ets
full of gems!" He slapped one hard pocket. "I'd swap the lot for a
proper pair of shoes and a skin o' that wine! Faith--that wine, now--"

The woman suddenly sat up, too, one hand on the hot gravel, the other
raised for silence.

"Hark!" she whispered. "Sh!"

"What now?" demanded the Master.

"Bells! Camel-bells!"

"_Nom d'un, nom!_" And the lieutenant drew his gun.

The five fugitives stiffened for another battle. They looked well to
their weapons. The Master's weariness and pain were forgotten as he
crawled on hands and knees up the side of the little wady. The sound
of distant camel-bells, a thin, far quiver of sound, had now reached
his ears and those of the other men, less sensitive than the woman's.

Over the edge of the wady he peered, across a _wa'ar_, or stony ground
covered with mummified scrub. Beyond, a blanched salt-plain gleamed
hoar-white in the on-coming dusk; and farther off, the dunes began
again.

Strangely enough, the Master laughed. He turned and beckoned,
silently. The others joined him.

"From the west!" he whispered. "This is no pursuit! It is a caravan
going to Jannati Shahr!"

Bohannan chuckled, and patted his revolver.

"Faith, but Allah is being good to us!" he muttered. "Now, when it
comes to a fight--"

"Ten dromedaries--no, nine--" Leclair judged.

"And six camel-drivers," put in the woman, gun in hand. "A small
caravan!"

"Hold your fire, all!" commanded the Master. "They're headed right
across this wady. Wait till I give the word; then rush them! And--no
prisoners!"

CHAPTER L

"WHERE THERE IS NONE BUT ALLAH"

An hour after sundown, four Legionaries pushed westward, driving the
gaunt, mange-stained camels. In the sand near the wady lay buried
Leclair and all the camel-drivers, with the sand smoothed over them so
as to leave as little trace as possible.

Leclair had come to the death of all deaths he would have most
abominated, death by ruse at the hands of an Arab. Not all his long
experience with Arabs had prevented him from bending over a dead
camel-driver. The dead man had suddenly revived from his feigned death
and driven a _jambiyeh_ into the base of the lieutenant's throat. That
the lieutenant's orderly had instantly shattered the cameleer's skull
with a point-blank shot had not saved Leclair.

The four survivors, in addition to burying all the bodies, had buried
the copper bars the caravan had been freighting to Jannati Shahr.
They had saved