E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Deever answered, “I don’t know yet. It all depends on what I find out there.” Here was vengeance carried to the ultimate. As a foreigner, Deever felt that he had to observe the traditions of the hills more scrupulously than the Kurds themselves would. The venture was suicidal, but there was no help for that.

  CHAPTER 3.

  The start was easier than Deever had expected. He went upstream, toward the hut and the vegetable patch and the scrubby trees. Presently, he recognized the bend in the bank, and caught the smell of irrigated soil, the odor of dung drying for fuel. He could just hear the sleepy cluck and chirp of roosting chickens.

  The mud hut was dark. The inhabitants of this stretch of desolation have little use for artificial light, and no money to waste for that luxury. There was not even a dog. Thus there was no alarm until Deever had stood for some moments, listening to the breathing in the garlic scented darkness.

  Two occupants. One must be a woman. The reek of palm oil and perfume suggested that. Probably no children. Deever, standing at the low doorway, hailed the house. The sleepy answer had hardly come when he commanded, “Outside, both of you, or it will not be well with you. Tell me who you brought out to my raft to loot it. From where did they come? Where are they going? You know. You opened the way for them.”

  The man recognized the Kurdish accent. He stuttered and could not answer. His wife wailed and protested ignorance. Deever went on, “Tell me the truth. I have to find them. If I lose too much time, I’ll come back and kill you. Where can you hide if you leave this green spot?”

  The peasant had no answer to that. He had no refuge, and the fear of a mountaineer’s wrath made him speak. He told of the two Arabs who had come from Samarra to wait for the skipper who refused to pay tribute. “And by Allah, sahib, they made me go out and offer you melons,” the peasant concluded. “My life, or your goods!”

  “This must be the truth,” Deever said, “because it is their lives, or yours. Either will do, but the fault is theirs more than yours.”

  The peasant had no changes to make in his story; so Deever went downstream. He could have had his raft wait for him, but he had not expected such an easy start. His problem was merely a matter of getting to Samarra and finding Amru, the son of Musa, who was thin-faced, thin-lipped, and had a white scar that started above the left eyebrow and reached down to the jaw. And Amru’s accomplice was Saoud, short, fat, and red-bearded.

  Late that night, Deever camped. At dawn, before the sun made the brown expanse reel and shimmer, he picked up a trail—two camels, heading south. The blurred edges of the prints indicated that they had passed about twelve hours previous; shortly after the unsuccessful attempt to loot the raft. The tracks headed somewhat west of south, instead of following the Tigris.

  That made Deever stop and frown. There might be little settlements in the flat waste between Samarra and the Euphrates, a hundred miles or so west. Then he saw the slow wheeling of vultures. The scavengers circled above the path of the two fast moving camels. Why would the riders prod their beasts to such a pace? Certainly not for fear of pursuing raftsmen! The vultures, Deever thought, answered the implied queries.

  “One of the pirates was wounded when the shooting began,” he reasoned. “The other one tried to get him to where he lives, or to a doctor, or something.”

  Deever wanted to know which man was dead; whose shallow grave already attracted vultures. Mountain, not desert, was his terrain, but camel tracks were no novelty to him. Soon he licked his dry lips and said, “Here’s where one couldn’t sit his saddle, and the other one gave him a lift. One camel carrying double now.”

  God, it was hot! That goatskin water bag became heavier every minute, and his hat was far too light for the terrific sun of Iraq. The plain was no longer deadly brown, but a dancing glare. White, salty spots tormented his eyes. Deever took off his shirt and underwear and cut them into wide strips. These he wound into a crazy turban about his hat, and so protected the back of his head. Luckily, his feet were tough.

  It took him two hours to reach the spot where the vultures wheeled. A small cairn of rocks encouraged him. When he began tearing it down, the birds of prey settled in a black circle. Well beyond his reach, but close enough for him to see their reptilian eyes, their featherless heads and necks; featherless, since nature had adapted them to their horrible purpose.

  Deever had never seen anything quite so sickening as the intentness of those vultures. Something about their expression said to him, “You’re really one of us, you’re helping us, we can’t move those rocks.”

