SANDA SPEAKS

It was Max's policy, for Sanda's sake, never to give Stanton a pretext to send him away. He kept his temper under provocations almost intolerable; and now he obeyed the truculent summons.

"What do you want?" he asked stiffly when he had come near enough to speak in an ordinary tone.

"I'll tell you inside my tent," the explorer answered, stalking in first and leaving his guest to follow. Stanton was somewhat surprised to see Ahmara sitting on her feet, her ringed hands on her knees, her crowned head thrown back against the canvas wall; but on the whole, he was not sorry that she was there. She might be useful. He only smiled sarcastically when, at sight of her, Max stopped on the threshold.

"Don't be afraid to come in," Stanton laughed; "the lady won't mind."

"But I do," Max returned, with the curt politeness of tone which irritated Stanton. "I'll stand here if you please."

"All right. My orders won't take long to give. I want you to go to your friend's tent with a message from me."

"My friend's tent?" Max's eyes sent out a spark in the dull yellow light.

"My wife's tent, then, if you think the name's more appropriate. I believe she's likely to favour you as a messenger, and she hasn't gone to bed, for her tent's lit up. Tell her from me, I find it subversive of discipline in this caravan for a woman to set her will up against the leader and live apart from her husband. Entirely for that reason and not because I want anything to do with her, after the way I've been treated, I've made up my mind that she and I must live together like other married people. I wish the change to be made with the knowledge of the whole caravan. Go and tell her to come here; and then give my orders to Mahmoud and Zaid to bring anything over she may need."

If eyes could kill, Stanton would have dropped like a felled ox. But Max would not give him the satisfaction of a blow or even of a word. With a look of disgust such as he might have thrown at a wallowing drunkard in a gutter, St. George turned his back on the explorer and walked away. Before he could escape out of earshot, however, the Chief was bawling instructions to Ahmara.

"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 pass. 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 assured 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 DardaÏ, 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 nobody 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 passed 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 masses 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-AbbÉs, 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 DuprÉ 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 Æons 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-prick 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 entity 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?"

"It does, rather," Max admitted, still apologetically, because he could not bear to have Sanda suffer for him. "But it's a painless sort of an end, not a bad one, if it wasn't for—for——"

"For leaving me alone. I understand. And because you may have to—very soon, though I pray not—I shall tell you what I never would have told you except for this. Only, if you get well, you must promise not to speak of it to me—nor even to seem to remember; and truly to forget, if you can."

"I promise," Max said.

"It's this: I know you care for me, Max, and I care for you, too, dearly, dearly. All the love I had ready for Richard flowed away from him, like a river whose course had been changed in a night by a tremendous shock of earthquake. Gradually it turned toward you. You won it. You deserve it. I should be a wretch—I shouldn't be natural if I didn't love you! That's all I had to tell. I couldn't let you go without knowing. And if you do go, I shall follow you soon, because I couldn't live through a day more of my awful life without you."

"Now I know that I can't die!" Max's voice rang out. "If there was poison in my blood, it's killed with the joy of what you've said to me."

"Joy!" Sanda echoed. "There can be no joy for us in loving each other, only sorrow."

"There's joy in love itself," said Max. "Just in knowing."

"Though we're never to speak of it again?"

"Even though we're never to speak of it again."

So they came to Sanda's tent; and Stanton, sitting in his open doorway, saw them arrive together. With great strides he crossed the strip of desert between the two tents, and thrust his red face close to the blanched face of Max. His eyes spoke the ugly thing that was in his mind before his lips could utter it. But Sanda gave him no time for words that would be unforgivable.

"I had gone to the river," she said, with a hint of pride and command in her voice that Max had never heard from her. It forbade doubt and rang clear with courage. "Monsieur St. George was afraid for me, and came to bring me back. On the way he killed a viper that would have bitten me, and was bitten himself. He has cut out the flesh round the wound and cauterized it; and he will live, please God, with care and rest."

