Free Caravans by James A. Michener Page B

smiled wanly and said, “I dare say Freddy and Karl will be damned unhappy about your decision.”
    “At the next reading I’ll ride home with Freddy and Karl,” she laughed, slipping into the coat which an Afghan servant held for her.
    Lady Margaret interrupted. “But at the next reading you and Mark are to be lovers.”
    Gretchen flashed her wittiest smile at her superior’s wife. “Lady Margaret, haven’t you noticed? At the end of a reading the actress is so irritated with her stage lover that she wishes to have no more to do with him. After all, in our play tonight Ingrid and Mark were lovers. But she made no move to go home with Mark. By the time the next reading’s finished, I’ll be fed to here with dear Mark.” With her hand she made a line across her eyebrows. “Tonight, he is my gallant champion, to keep me from the wolves.” To my surprise, she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
    “Bravo, Gretchen!” Lady Margaret applauded.
    “Looks as if you’re losing your secretary to the Yanks,” Sir Herbert huffed at the ambassador, as I led Gretchen to the jeep which Nur Muhammad had driven up.
    Not all the British hands could find quarters in the embassy grounds, ample though they were, and some lived in Kabul proper, in a spacious walled house west of the public square. It was quite the liveliest spot in town, filled with laughter, ponderous jokes which the British overseas so love, and a fairy-tale kind of make-believe which has enabled them to live in reasonable relaxation in almost any portion of the globe. I was often in this house and Iremember it now mostly as a center of things hearty. When I first came to know it and its occupants I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick? How did he halt her from making very witty jokes about nothing? Now, as I started to ride homeward with one of the prettiest English girls I had ever met, I was bothered by the same questions.
    But as we rode over the winding trail that led from the embassy to Kabul, and as we saw to our left the soaring mountains of the Hindu Kush, outlined in snowy moonlight, the trivial problems of courtship left us, and we were two strangers from alien lands traveling across one of the high plateaus of the world. Gretchen moved closer to me, and we held hands as our jeep approached the first houses of Kabul.
    Then we saw lights—actual flaming torches—as men hurried to and fro and a wagon with horses approached. There was a crowd in the road, and Nur Muhammad left the jeep to find out what had happened. In a moment he returned to report without inflection, “The wolves found an old man.”
    It must have ended quickly. Fifteen to twenty wolves, by local count, had struck the man and torn him to pieces within a few minutes. Now they were raging somewhere to the east and soldiers were out to shoot a few, after which the others would retreat. Nur Muhammad drove the jeep past the scene of mutilation and we reached the English dormitory.
    Pretty Gretchen said, “Will you come in?” and I said I would, for I knew that on the morning followinga reading no one would get to his office promptly, and in the English house there would be fun and good talk and kissing beneath the stairs. But when I started in, I saw Nur Muhammad sitting in the jeep and I said, “Nur, you can go home. I’ll walk across the park.” But he said, “You mustn’t They haven’t shot the wolves yet.” And from the east we heard sounds and could tell that something was rushing down the narrow streets, and I did not want to be in the English house that night.
    “I’ll take Nur Muhammad home,” I apologized. “He’s been working since dawn.”
    Almost as if relieved of a heavy burden Gretchen said, “I do think that’s best,” and I bounded, with improper haste I reflected later, into the jeep.
    “Let’s find the wolves,” I cried to Nur, and we spurred the jeep east of the American embassy and along