"Ya Ali Higg! You fool!" said the driver. "You would kill your own brother? You let me go!"
"Hah! You recognize me, then?" said Grim, coolly enough on the surface.
But his poker mask was off. In that land of polygamy and deportations it is frequent enough that one brother does not know the other by sight; but it must be disconcerting, all the same, to have a supposititious brother sprung on you. He gave a perceptible start, as he had not done when first addressed as Ali Higg that day.
"Mashallah!" swore the driver. "I would know thine evil face with the meat stripped off it! Nevertheless, thou and I are brothers and this is my train. So let me go!"
Grim watched Ayisha jump out of the caboose with my rifle in her hand, and turn to take aim at the open door, through which the conductor's voice came croaking blasphemy.
"All right," he said. "Since thou and I are brothers, go thy way! Allah ysallmak!"
The driver did not wait for a second hint, but shoved the lever over so hard that the wheels spun and the whole train came within an ace of bucking off the track. And before the caboose had passed us Ayisha was alongside Grim abusing him for not having broken the locks off the steel freight-cars.
"I am a robber's wife!" she said, stamping her foot indignantly.
"What sort of robber are you that let such loot pass free?"
"Shall I rob my mother's son?" Grim asked her. "God forbid!"
Then he turned to me, wondering.