by Talbot Mundy
It wasn’t easy stalking. For one thing I had to go fast unless those men among the boulders were to be decimated; for another it was practically open country, with only that sandy ridge running nearly parallel to the fiumara to take advantage of. But, as probably a million men discovered in the great war, you can hide behind a pebble when the other fellow isn’t looking for you and inside a few square feet of shadow even when he is. A brown Bedouin cloak is hot and in your way when you’re using hands and knees, but even in strong sunlight shades away into the desert color-scheme beyond belief.
It was nervous work, though, for I knew that two score eyes and a pair of Zeiss binoculars were watching me from under cover in the rear, and there wasn’t one of them likely to miss a fine point. True, I wasn’t going to get written up in the papers, and read an account next day of how badly I had bungled the fourth hole; and Grim wasn’t going to pass remarks whatever happened; but I function best out of the public eye, and would never have made a good gladiator or anything like that, although I enjoy using what faculties I have so thoroughly that old women of both sexes have called me an instinctive savage.
I think I made the distance — say a mile along the straight from where Grim watched to the boulder I had singled out to work magic from — in a minute or two under half an hour, and I daresay each five minutes of that time cost the life of a man, although I’ve lost no sleep over it. I didn’t start the fight, and I didn’t hesitate to save time by taking chances across the open when a circuit would have cost ten more minutes.
Anyhow, unseen as far as I know, I reached the cover of a boulder shaped something like a dog’s head, rather more than a hundred yards to the rear of the firing-line, and wondered what to do next, for there was so much din of battle going on — shooting and yelling and running to and fro for a better pot-shot at somebody among the stones below — that you couldn’t have made yourself heard at that distance with a fog-horn.
Every minute or so somebody would yell, and jump up, and dance delightedly, swearing he had shot a man, grabbing his mates here and there to brag to them and explain in pantomime exactly where the bullet hit, and how the victim fell over; but fortunately you can’t always believe an Arab’s account of casualties any more than what you read at home in the daily paper. But I saw three men drilled cleanly through the head as they leaned over the edge of the fiumara, so it wasn’t any child’s play that was going on, and the men in the trap weren’t selling their lives cheap.
I could see the man who Grim had said was Jmil Ras, but it was several minutes before he turned enough toward me for me to make sure he was really Jeremy. He had a black cock’s feather stuck in the camel’s-hair band that bound his Arab head-dress, and that was unusual enough to mark him for no ordinary native of the country; but it might have meant that he had shot an Australian in the war and chose that way of boasting of the feat. Some men’s rifle-butts have so many notches cut in them that they invent new ways of signifying that their foes are dead. But when he turned my way there wasn’t a doubt of him. He had lost a little of his youthful look, but he was Jeremy Ross if twelve o’clock is noon.
He wasn’t encouraging his men or giving any orders, but gave the impression of letting them have their fling. I saw him laugh aloud when one of his own fire-breathing fanatics was shot dead in the act of boasting, but on the other hand he dragged the wounded from the firing-line with his own hands and stowed them under cover behind rocks.
In fact, it was the strangest picnic, and he the strangest host I had ever watched, and how to call his attention without drawing the fire of twenty rifles on myself seemed an unsolvable mystery.
But I was there to make magic, and seeing I had to take a chance of some sort I decided that if my nerves weren’t quite as steady, perhaps, as Jeremy’s at the moment, my life was at least as sweet as his; and if his nerves were really the steadier, then a close shave wouldn’t hurt him. He sat down on a rock and began unscrewing the stopper of a service flask, and I know I hoped the rock he sat on was as hot as the infernal thing I had to sprawl across. It is rarely that two men shoot their best in exactly the same position; I like to rest my belly and elbow over a solid support of some kind.
The risk was that I might drill a bullet through his head when he lifted the flask to drink, but that seemed better than being shot before I could get word with him; so I held my breath and took aim six inches to the left of his mouth, and let drive as he lifted the thing across the foresight.
If I weren’t a good shot I should be one of the unteachables who belong in the orderly places where you buy your meat in shops and don’t cross the street until the cop gives you permission; for Lord knows I have had experience enough.
