"Can't be done. Even if you got away with it—which I don't believe you could—it would involve obligations on my part. You'd ask me to change professions."
"I would even offer you the opportunity to do so."
"Couldn't stand it. Rhoda couldn't stand it. We were born to this sort of thing. . . . It's not life. I may die suddenly, but I'll have lived all the time until that moment gets here." He smiled winningly. "No, I'd rather be wicked than bored."
"Think of her."
"I am. . . . Rhoda and I against the world—and what a team we'll make!"
"There are legitimate adventures; there is romance in business."
"Not my sort. . . . No use, Mr. Friend. I've got Rhoda and I've got the life I want. Nobody can offer me anything else."
Reuben Friend sighed and smiled sadly. "Children . . . only children," he said, softly. "Crying for the moon."
"Papa," interjected Mrs. Friend's voice, "don't sit on that damp ground. Your rheumatism—" She had been talking to Rhoda, who maintained her post of watchfulness. "It's gratifying how Mr. Friend is received all over Europe—but, of course, it's his due. And his visit is unofficial, too. Naturally we travel on a diplomatic passport—but he's been making a regular progress. . . . But I have such trouble with him. He does too much. . . . And you see how irritable he is when his rheumatism is bad. I have to watch him every second. Why, General Allenby said to me—" It was at this moment she discovered the object of her pride and solicitude upon the earth. . . .
Rhoda peered downward. "Something's happening," she called. "They're running back toward the cars. . . . They've gathered in a knot, listening. . . ." Now she leaned far over the brink in an effort to see down the winding road. "They hear something and there's an argument. Everybody waving his arms and yelling. . . . It's horsemen. I see them."
"Hana Effendi," said Dare, and they rushed to the cliff's edge in time to see the Bedouins scurrying for cover behind rocks and in gullies, whence rifles began to bark. Presently the horsemen came into full view, stopped, dismounted, and took cover themselves—all but one who sat his horse, erect, motionless.
"Now who's that idiot?" Bailey asked, complainingly.
Rhoda strained her eyes, and even at that distance she recognized the man. It was El Ghafir! And with the police! What could it mean? What was the significance of his presence there? It troubled and perplexed her that he should have taken sides against her, become an ally of her enemies. Her lip quivered and she felt alone, deserted. . . .
"Now's our time," said Bailey. "Both sides are busy and will be for a spell. . . . Mr. Friend, you're safe now. I hate to give you up, but as things lie there's no way I can realize on you. When the fracas below is over, go down to the policeman—and your troubles are over. . .
"And you?" asked Mr. Friend.
"We," said Bailey, "are going to look for back of the beyond and crawl into it. . . . You're sitting on the world now. Luck broke against me—but better luck next time. Saffoury, you stop with Mr. Friend. . . . How about you, Professor? Still determined?"
"I come with you," sail Dare.
"Rhoda!"
She arose to follow him, but Mrs. Friend caught the girl to her deep bosom and clung to her. "No. . . . No. . . . Stay with us. Trust my hush and."
"I've promised," Rhoda said, freeing herself gently. "But I thank you—I thank you both. . . . And I shall never forget you. . . ."
And so, having come to the parting of their ways, Rhoda Fair and Jaunty Bailey and Paul Dare turned their backs upon their companions and their faces to the unknown. . . . Reuben Friend and his wife watched them until their forms disappeared among the distant trees then Reuben took his wife's hand. "Children," he said again, "little children playing games . . . dangerous games. . . "
Chapter Twenty-four
IN Jaunty Bailey's mind was a half-defined plan; the kernel of it was to arrive at some great city, for, in common with his kind, he found safety and refuge in crowded streets and swarms of humanity. If he had been pursued in America his first thought would be to reach New York or Chicago. He knew how to conduct himself in cities; in the outlands he was uneasy, out of his element. Therefore his present thought was to make for Jerusalem. His ideas of the Holy City were vague, especially as to its modern aspects. It was enough for him that it was one of the famed cities of the world, which indicated to him a great population, huddled sections of the city, hiding places. He did not know that, great as Zion once had been, the city of David was now little more than a village. . . .
