Sahara Crosswind Read Free Page A

Immediately the wind grappled with him, searching with harsh gritty fingers to pluck him up and hurl him against the cliffside. There was neither night nor day nor left nor right, only the golden-brown swirling mass that flung itself at him with such force that it threatened to rip the skin from his face.
    Out of nowhere appeared a great looming shadow, one dusty brown shade darker than the storm itself. The shadow passed, to be followed immediately by another, and yet a third. When the fourth shadow appeared, Jake did not hesitate or think. He reached and found himself grasping at the sand-sodden hairs of a camel’s neck. Somehow a string of camels had broken free of both their hobbles and their stakes.
    The pelt ran through his fingers until he came to the thick harness guide rope. He grabbed hold and allowed himself to be flung from a standing start to a pace so fast that his feet scarcely touched the ground. With his free hand he reached blindly and felt a second rope trailing down from the camel’s hump, the leader used to lash down the loads. Without thinking of the risk, he took two further great strides and flung himself up onto the camel’s back.
    The panicked beast was too busy running blind to bother with him. Jake struggled and managed to raise himself upand into the lumpy fold between the beast’s double humps. He struggled against the jouncing gait that slammed him up and down and threatened to dislodge him with every step. Working his feet through the ropes running around and under the camel, he pulled his cape down far over his face and hung on for dear life.

Chapter Three
    Although he did not ever really sleep, still Jake had a sense of awakening to the hush and the heat.
    The wind and the camel’s bruising gait had buffeted him to an aching numbness. Jake had been unable to unmask his face or hold his eyes open against the storm’s blistering force. He had ridden scrunched over, his face pressed close to the camel’s hide so that his hood was kept in place, blind to all but his growing pain. The jouncing, panic-stricken race to nowhere had bruised him from head to toe. Jake had hung on with the grim determination of one who knew his only hope of safety lay in not being tossed off. The enforced blindness and the relentless wind and the jolting ride had gradually melded together, until time had lost all meaning and Jake had been swallowed by a welcome nothingness.
    Then he opened his eyes to a brilliant desert sun.
    After three days of howling storm, the stillness was frighteningly alien. Jake struggled upright, wiped his eyelids with an inner sleeve, blinked, squinted, and laughed a hoarse croak.
    The seven camels all wore remnants of their hobbles around their ankles. They were linked by halters, and dragged the uprooted staves as they cropped at meager desert shrub. The scene was so calm and normal it was funny, despite the fact that the cliffs were a distant smudge line on the horizon.
    The camel upon which Jake sat was the only one with two humps. All the others had the more common single hump. Jake inspected them, doubted if he would have been able to keep his hold upon one of those.
    He ran his hand tentatively down his camel’s neck, fearful that at any moment the animal would recognize him for the novice he was and attack him with those great yellow teeth it was using on the shrub. But the camel paid him no mind. Jake snagged the rope attached to one of the staves, pulled ittoward him, and grasped the wood. He leaned back as far as he could and tapped behind the camel’s rear leg while trying to copy the “tch-tch” sound he had heard from the drovers.
    Obediently the camel lowered itself in the slow rocking motion of a boat on high seas. When it was fully down on its knees, he croaked another laugh. Jake Burnes, camel driver.
    With the motions of an old man, Jake half clambered, half slid down onto the ground. Keeping a very firm hold on the guide rope, he