The Veiled Raiders Read online

  None of them felt like talking. Rick raised his face to the stars that were dim in the growing dust. The Page 38

  harmattan had started to blow again. They were north of the equator, and the constellations were the familiar ones. The North Star, Polaris, was much lower than he was used to, but that was because they were somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees north of the equator. If they had time and equipment to make a simple sight, it would be easy to get their precise latitude.

  At Spindrift, Polaris would be at its usual angle of slightly more than 40 degrees above the horizon. But Orion, which was just setting from his vantage point, would be just rising overNew Jersey .

  Rick wondered when he would see his family and friends again, and then the vagrant thought crept in that he might not see them at all. He shook it off. “Let’s get going,” he said. “TheCape of Good Hope is due south, and we won’t reach it if we don’t hurry.”

  Scotty was so tired he didn’t recognize the wry joke at first. “Who’s going to theCape of Good Hope ?

  Oh, I get it.A funny.”

  “An unfunny funny,” Rick said.

  Tony chuckled. “Maybe we’re not as badly off as I thought we were if bum jokes can still crop up.

  Onward, brave desert bums. And watch the footing.”

  They had been going steadily downhill at a very gradual angle for more than a day. When the first pale light of coming day illumined the barren landscape, they saw that the descent was over. Behind them, the land rose in a slow but perceptible climb. Ahead was flatland. It stretched to the horizon, broken only occasionally by a lone baobab tree. Even the grass was stunted, a mere stubble of brown.

  Rick’s heart turned over. How could they cross that endless stretch? Except for the few trees, which were hopelessly inadequate as shielding from the sun, there was no place to hole up for theday. He turned and looked back the way they had come. He knew now why the walking had been easier for the past hour. The unbroken plain simply rose up the faint slope. The closest area of rock in which they might have found shelter was an hour behind them. In the condition they were in, retracing their steps was impossible.

  “If the horsemen show up, we’re caught,” Scotty said grimly. “We’d be visible for miles, even stretched out flat.”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter much any more,” Tony replied. “Come on. Let’s head for that nearest baobab before the sun comes up.”

  Walking wasn’t easy, even though it was on the level. The low, dead grass was in clumps, hard as cobblestones. Reasonable speed was possible only by choosing clumps on which to step. Their progress toward the tree was uneven, clearly showing the condition to which the journey had brought them.

  Finally they sank down under the tree, grateful for the chance to get off their aching feet.

  “How much water?”Tony asked.

  “One calabash.A little more than half full. There may be a quart left.”

  Tony’s cheeks were sunken, and his rapidly growing beard was black against the pallor that showed through the tan. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils contracted sharply against the growing light. There were new lines around his eyes and mouth.

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  The scientist was still alert enough to realize that Rick was studying his face, and he grinned. “Noticing a few changes, Rick? You should see your own face.”

  Scotty grinned, too. “Do I look as bad as you two?”

  Rick examined his pal’s face. “I don’t know how I look, but you two are candidates for the medical examiner. If you weren’t grinning, I wouldn’t be sure you were still alive.”

  Tony stared at the distant horizon. “You know, the Emir isn’t a bad sort, really. He gives us water, and food that’s decent by local standards.”

  “What are you driving at?” Rick asked sharply.

  “The Emir is the nearest potentate capable of giving help to the lonely traveler. I think it’s time we asked for aid and assistance.”

  The two boys looked at each other.

  “You mean we should give up if the horsemen come this way?” Scotty demanded.

  “More than that.I think we should signal for help.”

  Rick’s impulse was to argue, but he looked at the barren land and at the remaining calabash, and knew Tony was talking sense. If they continued on, they would surely run out of water and die within a few miles. Of course, by some miracle, they might hit water just over the horizon, but Rick knew such miracles seldom occurred. They had seen no sign of life, even of birds, except for the winged sentinels that were always present-the vultures, the kites, and the hawks that lazed in the sky so far overhead that they were almost invisible. Water, even water over the horizon, would have meant life of some kind.