How much their success in evading capture for that night was due to his strategy, how much to possible misinformation given by Reuben Friend, will never be known. Jaunty put himself in Hana Effendi's place, and Hana Effendi would imagine them making straight for the valley of the Jordan. Therefore they would not travel in that direction, but would turn southward and a little westward, keeping to the mountain fastnesses. They were, therefore, facing and traveling toward the ancient village of Endor, and might have skirted it had not the Wady esh Sherrarr intervened.
"We'll go this way," he said, "as long as we can keep afoot tonight. A head start's the thing. After this I think we should travel at night and hide out in the daytime. . . . Your dragoman, Rhoda, said the Jordan led to Jericho, and that from Jericho to Jerusalem was a fine road. Once in Jerusalem and we can take care of ourselves.
The Jordan lay some ten miles to the eastward; the railroad to Haifa made an oblique angle, turning to the northwestward a little greater distance to the south. From the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, as the bird flies, is but sixty miles; if one follows the tortuous windings of the tawny river it is close to two hundred, and the way is not easy to travel. On either side of this great depression rise tumultuous hills, cliffs of basalt, traversed only by difficult paths. The valley itself, at its northern end, is of a fine fertility, but as it descends steeply, falling and ever falling, it becomes increasingly sterile and inclement, until at the river's mouth it has reached a level thirteen hundred feet below the surface of the Mediterranean. There it is a desert, stifling with heat in the hours of sun—a wilderness among whose dwarf growth, tall reeds and rushes, wild animals and hunters almost as wild may be met with. Yet Rhoda and Paul Dare and Jaunty must fight their way, either over the obstacles interposed by the jumble of mountains or through the scarcely less terrifying hazards of a dead valley. . . .
They must avoid human beings, must remain unseen, for in this land rumor travels fast. The problem was not so much one of travel as of living, for to live one must have food; if one is to renew his energy for the travail of another day, he must have rest and shelter. From no living being would they dare ask food, at no door might they knock for shelter!
That night they spent in a ruined enclosure snuggling in the deeply eroded cut made by a mountain brook. The spot was lonely, sheltered, and they were not uncomfortable save for the gnawing of hunger. Here Paul Dare built a fire to keep off the night chill, and about this they lay upon couches contrived of leaves and grass. They were exhausted with the day's exertions and excitements, so that even hunger was of little moment, and Rhoda slept almost at once.
"We must keep up the fire through the night," said Dare. "I'll watch until midnight."
"Dare," said Bailey, "I'm not worrying much about the police. It's Abdullah that's on my mind. And the Sheik El-Ssimairi. They can get information where Hana couldn't hear a whisper. . . . That little ex-partner of mine is not going to forget us. If he can't manage to get his own personal sticheree into my ribs, he'll sell us out to the British. I know him."
"If," said Dare, "he escapes from Hana Effendi."
Jaunty grunted. "He'll smell us out," he said, and he said it as one who knows.
"It's frightfully hard on Miss Fair."
"Said the high-minded young man with an accusing voice," Jaunty replied.
"I was not trying to make a quarrel," said Dare. "We've enough between us now—which must be kept on the shelf until Miss Fair is safe. Until then
, Bailey,—"
"Until then we must work and think and fight together. All for one and one for all—that sort of thing. . . . How's your leg?"
"Better than I hoped. Turn in now. I'll call you at midnight."
"Have a hot cup of coffee ready," said Jaunty, "and I wouldn't mind three or four fried eggs and bacon." He turned over, pillowed his face on his arms, and was almost instantly asleep. As for Dare, he crouched over the fire, renewing it as occasion demanded, thinking, speculating, studying the past and the future. . . . He had journeyed a long road from the lecture platform of his university, and he was not sorry for it. He had altered more than he realized; he had perceived and accepted more than he knew. . . . He was conscious that the world he lived in today had little in common with the world of sixty days ago.
