I know," said Max.
"I"ve been always hoping I should die somehow, and--and that would make an end," the girl wept. "Other people have died since we have started: three strong men and a woman, one from a viper"s bite and the others with fever. But I can"t die! Soldier, you never _let_ me die!"
"I don"t mean to!" Max tried to force a ring of cheerfulness into his voice, though black despair filled his heart. "You"ve got to live for--your father."
"I hope I shall never see him again!" she cried sharply. "He"d know the instant he looked into my eyes that I was unhappy. I couldn"t bear it.
Oh, Soldier, if only I had let you take me back when you begged to, even as late as that morning--before Father Dupre came out from Touggourt.
But it makes things worse to think of that now--of what might have been!"
"Let"s think of what will be, when we get through to Egypt," Max encouraged her.
"I don"t want to get through. The rest of you, yes, but not I! Soldier, what am I to do if he tries to make--if he won"t let me go on living alone?"
"He _shall_ let you," said Max between his teeth.
"You mean that you--but that would be the worst thing of all, if you quarrelled with him about me. You"ve been so wonderful. Don"t you think I"ve seen?"
Max"s heart leaped. What had she seen? His love, or only the acts it prompted?
"Don"t be afraid, that"s all," he said. His voice shook a little. As her face leaned out of the shadow looking up to him, lily-pale under the moon, he feared her sweetness in the night, feared that it might break down such strength as he had and make him betray his secret. How he would hate himself afterward, if in a mad moment he blurted out his love for this poor child who so needed a faithful friend! In terror of himself he hurried on. "Better let me take you back now," he suggested almost harshly. "You can"t stay here all night."
"Why can"t I?"
"Because--it"s best not. I"ll walk with you as far as the camels, and then drop behind--not too far off to be at hand if--anything disturbs you. Did you hear all that woman said to me?"
"About his looking into my tent and then going back to his own--that she"d promise he _should_ go back? Yes, I listened before I ran away.
Those were the last words I waited for."
Max was glad she had not overheard the threat of future punishment.
"Well, then, your tent will be safe."
"Safe?" she echoed. "Safe from him--from my _hero_! What fools girls can be! But perhaps there was never one so foolish as I. It seems aeons since I was that person--that happy, silly person. Well! It doesn"t bear thinking of, much less talking about; and I never did talk before, did I? We"ll go back, since you say we must. But not to my tent. I"d rather sit by the fire all night, if the men have gone when we get there. After dawn I can rest, as we"re not to travel to-morrow."
She held out both hands to be helped up from her low seat, and Max fought down the impulse to crush the slender white creature against his breast. Slowly they walked back over the rocks and through the moon-white sand, until they could see not only the glow of the fire, but the smouldering remnants of palm-trunks. Dark, squatting figures were still silhouetted against the ruddy light, and Sanda paused to consider what she should do. She stopped Max also, with a hand on his arm.
"It"s a wonderful picture, or would be if one were happy!" she muttered; and then Max could feel some sudden new emotion thrill through her body. She started, or shivered, and the fingers lying lightly on his coat-sleeve tightened.
"What is it?" he asked, but got no answer. The girl was standing with slightly lifted face, her eyes closed, as if behind the shut lids she saw some vision.
"Sanda!" he breathed. It was the first time he had called her by that name, though always in his thoughts she was Sanda. "You"re frightening me!"
"Hush!" she said. "I"m remembering a dream; you and I in the desert together, and you saving me from some danger, I never found out what, because I woke up too soon. Just now it was as if a voice told me this was the place of the dream."
What caused Max to tear his eyes from the rapt, white face of the girl at that instant, and look at the sand, he did not know. But he seemed compelled to look. Something moved, close to Sanda"s feet; something thin and long and very flat, like a piece of rope pulled quickly toward her by an unseen hand. Max did not stop to wonder what it was. He swooped on it and seized the viper"s neck between his thumb and finger and snapped its spine before it had time to strike Sanda"s ankle with its poisoned fang. But not before it had time to strike him.
The keen pin-p.r.i.c.k caught him in the ball of the thumb. It did not hurt much, but Max knew it meant death if the poison found a vein; and he did not want to die and leave Sanda alone with Stanton. Flinging the dead viper off, he whipped the knife in his belt from its sheath, and with its sharp blade slit through the skin deep into the flesh. A slight giddiness mounted like the fumes from a stale wine-vat to his head as he cut down to the bone and hacked off a bleeding slice of his right hand, then cauterized the wound with the flame of a match; but he was hardly conscious of the pain in the desperate desire to save a life necessary to Sanda. It was of her he thought then, not of himself at all as an ent.i.ty wishing to live for its own pleasure or profit; and he was dimly conscious, as the blood spurted from his hand, of hoping that Sanda did not see. He would have told her not to look, but the need to act was too pressing to give time for words. Neither he nor she had uttered a sound since his dash for the viper had shaken her clinging fingers from his arm; and it was only when the poisoned flesh and the burnt match had been flung after the dead snake that Max could glance at the girl.
When he did turn his eyes to her, it was with scared apology. He was afraid he had made her faint if she had seen that sight; luckily, though, blood wasn"t quite so horrid by moonlight as by day.
"I"m sorry!" he stammered. But the words died on his lips. She was looking straight at him with a wonderful, transfiguring look. Many fleeting expressions he had seen on that face of his adoration, but never anything like this. He did not dare to think he could read it, and yet--yet----
"Have you given your life for me this time?" she asked, in a strange, deadly quiet tone.
"No, no. I shall be all right now I"ve got rid of the poison," he answered. "I"ll bind my hand up with this handkerchief----"
"I"ll bind it," she cut him short; and taking the handkerchief from him she tore it quickly into strips. Then with practised skill she bandaged the wound. "That must do till we get to my tent," she told him. "There I"ve lint and real bandages that I use for the men when they hurt themselves, and I"ll sponge your hand with disinfectant. But, my Soldier, my poor Soldier, how can I bear it if you leave me? You won"t, will you?"
"Not if I can possibly help it," said Max.
"How soon can we be sure that you"ve cut all the poison out?"
"In a few minutes, I think."
"And if you haven"t, it"s--death?"
"I can"t let myself die," Max exclaimed.
"It"s for my sake you care like that, I know!" Sanda said. "And _I_ can"t let you die--anyhow, without telling you something first. Does the poison, if you"ve got it in you, kill very quickly?"