The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

of the Orakzai have hairy arms, but they are strong to nestle in. Let me look into those liquid eyes and see how fairer they are than the moon and stars!”

      “Father of pigs!” she retorted. “Get away from me. I choose to walk alone.”

      “Nay, beloved; come closer! One danger is enough to run for this night. Next we must face Jimgrim, and you need a protector from his wrath. He will accuse you of treachery while he slept.

      “You must lean on me. You must depend on me to defend you. We Pathans of the Orakzai are wondrous liars. A man’s sword and a man’s tongue should be ready for any occasion, say we. Now put me to the test, O Heart of all Loveliness. What shall we tell Jimgrim?”

      But though he called her by a fabulous long string of jeweled names, offered her the hills of Edom for a kingdom and the fairest cities of the earth for plunder, he could get no answer out of her at all, until we came to the brim of the fiumara and were challenged by three separate members of our startled camp. We had to answer the challenge right swiftly, for the click of rifle-bolts preceded it.

      Then Narayan Singh took Ayisha by both arms and swung her in front of him.

      “Must I tell him all I heard?” he asked. “Oh, Heart’s Delight, don’t put me to that necessity!”

      “Black pig! Let go of me!”

      But he held on, and my prisoner—no more aware than I was that the Sikh had not been able to hear the first part of the conversation at all—piped up in support of him.

      “I have a tale I shall tell,” he announced. “Listen, Lady Ayisha, this great fellow is a friend of yours. Humor him. He is willing to stand between us and this Jimgrim. Better let me tell the tale, and you confirm what I say. None ever believes a woman, but he will believe me.”

      At that Narayan Singh laughed gruffly, and I detected a note of triumph, although he affected defeat.

      “Malaish [No matter],” he said with a shrug of his great shoulders and loosing Ayisha’s arms; “there is nothing for it but to tell the truth. I shall tell Jimgrim every word I overheard from first to last.”

      He had gained his point. Ayisha made up her mind that he had heard everything, and whatever her first intention might have been she decided now to make a virtue of necessity.

      “I need no ignorant Pathan to speak for me!” she retorted. “It is I, not you, who will tell him. Get behind me, son of sixty dogs!”

      But instead of obeying that command he laughed aloud, picked her up like a child, and carried her down the dark track into the fiumara. She didn’t seem to mind that part of it. In fact, one of the most surprising things anywhere east of, say, the North Sea is the complaisance with which women submit to being seized and carried off.

      He carried her straight up to Grim, and set her on her feet in front of him on top of the island, and I think that by the time she got that far her private opinion of the Sikh had undergone considerable modification.

      I SENT my prisoner up between two of our Arabs, and went to have a quiet look at Jael’s tent. There wasn’t a sound. I hardly cared to open the fly and look in, so I counted the camels. The Bishareen dromedary wasn’t there.

      I returned to her tent, and this time didn’t hesitate to peer inside. It was empty. The sheepskin rug and blankets were gone too.

      Several of our Arabs were still asleep among the camels; it wouldn’t have been the slightest use to arouse and question them. The remainder had slept until my prisoner’s bellowing disturbed them, and wouldn’t believe me at first when I said the Bishareen was gone. I went up to Grim with the bad news, but he was aware of it already.

      “There she goes,” he said before I could begin to tell him.

      He nodded toward the northeast. The little Bishareen was eating stick and galloping at top speed in the direction of the rock from behind which Ayisha’s visitor had come—silhouetted softly in the moonlight just out of reasonable rifle-shot. It looked exactly like one of those up-to-the-minute motion pictures, especially as there was too much noise in our camp by that time for us to hear the camel’s footfall. Most of our men were clambering out of the fiumara and shouting to Grim to know whether they should open fire or not. He shouted to them to do nothing.

      What Jael had accomplished looked remarkably like a miracle to me. It was obvious, of course, now why the camels had been making all that noise when I started to follow Narayan Singh. But how in the world she had saddled that beast and got away without disturbing the men who slept by the picket stakes was the mystery, unless there was a traitor in our camp. The saddle alone was as much as most women could lift.

      She must have chosen the exact moment when Grim and I were both engaged in climbing out of the river-bed, he in one direction, I in the other, to start up the fiumara and disappear around the nearest bend. The rest would be easy enough; no doubt there were plenty of places higher up where a camel could find footing and negotiate the bank.

      We hadn’t a beast in camp that could overtake that Bishareen. It could go like the wind, and Jael was about half the weight of anybody we could mount and send in pursuit of her. So unless Grim chose to try long-range shooting by moonlight, which in ninety-nine percent of cases is a useless waste of ammunition, there was nothing much to do but watch.

      She headed straight for that big rock, from behind which a camel’s head still protruded, and presently disappeared.

      “Now,” said Grim, “what’s the excitement all about?”

      He looked cheerful enough to have planned the whole business.

      Ayisha squatted down comfortably in front of him, giving the rest of us a good view of her back. That trick is part of a woman’s language; no male could ever contrive it in exactly the same way, suggesting indisputable superiority of intellect, class, knowledge, opportunity, privilege and everything. Grim waited for her to speak first, and she kept him waiting, while my prisoner trembled in his skin and Narayan Singh stroked his great beard upward with both hands.

      “O Jimgrim,” she said at last, “you would better make an end of foolishness and marry me.”

      Nobody gasped. Nobody cracked a smile—least of all Grim. There wasn’t really anything to smile about, considering time, place and circumstances. History was merely repeating itself. For the hundred-millionth time a female of the species considered that a man was captive of her bow and spear, and the member of the less conventional sex was trying to make the most of opportunity.

      “Why, O Lady Ayisha?” Grim asked her blandly.

      “Am I not fair to look at? This Pathan of yours vows I am fairer than the moon and stars. He ought to know, for he has loved many women in many lands.”

      “Shellabi kabir! [Extremely beautiful!]” Grim answered. “The fellow flattered stars and moon by speaking of them in the same breath. Yet the Prophet said, Ayisha, that the houris wait for us in paradise. Who should anticipate the joys of that world in the make-belief of this?”

      “Yet the Prophet did!” she answered. “He had many wives.”

      “Truly, but then he was a prophet,” Grim replied. “Can you tell me why I should pause in the midst of happenings to make a marriage? There are twenty lives depending on my judgment. A mistake, a false move, and these friends of mine are dead men.”

      “Father of wise answers, that is why you must marry me,” she answered. “No man can find his way out of the net a clever woman weaves. Jael has you in the toils. You need me, I tell you, to help you out of them.”

      “It seems, though, that you are not too far away just now to help me if you will,” he suggested.

      “Inshallah, if you marry me now, I will help you indeed,” she answered. “You shall rule this country.”

      That was two women within a day who had proposed to make a king of him. Wouldn’t you have felt tickled? I know I would, although nobody ever made me the proposal. Bearing in mind Narayan