  They hadn’t even seen a snake or a lizard. The mamba was the last sign of living things.

  “The Emir will probably kill us, anyway,” Scotty ventured.

  “That’s a possibility,” Tony agreed. “Against it, I can only offer certain death if we continue. Also, I see no sense in going on until we simply collapse. We’re still on our feet, but we won’t be in another few hours.”

  Rick spoke his mind. “I hate to give in.”

  “We’ve never given in before,” Scotty stated.

  “True. But have you ever been in a spot like this before? We don’t even know where we are. The nearest caravan track or village may be fifty miles away, or even more. Besides, I’m senior in this party, and I don’t fancy having your deaths on my conscience, even if I join you at the same moment.”

  “I was sure we’d hit civilization before this,” Rick said unhappily.

  Tony answered shortly, “We didn’t. So I propose we light a fire and try to make a smoke signal. If someone sees it and comes, there’s help, and water- even if it’s the Emir’s guards. If no one comes, we’re exactly where we are now . . . wherever that is.”

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  Rick drove his fist at the unyielding trunk of the baobab tree. It didn’t help, but barked knuckles told him to stop acting foolishly. He knew Tony was right. He yielded as gracefully as he could by asking, “How do we light a fire?”

  “By one of the most useful of the old technologies -flint and steel.The spike will provide the steel. I hope we can find something resembling flint.”

  “No problem,” Scotty said. “I’ve been saving a couple of nice quartz pebbles from a dry wash a ways back. Planned to suck on them, but didn’t.” Rick knew that was Scotty’s way of giving in, too.

  Dry tinder was readily available. The baobab tree was hollow, like most of its kind, and there was sawdust left by wood beetles in its base. Twigs and dried grass made a bed for the fire. Scotty managed to boost Rick high enough to get handfuls of the leaves with which to make smoke.

  There was a knack to making fire with flint and steel. They took turns striking the pebbles and the spike until their hands were sore and tempers frayed. Finally the sawdust glowed, and Tony lay flat and breathed on it until flame kindled. Rick held a bunch of grass in the tiny flame and it ignited. Within minutes a thin column of smoke mounted into the sky.

  Rick was the lightest of the three. Tony and Scotty joined forces to lift him high into the baobab. He climbed unsteadily until he could throw handfuls of leaves down along with dried twigs and branches.

  “Enough!” Tony called.“At least for now.”

  Rick climbed down and dropped the last few feet. Scotty steadied him. Tony fed the fire and the smoke column thickened and climbed higher.

  They kept the signal going for an hour before Tony let it die. “If there are no results, we can try again later. If necessary, we can light the whole tree on fire.”

  “Meanwhile,” Rick said wearily, “we rest.”

  “Exactly.”

  The three stretched out on the sleeping bags they still carried, and tried to sleep. Rick dozed, and dreamed of a throat so dry that it hurt like a scraped knee.

  Lighting the baobab tree on fire wasn’t necessary. Beforenoon , horsemen swept down on
them, and at their head was an old friend-or enemy: Elijah.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Highway North

  The emir was amused. He sat on his cushions and sucked noisily at a water pipe and contemplated the Page 41

  three before him. They were in chains, with ancient handcuffs and leg irons grinding rustily with each move.

  Rick was half-dead with fatigue, but he kept his eyes on the Emir. Sometime within the next few minutes, when the Emir: tired of playing with them, their fate would be announced.

  The boy knew that the Emir was enjoying keeping them in suspense. From the moment that Elijah and the guards had hurled them to the floor in front of the local potentate, the Emir had grinned constantly between sucks at his hubble-bubble pipe.

  Ricksquirmed a little to ease his sore thighs. The distance they had traveled so laboriously had been covered between the time of their capture and nightfall, with the three of them seated on horses behind the saddles, holding on to the riders to keep from being bounced off. The wiry desert horses had moved at a steady canter not calculated for a bareback passenger’s comfort.

