Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  And he may have been right, for all I know, because Jmil Ras, even with his back turned, was no easy mark for any man. Friend Jeremy had made his reputation good a score of times by outgeneraling every leader sent against him.

  Whatever the Avenger’s argument, he sent out fifty belated men to re-inforce his brother, and they came down the bed of the fiumara two by two with all the serene confidence of men who expect to find the work already done. All the precaution they took was to throw out an advance-guard of four men, and Jeremy’s lookout reported them before they came within two miles of us. So we set an ambush in a hurry, which only worked sufficiently to draw the fifty within range — for the kites circling overhead betrayed us — and there was a first-class scrap that lasted nearly an hour and was better than anything that Colonel Cody ever staged.

  You see, even after the kites had made them aware of us, the Avenger’s fifty didn’t know yet that we weren’t exactly the party they had come to meet. They didn’t even grow suspicious until their shouts weren’t answered — and that was a mistake on our part; but Jeremy, who was giving all the orders, hadn’t time to consider everything.

  Sensing danger in time to escape the trap, they scooted up the back out of the fiumara, spread out in a wide half-circle, and came on to draw our fire. Half of them were mounted on mighty good horses, and the speed of their maneuver put us at a terrific disadvantage for the space of about three minutes while we scrambled into new positions. If they had come straight on Lord knows what they might not have done to us; but, like the British fleet in the first attack on the Dardanelles, they didn’t know. And it’s what you do know that counts in the fighting business.

  Narayan Singh, Ali Baba, Mujrim, and myself were the first to open fire on them. Jeremy and Grim had their hands full getting the rest of our crowd into a new formation to meet the emergency. An example was the thing most needed, for if too many people try to give directions in a crisis, circumstances usually take charge and the last state of panic is worse than the first.

  And here I have a confession to make. I suppose it’s a proof of weakness; and all the missionaries I have talked with on the subject assure me I shall go to Hell for it. And yet — I wouldn’t confess (for why should I?) if I couldn’t do so without qualms. I hate to shoot a good horse. Grim agrees with me.

  I’ve had to deal with men who see snakes in delirium tremens, but I never wasted much time swatting the snakes. It was simpler and more efficacious to deal with the cause of them. And so, as has happened more than once in my career, when a horse comes at me with a man on his back, rather than shoot the horse, who is hardly a free agent, I prefer to put a bullet through the man. I can do that without compunction, because, to my way of looking at it, the man is a free agent and the horse no worse than a willing servant. Nevertheless, I’ve been called a murderer to my face by a missionary, who left three tied horses without water during two hot days and complained afterward about his own hard luck.

  Well; there you are. I might have shot a horse, and that might possibly have had the same effect in the long run. But I picked out the leading man instead, and drilled him clean, and my three friends, crouching behind boulders on my right hand followed suit. I believe Mujrim missed, although he never would admit it, but at any rate, between us we tumbled three men out of the saddle, and one of them was dragged head-downward by the stirrup for half a mile before the horse stopped and came whinnying back.

  That four-shot salvo saved an awkward situation for us, for the rest of the troop fired wildly from the saddle once or twice, wheeled sharp about, and galloped out of range, leaving the men on camels to make the next move. And while they thought about it, Grim and Jeremy had got our force straightened out, devised a plan, and got it fairly started.

  Grim came running up with the rest of Ali Baba’s men, and put me in charge of the lot, including Narayan Singh.

  “Keep up a hot fire from here,” he said. “Make them believe, if you can, that you’re the main force. Don’t spare ammunition. Don’t move away from here; keep an eye on the Avenger’s brother.”

  Having said that much, which was more than usual for him, for he doesn’t often limit you, he went sliding down again into the fiumara. So I posted my men behind boulders and started up a rather long-range fire at the camel party, crawling from one man to the next to explain what was expected of us. Ali Baba snatched up the idea as a dog takes meat, and what with his croaking to his sons and my choosing one rock after another from which to fire several shots in rapid succession, I daresay we contrived a pretty good illustration of, say, fifty men at bay.

