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

safely through Afghanistan. The weight that American carries with the Mohammedans is amazing. But it doesn’t carry with the Kirghiz, and beyond this point we don’t need him.
    “That’s the peak the Tajik described, right enough, and he gave it the same name Gordon called it. Using it as a guide, we can’t miss Yolgan. We head due west, bearing a little to the north of Mount Erlik Khan. We don’t need Gordon’s guidance from now on, and we won’t need him going back, because we’re returning by the way of Kashmir, and we’ll have a better safe-conduct even than he. Question now is, how are we going to get rid of him?”
    “That’s easy,” snapped Ormond; he was the harder-framed, the more decisive, of the two. “We’ll simply pick a quarrel with him and refuse to continue in his company. He’ll tell us to go to the devil, take his confounded Punjabi, and head back for Kabul — or maybe some other wilderness. He spends most of his time wandering around through countries that are taboo to most white men.”
    “Good enough!” approved Pembroke. “We don’t want to fight him. He’s too infernally quick with a gun. The Afghans call him ‘El Borak,’ the Swift. I had something of the sort in mind when I cooked up an excuse to halt here in the middle of the afternoon. I recognized that peak, you see. We’ll let himthink we’re going on to the Uzbeks alone, because, naturally, we don’t want him to know we’re going to Yolgan —”
    “What’s that?” snapped Ormond suddenly, his hand closing on his pistol butt.
    In that instant, when his eyes narrowed and his nostrils expanded, he looked almost like another man, as if suspicion disclosed his true — and sinister — nature.
    “Go on talking,” he muttered. “Somebody’s listening outside the tent.”
    Pembroke obeyed, and Ormond, noiselessly pushing back his camp chair, plunged suddenly out of the tent and fell on someone with a snarl of gratification. An instant later he reentered, dragging the Punjabi, Ahmed, with him. The slender Indian writhed vainly in the Englishman’s iron grip.
    “This rat was eavesdropping,” Ormond snarled.
    “Now he’ll spill everything to Gordon and there’ll be a fight, sure!” The prospect seemed to agitate Pembroke considerably. “What’ll we do now? What are you going to do?”
    Ormond laughed savagely. “I haven’t come this far to risk getting a bullet in my guts and losing everything. I’ve killed men for less than this.”
    Pembroke cried out an involuntary protest as Ormond’s hand dipped and the blue-gleaming gun came up. Ahmed screamed, and his cry was drowned in the roar of the shot.
    “Now we’ll
have
to kill Gordon!”
    Pembroke wiped his brow with a hand that shook a trifle. Outside rose a sudden mutter of Pashto as the Pathan servants crowded toward the tent.
    “He’s played into our hands!” rapped Ormond, shoving the still smoking gun back into his holster. With his booted toe he stirred the motionless body at his feet as casually as if it had been that of a snake. “He’s out on foot, with only a handful of cartridges. It’s just as well this turned out as it did.”
    “What do you mean?” Pembroke’s wits seemed momentarily muddled.
    “We’ll simply pack up and clear out. Let him try to follow us on foot, if he wants to. There are limits to the abilities of every man. Left in these mountains on foot, without food, blankets, or ammunition, I don’t think any white man will ever see Francis Xavier Gordon alive again.”

II

    When Gordon left the camp he did not look behind him. Any thought of treachery on the part of his companions was furthest from his mind. He had no reason to suppose that they were anything except what they had represented themselves to be — white men taking a long chance to find a comrade the unmapped solitudes had swallowed up.

    It was an hour or so after leaving the camp when, skirting the end of a grassy ridge, he sighted an antelope moving along