  The Emir waved his hand and one of his women attendants carried the pipe away. The Emir’s eyes went from one of the miserable trio to another.

  “I once saw a herd of baboons,” he said. “They had been chased by hunters for four days without water or food. They had to be killed, because all of them were afflicted with a disease that reduced them to skin and bones. When I saw them, they looked better than you do now.” Rick, Scotty, and Tony remained silent

  “It would perhaps be merciful to put you out of your misery,” the Emir mused. “It would also be easier for me. You realize that you have posed me with a difficult problem?”

  “You’ve posed us with one!” Rick snapped.

  “True. I may allow one problem to cancel out the other-if I can decide what is to be done with you.”

  “Why not settle everything by giving us our jeep and turning us loose?” Tony asked acidly.

  The Emir turned his palms up and shrugged. “The answer to that has two forks. One is that I am not yet satisfied that the stain on my honor is erased. The other is that you would cause some difficulty for me with reports that you were kidnapped. It is not a very great difficulty, to be sure, becauseNigeria ,Niger , andChad probably could not agree on which has jurisdiction here. But it could be somewhat embarrassing for me. No, I cannot agree to let you go.”

  “So you do plan to hold us as slaves from now on,” Scotty said coldly.

  “A reasonable assumption.But not here.You have shown more determination than I had expected. If I allow you to continue as before, you might try to escape again. Who knows? You might even succeed.”

  “With chains on?”Rick demanded.

  The Emir smiled. “The chains are only a temporary solution. You must earn your food and water by working, and who can work while chained? Even leg irons would be a handicap. No, the chains must go.

  A less tangible kind of chain is needed, but one that would be as effective as a ton of iron on each leg. I have that kind of chain. Tomorrow you will feel it.”

  The Emir gestured, and guards herded the three from the great man’s presence, down the stairs, and into Page 42

  a cell next to the one in which they had been imprisoned earlier. The door slammed shut and the bolt was rammed home.

  “Welcome to Casa Calabash,” Scotty said wryly.

  Rick managed a grin.“Nothing like a familiar hotel after a long trip. But I thought I’d never get down those stairs in one piece with all this iron on.”

  “I wasn’t sure I’d make it, either,” Tony agreed. “At least they put our sleeping bags in with us.”

  They managed to unroll the bags and get inside, leg irons and all. Then, as they lay in the darkness, Rick asked the question that had been on his mind. “What do we do now?”

  “We don’t give up,” Scotty assured him fiercely.

  “No,” Tony echoed. “We can’t give up. But for the present we can only wait and see what the Emir has in mind. Frankly, I’m taking the first deep breath since we were captured, or recaptured, to be accurate.

  There was an excellent chance the Emir might decide escaping prisoners were troublesome and simply do away with us.”

  “He could have,” Rick agreed. “But he thought it was funny.”

  Scotty snorted. “Sure. After we built a smoke to let his troops know where we were. If we had managed to escape, he wouldn’t be laughing.”

  “I wonder how far we were from safety,” Rick mused.

  “Maybe five miles, maybe fifty, or even more,” Tony replied. “It certainly didn’t take them long to carry us back over ground it took days of hard travel to cover.”

  Rick thought they had probably wandered from a straight line, zigzagging back and forth, while the horsemen had followed a beeline to the Emir’s stronghold. He didn’t voice the thought. He was tired, and sick with the sense of defeat. He felt low enough to crawl under a peanut vine without disturbing it. What could they do now? If their failure had proved anything, it was the impossibility of walking to civilization and safety. Maybe, by some wild chance or careful plan, they could recover the jeep. First, though, they had to find it. Scotty had failed to spot it, or any place it might be hidden, when he reconnoitered the place before their breakout. Still, it must be somewhere . . . and on that thought, Rick fell asleep.

  Had he been even slightly less exhausted, the rattle of chains every time he moved, and the discomfort of hard links under him when he turned over would have kept him from sleeping, but it seemed he had hardly closed his eyes before the guard was shaking him.