Rhoda cried out softly in her sleep, and Paul arose to bend over her solicitously. She was cold in spite of the fire. He glanced at Bailey, who was asleep, and then removed his coat to spread over her she shoulders—and was embarrassed by what he had done. Before he awoke Bailey he would recover his garment so the act would not be discovered. . . . It was a little thing, but indicative of profound changes.
Midnight came and he aroused Bailey, who awoke, rubbed his eyes, gazed at Paul in his shirt sleeves—for he had forgotten to retrieve his coat—and then to Rhoda. He made no comment, but, waiting until Dare slept, removed his own coat and spread it over the shoulders of his rival, his enemy, his ally. As he did so he chuckled. . . .
There was a dreadful sameness to the days and nights that followed, a sameness of fatigue, of hunger, of furtiveness and of constant watchfulness. The heat of the day took its toll of them, as did the chill of the night. Food was not easy to come by, though small game was plentiful in the wadys. More than once, driven by necessity, one of the men risked drawing near to some village or to some outlying farmer's house in search of food. They were ragged, cut, bruised, but always Bailey lived up to his sobriquet, always he was debonair, laughing, keeping up flagging spirits with that oblique humor which characterized him. Rhoda, least fit of them all physically, presented a brave front. She did not hold back, never asked concessions, never made complaints, and showed that laughter was not dead within her. It was Dare who suffered most, by reason of his injuries, and it was he his companions were compelled to admire. . . . But the fine, the splendid thing about it was the way in which the two enemies labored day and night, unselfishly, neither attempting to outdo the other in her eyes, for her comfort and her protection. She was conscious of it, conscious of the manhood which resided in them—even if that manhood were of two different antagonistic varieties. She knew that either of them stood ready to lay down his life for her, and she was grateful—but no word of gratitude passed her lips.
There were hours in which she was content, and with a strange contentment. She was content because she believed they were approaching the end—the end of everything. It did not seem to her that they could continue forever, that before long strength, vitality, must depart and they would lie down and nothingness would descend upon them. Of this she was not afraid, but she was afraid of a future, of any future. Whether they made good their escape—as Bailey seemed so confident they would do—or were captured, the future held for her nothing but woe, and she would gladly avoid it by passing through the dark gates.
She had promised herself to Jaunty—in return for a fraudulent promise which circumstances had compelled him to fulfil. . . . She knew now that she did not, nor ever could, love the man. . . . And, strangely, she was beginning to long for a life of peaceful quiet, a normal life, a life within the law. Fate seemed to have cast her without the law, giving her no choice in the matter—and so she longed for what she could not have. . . .
More than once they saw, from some safe eminence, parties of horsemen scouring the valley below. Again and again they lay motionless in some cover while parties of searchers rode hither and thither among the hills. Never for a moment were they allowed to forget that they were hunted creatures and that every instant was one of peril. . . .
But fortune favored them; they remained undiscovered, and each day drew nearer and nearer to Jericho, their first objective.
"Keep your eye peeled for Bedouins," was Jaunty's constant caution, but they saw no Bedouins, nor did they see any of those hunted outlaws who keep to the fastnesses bordering the river, making forays into Palestine to rob, to steal cattle or sheep. They saw none of the vagabond, nomadic hunters of the basin. . . . But they had themselves been seen and watched with curiosity by the these. It may well have been that they would have been attacked and robbed in their sleep had not their fire been bright and their watch incessant. Their progress was watched, discussed by furtive men, word of it passed along the valley until it came to the vengeful ears of Abdullah and the fugitives from the camp of the Sheik El-Ssimairi.
Six days they had b been upon their way, and on the seventh they could look from the heights to see spread before them the glistening blue of the Dead Sea, and the arid, sun-baked, undulating desert through which ran the Jordan to pour its yellow waters into that great salt reservoir. Across and in the misty distance reared Mount Nebo; to their left the gigantic, un-scalable cliffs of the Mount of Temptation, and, below it, the straggling cluster of houses which marked the ancient village of Jericho—a place of departed glories. . . There, under their eyes, was the spot where Joshua and his men had crossed the Jordan and set up their altar; there the trumpets had sounded and the walls crumbled as the hosts of Israel marched about the city. Here Christ started upon his last journey to Jerusalem. Once the district had been fair and populous, suitable as a gift from Antony to Cleopatra—who sold the gift to Herod the king, and he embellished it with palaces suitable to the winter residence of a monarch. . . . A history incredible when one surveys the spot as it exists today, barren, unsightly, unfit to nourish animal or man!
