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 fighting men. And, absurd though his rodomontade may sound to Europeans, who read it in cold print, it was a vastly different matter there in the dark of the Plain, when Salam stood, believing he held a loaded gun in his hand, and allowed his fierce temper rein. The headman and his two attendants slunk off like whipped curs, and we proceeded to feed our animals, replenish both fires, and sleep with one eye open.
PREPARING SUPPER
Morning came over the hills to Ain al Baidah in cold and cheerless guise. The villagers crowded round to stare at us in the familiar fashion. But there were grim looks and dark scowls among them, and, failing the truculent and determined bearing of Salam and the presence of the kaid we should have had a lively quarter of an hour. As it was, we were not ready to leave before eight o'clock, and then Salam went, money in hand, to where the thieving headman stood. The broken night's rest had not made my companion more pleased with Ain al Baidah's chief. He threw the dollars that had been demanded on to the ground before the rogue's feet, and then his left hand flew up and outward. With one swift, irresistible movement he had caught his foe by the beard, drawn down the shrinking, vicious face to within a few inches of his own, and so holding him, spoke earnestly for half a minute, of what the Prophet has said about hospitality to travellers, and the shocking fate that awaits headmen who rob those who come seeking shelter, and beat them when they complain. Ain al Baidah's chief could not but listen, and listening, he could not but shudder. So it fell out that, when Salam's harangue was finished, we left a speechless, irresolute, disgraced headman, and rode away slowly, that none might say we knew fear. If the village had any inclination to assist its chief, the sight of the blessed one's weapon, in its fierce red cloth covering, must have awed them. Some days later, in Mogador, I was told that the Ain al Baidah man is a terror to travellers and a notorious robber, but I made no complaint to our Consul. If the headman's overlord had been told to punish him, the method chosen would assuredly have been to rob every man in the douar, and if they resisted, burn their huts over their heads. It seemed better to trust that the memory of Salam will lead Ain al Baidah's chief to lessen his proud looks.
We made slow progress to Sheshoua, where the river that might have barred our road to the coast was as friendly as the N'fiss had been on the previous day. The track to its banks had been flat and uninteresting enough; what good work the winter rains had done by way of weaving a flower carpet on the plains, the summer sun had destroyed. There was a considerable depression in the plain, though we could not notice it at the slow pace forced upon us, and this accounted for the absence of water between the rivers, and for the great extent of the calcareous gravel, in which few plants could thrive. Only the zizyphus lotus, from whose branches little white snails hung like flowers, seemed to find real nourishment in the dry ground, though colocynth and wild lavender were to be seen now and again. But by the Sheshoua River the change was very sudden and grateful to the eye.