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Roy Glashan's Library
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All-Story Weekly, 25 May 1918, with "The Third Hound"
THE Bazaar of the Sleeping Priest was almost deserted. A pair of stiff-eared pariah dogs scouted in and out like mining-agents exploiting an abandoned claim. A fierce Assyrian sun flared on the squat-roofed town of Shad-el-Marish. Inside the bazaar young Hassan, the carpet weaver, slept with his right cheek against the blue of his wares. It was the sonorous voice of Reuben, the donkey-boy, that shattered the silence.
"Inside the Red Shrine, effendi, is Biram, the sleep-talker. He speaks wisely of the living or the dead. May heaven-protect you, effendi!"
A trooper in the uniform of the Foreign Legion strode down the empty bazaar. At the silk-draped door of the Red Shrine he halted curiously before entering. An oil lamp swung from a rod under the roof; a smell of myrrh and frankincense clung to the stagnant air. On a divan of faded ruby red reclined an age-shrunken priest, a pair of thin, transparent hands folded over his breast.
"God be with you, Biram!" the trooper greeted. "I have come from the war camp by the Tigris for thine advice."
The transparent hands made a sign. "Come nearer and tell me thy name. Let me see thy face. Now—speak."
The trooper stood at ease, smiling thoughtfully in the uncertain light. "Men know me as Lone Larry. I come from away overseas because white men were fighting a cause on holy ground."
The muscles of the priest's face seemed to vibrate like the strings of a violin. "Then God be with you too, friend," he said sweetly. "I am but an idler in the valley of shadows, a poor dreamer at the wells of life and death. How can I help one whose arm is as strong as the blades of Damascus?"
Lone Larry drew breath sharply. Burning incense and myrrh brought a memory of a little shrine at Bethlehem he had visited the week before. "I have a friend, Biram, a soldier like myself, but younger. Two days ago he was in the hills of Shirah with his company to destroy a Turkish observation post. He was made prisoner after every member of his company had been killed. The commandant, Endred Pasha, has just decided on his life."
"If it is a soldier's death—" the priest murmured and paused irresolutely.
Lone Larry shrugged his big shoulders. "The death Endred has chosen for my friend is fit for thugs and the slayers of little children, only. Endred has given the word for him to be stripped and left on a wooden cross to the jackals."
The priest shook his head. "No philosophy of mine can save your friend; but there will be much solace for you in the killing of Endred. He fears death as the harlot and the pariah fear it."
Lone Larry was silent, and the droning of native voices beat like a subdued song down the narrow streets of the town.
"Endred has eight thousand fighting men to protect his beard," he declared after a while. "I would not be allowed within a mile of his hooked nose."
"Endred is only one," the priest intoned sleepily. "He is not eight thousand."
Larry pondered the words and listened to the queer sounds of this little Eastern war-frontier, the squalling, bickering voices of the donkey-boys and porters. He was thinking of the boy comrade whose life-hours were running out.
He had not come to Biram under a superstitious impulse. The fame of the old priest was as wide as Egypt and the great deserts beyond. Men came to Biram when all hope had been abandoned elsewhere, for they knew that the secret whispering of a thousand bazaars came to him sooner or later. Moreover he was the sworn enemy of the Turkish commandant, the man whose armies had desolated Persian and Armenian lands. It happened that morsels of Endred's high strategy, confided to Mohammedan aides, often drifted into the little Red Shrine.
"Tell me, Biram," Larry said in his drawling tones, "how will the killing of Endred Pasha save my friend Noel Chanter? How shall I traverse the miles of enemy trenches alone when the army of a people cannot—as yet?"
"Go to Endred as a pilgrim, a reader of the Koran, or as a deserter from your own side."
A weary smile creased the trooper's face. "In my country, Biram, we tell such things to children. I thought you might help to save a boy's life," he went on steadily. "They say in these parts that a man lives until you will it otherwise. The gray-haired woman he calls mother runs a sheep-farm in my country. She slaves like those Arab women on the Nile so that this lieutenant boy will have a roof and a pillow when he comes out of this scrap. You are a priest, Biram; you know how these women feel when a bald-headed official sends a message saying that their Johnny has been shot and that he will be buried where the sunset will keep his feet warm for thousands of years."
