“ ... for if we have safely followed in the path of the thirty who sleep yonder,” argued Mohammed-Abd, looking up to the tombs in the rocks bathed in the glory of the sunrise; “why should not yet another thirty, fleeing before the law, and even thrice times thirty, come safely through the hungry sands? If two horses escaped the death, why should not two camels, with their feet as big and soft as the heart of one who leans unduly to the affections, cross that path, and, with violent lamentations and much urging, make their way down yon rocky road? And if two, why should not thirty of their brothers and sisters follow as safely, with thirty Nejdeen stallions and mares, as nimble as goats upon their dainty feet, behind them? And are we so weak that we could not carry sheep and goats, in young, across our saddle bows, so that they multiply in this place of plenty?” He looked up and around, stretching wide his arms. “Is there not place for man and beast and many of each? And are we not, O my brother, bidden by the Great Prophet to succour those in distress, are we not?”
In such-wise did Mohammed-Abd, the ambitious outlaw, with Yussuf as his right hand, become the head of as daring a gang of brigands as had ever swept the highways of the desert.
And all went well with him, his harvests yielding abundantly, his wealth accumulating, his people and cattle waxing fat and multiplying throughout the years, until he took unto himself a wife, who died on bearing him a daughter.
CHAPTER I
“From the afternoon it will appear if the night will be clear.”—Arabic Proverb.
Zarah the Cruel leaned on the wall which surrounded the chapel of the monastery, built by early Christians in the fifth century, and looked down at two dogs fighting upon the plateau near the water’s edge.
Twenty years had passed since Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, so called by his men, who adored him, had adopted the natural stronghold in a desert waste as home, naming it the Sanctuary, unwitting that he poached upon the poetical tendencies of the long dead Holy Palladius; fifteen years since he had taken to wife Mercedes, the beautiful Spaniard, the arrogant daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee, who, made prisoner as she journeyed on business bent across the Arabian Peninsula in the company of her high-born and feckless father, had condescended to marry the notorious robber-sheikh in exchange for the liberty of her progenitor and the safe conduct of himself and his retinue out of the country. She had condescended to marry him, but in the secret places of her passionate, adventurous heart she had come most truly to love him, so that the years preceding the birth of their daughter had been years of happiness; years in which, although the raids upon caravans and peoples had been as fierce and bloody as before, the lot of the prisoners had been considerably lightened, until those who had not the wherewithal to pay the ransom demanded had come to sing as they set about their tasks of herding cattle, tending harvests, or working to strengthen and beautify the ruins upon the mountainside. Those who had the means, or friends altruistic enough to raise the ransom, had paid it and taken their departure with a distinct feeling of regret in their hearts.
Many had thrown in their lot with the outlawed chief, whilst the physically undesirable had been liberated at once and sent packing on the homeward track, so that harmony had reigned in the strange place and the welfare of the brotherhood had increased a hundredfold.