  And neither the camel-men nor the horsemen opposing us dared approach the fiumara to discover how many we really were, or to take us in flank and rear, because of the possibility that we might have reserves down there in ambush.

  Over my shoulder I saw Jeremy take most of his men, all mounted, straight up the fiumara in the direction from which the enemy had come. Grim, on the other hand, took twenty or twenty-five of Jeremy’s crowd in the opposite direction, and in a minute or two the plan unfolded.

  * * * * *

  A QUARTER of a mile below us Grim led his small force out on to the plain, and the horsemen began to attack him mosquito-fashion, charging to within a hundred yards, to fire from the saddle, wheel suddenly, and gallop out of range again. I hadn’t time to estimate casualties, for the camel party seemed to have made up their minds that our whole force was now accounted for and came at us headlong, yelling “Allaho Akbar!” shooting and flogging alternately.

  But, you know, a man can’t flog a galloping camel and shoot straight at the same time. They looked awfully ferocious, and I expect they would have scared the wits out of raw riflemen. They were brave, too, for I think they believed there were forty or fifty of us, and we had cover, whereas they had none unless you count the smokescreen of sand the camels kicked up as they came, which went billowing down-wind until you couldn’t see what was happening in Grim’s direction.

  But you couldn’t find a tougher, less easily stampeded gang in Asia Minor than the party Grim had left with me. They spat on their cartridges and crammed them in like veteran soldiers instead of the thieves they were by trade, and each bullet was loosed on its way with an appropriate curse, until Narayan Singh on the far right laughed so that he could hardly shoot straight. And the camels went down one by one like great ships sinking, pitching up their sterns as they plunged bow first.

  But that war-cry “Allaho Akbar!” is something more than a formula. It seems to fire the men who use it with a frenzy that bullets can’t quench. Camels fell, but their riders charged forward on foot, and by that time they could guess how few we were, which added confidence to fury. The amount of nickel-coated lead that a charging Arab can eat up as he comes is incredible. There isn’t an animal — not even a bear — that can compare with him. That gang of fanatics charged home — got right into the middle of us — and used their knives to such effect that Ali Baba and his youngest son Mahommed were the only two who hadn’t some sort of wound to show by the time we had beaten off their survivors. We were lucky to have none killed. Mujrim’s devotion was all that saved old Ali Baba’s life.

  My share was a blow on the head from the back of a sword that knocked me nearly unconscious for a minute; Ali Baba came and bent over me — thinking I was dead — genuinely sorry I believe — but anxious to acquire my watch (which is an heirloom). Two men sprang on him as his back was turned and his fingers just beginning to explore my shirt; Mujrim laid them out, and fought a duel with a third, bagging three to his own knife.

  Those frenzied Arab charges, though, are like oncoming waves that have to recede when the momentum fails. Unless they accomplish their full purpose at the first shock, they inevitably draw off and make ready for another and another, until there are none of them left to charge or the game seems hopeless. I don’t know how many we killed all told, for I was otherwise occupied when the time came for burying the dead, and Mahommed’s song about it afterward
s turned units into scores; but they left nine dead or dying among our clump of rocks. We had killed more than camels as they rushed us across the open.

  The remnant ran at last as furiously as they had attacked, but by that time Jeremy’s counter-attack was under way. He and about seventy camel-men swooped out on to the desert on the far right, cutting the line of retreat. I heard their roar rising in volume as they wheeled and started forward — caught sight on the left of the dust of horsemen reeling back in front of Grim — and that is all the account I can give at first hand of our pitched battle by the fiumara, for as my wits recovered from the sword-blow I recalled Grim’s admonition to keep an eye on the Avenger’s brother.

  I looked about, but couldn’t see him — couldn’t see Ayisha either. They had been left close together in the fiumara just below the bank on top of which we took position, he tied hand and foot, and she glumly fingering her rifle — for she could hardly be expected to help us against her husband’s men, yet couldn’t rightly be regarded as an enemy.

