ped through,
dressed like a fighting Bedouin, bandolier and all. Grim had even
let her have a rifle and cartridges. As he promised, he had put
her to no indignity.

CHAPTER XIII

"There is a Trick to Ruling!"

Don't you hate a story with a moral in it? I do. This is an
immoral story. And, remember, I said in the beginning that it had
no end, but was no more than an episode in the career of Ali
Higg. I would have liked to tell it from his viewpoint setting
down what he thought of this unexpected stick thrown in his
wheel, omitting most of the bad language for the censor's sake.

His first thought was that Jael had returned from the raid with a
hundred and forty men. You could tell that by the light in his
eyes, even before he spoke.

"Allah reward you; you come in time! Have Ayisha and that Yussuf
thrown over the cliff. Praised be Allah, I shall be obeyed at last!"

It was his worst shock yet when even Jael did not start at once
to carry out his order. Instead, she sat down on the rug, so that
she and Ali Higg and Grim formed a triangle.

"O Lion of Petra," she said--for it would not have been manners
to call him by his right name in front of strangers--"what was
written has come to pass, and my foreboding was a true one. If we
had let the tribes at El-Maan be, and if you had kept those forty
men instead of sending them to raid the Beni Aroun, this could
not have happened. Now twenty men have cornered us, while Ibrahim
ben Ah eats up provisions to no purpose, sitting idly in
the desert."

"Then the El-Maan men were not scattered to the winds?" groaned
Ali Higg. "O Allah, may shame devour you as it tortures me! Those
dogs will have looted a train and will say that Ali Higg no
longer dares interfere! The sun rises, but it sets at evening,
since Allah wills; but is my day so short?"

"By no means," answered Grim. "The El-Maan men saw me and
believed I was the Lion of Petra. I forbade the looting of the
train, and Your Honor's wife Ayisha went to El-Maan to enforce
obedience by her presence.

"Later they saw me start for Petra when the train had passed; and
now they will learn that Ibrahim ben Ah with seven score men is
bivouacking in the desert. The world is round, O Ali Higg, so
that where in one place it seems dark in another they say the sun
is rising."

"In Allah's name, who art thou?" asked the Lion.

"James Schuyler Grim. Men call me Jimgrim."

"Allah! _Wallahi haida fasl!_* Not he who