Title: The Woman Ayisha
Author: Talbot Mundy
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eBook No.: 0700251.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: February 2007
Date most recently updated: December 2007

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Title: The Woman Ayisha
Author: Talbot Mundy




CONTENTS

I.    "Ali, I Say I Go With Him!"
II.   "Once Before She Called Herself His Wife, on Half the Provocation"
III.  "We're All Set Now"
IV.   "A Cent for Your Sympathy!"
V.    "May You Deal with Your Enemies Like Iron, Even as You Deal with Me"
VI.   "I Will Stick That Pig Yussuf When I Find Him!"
VII.  "Akbar Ali Higg!"
VIII. "Have You Heard of Jimgrim?"
IX.   "Should I Stoop to a Pig-Pathan with a Prince Waiting for Me?"
X.    "_Wallah!_ And You Say She Has a Following of Fifty Men?"
XI.   "I See No Sin in Holding to My Given Word. Let Allah Judge Me!"

----------------




CHAPTER I


    _"Ali, I Say Go With Him!"_



Consider the situation for a moment first. There were twenty of
us--seventeen Arabs, Narayan Singh the Sikh, myself, and Grim. We
were in Petra over-Jordan, which was no-man's land until Ali
Higg, self-styled Lion of Petra, friend of the Prophet of Islam,
Lord of the Limits of the Desert and Lord of the Waters--Ali Higg
the Terrible, swooped into it from Arabia and, with the aid of
Jael, his European wife, established himself there as a thorn
in the flank of Palestine. You couldn't choose a better place
to be a thorn in. Impregnable without long-range artillery;
inaccessible except by aeroplanes, if once the Valley of Moses
leading into it through a twelve-foot gap were blocked; furnished
with enough half-ruined graves and temples for accommodation
purposes; close enough to Palestine for sudden raids, and
surrounded by dry desert over which no mandatory power would
think of sending an army if that could possibly be helped, Petra
is the perfect outlaw's paradise--a paradise of opal set in
savage mountains.

As for ourselves, you could hardly call us an official expedition,
nor even exactly authorized, for Grim enjoyed a free hand subject
to the definite proviso that he would be promptly disowned
by the Palestine authorities if trouble came of it. The British,
having heard from the taxpayer, did not want to send an army
against Ali Higg, besides which they had no mandate yet for
the trans-Jordan country, as Ali Higg and all the Bedouins were
well aware.

An American, even though commissioned in the British Army, can
get away with things no Britisher would dare attempt because, of
course, the authorities would have to stand behind a Britisher,
whereas Americans are all born crazy and act without authority,
and everybody knows it, and there you are, old top, so what's
the use?

And Grim, by using brains and information, which is a combination
nobody can beat, had cornered Ali Higg, as I told in another
story. One hundred and forty of Ali's men under a veteran named
Ibrahim ben Ah were resting their camels miles away in an oasis.
The remaining forty and odd were camped in another direction.
Jael, Ali Higg's wife, after being made prisoner, had grudgingly
agreed to help Grim tame her lord and master; and what with
drenching him thoroughly, lancing his boils and catching him at
an all-round disadvantage, we had forced him to give a hostage
for good behavior in the shape of a deposit of fifty thousand
pounds lying in his wife's name in the Bank of Egypt.

So far, good; but there were complications. In the first place,
that document was not worth a plugged piastre until safely under
lock and key in Jerusalem, for Ali Higg would surely steal it
back if he could. The money had been paid into the bank in gold,
mainly half-sovereigns that were earned by Arab troops in the war
against the Turks. The man who could squeeze all that money out
of fighting Bedouins was unlikely to lose his grip on it, even
for the three-year term of the agreement, if force or chicanery
should provide him an alternative. If those troops of his should
suddenly return, for instance, not only the agreement but our
lives would be at stake.

The easiest course would have been to scoot out of Petra and head
for Palestine, avoiding that oasis where the "army" waited. But
Grim had made a promise which prevented that. In return for
Ali Higg's pledge and in the general interest of peace he had
undertaken to deal with a Sheikh at Abu Lissan, farther South,
who with eight hundred men proposed to come and "eat up" the
terrible Ali and his scant ten score. While on our way southward
there would be nothing to prevent Ali Higg from swooping on us
treacherously from behind; but in dealing with people who might
perhaps break faith there is nothing nearly so important as
observing your own promises.

Nor was that all. Our opportunity to visit Petra, give the slip
to Ali Higg’s men, capture his head wife and corner the gentleman
himself had come through Ayisha, his second wife, whom Grim had
found making purchases in Hebron and who welcomed our escort on
her way home across the desert. On the way she had fallen in love
with Grim after the desperately swift fashion of the country.
Thinking to poison Ali Higg, she had given him croton oil, which
we provided. It served our purpose famously, but rather naturally
maddened the fierce polygamist, who divorced her on the spot. So
we had Ayisha on our hands, for we couldn't decently leave her to
take the consequences.

When I was a boy at school I once borrowed from another boy a
dime manual entitled "What to do with a dead policeman." But that
problem, solved, I remember, clumsily, was a very simple one
compared to what we had to face. Ayisha was a beautiful young
woman, wholly bereft of convention in the Western sense, and
totally resolved to win Grim for her own or know the reason why.
Our rank and file, excepting Narayan Singh and myself, were all
profound polygamists from El-Kalil, thieves by profession
and conviction, and inclined to treat Ayisha's love affair
as a prodigious joke; which, of course, it was, but for the
infernal danger.

In fact, the whole situation was a joke, if you could only bring
yourself to look at it in that way. What else could you call the
intention of twenty men (not one an Englishman), cut off from
supplies and support, to interfere between the warring tribes of
North Arabia and breed peace in the process where none had ever
been since history was written?

As I sat with my back against the wall of Ali Higg's cave
overlooking the gorge of the City of Ghosts (as they call Petra)
I tried to figure on our chances, but could reach no conclusion.
Not that we weren't a pretty resourceful crew of a sort, and fit
to fight, perhaps, three times our number, but the odds seemed
overwhelming in that land where, as they say, "in the desert all
men are enemies." There wasn't one of us who could not mount his
camel on the run, with a rifle in one hand, and our camels were
the finest beasts that ever swung leg out of Syria. There was
nothing about desert work that you could teach Grim or any of our
seventeen Arabs. Narayan Singh was a Sikh in a thousand--a bold
soldier of the old school, who should have been born a hundred
years ago. As for myself, although comparatively new to Arabs and
Arabia, I have prospected and hunted big game for a living up and
down the length of Africa; and if diplomacy is not my long suit,
I can endure, and physical strength has advantages.

But I laughed to myself as I sat there and looked at Grim,
wondering at the freak of fortune that had thrown us together.
True, I have chosen to spend my life looking for adventure where
it grows; but a man likes to pile up a few dollars against old
age, and I have generally reckoned up the prospects in advance.
There was no money to be made in Grim's company. It didn't
matter, as it happened, for I have not had more than my share of
disappointment and need never starve again as long as the U.S.
keeps a Government in being. But middle-aged dogs don't learn new
tricks too easily, and I have known less surprising things than
to find myself risking a sunburned neck behind a whole-souled
altruist without the remotest possibility of making a profit.

But you couldn't resist Grim. The man is like a loadstone, if you
have the iron of adventure in you. I could take two of him, one
in each hand, and shake them as a dog does rats; for though he is
tall he is lightly framed, whereas the muscle stands on me in
lumps. But when it comes to a call for those qualities that have
always seemed to me man's finest, he can leave me standing still.
Mind you, I yield to no man in determination to live so according
to the rules, as I understand them, that I can afford to look any
man in the eye and tell him to go to hell if I see fit. But that
is one thing--comfortable in its way, and good for friendship.
Genius is another. Grim has genius, beside a flair for leaving
this old battered world a wee mite better than he found it.

I never heard him preach. Intimate friend of mine though he now
is, I have hardly ever heard him discuss his principles. But I
did hear him tell Jael Higg, by way of convincing her that her
only possible course was to help him tame her ambitious lord if
she hoped to escape imprisonment and deportation, that his one
asset is understanding of Arabs and Arabia: that he is hell-bent,
as he put it, on doing his bit in the world: and that his notion
of a good big bit is to help Arabia to independence by preventing
brigandage and civil war.

He clings to his American citizenship as some men stick to
religion. The British made him a major on those terms because
they needed him, and he accepted because it seemed the best way
to carry on what he had in view. He is punctiliously loyal to the
crowd whose uniform he wears occasionally, yet I never knew a man
more outspoken to his paymasters whenever he disagrees with them,
nor anyone who took more liberties with orders. His one annoying
quality is that of keeping his thoughts to himself, hardly ever
discussing a plan until it is perfect in his own mind and then
telling you, perhaps, not more than half of it; after which he
springs the rest on you as a surprise. But if you want to be
friends with any man on earth you'll find there's something or
other to put up with.

We all have our hobbies, even those who imagine they have none
and boast of it. Having traveled widely I have had to make mine
portable, and the two things that have increasingly obsessed me
are the ancient history of whatever land I happen to be in, and
the study of men's faces. I had time to study two now--Grim's and
Ali Higg's, for they were sitting face to face in the middle
of the cave, Grim stooping from the shoulders as he squatted
Arab-fashion in exactly the same way that the robber chieftain did.

You would never have guessed that Grim wasn't an Arab, born in
that part of Arabia. Unless in the secret, you would never have
believed the two were not blood brothers--possibly even twins.
Seen in the comparative gloom of the cave, they resembled a man
facing his reflection. Except for the bandages on Ali Higg's neck
they were dressed alike, and the only noticeable difference at
the first glance was the color of their eyes: Ali Higg's were
brown and bloodshot; Grim's were keen and baffling--somewhere in
the region of blue-grey. I have looked straight into them and not
been able to tell their color.

Now the puzzling thing was this: that whereas every line of
Grim's face made for strength, independence, honesty, and all
those other qualities that you recognize in a man at the first
glance and like immediately, almost identical features made a
rogue of Ali Higg. I believe you could have taken a pair of
calipers and measured them without finding enough difference to
split a hair about. Both were clean-shaven, although Ali Higg's
sparse whiskers had about two days' growth, which darkened and
slightly changed the outline of his face. Both had that kind of
chin with the suggestion of a cleft in it that usually goes along
with a deep understanding of human nature. Each man's eyes were
large and seated rather deep. Each had a calm forehead, not
much wrinkled, and their noses might have been cast from one
mold--good, big noses, delicately curved along the bridge, with
nostrils of the shape supposed to show good breeding. They were
the same height, and I don't believe either man weighed more than
a hundred and forty pounds. I weigh nearly a hundred more than
either of them. So does Narayan Singh.

Being dressed as an Indian Moslem from Lahore, with a great brown
Bedouin cloak thrown over all, with my head showing shaved under
the turban and a week's growth of nearly black beard sprouting,
my disguise was pretty nearly perfect; but I dare bet that if a
stranger could have entered that cave suddenly, he would have
recognized Grim without hesitation as the man to reckon with: Ali
Higg as the villain of the piece: Narayan Singh as a somewhat
quarrelsome though loyal subordinate, and me as the looker-on.
It's difficult to see yourself as others might, but I expect
that air of more or less detachment is hard to disguise when
you have no real stake in a venture, except, of course, your
life--something we risk more casually than our money.

Ali Higg watched us with similar curiosity, glancing from one to
the other furtively, whereas Grim never shifted his gaze, but
eyed the bandit steadily. It is one of the privileges of the East
to sit as long as you want to and say nothing; outside on the
ledge sat our old friend Ali Baba with his sixteen sons and
grandsons overlooking the valley like vultures in a row, and
nothing was likely to escape their eagle eyes, well fed though
they were, and perhaps sleepy after gorging the bandit's rice and
mutton. We had no need to seem in a hurry, and it was Ali Higg at
last who spoke first.

"O Jimgrim, you have promised you will deal with that dog, Hassan
Saoud of Abu Lissan."

"True, O Lion of Petra."

"Then either you made that promise in order to trick me into
signing an agreement, or else you are a madman! For how shall
you, who have but nineteen men, get the better of Hassan Saoud,
who styles himself the Avenger and has at least eight hundred?"

"Did I have the better of you?" Grim asked him.

"Father of ruses, yes! But you must give me back that agreement
unless you keep your promise by smiting the Avenger. And how
shall you do it?"

"Have I smitten you?" asked Grim.

The robber put some oily seeds into his mouth and chewed the cud
on that for several minutes.

"But unless he is destroyed the Avenger will come and make
war on me. If he wins, he will slay me and make some of my men
prisoners, adding them to the force he has already. Thus you will
have a more difficult man to deal with than I have been. Whereas
I have only raided into Palestine a dozen times, he will make a
holy war and plunder Jerusalem itself. So you must smite him or
return me that agreement."

Grim laughed. "You would better help me then! If I fail you'll
suffer sooner than anyone."

"Uh-uh!" the robber grunted. "Here in Petra I might defeat him,
for the pass is narrow and a woman is the equal of a man.* Out in
the open I cannot prevail against his numbers."

----------
* Alluding to the women's historic custom of throwing down rocks
from the cliffs on invaders' heads.
----------

It was Grim's turn to sit silent. I was growing used to his
masked changes of expression and did not doubt he knew what he
was going to say; but I believe he turns over a sentence in his
mind a dozen times before he uses it, on occasions when most men
would seek to make an impression by rhetoric.

"They say I look like you," he said at last.

"They speak truly. We might have had one mother. Therefore it is
unseemly that you should force a written pledge from me! Give me
back that paper I signed, and go in peace."

