“Dekko!” said he.
“Shuf!” said I. And we both meant the same thing: “Look!”
More than a score of mounted camels were standing in a group on the horizon, cut off from us by a deep ravine that looked impassable. It seemed as if the men who rode them were holding a consultation; it was a fair guess that they had only just reached the spot. We halted and watched them. After a minute or two they spread out into a long line, and began to come forward at a walk toward the ravine, constantly increasing the distance between them fan-wise, as if scouting. But some of them were not very good scouts, or else the sun was too strong in their eyes, for it was quite a while before most of them saw us.
The first to spot us was a man near the middle of the line, but he made no signal to the others. I knew he had seen us, because he put on speed and slightly changed direction. He rode a nearly white camel—it looked all-white at that distance.
“I would know that beast in a hundred thousand!” said Narayan Singh.
That was, maybe, an exaggeration. We have most of us known men who could pick one horse out of a mob infallibly at the first glance. I have seen cowmen do the same thing with a steer. But camels? Nevertheless, it did look like the Syrian beast that Ali Baba rode, and the action of its rider, forcing the pace, as he did, alone, did not quite suggest an enemy.
It became obvious presently that whoever he was he did not know the lie of the land very intimately. He had to halt at the edge of the ravine and stare under his hand to left and right in search of a place where he could cross.
“That’s our old thief,” said Narayan Singh in a tone of finality. “If we find a place on this side, and he on that, we shall meet the sooner.”
He led off without a word, and it began to look as if we might meet our man in the bed of the ravine without the others being any wiser. But as soon as we got in motion half a dozen of them saw us and shouted to the rest, who whipped to a gallop and headed instantly all in one direction, where the top of a negotiable track lay hidden from our view beyond a bulge in the far wall of the ravine.
At that old Ali Baba halted until they had all passed him, and then suddenly began to ride full-pelt the other way. He still made no signal to us, but kept close to the edge of the ravine, and was obviously looking for another crossing higher up. So we followed suit, looking for a track on our side, and what with the irregular curve of the ravine and the speed at which all were moving we soon had several miles between us and the score or so, who probably believed that Ali Baba was still with them.
We had long ceased to hear their shouts in the distance when we found a dangerous descent at last and forced our reluctant camels to risk their necks down it. It was more like a goat’s ladder than a road, but it was evidently used at times by men, for Ali Baba came on its corresponding opening on his side, and took his chance, too. It wasn’t merely dangerous going; the heat of the ravine came up to meet us like fumes off the lid of Tophet, seeming to singe your eyelids, and the camels behaved as if they felt the same vertigo that we did. A camel is a fool at downhill work in any case; he sticks his supercilious nose in the air and paws about with his forefoot as if expecting somebody to come and put a cushion under it; and if there isn’t anything to step on he just yells, and steps on nothing, and lets it go at that. When he lands by luck and ignorance on something solid, he doesn’t know enough to stand there for a breath or two and get his balance, but yells again and goes careering on his way like a devil with the hornets after him. So we had some exciting intervals before we reached the bottom.
The heat down there was so intense that you could hardly see or think. It was one of those infernos that geologists pretend were sucked out by running water two or three hundred million years ago. Knowing no more geology than most prospectors, and not believing half of that, I prefer to think with the Arabs and Narayan Singh that the devil made that place when he slid on his belly for the home plate after stealing two bases in Eden.
It was full of rocks and rugged islands, and several minutes passed before we caught sight of our old friend, who was hunting for us as nervously as we were for him. Even then, there was such a dancing heat-haze in the valley- bottom that we had to look three times before we were sure it was he.
The old man knew us all right. He made his camel kneel, and waited for us in a hollow, over whose rim a man could not be seen standing from twenty paces off.
“Il hamdul’illah!” he exclaimed as soon as we got near him. “It is true that Allah makes all things easy, though an old man’s bones rebel against this kind of work. Ayyee! But my loins ache! How fares Jimgrim?”
I told him’ most of what had happened, while he leaned against his camel’s rump and munched dry dates, spitting out the stones between my feet; but I said nothing about that wrestling bout with Mujrim.
“Taib!” he said at last. “If the she-wolf Jael is in Petra, we lambs have a chance left for our lives! What do you think? That old village- raider Ibrahim ben Ah, who waits where he was bidden wait, vows he will not stir another inch toward Abu Lissan—nay, not for fifty Ali Higgs! The Avenger is on the move, and none knows which direction he is taking. Ibrahim is so afraid that he would not let me go without twenty men —an escort, as he pretended, but a guard, as a matter of fact, to prevent me from betraying him. Now they will be hunting for me in this wady,and I must be gone before they discover me. Go, you two, to Ibrahim ben Ah instead of me, while I take the news to Jimgrim.”
“Did Yussuf get through with his letter?” I asked.
“No. They caught him. He had it in mind to sell that letter of Jimgrim’s. He swore there was a draft in it for fifty thousand pounds, and he offered to trade the lot for ten good camels. But they took the letter from him, being brigands, whereas he was but a sneak-thief; and when they opened it, and found only a letter in English and a second envelope containing nothing, then they knew him for the liar I said he was.”
“Did they read the letter?” I asked.
“No, none could read it. But he offered to read it for them, and judging his life to be in danger he told such a tale about Jimgrim and Jael and Ali Higg as set them all well by the ears. But the fool wasn’t clever enough to stick to the truth. He told such a cock-and-bull story that they could make neither head nor tale of it, and when they asked me, I laughed. So he denounced me, saying I was party to the tricking of Ali Higg, and what with one thing and another Ibrahim ben Ah was at his wits’ end, knowing not what to believe. I thought he would kill the two of us, and was not pleased, for, inshallah, I can die a better death than in one halter with a dog like Yussuf. But Allah makes all things easy. Ibrahim decided at last to obey the order in the letter that I brought seeing that the seal was on it, and to take us both along with him.”
“I will stick that pig Yussuf when I find him!” swore Narayan Singh. “By the Prophet’s body and my beard, he shall learn how a knife in the belly feels!”
“Too late to teach him that!” laughed Ali Baba. “You would have to fight the vultures for his belly. His head lies one way, and his limbs the other. There came two men from different directions. Ibrahim knew both of them, and knew they would not dare lie to him. The one said that Ali Higg, with Jael and Ayisha and a score of men, was camped in a fiumara not far off. The other said that a certain Jimgrim—a person much resembling Ali Higg in general appearance, even to the bandage on his neck— was prowling to the south of us, also with twenty men. That was so contrary to Yussuf’s story that, considering his gold ear-rings and the Army pistol and the camel-trappings—nor forgetting the lie about the draft for fifty thousand pounds—it was decided on the spot that the earth would be well rid of him.