And as luck would have it, Jeremy held the flask by the neck, so that there was a good hand’s breadth of brown felt cover between my eye and the sky-line; the bullet went plump through the middle of that, sploshing the water into his face, knocking the flask galleywest, and spoiling his drink abominably, but doing no other damage.
And of course he glanced in my direction, although I never heard tell what human sense it is that tells a man which way a bullet came. I’m willing to swear he couldn’t have heard the report of my rifle, because of the din made by his own rapscallions. I could see his lips move as he swore, but it wouldn’t have been Jeremy if he hadn’t laughed at the same time; and he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t reached for his rifle, but before he could touch it I gave tongue.
“Coo-eee-eee!”
Lord! How he jumped and stared; and the look of delight, that flashed across his face was worth twice that dusty crawl to come and see. He couldn’t have heard that long Australian yell for more than two years, and it took all the sudden fight out of him. He let the rifle lie, and stood up — a fair mark for anyone inclined to murder him — and putting both hands to his mouth yelled back:
“Coo-eee-eee! Coo-eee-eee!”
Now that was genuine magic. There was no hocus-pocus, superstition or mechanical ingenuity in any way connected with it. I had made a sound that touched the inner heart-strings of a fellow man and switched his whole attention instantly from the absorbing business of a fight to me — alone — a bearded, brown, presumptive Indian on a hot rock. He turned his back entirely on the screaming fighting men, coo-ee-ed again between his hands, and came running toward me with the awkward half-galloping gait of a horseman in a hurry.
You may say what you like about Free Masonry, and I say nothing, being wise in that respect. But when you’re in a tight place in foreign parts and yearn for action without argument, just yell “Coo-eee!” to a Cornstalk; and if all the Devil and his accomplices are boiling between him and you, you’ll see Hell shifted and its legions made afraid, because there isn’t any inferno, and never was, that can douse an Australian’s chivalry.
It’s a new chivalry, because theirs is a new land; but there’s more of the old in it than you dare try to explain to an Australian, unless you want to swap punches. They don’t like being told that England with long-bow and leather jacket taught them anything. The point to bear in mind is, that in a tight place, in any circumstances, “Coo-eee” works. And now that I’ve spilled the beans, I’ll leave Australians to sweep them up again, and get on with the story.
I guess he thought I was an Indian until he came within ten yards of me, and Australians all draw the color-line tight and hard, don’t forget that. But I once saw an Australian sluice himself from head to foot and go through burning grass to rescue an Afghan, simply because the Afghan had once driven camels across the desert in West Aus.
When he came close enough I grinned, and called out:
“Hello Jeremy! Who’d have thought of meeting you again? What’s your difficulty this time?”
“Oh, you, is it?” he answered. “Well, I’ll be damned! Where did you get those whiskers? Say; that fellow Grim turned out a dandy — perfect Jim-pippin of a man! What became of him?”
We shook hands as if we were pumping water, and he sat dow
n there on the rock beside me, with all that fighting going on, and began to talk as if we had seen each other yesterday.
“Hah-hah! Too bad I couldn’t kidnap Grim along with me. He and I’d have added Arabia to the Commonwealth! Hah! What happened to him? I heard tales of him using this part for a checkerboard, shoving the Sheikhs from square to square as he pleased.”
“He’s close by,” I said. “He sent me to tell you to call this fighting off.”
“The Hell he did! Same old Grim, eh? He’d hand out orders to the Almighty and watch him do it! But listen a minute: I came out to meet a man named Ali Baba, who’s supposed to be bringing me dynamite and jam. I’d walk to Jericho to get some jam. These parts aren’t healthy for a hilly-and-bluey column on the march, so I got the idea to round ’em up and kind o’ nurse ’em, see? Came out with a hundred men — best gang of Bible-minded robbers ever you set eyes on — and sent out a scouting party of twenty at dawn to look for my supply column.
