"What do you mean?"
"Is he good's a horse or mule?"
"Much better," Ali stated.
The old man shook a puzzled head. "That don't hardly jibe with those camels on the Heely. Wasn't nobody payin' them no mind, 'cept some heathen Papagoes that was fixin' to eat 'em. I was tempted to ketch one an' see how it rode, but a cowboy said they wasn't worth ketchin'. The Army fetched 'em from some place in Texas, he said, an' turned 'em loose on the Heely on account they was more fuss than worth."
Ali's heart sank at this first news in more than two years of the camels left behind at Camp Verde, but he told himself that he should have expected nothing else. He drew some comfort from a quick assurance that neither Mimico nor Major Wayne could possibly have accompanied any expedition that would abandon camels. Whoever had loosed those five in the Arizona desert, where they would certainly find conditions to their liking, knew nothing of camels and cared less.
Ali said, "Who left those camels did not know what he was doing."
"Might be I ought to have caught me one anyway, eh?"
"You'd have found it worth your while," Ali assured him.
"Well, I didn't an' I don't know as it would of been doin' me or the camel any favor if I did. Ridin' anythin' don't set like it used to. Come on in, Hi. I'll rouse up some rations."
Ali walked with the old man to his house and sat down on a wooden bench while Hud Perkins busied himself preparing fish from the river and vegetables from his garden. He queried, "If I might ask, where ye been?"