Free El Borak and Other Desert Adventures by Robert E. Howard

was a certitude in his level gaze, an economy of motion in his movements, that reflected kinship with the wilderness.
    “Pembroke and I were discussing that peak, Gordon,” said Ormond, indicating the mountain under discussion, which reared a snow cap in the clear afternoon sky beyond a range of blue hills, hazy with distance. “We were wondering if it had a name.”
    “Everything in these hills has a name,” Gordon answered. “Some of them don’t appear on the maps, though. That peak is called Mount Erlik Khan. Less than a dozen white men have seen it.”
    “Never heard of it,” was Pembroke’s comment. “If we weren’t in such a hurry to find poor old Reynolds, it might be fun having a closer look at it, what?”
    “If getting your belly ripped open can be called fun,” returned Gordon. “Erlik Khan’s in Black Kirghiz country.”
    “Kirghiz? Heathens and devil worshipers? Sacred city of Yolgan and all that rot.”
    “No rot about the devil worship,” Gordon returned. “We’re almost on the borders of their country now. This is a sort of no man’s land here, squabbled over by the Kirghiz and Moslem nomads from farther east. We’ve been lucky not to have met any of the former. They’re an isolated branch off the main stalk which centers about Issik-kul, and they hate white men like poison.
    “This is the closest point we approach their country. From now on, as we travel north, we’ll be swinging away from it. In another week, at most, we ought to be in the territory of the Uzbek tribe who you think captured your friend.”
    “I hope the old boy is still alive,” Pembroke sighed.
    “When you engaged me at Peshawar I told you I feared it was a futile quest,” said Gordon. “If that tribe did capture your friend, the chances are all against his being still alive. I’m just warning you, so you won’t be too disappointed if we don’t find him.”
    “We appreciate that, old man,” returned Ormond. “We knew no one but you could get us there with our heads still on our bally shoulders.”
    “We’re not there yet,” remarked Gordon cryptically, shifting his rifle under his arm. “I saw hangul sign before we went into camp, and I’m going to see if I can bag one. I may not be back before dark.”
    “Going afoot?” inquired Pembroke.
    “Yes; if I get one I’ll bring back a haunch for supper.”
    And with no further comment Gordon strode off down the rolling slope, while the other men stared silently after him.
    He seemed to melt rather than stride into the broad copse at the foot of theslope. The men turned, still unspeaking, and glanced at the servants going about their duties in the camp — four stolid Pathans and a slender Punjabi Moslem who was Gordon’s personal servant.
    The camp with its faded tents and tethered horses was the one spot of sentient life in a scene so vast and broodingly silent that it was almost daunting. To the south stretched an unbroken rampart of hills climbing up to snowy peaks. Far to the north rose another more broken range.
    Between those barriers lay a great expanse of rolling table-land, broken by solitary peaks and lesser hill ranges, and dotted thickly with copses of ash, birch, and larch. Now, in the beginning of the short summer, the slopes were covered with tall lush grass. But here no herds were watched by turbaned nomads, and that giant peak far to the southwest seemed somehow aware of that fact. It brooded like a somber sentinel of the unknown.
    “Come into my tent!”
    Pembroke turned away quickly, motioning Ormond to follow. Neither of them noticed the burning intensity with which the Punjabi Ahmed stared after them. In the tent, the men sitting facing each other across a small folding table, Pembroke took pencil and paper and began tracing a duplicate of the map he had scratched in the dirt.
    “‘Reynolds’ has served his purpose, and so has Gordon,” he said. “It was a big risk bringing him, but he was the only man who could get us