"Good fortune, O Sheik," I said, when my breath came back. "And the name of the ship was 'The Vindictive,' which in Arabic—as near as I may come to it—is El Stedoro."
"Allah bear witness it is a good name, one of great meaning to us Bedouin. So shall he be known among us and, if Allah wills, far beyond our deserts, for truly he has the makings of a great steed, and even now I would not sell him for a hundred gold dinars. Furthermore, I wall entrust him to your care. See that he does not grow up an outlaw like his sire, at the same time making sure you do not break his spirit. You shall put the first halter on his great head, the first saddle on his stout back. When the time comes to train him as a hunter and jumper—"
But Suliman stopped, white and short of breath. We had forgotten the late hour and the strain he had been under; and while the others remembered these things now, I thought of so much more.
"If Allah spares my life that long, you shall do those things," Sufi-man went on, his eyes sunk in his head.
There were visions before my eyes.
"Yea, yea, O Sheik," I answered.
I had been waiting my chance to ask permission to trap El Sher-moot at a water hole, in a steep-walled wadi, let him go hungry until I could half-tame him with food, then ride him until he acknowledged me his master and have him for my use. But I could not afford the venture. It would take thought and effort for which my pleasure and such izzat as I could win would not recompense me. My usual tasks plus the care of El Stedoro would keep me busy enough; the life in the camps and the field was good enough. What extra time I had must be put to a greater use. That much I knew. What I did not know was which way to turn.
CHAPTER 12
Signs and Wonders
If coming event cast its shadow before, the only one who saw it was Timor, my mullah.
When El Stedoro was a yearling, we had followed the grass to the extreme southeastern border of our hereditary domain. At a water hole, Timor set traps for far-flying pigeons; and in the crop of one he found pearl millet, not grown west of the oases of Central Egypt, south of Baeed Oasis, or east of the lands of the muleth themin—the Veiled People—the lordly Tuareg. It was unthinkable that a bird could cross such expanses in a matter of hours, but she could have robbed a caravan on a rarely-used road some sixty miles southward.
"A great caravan," Timor remarked thoughtfully, stroking his beard.
"It may be so, but how can you know?"
"From whence would a small caravan start, and where would it go? There is nothing but desolation, with a few water holes in the wadis, from the Oasis of Kawar eastward to the Nile. The Tuareg had traveled a whole moon when they came to Kawar. Would they have set out those many miles with fifty camels? Nay, there be five hundred, and the sheik and his sons and his women and their riding beasts subsist not on bread flaps and camel cheese and thorn! A trifle among good things, they carry enough pearl millet to waste it on the ground!"
"Bismillah!" I cried. This was to invoke the mercy of Allah on the wasteful rich and the needful poor.
"They are passing even now within a stone's throw."
"Nay, the toss of a stone—by an afrite tall as a mountain. We can almost see their dust!"
"Truly they are in two, at most three days' journey. And why should the lordly Tuareg come to these wastelands accursed of Allah? Listen, my son, to what I unfold. The Beni Tuareg are not Unbelievers, but they have strange ways. The men mask their faces instead of the women as with us."
As for my face, I kept it straight, although one of the most amusing of the Bedouin's illusions was that their women wore veils. Actually I had seen them worn only on one or two ceremonial occasions.
"Also, the women sway more power in the councils and over their husbands than is meet," Timor went on. "Still, it must be admitted that they are most beautiful."
I had heard all this before and a great deal more. The tall, light-skinned Tuareg, although nominally Mohammedans, were the scandal of all Islam. They ate what they pleased, prayed when they liked, venerated the Cross—perhaps from some early contact with Christianity—and, most impious of all, allowed their women as much freedom as they enjoyed themselves. The bold-faced Bedouin girls were models of modesty compared to the tall daughters of the Tuareg, who sang and danced and recited poetry in open assembly, took the leading part in courting, and uncovered their breasts. Descent was traced through the distaff as in matriarchies. Wives were treated with real chivalry.
"About five years ago the Emir of the Kel Innek—that is one of the greatest and richest of the Tuareg clans—fell under the spell of a marabou from Yemen, and since then you would think him a whirling dervish for piety," Timor went on. "And it comes to me that he has now set out for Mecca on holy pilgrimage."
It was good enough guessing, I thought, but far from a surety. If indeed an emir of the Masked Men was on pilgrimage to Mecca, I wished that I could fall in with him on his return journey. If excessive piety had not dehumanized him, I could be confident of arousing his interest in a Yankee slave, and quite possibly make an arrangement of shining hope. He was not subject to the Pasha of Tripoli, and the Tuareg held sway beyond Ghat, only four hundred miles from the Sepulcher of Wet Bones. When my time came to break out, some of his riding camels might be waiting. . . .
But kismet had written otherwise.
In the middle of the night following Timor's finding of the millet, I was brought up out of my dreams by being gently shaken. I wakened to hear Timor murmuring "Omar," and to see his finely wrinkled ascetic face by the rays of the moon. Plainly he had just come in from riding herd.
"Saddle and come with me," he told me in low tones.
At once he set about filling extra water jugs and fastening them to his croup. Finally he saddled and haltered one of the spare mares-there were always a number in camp, either lying underfoot with the greyhounds or having to be pushed out of our way—and with her bridle, tied her to my saddle strings. Stuffing some balls of camel cheese into his bags, he mounted a fresh mare and led me onto the silvered desert.
"None but Allah knows what may come over the desert," he remarked when we were riding up the steep slope above the wadi.
"Yea, verily," I responded, as he would wish.
"There may be an afrite, tall as a mountain, or there may be only a whirlwind, and there may be a caravan of the dead that lost its way and died and must wander for a thousand and one years, or there may be a great emir with his thousand horsemen, or a hermit following a dream. Truly there are no bounds to its wonders. But tonight a thing comes over the desert I have never seen."
The back of my neck prickled fiercely, but I did not speak.
"It may bring evil, and it may bring good. Only Allah knows. Certain signs given to me were favorable, such as a jumping of my left eye and a jerboa bounding to the right across my path. As I came in to waken you, I saw the sheik's female slave coming from the well with a brimming water jar—in daylight a good omen, but at this midnight hour a foreshadowing of great portence, whether for woe or weal. Yet I kept my resolve to waken you, and to let you ride foremost on a path we will presently come on, if such is your will, so thereby the good or evil fortune waiting at the path's end will mainly fall on you."
"I am your protected, O Mullah!"
"Nay, but you have learned to ride under my teaching. Mark, now, that I am no longer young and have no sons. If great fortune came, I would not know what to do with it, and I am hardly worth evil fortune's trouble. Also, your lot is a most strange and terrible one, for when the cup of death is brought unto our sheik, you must go again into living death. Tonight I saw what may be a lucky chance. At least it comes about from no common happening on our desert. It is all I have to give you and it is yours to play or to pass by."