The Mammoth Book of Pulp Action

Caravan to Tarim David Goodis

Eleven miles out of Maglaf, the caravan ran into a mob of Bedouins. It started out as a pleasant negotiation with rifles.

Kelney cursed the Arabian sand and the Arabian sun and said, “Who gave them rifles?”

A bullet ran past Tiggs’s cheek and he muttered, “Anyway, it’s better than knives.” Tiggs had three knife scars from the Bedouin blades. He had been working back and forth across the desert for nine years. He was used to this sort of thing.

The Bedouins were moving in now. They knew all about Kelney’s caravan, the spices and perfume and rugs that were being taken to the market in Tarim.

Kelney cursed and started up, wielding his pistol. He tried to leap over the parapet formed by the spine of his camel. Tiggs pulled him down. And the next bullet came sailing across his crouching body and went on going and hit one of the Arabian guides in the forehead.

Kelney was not used to this. He was an American, big but not tall. Five seven and one ninety. He was thirty-six years old and for almost a quarter of a century he had been a drifter. His hair was whitish gold and his eyes were bottle green. His skin was oak. He wasn’t a happy man; he was a bit too tough.

“Don’t waste bullets,” Tiggs said. He was an Englishman. His philosophy was that life was very short and a man had to do as he damned well pleased, provided he didn’t cause grief to nice people. Tiggs was a year shy of forty and looked younger. He was tall and thin and dry. His eyes were colourless. He seemed very tired.

With Tiggs and Kelney there were seventeen honest Arabians. And in a semicircle behind the sand dune thirty yards away there were thirty-odd dishonest Arabians. There was nothing to do but crouch down behind the camels and listen to the bullets whining.

“Let’s rush them,” Kelney said.

“That wouldn’t be wise,” Tiggs murmured. “They’ve got the elevation. They’ve got too much sand in front of them. Wait. Let them use more bullets.”

“They’re killing us all.”

“It’s bad,” Tiggs admitted. “But there’s nothing we can do about it right now.”

“That’s one man’s opinion,” Kelney said. His dark green eyes became black.

In shabby Arabian he shouted an order. The guides whimpered. Kelney repeated the command and the Arabians still held back. He jumped out of cover, and his pistol shoved lead. The Arabians were following him. Even Tiggs joined up. They were running now, running and weaving, some of them falling as they went across the sand. The Bedouins stood up, shot downwards.

Kelney saw Tiggs go down. The Englishman rolled over a few times, and then his face was to the sun and his mouth was open. Blood dribbled from his lips. Kelney didn’t see the need for further study. He concluded that Tiggs was dead and that was unfortunate but then this whole business was unfortunate.

The Bedouins were coming out from behind their dune. Kelney saw his men start to run. The Bedouins were laughing and shooting them down. A bullet tore flesh from Kelney’s thigh.

In another minute, the Bedouins were walking out to get him. They were grinning.

They looked mean, and their women liked to see white men die slowly, with a lot of groans and screaming. Kelney put the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.

He had forgotten that the chamber was empty. The Bedouins had him, and he was shouting curses, squirming, kicking with his good leg.

The leader came over and told him to be quiet.

In fuming Arabic, Kelney told the leader what he could do. But then his eyes became green again and he gave the Bedouin chief a half grin.

The Bedouin was not very tall and not very wide. But his eyes and nose and jaw line were bladelike and hard. His smile was a thread. He wore a lot of green and yellow silk, and shining belts of silvery leather. His men wore rags. Kelney, sizing it up, decided that the leader had a mixture of brains and vanity and could be talked to.

“There is precious stuff in the bags,” Kelney said, pointing with his chin towards the corpses of the camels. His wrists were already behind his back and the Bedouins were drawing the hemp in tight knots.

“Why do you wish me to know that?” the Bedouin leader said.

Kelney shrugged. “It is good to know the joy of looking forward to a treasure.”

“I know all about the treasure. I know all about you.”

