DESERT DRIFT
ByJOHN BRIGGS
Author of "The Last of the Kings," etc.
EAST AND WEST MEET ON THE TREACHEROUS SANDS OF THE PAINTED DESERT; AND ONLY THE SANDS WHICH SAW THE MEETING CAN TELL OF THE FATE OF THE BLACK OPAL, WHICH WAS THE HERITAGE OF AN ANCIENT DYNASTY
"One First Class Passage—Prince Yuen Ming Chu."
Thus his American Pacific Liner passport had read, thirty years ago.
The Chinaman halted his time-and-wind-worn outfit in the sickly shadow of a smoke tree. He was clad in blue jumper and overalls. His gray felt hat was peaked after the common fashion of the desert country. With hands long accustomed to the task, he slipped his diamond hitch, removed his bed roll, kiaks and canvas water bags, and after a few final jerks with the cinches, he had uncovered a dust-hued beast so diminutive that the revelation might have startled a casual observer.
After staking the little animal where it could enjoy some very dry galleta grass, Prince Yuen Ming Chu accomplished a feat never duplicated before his time, nor since, on the drifting surface of the Painted Desert. He picked up a long roll of heavy pongee, from one end of which projected a large bamboo stick.
Holding one hand under the end of the innocent-looking roll and pulling down on the bamboo, there suddenly came into being a flowery and dragon-festooned sun-shade of immense size. He gave another pull, and the bamboo stick lengthened out several feet. The end of it he stuck down into the sand, and then from the eaves of the contraption he unfolded four stay rods. With these in position, he gave a pull at a cord, and behold! the big umbrella divided itself at the peak, and curtains dropped to the ground. Yuen Ming Chu parted the curtains at one side and drew them up at the opposite side, allowing for air circulation, whenever the air should decide to circulate.
Laying a grass mat down under his silken shelter and seating himself, he proceeded to undo the rawhide thongs of his laced boots. One might have noticed that the fingers so deftly engaged were very long and delicately tapered. This Celestial son could not deny himself the simple luxury of washing his feet, notwithstanding the scarcity of water. That accomplished, he exhaled with deep satisfaction, slipped his sensitive toes into loose sandals and went about under the smoke tree gathering fallen twigs with which to cook his rice and brew his tea.
For thirty years he had wandered under the far stretches of brilliant skies and over the tinted dunes that had been as home to him for so long. He had pitched his dragon tent under the lee of the purple and vermilion cliffs and at the foot of God's Altar Stones, the needle pinnacles of an old continent which seemed to pierce theriotous sunset heavens. He had communed with eternal quiet and had become the intimate of the stars by night. He had come to America on an Imperial mission, and hopeless as it had seemed for years, he had pursued it long after the fall of Imperial power in China; for his heart was in the task.
His quest was the recovery of the wondrous black opal, talisman of the Ancient Tsins, pillaged by a band of smugglers from the old Palace of the early Manchus at Mukden. Under disguise he had followed the smugglers to their stronghold in Lower California. He had joined them. By assiduous cunning, he had located the great jewel. And then, almost successful, his plans to regain it had been suspected. A furious chase had led him through the wildest regions into Arizona and on up into the Painted Desert. One by one he had accounted for his quarry until one alone remained. And then that one had perished in a sand storm which had buried him and his fabulously precious burden without a trace.
The shifting face of the desert had altered with the long years of Prince Chu's search, he was an old man now. He knew the arid region as a parent knows his wilful offspring. He had witnessed the strange and various vegetation creep slowly over the dunes which he had with his own hands shoveled aside. He had seen old dunes melt and blow away, and new ones rise. Now he was bound southward across the desert to Flagstaff, thence homeward. He had found the ancient talisman of the Tsins, the remarkable black opal, the most precious stone, at least in his understanding, in the world. The silver-haired old Oriental could hardly picture the changes which had taken place in his native land. He could not fit his imagination to what he would find at the other end of his long journey; but here he was leaving peace.
With a gesture almost of reluctance, he stood erect and raised his arms in a simple obeisance before partaking of his last meal there. It was a leave-taking of reverence and almost of sadness. His glance traveled to the northwest and fixed itself on the far horizon meditatively. In the distance the hazy cliffs were slowly being obscured by an undefined cloud which seemed without dependence on the sky—a volume yellowish and murky. The dunes were stifled in dead calm. Nothing moved. Only the heat waves writhed upward as though to lick the still air in their ravenous thirst.
