The House of the Falcon/Chapter 1
THE HOUSE OF
THE FALCON
CHAPTER I
THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
Men drop out of sight there. This one did. Or, no, I shouldn't say that. He went up out of sight. You see, he was carried.
Yes, right out of the city up toward the top of the world—at least that's what the natives thereabouts call the mountains, where the spurs of the Thian Shan meet the Himalayas. About five thousand men saw him go.
And not one of 'em cared to follow.
They were natives of course, all sorts—Chinese, beggarly Sarts, Mussulman traders, Kirghiz shepherds and what not. He was a white man. The other Europeans in Kashgar were all in the new city, the Chinese city, where the taotai and the missionaries are. He had come to the old city of Kashgar, by the dried-up river. He rode—uncommonly well, they say—across the wooden drawbridge and under the arch into the thick of the bazaar section.
Not that he'd lost his way. In fact he seemed to be looking for some one in the bazaar where he must have known there were no foreign barbarians—only the natives. His horse was dark with sweat and he was covered with dust. There was a good rifle slung over his shoulder and a native servant followed him. So the white men in Kashgar, when they heard what had happened to him, thought he must have been a big game hunter.
Still, they wouldn't understand why a hunter should off-saddle and go wandering through the bazaar as this one did, guided by his servant. White men, even ovis poli and wapiti hunters, are not frequent visitors in Kashgar, you know. It's a city on the old caravan route from China into India and Persia. It's sort of stuck up there under the hills that overlook Tibet, Turkestan and Kashmir, and the hills themselves are rather a no man's land—tribal areas.
I have said he was looking for something, or some one. And he didn't find what he was looking for. That seems to be clear. So he let his servant take him to a serai, an inn for travelers in the bazaar quarter. For a hunter he was traveling awfully light, and with no heads at all in his baggage. He'd made a long trek, too, judging by the condition of his beasts.
It sounds just like a story, of course. The white man—we'll call him that for want of a better name—was sitting in a corner of the serai with his back to the mud wall smoking a pipe and watching the other inmates—a fine lot they were, too—when a big black-faced native in sheepskins, blind in one eye, got up and went over to him.
"Effendi," the fellow said, "your slave who is the dust beneath your feet (he meant himself) has heard that there is danger and trouble in store for you here. Will the effendi ride hence at once and swiftly?"
The white man laughed and said he liked it where he was. At this the chap of the sheepskins went out of the serai and began to run as if the devil were after him, through the twisting alleys of the bazaar, out past the mosque and up the road to the hills.
He didn't stop running as long as he was visible from the balcony where the taotai, the governor, was having dinner. They noticed that, because those natives never run unless necessary, and then they ride.
In an hour, after he'd eaten a little dinner, the white man was knocked out. Not actually, of course, but by fever or food poisoning. It was so quick in coming, it must have been poisoning.
He still sat in the corner of the serai with his rifle across his knees and his face drawn with pain. He couldn't move except to put his finger on the trigger of his piece and watch the crowd in the serai with his eyes. This was necessary, because his servant had left him and he hadn't tried to get word to the few Europeans who were near by in the new Kashgar.
Perhaps he did try to get word to them; still, there was no evidence that he did. A Kashgar crowd is harmless for the most part; but not when a foreign barbarian with his kit and rifle is helpless in their hands. Well—this chap kept watching the crowd and the crowd watched him. Waiting for him to die, most likely, so they could appropriate his kit and rifle.
Evidently while he was still alive they didn't dare touch him. And it wasn't dark yet. The Chinese governor, who was very conscientious—a fine fellow and a scholar, too—and investigated the affair to the best of his ability, says that this was before the namaz gar, the time of evening prayer for the Moslems who made up the greater part of Kashgar.
Apparently the white man made only one remark.
"Where is Jain Ali Beg?" he asked—referring to his servant.
The serai keeper swore afterward to the governor that the servant had run away, perhaps because he scented trouble in the air.
So the white man sat there, poisoned perhaps by the Moslems of the bazaar. So the governor said; but a Chinese official hates all Mussulmans. Then a curious thing happened.
Those in the serai heard the trample of the camels of a caravan outside, in the alley. They heard the bells of the camels. And the leader of the caravan, the man who holds the nose cord of the first animal in the line, was the one-eyed chap in sheepskins.
The caravan had come down the road from the hills. Nothing unusual in that, of course, because caravan transport is the only way of moving goods in Central Asia and a half dozen of 'em go through Kashgar every day. But this particular caravan didn't have any boxes or anything but a score of dark-skinned hillmen for riders.
It might have come in to the bazaar to load up—only it didn't. The caravan moved down out of the hills in the dust, to enter the bazaar. It stopped just for a moment outside the serai, and the riders took the white man away with them.
That was exactly what they did. Set him on a camel; then the whole string turned and went off with the one-eyed beggar in the lead. They had crossed the old bridge over the moat and disappeared into the dust before the bazaar knew what was happening.
At that, the natives of Kashgar gave the caravan a wide berth. There wasn't a soul in the alleys when it went away. Every one had popped into the open shop fronts or under the sun mats. They seemed to be superstitious about it and the Mussulmans related something to the taotai about a caravan that came from nowhere and went nowhere.
Yes, that particular white man went up out of sight. At least, he was never seen again.
Now, what do you think of it all?