Kelney forced a laugh. He looked down to see blood fountaining from his thigh. The Bedouin reached down, arranged a somewhat capable bandage.

Then Kelney was placed on a camel and the Bedouin mob ribboned across the lake of sand.

The leader rode beside Kelney. He said, “I was in Tarim when you brought in the last shipment. I followed you. I know that you have more spices, perfume, rugs—”

“Not quite. But I know where to get more.” Kelney said it wincing.

The Bedouin smiled at the sun. “We will speak of this later.”

It was all very unpleasant, the sticky heat and the smell of too many unwashed camels and the general filth of a Bedouin camp. But Kelney wasn’t thinking in terms of the present. He went so far as to eat and drink from the same big dish shared by a group of Bedouins.

The leader, who had introduced himself as Sheik Nadi, was saying, “You do not mind the food?”

“Why should I?”

“It is bad food. We are very poor. Do you know why?”

Kelney shrugged.

“We are the forgotten people,” Nadi said. “We are kept out of the villages. This tribe was not always nomadic by nature. They took our grazing lands away and now we are slowly starving. That is why we come out on the desert with our rifles.”

“How did you get the rifles?” Kelney’s tone was conversational.

“Theft,” the Bedouin said. “We have been forced to make our own laws. And we will benefit. When our treasure is sufficient, we will take trade away from the stingy merchants in village bazaars. We will be the scornful rather than the scorned!”

“And why not?” Kelney gazed directly into Nadi’s eyes.

Nadi breathed deeply through his nose. He folded his arms and looked past Kelney’s shoulder. “You know where to get these treasures,” he said. “You pay a small price, then you take the stuff to Tarim and reap a high profit.”

“You have it wrong,” Kelney said. “I am not my own employer. I work for Mezar, the richest merchant in Tarim. He sends me to the coast of the Red Sea. There I trade with European vessels that slip up through the Indian Ocean. I can negotiate better than the Arabian tradesmen.”

He was telling the truth. He was seeing hate sparkle in Nadi’s eyes.

“Mezar,” the Bedouin said. “I know him well. A jackal. It is he who controls the city of Tarim. And you work for him.”

“No more,” Kelney said.

Nadi went into his tent, brought out water pipes. For a while the two men sat smoking quietly. Kelney made the first bid. He said, “I will get you more treasure.”

“Of course.” Nadi smiled. “That is why you are alive now. That is why the knives of our women remain idle.”

“I will go to Tarim,” Kelney said. “Mezar will send me out with another caravan.”

“Am I a fool?” Nadi said. “Do I speak with fools?”

“Another caravan,” Kelney said.

“And heavily armed, yes?”

Kelney nodded. “Heavily armed — with blank cartridges.”

“If you would cheat Mezar, you would cheat me.”

“I have more to gain by cheating Mezar.”

Nadi sucked at the water pipe. He looked at Kelney and then he looked at the sand. He said, “You think wisely. Work for me and your rewards will be plentiful. But revenge can come in equal quantity if you attempt betrayal.”

“I wait for your word,” Kelney said.

“My word is this — you will leave Tarim with the new caravan. You will be unmolested during your journey to the sea. This time you will bring back a treasure greater than any in the past. And once again you will meet me in the desert. There will be no fighting. You will tell your men to surrender. We will take their rifles and camels.”

“And my men?”

“They will die in the desert. Under the sun. Thirsting.”

Kelney put down the tube of his water pipe. “Must they die?”

“They are from the city,” Nadi said. “They would happily see my tribe die the slow death. We will likewise be happy to see them crawling across the desert, their tongues black.”

“What about me?” Kelney said. “How can I murder my own men?”

“Speak now!” Nadi was standing. “Your life is no longer your own. The knives of my women are waiting.”

Deep inside, Kelney shivered. He said, “It is agreed.”

He would start out the following morning. There were no complex details. A single Bedouin would accompany him.

Alone in his tent, Kelney laughed without sound. He had never expected it would be this easy. He had given his word to Nadi, but Nadi was a bandit and a killer and you’re not obliged to keep promises to the Nadis.

