LITMIR.BIZ

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no; I remembered the cunning look which had crept into his eyes when he had said that perhaps Ali-Khan would show him mercy. He was playing at being mad. There was no other way of saving his life, for in the hills madmen are considered especially beloved by Allah, and thus sacrosanct.

      “Blood has reddened the palms of my hands,” came the droning chant as Ebrahim Asif jumped up again from the ground and began again his whirling dance.

      “What has happened?” Ali-Khan whispered in my ear. “Has there been killing? Where? When?”

      Instead of replying, I pressed my rifle into his hands.

      “Shoot him!” I cried.

      He looked at me, utterly amazed.

      “Why should I shoot him?”

      Again the droning chant of Ebrahim rose, swelling and decreasing in turns, dying away in a thin, quavery tremolo, then bursting forth thick and palpable.

      “I give thanks to Allah the Just, the Withdrawer of the Veils of Hidden Things, the Raiser of the Flag of Beneficence! For He guided my footsteps! He led me into the plains. And there I took toll, red toll!” There came a shriek of mad laughter, then very softly he chanted: “Once a nightingale warbled in the villages of the Moustaffa-Khel, and now she is dead. The death-gongs are ringing in the city of the plains—”

      “Shoot him,” I shouted again to Ali-Khan, “or, by Allah, I myself will shoot him.” And I picked up the rifle.

      But he put his hand across its muzzle.

      “Why, why?” he asked. “He is blood-cousin to Bibi Halima. Also does it seem that reason has departed his mind. He is a madman, a man beloved by Allah. Shall I thus burden my soul with a double sin because of your bidding? Why should I shoot him?” he asked again.

      And then, before I found speech, the answer came, stark, crimson, in the hillman’s mad chant:

      “Bibi Halima was her name, and she mated with a rat of the cities, a rat of an Herati speaking Persian. Now she is dead. I drew my cheray, and I struck. The blade is red with the blood of my loved one; the death-gongs are ringing—”

      Then Ali-Khan understood.

      “Allah!” he shouted. And the long, lean Afghan knife leaped to his hand like a sentient being. “Allah!” he said again, and a deep rattle was in his throat.

      The grief in the man’s eyes was horrible to see. I put my hand on his arm.

      “She is not dead,” I said.

      “Is that the truth?” he asked; then, pitifully, as I did not reply, “we have spoken together with naked hearts before this. Tell me, is the tale true?”

      “The child will be born,” I said, quoting the English doctor’s words, “but Bibi Halima will assuredly die.”

      And then—and at the time it seemed to me that the great sorrow had snatched at the reins of his reason—Ali-Khan sheathed his knife, with a little dry metallic click of finality.

      “It is even as Allah wills,” he said, and he bowed his head. “Even as Allah wills!” he repeated. He turned toward the east, spread out his long, narrow hands, and continued with a low voice, speaking to himself, alone in the presence of God, as it were:

      “Against the blackness of the night, when it overtaketh me, I betake me for refuge to Allah, the lord of daybreak.”

      There came a long silence, the hillman again rolling on the ground, mouthing the dirt after the manner of jackals.

      Finally I spoke:

      “Kill him, my friend. Let us finish this business, so that we may return to the city.”

      “Kill him?” he asked, and there was in his voice that which resembled laughter. “Kill a madman, a man beloved by Allah the Just?” He walked over to Ebrahim Asif, touching him gently with the point of his shoe. “Kill a madman?” he repeated, and he smiled sweetly at the prostrate hillman, as a mother smiles at a prattling babe.

      “The man is not mad,” I interrupted roughly; “he is playing at being mad.”

      “No! no!” Ali-Khan said with an even voice as passionless as fate. “Assuredly the man is mad—mad by the Forty-seven True Saints! For who but a mad man would kill a woman? And so you, being my friend, will take this madman to the villages of the Moustaffa-Khel. See him safely home. For it is not good that harm should come to those whom Allah loves. Tell the head-man of the village, tell the priest, tell the elders, tell everybody, that there is no feud. Tell them that Ebrahim Asif can live out his life in peace. Also his sons, and the sons which the future will bring him. Safe they are in God’s keeping because of their father’s madness!”

      I drew him to one side, and whispered to him:

      “What is the meaning of this? What—what—”

      He interrupted me with a gesture, speaking close to my ear:

      “Do as I bid you for the sake of our friendship; for it is said that the mind of a friend is the well of trust, and the stope of confidence sinks therein and is no more seen.” He was silent for a moment, then he continued in yet lower voice: “Hold him safe against my claiming? Assuredly him and his sons—and—” then suddenly, “O Allah, send me a man-child!”

      And he strode down the hill into the purple dusk, while I, turning over his last words in my mind, said to myself that he was a soft man indeed; but that there is also the softness of forged steel, which bends to the strength of the sword-arm, and which kills on the rebound.

      So, obeying my friend’s command, I went to the villages of the Moustaffa-Khel. I delivered Ebrahim Asif safe into the hands of the jirgahs, giving them the message with which Ali-Khan had entrusted me.

      There was a little laughter, a little cutting banter hard to bear, and some talk of cowards, of city-bred Heratis turning the other cheek after the manner of the feringhees, of blind men wanting nothing but their eyes; but I kept my tongue safe between my teeth. For I remembered the softness of steel; I remembered Ali-Khan’s love for Bibi Halima; and thirdly I remembered that there is no love as deep as hate.

      Four days later I knocked at the door of Ali-Khan’s house, and there was the moaning of women, and the ringing of the death-gong.

      Ali-Khan was alone in his room, smoking opium.

      “A son has been born me, praise Allah!” was his greeting.

      “Praise Allah and the Prophet and the Prophet’s family, and peace and many blessings on them all!” I laid my left hand against his, palm to palm, and kissed him on both cheeks.

      There was no need to ask after Bibi Halima, for still from the inner rooms came the moaning of women and the ringing of the death-gong. But another question was in my heart, and he must have read it. For he turned to me, smiling gently, and said:

      “Heart speaks naked to heart, and the head answers for both. And I am an Herati and a soft man.”

      There was peace in his eyes, at which I wondered, and he continued:

      “Once I spoke to you of feud. I said that an unfinished feud is a useless thing, as useless as horns on a cat or flowers of air. For, if I kill my enemy, my enemy’s son, knowing my name and race, will kill me, and thus through the many generations. A life for a life, and yet again a life for a life. And where, then, is the balancing of lives? Where, then, is the profit to me and mine? So I have made peace between Ebrahim Asif and myself, cunningly, declaring him a madman, beloved by Allah, thus sacrosanct. And I shall sell my house here, and take my little son and go north to Bokhara. I shall sit under the shadow of Russia, and I shall prosper exceedingly; for I know Central Asia and the intrigues of Central Asia, and I shall sell my knowledge to the Russians. I shall be not without honor.”

      “Do you, then, love the bear of the North that you are willing to serve him?”

      “Love is of the mind and not of the heart,”—he

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