The Lion of Petra by Talbot Mundy (reading fiction txt) 📕

joined the circle. "But Your Honor is surely Ali Higg, and that is the lady Ayisha! Your Honor is pleased to pretend otherwise, but am I blind? I, who come straight from Petra where Your Honor paid me, am not thus easily deceived!

"Lo, the good camels! It was easy to make a wide circuit, and reach this place a day ahead of me; but what is Your Honor's purpose? What do you want with me, O Lion of Petra?"

"Nevertheless," said Grim, "I am not Ali Higg, who styles himself
Lion of Petra."

"Is that not the lady Ayisha?" he retorted. "True, I have only seen you in the dark, but have I not seen her at the least ten times? Was it not she who had my servant flogged on a former occasion because he likened her to other women?"

Grim said nothing to that. Ayisha drew the embroidered head-cloth over her face, I suppose to hide a smile.

"For what purpose did you visit Petra?" Grim inquired.

"Mashalla! Did I not receive payment from Your Honor? I do not understand!"

"It is I who do not understand," said Grim. "Repeat to me what you did at Petra."

"But Your Honor knows!"

"Very well. Return with me to Petra. I have reasons for asking."

"Wallahi! If it suits Your Honor's humor to make me tell you a tenth time what I have nine times said already, I have a tongue that wags. But I see that another has been telling tales of me behind my back, making me out a liar for his own purposes. Inshallah, it shall be found that my tale varies by less than the ten-thousandth part of the width of a hair from what I have told already."

"Proceed," said Grim. "I listen."

"Thus then: While in Jaffa, having received Your Honor's letter by the hand of Shabbas Ali, requesting me to spy on the British troops, I made all haste, laying aside my own affairs and journeying wherever the trail of information led me. I asked questions, but was not content with asking. I went and looked. I made friends with subordinate officials, some of whom I bribed to show me written orders removed from the desks of commanding officers.

"I ascertained all particulars and found this to be the fact: That whereas there are small bodies of troops scattered in certain places, those are needed for local protection of the places where they are; and that whereas there is at Ludd an army of more than twenty thousand men, with guns, great store of supplies, cavalry, and aeroplanes, that army is held in readiness to go to Egypt and cannot for the present be sent against you. Moreover, the long march, so difficult for guns and supply-wagons, from there to Petra, would not be attempted during the hot season. So Your Honor is safe from attack."

"Uh! So you say!" Grim grunted.

You could almost hear the wheels click inside his head as he tried to puzzle out what use to make of this man. One thing was clear enough: the Lion of Petra was well informed. It was nothing less than fact that on no account could an expedition be undertaken against him for a long time. And it was fair, therefore, to presume that in his Petra fastness the robber chief would be feeling confident, and would be that much more difficult to bluff.

But it is one advantage of that land that you may be deliberate without causing impatience or losing respect. Rather the contrary; the Arab values your decisions all the more for being reached after several minutes of silent thought.

Neither our own gang nor the prisoner was in the least disturbed by Grim's taking his time, and only Narayan Singh, still postponing his sleep, was anxious when Ayisha leaned her head close to Grim's and whispered. Grim did not nod or shake his head or make any recognition of her presence—for a real Arab would not have dreamed of doing so—but it was she who gave him the right suggestion, although her intention was totally different from his.

"You lie," he said suddenly.

"Allah!"

"There is an army making ready now to march on Petra."

"As Allah is my witness, there is no such thing."

"You shall return to Petra."

"But Your Honor knows I am in great haste. My own small affairs at Jaffa, God knows, have been neglected. How shall I spare time to return to Petra?"

"And there you shall reverse your story."

"Allah!"

"You shall tell the very numbers and equipment of the army that makes ready."

"May He who never sleeps preserve me! Am I mad, or dreaming? In Petra I have told Your Honor a true tale; shall I return to Petra in order to tell you a lie? O Lord of the limits of the desert, listen to me! I have property in Jaffa; I must attend to it."

"I know you have. By the wharf where the Greeks land melons from Egypt, isn't it? Three godowns and a cafe on the corner? A nice property."

He paused, and I think he was turning over in his mind just how far it would be wise to go with all those others listening; for every word he let fall was sure to be discussed and discussed again at the next halting-place.

"Which is better—to return to Petra and obey, or to lose that property?"

"How shall I lose it? Hah! Your Honor is pleased to joke. You will invade Palestine as far as Jaffa?"

"For those who live under British protection and yet spy against the British are not so well treated by them as those who spy on their behalf."

"Maybe. When they are caught! When they have caught a fox they may skin him."

"And I am not Ali Higg, the Lion of Petra."

"Then who in the name of the Prophet are you, with the Lion's wife at your side?"

"That is none of your business. You come back to Petra with me.
No, not your men; they go on. You alone. I have spoken."

In vain the man protested. He did not believe for a moment that Grim was not Ali Higg, and he felt sure that he was being kidnaped for some frightful fate, although Grim's mildness of demeanor must have puzzled him; for according to accounts the real Lion of Petra was a roaring beast.

