by Talbot Mundy
I rode over beside the engine-driver and warned him to pull out before trouble started. But he had to take in water first. And he seemed to be an expert in symptoms of lawlessness. Leaning his grimy head and shoulders out of the cab, he looked the crowd over, spat, and showed his yellow teeth in a grin that vaguely reminded me of Grim’s good-humored smile.
“Mafish!” he remarked, summing up the situation in two syllables. “Nothing doing!”
I would have given, and would give now, most of what I own for that man’s ability to pass such curt, comprehensive judgment without reservation, equivocation, or hesitation. I rather suspect that it can only be learned by sticking to your job when the rest of the world has been fooled into thinking it is making history out of talk and treason.
There was nothing whatever but water for the train to wait for. Nobody had business at El-Maan, for the simply sufficient reason that you can’t do business where governments don’t function, where all want everything for nothing, and whoever could pay won’t.
The engine-driver’s grimier assistant swung the water-spout clear and climbed back over the cab, cursing the view, crowds, coal-dust, prospect — everything. He meant it too. When he said he wished the devil might pitch me into hell and roast me forever he wasn’t exaggerating. But I got off my camel and boarded the engine nevertheless. Ayisha had handed over her mount to Ali Baba and entered the caboose, ignoring the protests of the uniformed conductor who, having not much faith in fortune, did not care whom he offended. But he might as well have insulted a camel as Ayisha, for all he would have gained by it.
My friend the engine-driver blew the whistle; somebody on the platform tooted a silly little horn; a signal descended in the near distance and we started just as I caught sight of Mujrim coming to take my camel.
Then it occurred to some bright genius that even if they might not loot the train there was no embargo on rejoicing; and there was only one way to do that. What they saw fit to rejoice about I don’t know, but one shot rang in the air, and a second later fifty bullets pierced the dinning iron roof.
That made such a lovely noise and so scared the passengers that they could not resist repeating it, and by the time we had hauled abreast of the distance-signal there was not much of the roof left.
I saw Ali Baba and Mujrim take advantage of the excitement to start back with the camels; and two minutes later about twenty men decided to follow them at a safe distance. The rest had begun to scatter before the train was out of sight, and I never again saw one of the five gentry who had introduced us to the whole proceedings.
Then my friend the engine-driver found time to be a little curious.
“What’n hell?” he asked, in the lingua franca that all Indians are supposed to understand.
So I answered him in the mother argot at a venture, and he bit.
“There’s a man down the line a piece who’ll blow your train to hell,” said I, “unless you pull up when he flags you.”
“Son of a gun, eh?”
“Sure bet!”
“Where you learn English?”
“States,” said I. “You been there too?”
“Sure pop! Goin’ back some time.”
“Not if you don’t stop her when you get the hint, you won’t. That guy down there ahead means business.”
I don’t think he would have dared try to run the gauntlet in any case, for the best the engine could do with that load behind it was a wheezy twenty miles an hour, and the track was so out of repair that even that speed wasn’t safe. I was willing to bet Grim hadn’t lifted a rail or placed any obstruction in the way, but the driver had no means of knowing that.
“Son of a gun, eh?” he repeated. “What in ‘ell’s ‘e want?”
“Nothing, if you pay attention to him. All he hankers for is humoring. He wants to talk.”
“Uh! What in ‘ell’s a matter with him?”
“Nothing, but he’ll put a crimp in your machinery unless you stay and chin with him.”
“I give him dry steam. He’ll run like the devil.”
“Don’t you believe it. He’s wise. Better humor him.”
“Shucks! I shoot him. I shot lots o’ men.”
“No need to shoot,” said I. “This is love stuff. He’s got a lady in the last car.”
“Oh, gal on the train, eh? All right. You climb back along the cars an’ kick her off soon as you see him.”
“Gosh! I’d sooner kick a nest of hornets!”
“You her brother?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it.”
“What then?”