Taken aback by the challenging air of one who usually shrank from him, Stanton was silenced. Sanda's words and manner carried conviction; and even before she spoke he had failed in goading himself to believe evil. Drunk, he had for the moment lost all instincts of a gentleman; but, though somehow the impulse to insult Sanda was beaten down, the wish to punish her survived. Max's wound and the fever sure to follow, if he lived, gave Stanton a chance for revenge on both together, which appealed to the cruelty in him. Besides, it offered the brutal opening he wanted to show his authority over the sullenly mutinous men.

"Sorry, but St. George will have to do the best he can without rest," Stanton announced harshly. "We start at four-thirty. It is to be a surprise call."

"But we were to stop till to-morrow and refit!" Sanda protested in horror.

"I've changed my mind. We don't need to refit. In five hours we shall be on the march."

"No!" cried Sanda. "You want to kill my only friend, but you shall not. You know that rest is his one chance, and you'd take it away. I won't have it so. He stays here, and I stay with him."

"Stay and be damned," Stanton bawled.

The men sitting by the distant fire heard the angry roar, and some jumped to their feet, expecting an alarm.

"Stay and be damned, and may the vultures pick the flesh off your lover's bones, while the sheikh takes you to his harem. He's welcome to you," Stanton finished.

Before the words were out Max leaped at the Chief's throat. All the advantage of youth was his, against the other's bulk; but as he sprang Ahmara bounded on him from behind, winding her arms around his body and throwing on him all her weight. It made him stagger, and, snatching up the heavy campstool on which he had been sitting, Stanton struck Max with it on the head. Weakened already by the anguish in the torn nerves of his hand (most painful centre for a wound in all the body), Max fell like a log, and lay unconscious while Ahmara wriggled herself free.

"He asked for that, and now he's got it," said Stanton, panting. "Serve him right, and nobody will blame me if he's dead. But he isn't, no fear! Fellows like him belong to the leopard tribe, and have as many lives as a cat. Good girl, Ahmara, many thanks."

And without another glance toward Max, beside whom Sanda was on her knees, Stanton threw the campstool into the tent and yelled to the men by the fire. He called the names of two who were his special servants, but most of the band followed, knowing from the roar of rage and the one sharp cry in a woman's voice that something important had happened.

Stanton was glad when he saw the dark crowd troop toward him, though in his first flush of excitement he had not thought to summon every one.

"Come on, all of you!" he shouted. "Now halt! You see the man lying there—at my feet, where he belongs. He was my trusted lieutenant, but he took too much upon himself. I knocked him down for insubordination. He doesn't go farther with the caravan. And we start in five hours. Zaid and Mahmoud, put this carrion out of my sight. I've shown you all what happens when black or white men disobey my orders."

No one came forward. From her knees beside Max Sanda rose up slim and straight and stood facing the Arabs and negroes.

"Men," she cried to them, "I've done my best for you. I've defended you, when I could, from injustice. When you have been sick with fevers or with wounds I have nursed you. Now my father's friend, and my friend, who to-night has saved my life, lies wounded. If you leave him, you leave me, too, for I stay as his nurse. What do you decide?"

Stanton was on her in two strides. Seizing her arm he twisted it with a savage wrench and flung her tottering behind him. The pain forced a cry from the girl, and Ahmara laughed. That was more than the men could stand, for to them Sanda was always the White Angel, Ahmara the Black; and over there by the fire they had discussed a deputation to Stanton, announcing that, since starting, they had heard too much evil of the haunted Libyan desert to dare venture across its waterless wastes. The spirit of mutiny was in them, having smouldered and flashed up, smouldered and flamed again at Stanton's cruelty. This was too much! The spark was fired. A Senegalese whom Sanda had cured of a scorpion bite—a black giant to whom Max had lent his camel when Stanton would have left him in the desert—leaped like a tiger on the Chief. Steel flashed under the moon, and Stanton fell back without a groan, striking the hard sand and staining it red.

For an instant there was silence. Then burst forth a wild shout of hate and joy....