The Lion of Petra | Page 3

such weakness as a
smile to escape him. When great things are being staged it is his
peculiar delight to look wooden. Not even his alert brown eyes
betrayed excitement. Like most Sikhs, he can stand looking straight in
front of him and take in every detail of his surroundings; with his khaki
sepoy uniform perfect down to the last crease, and his great black
bristly beard groomed until it shone, he might have been ready for a
dress parade.
"Is everything ready?" asked Grim.
"No, sahib. Suliman weeps."
"Spank him! What's the matter this time?"
"He has a friend. He demands to take the friend."

"What?" I said. "Is that little ---- coming?"
Two men in all Jerusalem, and only two that I knew of, had any kind of
use for Suliman, the eight-year-old left-over from the war whom Grim
had adopted in a fashion, and used in a way that scandalized the
missionaries. He and Narayan Singh took delight in the brat's iniquities,
seeing precocious intelligence where other folk denounced hereditary
vice. I had a scar on my thumb where the little beast had bitten me on
one occasion when I did not dare yell or retaliate, and, along with the
majority, I condemned him cordially.
"Who's his friend?" asked Grim.
"Abdullah."
Now Abdullah was worse than Suliman. He had no friends at all,
anywhere, that anybody knew of. Possibly nine years old, he had
picked up all the evil that a boy can learn behind the lines of a beaten
Turkish army officered by Germans--which is almost the absolute of
evil--and had added that to natural depravity.
"Let Abdullah come," said Grim. "But beat Suliman first of all for
weeping. Don't hit him with your hand, Narayan Singh, for that might
hurt his feelings. Use a stick, and give him a grown man's beating."
"Atcha, sahib."
Two minutes later yells like a hungry bobcat's gave notice to whom it
might concern that the Sikh was carrying out the letter of his orders. It
was good music. Nevertheless, quite a little of the prospect was spoiled
for me by the thought of keeping company with those two Jerusalem
guttersnipes. I would have remonstrated, only for conviction, born of
experience, that passengers shouldn't try to run the ship.
"What shall I pack?" I asked.
"Nothing," Grim answered. "Stick a toothbrush in your pocket. I've got
soap, but you'll have small chance to use it."

"You said I can't go as a white man."
"True. We'll fix you up at Hebron. The Arabs have scads of proverbs,"
he answered, lighting a cigarette with a gesture peculiar to him at times
when he is using words to hide his thoughts. "One of the best is:
`Conceal thy tenets, thy treasure, and thy traveling.'
"The Hebron road is not the road to Petra. We're going to joy-ride in
the wrong direction, and leave Jerusalem guessing."
Five minutes later Grim and I were on the back seat of a Ford car,
bowling along the Hebron road under the glorious gray walls of
Jerusalem; Narayan Singh and the two brats were enjoying our dust in
another car behind us. There being no luggage there was nothing to
excite passing curiosity, and we were not even envied by the officers
condemned to dull routine work in the city.
Grim was all smiles now, as he always is when he can leave the alleged
delights of civilization and meet life where he likes it--out of bounds.
He was still wearing his major's uniform, which made him look
matter-of-fact and almost commonplace--one of a pattern, as they
stamp all armies. But have you seen a strong swimmer on his way to
the beach--a man who feels himself already in the sea, so that his
clothes are no more than a loose shell that he will cast off presently?
Don't you know how you see the man stripped already, as he feels
himself?
So it was with Grim that morning. Each time I looked away from him
and glanced back it was a surprise to see the khaki uniform.
The country, that about a week ago had been carpeted with flowers
from end to end, was all bone-dry already, and the naked hills stood
sharp and shimmering in heat-haze; one minute you could see the edges
of ribbed rock like glittering gray monsters' skeletons, and the next they
were gone in the dazzle, or hidden behind a whirling cloud of dust. Up
there, three thousand feet above sea-level, there was still some
sweetness in the air, but whenever we looked down through a gap in
the range toward the Dead Sea Valley we could watch the oven-heat

ascending like fumes above a bed of white-hot charcoal.
"Some season for a picnic!" Grim commented, as cheerfully as if we
were riding to