Did he have a harem?

No, Spaghetti thought not. It was very hard to keep one these days.

Especially when your business had you out on the desert running an ambling horse farm. You were so likely to return to Biscuit or Orange or Ammonia and find the harem had run out on you, bobbed its hair and got jobs as manicure girls in Constantinople.

"That will be all," then had remarked Verbeena and had further taken a tuck in Amut's devoted servant by saying:

"It is absurd; don't you think, for you to call yourself Spaghetti?

You're much too fat. Macaroni would be infinitely more suitable."

"Aw, Queena Verbeena!" protested Spaghetti.

"That will do. You may go, Mac."

He had backed out as becomes one departing from royalty and a hat pin.

Hulda she had entirely won over during the afternoon. She had given the little six-foot thing one of her old evening gowns, yet a modest garment withal, hanging well below Hulda's shoulder blades.

Dependably Verbeena was to be suspected of having something other than sawdust under those clubbed curls of hers!

She was just wondering if she could go so far as to appoint Hulda policewoman of the tent and entrust her with a sand-club when there came loud yells without of "Hip hoy, hip hoy, hip, hip, hip! Allah, Allah, Allah! AMUT!"

Three more "Allahs" were being heartily given still yet without when the Sheik Amut Ben Butler strode haughtily into the tent, threw off his creamy cloak and with a careless motion tossed his bejeweled cla.s.sy turban among the old gold and silver cushions, thus displaying his shock of Sahara colored hair above his stick licorice black chin m.u.f.f.

Verbeena savagely and swiftly lighted nine cigarettes and faced him peagreen with pyromania.

He touched off a cigarette himself.

"I hope Spaghetti didn't lay down on his job," said the Sheik. "Do you know what we're going to have for dinner?"

He pushed Verbeena out of the way and stretched himself on the divan.

His cold manner was like a dash of water of the same temperature against her face. Verbeena broke into a watery perspiration, her eyes got watery with rage and her mouth watered to bite him the more so that she could see, despite the nonchalant manner in which he was looking at her, he was yet significantly appraising this outburst as a valuable a.s.set on any desert.

His presence was an offense and she would concede no amelioration of it due to the nature of his occupation among horses. She wished with pa.s.sionate fierceness that she could dye his hair to match his whiskers or his whiskers to match his hair. And the dreadful, cool way he was lying there staring at her, the princely thing! My--such airs!

"You seem to think everything's nicely settled," said Verbeena icily.

"But when King and Lloyd George hear of this, they'll put such a flea in the ear of the French Government, they'll be after you with a hoop-la and a full set of gendarmerie armed with guillotines!"

"A pea for the French Government! And holler-woller for the Georges, King and Lloyd."

"You seem very confident of immunity."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHEIK AMUT BEN BUTLER, THE TERROR OF THE SANDS.]

"Of a certainty," said the Sheik. "I'm depending on Queen Mary. She's an awful stiff one for the proprieties, you know, and when she hears the way you defied conventions and went journeying out into the desert without so much as a chaperon, if I know Mary, she'll say it served you jolly well right. Anyway, what's one of those countries you speak of got to do with it?"

He gave her the point of a finger--slightly cigarette stained, but very stern.

"You forget, hussy,--I am the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. I'm the Grand Monarch, the Monseigneur of this entire sand-patch--put that in a cigarette paper and smoke it!

"There's another Sheik in these parts, one Abraham O'Mara who goes around as if he cuts some didoes until he hears I'm in the neighborhood and then, Allah behold him bolt for his simoon cellar!

"Besides, he'll soon be going back to Ireland or Palestine now and I'll be taking over all his sandlots as well. So you can see for yourself what a gra.s.s-cutter I am.

"Don't stand there shaking your sa.s.sy red curls at me or I'll get up to you, do you understand?"

Verbeena gulped grandiloquently.

The Sheik sneered at her violently.

"See here," he said, "you'd have made a fine chorus boy but it was not as a chorus boy or any other kind I saw you in Biscuit. So shake those Reginald fixings and get yourself into something with fancy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, something decollete and dashy. I'm surprised to find you so p.r.o.ne to forget that you are a lady."

"In Biscuit--in Biscuit? You saw me in Biscuit, you underbred loafer?"

gasped Verbeena.

"That cat you chased off the balcony fell on a brand new, very natty turban I was wearing as I pa.s.sed the hotel."

"It was then that I first saw you, cutey! And when I heard you were going to make a desert hike alone--well, here you are, little one, _mon chit_, hale and hearty if a bit high-strung, my sweet ukelele."

"Love--love! You speak of love! 'Twas for a ransom you rifled me of my liberty and what not, you big, hulking rotter!"

He regarded her scornfully.

"As a man who gave up eighty-six cents American cash to Musty Ale for your possession--and this I did--shall you accuse me of kidnapping you for ransom?"

"Then why--why--O, gosh, if only your hair and whiskers matched! But I know Spaghetti lied."

"'Bout what?"

"He said he didn't know of your ever having any other girl but me."

"Well, naturally," the Sheik frowned dangerously, "Spaghetti knows better than to do any gossipin' while I'm gone. Still it is true, Verbie, that you are the first one I have ever taken caravaning. As for the others----"

"The others! O, golly, golly me!" she sobbed. "Listen to him--the way he says it--the others--the others! Just like that!"

"Why, of course," he said with a light insouciance that was paramountedly the pinnacle of intense impropriety. "Let's see--there have been Ayah and Beeyah, Ceeyah and Deeyah, Eeyah, Effa, Geeyah, Aicha, Aihyah, Jayah, Kayah, Ella, Emma, Ennapeayah, Queahra, Essatee, Dubla, Exa, little Whyzee and," the Sheik Amut sent a thin stream of supercilious, insolent cigarette smoke at the trembling Verbeena, "so forth. But you notice there was a 'V' missing from the collection."

"And so you----"

"Partly--partly. But there was another, by Allah, a deeper reason."

"What?"

He gave her a look that was awful sneery.

"That's something I'm keeping under my turban just now, Verbie. The way you go 'round here asking questions you'd think we were really married you know."

"And are we not to be?"