We hadn’t a beast in camp that could overtake that Bishareen. It could go like the wind, and Jael was about half the weight of anybody we could mount and send in pursuit of her. So unless Grim chose to try long-range shooting by moonlight, which in ninety-nine percent of cases is a useless waste of ammunition, there was nothing much to do but watch.
She headed straight for that big rock, from behind which a camel’s head still protruded, and presently disappeared.
“Now,” said Grim, “what’s the excitement all about?” He looked cheerful enough to have planned the whole business.
Ayisha squatted down comfortably in front of him, giving the rest of us a good view of her back. That trick is part of a woman’s language; no male could ever contrive it in exactly the same way, suggesting indisputable superiority of intellect, class, knowledge, opportunity, privilege, and everything. Grim waited for her to speak first, and she kept him waiting, while my prisoner trembled in his skin and Narayan Singh stroked his great beard upward with both hands.
“O Jimgrim,” she said at last, “you would better make an end of foolishness and marry me.”
Nobody gasped. Nobody cracked a smile—least of all Grim. There wasn’t really anything to smile about, considering time, place, and circumstances. History was merely repeating itself. For the hundred millionth time a female of the species considered that a man was captive of her bow and spear, and the member of the less-conventional sex was trying to make the most of opportunity.
“Why, O Lady Ayisha?” Grim asked her blandly.
“Am I not fair to look at? This Pathan of yours vows I am fairer than the moon and stars. He ought to know, for he has loved many women in many lands.”
“Shellabi kabir!”* Grim answered. “The fellow flattered stars and moon by speaking of them in the same breath. Yet the Prophet said, Ayisha, that the houris wait for us in Paradise. Who should anticipate the joys of that world in the make-belief of this?”
(* Extremely beautiful)
“Yet the Prophet did!” she answered. “He had many wives.”
“Truly, but then he was a prophet,” Grim replied. “Can you tell me why I should pause in the midst of happenings to make a marriage. There are twenty lives depending on my judgment. A mistake, a false move, and these friends of mine are dead men.”
“Father of wise answers, that is why you must marry me!” she answered. “No man can find his way out of the net a clever woman weaves. Jael has you in the toils. You need me, I tell you, to help you out of them.”
“It seems, though, that you are not too far away just now to help me if you will,” he suggested.
“Inshallah, if you marry me now, I will help you indeed,” she answered. “You shall rule this country.”
That was two women within a day who had proposed to make a king of him. Wouldn’t you have felt tickled? I know I would, although nobody ever made me the proposal. Bearing in mind Narayan Singh’s method of making love, and allowing a good margin for Eastern hyperbole in general, there was still much more than random flattery in the offer. There are some men who can lead people—who can understand an alien race, deserve their allegiance, and lift them toward progress. Grim undoubtedly had that gift. And how many exceptions are there to the rule in such cases that women have been first to recognize the fact, and to egg the man on in spite of himself? But Grim has less personal vanity than any man I knew, as well as a business instinct for appraising facts in all their bearings.
“‘Between the promise and the deed a man may marry off his ugly daughter,’” he quoted, using the famous Arab proverb. “Tell me what you know and I will listen.”
“You are at Jael’s mercy,” she said, “unless you consent to be guided by me.”
“How then?”
“You gave her too much opportunity. You let her talk with Ali Higg. You left them alone together. Then, like one who has set match to gunpowder, you came away, knowing nothing of what the fire said to the powder. But I listened, and I heard. And what I did not hear, another heard; and this shivering fool came in the night, bringing me word of it.”
“I listen, O Lady Ayisha,” said Grim.
“As a man to a tale that is told between waking and sleeping, or as a man to his wife, do you listen?”
“I have but one pair of ears,” Grim answered.
“Aye, that listen to the she-wolf, Jael!”
“That listen to all voices, whoever speaks. Who am I that should bury my head in the sand like an ostrich?” She held her tongue for a full minute, while an owl hooted weirdly in the darkness up the fiumara. Then: “Unless I speak you are ruined,” she said at last.
Grim considered it his turn to wait. He simply watched her face with interest. The rest of us hardly breathed. At the end of a minute, since he made no suggestion:
“What if I do not speak?” she asked. “And what if I do?”
“If you do not, you are not my friend.”
“And?”
“I have other friends,” he answered calmly.
“None like I am!” she retorted.
“Truly. My other friends drive no hard bargains before they consent to tell me what they know.”
Maybe Ayisha had forgotten Narayan Singh; more extraordinary things than that have happened in the strain of concentration. There was a general once who forgot an army corps. Or perhaps she thought he was so enamored of her that he would hold his tongue. At any rate, she ignored him, which was easy enough while he stood alongside me behind her.
But he bulks big in any kind of light, and she could not pretend not to see him when he strode around behind Grim and stood there facing her, with folded arms and his eyes fixed on her face. He said nothing. He didn’t even cough to draw attention to himself. But it was an ultimatum, and she realized it. I half-suspected by that time that the Sikh was bluffing. It seemed to me that if he had really overheard all that she said to my prisoner, and that the prisoner had said to her, Narayan Singh would have helped Grim out of a predicament and saved time by telling all he knew at once. But if she, too, suspected he was bluffing, she didn’t dare challenge him.
“May you deal with your enemies like iron, even as you deal with me,” she said to Grim at last. “Behold, it is the way of men to devour the women’s harvest; and the women plant again, and reap again, and grind again, that their lords may eat. I will tell all; then, like all women, I will desire my lord’s favor.”
I could see the milk-white of Narayan Singh’s teeth in the midst of his black beard, but if she saw the smile, too, she pretended not to notice it. Grim merely nodded to her to continue.
“In the cave in Petra, Jael said to Ali Higg: ‘Behold, this fellow comes in your guise, letting men believe that he is the Lion of Petra. By a trick he has worsted you, for he is very cunning. In your name he will go against the Avenger, and it is well to let him go, for because of his cunning he will be too much for the Avenger, and will bring him to terms likewise. Thereafter, both you and the Avenger will be as strong men bound, and this Jimgrim will be reckoned a great one. Like honey in his mouth is the success he tastes already. But is honey sweet only to the bees?’”
My prisoner was in as abject terror as I have ever known a man to be. I had my leg against him, so as to be aware of any movement he might make, and he was shivering as if he had the ague. I expect he was thinking of what Ali Higg would do to him if it ever transpired that he had helped betray the Lion’s plans.
Grim nodded again, and Ayisha went on with her story. “Ali Higg