Kelney was awakened at dawn by an old Bedouin, who informed him that his camel was ready. He was offered food and gulped it down hurriedly. Walking towards the camel, he turned to the man and said, “Sheik Nadi?”

“Gone,” the old Bedouin said. “Out of the desert, waiting for another caravan. A great one, our chief.”

“Yes,” Kelney said. “And very clever.”

“Cleverer than you think,” the old man said.

After a moment the old man nodded. “You will keep your word. Because I will tell you that Nadi is a man of honour and he believes that honour means more than life itself. There have been those who have broken their word to Nadi, and they have died. I could tell you how they died but I will let you imagine it for yourself. They thought they had tricked Nadi; they thought once they were out of the desert they were free of him. But he followed them. And eventually he caught them. One by one. When Nadi decides to pursue a man, the man never gets away.”

It hit Kelney with the force of a hammer. He had the ability to recognise profound truth when he heard it, and he was hearing it now.

The old man was saying, “Your fellow traveller will be the tongueless fool who waits now on his camel.”

Kelney got a look at the man who would journey with him for two hundred miles across sand. It wasn’t a pleasant look. The ragged Bedouin had a face that could turn a stomach. Some terrible disease had left scars, blotches and pulpy masses that distorted his features into a hideous mask. The diseased one opened his mouth to speak and his lips moved but he made gurgling sounds and nothing more.

Shuddering, Kelney said, “I must travel with that?”

The old man grinned. “It is the wish of Sheik Nadi.”

Kelney was climbing onto his camel. His body jerked violently as the beast rose from a placid crouch, shook itself to get blood into its legs.

The old Bedouin looked up at Kelney. “Your camel is strong,” he said. “May your will have the same strength.”

Kelney nodded slowly. He really meant it as he said, “Thanks for the tip.”

And the two camels, bearing silent riders, went eastward, towards Tarim.

Short and fat and sloppy, Mezar wallowed in his wealth. Once he had been a whining, begging seller of spices. In a miserable, hollowed-out space, he had made his living not on routine sales, but on certain practices that at times offered themselves when a customer was careless.

Slowly Mezar had pulled himself up, and now he had wealth. He was powerful and he had many persons working for him and it was good to think about all this, particularly the efficient white men he had working for him, this Kelney, this Tiggs, with their crisp, clear way of doing business. In short time, if things kept on the way they were going, his wealth would be doubled.

A servant came in, babbled loud and fast.

“Send him in!” Mezar said.

Kelney came in. His jacket and white linen breeches were rags. His pith helmet was cracked. He limped. But it was his face that made Mezar stare. His face was pale; the eyes had deepened in green until they were almost black.

The Arabian leaped up and almost choked on a mouthful of figs.

Kelney was in there first. He waved wearily at the fat merchant, he folded his arms and gazed at the floor and said, “Bedouins.”

“But the shipment—”

“I had more luck than the others,” Kelney said. His nerves were a sunbroiled mass dangling from an ever-thinning thread. He wanted to hit Mezar in the face.

“The shipment!” Mezar screeched. He was leaping around the silk-curtained room. “The shipment is gone! Why did you let the Bedouins—” He coughed on the figs. His eyes were glass. Then he saw the silent man standing in the doorway and he looked at the pulpy, scarred face and he said, “Who is that?”

“The man saved me,” Kelney said, just as he had rehearsed it. “I do not know who he is. He has no tongue.”

Mezar was slowing down. His eyes were retreating into the fat folds of his face. He walked past Kelney, kept walking towards the mute. As he did so, he clapped his hands, twice.

Then he stood in front of the mute, hitting his palms together lightly, smiling as he stood there waiting.

“He befriended me,” Kelney said.

Two tall, half-naked Arabians entered the room. They were sweating, breathing hard. When you worked for Mezar you were always sweating, always groping for more energy.

Mezar pointed to the mute and said, “Take him.”