A touch of red stained the priest's pallid cheeks. "We come back to Endred," he murmured. "There are roads that lead to death and there are roads that lead to a fool. To-day a ship called the Parthia entered this port. When you have found her you will have decided your friend's fate. Ask for Captain Ishmail. Give him the sign—Allah and Endred. Tell him you must take the dogs to Endred. You will get through."
"But these clothes of mine?" Larry protested.
"Kir Mali, the Armenian, at the end of the Bazaar, will lend you others if you speak my name. Go now—"
Lone Larry swung out of the Red Shrine as one in the grip of a dreadful mystery. Kir Mali had the face and whiskers of an Egyptian grain-rat. A hint of the trooper's mission coupled with Biram's name, put all questions of money out of the way. In a brief time the American emerged from the stuffy little shop wearing a nondescript costume that one sees in the streets of every Assyrian town.
From the bazaar to the quay was a short walk. A government wharf afforded berthing accommodation for half a dozen fruit steamers from Jaffa and Aleppo. A native clerk guided him to a low-hulled banana-tramp with the name "Parthia " daubed under her sun-rusted anchor chains. Captain Ishmail was not on board. He was to be found, however, within the white stone residence at the entrance to the wharf. Thanking his informant, Larry walked leisurely to the gates of the house.
Here he became aware of a curious howling of dogs within an iron-roofed shed attached to the residence. Halting at the gate he looked up swiftly at the face of a woman scrutinizing him from behind the brass window-screen. She made no effort to withdraw as he returned her glance. By her costume he knew that she was a nurse.
But the one fact that flashed upon him was that he had met her at a military hospital at Suez some months before, when Noel Chanter was recovering from an attack of fever. A further effort of memory convinced him that she had nursed Chanter through the worst period of his illness. Furthermore, she had the distinction of being French.
The window with the brass screen was opened softly. Her lips fluttered as she beckoned him nearer. "This ees the house of Captain Ishmail," she told him in a whisper that proved she saw through his thin disguise. There was a starlike flash of curiosity in her violet eyes.
Lone Larry felt the hot sun searching his bare neck in the unsheltered gateway. The sobbing howls of the dogs in the near shed ran like a fluid over his tense-drawn nerves. "Chanter's a prisoner in Endred Pasha's camp," he informed her.
She nodded and cast a frightened glance across the blind-darkened room beyond. "The foolish boy! He will nevair come back. Why do you seek Ishmail?"
"Because I'm a special commissioner of dogs, Ma'm'selle Marie." Her name came with the first breath of perfume from her dark hair. Chanter had carried a bottle of that perfume in his valise, together with a handful of very dead violets which Marie had worn on the night of a certain military ball in Cairo. He watched the fluttering of her lips.
"Ishmail is in Endred's pay," she warned him.
"So are you!" he flung back without a shift of his steel-gray eyes.
Marie's small hands were clenched on the stone casement; the carmine of her lips had grown ashen. "I came from Jaffa with Ishmail's wife, monsieur. I am now her nurse at fifty dollaire a month. She ees sick in this house. We brought two bloodhounds from Jaffa for the Pasha Endred. Ishmail is feeding them over there."
"Bloodhounds!" His surprise was dramatic. "Then—I take them to Endred. Any message for Chanter, ma'm'selle?"
"'Cré nom! You are mad!"
"Maybe," he admitted with a grin. "Sort of madness that afflicts mules and calves. Anyway, Chanter hadn't any more brains than you could press through a slot machine, or he'd have beat it when those Turks got too busy. As I mentioned to an old gentleman who dreams for a living, it's Chanter's mother who'll do the crying if the jackals get him."
"Jackals, monsieur?" Marie flinched as though steel had touched her.