"It will be another hour, maybe," speculated Prince Chu. "Then the Twin Gods of Thunder Mountain will begin to sweep the desert." He had learned the legends of the desert peoples, and he had found beauty in their poetry. In his eyes smouldered a certain brilliancy—the look of a dreamer. In his sensitive lips, in his long, thin-bridged nose, spoke ages of refinement. Prince Yuen Ming Chu's family history stretched back two thousand years, even to the ancient Tsins.
After eating, he carefully rinsed and packed his fragile porcelain rice and tea bowls. Emerging from under his sun-shade, he righted one of the kiaks, and was about to repack it, when some inner sense warned him to straighten up and look back of him.
Staring at him, about forty feet away, were two individuals of the genus homo and otherwise not easily classifiable. One was taller than the other, and the shorter one seemed the most ragged of the two. Their much-traveled appearance suggested that they had been somewhere; but their lack of any equipment for a journey aroused Prince Chu's suspicion that their destination might be "just anywhere to get away from where they had been." He rightly guessed that their object was to put a considerable distance between themselves and the Hopi Reservation.
He had been long enough in the country to recognize these two specimens as a certain brand of unscrupulous white riff-raff, driven from the city slums, which was given to preying upon the Indians, in one way or another. It was evident that they were leaving the Hopi people under circumstances of haste. In one swift glance he gleaned all of this, and then continued unconcernedly with his packing.
After their astonished survey of the dragon tent, the pair limped nearer.
"Hey! Got any water?" croaked one.
In response, Prince Chu merely grunted and poured water from one of the bags into the stew pan which he happened to have in his hand. Still squatting on his heels, he handed it to the man who reached for it, and the other, the shorter one, made a grab for the bag.
The old Chinaman drew it back and held up his hand in refusal. He was particular about who drank from his water bags.
The bandy-legs growled a curse and reached lightning-quick toward his hip, but as quickly checked the motion. "Wot'n 'ell d' yuh mean?" he hoarsely demanded. "Can'tcha give uh man uh drink?"
"No savvy," responded Yuen serenely.
"Don't get too ripe, Shorty," cautioned the taller, bleak-nosed one with red-rimmed eyes. "Take uh swig outa this."
After draining the tin, the ragged Shorty extended it for more.
Obligingly, indifferently, Prince Chu refilled it.
"Can'tcha talk English?" questioned the sun-blistered rogue.
Yuen Ming Chu, the scholar, simply shrugged, shook his head and smiled. Though granting them their needs, with a courtesy inherently his, he desired speedy riddance of his unwelcome guests. An eye even less discerning than his would have marked them as a cold-blooded pair. A weapon bulged in the hip pocket of each, and their movements were nervous and jerky. Obviously they were assassins and drug addicts. The old Chinaman's only weapon, an antiquated shotgun, was still strapped to his pack.
"The freak is uh Chink!" suddenly exclaimed the tall one. The speaker's beak nose and pasty cheek points gleamed strikingly. Apparently the sun had not affected the small area of his face which was exposed.
"Got anything to eat, John?" he questioned. Then, as an after-thought, he performed the motions of consuming food.
"All li—all li!" acknowledged Yuen. He put more rice to cook, and added his last piece of bacon. Covertly watching his guests, who had stretched themselves out under the smoke tree to wait, he observed that they were stealthily watching him also. Their conversation was low mumbled. They evidently mistrusted that he might understand them; but they were careless enough to let escape a few words which could be caught by the ears so long attuned to desert stillness.
"Damn funny—Chink out here—Yeh, runnin' hop t' the Injuns—Got it?—Sure 'eez got it. All Chinks uh got it!—Huh?"
They ate their rice with poor grace, frequently casting surreptitious glances over his outfit. Yuen led the small burro in from its dry grazing and readjusted the pack-saddle. He faced the burro so that his gun would be on the opposite side of the saddle from the two thugs. He perceived that they were suspicious. An astute reason counseled him that their suspicion of him could arise only from their offensive intentions. A deduction in which he was right.
His long, facile fingers were not quite quick enough to release the straps holding the shotgun before the red-eyed one had sprung up on his long legs and had covered him with a mean-looking automatic. Plainly the man was a professional killer. His order to "Get 'em up in a hurry!" was undebatable.