Kelney saw the mute struggling in the grasp of the two big men. He pushed Mezar’s elbow and said, “Leave him be. Reward him and let him go.”

“He is a Bedouin,” Mezar said.

Kelney was very tired. He was nearly broken in two. He said, “If any harm comes to the mute one, I will leave your employ. The Englishman is dead, and you will have no one to get the low prices. Hear me, Mezar.”

“But he is a Bedouin!” Mezar insisted. “Can you know how I hate them? Can you understand what a plague they are?”

“This one is sick and harmless,” Kelney said.

“I will make sure that he will always be harmless,” Mezar replied, and now his smile had enjoyment in it. Gesturing towards the writhing, gurgling Bedouin, the fat merchant addressed the tall men and said, “Take him out and cut off his ears and the tip of his nose.”

Then, as Mezar changed the smile to a laugh, Kelney cursed. He sensed himself going across the room, his hands shaping a couple of fists. He landed a hard one on an Arabian’s chest and the tall man lurched. The other man moved towards Kelney and at that point the mute became an eel, went sliding away. His gurgling was now an awful sort of laughter, fading quickly as he made his escape down a narrow street.

Kelney had nothing to do and no place to go and he stood there and waited until the two tall men came back. They looked at Mezar. And Mezar nodded.

Mezar had seated himself and now he studied Kelney’s face. He said, “You seem to like the Bedouins.”

“There are good and bad in all tribes.”

“I do not understand.”

“It’s very necessary to understand,” Kelney said. “Every nation and every tribe has its good people and its bad. Does it take much intelligence to get that?”

Mezar rubbed a finger across a huge carbuncle amethyst that dangled from his neck. “All Bedouins are fiends,” he said. “You know that, as I do. But you helped the mute one to escape. I want to know why.”

Biting his lip, Kelney looked at Mezar and let out a sigh and said, “I told you why.”

“I do not believe it,” Mezar said. “I will tell you, Kelney, I expected that at some time you would try to trick me, but I did not suppose that you would be so foolish as to enlist the help of Bedouins. You are working with them now, is it not so?”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“The Englishman, too. And all the rest of the caravan. All working with the Bedouins. And you arranged it. Tell me with your own lips. Say it now!”

“All right,” Kelney said. “Go to hell.”

Then he squirmed and tried to get away, knowing that it was a crazy idea, knowing it would be a tough process from here on in. The violent part of it lasted about a minute. Afterwards they were able to half carry him out of the room, and he felt himself going down some corridor. And then he got the feeling of metal clamps fastened around his wrists, and he was vertical and his boots and socks were being pulled away; his naked feet just about tagged the floor.

“You will be alone for a while,” Mezar said. “I will grant you complete darkness and silence. In an hour I will be back here with gifts of agony. It is my hope that you will tell the truth.”

Footsteps were going away, a door was closing, and Kelney was calling himself the same names he had called Mezar. It occurred to him that perhaps he had deserved this sort of thing for a long, long time and now there was nothing to do but take it with philosophy.

Blank cartridges, he was thinking. That was a lovely arrangement and for that deal alone he deserved to get his head kicked in. Even though he hadn’t been given the opportunity to go through with the transaction, the fact remained that he had agreed to it and he certainly would have gone through with it to soften his own mattress. And that made him a thousand varieties of louse and he was lower than any Bedouin.

He had to grin. It was so easy to feel this noble remorse, this inner cleansing, when the four surrounding walls were walls of odds. Give him a chance to get out of this and he would go back to the strategy, the fencing, the scummy bargaining that he always engaged in when he was bargaining with what he recognised as scum.

But was Nadi scum? What about those Bedouins? Were they really scum? He gave himself a picture of them, their rags, the food they ate, the sad faces of their children. On another canvas he was seeing fat Mezar with a mouthful of figs, and gems against fleshy fingers and all the silk. He thought about the good Arabians, honest and fairly decent men crawling across sand and dying of thirst because a noble soul named Kelney had placed blank cartridges in their rifles. He heard the door again, and then the footsteps.