"Kind of coyote the Turks feed with crucified officer boys. You couldn't dream a worse kind of death if you ate Welsh rabbit and slept on a clothes-line. The boy is just roped to his cross and the jackal provides the—entertainment."
In the grim silence that followed, Larry was afflicted with another effort of memory in connection with Chanter's past. But even in his mental preoccupation he noted the healthy red vanish from Marie's cheeks.
"I remember," he stated after a while, "a big dog of Chanter's that was once a prize-winner in the boarhound class. It used to hunt coyotes when it was quite a pup."
Marie looked up sharply. "Noel's mother sent the dog to him in Cairo. The colonel would not allow it to be attached to the regiment. Poor Noel was in great distress. So I promise to look aftair ol' Hickory, as they call the dog, until the war ees over."
Lone Larry scratched a sun-frizzled ear thoughtfully. "I reckon the dog can't help Chanter worth a tin of beans at present," he ruminated darkly. "It wouldn't hurt, maybe," he added slowly, "if Hickory traveled along with me."
"What can Hickory do, monsieur?"
"Nothing, ma'm'selle; only it gives a fellow a comfortable feeling to have a big dog named Hickory in the bill when you haven't another friend between you and kingdom come."
THE head of Captain Ishmail was thrust from the door of the dog-house as Larry approached. The jaw and head of the Levantine sea-captain appeared to have been forged from a copper ingot. There were newly-healed scars on his cheeks that might have been caused by a casually flung grenade or torpedo splinter.
"What business?" he called out in the voice of one who greets a stranger.
Larry favored him with a salute. "I serve Allah and Endred. There is a matter of two bloodhounds," he intimated with studied assurance.
Ishmail measured him foot and hand, an uncertain scowl on his Cyclopean brow. "Where is the commandant's letter?" he inquired.
Larry shrugged. "A fool but not a soldier would try to pass the British lines carrying the commandant's signature."
Ishmail regarded him with sudden favor. "You passed the British lines?"
"Allah helps his own. Where are the dogs?"
"You are in a hurry!"
"The commandant has given a date for the Armenian hunt. Where are the bloodhounds?"
"They are here."
"There is a boarhound in this house; Endred is short of dogs."
"The commandant's orders were for two bloodhounds only," Ishmail snapped. "The boarhound stays here. Take what is thine." The Levantine captain opened wide the door of the dog-house.
Lone Larry entered the close-smelling shed and stood opposite a bed of straw where a couple of big-chested, fawn-colored hounds lay watching him with glowing eyes. For an instant the American experienced a sick feeling when he recalled certain man-hunting expeditions organized by Turkish officers in the Tigris valley.
"The one is called Sultan, and ran to death nine infidel boys and men at Ephesus." Ishmail stooped to caress the hound's panting sides. "This smaller one is swifter. Inshallah! Behold his teeth and neck muscles! His name is Mahomet."
Mahomet emitted a soft whine as Larry unfastened the two leashes from a hook in the wall. Ishmail pressed a long-thonged whip into his hand as they passed from the shed. Larry was half inclined to renew his demand for the boarhound, but checked himself on reflection. He was not sure where the adventure would end, nor how the presence of Hickory would help Noel Chanter. He was certain, however, that the presence of Sultan and Mahomet would pass him through the Turkish lines.
Marie watched him go from the gate in voiceless trepidation. The sight of the two hounds hauling on the leashes filled her with an unnamed dread. Noel would never return from the hills where soldier prisoners were nightly crucified. Mon Dieu, it was terrible! And why had Captain Ishmail prevented the American from taking Hickory along?
It was almost dark. Large white stars fluttered faintly on the edge of the desert. Troops of native boys and donkeymen paused to stare after the striding giant holding the two straining bloodhounds in leash. Larry's brow held the impress of his cogitations. He could not see the end of this soul-gripping mission into which he had been urged by the dream-priest in the bazaar. That his mission would take him to the commandant's tent he was certain. But it would not save Chanter.
For an instant he felt like abandoning the enterprise and returning to camp in the hope of persuading the colonel to strike a blow for the boy's life. It needed no second thought to indicate the hopelessness of such a request. And again the priest's words returned to comfort and nerve him—" Endred is not eight thousand—He fears death as the harlot and the pariah fear it."
