The Sheik

"If you do not stop I will shoot your horse. I give you one minute."

She swayed a little in the saddle, clutching the grey's neck to steady herself and for a moment she closed her eyes, but she did not falter for an instant. She would not stop; nothing on earth should make her stop now. Only, because she knew the man, she kicked her feet clear of the stirrups. He had said he would shoot and he would shoot, and if the grey shied or swerved a hair's breadth she would probably receive the bullet that was meant for him. Better that! Yes, even better that!

Silver Star tore on headlong and the minute seemed a lifetime. Then before even she heard the report he bounded in the air and fell with a crash. Diana was flung far forward and landed on some soft sand. For a moment she was stunned by the fall, then she staggered dizzily to her feet and stumbled back to the prostrate horse. He was lashing out wildly with his heels, making desperate efforts to rise. And as she reached him the black horse dashed up alongside, stopping suddenly, and rearing straight up. The Sheik leaped to the ground and ran towards her. He caught her wrist and flung her out of his way, and she lay where she had fallen, every nerve in her body quivering. She was beaten and with the extinguishing of her last hope all her courage failed her. She gave way to sheer, overwhelming terror, utterly cowed. Every faculty was suspended, swallowed up in the one dominating force, the dread of his voice and the dread of the touch of his hands. She heard a second report and knew that he had put Silver Star out of his misery, and then, in a few seconds, his voice beside her. She got up unsteadily, shrinking from him.

"Why are you here, and where is Gaston?"

In a stifled voice she told him everything. What did it matter? If she tried to be silent he would force her to speak.

He made no comment, and bringing The Hawk nearer tossed her up roughly into the saddle and swung up behind her, the black breaking at once into the usual headlong gallop. She made no kind of resistance, a complete apathy seemed to have come over her. She did not look at the body of Silver Star, she looked at nothing, clinging to the front of the saddle, and staring ahead of her unseeingly. She had dropped her helmet when she fell and she had left it, thankful to be relieved of the pressure on her aching head. Her mental collapse had affected her physically, and it needed a real effort of will-power to enable her to sit up right. Very soon they would join the horsemen, who were waiting for them, and for her pride's sake she must concentrate all her energy to avoid betraying her weakness.

Ahmed Ben Hassan did not go back through the defile, he turned into a little path that Diana had overlooked and which skirted the hills. In about half-an-hour the troop met them, riding slowly from the opposite direction. She did not raise her eyes as they approached, but she heard Yusef's clear tenor voice calling out to the Sheik, who answered shortly as the men fell in behind him. Back over the ground that she had traversed so differently. She knew that it had been madness from the first. She should have known that it could never succeed, that she could never reach civilisation alone. She had been a fool ever to imagine that she could win through. The chance that had thrown her again into the Sheik's power might just as easily have thrown her into the hands of any other Arab. Luck had helped Ahmed Ben Hassan even as she herself had unknowingly played into his hands when he had captured her first. Fate was with him. It was useless to try and struggle against him any more. Her brain was a confused medley of thoughts that she was too tired to unravel, strange, conflicting ideas chasing wildly through her mind. She did not understand them, she did not try. The effort of thinking made her head ache agonisingly. She was conscious of a great unrest, a dull aching in her heart and a terrible depression that was altogether apart from the fear she felt of the Sheik. She gave up trying to think; she was concerned only with trying to keep her balance.