Slanting light straightened itself out as Mezar placed a torch in a wall bracket. Mezar was alone and breathing hard.

This is going to be good, Kelney thought.

But he hadn’t dreamed it would be this good, because Mezar was unfastening the clamps and saying, “I am humble.”

Kelney rubbed his wrists. “Say it again.”

The fat Arabian said it again.

“So what brings about the change of heart?”

“Tiggs is here.”

“You can say that again, too.”

“Tiggs has been brought in. He was picked up by another caravan coming this way from the coast. He was dying. They had a physician with them, a famous man from Charfa. An operation was performed in the desert, and a bullet was taken from Tiggs’s body. He is recovering fast. And he has told me what happened with the Bedouins. I know now that you spoke the truth.”

“Thanks,” Kelney said, “for nothing.”

“Let us forget this unpleasant affair,” Mezar said. “In a short time Tiggs will be well again. You will take out another caravan—”

“I want more payment,” Kelney said.

“Of course. You are a good tradesman, Kelney, and I am happy to reward my best workers.”

“I don’t work for you,” Kelney said. “I only deal with you. Remember that. And here’s another thing. I don’t want to wait around for Tiggs to get back on his feet. I’ll take out the next caravan as soon as you make out your buying schedule.”

“But Tiggs knows the route better—”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“Yes, but Tiggs—”

“The buying is the important thing.”

Kelney was thinking of the blank cartridges, calling himself a skunk even as he called himself a nice guy for making this attempt to save Tiggs.

“You say that you do not work for me.” Mezar’s tone was level. “I tell you that you are wrong and that my word is the last. You will wait until Tiggs recovers and he will go with you on the next caravan.”

All at once Kelney was very tired. He shrugged and said all right, he would wait for Tiggs.

It was an ordeal in itself, counting the days, pacing them in ratio with Tiggs’s recovery. The day when Tiggs sat up. The day when he walked around. The day when he was able to eat and drink as a normal man. Kelney watched him come back to full life and realised that it would not be long before Tiggs was back there with death. The bargain with Nadi must be kept, otherwise Nadi would come creeping. And Nadi would find him.

There came a day when the caravan set out across the desert, aiming at the string of ports on the Red Sea coast. Kelney and Tiggs walked ahead of their camels. And following were thirty Arabians, whom Kelney had supplied well with water and food and rifles and cartridges. The cartridges were blank.

“I’d like to meet the Bedouins again,” Tiggs said.

“A bullet can’t settle an issue.”

“In a way you’re right,” Tiggs said. “But I’ve had a lot of pain. I’d like to make at least one Bedouin go through what I’ve been through.”

Kelney glanced to the side and saw that Tiggs’s lean, dry face was working slightly. Tiggs’s lips were drawn like expanded rubber and his eyes aimed ahead like rifle muzzles.

The caravan reached the coast in eleven days. It had been slow going. On the trip northward however, along the coast, Kelney made good progress. His negotiating was more clever than it had ever been. When the caravan was headed back towards Tarim, the packs were loaded with quality that would make Mezar smile.

They moved onto the desert, and the big sun was there to greet them. They watched it as it floated along with them. There was half a day of this, and hardly any talk, and then during a rest period Tiggs was lighting a cigarette and saying, “Well, we have our treasure. Now let the Bedouins try to take it away from us.”

Kelney leaned his head towards the match in Tiggs’s fingers. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it too much.”

For a while Tiggs was quiet. Then he said, “I’ve been wondering about something. That mute Bedouin who guided you back to Tarim. Rather odd that any of them would do something like that, don’t you think?” And when there was no reply, Tiggs went on, “They’re clever as well as mean, those buzzards. You’ve got to be careful.”

“All right,” Kelney said. “What’s on your mind?”

They looked at each other, and Tiggs said, “What’s on yours?”

“I’m not worrying about a thing,” Kelney said.

They had moved another mile or so when Tiggs suddenly darted ahead. Something was on the sand, writhing out there in front of them.