“She’s got my gun. Barring that we’re not real close related.”
“Uh! Those damned Bedouin fellers can’t shoot for nuts. Let ’em fire away. I take a chance.”
“Ever hear of Ali Higg?” I asked him.
He turned his head from peering down the blistering hot track, wiped the sweat from his face and hands with a filthy rag, and looked at me keenly.
“Why? You know him?”
“Yes. I asked if you do.”
“Son of a gun! Him and me — same father!”
“You mean he’s your brother?”
He nodded.
“He’s the man you’ve got to pull up for.”
“His gal on the train?”
“Sure thing.”
He resumed his vigil, leaning over the side of the engine with one hand on the throttle-lever.
“All right,” he said. “I stop for him. Son of a gun! If he bust my train I kill the sucker!”
I never posed as much of a diplomatist, but it seemed wise to me in the circumstances not to offer any further information or ask questions. But I was curious. It was possible that Ali Higg’s brother had been given the task of running that train for the reason that no lesser luminary would have one chance in a thousand of reaching the destination.
I never found out whether my guess was right or not, and never left off rating that engine-driver in any case as one of the world’s heroes. I’ve a notion there is a book that might be written about him and his train.
A polished black dot in the distance soon increased into the flattened egg-shaped rock, and then we saw Grim standing on the track with all his men.
That is the safest place to stop a train from, because you avoid a broadside from the car-windows. True to his word the driver came to a standstill, and Grim came up to speak with him just as I jumped off. I waited, expecting to see a contretemps.
“Ya Ali Higg! You fool!” said the driver. “You would kill your own brother? You let me go!”
“Hah! You recognize me, then?” said Grim, coolly enough on the surface.
But his poker mask was off. In that land of polygamy and deportations it is frequent enough that one brother does not know the other by sight; but it must be disconcerting, all the same, to have a supposititious brother sprung on you. He gave a perceptible start, as he had not done when first addressed as Ali Higg that day.
“Mashallah!” swore the driver. “I would know thine evil face with the meat stripped off it! Nevertheless, thou and I are brothers and this is my train. So let me go!”
Grim watched Ayisha jump out of the caboose with my rifle in her hand, and turn to take aim at the open door, through which the conductor’s voice came croaking blasphemy.
“All right,” he said. “Since thou and I are brothers, go thy way! Allah ysallmak!”
The driver did not wait for a second hint, but shoved the lever over so hard that the wheels spun and the whole train came within an ace of bucking off the track. And before the caboose had passed us Ayisha was alongside Grim abusing him for not having broken the locks off the steel freight-cars.
“I am a robber’s wife!” she said, stamping her foot indignantly. “What sort of robber are you that let such loot pass free?”
“Shall I rob my mother’s son?” Grim asked her. “God forbid!”
Then he turned to me, wondering.
“Can you beat it?” he said.
WE did not have to wait long for Ali Baba, Mujrim, and the camels, for they had not been fools enough to dawdle, with a hundred and fifty balked freebooters within rifle-shot, whose resilient pride was likely to breed anger. You can’t lead camels any more than horses as fast as you can ride them; unless stampeded they tow loggily; but the fact that two or three dozen mounted Arabs had elected to follow along behind and watch from a safe distance what might happen to the train had lent Ali Baba wings.
And the same fact gave us wings too. We were up and away at once, headed eastward toward Petra, I perched on top of a baggage beast until Ali Baba could cut across at an angle and overtake us.
So those who watched no doubt confirmed the story of Ali Higg’s presence on the scene. Had they not from the horizon seen the train stopped? Did they not with their own eyes see us scoot for Petra? And who else than the redoubtable Ali Higg would be likely to own such a string of splendid camels — he who could take what he coveted, and never coveted anything except the best?
The evidence of identity was strong enough for a judge and jury. Men have been hanged in America on less.