Grim ignored the suggestion. "Are you known to this Sheikh who
calls himself the Avenger?" he asked.

_"Walla!_ Am I known to him? He took the title of Avenger on
account of me, when he swore to spill my blood in the dust! In
the War I let myself be captured by the British rather than fall
into his hands, for in those days I was not yet ready to take the
field against him. Am I known to him! Bismillah! It was my knife
that made the scar across his cheek! Not only does he know and
remember me, but every man of his who sees that scar remembers me!"

"Then the Avenger will think I am you?" suggested Grim.

"Aye, and torture you with crucifixion on a dung-heap among the
flies, after you have been well beaten!"

"And my men will be considered your men?" Grim went on.

"Surely, and tortured, too!"

Grim made another long pause, and Ali Higg smirked in the belief
that he had found the weak place in Grim's courage. But he winced
when Grim countered calmly.

"So whatever my men and I do will be credited to you?"

"Allah!"

"So that if I fail I shall have added to the wrath of the Avenger?"

"As a man who takes a little stone and adds it to a mountain!"

"You'd better help!" said Grim.

"As God is my witness, I am afraid to go against Ben Saoud the
Avenger!" answered Ali Higg. "Besides, what can I do? You have
sent away my men--some in this direction, some in that."

"It was you who sent them away," Grim retorted. "All I did was to
postpone their return. Now I'll give you one last chance to use
your men on a campaign. After this once, peace!"

_"Mashallah!_ What shall I do with peace? How then shall I get
new camels?"

"Breed them!"

"How shall I get provisions?"

"Till the oases. Sow and reap!"

"How shall I make my name feared?"

"Make it respected! Was not Solomon the wisest man? Did he make
war? Rather he held the scales of justice evenly, and men looked
up to him."

"But the prophet Mahommed came after Solomon, and was wiser. He
made war!"

"I tell you, Ali Higg," said Grim, "you've made the last raid you
ever will with impunity! It's none of my business to ruin you.
I'd sooner see you establish yourself as a strong chief--strong
enough to keep the peace in these parts, and keeping it fairly.
But as Allah is my witness, Ali Higg, if you don't mend your ways
the British will come and mend them for you. What is more, I'll
take the field myself against you, and not quit until your bones
are bleaching! You may call me friend or enemy, but choose now!
Which is it to be?"

Ali Higg grew fidgety and his eyes shifted again. I didn't see
what Grim stood to score by extracting a promise of friendship
from such an obvious rogue; but you never know what Grim is
driving at until it suits him to make it clear.

_"Wallahi!_ If I say I am your friend," the Lion of Petra
answered presently, "what shall prevent you from going to
Saoud the Avenger and saying you are his friend?"

"True! What shall prevent?" said Grim.

"And joining with him against me? For all men love to take the
stronger side!"

Ali Higg called for his water-pipe, and a woman brought it
already filled with tobacco. She lighted it for him, and he
ordered her gruffly to get out. He was evidently feeling pleased
with himself over that piece of subtle reasoning. There was
silence for several minutes during which Grim produced a cigarette,
and old Ali Baba, grandfather and captain of our gang of thieves,
came to the mouth of the cave to make sure that all was well.
He excused himself by asking leave to send four men to feed
our camels, and thereafter sat down just around the corner
of the wall, where he could listen.

"Do you realize," Grim asked at last, "that if I proposed to take
sides against you I would simply take and kick you over this
cliff now?"

"Allah! That is not how friends talk!"

"Yet I haven't even disarmed you. Instead, my _hakim_ here has
lanced your boils and--"

"Aye! Leaving me too sore and weak to take the field against
anyone. I would bastinado such a _hakim_ if he were mine!"

He looked meaningly at me, but drew small satisfaction from it,
for I laughed. I dare say my hand was a fraction heavy with the
presentation razor that turned that trick. I can skin a dead lion
rather neatly, but no college of surgeons ever gave me its
parchment benediction.

"I don't wish you to take the field," said Grim.

_"Il hamdul illah!_* What then?" [* Thank God]

"I want your men."

At that the Lion of Petra swore a blue streak sixty seconds long
of brimstone Arab blasphemy. There is no such language as Arabic
to swear in. Not even the Missouri mule has kicked back at such
scurrilous expletives. Ali Baba thrust his old wrinkled face
around the corner and grinned.

"So that is the idea! So that is the foreign scheme! What son of
sixty dogs imagines he can lead my men?"

"They might find themselves pretty soon without a leader
otherwise!" suggested Grim.

Ali Higg ceased smoking. Rage and tobacco and helplessness didn't
seem to make a palatable mixture. To judge by his wandering eyes,
one second he seemed to be making up his mind to dash past us in
a bolt for liberty, the next he contemplated suicide in a duel to
the death with Grim. His left hand groped for his rifle behind
him, but he could not quite reach it without betraying what he
intended. Narayan Singh rattled the butt of his own rifle on the
cave floor, and I laid mine pretty ostentatiously across my
knees. There was no need for Grim to feel disturbed, and he
obviously didn't.

In fact, I think Grim was having a good time. I'm no fisherman
myself, lacking that kind of patience and getting more enjoyment
from the sports that call for strenuous exertion, but I've often
seen on the face of some fellow angling for a big one pretty much
the expression that Grim wore then. His lips were set in a firm
smile and his eyes shone.

"You will ask me for my wives presently!" said Ali Higg with
biting sarcasm.

"No, not all of them," Grim answered, "only one!"

"By the beard of the Prophet and my feet, what next! I have
divorced Ayisha--you may have the baggage. Much good may she
do you!"

"I witnessed the divorce," Grim answered, "so I did not count her
as your honor's wife."

"What then?"

Now the Lion's anger began to weaken into fear as he guessed the
drift of Grim's intention. You can't help feeling sorry for a
tyrant in a corner as one phase after another of his helplessness
dawns on him. Grim eased the torture at once. A man like Ali Higg
suffers more from beaten pride than we non-tyrants do from toothache.

"Never fear," he said; "I will not take Jael from you. I will
either bring or send her back to you safely afterwards, but she
must come."

Ali Higg looked incredulous, enraged, suspicious, treacherous in
turn, but made no answer. Another answered for him. There was an
inner cave all hung with fine Bokhara embroideries, opening into
that in which we sat. Jael herself stepped from the interior
gloom, stood still for a minute facing us all, and laughed.

"Enough, Ali; I will go with him!"

When we had first met her she was dressed in man's clothes, but
now all jeweled with turquoise and amber she wore the Bedouin
woman's regalia, and it suited her style of beauty. The paleness
of her freckled face was relieved by the veil that partly framed
it, and although she must have been deathly tired after the
recent adventure she looked younger and not so hard-drawn. Jael
was a perfect name for her--so perfect that you wondered whether
it was really hers and not adopted; you could easily imagine her
driving a tent-peg through the temples of a sleeping foe.

"Peace, woman!" growled Ali Higg.

"Peace, Ali? How can there be peace unless we let this Jimgrim
have his way? Refuse him, and we must deal with Saoud the
Avenger. Agree with him, and he may show us a way. If he fails,
we shall be no worse off. I go with him."

"Peace, woman, I say! Be silent!"

"Very well. I will go in silence. It may be thus that we shall
contrive peace. But I surely go with him!"

"Thou shalt not!"

"Ali, I say I go with him!"




CHAPTER II


    _"Once Before She Called Herself His Wife, on Half the Provocation."_



There is a certain type of captious critic who annoys me
horribly. He is usually a person who, by dint of vinegary
unbelief in those solid underlying qualities of human character
that decide most issues, has destroyed all his own power to make
good the grand assertion in that favorite song of Grim's and
mine, "I am the captain of my soul, I am the master of my fate!"

Such a man will tell you that Grim hadn't done much yet. We will
say (for I have heard him in a dozen places--on occasion he would
be a merely jealous official superior of Grim's, but now and
then, too, an after-dinner glutton by the fireside) that my
friend's fortuitous resemblance to Ali Higg had got us safely
into Petra, and the rest was sheer luck. The same man would
doubtless consider it a piece of luck that the sun got up at dawn
this morning and that the U.S. hasn't recently defaulted in its
bonds. All right: but why not use the luck?

Grim had used his, and improved on it. Narayan Singh has certain
qualities of romantic manhood that have made a soldier of him,
along with an ineradicable fault that has preserved him from
promotion and obscurity. It was Grim who put Narayan Singh to
work. Grim picked him out of the routine business in Jerusalem. I
have independent means enough to labor free of charge if I see
fit, and a pretty wide experience of emergencies that has
made me in a sort of way reliable without dulling my appetite
for adventure in the world's by-ways. It was Grim, not any
Government, who studied me from every angle when I called on him
in Jerusalem out of curiosity, and put me to the test in a dozen
ways without caring whether I suspected it or not, and bent
my liking for adventure to his own ends. He did it with my
permission, but not on my advice. And there wasn't another man
in the Near East who could have made those seventeen thieves of
ours risk their necks behind him without hope of loot.

You may say it was gall that let him make such dangerous use
of other people, and I'll agree with you. Don't you admire
a man with gall, provided it's not his own profit or some mere
commercial end he's serving? I take it Drake had gall, and John
Paul Jones, and Theodore Roosevelt as well as others whose memory
more men cherish than the haters of the great prefer to think.
I'm not one of those who choose to discredit any man who
does things.

And it was luck and gall in combination, if you like, that now
gave him the use of an "army" of a hundred and forty men, with a
woman to captain them whose brains had been the making of Ali
Higg. I won't say much for her military judgment, because we had
captured her too easily for her to boast on that score; but she
had the gift of bending Arabs to her will, and you know how it
goes in politics: if you own the man who can swing the votes, the
election is yours. The same principle applies in other walks
of life.

I have heard a missionary criticaster say that because Ali Higg's
army was mounted on stolen camels and fed on looted grain, as
well as armed for the most part with rifles filched from the
Allies, therefore Grim should have scorned to make use of it. But
a quarter of a century ago I left off arguing with men like that.
In the midst of unwesternized knavery Grim always uses the least
unmoral weapon he can find, and makes the most of it.

We followed him out of the cave now to the narrow path that wound
along the face of the cliff to a point where it met a flight of
ancient stone steps something like a mile long. (The ancients who
carved Petra out of sandstone evidently didn't mind a toilsome
climb to church, for there was a place of sacrifice at the top of
the hill.) We sat down beside Ali Baba in a row with his men,
overlooking the Roman amphitheatre, whose tiers and tiers of
stone seats glittered in the sun.

The valley two hundred feet beneath us, inside the amphitheatre
and all about it, was black with goat-hair Bedouin tents, in
which the wives and daughters of Ali Higg's army were busy with
their morning work, of doing nothing, leisurely. There were
eagles soaring above us, whose shadows raced on the dazzling rock
below, and innumerable kites were circling on about a level with
our eyes. You could sometimes catch the bronze sheen on their
backs, and watch the play of their wing-tips as they swerved.
Along a ledge on the opposite cliff sat a row of vultures in fair
imitation of us.

The colors of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado are about the same
as those of Petra--the raw, real color out of which the paint
for the universe was mixed with a hard light from a polished
turquoise sky to judge it all by, provided your brain will work
in front of any such kaleidoscope. But we weren't there for
the view.

"We'll give Jael Higg a chance to talk her old man round," said
Grim in English; and Ali Baba caught the gist of it. (He knew
enough English in the old days to rob tourists when the Turks
weren't looking, and enough Turkish to cheat the police over the
commission afterwards.)

"Whatever talking a woman does--and especially that woman--is the
woof of trouble, Jimgrim!" he said warningly.

But I saw other trouble coming, and laughed aloud, for which I
cursed myself a moment afterwards. A laugh is pretty easily
misunderstood in that land.

The cliff bulged outward on our left beyond the opening of Ali
Higg's cave, and around the bend there was another cave that we
hadn't investigated; but judging by the chatter of female voices
it was the headquarters of Ali Higg's harem. He evidently
overrode the rule about providing a separate establishment for
each additional wife.

Around that corner now Ayisha came--Ayisha the divorced--with all
her belongings done up in a huge blue bundle, and the whole lot
balanced on her head. The wives of a polygamist are not, I
believe, noted for lying down together like the leopard and the
kid of prophecy, and a chorus of mocking laughter followed her.
Seeing and hearing me cough out that unconsidered "Aha!" she
naturally supposed me to be mocking her, too, and we were mortal
enemies from that minute. At least, she was my mortal enemy, and
I haven't learned yet how to keep an affair like that strictly
one-sided. I once knew a man who kept a female panther for a
pet; he used to say the dear thing only needed humoring, but I
remember attending his funeral, because there wasn't any parson,
and I had to read the service. I kept the panther's hide for a
souvenir--with a neat round hole between the eyes to show how she
and I made friends at last. You couldn't help thinking of a
panther when you saw Ayisha angry.

Balancing that enormous bundle (full of the loot of villages, no
doubt) with the grace that is born in the Bedouin women, she made
as if to pass us, and I think she would have done if Grim hadn't
spoken, for she was proud.

"Ya sit Ayisha,* what have I done that you should treat me
scornfully?" he asked. [* O Lady Ayisha.].

"Have a care!" groaned Ali Baba. Having raised sixteen sons and
grandsons he posed as an authority on women. She turned to face
Grim, her body quivering like a fine Damascus blade as she
balanced the load. He smiled up at her, and she seemed to waver
between liking for him and disgust at me. Then with the sudden
swiftness of a female panther making up her mind she answered his
smile with melting eyes and flashing teeth, and opened the war
with me by dumping the bundle into my lap. It would have damaged
a smaller man, for it weighed more than a hundred-weight and
there were brass bowls in it, and knives and things like that,
but I caught it on knees and shins and, although I didn't plan
to, kicked it forward so that it rolled over the edge of the path
and fell two hundred feet on to the ruined roof of an ancient
tomb below.