It was a dying camel, left there by another caravan. They looked it over and Tiggs said it was no use, there was no saving the beast. And then Tiggs lifted his rifle, pointed it at the camel’s head.

Kelney knocked down the rifle.

“Why not?” Tiggs said. He didn’t move. There was no expression in his eyes. Kelney was rolling invisible dice, telling himself that Tiggs had examined the cartridges in his rifle. Anyway, there was a quick means of finding out for sure. “All right,” he said, “if you think you’re being merciful, go ahead and give it a bullet.”

The Englishman said, “I can’t do it, Kelney. I adore these animals. You take the job.”

Kelney breathed hard, trying to keep his relief from showing. He told himself everything was fine now. But as he took the pistol from its holster he wondered about it. And as he pulled the trigger he asked himself if he was actually as clever as he thought he was.

Ninety miles out of Maglaf, Tiggs said, “They’re about due.”

“Who?”

“Bedouins.”

“Bad ones?”

“They’re all bad,” Tiggs said.

Injecting it with a stiff dose of sarcasm, Kelney said, “How long does it take to learn all about Arabia?”

Tiggs laughed. “I’ve been here nine years and I’m just beginning to learn.”

“Maybe you’re slow to catch on,” Kelney said. “Sometimes I think—”

A bullet cut in on that one. It came from a rise in the sand about seventy yards away. There was a string of bush fringing the rise, and above its meagre green there were bits of white that were Bedouin headdress.

Kelney acted electrically. His eyes made a chart of the surrounding sand. He saw that a deviation in the slope would afford a barrier against bullets. He yelled an order, his voice slicing hard. The Arabians backed up, swayed their camels behind the sand barrier. During all this there was quiet and Kelney knew what it meant. Nadi was waiting it out, waiting for a rifle response. Nadi wanted to see if the American was playing him clean.

Tiggs’s voice barged in. “Well, you’re in charge. What do we do?”

“Just wait,” Kelney said. He was flat on his belly behind the barrier, and Tiggs, at his side, was inching up to peep over the barrier.

“Stay down,” Kelney said. He raised his voice to give the command in Arabic. “Stay down — hold fire!” He knew it was loud enough for Nadi to hear.

Kelney waited for the Bedouin bullets and they didn’t come and he pushed his tongue over dry lips. He didn’t like the quiet. He didn’t like himself. He had brought these men out to die.

“You don’t look well,” Tiggs said.

Kelney heard that clearly but it didn’t mean anything to him. He sensed that he was breaking up inside. And all at once the break came and he realised that he could not let this thing go on. He had to do something drastic and he had to do it alone. He looked at Tiggs and he looked at the Arabians and he started to crawl backwards down behind the barrier.

“What’s the object?” Tiggs said.

“I’m going roundabout,” Kelney said. “I’m edging out to skirt that bush and get in behind them. I want to see what their plans are. Don’t do anything, just stay here and hold fire. I don’t want a single bullet wasted.”

Then, without waiting for Tiggs’s reply, he kept on moving back and he was following the barrier around its shape of an arc. He became older by a few years as he worked wide of the bush, then came in behind the bush, and all the time there was just that same thick quiet, and he knew that Nadi was wondering about the cartridges. Pressed flat against the sand, he crawled another twenty yards and then he was back there behind the Bedouins. He could see Sheik Nadi, the green and gold distinct against the colourless rags of Nadi’s followers.

Kelney stood up and walked forward. A few Bedouins became conscious of his approach, raised their rifles, then lowered them as Nadi shouted something. Kelney stopped and waited as Nadi came towards him. When they faced each other they were both smiling and Nadi lowered his rifle and that was when Kelney made a subtle gesture with the pistol. Nadi lost the smile.

“A trick?” Nadi said.

“No trick. I have kept the agreement. My men are holding rifles that have blank cartridges. But in this pistol are real bullets. If you cry out I’ll kill you. Now walk with me and try to be patient.”

