El Borak and Other Desert Adventures by Robert E. Howard Page A

and death, without control or repression. He was as wild and brute-savage in that moment as the wildest barbarian in that raw land.
    “Uzun Beg!” cried a score of voices, and men pointed at the scowling warrior. “He said that you had stolen away to betray us to the Kirghiz, and that we should attack before they had time to come upon us and surround us. We believed him until we saw you riding over the slope.”

    With a wordless fierce yell like the scream of a striking panther, Gordon hurled his horse like a typhoon on Uzun Beg, smiting with his scimitar. Uzun Beg catapulted from his saddle with his skull crushed, dead before he actually realized that he was menaced.
    El Borak wheeled on the others and they reined back from him, scrambling in terror.
    “Dogs! Jackals! Noseless apes! Forgotten of God!” He lashed them with words that burned like scorpions. “Sons of nameless curs! Did I not bid you keep hidden? Is my word wind — a leaf to be blown away by the breath of a dog like Uzun Beg? Now you have lapped up needless blood, and the whole countryside will be riding us down like jackals. Where is your loot? Where is the gold with which the wagons of the Kirghiz were laden?”
    “There was no gold,” muttered a tribesman, mopping blood from a sword cut.
    They flinched from the savage scorn and anger in Gordon’s baying laughter.
    “Dogs that nuzzle in the dung heaps of hell! I should leave you to die.”
    “Slay him!” mouthed a tribesman. “Shall we eat shame of an infidel? Slay him and let us go back whence we came. There is no loot in this naked land.”
    The proposal was not greeted with enthusiasm. Their rifles were all empty, some even discarded in the fury of sword strokes. They knew the rifle under El Borak’s knee was loaded and the pistol at his hip. Nor did any of them care to ride into the teeth of that reddened scimitar that swung like a live thing in his right hand.
    Gordon saw their indecision and mocked them. He did not argue or reason as another man might have done. And if he had, they would have killed him. He beat down opposition with curses, abuses, and threats that were convincing because he meant every word he spat at them. They submitted because they were a wolf pack, and he was the grimmest wolf of them all.
    Not one man in a thousand could have bearded them as he did and lived. But there was a driving elemental power about him that shook resolution and daunted anger — something of the fury of an unleashed torrent or a roaring wind that hammered down will power by sheer ferocity.
    “We will have no more of thee,” the boldest voiced the last spark of rebellion. “Go thy ways, and we will go ours.”
    Gordon barked a bitter laugh. “Thy ways lead to the fires of Jehannum!” he taunted bitterly. “Ye have spilled blood, and blood will be demanded in payment. Do you dream that those who have escaped will not flee to the nearest tribes and raise the countryside? You will have a thousand riders about your ears before dawn.”
    “Let us ride eastward,” one said nervously. “We will be out of this land of devils before the alarm is raised.”
    Again Gordon laughed and men shivered. “Fools! You cannot return. With the glasses I have seen a body of horsemen following our trail. Ye are caught in the fangs of the vise. Without me you cannot go onward; if you stand still or go back, none of you will see another sun set.”
    Panic followed instantly which was more difficult to fight down than rebellion.
    “Slay him!” howled one. “He has led us into a trap!”
    “Fools!” cried Orkhan Shah, who was one of the five Gordon had led to the ford. “It was not he who tricked you into charging the Kirghiz.
He
would have led us on to the loot he promised. He knows this land and we do not. If ye slay him now, ye slay the only man who may save us!”
    That spark caught instantly, and they clamored about Gordon.
    “The wisdom of the sahibs is thine! We be dogs who eat dirt! Save us from