sahib--little hakim--be warned and go back!"

"Thou bird of ill omen!" laughed King. "Must thou croak from every
rock we rest on?"

"If I were a bird I would fly away back with thee!" said Ismail.

"Forward, since we can not fly--forward and downward!" King answered.
"She must have crossed this valley. Therefore there are things
worth while beyond! Forward!"

The animals, weary to death anyhow, fell rather that walked down
the track. The men sat and scrambled. And the heat rose up to
meet them from the waterless ravine as if its floor were Tophet's
lid and the devil busy under it, stoking.

It was midday when at last they stood on bottom and swayed like
men in a dream fingering their bruises and scarcely able for the
heat haze to see the tangled mass of stone towers and mud-and-stone
walls that faced them, a mile away. Nobody challenged them yet.
Khinjan itself seemed dead, crackled in the heat.

"Sahib, let us mount the hill again and wait for night and a cool
breeze!" urged Darya Khan.

Ismail clucked into his beard and spat to wet his lips.

"This glare makes my eyes ache!" he grumbled.

"Wait, sahib! Wait a while!" urged the others.