  Ayisha, to state it mildly, was on the horns of a dilemma. If we should be defeated and the Avenger’s brother rescued, she would have to face that brother’s charge of treason on her return home.

  On the other hand, she wouldn’t be much better off if we should win, for she would then be in the hands of Jmil Ras, who had rejected her previous overtures and who, if he followed the usual course, would merely use her as a basis of exchange, in which case there would still remain the Avenger’s brother’s enmity to face; for he was quite sure to be ransomed and set free along with her. It would have been easy for her to murder him, and I haven’t a doubt she weighed that idea thoroughly. But I dare say, too, that she took into consideration Grim’s wholly incomprehensible — to her — but pronounced objection to throat-slitting in such circumstances; and she had a sort of reverence for Grim that I think came closer to being in love in our Western meaning of the word than any emotion she had ever felt.

  At any rate, what she did do was to try the other prong of the dilemma first, and since she was dealing with another opportunist, it bent momentarily to suit her. She proceeded to make friends with the Avenger’s brother — on her own terms, of course — and all the while that the fighting was going on she was negotiating with him the conditions under which she would cut the thongs that bound him and help him to escape.

  If she could have been satisfied with just that, the two would have made their getaway and I would almost certainly have died before they did it; because it was after she had cut the thongs, and while the Avenger’s brother was hiding between rocks, waiting for her to do the necessary scouting, that Grim’s instruction to keep an eye on the two of them crossed my mind and I went to look.

  But perhaps she wasn’t any too sure of the newly purchased friendship. Most women in precarious positions have discovered that most men will promise them nearly anything in return for what they want at the moment, only to forget the promise when the time comes to repay; and though Ayisha was a most amazing optimist in some respects, she was cynical in others. She decided to take a magician with her to control events and conjure away mistrust, and I suppose she thought me too well attached to Grim to make the trouble of trying to persuade me worth the risk. So she crept up the bank, and lay beside Narayan Singh. And because she had her rifle along and made some show of opening the breech, he supposed that she had come to fight beside him against her own folk. A man hasn’t much chance to think reasonably when the “Allaho Akbar” roar is rising and bullets fly; nor has he time to make hot love or be polite. He had to be coaxed a good deal and mighty tactfully before we could get his version of the story afterwards.

  “O mighty fighter!” she exclaimed, as she watched him lay cheek to the butt and blaze away. “They told me you Pathans were only boasters, but Wallahi! are they all like you?”

  “May the father of mistakes who made this rifle die of palsy!” he growled back at her — a little flattered, no doubt, although as suspicious as he had time to be. “I got the misborn weapon from the governorate at El-Kalil, and its vomit goes a mile wide of every mark! See that — may rats gnaw the eyeballs of the maker of the thing!”

  “But you are a magician! Make magic, and the rifle will slay two men with one bullet!”

  He had presence of mind enough even so to try to preserve that fiction.

  “Magic takes a certain amount of time,” he growled back, jamming in another clip of cartridges.

  But Lord! She was quick to use another’s argument as cement — and masonry for hers. “True!” she answered. “This is not your business. My lord is wasting time and running great risk at work that is only fit for thieves. Come away with me, and use magic, and you shall be a great chief! Come! Come quickly! Come and hide among the rocks, and slip away, and leave these cattle to their own devices!”

  “Go whither?” He had time to spare for only two words.

  “To Abu Kem, to the Avenger. He is a great prince, who will richly reward a friend. And have I not listened times out of number to my lord’s protestations of devotion? Am I deaf? Can a woman’s heart be like steel forever? Come now and show me how you topple down the thrones of kings!”

  According to his own account Narayan Singh found time between shots to make her a tactful answer; but my private belief is that he called her “Umm Kulsum,” which is an opprobrious title, and told her to go to the good old-fashioned hot place that most of us would hate to think had been abolished. For then where could we send folk who don’t like our points of view?