You know how a panther lays his ears back? She expressed anger
just as effectually, even if you couldn't exactly say how she did
it. It wasn't any use apologizing. I sat rubbing my shins, with
both eyes watching for the dagger I felt sure would come my way
in a second. But she passed the buck to Grim.

"Kill that fool for me!" she commanded him; and he laughed at me
whimsically sideways.

"But I need the man," he said. "He is the _hakim._ He has the
chest of medicines. Who else shall physic us?"

"Bah!" she exclaimed. "I would bastinado such a fool! He is the
son of sixty dogs who gave me baby's pap instead of poison for
the Lion in there! Thanks to that fool I am divorced instead of a
widow! Throw him down after my baggage!"

"We can recover most of it, and what has been broken shall be
replaced," Grim answered. "What are your plans, O Lady Ayisha?"

"I go to find my people."

"Where are they?"

"Only Allah knows."

You see, the desert hasn't changed much. Hagar did the same thing
once, going out alone into the waste of sand and rock, in search
of a tiny wandering tribe whose tents are here today and gone
tomorrow; and thousands since have done the same thing, without
enough acquaintance with the angels to get water whenever they
need it.

"Be seated," said Grim, and she took him at his word, thrusting
herself down between him and me, giving me the point of her
elbow. I shifted along close to Ali Baba so as to allow her a
full six feet of clearance, still bearing that possible dagger
in mind.

"And now," growled Ali Baba in my ear, "the _bint_* believes she
has him! He has bidden her sit beside him before witnesses, and
has promised her a new outfit! Once before she called herself his
wife on half the provocation; and now who shall deny her?"

---------
* Bint. Daughter, girl; in this case a disrespectful word.
--------

"He will," I retorted. "Jimgrim is no Arab. We don't do things
that way in the West."

"This is the East," he answered, "and she will do things her way!
_Inshallah,_* Jimgrim may prove clever enough to foil her, but I
doubt it." [* If God wills.]

But more than cleverness was going to enter into Grim's dealings
with that young woman. He was smiling, and a hint of worry
underlay the smile. Nobody but a born fool would think of
applying Western standards to judge her conduct by, and though
she had meant to poison Ali Higg there wasn't a doubt she had had
lots of provocation. It was true we hadn't invited her to poison
him, but she had made the attempt on Grim's account none the less
and we had taken full advantage of it. If Grim had been disposed
to leave her at a loose end I wouldn't have agreed to that,
and even the wild Lothario Narayan Singh, I think, would have
objected. But Grim would be the last man to leave her unprovided
for; I have seen him spend his scant spare hours befriending
murderers whom he has landed in the gaol.

"We go south to deal with Saoud, who calls himself the Avenger,"
Grim said to her. "Will you come with us?"

"I go where my lord wishes," she answered, in the sort of voice
that Ruth may have used to Boaz in the Bible story. Ruth came
from that desert country, too.

She must have known Grim was an American, but I really think she
meant what she said. Out in the sunlight there he was a lot
better looking than Ali Higg, because his face wasn't seamed by
vice and anger; and she had grown so used to being owned by a man
who resembled Grim superficially that it wouldn't be much of a
task to transfer her affections. Grim, for one thing, had no
other wife, and did not bastinado people.

"Until you find your people or another husband you must regard me
as a father," Grim said kindly.

"But why should I look for another husband?" she asked.

That highly interesting question wasn't answered just then. Jael
Higg came out, looked at the two of them, and laughed in that
mean, metallic way that women use to one another. But I think
that she, too, suspected that there might be a dagger to reckon
with, for she made no direct comment.

"I am ready," she said in English. "My husband has agreed to my
going with you. I shall bring a woman to keep me in countenance,
but"--(she glanced brazenly down the line of our men and raised
her voice, finishing the speech in Arabic)--"I don't suppose
there will be a man among you rash enough to try any liberties!"
I guess she was right, too, for her thin lips weren't of the
yielding kind.

Some spirit of devilment took hold of me then, and forgetting my
role of Indian _hakim_ I horned in with a suggestion.

"Won't Ayisha serve the purpose, Lady Jael?"

Well, that woman was used to handling men by brow-beating and
overbearing them. I suppose she had tongue-lashed into subjection
some of the toughest characters between the Dead Sea and the
Persian Gulf, and you get out of the habit of mincing words when
that sort of job occurs frequently. You get fluent-acrid-fiery;
or at least that had happened to her. And she turned loose the
full flood of her vocabulary on to me, speaking past Ayisha as if
that young woman never existed, but making it perfectly obvious
that we might divide the epithets between us. I dare say some of
it was meant for Grim, too. The fact was that the situation had
got on her nerves and all her pent-up rage had to find some
sort of outlet. I had simply provided her an outlet; and Grim
his opportunity.

He waited until she had finished, and then got to his feet
and yawned.

"Let's have a clear understanding on two points to begin with,
Lady Jael," he said in English. "I'll answer for my men. And two
women on this expedition are enough."

The effect was as if he had struck her. She flinched away from
him, and he followed up before she could recover and give tongue.

"I'll give all the orders. Everybody else obeys."

She bit her lip and turned her back on him. And then I realized
that Ali Higg had been quietly watching us from inside the cave.
She wasn't used to being rebuked in front of him. He came out and
stood in the entrance, smiling ironically. I don't think he knew
any English, but he appreciated that that termagant head-wife of
his had met a man who wasn't in the least afraid of her, and who
knew how to manage her; and he looked almost good-tempered as he
watched that happen which he had never been able to achieve.

"Call Yussuf," ordered Grim, producing his writing-pad and
fountain-pen, and sitting down again as if the incident were closed.

Now Yussuf was the spy, you may remember, with a home in Jaffa,
who had brought word to Ali Higg about the plans and disposition
of the British Army in Palestine, and had fallen into our hands
on his way back--a very dark-skinned man with little gold
ear-rings, whose normal profession was spying for both sides to
any quarrel. He was shoved along the ledge from his place at the
end of the line by Ali Baba's men, and stood shifting from one
foot to the other in front of Grim, clasping his hands first in
front and then behind him as he watched Grim write.

Grim made considerable fuss with two envelopes, addressing both,
and sealing one inside the other. He evidently wanted to be seen
doing that--wanted Ali Higg to see it; so I asked him in Arabic,
why two envelopes? There was no need to answer me, because Ali
Higg made it clear that he was watching and listening. Jael, too,
swallowed down her rage and faced about. Grim addressed himself
to Yussuf.

"What do you want me to do with you?" he asked.

"Father of irony! What a question! Jaffa is my home. I was on my
way thither when your honors decided otherwise. As a fish yearns
for the sea I long for Jaffa."

"Can you make your way alone?"

"Inshallah."

"Would you like to try?"

"Give me but your permission and a camel, and see me put the
telegraph to shame!"

"If I give you a letter to take to Jerusalem, will you deliver it?"

"Father of surprises! What is in the letter? Shall I carry then
an order for my own arrest?"

"No. But there is an order inside that you are to be paid a full
week's wages as a messenger, provided you deliver the letter
without delay."

"Allah ykafik anni!" * [* God reward you on my behalf.]

"You know what will probably happen if Ali Higg's men catch you?"

"Trust me! I know the dogs! They will find it easier to catch
the wind!"

"And you know what will happen to your Jaffa property if you try
to play a trick on me?"

"Your honors had no need to say that. I am a loyal man."

"I know you for a spy-for-both-sides," answered Grim. "If one
overtook you on the way and offered you money for the letter I
shall give you, it would be your natural course to take the money
and let the letter go. That is why I warn you about your Jaffa
property. If you part with the one you shall lose the other."

"Trust me!"

"I don't trust you. I offer you payment and impose conditions.
I give you clearly to understand that failure to deliver that
letter in Jerusalem will involve a definite and heavy penalty.
Now choose: will you carry the letter or remain here?"

"As well ask a thirsty man what he will do for a drink of water!
Give me the letter!"

Grim gave it to him, and Jael returned into the cave to talk with
Ali Higg. Despite the booing she had recently received, Ayisha
got up and walked back toward the women's quarters as if she had
forgotten something, and we saw no more of her for several hours.
Grim's whole manner changed instantly. With a glance over his
shoulder to make sure that neither Ali Higg could see him, he
pulled out a loaded Army revolver from under his cloak and passed
it to Yussuf along with a handful of extra cartridges.

"Now go!" he ordered in a low voice. "One of Ali Baba's sons
shall go below with you and pick you out a camel. Ride straight
for that oasis where Ali Higg's army is camped."

"But they will capture me!"

"Listen, will you! If you go now you'll get there about nightfall.
I don't think they'll be there, but if you see their camp-fires,
make your camel kneel, and wait until they're gone. Better
approach the oasis from the northward. They'll move off toward
the south. The minute they're out of sight, feed your camel
and then make for El-Mann; from there on to Jerusalem the
way is easy."

"But ---- "

"You have your orders. Go!"

One of Ali Baba's sons went along with him to select a camel, and
nobody except Yussuf worried on that score. We all knew which
critter he would get; there was only one worthless specimen. Old
Ali Baba laughed.

"The crows will say Allah is kind!" he remarked. "They would
prefer to pick the bones of a fatter man, but any corpse is meat
to them! Both Jael and the Lion know he carries that agreement.
Father of ruses, he will be dead and they will have the letter
before midnight; but why? What is to be gained by that?"

"Nothing," Grim answered. "But he'll live and they won't have it,
if you ride hard."

"I?"

"Surely--you. The men at the oasis know you. I'm going to give
you another letter presently, which Ali Higg will sign, ordering
Ibrahim ben Ah to take those men southward at once and meet us at
a place in the desert half-way between here and Abu Lissan. Take
the best camel we've got, and keep to the southward. You'll reach
the oasis well ahead of Yussuf. The Lion is sure to want to send
either Jael herself or one of his own men instead of you; but I
shall insist on your going. Then either the Lion or Jael will
probably give you another letter with secret orders to Ibrahim
ben Ah to capture Yussuf, kill him or bribe him, and take his
letter from him. They'll very likely bribe you: in that case
accept the bribe, but don't do what they say. Tear their letter
up, or burn it in the desert. I think Yussuf will get through; at
any rate, I've given him his chance."

"And if not?" I interrupted.

"Then, as Ali Baba remarked, the crows will eat him."

"That's Yussuf's end of it," said I. "But how about us? There'll
be nothing then to keep the Lion and Jael from turning on us.
They'll have that precious letter to the bank back, and--"

"Not they," Grim answered, smiling. "That letter to the bank is
still in my pocket. If by some accident they happen to capture
Yussuf all they'll find out is that I didn't give it to him after
all. If they don't capture him--as I hope they won't--they'll
still think he had it. They're likely not to turn on us until
they've got that piece of paper back, but they'd surely try to
murder me if they believed it was on my person. I'd sooner they
had it in for Yussuf! And at that, we've given Yussuf a better
chance for his life than he'd have had if we left him here with
Ali Higg."

He said all that in English to me in a low voice, and Ali
Baba, leaning past me to listen, only picked a word out here
and there. I had to translate it for him; and when I had
finished he sat meditating for a minute or two, with an
expression on his wrinkled old face like that of a man watching
a motion picture--as if somewhere in the distance he were
visualizing all the details on a screen.

_"Wallahi!_ That is good," he said at last. "I am an old man. I
lack sleep; and my bones are weary. But a man can play such a
part proudly. There is cunning in it. Allah! What a thief was
lost when Jimgrim took to soldiering! I will carry word for him
to Ibrahim ben Ah if it is my last ride, and if they crucify me
at the other end! But I am an old fox and, inshallah, no fool
follower of Ali Higg shall not suspect me of a trick."

He was so enamored of the plan that he had to get his sons and
grandsons in a circle on the ledge and explain it all to them,
pointing out the pros and cons of it, and delivering a final
lecture on the general art of practicing deception.

"None of us would ever have been in gaol if we had known as much
as Jimgrim," I heard him say. "Observe: Jimgrim has their order
on the bank for fifty thousand pounds. Let us suppose that Ali
Higg and his wife Jael are the police. They know he has it. Does
he bury it? Does he run away? He is no such fool. He lets them
see him give it to another; he provides as far as possible that
the other shall get safely away; and all the while he keeps the
order in his pocket! Remains nothing but to provide a messenger
for the police, who will surely not deliver their message; and he
thinks of that, too! Learn, ye dullards! Learn from Jimgrim, and
there shall be no such thieves as ye in Asia!"

It all worked out exactly as Grim had foreseen. He wrote out a
letter in Arabic to Ibrahim ben Ah in the oasis, ordering him to
take those hundred and forty men of Ali Higg's to a point nearly
due south, about half-way between Petra and Abu Lissan. Then he
interrupted Ali Higg and Jael in the cave where they were
whispering together, and requested the Lion to sign it.

The Lion took his time, reading the letter two or three times
over, and Jael offered to go down to the camp below and find a
man who would carry it.

"I will send one of my men," answered Grim, and it seemed she had
already learned better than to argue with him. So, while the Lion
gained time by studying the letter and asking Grim a lot of
random questions, Jael went out and, taking care to turn her back
to me, asked in a low voice who was the man who would carry a
letter for Jimgrim.

Ali Baba stood up at once. She walked past him and signed to him
to follow her just out of sight around the corner of the cliff.
Whatever took place there must have agreed with Ali Baba's
appetite, for he came back with his old eyes gleaming. He watched
her return into the cave and then turned to his sons.

