“Have I smitten you?” asked Grim.
The robber put some oily seeds into his mouth and chewed the cud on that for several minutes.
“But unless he is destroyed the Avenger will come and make war on me. If he wins, he will slay me and make some of my men prisoners, adding them to the force he has already. Thus you will have a more difficult man to deal with than I have been. Whereas I have only raided into Palestine a dozen times, he will make a holy war and plunder Jerusalem itself. So you must smite him or return me that agreement.”
Grim laughed. “You would better help me then! If I fail you’ll suffer sooner than anyone.”
“Uh-uh!” the robber grunted. “Here in Petra I might defeat him, for the pass is narrow and a woman is the equal of a man. Out in the open I cannot prevail against his numbers.”
It was Grim’s turn to sit silent. I was growing used to his masked changes of expression and did not doubt he knew what he was going to say; but I believe he turns over a sentence in his mind a dozen times before he uses it, on occasions when most men would seek to make an impression by rhetoric.
“They say I look like you,” he said at last.
“They speak truly. We might have had one mother. Therefore it is unseemly that you should force a written pledge from me! Give me back that paper I signed, and go in peace.”
Grim ignored the suggestion. “Are you known to this Sheikh who calls himself the Avenger?” he asked.
“Walla! Am I known to him? He took the title of Avenger on account of me, when he swore to spill my blood in the dust! In the War I let myself be captured by the British rather than fall into his hands, for in those days I was not yet ready to take the field against him. Am I known to him! Bismillah! It was my knife that made the scar across his cheek! Not only does he know and remember me, but every man of his who sees that scar remembers me!”
“Then the Avenger will think I am you?” suggested Grim.
“Aye, and torture you with crucifixion on a dung-heap among the flies, after you have been well beaten!”
“And my men will be considered your men?” Grim went on.
“Surely, and tortured, too!”
Grim made another long pause, and Ali Higg smirked in the belief that he had found the weak place in Grim’s courage. But he winced when Grim countered calmly.
“So whatever my men and I do will be credited to you?”
“Allah!”
“So that if I fail I shall have added to the wrath of the Avenger?”
“As a man who takes a little stone and adds it to a mountain!”
“You’d better help!” said Grim.
“As God is my witness, I am afraid to go against Ben Saoud the Avenger!” answered Ali Higg. “Besides, what can I do? You have sent away my men —some in this direction, some in that.”
“It was you who sent them away,” Grim retorted. “All I did was to postpone their return. Now I’ll give you one last chance to use your men on a campaign. After this once, peace!”
“Mashallah! What shall I do with peace? How then shall I get new camels?”
“Breed them!”
“How shall I get provisions?”
“Till the oases. Sow and reap!”
“How shall I make my name feared?”
“Make it respected! Was not Solomon the wisest man? Did he make war? Rather he held the scales of justice evenly, and men looked up to him.”
“But the prophet Mahommed came after Solomon, and was wiser. He made war!”
“I tell you, Ali Higg,” said Grim, “you’ve made the last raid you ever will with impunity! It’s none of my business to ruin you. I’d sooner see you establish yourself as a strong chief—strong enough to keep the peace in these parts, and keeping it fairly. But as Allah is my witness, Ali Higg, if you don’t mend your ways the British will come and mend them for you. What is more, I’ll take the field myself against you, and not quit until your bones are bleaching! You may call me friend or enemy, but choose now! Which is it to be?”
Ali Higg grew fidgety and his eyes shifted again. I didn’t see what Grim stood to score by extracting a promise of friendship from such an obvious rogue; but you never know what Grim is driving at until it suits him to make it clear.
“Wallahi! If I say I am your friend,” the Lion of Petra answered presently, “what shall prevent you from going to Saoud the Avenger and saying you are his friend?”
“True! What shall prevent?” said Grim.
“And joining with him against me? For all men love to take the stronger side!”
Ali Higg called for his water-pipe, and a woman brought it already filled with tobacco. She lighted it for him, and he ordered her gruffly to get out. He was evidently feeling pleased with himself over that piece of subtle reasoning. There was silence for several minutes during which Grim produced a cigarette, and old Ali Baba, grandfather and captain of our gang of thieves, came to the mouth of the cave to make sure that all was well. He excused himself by asking leave to send four men to feed our camels, and thereafter sat down just around the corner of the wall, where he could listen.
“Do you realize,” Grim asked at last, “that if I proposed to take sides against you I would simply take and kick you over this cliff now?”
“Allah! That is not how friends talk!”
“Yet I haven’t even disarmed you. Instead, my hakim here has lanced your boils and—
“Aye! Leaving me too sore and weak to take the field against anyone. I would bastinado such a hakim if he were mine!”
He looked meaningly at me, but drew small satisfaction from it, for I laughed. I dare say my hand was a fraction heavy with the presentation razor that turned that trick. I can skin a dead lion rather neatly, but no college of surgeons ever gave me its parchment benediction.
“I don’t wish you to take the field,” said Grim.
“Il hamdul illah!* What then?”
(* Thank God)
“I want your men.”
At that the Lion of Petra swore a blue streak sixty seconds long of brimstone Arab blasphemy. There is no such language as Arabic to swear in. Not even the Missouri mule has kicked back at such scurrilous expletives. Ali Baba thrust his old wrinkled face around the corner and grinned.
“So that is the idea! So that is the foreign scheme! What son of sixty dogs imagines he can lead my men?”
“They might find themselves pretty soon without a leader otherwise!” suggested Grim.
Ali Higg ceased smoking. Rage and tobacco and helplessness didn’t seem to make a palatable mixture. To judge by his wandering eyes, one second he seemed to be making up his mind to dash past us in a bolt for liberty, the next he contemplated suicide in a duel to the death with Grim. His left hand groped for his rifle behind him, but he could not quite reach it without betraying what he intended. Narayan Singh rattled the butt of his own rifle on the cave floor, and I laid mine pretty ostentatiously across my knees. There was no need for Grim to feel disturbed, and he obviously didn’t.
In fact, I think Grim was having a good time. I’m no fisherman myself, lacking that kind of patience and getting more enjoyment from the sports that call for strenuous exertion, but I’ve often seen on the face of some fellow angling for a big one pretty much the expression that Grim wore then. His lips were set in a firm smile and his eyes shone.
“You will ask