“That’s just what I want. It’s no good mincing matters now. Put your heads together and take a good squint at the thing, and then look as angry and excited as you like, but say nothing to those fellows. After supper we will have an ostentatiously serious talk.”
Quite in the dark as to Cyril’s intentions, the others nevertheless obeyed him, casting glances of suspicion and dislike, which it needed no dissimulation to render realistic, at the Arabs in the intervals of picketing and rubbing down the horses and gathering sticks for the fire. This change of demeanour did not pass unnoticed, and after their frugal meal the hostile camps met separately in serious consultation. Mr Hicks and Mansfield failed to receive the enlightenment they expected and desired. Cyril let them say what they liked, but offered no suggestions of his own, listening to all that was said with an air of languor, almost of boredom.
“Tell the sheikh that I wish to speak to him in the morning before we start, Hicks,” he said at last, and Mr Hicks obeyed, wondering.
“That the boss should give them free leave to vamoose the ranche in the hours of darkness throws me out,” he said, and Mansfield determined to balance this extraordinary failure of judgment on his leader’s part by keeping watch on his own account all night. But a hard day’s riding in sun and sand is not the best method of preparation for a vigil, and not so very long after his usual hour Mansfield was comfortably asleep. It was Cyril’s voice which aroused his two companions from their dreamless slumbers.
“Mansfield! Hicks! wake up! Your revolvers!”
Mr Hicks was on the alert in a moment, revolver in hand. There was no moon, and the fire was almost out, but his ear told him that the words came from the neighbourhood of the horses, which were plunging and kicking.
“Strike a light,” continued the voice, “and let’s see who it is I’ve got here.”
The flickering gleam of the match showed that Cyril was holding the loosened heel-rope of his own horse, while his revolver was pressed to the forehead of the sheikh. The man was crouching on the ground in an attitude which made it clear that he had been surprised when about to release the other horses. Just outside the circle of the light the dark forms of the two tribesmen were visible against the stars, mounted and ready to ride away, but afraid of endangering their sheikh if they attempted to attack Cyril. The sheikh’s own horse was close at his heels.
“Is your revolver cocked, Hicks?” asked Cyril. “Mansfield, go and fetch in the sheikh’s horse, but don’t fire unless I give the word. Now, Hicks, ask the sheikh what he is doing here.”
“He says he never calculated to take you to Sitt Zeynab, Count,” said Mr Hicks, receiving the sullen answers of the captive. “He and his people have fixed up all the other travellers in this style, leading them round and round until they were tired, and then sloping with their horses. They were so glad to escape from the desert, when they found their way out at last, that they never wanted to come back. He says he saw that we suspected something last evening, and he concluded it was time to travel.”