Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  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.
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br />   “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.