Prince Chu neither hesitated nor hastened. He simply accepted his strategic defeat. The malign glint of the red-rimmed eyes behind the black bore of the implacable-looking instrument of death, seemed to project a cold eagerness along their line of vision; as though hungering for the sight of a blood splash at the spot upon which their stare was fixed. The tip of the man's protuberant nose quivered like that of a beast scenting his quarry. The Chinaman dispassionately made note that the drug degenerate would welcome an excuse to murder.
"No more stallin', Chink," the voice grated. "Yuv got the stuff somewhere. Come through!"
Had the speaker known that he was addressing a man in whose blood flowed the quality of blood which had ruled China for two thousand years; and that governing the unaltered expression of the face he was looking into, there was the kind of mind at work which is dangerous to cross even when deprived of every vestige of defense, he would not have hesitated to release the death which his taut forefinger begged to deliver. But he was not yet aware of his mistake.
"Let's have it!" he barked again. "Show us where it is."
"No savvy," repeated Prince Yuen Ming Chu.
"Hey, Squint," interrupted the scalded-faced Shorty, "maybe the crazy Chink don't savvy!"
"He savvies, all right," was the response."Step around from behind that donkey, there, yuh heathen. Quick!"
Yuen obeyed. He knew that the murderer would shoot if he did not.
The renegade laughed. "All right, John. Now yer commencin' t' learn English. Where's the stuff?"
Prince Chu took his second discomfiture collectedly.
"I admit that I can speak your language," he said, "but you have not made it plain what it is that you want of me."
"Holy fish!" the gunman exclaimed. "What next? Yuh can talk, can'tcha? Whadda we want, huh? We want the hop, the snowflakes, er whatever kind yuh peddle. An' we want it right now—get me?"
"You are mistaken," replied Yuen. "I do not peddle opiates. I have nothing of the kind. If I had, I would gladly let you have it."
The Squint made only one response to this.
"Hell! He's stallin'. Go through 'im, Shorty. Try his pack first."
The short and ragged one tore the pack to pieces and left no space the size of a lead pencil unsearched. He finished his fruitless task in exasperation.
"Clean out His Nibs next," commanded the pasty-nosed ruffian.
Panting from his exertions and the blistering sun, the plunderer stepped up behind their victim, and keeping himself out of gun range, he deftly felt through Prince Chu's garments.
"I have not what you want," stated the Chinaman calmly.
"Yuh haven't, hey! Then wot's this?"
The eager fingers were fumbling with the clasp of a long, flat pocket case, black leather bound.
"It contains medicines, and certain chemicals, but nothing of value to you. Yes—cigarettes. Help yourself."
The case opened suddenly. Viewing an array of little vials, the searcher noticed one containing a white, crystaline powder, and his glum expression lightened immediately. He jerked out the vial and dropped the case to earth.
"Here's the snow, Squint!" he rasped excitedly, working at the cork.
The gun-wielder's drawn face relaxed in pleasurable anticipation.
"Mistaken again," remarked the measured voice of Yuen Ming Chu. "It is an anti-venom, to be used in case of snakebite. Should you use that as you would cocaine, without first having been bitten by a snake or the black spider, it would kill you."
The blue-bearded gunman's face clouded with anger. "If that's uhnother bluff, Chink," he threatened, "I'll croak yuh!"
"It is not a bluff," responded the silver-haired Oriental.
Sensing truth in the impassive words, the tall man ordered his partner to further rifle the Chinaman's person.
Prince Chu's face was still steadily expressionless.
"You are wasting your time," he said.
"Well, wot in 'ell er yuh doin' in this country, anyhow?" peevishly questioned Shorty, of the blistered face.
Before his question could be answered his exploring fingers encountered a chain of heavy linked gold about the Chinaman's neck, and he yanked at it.
"Wot's this?" he demanded.
For the first time, he might have seen a change come into their victim's expression. Exultantly observant, his partner directed him to snip the chain. When the chain had been removed by the practised use of a small pair of sharp nippers, the two crooks beheld at its end the most marvelous stone that they had ever seen. As large around as the rim of a tea cup, it covered Shorty's palm, while the gold chain glittered unheeded down from his hand. In the half-shadow of his hat, the opalescent lights flamed from the great jewel with a rapidity of changing fire which seemed alive—emerald, crimson, orange, pink and blue; fascinating, benumbing.
"My God! It's worth a million!" gasped Shorty.
Prince Chu's stern old lips curled slightly upward in their irony.