“They looked about and didn’t see much, so they cooked it up between ’em to rest in this fiumara, where I couldn’t see ’em loafing from the skyline, knowing I’d twist their tails to beat the Queen if I caught ’em at it. And while they parked their hams down there along come thirty sons-of-guns and go for ’em without notice! Shot nine men before you could say Christmas, and waded in to chew hash out of the rest!
“I know who they are; they belong to that Willy-boy who calls himself the Avenger, and he’s got it in for me. I haven’t treated him strict enough — too soft-hearted by a darned sight — been teaching him kindergarten — stripped his men and sent ’em back to him naked and that kind of thing, whereas what he needs is strafing by a Hun.
“Top o’ that my men were sore all the way through at being jumped on that way, and I don’t blame ’em. They swore by Allah and the Prophet to wipe that outfit off the map, and I turned ’em loose to do it. Call ’em off, eh? Might as well try to whistle dingoes off a sick sheep! They mean to clean up, bones and all.”
“They have my sympathy,” said I, “but it don’t suit Grim’s book, Jeremy old man. He puts it this way — he’d regard it as a special favor if you’d call this game off, because he’s got a hotter one waiting to begin, and all this noise you’re making spoils his aim.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“You bet.”
“And he asks it as a favor?”
“Certainly.”
“Well I’ll be damned! If Grim’s not a good sport, there isn’t one! Don’t he think I’m a deserter?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Well, he’s the boy for me! Let’s see if we can’t oblige him. Stay there.”
He ran off, skipping and jumping, toward the firing-line without another word and, seeming to pick them carefully, dragged back two men by the scruff of the neck and shook them until they paid attention to him.
I suppose I ought to have stayed where I was, because there isn’t any sense in walking about among flying bullets unless you have to, and Grim was counting on me for information and support later on. But women aren’t the only people who are curious, and anyhow I went.
The only men down in the fiumara who were visible had been dead some while, and it was doubtful whether you could bury them without a rake, because Jeremy’s crowd on both banks were wasting ammunition riddling the corpses full of holes. And I suppose each man would notch his rifle after each shot! But those who were still keeping up a hot fire from under cover must have been getting short of ammunition, and it didn’t call for much shrewdness to figure out that they would surrender if given the chance. I don’t know what Jeremy said to the two men he had singled out. Maybe he threatened them with black magic or something of that sort, but whatever it was it took effect. He sent one man to cross the fiumara below the bend and spread the order from mouth to mouth on the far side, and after about ten minutes the firing ceased. Then Jeremy himself stood as close to the edge of the fiumara as he dared and offered quarter in the name of Allah, saying that anyone who cared to claim protection now might have it.
There were only eleven men left alive, and several of those were seriously wounded, but they had enough presence of mind left not to show themselves as long as Jeremy’s men were in evidence.
When he called his men off, and one spirit more daring than the rest had crawled out to take a look, the remainder emerged one by one like rabbits out of holes, whereat Jeremy told them to bury their dead and look sharp about it.
That reassured them, especially when a couple of rough hoes were tossed down for the purpose, it being a Moslem’s principal obsession to be buried when he dies, just as a Hindu wants to have his body burned. But the job was perfunctory; they buried the totally dead ones first under about a foot of sand, with a few stones piled on top to make the hyenas work for a meal — and then dug rather deeper graves for the men who should have been dead, even if they weren’t, and would be soon in any case.
They weren’t allowed to carry out that part of the plan, but it was an interesting sidelight on men and manners. They had one shallow grave dug, and placed a wounded man in it before Jeremy called my attention to it, placing the man so as to sit upright with his back against the end, and the victim seemed to take it all as a matter of course.
He would probably have died of thirst, if the vultures and hyenas didn’t hasten the process; and in spite of that prospect he seemed surprized, and even resentful, when Jeremy ordered him carried up and laid in the shadow of a rock beside his own wounded.