Grim assigned two men to watch him, and gave the order to strike camp, refusing to listen to any further argument. And since the man's camels were too exhausted to march at once he ordered all three left behind at the oasis and put the prisoner on one of our baggage animals.

Just as we were ready to start he walked over to the two men and threatened them with frightful torture unless they hurried westward the minute the camels were fit to move on. It was pretty obvious that they were only too glad to obey; and Yussuf, our prisoner, made obedience more certain by shouting messages to them to be delivered to friends in Jaffa.

So Narayan Singh cast appraising eyes on the shibriyah, and curled up in it like a big dog, without troubling to ask Ayisha's permission. Sleep was his first intention, but he was for killing two birds with one stone; I did not realize at the time what a chance that was going to provide for making the first advances to the lady.

I rode forward beside Grim, who guided us with a compass on his wrist until the stars came out; and for hours on end we went side by side, saying nothing, listening to the monotonous jangle of his camel bell and the obligato of the bells behind. It was music that suited our mood, harmonizing perfectly with the solemn marvel of a desert sunset and the velvety, cool silence of the starlit night.

"That man Yussuf had me guessing," he said at last. "I couldn't place him. Knew his face, but that was all. Then she whispered something about his being a wind that carries smells from one village to the next and back again, spying against both sides at the same time. Then I remembered. He used to spy for us against the Turks and sell them information about us at the same time. Nearly got shot for it, but was let off because his services had really been valuable. I remember his being sent down to Jaffa and told to stay put."

"But what in thunder are you going to do with him?" I asked. "He thinks you're Ali Higg"

Grim chuckled.

"Wonder what Ali Higg will say when he's confronted by Ali Higg!"

"Wonder what he'll do, you mean, don't you!"

"What d'you keep looking back for?"

"Just keeping tabs on Ayisha."

"No need to worry about her. Now we've got Yussuf on our string it's a cinch we can use her whichever way the cat jumps. She'll be afraid he'll tell tales about her."

"Hell!" I said. "It seems to me this whole procession's crazy!
The best we've got with us is a gang of professional thieves.

"The farther we go the more we load up with sure-fire traitors. First Ayisha; she'd cut throats at so much per. Her four men, who'd change sides once an hour if they were made afraid that often. Now this Yussuf—a professional spy, whose habit you say is to betray both sides."

"Pretty good outfit, I'll tell the world," he answered.

"Good for what?"

"You got cold feet?"

"I've got cold judgment. We're crazy. We haven't a chance in a million of getting the best of an outlaw with two hundred men."

"We can try, can't we?"

"Yes, and die, can't we!"

"Well—we might do worse. I'd sooner croak in harness than have an eight-horse funeral. But say, if you don't like it you go back and join those two fellows at the oasis. There'll be no hard words."

But I felt too afraid of my own opinion of myself to turn back at that stage of the game.

CHAPTER VIII

"He Cools His Wrath in the Moonlight, Communing with Allah!"

Now the desert at full moon is as light as Broadway, and the only shadows are those the camels cast, than which there is nothing more weird in the whole range of phantasmagoria. We looked like a string of glistening ghosts accompanied by goblins of a fourth dimension mocking us, and though you couldn't see the details of men's faces, looking back along the line you could see every movement and distinguish man from man.

About midnight Ayisha made up her mind to enjoy the shibriyah, more, I suspect, for the sake of annoying the Sikh than because she really wanted it. So she ranged alongside, and chiefly because I was curious and chose to be amused, but partly because of my league with Narayan Singh to keep watch on her, I checked my protesting camel and let him drop back into place behind them.

I knew Narayan Singh was awake, for I had seen the glow of his cigarette through the curtains ten minutes before; but he pretended to be asleep, so that she had to get the camels flank to flank and put her hand inside the curtains to awake him. Then he did the obvious thing and seized her hand, and I heard his bass voice answering her shrill protests. I don't know why, but the moonlight that made all things clear seemed also to make words more than usually distinct.

"Ah!" he boomed. "I dreamed of paradise. I awake and find a houri with her hand in mine! Il-hamd'ul-illah!* I Enter, beloved! Why waste the moonlight hours?" [* Thanks be to God!]

"Pig!" she retorted. "Father of bristles! Let my hand go!"

"Nay, lovely one! I awake—I see—I understand; thou art not a houri after all, but that same Ayisha I have loved in secret all these burning days! I, who had resolved that gold and honor were as feathers in the scale against thy kisses, am I blessed as last?"

"Cursed by black ifrits, thou son of an Afghan pig! Let me go, and get out of that shibriyah!"

"Such eyes! Behold, the moon is pale beside them, and the stars mere drops of sweat on the sky's dull cheek! Such loveliness as thine, beloved, needs a warrior to worship it—such a man as I, who would cut the throats of kings for a kind word from thee!"

Don't forget, you fellows who have to call on a girl a dozen Sunday evenings in succession before she will go to the movies or condescend to sit out a dance with you, that