"Well? Are you coming?"
"Taib. We are ready. But—"
"On my terms!"
"But the pay is nothing!"
"So is my pay nothing! This man"—he pointed to me—"gets no pay at all. Narayan Singh, the Sikh, gets less pay than a policeman."
"Then what is the profit?"
"For you? The honor of keeping your word. The privilege of making fair return for past immunity. Why aren't you and all your sons in jail this minute? Why did I invite you to come with me on this occasion? Because a man looks for friends where he has given favors! But if you consider you owe the administration nothing for forgiving all past offenses, very well; I'll look for friends elsewhere."
"As for the administration, Jimgrim, may Allah turn its face cold! But you are another matter. We will come with you."
"On my terms?"
"Taib."
You would have thought that settled it, especially as Ali Baba had already stated that he and his gang were prepared for the journey. But the East, that is swift to wrath, is very slow over a bargain, and it is a point of doctrine besides, all the way from Gibraltar to Japan, to keep an American waiting if you hope to get the better of him. Ali Baba settled down for a nice long talk; and you would have thought, to judge by Grim's expression, that he could ask for nothing better.
The old rogue wanted to know among other things who would have the task of cleaning rifles on the journey. It seemed that he was long on sanctity, and not allowed by his religion to touch grease in any shape or form. Grim satisfied him on that point. Narayan Singh should clean the rifles.
But that started him off on a new trail. He tried to see how much more he could impose on the Sikh, and suggested such matters as pitching tents, cooking, gathering firewood, cleaning pots and pans, leading the pack-camels, and a host of other necessary evils.
"I shall issue all needful orders to each man," Grim told him bluntly at last.
"And what is to be done to Ali Higg?"
"That remains to be seen."
"He is a devil with a cold face."
"So I'm told."
"He has more than a hundred armed men."
"I heard twice that number."
"And we shall be twenty?"
"Twenty."
"Oh, well, Allah makes all things easy!"
But that was not the last word. There was still a custom of the country to be met and overcome.
"Are the camels watered?" Grim asked.
"Surely."
"Packs all ready?"
"All tied up-everything."
"You're all ready to start, then?"
"Inshallah bukra." * [* Tomorrow, if God is willing.]
"Tomorrow won't help me," said Grim. "We start tonight, at sundown. I'll go with you and look the camels over now."
"But, Jimgrim, that is impossible. My son Mahommed's second wife is sick—"
"Leave him behind, then, to look after her."
"He will not consent to be left! Two of the camels are not paid for. The man comes in the morning for his money."
"Leave the money here for him with Captain de Crespigny. We start tonight."
"But what if the camels are not satisfactory?"
"I shall see about other ones at once in that case. There'll be time if we look them over now. We start tonight."
"I was thinking about some mules to carry an extra load or two."
"No. Don't want mules. Too hot for them. Besides, there's no time for changing the loads over. We start tonight."
"Tomorrow will be a better moon, Jimgrim."
"We want a full moon when we get to Petra. We start tonight. Come along; show me the camels."
"It is hot now. There is a bad stink in the stables. Better see them when it gets cooler."
"I'm going now. Are you coming with me?"
"Taib. I will show them to you. They are good ones. They will make you proud. Better give them another night's rest, though, Jimgrim."
"Come along. Let's look at them."
"One has a little girth-gall that—"
"Ali Baba, you old rogue, we start tonight!" said Grim.
CHAPTER II
"Trust in God, But Tie Your Camel!"
Do you believe in portents? I do. Whenever in the East the first two statements that a man has made in my presence, and that I have a chance to test, prove accurate, I go ahead and bet on all the rest. I don't mean by that that because a man has told the truth twice he won't lie on the third and fourth occasion; for the East is like the West in that respect, and usually seeks to turn its virtue into capital. But in a land where, as old King Solomon, who knew his crowd, remarked, "All men are liars," you must have some sort of weathervane by which to guide your national optimism, so I settled on that one long ago.
Ali Baba had said there was a bad stink in the camel stables. A natural expert in hyperbole, he had not exaggerated in the least. And he had said that they were good camels; it was true. You did not need to be a camel expert to know those great long-legged Syrian beasts for winners. They looked like the first pick of a whole country-side, as he maintained they were—twenty-five of them in one string, representing an investment at after-war prices of the equivalent of five or six thousand U.S. dollars.
"Who has been looted to pay for these?" asked Grim.
"Allah! You have put an end to our proper business, Jimgrim. What could we do? We took our money and bought these camels, thinking to take a hand in the caravan trade."
Grim looked into the old rogue's eyes and laughed.
"In the land I come from," he said, "a capitalist with your predatory instincts would pay a lawyer by the year to tell him just how far he could safely go!"
"A wakil?" sneered Ali Baba. "The wakils are all scoundrels. May Allah grind their bones! No honest man can have the advantage of such people."
Grim looked the loads over, but there was nothing that any one could teach that gang about desert work. The goat-skin water-bags were newly patched and moist; the gear was all in good shape, none new, but all well-tested; and there was food enough in double sacks for twenty men for a month. Mujrim, Ali Baba's giant oldest son, picked up the loads and turned them over for Grim to examine with about as much apparent effort as if he were tossing pillows.
Presently Grim laughed again, and looked at the line of fifteen other sons and grandsons, all squatting in the shadow of the wall watching us.
"Which is the chief Lothario?" he asked; only he used a much more expressive word than that, because the East is frank where the West deals in innuendo, and vice versa.
"They are all grown men," said Ali Baba. "There's a woman named Ayisha—a Badawi (Bedouin)—who has lately come from El-Maan with a caravan of wheat merchants."
"How did you know that, Jimgrim?"
"I'm told she has