Frenchmen with his saber. 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 Hackenschmidt—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 rajas. 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 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 her, 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 book-worm eyes, and the expression, even with his face framed in an Arab headdress, of a forceful, imaginative business man.
“You are a fool, James Grim,” I heard her say to him. “You don’t know which side your bread is buttered on. If you would cross the Jordan for good and all I could make you king of all this country in a year!”
“That, or vulture-food?” he asked her; and laughed, and lit a cigarette.
CHAPTER IV
“A cent for your sympathy.”
Well, our ruffians turned up at last, and brought back news with them. Ali Higg, they said, was on the rampage. He had left his aerie of a cave, and was superintending the saddling of a score of camels in front of “Pharaoh’s Treasury.”
“But not good camels, Jimgrim—mangy, miserable beasts. His men are using all the best ones, and those six splendid ones that we borrowed just now are all that were left of his private string. If he means to follow he will have hard work. He has collected a handful of men, but they are hardly better than the camels—fit food for kites—sick men, wounded men, men afraid of their own shadows—scarcely able to lift a camel-pack between them.
“We walked up to the Treasury and flung the plunder down, saying that our Sheikh Jimgrim declined to burden camels with such miserable stuff. He ordered his party of crows’ meat to open fire on us; but one of them swore that our return with that loot must be a trick to start trouble. He said that you and the rest of our party were doubtless waiting close at hand to make reprisals, and the sound of the first shot would certainly bring you hurrying. The others, being all afraid, agreed with the first man.
“So we behaved like men who have been found out in a trick, carrying on scornfully and saying it was a pity nobody in Petra was brave enough to fight, since our Sheikh Jimgrim took no pleasure in defeating cowards. And what with one hot word and another we made our escape safely.”
But that talk might have been a trick to cover up another one, and Grim made sure.
“Men who speak truth,” he laughed, “are never afraid to prove it. Let’s see how much loot you’ve still got hidden in your clothes.”
They submitted to be searched with entire good humor, and Grim displayed an intricate knowledge of their ways of hiding things that made them laugh. But he had had his way; there wasn’t as much as a woman’s earring or a brooch among them, and they were all the better tempered for having proved it, considering now that the joke was as much on him as on themselves.
That is a great point, by the way, which some men fail to understand. When disobedience doesn’t really matter much you can now and then afford to overlook it—especially if it would be easy to enforce discipline; because discipline that is easy to enforce doesn’t make a lasting impression on naturally lawless men.
But in a tight place, when men disobey because they think they have you at a disadvantage, and to force the issue looks like sure disaster, then you can’t afford to yield one jot or tittle of authority. Better die there with your boots on than give way; because if you fail then you’ll never regain their respect.
And having won your point, by hook or crook, brute force, profanity or argument, be sure you have the whole of it. To use Narayan Singh’s expression—
“Milk the udders of obedience dry.”
Thereafter whenever you concede a point or two you’ll find it safe enough, because they will realize it is concession, and not anarchy.
We were all in a rare good temper now, Jael Higg not least of us. I suppose the news that Ali Higg was on the move was what raised her spirits. Grim asked her what she supposed the Lion intended, but she shook her head and laughed.
“You’re worse than a divorce court! You separate a man and wife, and ask the wife to account for her husband’s doings?”
“I know nothing of lions,” Narayan Singh commented. “Mine is a land of tigers. When a tiger keeps quiet he is difficult and dangerous to trap. When he prowls he is easy.”
At that Mahommed piped up, Ali Baba’s youngest son, poet to the gang, and bard, and arch-inventor of impracticable plans.
“I say let us lie in ambush in this hot jahannum of a valley, and catch the Lion as he ventures out. Let us take him back with us to El-Kalil