"Do not make a second mistake, my friend," he said. "In your dollars, it is worth ten millions. But if you should find it possible to dispose of the jewel, it would be worth your life."
"Wot's that!" the two exclaimed, almost in a word.
The Chinaman shrugged and smiled enigmatically.
"'Nother one uh yer Chink bluffs," mumbled Shorty.
"I ain't so sure," joined his partner meditatively. "But we better get movin'.Com' on! Stick 'er where she'll be safe, Shorty. Get that shotgun. Get both them water bags. That's it—both uv 'em. It's hot an' we'll need 'em," he added with a chuckle of grim significance.
"All right," announced Shorty, lowering his gun and grinning at the Chinaman with lips that twitched. "We'll toddle on, Ole Timer. Sorry can't have yer company."
"You may need it," tranquilly replied Prince Chu, commencing deftly to pick up his scattered things. "I shall not be far behind."
The gunman laughed unpleasantly. "I guess yuh'll keep outa gun range," he retorted, backing away a few steps.
"Which way?" inquired Shorty, loaded with the appointed articles. They contemptuously turned their attention from their late victim, now that they had rendered him harmless, they thought, and disabled by lack of water.
"Wait uh minute," the Squint interjected. "Let's see the rock. I wanna look at it close."
Shorty dug the great black opal from an inner pocket and was about to hand it to the other, when he halted suspiciously.
"Yuh ain't startin' nothin', Squint, are yuh?" he inquired.
"Com' on, yuh boob," protested the other. "How could I? We're t'gether, ain't we? Ain't there enough in it fer both uv us, anyhow? I jus' wanna see how the thing feels. Gee, she's some rock!" he exulted, as Shorty released the great jewel unwillingly. He allowed his attention to be consumed by the fascinating opal for a moment, and then he slipped the stone into an inner vest pocket.
"Hey, you! Wot're yuh comin' on me?" challenged the ragged one.
"Yer pockets're apt t' have holes in 'em, Shorty——"
At this point they were interrupted by the even-toned, dispassionate voice of the Chinaman. He had stood up from his patient reassembling, and there was such a contempt, such an impalpable foreboding in his voice, that both bad-men were impressed with a vague apprehension.
"Mr. Shorty, you have made your third mistake today," came the veiled, slowly articulated words.
Then addressing them both, "You have never seen such a stone, before, have you?"
"Com' on—cut it short," interrupted the squint-eyed.
"There is only one such stone in the world," continued Prince Chu, unhastened. "It has ruled empires for ten thousand years. Before this, thieves have stolen it; yet none have kept it long, except its rightful owners." He paused impressively.
Despite their callousness, the two thugs were getting a little nervous. Each had been speculating on the almost impossible value of the jewel. How could they dispose of it? Perhaps he was right. Maybe it wasn't intended for such as they. Still they should be able to realize something out of it.
"It has this peculiar faculty," continued the smooth, unruffled voice, "that when it falls into the hands of one who is not entitled to it, the unlawful possessor will enjoy good fortune as long as he retains it; but if he should relinquish it from his person, it becomes his fate to meet a violent death, very shortly afterward."
Prince Chu allowed himself the shadow of a smile, then his inscrutable eyes searched the faces of the ruffians to note when the significance of his clever invention should have penetrated their heat and drug crazed brains. He knew that superstition was not peculiar to his own race. It was the common penalty of all killers of men. Murder had stamped itself on the faces of these two, for such eyes as his to read, and fear now swept into the features of the one called Shorty.
"Gimme that back!" he shouted, his voice rising to a strained pitch and breaking. "Wot'd'ya have t' take it for, anyhow? Com' on, Squint, lemme have ut back," he begged.
The pasty-nosed Squint laughed sneeringly, and his lips twisted in a simulation of pity.
There came a low whine over the distant dunes. The disputing pair had not noticed that the sun's light was fading out. The air was stifling.
"Don't be uh boob," gibed Squint. And there was a crackling edge to his laugh. "The Chink's tryin' uhnother shindy on us." But his tone carried no confidence in his words. There seemed to be an insidious, occult, inexorable something about this Oriental who had communed so long with the desert.
The badgered Shorty twitched his gun hand instinctively, then discreetly checked himself.
"Yeh—yeh, damn yuh!" he wailed interrified anger. "Now yer scared to let go of it, yerself!"