That last day! Miles of stumbling and climbing; miles of heat, of torn hands, of suffering feet! Miles when nothing but the will which lived in them enabled them to persist, so that they went on and on as if in a horrid dream. . . Miles of mountain and gully, of basalt cliffs, of undergrowth, of broken rocks—miles interminable and dreadful! . . . Miles when not for an instant were they hidden from vengeful, red-veined eyes, eyes which followed and marked, waiting for the night's encampment! . . . Abdullah had found their trail and had overtaken them! Abdullah and four of the seven sons of the Sheik El-Ssimairi, eager to wipe out the memory of their father in a British prison place with the blood of those who had caused his undoing. Here was blood feud which could not be settled by the payment of money. . . . Yet Abdullah hoped for profit, for he, who had been Jaunty's go-between, knew the girl concealed about her person something of great value. . . . So the fugitives approached a night in whose shadows lurked cupidity and revenge.
From a slope midway up the mountain Jaunty marked, a mile or so ahead, a perpendicular cliff, and clinging to this precipice near to its top a tiny structure which, in the descending sun, shone a glittering white. From the past week of experience he knew what it was—the long-deserted shelter of some forgotten hermit, some religious who had lived and died there in lonely, fanatical ecstacies.
"Got to be more careful than ever," he said. "Tourists come to Jericho and the Dead Sea. . . . If we can make that hermit's cell we ought to do for the night."
So they struggled upward and forward, searching for some path to lead them to the shelf; finding it, at last, dipping from the top and wending perilously downward, offering but the narrowest of foothold. They followed it until they reached the tiny level floor on which the cell was built. Above them the face of the cliff jutted outward, frowning down upon them; it dropped sheer to the dead lands a thousand feet below!
"Safe for this night," said Jaunty. He lay upon his stomach and peered into the abyss, chuckling as he saw a party of horsemen trot into the village and disappear between dwellings and garden walls. Han Effendi and his men were taking care to guard the highway. "R
hoda, we're almost out of the woods."
She smiled, could not help but smile, for Jaunty was so like a boy, so capable of shedding responsibilities, so buoyant and optimistic. It really seemed to him they were almost out of the woods, when, as a matter of fact, they were just entering them. Because he had traversed a barren region where it was all but impossible to trace or to follow them, Jaunty could shed his anxieties. He let each day take care of itself. . . . At the worst he never would be a dull or depressing companion.
"Tomorrow we'll get to Jerusalem, and then we'll have meat and potatoes and salad and butter. I can taste butter in my sleep."
"And then what?" Paul Dare asked. "Suppose we do reach Jerusalem. How are we to get out of it? How reach America? We can't travel on a train without showing our passports. We can't cross a boundary. We can't board a ship."
"Don't your worry, Prof. I'll find a way. Trouble with you is you've done too much thinking and not enough doing. You haven't found out you get away with things by trying. Toujours l'audace, as the french say. . . . I'm rested up enough to take a climb after firewood. . . . No. Save your gimpy leg. I'll do the chores tonight."
Jauntily he wended his way up the path while Rhoda and Dare watched him in silence. Presently Paul turned to her abruptly and asked, "You're going through with it?"
"My promise to Jaunty?"
"Yes."
She nodded her head slowly. "Yes," she said, "I shall keep my word."
"Do you love the man?"
"That is a question you have no right to ask."
"And you have answered it. If you did love him you would not hesitate to say so."
"Love has nothing to do with it."
"I'm beginning to believe that this thing we call love has a great deal to do with everything," he said; then his voice changed, became younger, deeper, tremendously urgent. "Rhoda, don't do this. Don't do it. . . . He has no right to insist."
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