He was bad-tempered, too, about the water that was given him to drink, swearing it wasn’t fit for camels; and he cursed like a wet cat at one of Jeremy’s men who was told off to bandage him. The other wounded were the same — indifferent to the prospect of a thirsty death in an open grave, and bitterly resentful of attention. There wasn’t much you could do for the wounded anyhow, and I wouldn’t have cared to change places with them. They were slung on to the camels — one man nearly upside-down in a gunny-bag until Jeremy interfered — and taken along on the off-chance of their having enough stamina to survive the march; in which case they would be held for ransom, or else traded against prisoners held by the surrounding Sheikhs.
One way and another it was nearly an hour after the surrender before Jeremy provided me a camel and I started off beside him at the head of all his men to resume touch with Grim. The march, though, didn’t seem to last five minutes, for Jeremy was garrulous, chatting away to me in English just as if I weren’t pretending to be an Indian and disregarding my protests with a fine air. “Make any explanation you want to afterward. I’ll back it up, and they’ll believe me, for I’m a great magician in these parts, mind you, and anything I tell ’em that isn’t in the Book gets written into the appendix quick! Say, I haven’t talked English for a century, it seems like, and I’m going to do it now or bust. You listen, and tell me if I’ve lost the knack!”
* * * * *
YOU might as well have tried to stop the tide with a tin bucket. He talked away like a boy just home from school, and made you laugh because of the incongruity of all that flow of speech from a man dressed like an Arab, mounted on a camel in the midst of all that silent desert. The black cock’s feather stuck into his brow-band was the only thing in keeping with his conversation.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve stuck to the old sky-tickler. Had to have something to remind me I was white. But say; as I was telling you, that fellow Grim’s a two-legged man on feet. He has my vote. I fell foul in Akaba of one of those red-throated fools with inky fingers that the army calls staff-officers, and he was for having me treated with field-punishment number one plus. But Grim’s white, and thinks without moving his lips. He said nothing, but slipped me away with a column of camp-roustabouts who left that afternoon with odds and ends of supplies; but I’ll get that red-throat some day!”
“No you won’t, he’s dead. Died the same night.”
“You don’t say! Well, that’s too bad. I was for getting my discharge in prope
r shape and going round the world to bust him in the nose. He called a beef-bullock an ox, and said I couldn’t talk King’s English. Well, he’s in Hell now, and let him roast! He’ll know what beef is when the fat runs! As I was saying, I slipped away with a column of fly-by-nights, thanks be to Grim, and they and I were fast friends in half o’ no time. I did tricks for ’em, and they had me down for a number one wizard who should bring them luck.
“They’d made up their minds to cut and run with the swag before ever we started, and instead of slitting my throat they made me prisoner and had me giving a performance at every tin-pot village we spent a day at. We traveled nights, you know, and only looked in at the one-horse stands, where they hadn’t enough fighting men to hold us up.”
“How far did they take you?” I asked him.
“My God! We went forever! And I got so sick of finding money in a pocket-handkerchief and turning bullets into eggs that I began to invent new tricks, and got good at ’em too. Ventriloquism went over best, and I got to making the goats say their prayers and prophesy rain; and one day rain came after I’d done that, so they sacrificed the goat on a rock to Allah and made me a saint of ElIslam or some such tommyrot.
But they wouldn’t let me go. A Johnny-on-the-spot who can make goats tell when rain’ll come looked good to them, and they offered me a quarter-dozen wives, but no return ticket.” Being circumstantial godfather to Jeremy, I had my rights. I asked the obvious question.
“No. I’m a bachelor right down to this minute. They lined up a lot of ’em and offered me my pick, and some were not half bad. But I’ve kissed a few of the other kind, and I’m no King Solomon. The Queen of Sheba couldn’t corral me! Crikey! Wait till I set foot in South Aus! One look round at the Bull’s Kid, and then the wallaby trail, with soft grass under me!
“I’ll take a tin billy and an old blue blanket for the love of it; and I know places where the little stations line out one by one along the road, and real girls in lilac and white sunbonnets and straw hats lean over the hitching rail at dinner-time to see if strangers are in sight who’d say yes to a meal. Oh, bully boy! Real women, with violet and blue and gray eyes, and red lips, and a jolly laugh! Say; you ought to come with me. I’ll show you lips worth kissing if you’ll take those whiskers off!”