by Rod Miller
The girl stood silent, but firm. Rawhide Robinson tipped back his thirteen-gallon hat and grinned a grin, eager to hear what she had to say.
But it was Major Wayne who asked the question. “Whatever do you mean, young lady?”
“That one,” she said, pointing to a camel, “is good. But that one in the middle is old. His teeth say he is well past his prime. Nearing forty years, I should think. And that other one is diseased. He has surra—a sickness from biting flies. He looks fine now, but with the surra he will soon grow thin and weak. Then he will die.”
“The girl knows nothing!” Hasan shouted. “She is but a child!”
“I cannot offer an opinion, as such matters are beyond my experience. But Huri’s uncle, Hayri”—Fitzgerald said with a nod toward the man who accompanied him—“who I know and trust, says she was raised among the beasts and knows them well. At the very least, her concerns merit an opinion by an expert with no interest in this affair.”
Rawhide Robinson sidled up to Major Wayne. “Major, I ain’t never seen a camel until this very minute and ain’t got no idea about them critters,” he said, barely above a whisper. “But I can see that girl there knows her stuff. She’s got a way with animals, for certain. If I was you, I’d listen to what she says.”
Wayne, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed, forehead furrowed, contemplated the complicated circumstances. Then, “Take the camels away, Hasan. We will consider accepting your gift later.”
The round man spun like a top and stomped away. The giant stared at each of the men through slitted eyes, gave Huri the same treatment for an uncomfortably long time, then led the camels away, following the wake his master left through the crowd.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
With the departure of Hasan and his camels, Whitman Fitzgerald suggested the party retire to a corner café for refreshment and to compare notes about fulfilling the mission. Major Wayne concurred and soon Fitzgerald led the way through the crowd.
Leastways it seemed like a crowd. But it was nothing compared to what the group encountered at the bazaar. Jam-packed and pungent, the market resembled nothing like anything Rawhide Robinson had ever seen before. Brightly colored canvas awnings covered rows of stalls separated by narrow passages. They shouldered and elbowed their way through the pandemonium of sellers hawking their wares, buyers bargaining for better prices, the clang and bang and clatter and rattle of moving goods, the cackle of chickens and squawk of caged birds and gabbling of geese, the bleating of sheep and baaing of goats and bawling of cattle. The stench of rotting vegetables and overripe fruit and cooked food, the sting of dung and urine, clouds of smoke from tobacco and cooking fires, a fog of sweat and spices and scents and incense.
The whole of it all overwhelmed the cowboy, accustomed as he was to a calmer existence and quieter life.
“This is smellier and noisier than a stockyard full of mad cows!” he shouted to Ensign Ian Scott.
“What?”
“This is smellier and noisier than a stockyard full of mad cows!!”
“What??”
“This is smellier and noisier than a stockyard full of mad cows!!!”
The young officer shook his head, telling the cowboy with the silent gesture—the only thing that could be understood in all the uproar—that he could not hear him. Rawhide Robinson shrugged his shoulders. After a brief eternity, the group debouched into a packed public plaza that seemed calm and quiet compared to the bazaar. Fitzgerald led the group to his accustomed table at his accustomed open-air café. The diplomat, the army commander, the naval officer, and the cowboy took seats around the small table. Hayri stood to the side while Huri knelt in the shade of a small tree.
Since introductions, formal and informal, had been left wanting at the wharf owing to the squabble with Hasan, Fitzgerald led out with a round of handshaking.
“Major Benjamin Wayne,” he said. “Whitman Fitzgerald.”
Then, to the naval officer, “Whitman Fitzgerald. And you are?”
“Ensign Ian Scott, United States Navy, assigned to the USS Cordwood.”
“Charmed, I’m sure. Whitman Fitzgerald—and you?”
“They call me Rawhide Robinson, and I reckon you can too. Mind if I shorten up our conversations some by calling you Whit Fitz? Could save us some time.”
Fitzgerald swallowed his shock at the implied informality, but rightly assumed it was but a result of the cowboy’s rustic background. “Whit Fitz it shall be, Mister Robinson.”
