The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

the bed of the fiumara, and turned again suddenly.

      “What about the woman Ayisha?” she demanded. “Am I to be saddled afterward with her? I warn you—”

      Grim laughed and shook his head.

      “I allow she’d be more nervous about that than you,” he answered. “No. I won’t saddle you with her. Good night, Jael.”

      She didn’t answer, but dropped down into the darkness, finding her footing with the nimbleness and lack of hesitation that typified her mental qualities by which she had established a position in the desert.

      As soon as she had gone Grim turned to Narayan Singh and me.

      “It hardly seems fair, you fellows,” he said, smiling. “You’re as sleepy and tired as I am. But tomorrow I’ve got to have my brains awake or we’ll all go fluey. You’ve got to stand watch tonight between you, and no argument. Better stay up here, where you can get a good view all around.

      “My tent is that one beside the big boulder in the fiumara bed; if anything happens, don’t yell, but throw rocks until I wake and come and join you. You’ll be so all in by tomorrow that you’ll be able to sleep on camel-back. Good night; I’m off!”

      “Nevertheless, our Jimgrim has a plan all cut and dried,” said Narayan Singh as soon as Grim was out of earshot. “Only, he knows that that she-wolf is the enemy, and will not risk telling her.

      “Moreover, he said, ‘stand watch between us.’ There was nothing about being both awake at once.

      “Have you a coin, sahib? I have only nine piasters, and the Prophet of these people couldn’t tell the head from the tail of any one of them. Let us take four-hour watches, turn and turn, and toss to see who sleeps first.”

      “I’ll toss you,” said I, “but let’s take half-hour turns. It’s easier to keep awake for thirty minutes than four hours.”

      He agreed to that, so I spun a coin and won the first spell of sleep. Maybe I’m an expert. At the end of six or seven seconds he awoke me, and swore he had allowed me several minutes more than half an hour. Then he took a turn, and when I shook him awake he vowed I wasn’t playing fair.

      “Sleeping or waking, I know the length of a second and a half!” he grumbled.

      But I showed him the watch. When he accused me of having moved the hands I showed him how the shadow of the moon had traveled, and demanded time out, in the bargain, to compensate for the minute we had wasted arguing. It was like a game of cat-naps.

      All the same, however short the snatches of sleep seemed, I’m convinced that in circumstances like that short turns are always best. Anything may happen in the night, and it’s better then that each should have slept a little than that one should have had four hours, say, and the other none. Events proved that I was right in that instance, anyhow.

      CHAPTER V

      “May you deal with your enemies like iron, even as you deal with me.”

      We took turns until midnight, when the moon, a day or two past full, was almost overhead, bathing the desert with honey-colored light in every direction. The desert is more full of night sounds than a forest if you listen intently enough, for the sand creeps musically and there is no rustling of trees to cover up the infinitely tiny noises of the lesser prowlers.

      After ten minutes or so of sitting motionless a hyena becomes a lumbering rowdy, a jackal a clumsy clod-walloper, and a mouse seems to make as much noise as a man. But when a man moves, all is instant silence by comparison.

      I was making the most of one of my short turns of sleep when Narayan Singh awoke me by the practical expedient of laying his right hand across my mouth. I deduced that he did not want me to swear out loud; so I bit his finger pretty sharply to prove I was awake, and lay and listened.

      There was something moving sure enough, and it wasn’t an animal. The sound was too irregular and stealthy for that of any creature with a right to be at large. It was a human, trying not to attract attention—than which there is nothing more compelling of attention in the whole wide world, unless you are one of those folk who live forever in cities with their ears and eyes shut.

      As I lay I could see Narayan Singh sitting absolutely motionless, shrouded so as to look shapeless in his Bedouin cloak. I imagine he and I together might have been mistaken for a lump of rock unless either of us moved. And there are two tricks of moving that hunting teaches you; one is to do it suddenly and then be absolutely still again; the other is to change position so slowly that no eye, not deliberately measuring your outline against a fixed mark, can detect the motion.

      If you know you are being watched the first is usually best, because if you are absolutely still again the moment afterward the watcher will doubt the evidence of his own eyes. But it needs practice. The one thing not to do is to change position in jerks, or moderately slowly.

      You can’t judge much from a superficial glance at such a veteran scout as Narayan Singh. He was facing pretty nearly due east; but that didn’t mean he was looking in that direction. Almost the surest means of allaying the suspicion of man or animal is to seem to look another way. Most Sikhs are past-master experts at that.

      I lay and studied Narayan Singh for about two minutes before I was sure he was watching something over to his left. And it was another two minutes before I made out the head of a kneeling camel protruding from behind a rock at about the farthest range of vision in that peculiar light. It might have been half a mile away, or less.

      The rock was big enough to hide a dozen camels; so it seemed likely there were more behind it, because a man with only one camel, who wanted to conceal the beast, would have done the job thoroughly; whereas if there were more than one there the end one might have been crowded into view.

      Almost all the way along, between the camel’s head and the edge of the fiumara, there was a series of shadows cast by boulders and sand-heaps. They were short, because of the position of the moon, and considerably broken up; but they formed the only line which animal or man might hope to approach us from the direction of that camel unobserved. There were occasional gaps in the shadow of as much as twenty feet of glistening sand. It wasn’t long before I made out a man’s shape moving swiftly from one spot of shadow to the next.

      He took his time in the shadows, kneeling down to crawl and becoming very difficult to see, but hurrying across the light after watching to make sure he was unobserved. The light was tricky, but I don’t doubt I could have put a bullet through him by the time he came within a hundred yards or so.

      However, there was no need. An occasional glance in the direction of that camel’s head was sufficient to make sure that none of his friends was prowling our way too; and it seemed wiser to discover what he was up to, than to stop him.

      But it wouldn’t have done to try to arouse Grim. If one of us had moved to throw a rock at Grim’s tent the man would certainly have seen us; and if we had called out loud enough to waken Grim the man would almost certainly have heard. We kept quite still, and let him come within twenty yards of the fiumara.

      Then he lay prone on his belly, watched like a leopard for at least five minutes, examining every detail of the ground in front of him, and began to crawl closer, advancing a yard at a time and pausing to re-scrutinize each shadow. He did a pretty good job on the whole. If Narayan Singh were not a trained scout and I a hunter, he might very likely have reached our camp unseen.

      At last he reached the sharp brim of the fiumara, thrust his head and shoulders over it, and peered down; and then it became a problem what to do with him. If we once let him get down into the black shadow below, the advantage would be all on his side. I could see the moonlight sheening on his long knife-blade.

      He might be an assassin sent by Ali Higg to murder Grim; but that was doubtful, because he dragged along a rifle with him as well, and the midnight murderers of that land don’t encumber themselves with long-range artillery that might get in their way in a scuffle and prevent escape. I judged he didn’t mean to take chances down in the dark, and it turned out I was right.

      He