There came a moment when he lay under me and gasped, and even had time to grow conscious of surroundings—a thing you can’t do if the man you’re up against is still fit to make you use all you’ve got. Then, in between the bass booming of Narayan Singh, I distinguished Ayisha’s shrill voice screaming to Mujrim to tear my tongue out.
There is something barbaric in a woman’s scream that puts new fight into most uncivilized folk, and especially into all the desert-people. Mujrim must have heard that shrilling, for he suddenly revived, and over and over we went with nearly bursting muscles in a series of sudden spurts, until we lay panting again close to Ayisha’s feet. I couldn’t see her, naturally, for my back was uppermost; and Mujrim had murder in his eye; I did not dare relax the pressure on him for a second. His right hand was groping wildly for a handful of my thigh muscles, and what she did was to slip a dagger into it. His fingers closed on the thing before he realized what it was, and before Grim or anyone could intervene. I didn’t know what had happened. My eyes were full of sweat and dust in any case, and the trick took place behind me. But Mujrim, suddenly aware of what was in his hand, threw the thing away like the sportsman he was at heart; and the effort gave me my opportunity.
I got a sudden hold that pinned his left arm to his side—rose to my feet, lifting him with the old bag-heaver’s hoist that uses every muscle in your body, and was considering whether the time had come to lay him pretty gently on his back, or whether he needed another shake-up, when something stung the calf of my leg as if a snake had bitten it. At that there was an angry yell from everybody. I hurled my man clear of me, and Grim stepped in between us, stopping the fight. When I could get the sweat out of my eyes I saw there was blood running pretty freely down from my calf into my shoe. Grim stooped and picked up Ayisha’s dagger. The minx had been so bent on seeing me murdered that when Mujrim refused to use the thing she had picked it up again and thrown it—fortunately doing no more harm than to open a cut two inches long that bled more freely than it hurt.
Mujrim was more annoyed than anyone. He had had all the exercise he needed, and lay on his back with his brothers all about him sluicing him with water from one of the camel-bags. He sent them to sluice me, too, and called out to me between gasps for breath to be good enough to believe that the wound was none of his doing.
Ayisha was perfectly unconcerned about it. Beyond demanding the dagger back from Grim she made no comment. He gave it to her with the remark that if she should play a trick like that again he would have her hanged to the nearest tree; but she didn’t believe him any more than I did, and showed her teeth in as merry a smile as ever lone bachelor set eyes on.
Jael, on the other hand, was indignant—not at my being wounded, for she wasn’t exactly a stickler for ethics, and my welfare was no concern of hers—but because Grim should neglect such an obvious chance.
“The least you might do is to have the hussy beaten,” she insisted. “You’ll never make a leader of men, my friend. You don’t know enough to be drastic. You’re weak!”
Yet, if you ask me, I think Grim came out of it pretty well. There wasn’t another word from the defaulters. Mujrim had been wrenched and bruised too badly to be fit for much for an hour or two, and it was out of the question to make him walk back. But Grim tossed the amber necklaces to one of the others, pointed with his stick toward the three camel-loads of miscellaneous “presents,” and said his final say on that subject.
“Back you go now! Take those loads and walk!”
They went off without a murmur. And bear in mind if there is one thing on earth that Arabs of their stamp consider beneath their dignity, it is to carry loads. They expect their women-folk to do that when camels or asses are not available.
Mujrim got to his feet after they had gone, and apologized to Grim handsomely.
“Wallahi, Jimgrim, you were in the right! There should be but one captain—and his word law, even when he says that white is black!”
It was pretty safe to say that looting was at an end as far as that expedition was concerned. And if you think, as I have heard some say, that it wasn’t Grim, but I who pulled off that affair, I don’t agree with you. You might just as well say that the cards had won a game, rather than the player of the hand; or that Bill Adams won the battle of Waterloo by killing eighteen Frenchmen with his sabre. Hats off to Bill Adams, certainly; but the old Iron Duke was the boy who led trumps when the right time came. I hate this modern craze for taking credit from every leader. Believe me, it takes a good man to persuade me to risk hair and hide in his behalf, as one or two of Grim’s jealous critics might discover if they had the guts to try.
We sat down all together in the shadow of a great rock, women included, and discussed the fight from start to finish, each of the brothers claiming to know a hold that would have beaten me—which might easily be true, for I am no Gotch or Hagenschmidt—yet all equally averse to testing it. And presently Narayan Singh cut loose and told us wonderful lies about the wrestlers of Bihar and feats he had seen them perform at the marriage feasts of Indian rajahs. A first-class romancer is my friend Narayan Singh, as well as a good soldier.
The rift in our lute was mended, not a doubt of it. That party under the rock in the Valley of Moses, where we drank warm water out of goatskin bags, smoked powdery imported cigarettes, and bayed about our reminiscences like dogs over a kill, is one of the pleasantest I can remember.
It was nearly high noon, and the sun beat down on the floor of the gorge between ragged cliffs, making the air suffocating. Every once in a while a gust of hot wind would pick up a cloud of dust and take it waltzing along the valley, spreading a gritty mixture of air and dirt that you could hardly breathe. One or two eagles soared sleepily against the turquoise sky, but the kites appeared to have had enough of the heat and were hiding somewhere. Only the centipedes and scorpions beside ourselves seemed satisfied with conditions as they were; and they were about the only trouble we had. Narayan Singh said that it was the blood from the scratch in my leg that attracted them, and it may be that he knew; but, as I have remarked before, he doesn’t need much fact to weave a tale from.
The part I liked best was Grim’s whole attitude. He might easily have spoiled the fun by doing what so many asses do—smothering with flubdub whoever happens to have done his bit. He knew exactly how useful in a pinch my strength and willingness to fight had been, and in case I didn’t know it, too, he made one comment, and let it go at that:
“If Mujrim had beaten you we’d have had to call this expedition off. There’d have been no holding them. But we’re all set now.”
All the same, I thought that an exaggeration, unless he excluded Ayisha from the reckoning. The gang now referred to her constantly in her presence as “the woman Ayisha”; whereas before her swift divorce from Ali Higg in Petra she had always been “The Lady Ayisha” and “Princess.” If she was “set” on any purpose, then it was on snatching her own chestnuts from the fire of fate; and whoever should seek to prevent her was going to suffer unless he watched his step.
I would have excluded Jael Higg, too, from the “all set” reckoning. She was devoting herself rather cautiously just then, in that thin-lipped way of hers, to being a good fellow, joining in the conversation and laughing readily in a rather pleasant voice, with no more than a symptom of underlying harshness. But her eyes were hard—iron-hard, and they glittered whenever she looked at Grim. I think she regarded me, along with the Arabs and Narayan Singh, as a man whom she could find a way of managing in her own good time. But she was about as empty of forgiveness as a Red Sea shark. In my judgment, nothing less than Grim’s utter ruin would ever satisfy her for capture and defeat at his hands, although she undoubtedly proposed to make the utmost use of his brains and altruism until her time should come.
They made a wonderful contrast, those two, sitting side by side under the rock—she with her freckled, smooth face, and reddish hair showing under a black shawl; he with that ready smile, the puzzling, almost