“Rawhide. I don’t answer to Mister.”
“Right you are, then.”
He introduced Hayri as a reliable guide, skilled negotiator, experienced camel handler, able acquirer of camel furniture, locator of feed and fodder in quantity, and all-around-man-for-the-job. Hayri, he said, had agreed to accompany the camels to America if the army would guarantee return passage. Huri, he said, was temporarily in her uncle’s care and he assured one and all she would not be in the way.
Thick coffee in tiny cups arrived, and Rawhide Robinson rolled the sugary, bitter brew around his tongue. A tray of fancy little cakes and pastries, barely a bite each, reminded the cowboy of his hunger. While the others talked, his sticky fingers made short work of the sweet treats.
Fitzgerald was curious about the political climate back home, the health of the economy, the actions of Congress, developments in the military, even the latest female fashions—that, for his wife’s benefit, he said. “I have not set foot on my native soil for several years,” he said. “I fear I am now more familiar with this part of the world and related international matters than domestic affairs.”
Major Wayne and Ensign Scott traded turns offering facts and opinions on the state of the States. Hayri looked on in silence. Huri, from her spot in the shade, seemed unconcerned. Rawhide Robinson noticed, however, as he periodically licked his fingers and helped himself to more of the seemingly endless supply of sweetmeats, that the girl did not miss a word.
“How about you, Robinson? How do you view current affairs?”
The cowboy swallowed a mouthful of pastry, flushed it down with a swallow of coffee, tipped back his thirteen-gallon hat, hitched his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and said, “Mostly from the back of a horse.”
The State Department man looked confused.
“You asked how I view things, Whit Fitz. ’Bout the only view I’ve got most of the time is from my seat in the saddle on the back of a horse. Usually looking at a herd of cows. Don’t pay much attention to much else.”
“Surely you follow politics?”
“Cows don’t much care about that stuff.”
“The economy?”
“Why, sure, Whit Fitz—I always pay attention to cattle prices.”
The diplomat laughed diplomatically, and Major Wayne suggested they turn their attention to the price of camels.
“Indeed. My man Hayri, here—your man, now—has been at work evaluating the market. Hayri?”
The Turk cleared his throat. “Prices now are high, I fear, for it is not the ideal season for traffic in camels.”
As the man spoke, Rawhide Robinson noticed a man at an adjacent table set his coffee cup on the table and cock his head, turning an ear to the report. He noticed, as well, that the girl Huri noticed the eavesdropper.
Hayri said he had identified some two dozen camels as good prospects, fourteen from one camel trader and ten from another. He named the dealers, and testified as to their reliability, if not honesty. “Like any traders, these men will take any advantage offered,” he said. “I will see that any advantage taken will be ours.”
Ensign Scott asked about the purchase of hay and grain, and his need to determine the storage space that would be required on the USS Cordwood for the unaccustomed fodder. Hayri said it was a problem easily solved and he would escort the naval officer immediately to the hay market and assist with calculations.
Wayne whispered to Scott, wondering if the Turk could possibly be of any help.
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“It would not surprise me in the least. Keep in mind that many algebraic equations were either invented or perfected in this part of the world,” the ensign said.
Then, to Rawhide Robinson, “Let’s get to it. I trust no pilfering pickpocket lifted your lariat as we passed through the bazaar.”
“Got it right here,” he said, fetching the coils from under his chair.
“We will use the rope as measuring device,” Scott told Hayri, who nodded in agreement.
As the men readied to leave, Rawhide Robinson—and Huri—watched the erstwhile eavesdropper hurry across the square and report to Hasan’s giant, who was trying to remain inconspicuous in the recesses of an arched doorway.
“That is quite the hat you wear, sir,” Hayri said as he walked with Rawhide Robinson and Ensign Scott to the hay market. “Most inconvenient, I should think.”
“Hmmph. This here hat—the handiwork of one John B. Stetson, by the way—serves a passel of purposes in my line of work. Where I come from, most everyone covers his head with a lid like this. They’re as common back home as them upside-down flowerpots are on men’s heads around here.”
