Besides we"ve gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast _a deux_--What"s a few meals more?"
There was truth in that--and truth in what she said about the danger of returning to the city. They were already lingering overlong and Billy jumped up and packed their supply of food in sudden haste. It was folly, of course, to dream of the entire trip to Thebes on camelback, but Girgeh was about fifty miles south, and it would be safer and almost as near to push on there or to the next town, wherever that was, and there get the train as to return to a.s.siout....
Oh, Billy, Billy! What specious argument! And why must every bright delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay, random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing but a prolonging of the lark into which the affair had miraculously been turned. Billy was Big Brother--the American Big Brother with whom one might go safely adventuring for a day or a year.... And suddenly Billy felt a warm gladness within him. Not even her escapade with the unspeakable Turk had been able to shake her dear faith in her own countrymen.... He was not man to her; he was American. Billy waved the flag loyally in his grateful thoughts.
Aloud he said, "There"s risk in trying to go back, of course. That"s what they"re expecting of us. But there will be uncertainty in going on----"
"I rather like it. It"s the certainty that frightens," she gave back eagerly. "I want the way that puts the greatest distance between me and that man.... I don"t care what else happens so he doesn"t find us."
It is utterly astonishing how unastonishing the most astonishing situations become at the slightest wont.
Nothing on the face of it could have been more preposterous to Billy B. Hill"s imagination than trotting along the banks of the Nile on a camel with a gossamer-haired girl trotting beside him, two lone strays in a dark-skinned land, and yet after a few hours of it, it was the most natural thing in the world!
It was all color and light and vivid, unforgettable impressions. It was all sparkle and gaiety and charm. They were two children in a world of enchantment. Nothing could have been more fantastic than that day.
Sometimes they rode low on paths between green _dhurra_ fields, sometimes they rode high along the Nile embankment, watching the blue waters alive with winged fleet, black buffaloes splashing in shallows under charge of little bronze babies of boys, watching all the scenes about them shift and change with magic mutability.
They lunched beside an old well, they dined by the river bank, and then as the velvet shadows deepened in the folds of the Arabian mountains across the river and the first stars p.r.i.c.ked through the lilac sky above them, they pressed on hurriedly into the southwest that glowed like molten gold behind the black bars of the palms....
And by and by when even the after-glow had ceased to incarnadine the far horizon and the path was too black and strange for them, they turned off across the fertile valley into the edging desert again and saw the new moon rise like an arrow of fire over the rim of the world and pour forth a golden flood that lightened the way yet farther south for their tired beasts.
Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely.
But Girgeh seemed to retreat farther and farther into the unknown south, and at last it was no fairy princess but only a very tired girl who slid stiffly down from the saddle, and pillowed a heavy head on Billy"s coat. And it was a very tired young man who lay beside her, listening to the deep breathing of the beasts and the faint breath that rose rhythmically beside him. Yet for a time he did not sleep. His heart was full of the awe and mystery of the moonlit world about him--and the awe and mystery of that little bit of the living world curled there so intimately in the dark....
With a reverent hand he drew the wraps he had purchased closer over her. The night was growing cold. Far off the jackals howled.... With his gun at hand he slept at last, and slept sound, though sand is the hardest mattress in the world and a camel"s back not the softest pillow....
CHAPTER XIX
THE PURSUIT
"But I shall die," said Arlee. "I shall simply die if I have to go another step upon that creature."
She said it cheerfully, but firmly, a sleepy, sunburned little nomad, sitting cross-legged in the sands, slowly plaiting her honey-colored hair. "Even this," she announced, indicating the slight gesture of braiding, "is agony."
"It"s the morning after," said Billy, testing his shoulder with wry grimaces. "It"s yesterday"s speed--and then this infernally cold night. No wonder we"re lame. Why, I have one universal crick wherever I used to have muscles. But let me call your attention to the fact that we are in the wilds of Egypt and that tangerines are hardly a lasting breakfast. Something has to be done."
"Not upon camels," said Arlee fixedly.
"They say it doesn"t hurt after an hour or so more."
"I shouldn"t live to find out."
"A walk," he suggested, "a slow, swaying, gently undulating walk----?"
"A long, lingering, agonizing death," the young lady translated.
She tossed the curly end of her braid over her shoulder and rose, with sounds of lamentation. "I ought to have known better than to sit down again when I was once up," she confided sadly.
"Just what," inquired her companion, "is your idea for the day? How do you expect to reach Girgeh? It can"t be very far away now----"
"Then we"ll walk--_we"ll_ walk," she emphasized, "and tow those ships of the desert after us. That will be bad enough, but better--_what"s that?_"
Like a top, for all his stiffness, Billy spun about to stare where her finger pointed. Over the crest of a hillock, far to the north--yes, something was hurrying their way.
"A man on horseback," said Arlee anxiously. "They can"t have traced us, can they, all this way----?"
"Of course not--but we"ll take no chances," returned Billy briskly; "no more talk of pedestrian tours now!" and promptly he helped the girl, no longer demurring, into the saddle, and thwacked her camel into arising, just dodging the long, yellow teeth that the resentful beast tried to fasten upon his shoulder.
They started at no soothing walk, but at a hurrying trot.
Worriedly, her delicate brows knitting, "It"s absurd, but," said Arlee, "they could have traced us, I suppose, from my telegraphing at that little native station for my trunks to be sent."
"And mine," said Billy. "And from my trying to get my letter of credit cashed."
"That Captain could have telegraphed to all the places down the line to know if we"d been seen----"
"Even if we hadn"t wired or tried to get money, our presence alone and our buying food would have aroused talk. I told everybody," the young man continued, "that I was an artist and you were my sister, and that pa.s.sed all right--but if Kerissen has been making inquiries----"
"I"m desperately glad we didn"t go back toward a.s.siout," she thrust in. "We"d have walked right into some trap of his!"
"Lord knows what we ought to have done! Lord knows what we ought to do now!"
"Just keep on going," she encouraged. "We can"t be very far from Girgeh, can we?"
"I don"t know," said Billy soberly. "It may be half a day or a whole day more--you remember how vague that old woman was last night...!"
Bitterly he added, "And I"m afraid you"ve got a chump of a guide."
"I"ve the best one in the world!" she flashed indignantly.
But her a.s.surance brought no solace to the young man"s troubled soul. He reflected that they could have taken a train the day before. To be sure, he had not money enough for tickets to Luxor, yet he had enough for two to Girgeh. But Arlee had shrunk from entering a train in her dishevelled costume, fearful of watching eyes and gossiping tongues, and had advised riding on to Girgeh, where shops and banks would help them, and he had yielded apparently to her desires, but in reality to his own secret self that clung to every joyful contraband moment of this magic time with her.
Sincerely he had thought their danger ended.... But those trailing hors.e.m.e.n--"_Brute!_" he raged dumbly at himself. "Dolt! Idiot!"
Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. It was an ordeal of a ride.
They had ridden on in silence, occasionally glancing back over their shoulders. At last Arlee said, quietly, "Do you see anything--over there--to the left?"
Billy had been seeing it for fifteen minutes.
"Another horseman, isn"t it?" he carelessly suggested.
"He seems to be riding the same way we are."
"Well, we"ve no monopoly of travel in this region."