The desert hills soon shut him out from the town. Sand-dunes and cactus filled the darkening skyline. He was hungry and thirsty, but in the thought of Chanter's shortening hours he had forgotten to eat.
The dogs sniffed and mumbled at the end of their leashes, and not without cause. The sudden flash of a rifle halted them on the fringe of a barbed wire entanglement. The head of a Turkish patrol showed on the crest of the ridge; and again his rifle menaced them.
At the words "Endred and Allah" shouted back in clear tones by the stiff-shouldered American, the rifle was lowered and the word to pass on was given.
"Way for the commandant's blood-hounds!" The warning was bellowed along the Turkish outposts as Larry loped past groups of bearded Anatolian soldiers, who crowded along the high ridge to watch the dogs go by.
Once within the Turkish lines he found progress easy. A turbaned officer of the guard directed him to the commandant's quarters. The lights of Endred's palatial tent fell suddenly on the two panting hounds. A sentry presented arms outside the tent. A few moments later the white-coated figure of the commandant appeared in the doorway. His thin, hawk face took in the dogs and their leader at a glance. Larry saluted and held to his leashes.
The commandant made a sign. "The hounds are thin. How do they run?"
"Like cheetahs, excellency. They run to the death."
A strain of good humor lit the pasha's eyes. His trap-tight mouth smiled on Larry. "You are Ishmail's servant, but you will stay here until the sport is over."
Again Larry saluted. "It is your excellency's pleasure. You speak of sport?" he ventured guardedly.
Endred flashed a jewel-lit finger in the direction of the inner lines. "An American lieutenant, with the chin of a girl, has been troubling us of late. It was his third effort to bomb our trenches. He is now a prisoner, by the mercy of Allah. We had decided to feed him to the jackals for his accursed temerity. In consideration of his youth we have decided to give him a run for his life."
"Your excellency is the final judge," Larry assured him with humility. "How would he run, excellency?"
"Within the dried watercourse across the hills. I shall allow him a start of fifty seconds. If he can elude the dogs and reach his own lines the affair will end. What are his chances?" he inquired.
Larry suppressed a foolish desire to cry out, to spring at the throat of this boy-slaying devil. The soft intoning of the near guard steadied him.
"The prisoner has no chance after the first hundred yards or so, excellency." Then a thought flashed across him leaving him smiling, but cold. To save Chanter he could at least temporarily disable one or both the hounds-or put them beyond killing him on the run.
Endred half turned in the doorway; his voice jarred like a death sentence on the lonely American. "You must leave the dogs to the care of my servants," he commanded. "For to-night you are dismissed."
Larry saluted and blundered away in charge of a fat Turkish corporal of the guard to a tent which had been set apart for his use. A bottle of wine that tasted like sweet vinegar, together with some fruit and bread, awaited him.
He ate almost wolfishly, for he knew that a life-and-death challenge had been thrown down. He must eat to fight. Starving men rarely helped a comrade in need. Then he threw himself on the camp bed.
HE was awakened by the shrill calling of bugles and the strange voices of company commanders mustering men to a grand parade. Outside his tent Larry beheld several battalions of soldiers marching toward a dried-up watercourse across the hills.
Permission from the corporal being granted, he followed the dust-shrouded columns of men to the banks of a sunken stream-bed that ran from the Turkish lines into British territory. The floor of the stream-bed was smooth as a pavement for the first half mile, Then it became choked with boulders and sand-drifts over which Chanter must race before the protecting barbed wire of the British defenses was reached.
Accompanied by several members of his staff, Endred had ridden to the head of the watercourse where the two bloodhounds stood sniffing the air at the end of their leashes. A few moments later Lieutenant Chanter appeared accompanied by a squad of Anatolian troopers. Chanter was little more than a boy; his handsome face had the look of one who had been kept waiting a death sentence. A single glance at the hounds revealed his fate, and the muscles of his lithe young body grew taut under the silk vest he had been allowed to retain.
