[CHAPTER XII]
It was a Monday morning about two months later and the Sheik was helping Hulda hang out the wash in the back of the Big Tent, his soul pondering in trepidation, even worry as one might say, regarding what Verbeena was contemplating, what she was ruminating with such open evidences of liking it, in her masterful, little, red-capped noodle.
Fear suddenly clutched him clamorously by the heart.
It rang in his brain—ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling-a-ling!
They were now stopping at the Sahara Golf club oasis which is really a mere suburb of Orange, very popular because the golf club oasis was the wettest on the desert. So near Orange! She could, she would——
“Allah save my skin,” whispered the Sheik as best he could on account of the clothes-pins in his mouth as he was spearing Verbeena’s B.V.D.’s to the line hanging low between the stately palms.
From time to time as the reversal of the rôle he played in her life came to his quivering lips in cries of “Allah, O, Allah, let up on me!” he had managed to steal a horse-whip or two and bury it in the sand until nearly all of them had disappeared. It was not consideration for the horses which had led to those depredations. And now the thought had come to him that they were so near Orange she might ride in herself or send forth a blindly obedient equerry thence to fetch a new supply of first quality, sturdy horsehide lashes.
“O,” cried Sheik Amut fervently, “Allah, have a heart!”
But just about then other things happened to make his heart tick harder—like a grandfather’s clock.
He and Hulda dropped the wash to rush to the front of the tent where had arrived a messenger. Sure, on horseback.