But who can chronicle the glories of the Gihon Hunt--or their
shames? Who remembers the kill in the market-place, when the
Governor bade the assembled sheikhs and warriors observe how the
hounds would instantly devour the body of Abu Hussein; but how,
when he had scientifically broken it up, the weary pack turned
from it in loathing, and Farag wept because he said the world's
face had been blackened? What men who have not yet ridden beyond
the sound of any horn recall the midnight run which
ended--Beagleboy leading--among tombs; the hasty whip-off, and
the oath, taken Abo e bones, to forget the worry? The desert run,
when Abu Hussein forsook the cultivation, and made a six-mile
point to earth in a desolate khor--when strange armed riders on
camels swooped out of a ravine, and instead of giving battle,
offered to take the tired hounds home on their beasts. Which they
did, and vanished.
Above all, who remembers the death of Royal, when a certain
Sheikh wept above the body of the stainless hound as it might
have been his son's--and that day the Hunt rode no more? The
badly-kept log-book says little of this, but at the end of their
second season (forty-nine brace) appears the dark entry: "New
blood badly wanted.
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