The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

and ready to go on retreating if Grim insisted.

      “Search him, please!” said Grim.

      I believe in obeying orders. You don’t have to follow a man if you don’t care for his leadership. I have chosen to differ from more than one man after the event, but never yet spoiled a leader’s game by hesitating in a climax. Moreover, on one occasion when the leading was up to me I remember I beat a man half out of his senses for arguing with me in a pinch; whereas if he had chosen the proper time to air his views we might have agreed, or else parted good friends. And what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I laid my left hand on Mujrim’s arm and thrust my right into the bosom of his shirt, bringing out a couple of amber necklaces worth at least a hundred dollars each.

      I liked Mujrim from the first. I liked him even better in that minute. Ninety-nine Arabs out of any hundred would have pulled a knife at me. He struck me with his fist—a clean, manly blow above the belt, heavy enough to have knocked me out of the saddle if I hadn’t expected something of the sort.

      His brothers naturally drew their weapons. They probably ex­pected me to draw mine. But I was satisfied for the moment to keep hold of the necklaces and be on guard against a second blow.

      “Why strike the hakim?” Grim asked him. “He obeyed my order. His act was mine.”

      “Mashallah!” he retorted. “That is a wonder of a saying. If it is true, then it was you I struck. Behold, I strike again.”

      And he let out another blow at me that would have broken the arm of a weaker man.

      “Patience, sahib, patience!” Narayan Singh whispered, edging his camel close to mine; but big-game hunting is a pretty good teacher of that.

      It was clear enough that Grim was up against mutiny. Jael Higg was smiling jubilantly in that handsome, thin-lipped way of hers, and Ayisha was calling out aloud to Mujrim to “kill the cursed Indian and be done with it.”

      I kept my eye on Grim. He approached within arm’s length, and for a minute I thought he was going to be crazy enough to accept the blows as having landed on himself, and strike back. In that event, unless Grim should use his pistol he was as good as dead, for the Arab’s blood was up. But he chose to ignore the talk.

      “We’ll keep the camels and pay Lady Jael for them,” he said quietly. “You and the other seven walk back and deposit what you call the presents in the Treasury, where the women will find them sooner or later.”

      “Wallahi! Am I dreaming? Who orders me to walk back?”

      “Right smartly too!” Grim answered. “I’m not going to wait a week for you.”

      “Allah!”

      Mujrim’s face was black with rage by that time—the swift, volcanic temper of a lawless fellow checked. But even with the blood up back of his eyes I think he recognized that Grim meant to master him at all costs. There wasn’t a trace of anxiety on Grim’s face—nothing whatever but determination.

      “I told you all clearly before we started that I’d have no looting on this trip,” said Grim. “You can’t take advantage of me just because Ali Baba isn’t here. Carry that stuff back. I shall wait here and search you all when you return, so you’d better bear that in mind.”

      Remember, those weren’t men who had had military training. Probably the only people they had ever obeyed were Ali Baba, whose lightest word was law, the jailer at El-Kalil during periods of imprisonment, and Grim himself. Mujrim was like a big dog with a 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 all being 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 makeup 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