Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “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 retur
n 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 naaked 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 s
urroundings — 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.