"I drove a good hard bargain with the daughter of corruption!" he
remarked, and they all nodded. I never found out how much she
gave him, but dare wager that he extracted every sou the traffic
would stand.

A minute after that Grim came out with the order for the "army"
and sent the old man packing; after which Narayan Singh had a
word to say. Grim always listens alertly when Narayan Singh
speaks; for that long-headed Sikh would be fit to command an
army, if it weren't for one little peculiarity. About once in six
months he is as likely as not to parade without his pants, and
until the fumes of whisky die away the things he will say to
his beloved colonel wouldn't get past any censor. He doesn't
get punished much because he's such a splendid soldier; but
they can't very well promote him.

"As I understand it, _sahib,_ the purpose is to clip this Ali
Higg's claws and yet save him from being wiped out by his
enemies."

Grim nodded.

"He has two little armies. One, of a hundred and forty men under
Ibrahim ben Ah, is to work with us?"

Grim nodded again.

"The other, of four and forty men, is up somewhere in the
hills hereabouts?"

"Somewhere near the Beni Aroun village. They've been raiding it."

"And all the men that are left to Ali Higg are old ones and
weaklings--sick, wounded, and what not?"

"True. What of it?"

"This Ali Higg is a devil, Jimgrim _sahib._ He has a bad name.
The enemies of such as him will be swift to take advantage. If
you wish to see the last of him, good: leave him here with his
handful! I have nine piastres in my pocket; that would be a too
high price to pay for a lease on the Lion's life in that event.
If you wish him to continue to hold Petra, better let him call in
the other four and forty."

Grim laughed curtly.

"We'll not only let him have those men, Narayan Singh, but we'll
provide him a good reason, too, for keeping them in Petra and not
clapping them on our trail to pounce on us while we sleep."

"Shall we sleep here?"

"Not if I know it!" answered Grim.

Having nothing better to do, and rather liking to exercise my
wits with puzzles, I watched the eagles and tried to figure out
what Grim might do to keep the Lion of Petra and his four and
forty occupied. I thought of a hundred and one obviously futile
stunts, but not one that would have fooled me if I had been Ali
Higg. I asked Narayan Singh what he would do in the circumstances.

"That will be a simple matter, _sahib,"_ he answered. So I damned
him suitably, not seeing why a Sikh should put on airs with me.

"Any ignorant fool can say a thing looks simple," said I. "You
know no more than I do what the answer is."

"Seeing it is I most likely who must do the _bandobast,_* that
may be true," he answered patiently, "for many an ignorant man
has served a purpose in his day. I will see now if our Jimgrim
thinks as I do." [* Hindustanee word: Arrangement]

And instead of telling me his plan he went and talked with Grim
in undertones. Grim nodded.

Meanwhile Ayisha had returned and was sitting quietly by, with
her back to the wall of the cliff and an expression of masked
alertness. They talk a lot about the fatalism of the East, and
especially its women, but in the sense in which the word is
usually understood I have not seen much of it. I suppose you
might call a cat watching a mouse-hole a fatalist. Ayisha was
watching points, and as alert for opportunity as ever was the
brightest Broadway chorus lady. (Given the right garments and a
little training she would have looked well in the front row of a
chorus, by the way, for she had a splendid figure and could show
her teeth.)

Narayan Singh returned and sat down beside her. He looked
amorous, the ability to do that being part of his equipment as a
soldier. His great black beard was a little bit unkempt, and his
turban slightly awry, but liquid brown eyes and a flashing smile
made up for all that.

"Father of bristles, what do you want?" she demanded; for he sat
so close that she had to pay attention to him.

"Sweetheart," he answered, "you know I have loved you since the
moment we first met!"

"As a hog loves truffles!" she retorted.

I thought that was a pretty poor beginning, but Narayan Singh is
one of those soldiers who are only spurred to greater daring by
defeat in the first few skirmishes.

"Nay, but as the bright sun loves a flower!" he boomed. "Consider
destiny, and wonder at it! Here was I born half a world away,
hurled into wars and plucked forth with only a wound or two, sent
on the wings of fortune into foreign lands and preserved by
endless miracles from death and marriage, simply that I might
meet thee, O lady with the eyes of a gazelle!"

Experts I have talked with say that all women should be carried
by direct assault. I don't profess to know. But could you make
love to a woman that way, with nearly twenty people looking on?
Our Arabs had started a game with dice, since the prospect of
death had lost immediate interest; but they left off to watch and
listen. Realizing that he had an attentive audience, Narayan
Singh began to show his real paces.

He did not propose, though, to admit he was a Sikh in that land
of Moslem fanatics. Our men all knew his true religion and
nationality, but that was no reason why Ayisha should.

"We Pathans," he boasted, "understand the royal road of love! Our
hearts burn within us and our spirits blaze when we at last meet
the women of our destiny. And oh! what fortune for the woman who
is loved by one of us! For we are men--strong, fiery-blooded men,
whose arms are a comfort for our women and a terror to our foes!
Hah! Lady Ayisha, smile and bless Allah, who has brought a Pathan
of the Orakzai to lay his fortune at your feet!"

"Pig!" she answered. (Possibly she had overheard him say just now
that his fortune amounted to nine piastres; that would be, say,
forty-five cents at the old rate of exchange.)

"Nay, lady, call me lover! Never was such burning love as mine!
You doubt it? For a smile of yours I would pull the King of
England off his throne and take the jewels of his crown to make a
necklace for you! Behold: we march today against this braggart at
Abu Lissan who calls himself the Avenger. A bold one is he? A
captain of eight hundred men? What do you covet of his? His ears?
His nose? His head-wife for a servant? Say the word and see!
Test my love, beloved! Put it to the proof!"

His avowal was saved from entire absurdity by the fact that he
had made the same sort of advances to her most of the way from
Hebron; so she had a right to consider that he meant it, even if
the proposal did not charm. She who had deliberately laid her net
for Grim, in a land where all except the properly negotiated
marriages are affairs of sudden fancy and violent abduction,
could hardly doubt his earnestness. And, as I have said, all she
was watching for was opportunity.

"You would not lift a hand for me," she answered. "Everybody
knows the Pathan."

"Not lift a hand for thee, beloved! Hah! I would murder kings!"

"Nor would you tell me one secret."

"Try me! I would break open a king's letter, if thy tender eyes
as much as glanced at it!"

"You would tell me anything?"

"Anything! By Allah and the devil's bones, I would tell you
anything! We Pathans are no half-lovers!"

"Very well. Then tell me what to do to please Jimgrim," she answered.

He contrived to look thoroughly indignant. It was a good piece of
acting. Jealousy blazed from his eyes.

"Do you want me to slay Jimgrim?" he demanded.

But she could act, too. She smiled swiftly, as if his passionate
avowal had not been quite without effect.

"Unless I please Jimgrim," she answered, "he might send me away;
and then how could I listen to your boastings?"

"Ah!" he answered. "All lovely women have the wisdom of a snake!
That is true. That is good reasoning. He might dismiss you. Ah!
Well, listen then, beloved. Ali Higg has four and forty men, who
will presently return to this place. It would please Jimgrim to
know for a certainty that they will remain here, and not follow
to attack us from the rear. Therefore, go thou, beloved, and
say to the wives of those men in the camp below there that our
Jimgrim has promised two of them apiece to us, his men. Say that
our going is but a ruse; that we shall return when the four and
forty have left Petra, and carry off our pick of the women.
You may as well add that the only way to prevent that will be
for them to keep their husbands close at hand. Thus you will
satisfy Jimgrim."

She turned that over in her mind for half a minute and then got
up without answering him. She did not even glance at any of us,
but walked straight away along the narrow ledge, and started down
the ancient stone stairway toward the women's camp.

As soon as she was out of earshot Narayan Singh looked over
toward me and showed his white teeth in a perfectly prodigious
smile.

"That is the way in which such things are done, _bahadur!"_
he remarked.




CHAPTER III


    _"We're All Set Now."_



Those four and forty men of Ali Higg's who had been raiding the
Beni Aroun village were a much too dangerous factor for Grim to
take unnecessary chances with. Ali Higg, Jael, and Ayisha were
accounted for; we knew nearly every detail of their movements
since we entered Petra. But there were other women, whom we had
hardly more than seen, and some whom we had not seen; to say
nothing of the handful of men described by Narayan Singh as the
"weak and wounded," whose number we did not know exactly, and one
of whom might have left in secret to bring the four and forty in.

It was likely we could fight the four and forty and escape
without more than a fair proportion of casualties. But with only
twenty men all told we couldn't afford to lose one; and there
were the Bedouin women in the camp to be reckoned with. They were
pretty fierce, those women. Lawrence held Petra with a scratch
regiment of them in one of his famous battles, and thoroughly
routed Turkish regulars, who are not troops to be despised. And
now that Ayisha was spreading among them the report of our
intention to carry off the youngest and best-looking there was
more than a chance that they might send a messenger on their own
account to summon their husbands in a hurry.

That trick of Narayan Singh's was one of those boomerang
contrivances, in other words, that have to be snappily handled.
If we were out of the way before the husbands returned, well and
good, they were extremely likely to insist on staying in Petra to
defend their women; but if they should return before we were out
of the way, they would almost certainly attack us as the best
means of preventing what we were supposed to contemplate.

So, although we all needed sleep, and although Ali Higg importuned
Grim to spend that night in Petra--doubtless for private reason
not unconnected with those four and forty men, although he
made a great to-do about hospitality--Grim wasted no more
time. And there was another reason. The women were not wholly
without true ground for anxiety. Our Arabs were professionals
from El-Kalil, the home of the proudest trained thieves in
the world. Thieving, to them, made the combined appeal of
sport and guild craftsmanship; and there seems to be no such
exhilarating sport as stealing women, that being the one game in
the world that knows no national boundaries. Now that Ali Baba
was away, whose word was absolute law to his sons and grandsons,
the sixteen were not going to be any too easy to control--not
with a bait like that Bedouin camp under their acquisitive noses.

When Grim announced himself ready to start there were only eight
of them in sight. The rest had vanished, and there was only one
direction they could have taken--down that mile-long flight of
stone steps. Thereafter there were two ways: to the left toward
"Pharaoh's Treasury," where our camels waited; to the right in
the direction of the women's tents. It was a safe bet which way
they had gone.

Most people think that generalship consists solely in the art of
winning or losing battles, but there couldn't be a greater
mistake. If that were really so, then chess-players would conquer
the world, and all our arm-chair theorists would be enthroned as
an aristocracy.

It is soldiers who win battles. The good general is the man who
can get them to the spot without leaving more than a third of
them behind in clink and another third in hospital. The hardest
test of a man's manhood lies in leadership. Can he or can't he
make the lame dog and the rascal so respect him that they'll
disregard their own immediate comfort and profit and give their
best behind him in the cause he favors.

Of course, no two men are quite alike in their method, and there
aren't any definite rules, or we'd all learn them and all want to
lead. Ali Higg's method, for instance, was crucifixion or the
bastinado for disobedience: Jael's was something like it,
with scarifying language for milder cases. She looked at our
diminished line, and glanced at Grim, and smiled ironically.

"Let's go," said Grim.

So off we marched along the overhanging ledge, Grim leading,
Jael next, then Narayan Singh, then I, followed by our remnant
bringing up the rear, chorusing abuse of Ali Higg for a mean host
who had given them no presents. The Lion of Petra stood in the
cave-mouth watching us with an expression such as you can see in
New York any day on the face of an obvious criminal who has been
acquitted on a technicality--near-incredulity, relief, cunning,
and contempt for authority that can't convict him.

It seemed to me merely a question of how many hours it would take
that tough Lion of Petra to recover from the lancing of his boils
before he would set out to avenge himself on our rear. Men of
his ambitious mold think more, as a rule, of personal vengeance
than of high strategy; they are made short-sighted by the very
qualities that have brought a semblance of success. Without Jael
to counsel him he wasn't likely to betray much wisdom, and we had
her in control; but she and Ali Higg had done a lot of whispering
together in the cave, and although I'm no kind of judge of women,
not having had much opportunity to learn the home-keeping sciences,
I was ready to bet that minute that a plan was in the wind for
cooking our goose thoroughly.

And so, as it transpired, there was; but not even Grim, who
can see farther than most men through the fog of any Eastern
entanglement, had the remotest suspicion of what its form was
going to take.

If it had been my business I would have turned to the right at
the foot of that ancient stairway. Having handled lawless natives
by the score in various parts of Africa, my method would have
been to go into that women's camp and rout my rascals out of it
with a heavy fist for those I could overtake and a long whip for
the rest of them. Grim turned straight to the left and never said
a word, merely nodding recognition of Ayisha as she came along
and joined us.

When we passed the mass of ruins on to which I had dropped
Ayisha's bundle of belongings he sent two men to climb and fetch
it. The force of the fall had burst it open, but Ayisha had
enough faith in the future to stand by and make sure that they
filched nothing, so, though the things were all scattered about
and a few bits of hardware were smashed, the total loss didn't
amount to much. I thought it a good chance to try to make friends
again, and offered to pay her cash for the damage.

"Better laugh at me now while you dare," she retorted. _"Inshallah,_
when the time comes you shall pay with all you have!"

I was sorry for her, and didn't feel like laughing, yet what else
was there to do? If I had appeared to take her threat seriously
that would only have flattered her malicious instinct and made
matters that much worse. Glancing upward at the ledge I could
see the Lion of Petra standing watching us, also contemplating
mischief. She had been taught in his school and, like him, would
certainly take a yard for every inch you yielded. So I did
laugh--and regretted it later.

