Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1927-01-14

h1A thO o
that had once roamed the
~ mountainous Durrah Yousseff
wilderness southwest of the Russian
Central Asian border, only a few
were left, still rowing like gypsies,
preferring the deer and wolf trails to
the smooth roads, and the forests and
moors to tight, warm, stone built
houses; plunging to the knees at icy
fords below the shadow of the bridges
they looked on askance as meant for
women and Persians and swag bellied
bazaar traders; mocking at the prop
er, decent toll Of the fields and cattle
pens; living-as the Afghan saying
has ton the wind and the pines
and the gray rocks lichen.
thin - 8 the shu the would have
Even these clans, scanty In numbers,
grew smaller year after year as brazen
freedom gave way to barter, and the age
Of steel to the age Of coined silver. And
while their fathers had felt a fidget In
their scabbards and their sword arms,
they felt a fidget In the waist shawls
where they had their money. While their
fathers had hunted men, they were salts
fled with pilfering the armers' chicken
roosts and sheep folds. While their fathers
had danced over crossed blades and roared
defiant war songs to the disgrace OF his
highness the Amir's very nose, they
crooned more sober melodies and stepped
more gentle dances for the price Of clipped
rupees at village fairs or at some rich
PEASANTS marriage feast.
The freest Of the remaining wandering
tribes was q band of twenty men and
women led by Musa Khan.
Jaunty, ragged fellows they were, lean
as rakes, a bit hard in the look, a bit
braggart. Tall, supple women, unveiled,
leud Of voice, stag-sure OF step; And Musa
and muscle. His beard was long and
curled and russell red, sticking out like &
battering ram ahead of his thick chest or,
IL the wind veered, fluttering across his
were chilly and gray: his nose was an
eagles beak; his mouth was wide and
crimson and with ever a laugh lurking at
the corners; in the shadow Of his huge,
through the sun burned brow; and his
was a trick and twist Of putting large,
hairy hEK0B upon whatever be fancleQ
with a certain insolent possession.
Musa of the Seven-Goats they called him
because--for which he had been soundly
stolen that same judges. seven goats in
one memorable nights exploit. Musa -of-the-
Seven Heads had been his grandfather's
proud nickname because the latter, IN one
nights scarlet encounter, had sliced off
the handsome, pallid heads of seven
Persian gentlemen-and he alone and
armed with nothing but a short dagger,
and the seven Persian gentlemen with iron
bossed bucklers at their left elbows and
curved Bokahran scimitars circling from
their right wrists
But while Must Khan was more peaceful
than his grandfather, he was still a man
Of the hidden glens and the high, torn
crags. There lay his kingdom-and his
subjects the fish Of the pools, the dappled
deer that roamed through the laurel void,
the birds that clucked and chirped in the
t~hickets, the brown foxes that barked In
the underbrush. Winter and summer, with
sky serene or dark clouds surly and
threatening, with the SUMS rays like mol
ten gold or the snow thudding down in
binding, white eddies, he would lead his
band through the mountains, the forests,
the moors.
His work-beside stealing-since man
cannot live by stealing alone7
Il have played at s~eventy-seven things"
he would say, 'and tired of them and fin
ished nothing. And If / be tinkersng above
an anvil, | would be dreaming Of herding
cattle up there in the northern steppes,
and II | be driving cattle perhaps ! would
be dreaming OF climbing a tall, tall mast
on one of those shis in the south the Hin
du traders speak Of. Hal, hail 1t Is be-
cause / am freei AS free as the storm
which-so my mother told me-, and she the
most truthful woman In all the Afghan
hills-was my father! I am a perfect mas
ter only of myself. But it's a fine, glorious
thing is myself. And you can buy me for
a spice of love and friendship. Or maybe
II you be the other sort of man or
woman-I would not sell myself to you
for all the treasures of High Tartary!"
Still, he did work-at times. And there
was none like him to mend a pot or shape
a horseshoe, to sharpen a knife or weave
catch q hare with his bare hands or
plunge these same hands into a pool and
grip the brown, speckled trout by their
gills and jerk them ont on the bank; none
like him, finally, to tell the many. tales.
Tales-may Allah forgive him!-of his
own prowess as often as not. Tales-may
Allah forgive him again that were most
ly lies.
swing and a clank and a way TO them,
and so, when he stepped out of the wilder
ness, with his tail Of twenty lusty follow
ers, walking one behind another, all bear
ing weapons, smelling Of leather and
heather, haunting the echoes of the Dur
rah Yousseff peaks with their roaring,
cultural voices, there would be q great
shouting of welcome and the peasants
laughing demands:
Goats !"
Tell us a tale, o son Of the world!'
Tell us how you battled with the
Shirazi giant for the necklace made Of
phoenix eggs and dragon teeth and green
diamonds from the mountains of the
moon"
mo, no, no! Tell us how you fell In love
with the red haired Badakshani woman,
and she, on the wedding night, turning
tout to be a vampire with birds claws for
feet, and in back a little furry tail she
gestured with as mere humans use their
handsi"
"And a true tale 1t is, too-may I eat
dirt If 1t is notr' he would begin. "True-
by the honor Of my beard, 0 Moslems! -
and already the peasants would loosen
rupees from their knotted waist shswls,
and the women would kill and pluck a
brace Of fat fowls and set them to simmer
in an iron pot with saffron and honey and
eggplant
Most welcome was Musa Khan at the
ancient, feudal castle Of the Ghilzai Tartar
lords that topped the crest of the Durrah
Yousseff range with an avalanche of square
granite blocks and bold masonry and had
been built, many centuries earlier, by
copper faced Tartar freebooters out Of
Central Asia who had scared and con-
quered the land as far as Ba1kh and
PERSCHAL
LADIES and gentlemen, be independent;
receive 100 letters a day, each containing
25 cents; give dollar article to every GUS
TONER Send Orc for dollar article and