Neither of them had noticed why their words had to be shouted. They were too wrapt in their argument to perceive that the dull whine had risen to a distinct roar.
Swiftly the Chinaman had gathered up his outfit, and he was cinching it into place on the burro. The cut-throats had taken about twenty paces from him when he had halted them with his recital of the black opal's mythical qualities. Still in verbal conflict, they moved on.
A wind puff swished over the low dunes, driving loose sand through the crackling branches of the brittle salt bush. An incessant rush of suffocating air followed. Little rivulets of sand began to lift and worm along the ground and spill over the rolling dunes. Dust cloud blanketed the desert.
Prince Chu picked up the lead rope of his abbreviated burro and commenced to plod southward, with his back to the swirling, wind-driven dust. A hundred yards ahead of him the fleeing pair were trying to take note of their position and were traveling undecided as to direction.
In the south distance, before the dust had filled the air, there had been visible the jagged outline of the San Francisco Mountains. Now nothing was visible save the immediate wind-swept surface of the earth, the troubled dunes, and the higher desert ridges. Yuen Ming Chu had no intention of letting his despoilers beyond the range of his vision. And he was obliged to shorten the intervening distance; for the hot wind rose into a hurricane.
He rapidly overtook the two wobbling, stumbling men. They were letting themselves be swept directly with the drift of the storm, hunched over, running, scurrying up the ridges, sliding down.
They were not concerned with their pursuer's presence. They had shorn him of harm. He looked down at them, as they picked themselves up under the leeward of a sand drift.
"You are drifting with the storm," shouted Ming Chu. "It is blowing a west angle to our course. You must walk so that it strikes first the point of the left shoulder."
"You lead out," faintly responded the authoritative one of the pair. "Move on ahead, there. We'll follow. But no damned monkey business, Chink!"
Prince Chu looked back at them as he brushed by with his burro, and he interrupted a significant exchange of glances between them. Steadily he bore ahead, and the very surface of the earth seemed to be lifting up to bear them all down into smothered oblivion. He was fully at the mercy of these plunderers who followed him six paces in the rear. He had read the meaning in the look which they had exchanged. They intended to coolly shoot him down when they had done with his guidance. The drifting sand would do the rest.
"Such as it is to be, so it shall be," meditated this silver-haired son of the Great Ancients.
They were not following him easily. The driven sand cut through their ragged clothing. Occasionally one of them fell headlong. Neither tried to assist the other. The shorter one seemed to be the sturdier of the two. The long-legged one stumbled more frequently. One or the other of them frequently called on him to wait for them. He perforce obeyed. When they were close behind him, Ming Chu could see contortions of fear at work in the pallid face of the gasping Shorty. Each time that his partner went down he registered a look of satisfaction.
Prince Chu smiled inwardly. The prospect of violent death was fermenting in Shorty's brain. His features portrayed a fixed terror born of the alleged fate dependent on his losing possession of the marvelous opal. His mind was caught in the dread that the prophesy's fulfillment was bearing down upon him.
The surface of the desert was moving, shifting; slow rollers rose and sank, and drifted on. The earth picked itself up and rushed whither the mad wind drove. Small dunes melted away, where they were not rooted down by the stunted growth. New ones swelled up before their eyes—swelled up and burst and crawled ahead. Flat rivulets of sand ran, riffled, spumed against the rifted cholla trunks. The wild dry sea tumbled, rushed and roared on, relentless, insatiable. The three men and the beast were pounded, blasted, blown tumbling with the drift. There was no longer any tacking against its drive. The slipping sand sucked them down. Each step made a whirlpool into which they sank, straining to tear free, while the awful volume of the wind drove down upon them.
The high outline of a sand ridge loomed suddenly before them. It was an elevation which had built itself up year after year, by reason of its resistant creosote bush and other tenacious growth. It was halting the rushing flood of sand, banking it back against the terrific current. They were swept toward it. Its base seemed swelling, crawling to meet them, and its outline was mounting higher and higher. They were driven up with the piling earth. The thundering volume frayed at them, pressed the breath from their lungs, tumbled them, carried them with it. A mountain was being formed. They shot across its summit and dropped as though from a cloud. They slid and rolled and lodged under the lee of the ridge.
His face bleeding, his hands shaking, the ragged, short man stepped backward from the creeping pile and laughed. The sound made the other jump and whirl around on him. It was a sharp, strained cackle—a mad expression of release from the immediate clutches of death.