"You scare me out of my poor wits," said I.

"Since when has an Indian had wits?" she answered. "Allah made
Indians to be the scorn of all decent folk!"

Wouldn't you have felt flattered by that? I did. If I had come so
far without betraying my nationality to that young woman's keen
perception it was likely I might go the rest of the way without
failing Grim. And isn't it remarkable how an unexpected discovery
like that sets you to exaggerating all the by-play with which you
have hitherto half-unconsciously contrived a deception? All the
way to Pharaoh's Treasury I walked, scratched myself, spat,
belched, and volunteered comments like an Indian, until Narayan
Singh laughed at me.

"Has the _sahib_ heard the fable of the man who would be king?"
he asked. "No? He acted so like a king in advance that the people
decided he would be no novelty, and did away with him."

There was something in what he said. If you act a part instead of
thinking and being it, they'll find you out. So I left off
playing Indian.

I told in another story all about that fabled Treasure House
of Pharaoh--really a temple to Isis, that stands facing the
twelve-foot gap in a cliff, which is Petra's only entrance gate.
Our camels knelt where we had left them in the shade of the
enormous porch, and grumbled at being loaded nearly as abominably
as our eight Arabs did at having to do the work short-handed.
They wanted to wait for the others, but Grim would have none of
that; so they fired a last fusilade of shots at the great stone
urn above the porch that every Bedouin believes to contain
Pharaoh's jewels, and we started.

We had crossed the intervening space, and Grim on the leading
camel was already through the gap into the Valley of Moses, when
I saw our laggards coming. They had additional camels with them,
which we needed, having lost three in the skirmish when we
captured Jael; but they had brought six, and three of the beasts
were loaded. I called out to Grim, but he did not stop.

"Aha!" laughed Narayan Singh. "We shall now see what the major
_sahib_ has to say to stragglers!"

We were half a mile into the valley, at that point a quarter of a
mile wide with six-hundred-foot cliffs on either hand, when they
overtook us and formed the tail of our line. They said nothing,
and none of the eight who had stayed with us made any comment.
Part of the game was evidently to hope that Grim would take no
notice, and as for the loot, that was all in the family anyhow.
But hope that springs eternal isn't always blessed. Grim called a
halt at last.

The fellow who had led the filching expedition was Mujrim, Ali
Baba's oldest son, a man bigger than I am and about as heavy--a
serene-browed, black-bearded, sunny-tempered fellow (when not
crossed) and the logical captain of the gang in the old man's
absence. Grim counted heads, found all present, and asked what
the disappearance had meant. Mujrim spoke up for his brothers.

"We thought there were camels needed, so we went and procured them."

"Good," Grim answered. "Did you pay for them?"

_"Wallahi!_ Who would pay thieves for something they had stolen?"

"What else did you bring?"

"Oh, a present or two. The Lion of Petra proved himself a mean
man, for he gave us nothing except a meagre bellyful up there on
the ledge. But the women in the camp were ashamed of his meanness
and treated us handsomely."

"Are the presents all in those bundles on the three camels?"

"Surely. Where else?"

"Nothing under your shirt, for instance?"

"Nothing."

"Let me see."

"By the bones of God's Prophet, Jimgrim, everything is in
those bundles."

"If you're telling the truth, prove it. Let me see."

Neither smiling nor frowning, in fact giving no hint of his
ultimate intention, Grim drove his camel closer; and Mujrim edged
away, beginning to look worried, until at last he was alongside
me and ready to go on retreating if Grim insisted.

"Search him, please!" said Grim.

I believe in obeying orders. You don't have to follow a man if
you don't care for his leadership. I have chosen to differ from
more than one man after the event, but never yet spoiled a
leader's game by hesitating in a climax. Moreover, on one
occasion when the leading was up to me, I remember I bent a man
half-out of his senses for arguing with me in a pinch; whereas if
he had chosen the proper time to air his views we might have
agreed, or else parted good friends. And what is sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander. I laid my left hand on Mujrim's
arm and thrust my right into the bosom of his shirt, bringing out
a couple of amber necklaces worth at least a hundred dollars each.

I liked Mujrim from the first. I liked him even better in that
minute. Ninety-nine Arabs out of any hundred would have pulled a
knife at me. He struck me with his fist--a clean, manly blow
above the belt, heavy enough to have knocked me out of the
saddle if I hadn't expected something of the sort. His brothers
naturally drew their weapons. They probably expected me to draw
mine. But I was satisfied for the moment to keep hold of the
necklaces and be on guard against a second blow.

"Why strike the _hakim?"_ Grim asked him. "He obeyed my order.
His act was mine."

_"Mashallah!"_ he retorted. "That is a wonder of a saying! If it
is true, then it was you I struck! Behold, I strike again!"

And he let out another blow at me that would have broken the arm
of a weaker man.

"Patience, _sahib,_ patience!" Narayan Singh whispered, edging
his camel close to mine; but big-game hunting is a pretty good
teacher of that. It was clear enough that Grim was up against
mutiny. Jael Higg was smiling jubilantly in that handsome,
thin-lipped way of hers, and Ayisha was calling out aloud to
Mujrim to "kill the cursed Indian and be done with it." I kept my
eye on Grim. He approached within arm's length, and for a minute
I thought he was going to be crazy enough to accept the blows as
having landed on himself, and strike back. In that event, unless
Grim should use his pistol he was as good as dead, for the Arab's
blood was up. But he chose to ignore the talk.

"We'll keep the camels and pay Lady Jael for them," he said
quietly. "You and the other seven walk back and deposit what you
call the presents in the Treasury, where the women will find them
sooner or later."

_"Wallah!_ Am I dreaming? Who orders me to walk back?"

"Right smartly too!" Grim answered. "I'm not going to wait a week
for you."

"Allah!"

Mujrim's face was black with rage by that time--the swift,
volcanic temper of a lawless fellow checked. But even with the
blood up back of his eyes I think he recognized that Grim meant
to master him at all costs. There wasn't a trace of anxiety on
Grim's face--nothing whatever but determination.

"I told you all clearly before we started that I'd have no
looting on this trip," said Grim. "You can't take advantage of me
just because Ali Baba isn't here. Carry that stuff back. I shall
wait here and search you all when you return, so you'd better
bear that in mind."

Remember, those weren't men who had had military training. The
only people they had ever probably obeyed were Ali Baba, whose
lightest word was law, the gaoler at El-Kalil during periods of
imprisonment, and Grim himself. Mujrim was like a big dog with a
bone in his teeth, and the pack gathered closer around him, ready
to help him keep it.

"By the Prophet's feet," roared Mujrim, "these camels are all
ours. We will find our father Ali Baba and return to El-Kalil.
We are free men!"

"Free to obey me!" Grim answered. "You weren't conscripted; you
volunteered. Now, no nonsense! Get busy!" It was touch and go for
about ten seconds. I think if Grim had made a false move then,
such as reaching for a weapon or using an oath, they would have
carried out that threat and deserted us. The near impossibility
of finding Ali Baba, and the probability of being all killed by
Ali Higg's men if they did find him, wouldn't have prevented
them. But Grim made no false move.

I've always envied that ability in other men, rare as it is, to
be utterly calm in the face of anger. I can use patience, as I've
said, but that is a different thing altogether. Patience only
exasperates, as often as not. I can keep my own hot temper in
subjection, but it's there and the other fellow usually knows
that, with the result that I have had to fight in circumstances
that Grim would have negotiated diplomatically. You can't be
angry and convincing. I know that, for I've tried and failed
too often.

Grim wasn't angry. Mujrim and the whole gang knew it. He had
simply made up his mind that he was in the right and that it was
a proper time to stand by what he knew; and it dawned on that
gang of thieves that they would have to kill him if they proposed
to have their own way. I was close enough to Mujrim to read the
changing emotions. He opened his clenched teeth a fraction, as
most men do when they suddenly see the strength of an opponent's
case. Then his sunny good nature came to the rescue. He opened
his mouth wider--hesitated--spoke--and I knew that Grim had won.

"But it is too much to ask a man to walk back, Jimgrim!"

They were a first-class gang. I'm not discussing their
profession, which was their affair, risks included. What I mean
is that in a world in which most of us need no accuser, having
consciences that truthfully blame ourselves, they had lots of
redeeming manhood and less yellow in their make-up than afflicts
some folk who never do anything wrong because they'd be afraid
to. They loved that huge brother of theirs and were loyal
to him. They recognized instantly that he had yielded, and
instinctively--swiftly--without any process of reasoning--they
set to work to save his face and let him down lightly.

You never heard a more sudden chorus of abuse than they aimed at
me. They knew I was an American, of course, but they were much
too loyal to the practice of deception to rake that up, even in
such a crisis. I was disguised as an Indian, and that was enough.
They damned me as an Indian.

"The _hakim_ struck him!"

"The cursed dog of a _hakim_ thrust a hand into his bosom!"

"By what right does a _hakim_ interfere with Mujrim?"

"Beat him!"

"It was the _hakim's_ fault! He insulted our brother! Who
wouldn't have struck back?"

"Is the _hakim_ a coward?"

"Ha-ha! Does the _hakim_ take a blow like an ass lying down?"

"The _hakim_ is a coward! He insulted Mujrim and was struck for
it, but daren't hit back!"

"Let the _hakim_ pick our weakest man and fight him!"

"Good! True! It was the _hakim's_ fault! Make the _hakim_ fight!
Give him his choice; Mujrim is too strong for him!"

Well, I suppose that ever since the world was concentrated out of
chaos and old night whoever faced defeat has claimed a scapegoat.
All I was interested in was lending Grim the full force of
whatever attributes I have. I caught his eye, and he smiled
whimsically, with one eyebrow curved into an interrogation mark.

The gang became silent suddenly--wondering whether I would dare
accept the challenge, but I kept silent, too, for it was up to
Grim. I knew he didn't doubt my willingness to fight; and I knew
he would be the last man to refuse to make the fullest use of me;
it was a question of diplomacy, which, as I have said before, is
hardly my long suit.

"The _hakim_ obeyed my order," he said at last. "Mujrim struck
him. Mujrim therefore gave the insult. Let the _hakim_ name what
satisfaction he requires."

I didn't waste a second after that. It is one of my chief
failings that I simply love a fight on equal terms. Men choose
to differ about the name of the Power who parceled out men's
attributes, but this one thing I know: I received my share of
strength, and a most Berserkerish delight in using it.

"Are you afraid to fight me without weapons?" I asked, laughing
into Mujrim's face.

His answer was to vault from his camel without a word, throw all
his weapons on the ground, and start to strip himself. I followed
suit, and the rest all _naked_ the camels in a wide semicircle.

"Don't use your fists on him," Grim whispered. "'Twouldn't be
fair. These Arabs don't understand that gentle art." Then he
went and squatted on top of a rock facing the semicircle, to
watch proceedings.

The other men all squatted in front of the kneeling camels. Jael
went and sat near Grim. Ayisha took up a position of her own on
Grim's left hand, midway between him and the semicircle; and I
had time to notice that both she and Jael were as eager for the
spectacle as anyone. After that I sized up my antagonist, and
liked the look of him--as Narayan Singh, catching the clothes I
tossed to him, did not.

"Stick a thumb in his eye if he strangles you, _sahib!"_ he
whispered. (Standards of ethics vary slightly as you travel
farther East.)

All either of us kept on were our cotton trousers, and there
wasn't much to choose between us as the sun beat down on muscles
bulging under healthy skin. I am a sunburned man, but my skin
looked white and satiny against his coppery bronze. He had
several inches the advantage over me in height and length of arm,
and was pretty obviously quicker on his feet; but twenty years of
roughing it have taught me not to trouble much about the other
fellow's odds. The main thing is to reckon up your own, and
discover his point of weakness.

"Are you both ready?" Grim called out, and we walked in and faced
each other.

"Go!" he shouted, and Mujrim began to stalk me crabwise with both
arms thrust forward, looking for an opening. One weak point
became obvious at once. He considered himself a wrestler, and
fully expected to rush me and win in sixty seconds. So I gave him
the chance he looked for, and that first fall was easy; he went
over my head on to his back on the sand with a thump that shook
the wind out of him.

But all I scored by that, of course, was to spoil a little of his
confidence. He wasn't likely to repeat such a mistake. He got to
his feet pretty quickly, and I have seen a wounded lion look less
pugnacious. The gang shouted a lot of good advice to him to wring
my neck, kneel on my stomach, pull my arms out by the roots and,
in fact, to go in and rid the earth of me, and he threw one swift
glance in their direction as much as to say he wouldn't fail
them. Then I took the fight to him, and we closed.

Well, I've had many a good fight in my day, having to admit, with
less shame than some think seemly, that I'm kind of willing to
mix it with any strong antagonist who wants to take my number
down. But looking back, I think that was the best of all. It was
rather spoiled at one stage by Mujrim's biting when I had him in
a painful hold he could not break. But you can't expect a
half-savage to act like a white man all the way, and he only tore
an inch or two of skin loose. Besides, he made up for it
handsomely before the end.

The game was fast, for one thing, which suits my temperament.
Middle age hasn't made me a dawdler yet. And as we rolled and
tossed over and over, grunting, and sweating so in the sun that
we could generally slip out of a hold as easily as break it, the
speed took the gang by the heartstrings, and from time to time I
had visions of Grim beating them off with his camel-stick as they
crowded in to scream advice to their champion.

I never fought over so much ground before or since. I knew I had
my man beaten, and Mujrim, I think, guessed it after the first
five minutes; he seemed to think his only chance was to spread
the battle over half an acre, dragging and rolling me this and
that way with the idea of wearing me out. But I was the stronger
of the two, and it was I who did the wearing down.