"The dogs are well rested," Endred announced to the expectant staff. "They were bred and fed by our good Mussulman friends in Jaffa. Sweet to them is the scent of an infidel's blood. Are we ready?"
Chanter was led into the dry watercourse where a chalk line had been drawn. At a word from Endred he was left standing on the line, his body crouching forward for the flying start. Not once did he look back at the two hounds straining on their leashes, jaws dripping, flanks a quiver under the-imposed restraint.
Larry stood rigid and alone at the head of the stream-bed, a neglected witness to a Dantesque drama which he had helped to create. A revolver shot cracked in the still hot air. Chanter left the chalk line with a bound and ran in a straight line down the smooth track of the stream-bed.
One of Endred's aides ticked off fifty seconds with a watch, while the close-packed lines of Turkish infantrymen shouted from the banks for the dogs to be released.
At the word "fifty," Mahomet and Sultan were slipped from their leashes. For a hundred yards they raced breast to breast down the middle of the watercourse, and the dullest-brained camp followers saw at a glance the futility of Chanter's endeavor.
With the sound of their sobbing breaths in his rear, Chanter's stride lengthened, and the swart, hard-fighting Anatolians cheered hoarsely at his hopeless effort. It was soon evident that the two bloodhounds differed in point of speed and training. Mahomet, the smaller one, soon outstripped its companion and was gaining on the now fast-running Chanter by leaps and bounds.
The clash of its bared fangs seemed to echo on the stifling air. Chanter was too much in love with life to look round or waste a pulsebeat in his fierce young efforts to maintain his lead.
And as he ran he heard through the suffocating-blood noises in his head, the voice of the gray-haired mother calling him from the hills of his native Montana. The hot sun struck between his eyes as he leaped and swerved down the red sandstone track. His straining ears caught the guttural breath of the beast at his heels; he heard the sudden clash of jaws, the angry whine and slithering of feet that told of Mahomet's first effort to bring him down. He bounded away to the left to avoid the hound's cunning side-leap at his throat.
Twenty yards of smooth track separated him from the boulders and sand-ridges at the end of the course. He felt the sky swoop and cover him as Mahomet shortened its stride for a second leap. Once held by the smaller bloodhound he would soon be in the grip of the oncoming Sultan. A lightning glance at the ground in front showed him that the end had come. Instinctively he flung back his head to inhale a last deep breath.
In that movement his foot touched a pebble-hole in the hard sandstone floor, and the contact almost flung him to his face. In the delirious effort to recover his balance he was conscious of a monster boarhound rushing out from the cover of some desert scrub on the left bank.
Only the nearest Anatolian infantrymen saw what happened. The boarhound raced between the staggering Chanter and the fleet-footed Mahomet. There was a momentary impact of shoulders, a short fierce scuffle in which Mahomet's knee was gripped and broken between the boar-hound's snatching jaws.
Chanter ran with the sound of Mahomet's yells in his ears. He turned for a moment to watch Sultan spring past its maimed companion and continue the chase. Although slow of foot the bigger bloodhound was not to be tempted from its original quarry. It swerved from contact with the boarhound and charged on the young lieutenant's heels.
Chanter became dizzily aware of the boarhound running at his side, its long, wet muzzle upthrust to lick his hot clenched hand. The contact steadied him for an instant; the next revealed the hopelessness of his position. Endred had passed the order to shoot Chanter, since the race had been interfered with by a foreign pariah dog.
A score of bullets buzzed down the gorge from the rifles of pursuing cavalrymen. Chanter stumbled and caught his breath fiercely; a thin trickle of blood showed on his hip. Sultan clung to his shadow, goaded by the mad cries of the troopers.
"Pull—pull the accursed infidel down! Pull and hold!"