  At any rate, she left him and went back to the Avenger’s brother, and the two of them were conning their line of escape from behind a rock when I hurried down to look for them. It was only when Jeremy’s attack began and our share in the fight was practically over that, fortunately for me, Narayan Singh grew really hot at the thought that Ayisha, or anybody else, should dare consider him corruptible. Anger increased suspicion, and he, too, turned toward the fiumara to discover what might be going on. It was a big rock that the two of them were hiding behind. I looked around it, but they dodged me so silently that I didn’t hear them. At the moment when Narayan Singh reached the edge of the fiumara and looked down, and I was on my way to investigate another clump of boulders, the Avenger’s brother sprang at me from behind.

  If he had knifed me to begin with I might feel differently about it, but he didn’t try to use Ayisha’s knife until he had tried first of all to pin my arms from behind and throw me. He said afterwards, and I believe him, that his first intention was to gag and leave me there; but of course he had no chance whatever of doing that to a man of my build and mere muscular attainments. I threw him forward over my head, but did not break his hold entirely, and he closed again, twisting round like an eel to face me.

  It was then that he used the knife Ayisha had given him, stabbing me badly in the arm and following up by nearly braining me with the hilt. Coming on top of the sword-blow I got earlier his half-dozen hammer-strokes were too much even for my thick skull; but I didn’t quite lose consciousness at once, contriving to clinch and lean my weight on him in the same sort of way that a beaten prize-fighter avoids being counted out.

  But I got weaker every second, from the blows, not from bleeding — the cut in the arm was serious, but not enough to put me out of action — and if Narayan Singh hadn’t turned up in the nick of time some other fellow would have had to tell this tale. It may be I’ve done Jeremy out of a profession!

  But the Sikh did come like a landslide down the fiumara bank, swinging his rifle butt-end foremost, and the Avenger’s brother had to take the heft of that on his collar-bone, which naturally broke. I was “out” by the time that happened — out; but, they tell me, still standing and clinging to my opponent; which may be true, but I think they lied to make me feel better about it afterward.

  CHAPTER XII. “Ross, Ramsden, and Grim. Grim, Ramsden, and Ross.”

  I RECOVERED consciousness in a most extraordinary place, where they had laid me because it wa
s cool, and my head along with the rest of me seemed to be immersed in Hell flame before I was properly dead. As I came to I thought I heard war-drums near at hand, but that turned out to be nothing but my own pulse beating, although it was an hour or so before I realized the fact. At the end of a century or so, that may actually have been an hour, or even less, after I came to my senses sufficiently to realize that the walls of the cavern weren’t on fire but that my head was aching, Grim and Jeremy came and stooped over me, holding lanterns. Maybe I smiled; I tried hard enough.

  “Not dead yet, you blooming immortal?” laughed Jeremy. “You cat o’ nine-lives! Why, you old son a gun! We carried you balanced on your belly on top of a camel, and you bled so much that the camel’s flank looked like a sunset in Port Darwin! You’ve got no right to be alive! What have you done? Jumped your bail, or wouldn’t the Devil have you? Well; there’s no need for you to believe in reincarnation; you can make the same old carcass serve you over and over, but it’s a shame to cheat the worms that way. Sit up, and take a drink.”

  They had to help me up, but the drink worked wonders. I don’t know how many halves of one per cent it contained; but as I wasn’t in the U.S.A., Hawaii, or the Philippines, the Eighteenth Amendment doesn’t cover the facts in this story. I felt better as the poison, if you like to call it that, crept through my vitals, and presently was asking questions.

  “You’re in my mine, old top. How long? Oh, two or three hours. It’s nine o’clock tomorrow morning now; we marched all night and nearly killed the camels, but Grim said a little extra speed might save your bacon, and the darned fool insisted you were worth the trouble, so here we are. No, we didn’t make ’em all prisoners; three or four got away — the horses were too fast for us. The Avenger has got a machine-gun or two, you know, and we expect he has heard the news by this and is oiling the works for a bit of strafing in return. We’re making plans to hold our end up, and as long as he don’t turn out too many Sheikhs against us, you lay your money on this team, old son!”