The Voice in the Drum

By Harold Lamb

This is a short story set in the Gobi desert. It tells the story of Bill Gordon, also called Black Gordon. The Gobi desert is described as an "ancient world, wherein rivers had vanished and the ruins of cities older than China itself had been covered by the sands." Losing his compass, with little water on him, Black Gordon is on his way to meet his friend, Tom Eldridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066439453

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Harold Lamb

The Voice in the Drum

Published by Good Press, 2020

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EAN 4064066439453

Table of Contents

II The Half Way House

III The Man in the Cage

IV Mo Yan's Hospitality

V The Cord of Mercy

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BILL GORDON, called Black Gordon because he had sun bleached hair and light eyes, was in a hurry. For one thing, he wished to be out of the desert. It was no longer safe for him. And then, too, he wanted to meet up with his chum, Tom Eldridge.

It is not so easy to leave the Gobi desert in a hurry. Gordon knew this. He did not try to make speed, but he made time. For a night and the better part of a day he had been in the saddle of the shaggy Mongolian pony. His compass had been stolen, and for two days he had not seen the sun.

Might as well give a guy his tombstone as take his compass, here in this Gobi, he grumbled, thinking of Mo Yan and his men, who had run off his own followers, and, for good measure, all but one of his pack animals.

He did not want to think of Mo Yan, for the present—or of the cupful of warm water that sloshed around in the canteen on his hip. Because he had no more water, and it was hard to tell just how far he was from the edge of the barren plateau, the rock pinnacles and the clay gullies, the dry river beds and the piercing winds that made the Gobi the most desolate thing in the world.

True, he knew that he was heading nearly due east toward the hills that form the backdoor of China—knew it by the shape of the wind ridges where sandy stretches were met with. Marco Polo probably, had guided himself to Cathay by these same ridges in the marching sands. And since the day of Marco Polo the Gobi had not changed.

It was an ancient world, wherein rivers had vanished and the ruins of cities older than China itself had been covered by the sands. Early explorers related that stragglers from caravans had died when they followed after beings that sought them from the wastes. There was a tale, too, that at night the thunder of rushing hoofs could be heard, the blare of elephants, the roll of kettle drums—in short that the spectral horde of Genghis Khan moved again over the barrens.

Bunk, Gordon had said of this, and he knew the Gobi as few men did, all of that. There isn't any magic. Anyone who gets himself lost in the Gobi is gone, sure enough. And as for the noises—the moving sands sound queer, sometimes.

But then he thought of Mo Yan and the horsemen he had seen passing at night against the stars on the skyline when he was camped in a hollow out of reach of the wind. He did not speak of that. In fact he