There came a moment when he lay under me and gasped, and even had
time to grow conscious of surroundings--a thing you can't do if
the man you're up against is still fit to make you use all you've
got. Then, in between the bass booming of Narayan Singh, I
distinguished Ayisha's shrill voice screaming to Mujrim to tear
my tongue out.

There is something barbaric in a woman's scream that puts new
fight into most uncivilized folk, and especially into all the
desert-people. Mujrim must have heard that shrilling, for he
suddenly revived, and over and over we went with nearly bursting
muscles in a series of sudden spurts, until we lay panting again
close to Ayisha's feet. I couldn't see her, naturally, for my
back was uppermost; and Mujrim had murder in his eye; I did not
dare relax the pressure on him for a second. His right hand was
groping wildly for a handful of my thigh muscles, and what she
did was to slip a dagger into it. His fingers closed on the thing
before he realized what it was, and before Grim or anyone could
intervene. I didn't know what had happened. My eyes were full of
sweat and dust in any case, and the trick took place behind me.
But Mujrim, suddenly aware of what was in his hand, threw the
thing away like the sportsman he was at heart; and the effort
gave me my opportunity.

I got a sudden hold that pinned his left arm to his side--rose to
my feet, lifting him with the old bag-heaver's hoist that uses
every muscle in your body, and was considering whether the time
had come to lay him pretty gently on his back, or whether he
needed another shake-up, when something stung the calf of my leg
as if a snake had bitten it. At that there was an angry yell from
everybody. I hurled my man clear of me, and Grim stepped in
between us, stopping the fight. When I could get the sweat out of
my eyes I saw there was blood running pretty freely down from my
calf into my shoe. Grim stooped and picked up Ayisha's dagger.
The minx had been so bent on seeing me murdered that when Mujrim
refused to use the thing she had picked it up again and thrown
it--fortunately doing no more harm than to open a cut two inches
long that bled more freely than it hurt.

Mujrim was more annoyed than anyone. He had had all the exercise
he needed, and lay on his back with his brothers all about him
sluicing him with water from one of the camel-bags. He sent them
to sluice me, too, and called out to me between gasps for breath
to be good enough to believe that the wound was none of his doing.

Ayisha was perfectly unconcerned about it. Beyond demanding the
dagger back from Grim she made no comment. He gave it to her with
the remark that if she should play a trick like that again he
would have her hanged to the nearest tree; but she didn't believe
him any more than I did, and showed her teeth in as merry a smile
as ever lone bachelor set eyes on.

Jael, on the other hand, was indignant--not at my being wounded,
for she wasn't exactly a stickler for ethics, and my welfare was
no concern of hers--but because Grim should neglect such an
obvious chance.

"The least you might do is to have the hussy beaten," she
insisted. "You'll never make a leader of men, my friend. You
don't know enough to be drastic. You're weak!"

Yet, if you ask me, I think Grim came out of it pretty well.
There wasn't another word from the defaulters. Mujrim had been
wrenched and bruised too badly to be fit for much for an hour or
two, and it was out of the question to make him walk back. But
Grim tossed the amber necklaces to one of the others, pointed
with his stick toward the three camel-loads of miscellaneous
"presents," and said his final say on that subject.

"Back you go now! Take those loads and walk!"

They went off without a murmur. And bear in mind if there is one
thing on earth that Arabs of their stamp consider beneath their
dignity, it is to carry loads. They expect their women-folk to do
that when camels or asses are not available.

Mujrim got to his feet after they had gone, and apologized to
Grim handsomely.

_"Wallahi,_ Jimgrim, you were in the right! There should be but
one captain--and his word law, even when he says that white
is black!"

It was pretty safe to say that looting was at an end as far as
that expedition was concerned. And if you think, as I have heard
some say, that it wasn't Grim, but I who pulled off that affair,
I don't agree with you. You might just as well say that the cards
had won a game, rather than the player of the hand; or that Bill
Adams won the battle of Waterloo by killing eighteen Frenchmen
with his sabre. Hats off to Bill Adams, certainly; but the old
Iron Duke was the boy who led trumps when the right time came. I
hate this modern craze for taking credit from every leader.
Believe me, it takes a good man to persuade me to risk hair and
hide in his behalf, as one or two of Grim's jealous critics might
discover if they had the guts to try.

We sat down all together in the shadow of a great rock, women
included, and discussed the fight from start to finish, each
of the brothers claiming to know a hold that would have
beaten me--which might easily be true, for I am no Gotch or
Hagenschmidt--yet all equally averse to testing it. And presently
Narayan Singh cut loose and told us wonderful lies about the
wrestlers of Bihar and feats he had seen them perform at the
marriage feasts of Indian rajahs. A first-class romancer is my
friend Narayan Singh, as well as a good soldier.

The rift in our lute was mended, not a doubt of it. That party
under the rock in the Valley of Moses, where we drank warm water
out of goatskin bags, smoked powdery imported cigarettes, and
bayed about our reminiscences like dogs over a kill, is one of
the pleasantest I can remember.

It was nearly high noon, and the sun beat down on the floor of
the gorge between ragged cliffs, making the air suffocating.
Every once in a while a gust of hot wind would pick up a cloud of
dust and take it waltzing along the valley, spreading a gritty
mixture of air and dirt that you could hardly breathe. One or
two eagles soared sleepily against the turquoise sky, but the
kites appeared to have had enough of the heat and were hiding
somewhere. Only the centipedes and scorpions beside ourselves
seemed satisfied with conditions as they were; and they were
about the only trouble we had. Narayan Singh said that it was the
blood from the scratch in my leg that attracted them, and it may
be that he knew; but, as I have remarked before, he doesn't need
much fact to weave a tale from.

The part I liked best was Grim's whole attitude. He might easily
have spoiled the fun by doing what so many asses do--smothering
with flubdub whoever happens to have done his bit. He knew
exactly how useful in a pinch my strength and willingness to
fight had been, and in case I didn't know it, too, he made one
comment, and let it go at that:

"If Mujrim had beaten you we'd have had to call this expedition
off. There'd have been no holding them. But we're all set now."

All the same, I thought that an exaggeration, unless he excluded
Ayisha from the reckoning. The gang now referred to her constantly
in her presence as "the woman Ayisha"; whereas before her swift
divorce from Ali Higg in Petra she had always been "The Lady
Ayisha" and "Princess." If she was "set" on any purpose, then
it was on snatching her own chestnuts from the fire of fate;
and whoever should seek to prevent her was going to suffer unless
he watched his step.

I would have excluded Jael Higg, too, from the "all set"
reckoning. She was devoting herself rather cautiously just then,
in that thin-lipped way of hers, to being a good fellow, joining
in the conversation and laughing readily in a rather pleasant
voice, with no more than a symptom of underlying harshness. But
her eyes were hard--iron-hard, and they glittered whenever she
looked at Grim. I think she regarded me, along with the Arabs and
Narayan Singh, as a man whom she could find a way of managing in
her own good time. But she was about as empty of forgiveness as a
Red Sea shark. In my judgment, nothing less than Grim's utter
ruin would ever satisfy her for capture and defeat at his hands,
although she undoubtedly proposed to make the utmost use of his
brains and altruism until her time should come.

They made a wonderful contrast, those two, sitting side by side
under the rock--she with her freckled, smooth face, and reddish
hair showing under a black shawl; he with that ready smile, the
puzzling, almost bookworm eyes, and the expression, even with his
face framed in an Arab headdress, of a forceful, imaginative
business man.

"You are a fool, James Grim," I heard her say to him. "You don't
know which side your bread is buttered on. If you would cross the
Jordan for good and all I could make you king of all this country
in a year!"

"That, or vulture-food?" he asked her; and laughed, and lit
a cigarette.




CHAPTER IV


    _"A Cent for Your Sympathy!"_



Well, our ruffians turned up at last, and brought back news with
them. Ali Higg, they said, was on the rampage. He had left his
aerie of a cave, and was superintending the saddling of a score
of camels in front of "Pharaoh's Treasury."

"But not good camels, Jimgrim. Mangy, miserable beasts. His men
are using all the best ones, and those six splendid ones that we
borrowed just now are all that were left of his private string.
If he means to follow he will have hard work. He has collected a
handful of men, but they are hardly better than the camels--fit
food for kites--sick men, wounded men, men afraid of their own
shadows--scarcely able to lift a camel-pack between them. We
walked up to the Treasury and flung the plunder down, saying that
our Sheikh Jimgrim declined to burden camels with such miserable
stuff. He ordered his party of crows' meat to open fire on us;
but one of them swore that our return with that loot must be a
trick to start trouble. He said that you and the rest of our
party were doubtless waiting close at hand to make reprisals, and
the sound of the first shot would certainly bring you hurrying.
The others, being all afraid, agreed with the first man. So we
behaved like men who have been found out in a trick, carrying on
scornfully and saying it was a pity nobody in Petra was brave
enough to fight, since our Sheikh Jimgrim took no pleasure in
defeating cowards. And what with one hot word and another we made
our escape safely."

But that talk might have been a trick to cover up another one and
Grim made sure.

"Men who speak truth," he laughed, "are never afraid to prove it.
Let's see how much loot you've still got hidden in your clothes."

They submitted to be searched with entire good humor, and Grim
displayed an intricate knowledge of their ways of hiding things
that made them laugh. But he had had his way; there wasn't as
much as a woman's ear-ring or a brooch among them, and they were
all the better-tempered for having proved it, considering now
that the joke was as much on him as on themselves.

That is a great point, by the way, which some men fail to
understand. When disobedience doesn't really matter much you can
now and then afford to overlook it--especially if it would be
easy to enforce discipline; because discipline that is easy to
enforce doesn't make a lasting impression on naturally lawless
men. But in a tight place, when men disobey because they think
they have you at a disadvantage, and to force the issue looks
like sure disaster, then you can't afford to yield one jot
or tittle of authority. Better die there with your boots on
than give way; because if you fail then, you'll never regain
their respect.

And having won your point, by hook or crook, brute force,
profanity or argument, be sure you have the whole of it. To use
Narayan Singh's expression: "Milk the udders of obedience dry."
Thereafter, whenever you concede a point or two you'll find it
safe enough, because they will realize it is concession, and
not anarchy.

We were all in a rare good temper now, Jael Higg not least of us.
I suppose the news that Ali Higg was on the move was what raised
her spirits. Grim asked her what she supposed the Lion intended,
but she shook her head and laughed.

"You're worse than a divorce court! You separate a man and wife,
and ask the wife to account for her husband's doings?"

"I know nothing of lions," Narayan Singh commented. "Mine is a
land of tigers. When a tiger keeps quiet he is difficult and
dangerous to trap. When he prowls he is easy."

At that Mahommed piped up, Ali Baba's youngest son, poet to
the gang, and bard, and arch-inventor of impracticable plans.

"I say let us lie in ambush in this hot _jahannum_ of a valley,
and catch the Lion as he ventures out. Let us take him back
with us to El-Kalil and lodge him in the gaol for folk to make
songs about."

The notion was not impossible on the face of it. There were
plenty of suitable places for ambush, as Alexander of Macedon
found out, for instance, when he tried to force that gorge. But
it would only have entailed the breaking of Grim's promise and
the absolute reversal of his stubborn principle, that he had no
right to, and therefore would not move a finger toward imposing
alien rule on Arabia, even in the interest of peace, and
indirectly. It was Grim's notion of duty and enjoyment--and a
good one, too, in my opinion--to prevent that very thing by
drawing the teeth of contention and giving the Arabs a chance to
work out their own destiny.

"Let's go," he said; and the only members of the party to grumble
at that suggestion were the camels, who object to everything.

When you bear in mind that none of us--not even the women--had
slept a wink the previous night, and that we had to face the hot
south wind that withers the Arabian desert and, impinging on the
northern wall of that gruesome Valley of Moses, blows like a
furnace blast down the ever-narrowing funnel, our high spirits
were a thing to wonder at.

None of us had more than a vague idea of the danger into
which Grim was leading us. My only objection to him is that
exasperating way he has of never discussing difficulties until
after he has thought out their solution. In my own way I'm rather
a cautious man. I like adventure, but I also like to puzzle out
the chances in advance, both of risk and profit, and so be
prepared for them. Having anticipated ten percent or so of the
possibilities, I can then devote more attention to the unexpected
when it happens.

But the very method that annoyed me was like meat and drink to
our rogues of followers. What they did not know didn't trouble
them over much. Weaned on knavery, and used to haphazard
devilment of any kind at all, all they asked of life was meat and
drink, a chance to get away with other men's belongings, and
something new as often as might be to make up songs about.

To them Grim's very reticence was all in his favour, since it
suggested mystery. And remember, that is the land where the tales
now known in the West as the Arabian Nights first stirred men's
imagination. They wouldn't have enjoyed things half as much if
they had known exactly what was going to happen next.

Nor were they the only ones, who enjoyed Grim's method. There was
Narayan Singh. He rode his camel beside mine, and occasionally
leaned across to boom remarks through the cloth that covered nose
and mouth with the unaccomplishable purpose of defeating the
hot wind.

"Hah! _sahib,_ this suits me! This is the true way of a soldier!
Here today and gone tomorrow--today a bellyful, tomorrow a fight,
and the day after God knows what! I have no quarrel with the law
of destiny!"

I may have felt like a man on a wild-goose chase. In fact, I know
I did. But you couldn't for the life of you escape the spirit of
the game; and even with bones and muscles sore from Mujrim's
racking, and a cut in the calf of my leg that was beginning to
smart unmercifully as it grew stiff and the hot wind dried the
bandage, I felt about as merry as the rest did.

