The Blood-Red Road to Petra
George L. Eaton
Hideous treachery fed embers of hate that smoldered still within ancient, evil ruins — treachery that threatened to blast Bill Barnes from the sky!
By
A HALF DOZEN little puffs of dust, that were running ostriches, fled before the slow-moving caravan. Heat rose from the hot desert sands like blasts from a fiery furnace. The only sounds were the rustle of the camels' feet and the dull, dead shifting of the sand as it crept slowly westward before the hot, dry wind.
As the sun plunged toward the sea of sand the breathless wind became a half gale. It whipped sand eddies into the cracked lips and chapped faces of the two men who led that long, thin line of pack camels. The Bedouins astride the baggage and riding camels drew their head cloths tighter across their noses, pulled the brow folds forward like visors, leaving only a slit from which their granular, burning eyes peered.
Their cartridge belts held their brightly colored cloaks tight at the waist to keep out the swirling sands. They wore their long rifles slung across their shoulders, and from their belts protruded the hilts of their ever-present daggers.
There was only the shifting of the sands, the padding of the camels' feet, the creaking saddles, the tinkle of bells to disturb the peace and quiet of dusk. No living thing moved across the desert wastes to disturb the solitude of that lone caravan.
Yet; something that was almost tangible, something like a tangible wave of terror crept the length of that long, thin line of camels, as the blood-red sun disappeared and the desert night plummeted down upon the caravan. The camels, seeming to sense that fear, nervously tossed their heads from left to right and bawled their uneasiness.
The two men in the lead glanced furtively at one another and licked their shriveled lips with tongues that were dry and swollen. They shifted in their saddles and glanced back at the rest of the caravan as the desert night swallowed them up. The long, thin line became a sinuous snake, the head or tail
In an hour the wind died and the sky became calm and black and full of stars. Ahead they could see Sand hills coated with tamarisk in the glow of the moon.
Beyond that first rim of sand hills the camels' feet padded on a floor of mud that was baked hard and was as flat as a lake. It extended to the first low hills of limestone that became great peaks against the sky in the distance.
“We shall find water within the Bab es Siq,” one of the leaders said to his companion, in Arabic. His words came in the dull, rasping voice of a man who is parched. His companion acknowledged the words with a guttural grunt.
He was thinking of that long, desperate trek across the burning sands of the Great Nefud that lay behind them. He was thinking that now after the finger of Eternity had flicked them a half hundred times they should be safe. He was thinking of the riches they would divide once when they had marketed their cargo, if they got it safely home. His cracked lips twisted into a snarl at that word.
In two hours they came to Es Siq, a cleft in the red sandstone hills. A Bedouin carried a blazing torch to lead the line of baggage and pack camels. Stupendous walls, in some places only twenty feet apart, and towering so high that in daytime the caravan would have looked like a line of ants from the top, hemmed them in on both sides.
Even the camels ceased their grumbling and became quiet, afraid to flaunt their smallness in this gigantic work of Nature. Now and again, a single star twinkled in the dungeon of blackness overhead. The sweet odor of oleander was heavy in the air. It floated down the gorge of the Wadi Musa like the scent of ancient caravans bearing perfumes, frankincense, and myrrh.
They crawled along the bed of the Wadi Musa with weary, aching bodies. The half-conscious riders brought their camels' heads up with a jerk as they stumbled. The only thing that kept the riders in their saddles was the thought 'that soon they would feel cool, delicious water trickling down their throats. Then they could sleep the sleep of the weary. A few more days would bring an end to their long journey. There would be pay and a bonus, and the soft laughter of women, and that nameless fear would be behind them.
Because they were half-asleep, they were unprepared when that first blast of gun fire crashed down the gorge and reverberated against the high sandstone walls.
Es Siq became a place of flao1ing guns, screaming animals and mad fanatics. Those two in the lead went off their camels with the first fusillade, their heads, literally, ripped from their bodies by a storm of machine-gun bullets.
The Bedouin riders, astride the camels, screamed for mercy as they were shot out of their saddles by the cloaked and turbaned madmen who poured out of the crannies and fissures that lined Es Siq.
The man who led them was tall and slender, with deep-set eyes that burned like twin fires. A black beard covered half his colorless face. His long, white silk robe streamed out behind him as he shouted orders. His brown head cloth, bound, with a scarlet-and-gold cord, stood out as torches blazed in the gorge. His face became as mad as the faces of his men as he slashed the clothing off the two leaders of the caravan with his dagger and searched it for treasure.
The thing that took place in Es Siq that night was horrible to behold. As each man fell from his camel an Arab dagger was slashed across his throat until his blood gushed out and his life departed. Their rifles and daggers and all their belongings were stripped from them.
A solid line of men stood at each end of the caravan, a line of grim, bearded men dressed in the robes of the nomad Bedouin. They were so placed to see that not one man of that caravan escaped to tell the tale.
When the pack and baggage camels were hobbled and quieted, Serj el Said, the leader of the bandits, shouted a command. Two lean, bronzed Europeans, wearing sun helmets, slacks, and automatics strapped around their waists, leaped to his side.
“Kill that dog who is trying to cut the ropes of the first pack!” he directed them.
One of them brought his automatic up. It barked three times. The Bedouin's body jerked as the bullets tore into him. His scream rose above the babble of his mates, then died as he plunged to the ground. The other Bedouins watched his body twitch convulsively. It was their custom that with victory came the right to plunder. They had become a pack of screaming, clawing zealots. Their hands sped toward the daggers in their belts.
Serj el Said watched them with an expression of contempt on his colorless face. Then he lashed them with words in Arabic.
“Are you men or dogs?” he asked them. “Do you snarl and claw and spit in your filthy greed while there was work yet to be done? We must lash those carrion to their camels and take them to the gorge of the Wadi es Siyagh. They must not be found here. Only Douglas, the infidel, will be found here by the British.”
The Bedouins, grumbling, began tying the dead camel riders to the backs of their camels. Serj el Said spoke to his two European lieutenants in precise English.
“Bring Douglas,” he said, sneering. “He will be what you call a red herring drawn across the trail of our countrymen.”
They disappeared into one of the fissures that lined the mighty gorge. When they came into view again they were half-leading and half dragging a man between them.
The man's face and head were bruised and discolored. His clothes were in tatters. Anyone could see that each step cost him agony beyond description. But his eyes were bright and unafraid. He carried his head high as he tried to laugh at the men on either side of him. There was an air of youth and courage and clean perfection about him.
“If I must die,” he said, “I'm glad I learned what dirty rats framed me. No lower form of life ever existed.”