Chanter fought wildly against the vertigo of exhaustion and the blinding heat that drenched his eyes with sweat. He staggered, recovered his stride for a moment, and again experienced the cool, wet muzzle of the boarhound as he pitched to his knees. With Sultan on his heels he cast himself down a slight declivity in his last effort to escape Sultan's rending jaws. His head and shoulders struck stones and boulders in his descent. But through his sun-blinded eyes he saw that the boarhound had stayed in the track to meet the lionlike rush of the sleuth.
For a little while Chanter remained still as a sick child on the sandy floor. Through his throbbing eyes he watched the furious struggles of the two masterful hounds above. Sultan by his sheer weight almost hurled the boarhound across him. Chanter crawled to his feet, and with a last glance at the battling dogs, made for the end of the watercourse.
The shots from the Turkish troopers ceased. Over the edge of the cactus-covered banks poured a detachment of mounted infantry, firing into the brown of the Moslem horde as they advanced and deployed. The left wing of the detachment wheeled and encircled the reeling Chanter. Hobbling forward, his head fell against the saddle of the officer in command.
"There are two dogs fighting in the gully, Payne. One's a bloodhound—shoot it if you like, but spare the other!"
LATE that night Larry limped past the challenging sentries outside the British lines, and found his way to the field hospital in the rear. Inside a spacious, fan-cooled tent, he espied Chanter sitting up in bed, an ice-filled glass of lemonade on the table beside him. He looked up quickly as Larry entered, a puzzled frown on his boyish face.
"Come in!" he invited sternly. "I once lent you fifty dollars, and in return you presented Endred with a pair of hellhounds to chase me off the earth. Just sit down here and do some elucidating."
Larry cast himself wearily into a camp chair and drank slowly the drink offered him. "I'd a notion the two dogs might be useful to keep the jackals away after Endred decided to let 'em eat you up," he confessed ruefully. "I thought I might stick round, sir, and loose a bloodhound every time a coyote bit you a trifle too hard."
Chanter suppressed his laughter. "But —who in thunder sent old Hickory along?" he demanded.
"A lady named Marie. She used to brighten up the sick guys in the hospital at Suez," Larry responded, watching the danger signals in Chanter's cheeks.
The young lieutenant stared thoughtfully into the flame of the slow-burning lamp, a tender gleam in his troubled eyes. "Funny Endred didn't turn on you," he said as though to hide his confusion. "You seem to have got away without trouble?"
Larry consulted his wrist watch pensively. It was nearly ten o'clock.
"I complained that I had lost two valuable dogs, and jagged Endred into paying me for them. It was the only live bluff I could put up. I got the money, two hundred dollars in all, and was allowed to stroll round the big ammunition dump, under Shirah Hill and put my little clock bomb to sleep among the howitzer shells. Once you have a Turk's confidence it takes a blast of dynamite to shift it. Listen!"
A TERRIFIC earth-shock followed by a series of detonating roars shook the near hills. A pyramid of flame trailed skyward, while the ground beneath them rocked and quaked. Chanter sat up to peer through the tent flap.
Larry passed out, smileless as an image. "The little clock bomb woke up," he vouchsafed dryly. "Hope Endred will know where to find his whiskers in the morning."
A hairy shape, rose from the warm sands outside the tent. A wet, inquiring muzzle was thrust into his hand. He suppressed an exclamation as he patted the boar-hound's head.
"Some women and dogs make the running easy for some fellows, Hickory," he commented with a backward glance at the young lieutenant.
Chanter laughed outright. "I'll be running .another race shortly," he confessed. "Wish me luck you old sinner!"
"She won't be hard for you to catch," the big man predicted as he quietly strode away.
Past the commissariat wagon he caught the flutter of a nurse's uniform. The white, anxious face of Marie became suddenly visible.
"Pardon, m'sieur," she palpitated. "I have not seen Hickory since I let him go from Ishmail's yard. Nor have I heard whether Noel escaped the attention of ze jackals."
Larry indicated Chanter's tent good-naturedly. "The jackals left him his health, ma'm'selle, and a pair of good thick shoes to hit the wedding trail with. Go in now and tell him how glad you feel he's alive!"
When he looked back a few moments later he saw that she was laughing and crying with her cheek against the young soldier's.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.