That Valley of Moses is as savage and as endless as the Khyber;
but we emerged from it at last into a waste of hot rock, deep
_wady,_* and oleander scrub, with rounded, rolling foothills all
about us, and in places great heaps of human bones all cracked up
by the jackals--bones, I dare say, of the Turkish soldiers who
had tried to turn Lawrence out of Petra during the Great War, the
skulls persisting, as usual, long after the other bones had lost
their shape. (I wonder why a man's rib-bones disappear first. Has
it anything to do with Eve?) [* Ravine or valley]

Grim called never another halt until near evening, when we found
a thing they call a _fiumara,_ which is a dried-up watercourse
that winds between hills and widens until it reaches the sea.
There isn't any one word in the English language that translates
it nor for that matter any exactly similar formation elsewhere.
Excepting for a week or two in odd seasons of heavy rain they use
those _fiumaras_ as roads and camping-places, their winding habit
suiting the Bedouin's wandering taste, and the curves between
high banks providing shelter both from hot wind and observation.

Our protesting camels (they always protest at downhill work)
stumbled into the _fiumara_ at a point where a peculiar,
flat-topped island split the course in two and storm-water had
hollowed out a deep, curving cliff in the near bank. It was a
fine place to camp in, for there were three deep holes in the bed
of the _fiumara_ with two or three feet of dirty water in the
bottom of them; and in a land where no Bedouin will lead you to
water at any price, stuff of the color of soup and the flavor of
stale cabbage is a great discovery. Besides, the camels like it
better than the sort that bubbles from a clear spring, and after
all, the animal that carries you in the teeth of the _simuum_*
deserves to be considered first. [* Hot wind]

The tents were pitched in a jiffy, for everybody craved sleep,
and there seemed to be a pretty general impression that whoever
would hurry first into the land of dreams would be considered
unfit for grand duty when Grim should get around to making his
selections. But I glanced at Narayan Singh, and Narayan Singh
smiled at me; we both knew Grim by that time. He doesn't find
soft billets for his friends when the watch needs keeping, any
more than the wise banker pledges questionable credits.

So the mess of dates and rice was hardly eaten before the tents
resounded with snores, those who were not yet really asleep
pretending to be with all the more fervor. But as the moon rose
over the rim of the hills of Edom, Grim called a conference of
Jael Higg, Narayan Singh, himself, and me, up on the flat-topped
island, from which we had a fair view in the mellow moonlight of
most of the country round about for a radius of nearly a mile.
The desert reflected so much of the moon's rays that at a hundred
yards you could actually distinguish the tufts of hair and
markings on a scavenging hyena. But down in the hollow where the
tents were, all was dark.

We sat facing, in a square, on prayer mats. Jael Higg at first
could hardly keep awake; but hers was the kind of intellect that
drives its owner weasel-fashion, and it did not take a dozen
words to make her forget sleep.

"Now, Jael," Grim began, and I have heard a doctor lecturing in
just the same tone of voice a patient who can pull through if he
will hear and use horse-sense, "we're within five miles of the
place where we're to pick up Ali Higg's hundred and forty men.
Twenty miles farther to the south of that is the Avenger at Abu
Lissan with eight hundred. If it comes to a fight you can guess
as well as anyone what our chance is worth. Something less than
ten cents, eh?"

She nodded, every faculty alert. I rather liked her just then,
for she was brave, whatever conventions she had broken. I know
how necessary some conventions are, but Lord! I do admire courage
in man or woman; and I never worry much about another fellow's
morals, having all my work cut out to manage my own. I have met
many a worse and more merciless woman than Jael Higg in what is
called civilized society.

"You understand, don't you?" Grim went on. "I'm not interested in
destroying you and Ali Higg. If the Arabs hereabouts would like
you two for rulers, that's their affair. I'll not prevent. I'm
hired by the British to help keep the peace. They couldn't hire
me for any other purpose. I want to see Arabia rule itself.
That's my particular bug. It's too late to argue whether I'm
right or wrong. We're facing facts. I'm hell-bent on just that.
And the Arabs haven't a chance unless they quit cutting up--not
one chance in a hundred million. I happen to know that the
British don't want to come over here and govern this country, for
one reason because they can't afford it; but you all are busy
fixing it so they'll have to come, because they can afford still
less to have a constant state of war along their border. D'you
get me?"

She nodded again--hard-eyed. She understood him perfectly. What
most altruists don't understand is that the people they would
benefit rather resent it than otherwise, and after profiting as
much as possible intend to ditch them at the first chance. But
Grim knew all about that.

"I don't pretend to know what's going on in your mind," Grim
continued. "But supposing I were you, and you were I, it may be
I might feel revengeful. I might think in that case outside
interference of any sort was impertinence to be punished without
gloves. But, you see, you're a foreigner, too, Jael; you're from
the Balkans, with a New York education; and Ali Higg's from the
South of Arabia, which is a mighty long way off, so he's as
good as a foreigner, in the bargain. So I guess, as far as
impertinence goes, the lot of us are in one boat. Let's call
that account balanced, and draw a line under it.

"Then there's the personal side of it, and that's not so easy to
argue about. I never met anyone of spirit who enjoyed to take a
defeat sitting. You've got spirit, and so has that husband of
yours, and I can figure how you both feel. I'm sure sorry to hurt
anybody's feelings. I know, when any of these brass hats in
Jerusalem puts one over on me, I feel mad all through. There've
been occasions when I've watched my chance and got even, with a
shade the advantage by way of compound interest. That's human.
And I'm pretty sure you'd like to knock the props from under me.
Well, you're going to get the chance tomorrow morning."

Her thin lips quivered into a smile. It was frank, too; there
was nothing furtive about it. You couldn't rightly call her
treacherous, because she didn't pretend to be other than an
enemy, seeking her own advantage in every circumstance. But she
was longer-sighted than the Lion of Petra and, having lived in
America, understood something of the theory, at any rate, of
giving the underdog a chance. She knew enough to know Grim
wasn't setting traps for her.

"D'you mean to expect me to kiss and be friends?" she answered.
"Bah! I gave you that chance once. I offered to put you into Ali
Higg's shoes, and you refused it. Now you think my position is
beginning to be stronger than it was, with a hundred and forty
men almost within reach, and you plan to make terms. Thanks! I
think I realize the strength of my position, too."

"I guess I'll have to disillusion you," said Grim. "You think
your men will have captured Yussuf and that the order on the bank
for fifty thousand pounds will be safely torn up or burned
tomorrow morning. You'll have to guess again. I don't care how
much money you gave my man Ali Baba; it wasn't enough. He had
orders from me to accept any bribe you might give him, and to
destroy in the desert whatever secret message you might send to
Ibrahim ben Ah. So, you see, the men in the oasis weren't on the
lookout for Yussuf after all, and it's a safe bet that he got
through. So we're just where we left off, aren't we? If you
should turn on me--as you might, and scupper my outfit--as is
just possible, you'd lose that fifty thousand, Jael, to say
nothing of being bombed out of Petra by aeroplanes. Now--are we
quite clear on that point?"

"Well? What then?" she answered in a dry voice. Grim had played
the hand well. He had finessed the trick. She hadn't a trump
left; or so she seemed to admit.

"Why--hadn't you better sit into the game and help me euchre
this Avenger person, than spoil the game for everyone, yourself
included? I'm going to put you in charge of the hundred and forty
men tomorrow morning!"

"Whether I promise or not?"

"Sure. What is your bare promise worth to me? You're a woman of
the world enough to know I'm playing square; and you've got
too much sense to suppose I'd trust you without some sort of
guarantee. I've kind o' proved that, haven't I, by making you
give that order on the bank."

"Well, what more guarantee d'you want?" she demanded tartly.

"None, except--you keep on saying I don't know on which side
my bread's buttered--I'll feel safer when I'm sure you know
where the grease collides with your piece. Once you understand
thoroughly that I'm out to see you score off the Avenger person,
and that if you put a stick in my wheel you'll be stalling your
own wagon, you and I are going to pull together right well."

At that Narayan Singh saw fit to lend his counsel. "All well and
good, Jimgrim _sahib;_ but let me go with her. She knows you for
a man of peace, who hates to inconvenience a woman; but me she
knows for a Pathan, to whom it would be small inconvenience, and
in certain circumstances quite amusing, to rid the earth of
any enemy of yours. Send me with her, _sahib!_ I will be the
guarantee! Then if she plays you a trick there will be one more
head in the world without a pair of shoulders under it!"

Jael Higg laughed outright at that, and I think she was really
amused at the notion of anybody acting as a check on her if Grim
should let her go.

"Did you ever see a lamb act gaoler to a she-wolf ?" she asked;
and at that it was the Sikh's turn to roar with laughter.

"Man, woman, or child, you are the first who called me a lamb!"
he answered. "Blood of Allah, but that is a good one!"

Like most Sikhs, he thoroughly despises the Moslem creed, and
made up for having to pretend to be a follower of the Prophet by
using the most atrocious oaths. They even set Jael Higg's teeth
on edge, and she was no mealy-mouthed Puritan.

"I'll set no watch on you, Jael," Grim went on. "It's up to you
whether you ride straight or not. My game must be pretty obvious.
I'm going to pretend I'm Ali Higg. Ibrahim ben Ah, or any of
those hundred and forty, would detect me in a second if they saw
me by daylight, or even at close quarters in the dark. So what I
want you to do is to maneuver them according to orders that I'll
send you by messenger from time to time. They're plenty used to
obeying you, and there'll be no trouble if you're so minded.
You'll bear me out that first and last I've done nothing to
discredit you with Ali Higg, or your men either. Now which is
it to be?"

"What's your plan?" she asked. And I took that for a good sign.
If she had intended treachery, she would almost certainly have
agreed first and asked for particulars afterwards.

"We've got to make the Avenger person believe we're stronger than
we are, and force a guarantee from him, too. I guess you've never
studied the Duke of Wellington? You'd better do it, Jael, if
you hope to succeed at your business. He claimed that he beat
Napoleon by not having cast-iron plans. He said, if I recall
it right, that the plans of either side were like their mule
harness. Napoleon's mules were all turned out perfectly with
fine, strong leather harness; but when the leather busted they
couldn't fix it; and so with their plan of campaign. But the Iron
Duke's mule-harness was all ropes and string; when any part gave
out they tied a knot in it and went on. Same with his plan of
campaign. Same with mine. I've got a good general idea of what to
do, but it's no part of my method to spoil prospects by being too
darned definite in advance. You see, if you've a tight-drawn plan
the enemy can find it out and run a spike into it. I've got all
this Abu Lissan country in my head, because one of my jobs during
the War was to make a map of it. I'll pass you the word from time
to time where to go, where to hide, where to show yourselves, and
what to do next; and if you keep your men in hand I think I can
guarantee there won't be one casualty."

"And you'll leave me free to return to Petra afterwards?"
asked Jael.

"Why not?"

"With all my men?"

"Sure, if they care to follow you."

"Very well," she answered. "You're a fool, James Grim, but I
think you're honest. There's no such fool as an honest one! I'll
play your game this once. But I give you warning: if you lose it,
I'll leave you in the lurch; and if you win, that's the end of it
and we cry quits. Thereafter, if I ever get you in my power don't
count on my forgiveness! You had your last chance of making a
friend of me when you turned down my offer."

"Sure," he answered, "I can sympathize with your personal feelings."

"A cent for your sympathy!" she snapped, and I think she was on
the verge of tears, although she was too proud, and too much a
termagant to let them fall.

"Suppose you go and sleep, Jael," he suggested. "We'll all need
our wits tomorrow morning."

She rose without answering, started for the stepping-stones that
led down into the bed of the _fiumara,_ and turned again suddenly.

"What about the woman Ayisha?" she demanded. "Am I to be saddled
afterwards with her? I warn you--"

Grim laughed and shook his head.

"I allow she'd be more nervous about that than you," he answered.
"No. I won't saddle you with her. Good night, Jael."

She didn't answer, but dropped down into the darkness, finding
her footing with the nimbleness and lack of hesitation that
typified her mental qualities by which she had established a
position in the desert.

As soon as she had gone, Grim turned to Narayan Singh and me.

"It hardly seems fair, you fellows," he said, smiling. "You're
sleepy and tired as I am. But tomorrow I've got to have my brains
awake or we'll all go fluey. You've got to stand watch tonight
between you, and no argument. Better stay up here, where you can
get a good view all around. My tent is that one beside the big
boulder in the _fiumara_ bed; if anything happens, don't yell,
but throw rocks until I wake and come and join you. You'll be so
`all in' by tomorrow that you'll be able to sleep on camel-back.
Good night, I'm off!"

"Nevertheless, our Jimgrim has a plan all cut and dried," said
Narayan Singh, as soon as Grim was out of earshot. "Only he knows
that that she-wolf is the enemy, and will not risk telling her.
Moreover, he said stand watch between us. There was nothing about
being both awake at once. Have you a coin, _sahib?_ I have only
nine piastres and the Prophet of these people couldn't tell the
head from the tail of any one of them. Let us take four-hour
watches, turn and turn, and toss to see who sleeps first."

"I'll toss you," said I, "but let's take half-hour turns. It's
easier to keep awake for thirty minutes than four hours."

He agreed to that, so I spun a coin, and won the first spell of
sleep. Maybe I'm an expert. At the end of six or seven seconds he
awoke me, and swore he had allowed me several minutes more than
half an hour. Then he took a turn, and when I shook him awake he
vowed I wasn't playing fair.