  The company did not help Deever appreciate his mission, but he persisted. Presently, he saw that the man under the cairn was fat, red-bearded; a town Arab, and a filthy one. The peasant had told the truth, then.

  Deever took the dead man’s turban. Without it, his brain would soon be too nearly cooked for any thought of finding Amru, who was thin-lipped and had a scar on his face. He cursed dead Saoud, bitterly.

  Then he saw that he hated him less than he did the vultures, so he replaced the rocks.

  This burial of an enemy troubled Deever. You let them lie where they fall, and if the pigs get them, all the better. But as he trudged back toward the river, he was muttering to himself. Sometimes he grinned, and once he laughed outright.

  “My brain was frying. Saoud’s turban cools me off. If it weren’t for Saoud, I’d be dead soon. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be sure where to hunt Amru. Supposing I find Amru and settle him, would Amru’s kinfolk have a feud with Saoud’s kinfolk, account Saoud helped me and betrayed his partner?”

  Why not? He, Deever, was hunting Amru because, mainly through ill luck, Jawan Khan’s uncle had drowned when a raft broke up. Uncle Tahir was on the way to Samarra to die. Having drowned, cool and clean, a few days short of his destination—Deever started laughing.

  Then he stopped. “Shut up! Get some sense, right now.”

  When a man finds something funny about a feud, that man must be sun-struck. It said in the Good Book that you demanded an eye for an eye. It also said, vengeance is Mine. But a man with a gun was an instrument of God. Anyone could figure that out. God couldn’t run around dishing out small scale vengeance. Not when He was busy making up earthquakes, floods, pestilences, things that a man couldn’t possibly devise.

  “Ain’t a bit funny,” Deever said aloud. “When men ain’t got honor left, God’ll uncork a calamity that blots out a whole nation at once. So I got to get Amru. There’s nothing else a decent man can do.”

  He had it all reasoned out when he was once more on the bank of the Tigris, a reeling figure in tweed coat, homespun pants, soldier’s brogans, and an incredible turban such as neither Arab nor Kurd had ever tied. Offhand, he’d be taken for a Turk.

  All that day, Deever thought of Pine Ford. Perhaps it was the danger of exhaustion, of hunger, of being set upon by river Arabs who would murder a man for a pair of shoes. Perhaps it was because this quest, fantastic even to one nurtured on a grandfather’s feud traditions, was making him grope for precedents. While he scarcely realized it, he was no longer asking himself what his fellow villagers would say if he returned without vengeance, but what his folks back in Carolina would say.

  Old fashioned, that’s what it was. In Grandpappy’s day, people had honor. They had to have. Life was too tough and too short to furnish much fun. A fellow didn’t have much beyond honor to live for.

  Nowadays, it was different. A farmer got paid for not raising corn, not raising cotton. Suppose Grandpappy had been paid for not making moonshine? Suppose the Hatfield’s had been paid for not raising hell with the McCoys? Deever blinked the hot dust from his eyes, and said, “Uh-uh. I’m old fashioned. Getting more so, hanging around those ignorant fellows up in the hills. They’re just like our folks in Grandpappy’s time. No radio. No cars. Nothing but horses and guns. But they’re nice people.”

  Getting back to the States would
be practically impossible, unless he went to the U. S. Consul General at Bagdad and surrendered. One of these days he’d write, and find out, though he wasn’t sure but what he’d forgotten how. Maybe not enough witnesses were left to make a case.

  Deever had five more days skirting the Tigris. Five more days of solitude, blistered feet, eyes that throbbed and grated even after a night’s sleep. Ayyub and the raft must be in Bagdad by now. A man could not begin to march as fast as the sluggish Tigris flowed. He could for a while, but the river had been at it when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, somewhere not far from here.

  “Old settlers, those Chaldees,” Deever said aloud. “Four-five thousand years ago, and there’s still a few of them running around here.”

  This was the first time he had a chance to ponder on his surroundings. He was doing more thinking in a few days than he had ever contrived in the entire preceding thirty years. Back home, a fellow never had to think. His elders told him what was what, just as theirs had told them.