But that didn’t help make the rest of our course any clearer than a fog off Sandy Hook. The real Ali Higg was in Petra like a dragon in a cave, and from all accounts of him he was not the sort of gentleman likely to lavish sweet endearments on a rival who had stolen not only his thunder, but his name as well.
“When in doubt go forward” is good law; but which is forward and which backward when you stand in the middle of a circle of doubt is a point that invites argument; and as soon as I could get my own camel I rode up beside Grim to find out whether our leader had a real plan or was only guessing.
But he seemed in no doubt at all, only satisfied, with the air of a scientist who has at last found the key to a natural puzzle. I found him chuckling.
“That explains a hundred things,” he said.
“What does?”
“Why, my likeness to Ali Higg. It’s evidently so. I’ve often been kept awake wondering why strangers — Bedouins mostly — would show me such deference until they found out who I really am, and after that would have to be handled without gloves. It bothered me. It looked as if I had some natural gift that I couldn’t identify, and that got smothered as soon as I put mere brains to work.
“But I see now; they mistook me for the robber, and the reaction when they found out I was someone less like the devil made them act like school-kids who think they can guy the teacher. Now I understand, I’ll do better.”
“The point is,” said I, “that you’re established as the robber now, and here we are riding straight for his den. Can we fight him and his two hundred?”
“Fighting is a fool’s game ten times out of nine,” he answered. “That’s to say, it’s always a fool who starts the fight. The wise man waits until fighting is the only resource that’s left to him.”
“Why not wait, then, and watch points?”
“Because we’re not dealing with a wise man; he’s only clever and drastic. If we wait word’s bound to reach him that someone’s posing as himself, and he’ll sally forth to make an example of us — do a good job of it too!
“I’d hate to be caught out in the desert with twenty men by Ali Higg! He’s a rip-roaring typhoon. But the worst typhoon the world ever saw had a soft spot in the middle.
“You know what the Arab say? ‘A dog can scratch fleas, but not worms in his belly!’ We’ve got to be worms in the belly of Ali Higg, and where the man is there will be his belly also. We’ve got to stage what the movie people call a close-up.”
Almost everyone in the outfit had a different view of the situation, although all agreed that Grim was the man to stay with. Narayan Singh, growling in my ear incessantly, scented intrigue, and his Sikh blood tingled at the thought; he began to look more tolerantly on Ayisha as a mere instrument whom Grim would find some chance of using.
“For the cleverest woman whom the devil ever sent to ruin men is after all but a lie that engulfs the liar. I know that man Jimgrim. She will dig a pit, but he will not fall into it. It may be that we shall all die together, but what of that?”
Ayisha, on the other hand, was getting nervous. Grim avoided her. She was reduced to questioning others, edging the little Bishareen alongside each in turn. She seemed no longer able to suffer the close confinement of the shibriyah, but endured the scorching sun and desert flies with less discomfort than the rest of us betrayed, camels included.
“What will he do? Is he mad? Does he think that the Lion of Petra is a camel to be managed with a rope and a stick?
“I have given him his chance; because of my words men already fear him. Why doesn’t he plunder, then, and run to his own home? Why doesn’t he talk with me and let me tell him what to do next? I know all these people — all their villages — everything!”
“All women know too much, yet never what is needful,” Ali Baba answered.
He was frankly jubilant. Son and grandson of robbers by profession, father and grandfather of educated thieves, life meant lawlessness to him, and he could see nothing but honest pleasure and the chance of profit in Grim’s predicament. He loved Grim, as all Arabs do love the foreigner who understands them, deploring nothing except that unintelligible loyalty to a Western code of morals that according to Ali Baba’s lights consisted of pure foolishness. And now, as he saw it, Grim stood committed to a course that could only lead to trickery. And all trickery must pave the way for plunder. And plundering was fun.