  He opened his eyes and sat up with a groan. Elijah was in the doorway, obviously impatient.

  “Up, quickly! The Emir is waiting.”

  “Let him wait,” Scotty retorted.

  Elijah shook his head. “If I had my way I would teach you better manners with a dog whip. But you must be in shape to travel. So cease your stupid remarks and get up. Collect your sleeping robes and come with me.”

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  At the pump, Elijah let them pause long enough to drink deeply and splash water on their faces. Rick savored the water, letting it wash some of the rank taste of exhaustion and defeat from his mouth.

  Before the front door, horsemen were assembled, several holding pack horses. There were five empty saddles. The Spindrifters soon found that three were for them. Handicapped by chains, they needed help to mount. It was supplied by the guards, who lashed their feet to the stirrups after removing the leg irons.

  Rick counted fifteen armed men in the group. “Looks as though the Emir wants us to be well guarded,”

  he said.

  “Maybe the Emir’s the one who needs the heavy guard,” Scotty said. Then he pointed to a horse that was obviously superior to the rest, a genuine Arab stallion with the long legs and short back that marked the breed. “That must be his mount.”

  Scotty was right. In a few moments the Emir emerged, looking like the desert prince in an old movie. He swung into the Arabian stallion’s saddle with the ease of a skilled rider, then handled the spirited horse with the ease of a ten-goal polo player as he moved alongside the Spindrifters.

  “Today we ride,” he stated. “It has been some time since I inspected the northernmost part of my kingdom. There is a small village there, at an oasis not marked on any map. You will work there.

  Between you andNigeria will be only one place where water can be obtained, and that is right here.

  Now, are you prepared to bargain?”

  “For what?”Tony asked suspiciously.

  “For some comfort.It is a hard trip, three days in all. The irons will leave no skin on your wrists if left on.

  Give me your promise not to try to escape, and I will have them removed.”

  “Not to escape on the trip, or never to escape?” Rick demanded.

  “On the trip.A promise never to escape would be too big a burden.”

>   Scotty asked, “How did you know we would keep a promise?”

  The Emir smiled. “I am a judge of men and of horses. Besides, your friend’s question confirmed my judgment. Would anyone who puts no value on a promise ask about its duration?”

  “We accept,” Tony stated. “If you remove the irons, we will not attempt escape.”

  The Emir looked at Rick and Scotty. “He speaks for all?”

  The boys nodded.

  “Very well, so be it.” He spoke rapidly to Red Turban, who unlocked the unwieldy handcuffs and tossed them to a waiting servant.

  “As a matter of curiosity,” Tony inquired, “how old are those irons?”

  The Emir shrugged. “Who knows? I have them from my father, who had them from my grandfather.

  They were used to hold slaves during the trip toLagos where we sold them to your Yankee captains. At Page 44

  least my grandfather did. Now, let us go. You will follow the leader. My men and I will ride behind.” He grinned. “That is so I can watch you keeping your promise.”

  Rick almost grinned back. The Emir trusted them- but only up to a point.

  Red Turban took the lead, and the Spindrifters wheeled their mounts to follow. The Emir, Elijah, and the armed guard followed.

  Rick’s horse was a docile bay with an easy gait, for which he thanked his lucky stars. He was still sore from yesterday’s ride, and he knew the trip would not be an easy one, even with such a comfortable piece of horseflesh under him. He saw that Scotty and Tony had also been lucky, and decided the three had deliberately been given mounts that could be overtaken by the more spirited animals of the guards-if they were so foolish as to try another escape.

  CHAPTER XII

  Dawn Raid

  By noontime the party had left the savanna far behind and were in the desert itself. There were no sand dunes to make this part of theSahara picturesque, only endless plains of broken rock-sheets of sandy stone scoured clean by the desert winds. The harmattan still blew high overhead, following some great current of wind in the upper atmosphere, but on the ground there was surprisingly little dust.