Golden Blood by Jack Williamson

struck his fancy because of the phenomenal hardness of its yellow metal. Seizing her arm, as she raised the blade above the Macanese, he twisted it back, painfully.
    A suppressed cry of agony broke from the girl’s lips; her face went white. She dropped the weapon, just as Price’s fist crushed against Ali’s jaw.
    The Bedouin staggered away, spitting blood. The girl was biting her lip; the twisted arm hung limp. But, with the other hand, she snatched for the golden dagger.
    De Castro’s yellow claw was ahead of her.
    Price put his foot on Joao’s wrist, bent and wrenched the weapon from his hand. Seizing the girl firmly by the shoulder, he led her unresisting away, toward his own tent.
    Several of the watching men started to follow. He turned, ordered them curtly back. They gathered sympathetically around Joao. Though Price had won the girl’s release, he realized the victory was only for the moment; her position was still precarious.
    As usual, the tank had been stopped near Price’s tent. Sam Sorrows, the lean old Kansan who drove it, was watching from beside it.
    “Trouble in the camp, Sam,” Price told him briefly.
    “Over the woman?”
    Price nodded.
    “Thought so. Damn’ queer place, this, for a woman. But I reckon one could make trouble anywhere.”
    “It isn’t her fault.”
    “It never is.”
    “Sam, I’d like you to get back in the machine and stand guard with the machineguns for a while. There’s mutiny afoot.”
    “Okay, Mr. Durand.” The lanky old man grinned, as if the likelihood of fighting were enjoyable, and climbed into the tank.
     
    Price led the girl to his tent, indicated that she might enter. A moment she studied his face, with wondering violet eyes. Then she smiled, and slipped inside.
    For a little time Price studied the disorganized confusion of the camp about him, on the little plain among red sand-dunes. He was near the center of the camp. Tents, piles of dunnage, saddles, kneeling camels, were scattered all around him. The crowd of men about de Castro was still increasing. Price’s heart sank as he realized the inevitability of conflict. Of all the seventy men about him, Sam Sorrows was the only one he trusted.
    Picking up a canteen of water, Price entered the tent. The girl was waiting, tense, white-faced, just within. He unscrewed the top of the canteen, shook it so that the water sloshed audibly, and held it out to the girl. Eagerly she put her lips to it, drank until Price, fearing she would make herself sick with too much water, took it away.
    She laughed at him questioningly; he grinned.
    Then it happened: her tortured nerves gave way. She broke suddenly into a storm of weeping. Understanding that it was only the natural reaction to her relief, and yet uncertain what to do, he went toward her, touched her shoulder, pityingly.
    Shaken with uncontrollable sobs, she buried her face trustfully against his shoulder. Her brown hair, fragrantly soft, brushed against his face. Then she was in his arms.
    The tempest of weeping ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The girl slipped away from Price, composed again, drying her eyes upon the corner of her cherchis. Seeing that she looked exhausted, Price spread a blanket on the tent-floor and invited her, with a gesture, to sit down; which she did, with a grateful glance.
    “Do you speak Arabic?” Price asked her, kindly.
    A moment she hesitated; then understanding dawned in her violet eyes.
    “Yes!” she affirmed. “That is the tongue of my people, though you speak it oddly.”
    Her Arabic was clearly comprehensible, though it had a curious inflection. It was more nearly akin, plainly, to the classic language than to any modern dialect that Price knew. But its forms were older, even, than the classic. The girl spoke the Arabic of many centuries ago!
    “You are welcome,” Price told her. “I am truly sorry you were treated so. I hope to make amends.”
    “Birkum [I thank you],” she replied, with so close an approximation to