Golden Blood Read Free Page A

he boomed, in the deep voice that was so hypnotically compelling. “Gold! Pure gold! And tempered hard as steel! Look at it!”
    He swung it in a hissing circle, then handed it to Price.
    A weird weapon, heavy, its broad, double-curved blade razor-keen. Price thumbed it, realized that it carried an edge no ordinary gold or alloy of gold could keep. The handle was a coiled serpent of soft gold, grasping in the fanged mouth a great, burning blood ruby.
    Leaning across the table, Jacob Garth looked as extraordinary as the weapon; thick-bodied, immensely broad of shoulder, skin soft and white as a child’s, cold eyes glittering strange and hard and eager above the tangle of curling red beard.
    “Yes, it’s gold,” Price admitted. No denying that—or that it was harder than any gold he had ever seen. “And the ruby is genuine.”
    “You are satisfied?” Garth demanded.
    “Satisfied that you have something unusual—the manuscript was rather fantastic in spots. But what’s your proposition?”
    “I’m organizing another expedition. I’m going to take a force strong enough to break through the guarded pass, and to smash whatever resistance the people of Anz may offer, beyond. A small army, if you please.”
    “Central Arabia has never been conquered—and a good many nations have tried it, in the last fifty centuries or so.”
    “It won’t be easy,” Garth agreed, “but the reward will be incalculable! Think of the Spaniard’s house of gold! I know the desert; you do, too. We won’t be tenderfeet.”
    “And your proposition?”
    “I need about $140,000 to finish equipping the expedition. I understand that you are able to advance such a sum.”
    “Possibly. And in return?”
    “You would be second in command—I am the leader, of course, and de Castro third. Half the loot will have to be divided among the men. The remainder we shall divide in twelve shares, of which five are mine, four are yours, and three de Castro’s.”
    Gold for its own sake meant nothing to Price. His own fortune, which he had not striven to increase, approximated four million dollars. But, at thirty-one, he found himself a wanderer, weary of life, oppressed by killing ennui, driven by vague, formless longings that he did not understand. For a decade he had been an unresting, purposeless wanderer through the tropic East , seeking—what, he did not know.
    The swarthy and hostile mystery of the mountain-rimmed, barren sand-desert of the Rub’ Al Khali—“Empty Abode” which the nomad Bedouins themselves fear and shun—held an obscure challenge for him. He had learned Arabic; he knew something of desert life; he had seen the fringes of the unconquered desert.
    The lure of treasure was nothing. The promise of action meant more. Of struggle with nature at her cruelest. Of battle—if Garth’s story were indeed true—with the strange power reigning in the central desert.
    The adventure appealed to him as a sporting proposition, as a daring and difficult thing, that men had not done before. And the gold of which Garth talked meant no more than a trophy.
    Price was suddenly eager, more interested and enthusiastic than he had been over anything in many months. Decision came to him instantly. But something about him rebelled at taking second place in anything, at taking orders from another.
    “I will have to be in command,” he said. “We can share equally—four and a half shares each.”
    Pale and hard, Jacob Garth’s eyes scanned Price’s face. His deep voice rang out, almost angrily:
    “You heard my proposition.” And he added: “You needn’t fear dishonesty. You may pay out the money yourself. You know that I wouldn’t risk the Rub’ Al Khali unless I believed.”
    “I can’t go,” said Price, quietly, “except as the leader.”
    And Garth at last had surrendered. “Very well. You take command, and we share equally.”
     
    For two months the Iñez crept stealthily between ports of eastern Europe and the Levant, while