of the fast falling light; I
was nodding drowsily toward unconsciousness, and wondering, with a vague
resentment that exhausted all my remaining capacity to think, why the
headman should be speaking so loudly. Suddenly, I saw the muleteer go to
earth as if he had been pole-axed, and in that instant I was wide awake
and on my feet. So was Salam.

The headman delivered himself of a few incisive rasping sentences. The
muleteer rose slowly and wiped a little blood from his face.

Salam explained: his capacity for fathoming a crisis was ever remarkable.
"Headman he charge three dollars for barley and he don't worth more than
one. Muleteer he speaks for that, and headman 'e knock him down."

"Ask him how he dares interfere with our people," I said. "Tell him his
kaid shall hear of it."

The headman replied haughtily to Salam's questions and strode away. "He
say," said Salam, beginning to get angry, "Pay first and talk
afterwards--to Allah, if you will. He say he wait long time for man like
muleteer an' cut 'im throat. What he's bin done that be nothing. What he's
goin' to do, that all Moors is goin' to see. He come back soon, sir."

Then Salam slipped noiselessly into the guest-house and fetched my
repeating shot gun, from which I had previously drawn all cartridges. He
sat down outside with the weapon across his knees, and the bruised
muleteer safely behind him. I coaxed the charcoal to a further effort and
returned to my chair, wondering whether trouble that had been so long in
coming had arrived at last. Some five minutes later we heard a sound of
approaching footsteps, and I could not help noting how Salam brightened.
He was spoiling for a fight. I watched dim figures coming into the area of
light, they took shape and showed Ain al Baidah's chief and two of his
men--tall, sturdy fellows, armed with thick sticks. Seeing Salam sitting
with gun levelled full on them they came to a sudden halt, and listened
while he told them, in a voice that shook and sometimes broke with rage,
their character, their characteristics, the moral standing of their
parents and grandparents, the probable fate of their sons, and the certain
and shameful destiny of their daughters. He invited them, with finger on
trigger, to advance one step and meet the death that should enable him to
give their ill-favoured bodies one by one to the pariahs and the hawks,
before he proceeded to sack Ain al Baidah and overcome single-handed the
whole of its fig