The man's pasty face was pale green and drawn into lines of pain. He cursed the laughter.
"Laugh when we get outa this," he snapped, "er that damn Chink'll get us yet." He made a threatening step toward the shorter one.
"Yer scared yer goin' t' croak, ain'tcha?" he snarled. "Yuh wanna see me croak first, don'tcha? Well, don'tcha try t' start nothin' with me! I'm uh live man yet, by God!"
The smaller man stepped backward again. The sand sucked in around his shoe-tops. He stood still a moment, and then a curious, pained, questioning look came into his face. He advanced a step, hastily, and whirled about. Looking down at the spot where he had stood, he saw two black-spotted coils, one above the other, partly buried, and a flat, fanged head protruding from the sand. He had felt three sharp stings in his half-deadened leg, before he had moved.
Almost forgotten by the battered twain, the harmless Yuen Ming Chu had also observed the mottled coils and the venomous puffed head of the diamond rattler.
On recognizing what had befallen him, the stricken man's screech mounted to the whistling roar overhead.
"Wot'sa matter? Bit—hey?" interrogated the Squint.
"I'm croakin': now I'm croakin' sure!" gasped Shorty.
"Hey, shut up! Can the racket! Ain't the Chink got some stuff fer that? Sure he has.
"Hey, John—come through with yer snake dope. Bring it here!"
Prince Chu was standing about fifteen feet from the pair. Now he drew from his inner pocket the little flat case of medicines. Selecting the vial of white crystals, he replaced the case in his pocket and drew the cork from the bottle. Before he made any move toward the distressed Shorty, he emptied the contents of the vial into the palm of his hand. Sufficient wind yet stirred within their shelter to disturb the light pulverized stuff. So he closed his fingers over it. Holding it thus, he waited, while the flicker of a smile touched his impassive features.
The smitten Shorty caught the inkling of some subtle purpose back of the Chinaman's pause.
"Hey!" he yelled. "Wot'sa matter?"
He tried to draw his gun. It was packed solid in his pocket with sand. Frantically he dug it out, while his partner stood by, half-amused.
"No tricks, Chink! Come through with it!" he frenziedly commanded. He drew the pistol finally.
The old Chinaman maintained his distance. "Why should you shoot me?" he questioned. "If you should do that, the powder would spill from my hand and be lost in the sand."
A startled look overspread the features already terrified.
"If you come any nearer," was the mild assurance, "I will let the powder scatter."
"Hell!" articulated Shorty, deadened in his tracks.
"I will give this to you when you have returned the black opal to me," stated the scion of the Ancient Tsins.
These words acted as a spring releasing the afflicted man's action. He wheeled about to his partner.
"Now, will yuh gimme that?" he shrieked.
But a mortal terror had at last entered the face of Squint. He saw his partner dying a violent death, and he had no mind to release the uncanny stone which he was now convinced would work the same fate with him, if he should let it go. With the most desperate speed he had ever achieved in his lifetime, his hand flashed for his gun.
There followed a streak of flame and a report against the twilight and the din of the storm. The tall, squint-eyed man sank first to his knees, and then crumpled downinto the sand. Death caught the horrified expression in his red-rimmed eyes and held it until he pitched forward, face down, his right hand still wedged in his hip pocket by the sand which had prevented him from drawing the gun.
With fingers shaking out of his control, Shorty turned the limp form over and clawed into one of the inner vest pockets until he triumphantly drew forth the smoldering black opal at the end of its shimmering chain. Half-crawling, half-stumbling, he started with it for the extended hand of Yuen Ming Chu. He had dropped his short weapon behind him, and the troubled sand was crawling down over the upturned form of his victim.
He did not reach the outstretched hand, even though Prince Chu was coming to meet him. His face purpled in blotches, his breath choked, and the grip of convulsion tore him down.
The old son of the Tsins and the Mings stooped over him for a moment and examined the purpled veins and the black, contorted features. He shook his head.
"Too late," he murmured.
And again opening his little, flat case, he extracted another vial, and from it he let a few drops of the amber liquid trickle down between the gasping lips. Soon the movements relaxed and calm wiped out the tortured lines. The sand sifted down and the moving mountain crept on.
There was as nothing where the two men had stood and fought, and enacted the latest chapter in the history of that great, black, lambent jewel; more precious even than life, outlasting death; which had ruled empires for ten thousand years.