Hayri laughed. “Fez, we call this hat. And they have indeed become very popular of late. But tell me, what are the purposes of such a immense hat as that?”
“Light a spell and I will tell you-all about it,” the cowboy said with a grin. The three men and Huri squatted in the shade of a stone wall and Rawhide Robinson held forth.
“The first thing is that a hat like this one here that I and most every cowboy out West wears is to protect me from the sun. It shines bright on the range, and in lots of places there ain’t a tree within a day’s ride to shade up under. Keeps the sun off my head, out of my eyes, and off my face and neck. When I take a notion to use my back for a mattress of an afternoon, I jist plop this John B. over my face and it gets as dark as night.
“And if horseback on the range when a thunder gust and gully washer shows up—”
“—A what?”
“—rainstorm—well, this here hat makes a right fine umbrella. It keeps the rain off my face and out of my eyes, and the brim funnels it away so it don’t trickle down my collar. Keeps snow off of me, too, and if it gets too cold and windy on my ears, why I fold the brim down for muffs and tie it with my wild rag,” the cowboy said with an instructive tug on his colorful bandana.
Hayri—and Huri and Ensign Ian Scott—were speechless.
“And that ain’t the half of it. A hat like this makes for a fine bucket when you have to pack water to your horse. It’s been a basket when I’ve picked berries for a bunkhouse pie. I even used it to gather henhouse eggs when helpin’ out a laid-up sodbuster and his family. It’s a signal flag on a roundup, and a flag to start a Fourth of July horserace. You can fan a fire with a hat like this.
“Many’s the time I’ve used it to flail a mad cow in the face to keep her from maulin’ me. I’ll use it to slap a sulky steed on the backside, lay it upside a stampedin’ horse’s head to get his attention, and fan a salty bronc till he bucks hisself out.”
Now beyond speechless, the audience of three faces looked and listened in identical jaw-ajar enthrallment.
“Not only that, these here hats is good for sweeping—I’ve swept dust off a buckboard seat, snow off my saddle, and litter off a line-camp bunk. And before entering somebody’s abode or calling for a young lady, I use it to beat the trail dust out of my duds.”
With that, Rawhide Robinson smiled with satisfaction and tugged at the lapels of his vest. “Can that there fez coverin’ your topknot do any of that?”
Hayri pulled off his fez and rotated it around, examining its every inch. “No, sir, it cannot. I confess your head covering is much superior to my own.”
“Oh, you don’t need to feel none too bad about that. Ain’t nobody else the whole world over ever come up with a lid as useful as the cowboy hat. John B. Stetson is owed a place in history for the invention of it.”
“It is so. To my knowledge, there is nothing to compare.”
Like the Turk, the cowboy took off his hat and examined it—only in Rawhide Robinson’s case, it was with admiration rather than disappointment.
“What I’ve told you is just the ordinary, everyday, run-of-the mill uses for my thirteen-gallon hat. It has also served me well in emergencies.”
The wide eyes of his attentive audience spurred the raconteur to talk on.
“This one time—out in Wyoming Territory, it was—I was roundin’ up cows on this sorry bronc that bucked for fun at every opportunity and no one else wanted to ride him. The ramrod on that outfit figured I was the man for the job. I ain’t ashamed to say it, but that ewe-necked, hog-backed, mule-hipped, snipe-gutted, paddle-footed, cow-hocked, rat-tailed, pin-eared, wall-eyed, cold-jawed, hard-mouthed, widow-makin’ hay burner was so contrary minded he made punchin’ cows a right unpleasant business.
“Fact is, that horse bucked me off regular-like. Not only bucked me off, he pitched me so high I could see clear into next week. Thing is, I was so intent on watchin’ him that I didn’t pay attention to what else was goin’ on around me.
“So, one day, there I was, out on the wide Wyoming plains when a storm blew in without my notice. Them clouds must have been boilin’ something fierce, for when I quit watchin’ that crow-bait horse’s ears to have a look-see at the range thereabouts, I see one of them twisters comin’ at me. That tornado was whirling and spinning and sounded like a train.