"Sleeping or waking, I know the length of a second and a half!"
he grumbled. But I showed him the watch. When he accused me of
having moved the hands I showed him how the shadow of the moon
had traveled, and demanded time out, in the bargain, to compensate
for the minute we had wasted arguing. It was like a game
of cat-naps.

All the same, however short the snatches of sleep seemed, I'm
convinced that in circumstances like that short turns are always
best. Anything may happen in the night, and it's better then that
each should have slept a little than that one should have had
four hours, say, and the other none. Events proved that I was
right in that instance, anyhow.




CHAPTER V


    _"May You Deal with Your Enemies Like Iron, Even as You
Deal with Me."_



We took turns until midnight, when the moon, a day or two past
full, was almost overhead, bathing the desert with honey-colored
light in every direction. The desert is more full of night sounds
than a forest, if you listen intently enough, for the sand creeps
musically and there is no rustling of trees to cover up the
infinitely tiny noises of the lesser prowlers. After ten minutes
or so of sitting motionless a hyena becomes a lumbering rowdy, a
jackal a clumsy clod-whalloper, and a mouse seems to make as
much noise as a man. But when a man moves, all is instant silence
by comparison.

I was making the most of one of my short turns of sleep when
Narayan Singh awoke me by the practical expedient of laying his
right hand across my mouth. I deduced that he did not want me to
swear out loud; so I bit his finger pretty sharply to prove I was
awake, and lay and listened.

There was something moving sure enough, and it wasn't an animal.
The sound was too irregular and stealthy for that of any creature
with a right to be at large. It was a human, trying not to
attract attention--than which there is nothing more compelling of
attention in the whole wide world, unless you are one of those
folk who live for ever in the cities with their ears and
eyes shut.

As I lay I could see Narayan Singh sitting absolutely motionless,
shrouded so as to look shapeless in his Bedouin cloak. I imagine
he and I together might have been mistaken for a lump of rock
unless either of us moved. And there are two tricks of moving
that hunting teaches you: one is to do it suddenly and then be
absolutely still again; the other is to change position so slowly
that no eye not deliberately measuring your outline against a
fixed mark can detect the motion. If you know you are being
watched, the first is usually best, because if you are absolutely
still again the moment afterwards the watcher will doubt the
evidence of his own eyes. But it needs practice. The one thing
not to do is to change position in jerks, or moderately slowly.

You can't judge much from a superficial glance at such a veteran
scout as Narayan Singh. He was facing pretty nearly due east; but
that didn't mean he was looking in that direction. Almost the
surest means of allaying the suspicion of man or animal is to
seem to look another way. Most Sikhs are past-master experts at
that. I lay and studied Narayan Singh for about two minutes
before I was sure he was watching something over to his left.
And it was another two minutes before I made out the head of
a kneeling camel protruding from behind a rock at about the
farthest range of vision in that peculiar light. It might have
been half a mile away, or less.

The rock was big enough to hide a dozen camels; so it seemed
likely there was more behind it, because a man with only one
camel, who wanted to conceal the beast, would have done the job
thoroughly; whereas, if there were more than one there, the end
one might have been crowded into view.

Almost all the way along, between the camel's head and the edge
of the _fiumara,_ there was a series of shadows cast by boulders
and sand-heaps. They were short, because of the position of the
moon, and considerably broken up; but they formed the only line
along which animal or man might hope to approach us from the
direction of that camel unobserved. There were occasional gaps
in the shadow of as much as twenty feet of glistening sand. It
wasn't long before I made out a man's shape moving swiftly from
one spot of shadow to the next. He took his time in the shadows,
kneeling down to crawl and becoming very difficult to see, but
hurrying across the light after watching to make sure he was
unobserved. The light was tricky, but I don't doubt I could have
put a bullet through him by the time he came within a hundred
yards or so. However, there was no need. An occasional glance in
the direction of that camel's head was sufficient to make sure
that none of his friends was prowling our way too; and it seemed
wiser to discover what he was up to, than to stop him.

But it wouldn't have done to try and arouse Grim. If one of us
had moved to throw a rock at Grim's tent the man would certainly
have seen us; and if we had called out loud enough to waken Grim
the man would almost certainly have heard. We kept quite still,
and let him come within twenty yards of the edge of the _fiumara._

Then he lay prone on his belly, watched like a leopard for at
least five minutes, examining every detail of the ground in front
of him, and began to crawl closer, advancing a yard at a time and
pausing to rescrutinize each shadow. He did a pretty good job on
the whole. If Narayan Singh were not a trained scout and I a
hunter, he might very likely have reached our camp unseen.

At last he reached the sharp brim of the _fiumara,_ thrust his
head and shoulders over it, and peered down; and then it became a
problem what to do with him. If we once let him get down into the
black shadow below the advantage would be all on his side. I
could see the moonlight sheening on his long knife-blade. He
might be an assassin sent by Ali Higg to murder Grim; but that
was doubtful, because he dragged along a rifle with him as well,
and the midnight murderers of that land don't encumber themselves
with long-range artillery that might get in their way in a
scuffle and prevent escape. I judged he didn't mean to take
chances down in the dark, and it turned out I was right.

He would have had two bullets in him the same instant if he had
started down toward the tents, for Narayan Singh said afterwards
that he had formed the same judgement and decision that I did.

However, he lay there and barked like a jackal instead. It was
very well done. The pests had been snarling and yapping all
around us on and off ever since the moon rose, and unless someone
had been listening for a signal, or actually watching him as we
were, that bark would have got by as a normal night noise. It
only differed from a genuine jackal's bark in its regularity; he
made exactly the same succession of sounds four times at equal
intervals--a thing a jackal never does.

And somebody was listening below for just that signal. There was
no answer, but he evidently saw somebody move down there in
the darkness, for he was satisfied and drew back his head and
shoulders. Because of our position in the middle of the island we
couldn't see down into the _fiumara,_ but we heard footsteps; and
presently the man spoke and was answered. We could hear both
voices, but both failed to catch the words, or to distinguish
whether the voice below was man's or woman's.

However, we weren't long in doubt. A head that was unmistakably
Ayisha's emerged above the edge of the bank, coming up the track
our camels had used. The man spoke to her again, and crawled away
toward a good-sized boulder to his left hand and our right, fifty
yards off along the bank. She followed him, bolt-upright, walking
like a ghost. (It takes a woman to ignore possibilities that
scare a man into all manner of precautions.)

They both disappeared behind the boulder. The single camel's head
was still visible sticking out like a big snake's from behind
the rock in the near distance, and there was no other sign of
activity; so Narayan Singh and I dared to breathe normally at
last, and speak in low tones.

"One of us should go close and listen to their talk, _sahib,"_
said the Sikh. "Which of us shall it be?"

"Both of us," I answered. "You go ahead. I'll wake Jimgrim
and follow."

A couple of points were obvious. Someone had followed us from
Petra; for who else could have guessed Ayisha's whereabouts. She
might have made arrangements with one of the Lion's junior wives
or concubines to organize communications as soon as possible
after our backs were turned; I was absolutely positive that she
had answered a prearranged signal. The other point was that Grim
could keep watch on top of the island and be in the best position
from which to issue orders, at one and the same time.

So I crept down quietly behind Narayan Singh, and threw a handful
of small rocks on Grim's tent at short range. He would probably
have fired at me if I had used any other means of waking him,
because, seeing we had arranged a proper signal, he would
naturally suppose anyone entering his tent quietly to be an
enemy; and I would have had to go quietly for fear of arousing
the camp, whose noise would then have disturbed Ayisha. To cut
short her interview with that night-prowler might mean depriving
Grim of valuable information.

As soon as he thrust his head out of the tent I told him what
was happening. He went at once to the top of the island, and I
started after Narayan Singh. There wasn't a sign of the Sikh
by that time. I could still make out the camel's head in the
distance, moving rhythmically as the beast belched up and chewed
its cud, but there was no trace of a human being anywhere; and as
it happened, our camels were making quite a din just then, down
in the _fiumara_--dreaming or something. The brutes usually have
bad dreams and let high Heaven know it. Their guttural objections
and shuffling were loud enough to drown any reasonable footfall,
so I took the simplest course and walked straight forward, taking
one sole precaution. The jingle of the rifle-swivel in the night
can be safely guaranteed to wake the seven sleepers. I don't know
why, but there's the fact; I've seen many a long stalk spoiled by
it, and some men never learn.

By holding that loose swivel I actually stepped on Narayan Singh
before he was aware of me, which says something for his skill in
taking cover. He was lying in broad moonlight between two ridges
of sand on the side of the boulder nearest the _fiumara,_ too
busy listening to make a sign of any sort to me; so I went round
to the other side and crouched in the short shadow.

I judged the interview was pretty nearly over. The two were
conversing in such low tones that you could hardly distinguish
Ayisha's from the man's voice; but I heard her say:

"And is Jimgrim known so well to the Avenger?"

"Only by name," the man answered.

"But the Lion knows no English," she retorted.

_"Wallahi!_ Neither does the Avenger know a word of it."

"And Jael? Does she know of this?"

"Allah! Has the Lion a trick worth trying that she did not first
whisper to him? It was she who thought of it."

"May Allah do so to me, and more, unless I drive a knife into her
heart before tomorrow's sun sets!" hissed Ayisha. "Go now, or
those two fat Indians on the rock will cease snoring and see us."

But the man would not go. He seemed to put a pretty high value on
Jael's life. I heard him catch at her garments as she started up
to leave him, and although she cursed like a wet cat be wouldn't
let go of her.

"Woman, if you kill Jael," he insisted, "that will be the end of
all of us. Better by far slay the Lion himself! Jael is the real
leader! We would all follow Jael if the Lion were dead."

"Into _jahannum_ she would lead you!" Ayisha answered.

"That may be; for what is written shall come to pass. But better
into _jahannum_ behind her, than to live here leaderless!"

"Bah! Father of fear! There are other leaders."

"None fit to touch her garment! You must not kill her!"

"That is my affair!"

"I say you shall not!"

"Son of sixty dogs, let go of me!"

She made a sound between a curse and a scream, as if someone had
taken her by the throat, and I judged it time to interfere. It
was just two strides around that end of the rock, and I beat
Narayan Singh by half a second. The man's long knife was drawn,
and he had his fingers on her throat, as I had guessed. The butt
of my rifle sent the knife spinning, the Sikh dragged Ayisha
away, and I rushed the fellow before he could draw a second
knife. He was prone on his back in an instant, with the weight of
my big hams on his chest. Narayan Singh pounced on his rifle,
while I searched him diligently for hidden hardware, tossing out
a regular armory of weapons on to the sand as I dug them out one
by one. When, I was quite sure he hadn't any kind of weapon left
I let him sit up and recover breath.

With his first wind he began to beg for liberty, vowing he had
never harmed me, nor intended to.

"May your honors live for ever!" he roared out; and I let him
roar, for it didn't seem to matter now whether the whole camp
was wakened or not.

Next he offered me a camel as the price of freedom. When I
laughed at that, he swore he would pray for me three times daily
for a year, if I would let him go. He was dead set on getting
away from us; he even offered me his rifle as a souvenir of the
occasion. It was too bad to have to entertain such an awfully
unwilling guest.

"Come on," I said, "and learn the worst. Perhaps you won't be
beaten very badly!"

At that he even offered to lie down and let me beat him--anything,
in fact, if I would only let him go. On the whole I judged he
might prove a pretty important capture, and as he wouldn't see
sense I seized him at last by the scruff of his unwashed neck
and forced him along in front of me. He hadn't strength enough
to make me exert myself, but he struggled like a hooked eel
all the way.

I felt like a New York cop running in a pickpocket, and the
funniest part of it was that Narayan Singh strode along just in
front, with his arm around Ayisha's shoulders, booming titanic
love-stuff into her unwilling ears.

"What have I vowed a hundred times, beloved? Hah! If that had
been an army hedged in with a sea of fire, I would have jumped
the fire and freed you! What are bayonets and guns," he boomed,
"to one who loves as I do! Come closer, jewel of the Desert! Lean
on your protector! We Pathans of the Orakzai have hairy arms, but
they are strong to nestle in. Let me look into those liquid eyes
and see how fairer they are than the moon and stars!"

"Father of pigs!" she retorted. "Get away from me. I choose to
walk alone."

"Nay, beloved; come closer! One danger is enough to run for this
night. Next we must face Jimgrim, and you need a protector from
his wrath. He will accuse you of treachery while he slept. You
must lean on me. You must depend on me to defend you. We Pathans
of the Orakzai are wondrous liars. A man's sword and a man's
tongue should be ready for any occasion, say we. Now put me to
the test, O Heart of all Loveliness. What shall we tell Jimgrim?"

But though he called her by a fabulous long string of jeweled
names, offered her the hills of Edom for a kingdom and the
fairest cities of the earth for plunder, he could get no answer
out of her at all, until we came to the brim of the _fiumara_ and
were challenged by three separate members of our startled camp.
We had to answer the challenge right swiftly, for the click of
rifle bolts preceded it. Then Narayan Singh took Ayisha by both
arms and swung her in front of him.

"Must I tell him all I heard?" he asked. "Oh, Heart's Delight,
don't put me to that necessity!"

"Black pig! Let go of me!"

But he held on, and my prisoner--no more aware than I was
that the Sikh had not been able to hear the first part of
the conversation at all, piped up in support of him.

"I have a tale I shall tell," he announced. "Listen, Lady Ayisha,
this great fellow is a friend of yours. Humor him. He is willing
to stand between us and this Jimgrim. Better let me tell the
tale, and you confirm what I say. None ever believes a woman, but