His sons and grandsons in varying degree saw matters from the old man’s viewpoint, although, having had rather less experience of it, they were not quite so confident of Grim’s generalship; but they made up for that by perfectly dog-like devotion to “the old man, their father,” whose word and whose interpretation of the Koran was the only law they knew.
What tickled their fancy most was Ali Baba’s cleverness in egging on Ayisha to advertise Grim as Ali Higg. Again and again on the march that day, in spite of the grilling heat, and thirst and flies, they burst into roars of laughter over it, chaffing Ayisha’s four men unmercifully.
And after a while Mahommed, the youngest of Ali Baba’s sons, regarded by all the others as the poet of the band and therefore the least responsible and most to be humored in his whims, made up a song about it all. It called for something more than boisterous spirits; it needed the fire of enthusiasm and ingrained pluck to set them all singing behind him in despite of the desert heat and the dazzling, bleak, unwatered view. They sang the louder in defiance of the elements.
“Lord of the desert is Ali Higg!
Akbar! Akbar!
Lord of the gardens of grape and fig.
Akbar! Akbar!
Lord of the palm and clustered date.
Mishmish,†, olive and water sate
Hunger and thirst in Ali’s gate!
Akbar! Akbar!
Akbar Ali Higg!
“Lion of lions and lord of lords!
Akbar! Akbar!
Chief of lances, prince of swords!
Akbar! Akbar!
Red with blood is the realm he owns!
Bzz-u-wzz-uzz the blood-fly drones!
Crack-ak-ak-ak! The crunching bones!
Akbar! Akbar!
Akbar Ali Higg!
“Jackals feed on Ali’s trail!
Akbar! Akbar!
Speed and strength and numbers fail!
Akbar! Akbar!
Swooping along in a cloud of sand,
Killing and conquering out of hand
Hasten the slayers of Ali’s band!
Akbar! Akbar!
Akbar Ali Higg!
“Camel and horse and fat-tail sheep,
Akbar! Akbar!
Ali’s kite-eyed herdsmen keep!
Akbar! Akbar!
Gold and silver and gems of the best,
Amber and linen and silks attest
What are the profits of Ali’s quest!<
br />
Akbar! Akbar!
Akbar Ali Higg!
“Fair are the fortunes of Ali’s men! Akbar! Akbar! Each has slave-women eight or ten! Akbar! Akbar! Ho! Where the dust of the desert swirls Over the plain as his cohort whirls, Oho! the screams of the plundered girls! Akbar! Akbar!
Akbar Ali Higg!”
There was any amount more of it, but most of the rest was not polite enough for print, because the Arab likes to enter into details. It sounded much better in Arabic, anyhow. And more and more frequently as the song grew lurid and they warmed to the refrain they made their point by changing the third Akbar into Jimgrim:
“Akbar! Akbar! Jimgrim Ali Higg!”
It suited their sense of humor finely to announce to the wind and the kites that Grim, the strict, straight, ethical American was a ravisher of virgins and a slitter of offenseless throats, who knew no mercy — a man without law in this world or prospect of peace in the next.
When we reached an oasis about noon — sweet water and thirty or forty palm-trees — and simply had to camp there because the camels were exhausted after a night and half a day of strenuous marching, they were still so full of high spirits that they had to work them off somehow; and unwittingly I provided the excuse.
I was on the lee side of a camel, opening a boil in Mujrim’s leg with his razor, when I caught sight of one of the younger men trying to burgle the medicine-chest. I yelled at him, and naturally gashed my patient’s leg, who rose in giant wrath and with enormous fairness smote the real culprit.
The resulting blasphemous bad language brought Ali Baba to the scene at once as peacemaker, with all the gang behind him; and in a minute they had all joined hands, with Mahommed standing in the center, and were dancing like a lot of pouter-pigeons, singing a new song about Mujrim’s leg, and a razor, and blood on the sand, and palm-trees, and a saint, and my superhuman ability to let daylight into the very heart of boils. You don’t have to believe any one who tells you that Arabs haven’t humor.