  By the time he reached Samarra, he was hungry, dizzy, and aching for a glimpse of Amru.

  Right now, nothing looked finer than those great golden domes. “Surra-man-ra,” someone told him, was what the name originally was. It meant. “That-which-maketh-glad-the-beholder.” A tawny cliff rose up from the desert, jutting up and out into the Tigris. Samarra looked clean. The clear dry air created that illusion, and the intense light.

  That biggest dome seemed to float above white walls, cream-colored bulwarks, lime-daubed houses. Then in the smoldering red of sunset, Deever saw the gleaming bayonets of soldiers. Some river Arabs were being turned away from the ascent to Samarra. He heard wailing, the shrilling, quavering cry of professional mourners. Out in the hell glamour of the desert, he saw a burial party, and there were no tombs; just men digging in the sands, and soldiers standing guard. A wagon, camel drawn, went with creaking axles past the sentries.

  Deever saw all this from the shelter of an irrigation ditch bank. The scent that the shifting breeze brought explained things. The town was quarantined. Probably cholera. God was taking a large scale vengeance, for the murder and thievery that made Samarra a stench on the Tigris.

  “Don’t reckon God needs me butting in,” Deever said. “First class pestilence’ll do more in a day than I could do in two-three years of steady shooting. Bet Amru got here just in time to get caged up.”

  The plague had just broken out, and this must be the first organized move to bury the dead, for people were still trying to get into town. Clearly, the news had not yet spread. Amru must be in there.

  Deever lay in the ditch until darkness, and watched the sleds and wagons haul the dead. He was worried. Suppose Amru were among those to be buried tomorrow? All the more reason to get into Samarra to find out.

  CHAPTER 4.

  They arrested Deever before he had got far past the outposts. One of the khaki clad Iraq soldiers said, “Five rupees, O Man, and we will let you go. It is forbidden to enter the town, there is cholera.”

  “How long?” Deever’s Arabic made them think he was a Turk.

  “Since this morning. It is spreading fast. Not enough medicine has come from Bagdad, not enough doctors. Until supplies come from Damascus, it will be very bad. Five rupees. Quick, before the captain comes to inspect.”

  An Arab trick, letting him get past the lines, and then arresting him. Deever said, “Mafeesh!”

  They did not believe him, and said they would settle for three rupees. Once more he said, “I have no money.”

  A corporal came up and heard Deever say “mafeesh” to a rupee bid. He said, “The man’s a fool and a liar! Kick him into town and let him see how it is, he’ll find money when he wants to get out.”

  The Arab of it again. Only, it was over-played. An officer came along, and broke into the bargaining. Deever said, “Ana inklesi.”

  The officer, himself an Englishman, said, “My word! You speak like a foreigner. Unusual outfit you’re wearing, too.”

  Deever explained, “You see, sir, I’m really an American missionary. Up there in the hills. I came down to help. With the cholera epidemic. Lost my horse. Men deserted—”

  Deever, feigning a little more fatigue than he felt, staggered and would have fallen. The captain caught him. Later, brandy and broth revived Deever. A haggard medical officer said, “You have the devil’s own nerve, but if you mean it, you can jolly well help. You missionaries should know how.”

  Deever’s imposture succeeded simply because no proper Britisher ever could predict what an American would do next. Deever’s English, halting and a little labored from long disuse, was considered natural enough for a missionary, or for a man on the verge of exhaustion. Also, the few medical and hospital corps men which the Iraq army had been able to hurry from Bagdad were too busy and too tired to be critical.

  The man said he was a missionary. Doesn’t look it, but who ever had any reason to impersonate one of those bigoted chaps anyway? Who would ever come into a filthy hole like Samarra, and when there was cholera, unless he did have some silly notion of obligation or something like that?

  Blast it, he probably is incompetent, but any white man is worth something. Moral effect, you know, on these beggars.

  Deever diffidently said that he knew very little about medicine. Cobwebs or plug tobacco were good for staunching bullet wounds, and he could set a broken limb. Surgical skill, however, was at a discount in Samarra. Maybe he’d better just help the orderlies.

