She had been quite right about the capabilities of the horses. They responded without any apparent effort to the further demand made of them. The one in particular that Hana was riding moved in a swift, easy gallop that was the perfection of motion.
They had been riding for some hours when they came to the next oasis that had been sighted since leaving the one where the midday halt was made. Hana pulled up her horse to look at it, for it was unusually beautiful in the luxuriousness and arrangement of its group of palms and leafy bushes. Some pigeons were cooing softly, hidden from sight amongst the trees, with an expression of melancholy that somehow seemed in keeping with the deserted spot. Beside the well, forming a triangle, stood what had been three particularly fine palm trees, but the tops had been broken off about twenty feet up from the ground, and the mutilated trunks reared themselves bare and desolate-looking. Hana took off her heavy helmet and tossed it to the man behind her, and sat looking at the oasis, while the faint breeze that had sprung up stirred her thick, short hair, and cooled her hot head. The sad notes of the pigeons and the broken palms, that with their unusualness vaguely suggested a tragedy, lent an air of mystery to the place that pleased her.
She turned eagerly to Akatsuchi. "Why did you not arrange for the camp to be here? It would have been a long enough ride."
The man fidgeted in his saddle, fingering his beard uneasily, his eyes wandering past Hana's and looking at the broken trees. "No man rests here, Young Miss. It is the place of devils. The curse of God is upon it," he muttered, touching his horse with his heel, and making it sidle restlessly—an obvious hint that Hana ignored.
"I like it," she persisted obstinately.
He made a quick gesture with his fingers. "It is accursed. Death lurks beside those broken palm trees," he said, looking at her curiously.
She jerked her head with a sudden smile. "For you, perhaps, but not for me. God's curse rests only upon those who fear it. But since you are afraid, Akatsuchi, let us go on." She gave a little light laugh, and Akatsuchi kicked his horse savagely as he followed.
The distance before her spread out cleanly with the sharp distinctness that precedes the setting sun. She rode on until she began to wonder if it would indeed be nightfall before she reached her destination. They had ridden longer and faster than had ever been intended. It seemed odd that they had not overtaken the baggage camels. She looked at her watch with a frown. "Where is your caravan, Akatsuchi?" she called. "I see no sign of a oasis, and the darkness will come."
"If Young Miss had started earlier——" he said resentfully.
"If I had started earlier it would still have been too far. Tomorrow we will arrange it otherwise," she said firmly.
"Tomorrow——" he growled indistinctly.
Hana looked at him keenly. "What did you say?" she asked haughtily.
His hand went to his forehead mechanically. "Tomorrow is with the God!" he murmured with smug piety.
A retort trembled on Hana's lips, but her attention was distracted from her annoying guide to a collection of black specks far off across the desert. They were too far away for her to see clearly, but she pointed to them, peering at them intently. "See!" she cried. "Is that the caravan?"
"As God wills!" he replied more piously than before, and Hana wished, with a sudden feeling of irritation, that he would stop relegating his responsibilities to the Deity and take a little more active personal interest in his missing camel train.
The black specks were moving fast across the level plain. Very soon Diana saw that it was not the slow, leisurely camels that they were overtaking, but a band of mounted men who were moving swiftly towards them. They had seen nobody since the traders' caravan had passed them in the morning. For Hana the Sunas that were approaching were even more interesting than the caravan had been. She had seen plenty of caravans arriving and departing from Iwagakure, but, though she had seen small parties of foreign tribesmen constantly in the vicinity of the town, she had never seen so large a body of mounted men before, nor had she seen them as they were here, one with the wild picturesqueness of their surroundings. It was impossible to count how many there were, for they were riding in close formation, the wind filling their great white cloaks, making each man look gigantic. Hana's interest flamed up excitedly. It was like passing another ship upon a yet empty sea. They seemed to add a desired touch to the grim loneliness of the scene that had begun to be a little awe inspiring. Perhaps she was hungry, perhaps she was tired, or perhaps she was only annoyed by the bad arrangements of her guide, but before the advent of the mounted Sunas, Hana had been conscious of a feeling of oppression, as if the silent desolation of the desert was weighing heavily upon her, but the body of swiftly moving men and horses had changed the aspect utterly. An atmosphere of life and purpose seemed to have taken the place of the quiet stagnation that had been before their coming.
The distance between the two parties decreased rapidly. Hana, intent on the quickly advancing horsemen, spurred ahead of her guide with sparkling eyes. They were near enough now to see that the horses were beautiful creatures and that each man rode magnificently. They were armed too, their rifles being held in front of them, not slung on their backs as she had seen of the officers in Iwagakure. They passed quite close to her, only a few yards away—a solid square, the orderly ranks suggesting training and discipline that she had not looked for. Not a head turned in her direction as they went by and the pace was not slackened. Fretted by the proximity of the galloping horses, her own horse reared impatiently, but Hana pulled him in, turning in her saddle to watch the Sunas pass, her breath coming quick with excitement.