Fin Tireur | Page 2

face.
"You don't like the Arabs?"
"Like the dirty dogs! You haven't been told about me, m'sieu?"
"Only that your name was Fin Tireur.'"
"'Fin Tireur.' Yes; that's what they call me in the desert."
"You're a sportsman? A 'capital shot'?"
He laughed suddenly, and his laugh made me feel cold.
"Oh! they don't call me 'Fin Tireur' because I can hit gazelle, and bring them home for supper. No, no! Shall I tell you why?"
He looked at me half defiantly, half wistfully, I thought.
"But if I do, perhaps your stomach will turn against the food I cooked with these hands," he added suddenly, stretching out his hands towards me, "You are English, m'sieu?"
"Yes."
"Then I daresay you won't understand." "I think I shall," I answered, looking full at him.
The way he had spoken of his child had drawn me to him. Whatever he had done, I felt that chivalry and tenderness were in this man.
"Why do they call you 'Fin Tireur'?" "The men of the Midi, m'sieu, are not like the men of the rest of France," said Fin Tireur--"at least so they say. We are boasters, perhaps; but we've got more love of adventure, more wish to see the world, and do something big in it. They're talkers, you know, in the Midi, and they tell of what they've done. I heard them at Cassis when I was a boy, and one day I saw a Zouave in front of the inn balcony, where folks come on fête days to eat the bouillabaisse. The talk I had heard made me wish to rove; but when I saw the Zouave, in his big red trousers and blue and red jacket, I said to myself: 'As soon as my three years' service is over I'll go to Africa, and make my fortune.' I did my three years at Grenoble, m'sieu, and when it was done I carried out my resolve. I came to Africa; but I didn't come alone."
He puffed at his cigar for a minute or two, and the hot look in his eyes became more definite, like a fanned flame.
"You took a comrade?"
"I took a wife, a girl of Cassis. A good girl she was then."
He paused again, then continued, in rather a loud voice: "She was good, m'sieu, because she had seen nothing. That's often the way. It was I who put it into her head that there were things to be seen better than rocks, and dead white dusty roads, and fishing boats against the quay. I've thought of that since I--since I got my name of Fin Tireur. Her name was Marie, and she was eighteen when we stood before the priest. Next day we went to Marseille, and took the boat for Algiers. Our heads were full of I don't know what. We thought we were clever ones, and should do well in a country like Africa. And so we did at first. We got into a hotel at Algiers. She was housemaid, and I was porter in the hall, and what with the goings and comings--strangers giving us a little when we'd done our best for them--we made some money, and we saved it. And I wish to God we'd spent it, every sou!"
His voice became fierce for a moment. Then he continued, with an obvious effort to be calm: "You see, m'sieu, at Algiers we had nothing to say to the Arabs. With the money we'd saved we left Algiers, and came into the desert to take a café which was to let near the station at Beni-Mora."
"I've just come from there."
"They call it 'Au Retour du Sahara.'"
"I've had coffee there."
"That was ours, and there little Marie was born. In those days there weren't many strangers in Beni-Mora. The railway had only just come there, and it was wild enough. Very few, except the Arabs. Well, they were often our customers. We learned to talk a bit of their language, and they a bit of ours; and, having no friends out there, I might say we made sort of friends with some of them. The dirty dogs! The camels!"
He struck his clenched hand down on the table. As he talked he had lost his former consciousness of my close observation.
"But they know how to please women, m'sieu.
"They are often very handsome," I said.
"It isn't only that. They can stare a woman down as a wild beast can, and that's what women like. I never so much as looked on them as men--not in that way, for a Cassis woman, m'sieu. But Marie----"
He choked, ground his teeth on his cigar stump, let it drop, and stamped out the glowing end on the brick floor with his heel.
"She served them, m'sieu," he resumed, after clearing his throat. "But I was mostly there, and I don't see how--but women can always find the