They walked back and away from the Bedouin position. Nadi was smiling. “Before you kill me let me tell you that my followers will someday find you, and your death will be a terrible thing.”

“Aw, knock it off,” Kelney growled in his own tongue. Then, going back to Arabic, he said, “I said that I had kept our agreement, and I was not lying. All I ask now is that you spare the lives of my men. I will see that you get the entire shipment.”

“You are loyal to Mezar.”

“I am loyal to myself. I hate Mezar even as you do, even as my men do. Your followers and my men are brothers.”

Nadi lowered his head and rubbed his chin and it was done perfectly. The change of pace was also perfect, because Nadi was a streak as he smashed with both hands. The pistol went out of Kelney’s grasp and Kelney went back with the Bedouin tearing at him. They went down together, grappling, and Kelney grinned as he thought of every other man who had tried to use this method of argument with him. And a few moments later he was upright again and he was frowning. And Nadi, who had gone sliding out of a bear hug to take the pistol, now had it pointed at Kelney’s chest.

“It’s too bad,” Kelney said. “I was trying to be fair.”

And he was telling himself that it didn’t pay, there was no logic to it. If he had handled it from the evil side, if he had kept it dirty according to the original idea, he would have been in the cream.

He blinked and waited for the bullet.

And then he heard Nadi saying, “I cannot.”

“You’re not teasing me. I’m dead already and I know it.” He was trembling, he was very frightened, very agitated, because he was a man who got real taste out of life and this was a sure and final thing that would happen to him.

“I cannot kill you,” Nadi said.

“I’m listening.”

Nadi’s smile was vague. “When you went back to Tarim, I went with you. I was the mute.”

Kelney stared.

“I did not trust you,” Nadi said. “I wanted to be sure. I used a clay-and-rice paste to mask my face. But I was foolish enough to stay with you when you reported to Mezar. He would have given me death, slow and with agony. And you saved me. I cannot kill you. I want to, but I cannot. I will give you back your pistol and you will return to your men. Go on to Tarim. You will not be molested. But from now on you must take a different route. I do not want us to meet again.”

Butt foremost, the pistol was handed back to Kelney. And Nadi turned and started back towards the rise where his men faced the Mezar caravan, and where all the rifles were silent and waiting.

Tiggs turned when he heard Kelney coming up. He smiled with sincerity and said, “It’s a surprise. I never thought you’d come back.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course,” Tiggs said. “I thought they’d spot you and shoot you down.”

“Oh,” Kelney said. “I thought you meant something else.” Then he bit his lip for a few seconds. “We’ll move on. They won’t bother us.”

They shouted orders but the entire party was watching the Bedouins who were now moving away, a string of ragged figures on bony beasts, winding into the yellow distance.

Among the Arabians there were murmurs of puzzlement. Even the camels made questioning noises. The caravan formed line and moved on. Tiggs and Kelney walked ahead, saying nothing, and it went on like that for a long chain of hollow minutes.

Finally Tiggs laughed softly. “A good thing the Bedouins went home.”

Kelney stopped and faced the Englishman and said, “Whatever you’ve got to say, say the whole thing now.”

“I made a little change in our ammunition,” Tiggs said. “I took out the blanks and put in the genuine.”

Kelney had a feeling that he was two feet tall. “Which shows,” he said, “how much you trusted me.”

“Which shows how much I trust anyone before I come to know him,” Tiggs said. “I always make a private inspection of the rifles before a caravan goes out. Every once in a while a guide makes a deal with the Bedouins. The blank cartridge business is an old trick. But this is the first time I ever watched a man change his mind.”

“You knew I’d change my mind?”

“Let’s say I was hoping for it so strongly I made myself believe it. It’s this way, Kelney — you and I work well together and I’ve been planning that we should break away from Mezar and start our own little trade.”

“Hold it,” Kelney said. “After what’s happened out here, you think I can be trusted? I’m not exactly a saint.”

Tiggs’s voice was as gentle as his smile. “Not exactly,” he said, “but you’ve got possibilities.”