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Read Ebook: Marching Sands by Lamb Harold
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Ebook has 1879 lines and 69383 words, and 38 pages
MARCHING SANDS
THE LOST PEOPLE
"You want me to fail."
It was neither question nor statement. It came in a level voice, the words dropping slowly from the lips of the man in the chair as if he weighed each one.
He might have been speaking aloud to himself, as he sat staring directly in front of him, powerful hands crossed placidly over his knees. He was a man that other men would look at twice, and a woman might glance at once--and remember. Yet there was nothing remarkable about him, except perhaps a singular depth of chest that made his quiet words resonant.
That and the round column of a throat bore out the evidence of strength shown in the hands. A broad, brown head showed a hard mouth, and wide-set, green eyes. These eyes were level and slow moving, like the lips--the eyes of a man who could play a poker hand and watch other men without looking at them directly.
There was a certain melancholy mirrored in the expressionless face. The melancholy that is the toll of hardships and physical suffering. This, coupled with great, though concealed, physical strength, was the curious trait of the man in the chair, Captain Robert Gray, once adventurer and explorer, now listed in the United States Army Reserve.
He had the voyager's trick of wearing excellent clothes carelessly, and the army man's trait of restrained movement and speech. He was on the verge of a vital decision; but he spoke placidly, even coldly. So much so that the man at the desk leaned forward earnestly.
"No, we don't want you to fail, Captain Gray. We want you to find out the truth and to tell us what you have found out."
"Suppose there is nothing to discover?"
"We will know we are mistaken."
"Will that satisfy you?"
"Yes."
"I thought," he said slowly, "that the lost people myths were out of date. I thought the last missing tribe had been located and card-indexed by the geographical and anthropological societies."
Dr. Cornelius Van Schaick did not smile. He was a slight, gray man, with alert eyes. And he was the head of the American Exploration Society, a director of the Museum of Natural History--in the office of which he was now seated with Gray--and a member of sundry scientific and historical academies.
Gray's brows went up.
"And so you are going to send an expedition to look for it?"
Van Schaick peered at a paper that he drew from a pile on his desk.
Gray looked up quickly. "So did a thousand other American officers," he broke in.
"Ah, but very few have had a father like yours," he smiled, tapping the paper gently. "Your father, Captain Gray, was once a missionary of the Methodists, in Western Shensi. You were with him, there, until you were four years of age. I understand that he mastered the dialect of the border, thoroughly, and you also picked it up, as a child. This is correct?"
"Yes."
"And your father, before he died in this country, persisted in refreshing, from time to time, your knowledge of the dialect."
"Yes."
Van Schaick laid down the paper.
"In short, Captain Gray," he concluded, "you have a record at Washington of always getting what you go after, whether it is information or men. That can be said about many explorers, perhaps; but in your case the results are on paper. You have never failed. That is why we want you. Because, if you don't find the Wusun, we will then know they are not to be found."
"I don't think they can be found."
The scientist peered at his visitor curiously.
"Wait until you have heard our information about the white race in the heart of China, before you make up your mind," he said in his cold, concise voice, gathering the papers into their leather portmanteau. "Do you know why the Wusun have not been heard from?"
"Have been permitted to go. Asia, Captain Gray, for all our American investigations, is a mystery to us. We think we have removed the veil from its history, and we have only detached a thread. The religion of Asia is built on its past. And religion is the pulse of Asia. The Asiatics have taught their children that, from the dawn of history, they have been lords of the civilized world. What would be the result if it were proved that a white race dominated Central Asia before the Christian era? The traditions of six hundred million people who worship their past would be shattered."
Gray was silent while the scientist placed his finger on a wall map of Asia. Van Schaick drew his finger inland from the coast of China, past the rivers and cities, past the northern border of Tibet to a blank space under the mountains of Turkestan where there was no writing.
"In the Desert of Gobi."
"The one place white explorers have been prevented from visiting. And it is here we have heard the Wusun are."
"A coincidence."
Van Schaick glanced at his watch.
"If you will come with me, Captain Gray, to the meeting of the Exploration Society now in session, I will convince you it is no coincidence. Before we go, I would like to be assured of one thing. The expedition to the far end of the Gobi Desert will not be safe. It may be very dangerous. Would you be willing to undertake it?"
Gray glanced at the map and rose.
"If you can show me, Doctor," he responded, "that there is something to be found--I'd tackle it."
"Come with me," nodded Van Schaick briskly.
The halls of the museum were dark, as it was past the night hour for visitors. A small light at the stairs showed the black bulk of inanimate forms in glass compartments, and the looming outline of mounted beasts, with the white bones of prehistoric mammals.
At the entrance, Van Schaick nodded to an attendant, who summoned the scientist's car.
Their footsteps had ceased to echo along the tiled corridor. The motionless beast groups stared unwinkingly at the single light from glass eyes. Then a form moved in one of the groups.
The figure slipped from the stuffed animals, down the hall. The entrance light showed for a second a slender man in an overcoat who glanced quickly from side to side at the door to see if he was observed. Then he went out of the door, into the night.
LEGENDS
That evening a few men were gathered in Van Schaick's private office at the building of the American Exploration Society. One was a celebrated anthropologist, another a historian who had come that day from Washington. A financier whose name figured in the newspapers was a third. And a European orientologist.
To these men, Van Schaick introduced Gray, explaining briefly what had passed in their interview.
"Captain Gray," he concluded, "wishes proof of what we know. If he can be convinced that the Wusun are to be found in the Gobi Desert, he is ready to undertake the trip."
For an hour the three scientists talked. Gray listened silently. They were followers of a calling strange to him, seekers after the threads of knowledge gleaned from the corners of the earth, zealots, men who would spend a year or a lifetime in running down a clew to a new species of human beings or animals. They were men who were gatherers of the treasures of the sciences, indifferent to the ordinary aspects of life, unsparing in their efforts. And he saw that they knew what they were talking about.
In the end of the Bronze Age, at the dawn of history, they explained, the Indo-Aryan race, their own race, swept eastward from Scandinavia and the north of Europe, over the mountain barrier of Asia and conquered the Central Asian peoples--the Mongolians--with their long swords.
This was barely known, and only guessed at by certain remnants of the Aryan language found in Northern India, and inscriptions dug up from the mountains of Turkestan.
They believed, these scientists, that before the great Han dynasty of China, an Indo-Aryan race known as the Sacae had ruled Central Asia. The forefathers of the Europeans had ruled the Mongolians. The ancestors of thousands of Central Asians of to-day had been white men--tall men, with long skulls, and yellow hair, and great fighters.
The earliest annals of China mentioned the Huing-nu--light-eyed devils--who came down into the desert. The manuscripts of antiquity bore the name of the Wusun--the "Tall Ones." And the children of the Aryan conquerors had survived, fighting against the Mongolians for several hundred years.
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