“There wasn’t a thing I could do, as that sorry excuse for an equine companion got scared and sulled up and wouldn’t move a muscle—he planted his hooves in that prairie grass like fence posts and the only movement he’d make was to tremble like a tot in a cold bathtub.
“Anyhow, that twister come on and plucked me out of the saddle like a ripe apple off a tree and spun me up into the sky. I tell you, I was so high in the sky that I could see stars in the middle of the day. As you might imagine, when a feller finds himself going up like that—higher and farther than he ever imagined a man could go—he gets to wondering how he’s going to get back down.
“Not that he has to worry about it much, you understand, as he’s going to come down if he wants to or not. But, as any bronc peeler will tell you, it ain’t the falling that’s worrisome, it’s the sudden stop at the bottom. Then that storm peeled me off like the hide off an orange and before I knew it, comin’ down is what I was doing. And fast. I’ll tell you, I was comin’ down so fast my ears was whistling. Then I got to falling a little faster and my hat brim started to flapping and I got an idea.”
Rawhide Robinson waited, as was his wont when regaling an audience, for the tension to reach the breaking point.
“What did you do?!” three voices asked at once.
(Equally enthralled, albeit unknown to the cowboy and his companions, was Balaban the giant, secreted on the opposite side of the stone wall. He bit his tongue to keep from asking.)
“Well, it was like this. I took me a firm grasp on the edges of the brim with both hands and lifted it slowly—ever so slowly—off my head, then stretched my arms up as high as I could reach. As I hoped, that hat filled up with air like a toy balloon and slowed my fall considerably. So much so that I landed right back on that bronc’s back so soft and easy-like I made barely a bump.”
“Saçmalık!”
“Nonsense!”
“Fasa fiso!”
And, whispered unheard on the other side of the wall: “Zirva!”
Rawhide Robinson grinned. “I swear it’s true—every word, just as I told it! But that ain’t nothin’—let me tell you about the time I got unhorsed crossing a trail herd over the Red River and I used that hat for a boat to keep from drowning—”
“Not now!” Ensign Ian Scott interrupted. “We have work to do.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
Rawhide Robinson, Ensign Ian Scott and Hayri huddled among the haystacks scratching figures in the dirt, sweeping them away, then sc
ratching more. Huri lost interest in the computations and calculations and scrambled up the side of a stack of hay for a bird’s-eye view of the haymarket and Smyrna’s suburbs.
“I have no experience in the field of hay,” the ensign said. “So I’ve no idea how much storage space we’ll need aboard ship. We have signed a contract for the twelve tons of hay Major Wayne thinks we’ll need for the camels, but I have no idea what twelve tons of hay looks like.”
The cowboy offered no assistance. His experience with hay consisted of reluctantly pitching it to penned cattle on occasion. Such chores were considered farm work to top hands, and such work was refused as often as not. But, sometimes it had to be done and Rawhide Robinson was not the man to neglect a necessity where cattle and horses were concerned. Now, that sense of husbandry and responsibility extended to camels. But the numbers and formulas and equations and comparisons and conversions escaped him. Simple arithmetic he could handle. But Scott and Hayri had long since left him in the dust of their stampeding numbers.
It all started simply enough, with the ensign’s request to see what a ton of hay looked like so he could establish how much space it occupied. From there, he could extrapolate storage requirements.
“It is simple,” Hayri said. “Our Pasha has introduced the metric system of weights and measures in the empire, but they are not yet embraced by the people. So, I converted your units of weight, your pounds and tons, to our kantar and ceki. What you Americans call a ‘ton’ is roughly equivalent to four ceki. The purchase contract is for hay weighing forty-eight ceki—about twelve tons by your measure.”
“But I still do not know the volume of that amount of hay, whether tons or ceki.”
Hayri had a haymarket attendant fork into a compact pile one ceki of hay then squatted in the shade of the tall haystack upon which Huri perched.
Rawhide Robinson pitched out his lariat and he and Scott stretched it taut across the length and breadth of the pile and plumbed its depth—or height—then the ensign scratched some more in the dust.
