Jimgrim - The Spy Thrillers Series. Talbot Mundy

bone in his teeth, and the pack gathered closer around him, ready to help him keep it.

      “By the Prophet’s feet,” roared Mujrim, “these camels are all ours. We will find our father Ali Baba and return to El-Kalil. We are free men!”

      “Free to obey me!” Grim answered. “You weren’t conscripted; you volunteered. Now, no nonsense! Get busy!” It was touch and go for about ten seconds. I think if Grim had made a false move then, such as reaching for a weapon or using an oath, they would have carried out that threat and deserted us. The near impossibility of finding Ali Baba, and the probability of being all killed by Ali Higg’s men if they did find him, wouldn’t have prevented them. But Grim made no false move.

      I’ve always envied that ability in other men, rare as it is, to be utterly calm in the face of anger. I can use patience, as I’ve said, but that is a different thing altogether. Patience only exasperates, as often as not. I can keep my own hot temper in subjection, but it’s there and the other fellow usually knows that, with the result that I have had to fight in circumstances that Grim would have negotiated diplomatically. You can’t be angry and convincing. I know that, for I’ve tried and failed too often.

      Grim wasn’t angry. Mujrim and the whole gang knew it. He had simply made up his mind that he was in the right and that it was a proper time to stand by what he knew; and it dawned on that gang of thieves that they would have to kill him if they proposed to have their own way. I was close enough to Mujrim to read the changing emotions. He opened his clenched teeth a fraction, as most men do when they suddenly see the strength of an opponent’s case. Then his sunny good nature came to the rescue. He opened his mouth wider—hesitated—spoke—and I knew that Grim had won.

      “But it is too much to ask a man to walk back, Jimgrim!”

      They were a first-class gang. I’m not discussing their profession, which was their affair, risks included. What I mean is that in a world in which most of us need no accuser, having consciences that truthfully blame ourselves, they had lots of redeeming manhood and less yellow in their make-up than afflicts some folk who never do anything wrong because they’d be afraid to. They loved that huge brother of theirs and were loyal to him. They recognized instantly that he had yielded, and instinctively— swiftly—without any process of reasoning—they set to work to save his face and let him down lightly.

      You never heard a more sudden chorus of abuse than they aimed at me. They knew I was an American, of course, but they were much too loyal to the practice of deception to rake that up, even in such a crisis. I was disguised as an Indian, and that was enough. They damned me as an Indian.

      “The hakim struck him!”

      “The cursed dog of a hakim thrust a hand into his bosom!”

      “By what right does a hakim interfere with Mujrim?”

      “Beat him!”

      “It was the hakim’s fault! He insulted our brother! Who wouldn’t have struck back?”

      “Is the hakim a coward?”

      “Ha-ha! Does the hakim take a blow like an ass lying down?”

      “The hakim is a coward! He insulted Mujrim and was struck for it, but daren’t hit back!”

      “Let the hakim pick our weakest man and fight him!”

      “Good! True! It was the hakim’s fault! Make the hakim fight! Give him his choice; Mujrim is too strong for him!”

      Well, I suppose that ever since the world was concentrated out of chaos and old night whoever faced defeat has claimed a scapegoat. All I was interested in was lending Grim the full force of whatever attributes I have. I caught his eye, and he smiled whimsically, with one eyebrow curved into an interrogation mark.

      The gang became silent suddenly—wondering whether I would dare accept the challenge, but I kept silent, too, for it was up to Grim. I knew he didn’t doubt my willingness to fight; and I knew he would be the last man to refuse to make the fullest use of me; it was a question of diplomacy, which, as I have said before, is hardly my long suit.

      “The hakim obeyed my order,” he said at last. “Mujrim struck him. Mujrim therefore gave the insult. Let the hakim name what satisfaction he requires.”

      I didn’t waste a second after that. It is one of my chief failings that I simply love a fight on equal terms. Men choose to differ about the name of the Power who parceled out men’s attributes, but this one thing I know: I received my share of strength, and a most Berserkerish delight in using it.

      “Are you afraid to fight me without weapons?” I asked, laughing into Mujrim’s face.

      His answer was to vault from his camel without a word, throw all his weapons on the ground, and start to strip himself. I followed suit, and the rest all naaked the camels in a wide semicircle.

      “Don’t use your fists on him,” Grim whispered. “‘Twouldn’t be fair. These Arabs don’t understand that gentle art.” Then he went and squatted on top of a rock facing the semicircle, to watch proceedings.

      The other men all squatted in front of the kneeling camels. Jael went and sat near Grim. Ayisha took up a position of her own on Grim’s left hand, midway between him and the semicircle; and I had time to notice that both she and Jael were as eager for the spectacle as anyone. After that I sized up my antagonist, and liked the look of him—as Narayan Singh, catching the clothes I tossed to him, did not.

      “Stick a thumb in his eye if he strangles you, sahib!” he whispered. (Standards of ethics vary slightly as you travel farther East.)

      All either of us kept on were our cotton trousers, and there wasn’t much to choose between us as the sun beat down on muscles bulging under healthy skin. I am a sunburned man, but my skin looked white and satiny against his coppery bronze. He had several inches the advantage over me in height and length of arm, and was pretty obviously quicker on his feet; but twenty years of roughing it have taught me not to trouble much about the other fellow’s odds. The main thing is to reckon up your own, and discover his point of weakness.

      “Are you both ready?” Grim called out, and we walked in and faced each other.

      “Go!” he shouted, and Mujrim began to stalk me crabwise with both arms thrust forward, looking for an opening. One weak point became obvious at once. He considered himself a wrestler, and fully expected to rush me and win in sixty seconds. So I gave him the chance he looked for, and that first fall was easy; he went over my head on to his back on the sand with a thump that shook the wind out of him.

      But all I scored by that, of course, was to spoil a little of his confidence. He wasn’t likely to repeat such a mistake. He got to his feet pretty quickly, and I have seen a wounded lion look less pugnacious. The gang shouted a lot of good advice to him to wring my neck, kneel on my stomach, pull my arms out by the roots and, in fact, to go in and rid the earth of me, and he threw one swift glance in their direction as much as to say he wouldn’t fail them. Then I took the fight to him, and we closed.

      Well, I’ve had many a good fight in my day, having to admit, with less shame than some think seemly, that I’m kind of willing to mix it with any strong antagonist who wants to take my number down. But looking back, I think that was the best of all. It was rather spoiled at one stage by Mujrim’s biting when I had him in a painful hold he could not break. But you can’t expect a half-savage to act like a white man all the way, and he only tore an inch or two of skin loose. Besides, he made up for it handsomely before the end.

      The game was fast, for one thing, which suits my temperament. Middle age hasn’t made me a dawdler yet. And as we rolled and tossed over and over, grunting, and sweating so in the sun that we could generally slip out of a hold as easily as break it, the speed took the gang by the heartstrings, and from time to time I had visions of Grim beating them off with his camel-stick as they crowded in to scream advice to their champion.

      I never fought over so much ground before or since. I knew I had my man