  In a very few minutes, the doctor learned that Deever had a strong stomach. Grudgingly, he said, “You’ll do, I fancy.”

  The hospital was a tavern whose courtyard and stalls and traveler’s cubicles had been hastily cleared. The patients were laid out on pallets of straw. Torches flared in the still, reeking air. Arab orderlies, wearing gauze masks over their faces, were doing their best to give water to those who were blazing in the fever of the third stage. These might live; they had passed that fatal second stage, and had a bare chance. The doctor looked up from a patient who had just got an injection of saline solution. “Deever, never mind cleaning up. God man, you can’t, not now.” He gestured. “Get them out! Over there!”

  “Uh—um—how’ll I know for sure that they’re dead, sir?”

  The doctor cursed and went to the next pallet. He was too busy with those who might pull through to have much thought for those who were cold, turning blue, losing their voices. As an afterthought he turned and croaked, “Do your best, if you make a mistake, it won’t be bad—those poor devils in that row haven’t a chance anyway!”

  Deever soon learned to tell which were finished, which were in a coma and might live until the reaction, high fever and a fair chance of recovery. He became used to the odors, used to seeing those blue-brown corpses trotted out by stretcher bearers. He finally became as numb as the haggard doctors, and ceased wondering when the sanitary corps men would stop bringing in new cases.

  All he knew by morning was that more space was needed. They were collapsing, out in the town, faster than they were dying in the tavern.

  A warehouse was cleared. Planes from Iraq brought more supplies. Trucks roared in from across the desert, with cots, sterilizers, water purifiers. More soldiers came in, to quell riots that started when orthodox Moslems protested against mass cremations with petrol. The burying squads could no longer dig trenches deep enough nor rapidly enough. And Deever, just from watching, learned how to do doctor’s duty; the routine was simple enough, after all.

  If you made a mistake, the poor fellow would die anyway, nine times out of ten. If women refused to unveil, refused treatment from an infidel hakim, what difference, maybe they were right. If terrified orphans stole water from condemned wells—and every well was condemned—cholera was quicker than starvation! It was grim, it was horrible, it was quite unreal to Deever. He could understand dying from knife or gunshot wounds; from infections following co
mpound fractures, up there in the mountains, when a horse slipped on a narrow trail or an icy ledge. These were chances a man had to take, and the odds were decent. But now: terror, hunger, sudden collapse, and no defense.

  Soldiers shooting looters. Short tempered, frightened soldiers shooting instead of bothering to challenge anyone trying to slip through the cordon about the accursed town. What difference did it make? “Ya Allah! If they all die, then we’ll march away, if we do not die.” That was what the soldier told Deever, and Deever said, “That is true, O Man! And you are afraid, so you will die before they do.”

  Half an hour later, he returned. The soldier was doubled up with cramps. His rifle lay in a pool of filth. Dogs were gathering about him. They were hungry, and would eat him, if no one came in time.

  Deever was no longer sickened, and he had ceased to be afraid. He despised Arabs. Since they were afraid, he was too stubborn to let fear get even a secret hold on him. And then, he had to find Amru. He was too tired to see the monstrous jest of it all, hunting a man down to shoot him so that the plague would not first kill him.

  This intentness made him scrutinize every warped face, and question those he was now treating in their houses. There was no longer any place that could be cleared up to receive new cases. Deever lost track of sunrise and sunset, dusk and dawn. The medicines he gave, the dead he marked for taking away, the living took from befouled houses, the water he sterilized and distributed; these things now became the way of vengeance.

  “No, that’s not Amru. Isn’t this one, either.” Another shot of saline. Was it calcium chloride, sodium chloride? Potassium chloride? What difference? “Huh—no, no scar on his face!”

  Adrenaline. That’s what they needed over in this section. All sorted out. You don’t have to think. It’s routine here. Once, crossing a torch-lit square, he saw a white-bearded Arab with rolling eyes. The old man gestured at Deever, and called, “Behold, O Men! The hakim—see his look, see its madness! Allah is upon him. O Madman, touch us and we will be healed!”