Part 16 (1/2)

The men gathered at a Quartzite inn varied in various ways, but all bore the stamp of the desert. Tiny wrinkles etched the eyes of each man, and, though none were aware of it, even here in the cool and shaded inn, they squinted. That was something they learned in the desert, where they faced a blazing sun for hours on end and squinted to s.h.i.+eld their eyes, until the habit became so ingrained that they never forgot to practice it. The door opened and another man entered. One of those present greeted him with, ”Welcome, stranger!”

The newcomer grinned. ”Thought I'd best have me a look at civilization, been away so long that the other day I found myself talkin' with a pack rat. Saw the darndest thing when I walked in.”

”What?”

”A camel.” At once the newcomer was the center of interest. ”A big red camel.”

”Go on!” his friend exclaimed.

”It's true,” the newcomer insisted. ”He's right where Boney Wash crosses Skull Canyon. Layin' down, he is, like he might be sick or hurt. But he's there.”

The only man present who did not gather around the speaker had been sitting alone and unnoticed. He rose. An old man with snow-white hair and beard, there was that about him which spoke of many burdens carried, and yet he bore the weight of his years with a certain a.s.surance. When he walked to and opened the door and slipped into the overcast early spring afternoon, his absence went as unnoticed as his presence had been.

Ali closed the door behind him. Safe from prying eyes, he quivered with excitement.

The last arrival was a prospector, one of many original optimists who constantly roamed the desert, engaged in prodigious labors that were seldom granted the smallest reward and never once doubted that they had only to keep on and all the desert's dazzling riches would be yielded up to them. Recently, he'd been working in hills to the north, and his best way to Quartzite would be down Skull Canyon.

A red camel, the man had said, lay at the junction of Skull Canyon and Boney Wash. Ali couldn't remember how many times his own prospecting trips had taken him up Skull Canyon. He left the village and started to run, but his legs were no longer capable of running far, so he dropped back to a walk. The increasingly cooler evening wind, one of various reasons why Ali had finally turned his back on the desert to live with generous friends at Quartzite, he scarcely noticed.

He had gone to live at Quartzite six years ago, three years before the turn of the century and a few days before his seventieth birthday. Ben Akbar was old too, but even if he'd been welcome in Quartzite, he wouldn't have been happy there. Ali's last trip into the desert had been for the sole purpose of taking Ben Akbar to the most isolated spot he knew--and no man knew more than Ali about the wildest and most inaccessible areas--and leaving him there.

Escorting camels into the desert and turning them loose was nothing new.

Twenty times in years gone by Ali had thus disposed of beasts he was no longer able to support. Invariably, however, he either went and got them again or found some new herd for some new venture. Though not one other person in the entire Southwest shared his conviction that camels would eventually triumph--Ali's faith never flickered.

He'd loosed all the camels in the best places he knew. Ben Akbar, however, was a special case.

Though camels thrived in the desert and might have multiplied, as far as anyone knew, only camel ghosts had come to the water holes in recent years. Finding them gentle and easy to approach, Indians and white men alike killed them for food, and sometimes merely for killing's sake.

Many had been captured and were with various circuses or zoos. Ben Akbar was both the last to have been in any active and useful service and the last American camel not in confinement.

There were still rumors of desert-roaming camels, but all such were born in somebody's imagination and there were no reliable reports. Nor had there been since Ali loosed Ben Akbar, which might mean that Ali had succeeded in taking him so far away that n.o.body had yet found him. Or it might mean that he was no longer to be found; pa.s.sing years had probably not spared the camel any more than the master.

Just before nightfall, the wind lulled and then died down. A bright moon rode high, lighting the path but softening harsh angles and shadowing into gentle harmlessness all that was seen as hard and harsh under the sun's pitiless glare. Presently, every cactus was bedecked in a sparkle of rare jewels as moonlight glanced from frosty branches. Ali's thoughts went to a snug cave he knew, plenty big enough for a camel who was no longer as restless as he once had been.

Ali walked on, resentful of both his necessarily slow pace and a growing skepticism that came over him as he drew farther from the town and deeper into the desert. A red camel, the prospector had said, but there had been several red camels with the herd and there was still seventy miles of desert to cross before reaching the place where Ben Akbar was freed. Though there had been a time when seventy miles would have meant no more than a pleasant jaunt, could an aging Ben Akbar walk so far?

Then Ali came to the junction of Skull Canyon and Boney Wash. He stopped--and instantly he knew!

At this point, Skull Canyon was about fifty yards from the base of one rocky wall to the foot of another. Boney Wash had been born when torrential rains crumbled a rift in the east wall. The flood that had poured through then had ripped a ragged ditch in the canyon floor.

Above the ditch, the canyon was level, for the most part pebble-strewn, but here and there was a boulder or copse of cactus. Under the gentle moonlight, the canyon became gentle.

All four legs curled beneath him and head cus.h.i.+oned against his flank, apparently Ben Akbar had been on his way down the canyon and had lain down to rest when forbidding Boney Wash gaped before him. Ali's eyes softened, for it seemed no accident that on this night the moon should glow in such a fas.h.i.+on. The Ben Akbar Ali had last seen had shown the sunken cheeks, shriveled neck, worn teeth and stiffened joints of the aging. Under the magic moon, the Ben Akbar he met might have been the proud young _dalul_ he had rescued from the Druse and who, in turn, had rescued him. Even the many hairs that were no longer red, but white, could have been sparkling with frost.

Ali went a step nearer and crooned, ”I greet thee, oh prince among _dalul_.”

There was a ripple along flanks and ribs, but only after a marked interval was Ben Akbar able to raise his head. Ali dropped beside him and eased the proud head into his lap. He stroked it gently.

”We meet again, oh, brother,” he murmured. ”It is well.”