His love story

by Marie Van Vorst

With his nose flat to the sands Pitchouné smelt to east and to west, to north and south, took a scent to the east, decided on it—for what reason will never be told—and followed it. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten as hour after hour Pitchouné ran across the Sahara. Mercifully, the sun had been clouded by the precursor of a wind-storm. The air was almost cool. Mercifully, the wind did not arise until the little terrier had pursued his course to the end.

There are occasions when an animal's intelligence surpasses the human. When, toward evening of the twelve hours that it had taken him to reach a certain point, he came to a settlement of mud huts on the borders of an oasis, he was pretty nearly at the end of his strength. The oasis was the only sign of life in five hundred miles. There was very little left in his small body. He lay down, panting, but his bright spirit was unwilling just then to leave his form and hovered near him. In the religion of Tatman dogs alone have souls.

Pitchouné panted and dragged himself to a pool of water around which the green palms grew, and he drank and drank. Then the little desert wayfarer hid himself in the bushes and slept till morning. All night he was racked with convulsive twitches, but he slept and in his dreams, he killed a young chicken and ate it. In the morning he took a bath in the pool, and the sun rose while he swam in the water.

If Sabron or Miss Redmond could have seen him he would have seemed the epitome of heartless egoism. He was the epitome of wisdom. Instinct and wisdom sometimes go closely together. Solomon was only instinctive when he asked for wisdom. The epicurean Lucullus, when dying, asked for a certain Nile fish cooked in wine.

Pitchouné shook out his short hairy body and came out of the oasis pool into the sunlight and trotted into the Arabian village.

* * * * * * *

Fatou Anni parched corn in a brazier before her house. Her house was a mud hut with yellow walls. It had no roof and was open to the sky. Fatou Anni was ninety years old, straight as a lance—straight as one of the lances the men of the village carried when they went to dispute with white people. These lances with which the young men had fought, had won them the last battle. They had been victorious on the field.

Fatou Anni was the grandmother of many men. She had been the mother of many men. Now she parched corn tranquilly, prayerfully.

"Allah! that the corn should not burn; Allah! that it should be sweet; Allah! that her men should be always successful."

She was the fetish of the settlement. In a single blue garment, her black scrawny breast uncovered, the thin veil that the Fellaheen wear pushed back from her face, her fine eyes were revealed and she might have been a priestess as she bent over her corn!