CHAPTER IX

"A month. A little more than a month! Thirty-one days to be exact! O, Allah, it seems a life time!" sobbed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. "A month since I grabbed her hot off the Biscuit! Would that then I had developed b.u.t.ter fingers! And yet!"

He buried his face deep in the cushions and ate at them. He didn't cry out. It wouldn't have done the least good.

n.o.body would have answered. His horses, camels and men were all scared positively puerile and near to death of Verbeena. Whenever they saw her coming they hurried like the deuce in every other direction.

And yet!

Hypothetically considered, the situation was not extraneously alarming. But otherwise it was vicariously vazink.

The Sheik tossed and tossed around and around.

She was certainly the hottest penny he'd ever picked up in his life, this little red-head.

"The first thing you know," he told himself, "you'll be falling in love with this athletic young squidge. And then won't you be ashamed of yourself!"

Because if he did really he should.

The way she bossed him!

Dawn couldn't begin on the desert without the Sheik Amut being turned out with a slim cup of coffee to break horses. Or direct the currying of camels. And camels require infinite currying. If you want to live around the same oasis with them it has long been decided that this is quite essential.

And in all his former experiences he had never known that a camel could laugh. But now he knew they all did whenever he pa.s.sed by.

Besides he was losing money, for in breaking horses he'd acquired a habit of killing them while thinking of Verbeena.

And yet!

O, Allah, she had such a fascinating way of displaying romantic womanhood when he most expected the hatpin!

But still he knew his men were beginning to call him "Tame Turban" and "Shakes" instead of Sheik.

The inc.u.mbrance of their pitying glances was getting his cosmic lizard.

He never, these days, slung on his flowing, dashing, romantic white cloak without feeling like a whipped cream.

Conjurically he considered himself a storm-tossed palm branch hopelessly missing its dates.

He didn't have a pillow he felt he had a right to pile on.

He'd been in the habit of sprawling around on his cushions whenever he blamed felt like it. But not so no more! Verbeena could become so exceedingly vituperish and so conspicuously arousing. So different was she, he considered, than varinol.

Hashish had given him some relief but his stock of that was gone and Verbeena hadn't.

The way she wound Spaghetti around her little finger was utterly farnicaceous. And Hulda was eating out of the hollow of her cute, steel-like fingers.

He could only draw comfort from knowing that he and Verbeena had the cigarette habit intolerably.

"Shades of memory, O, Allah, those days when I was c.o.c.k of the walk!"

He squirmed bitterly to recall the fact.

He fumbled about among the pillows well-knowing that not a tail feather remained. In plain words, of his masculine dominance he realized he was hirsutically tweezered.

There was nothing left for him to Sheik but escape.

Verbeena, he saw, was fast asleep and for this he gave several still, small praises unto Allah.

There among the cushions he kicked himself softly for never having thought things clearly out before.

But now--aha! His horse, Sunstroke, would stand by him! That is to say run with him as he must if it was to do any good. And pretty fast, too, he conjectured, Sunstroke must.

Sheik Amut Ben Butler made just about then a cold sneak from the side of Verbeena. Toes and finger tips were clammy with apprehension.

At this time, deep down, his torn and tortured pride was crying to the astral heights:

"O, Allah, Allah, Allah, is it never going to end? Am I ever going to get away from her?"

And things like that.

He had, as a matter of verity, long felt that he should take to the woods, but how could he on the Sahara!

Either Oasis No. 3 or 5 was a heck of a distance.

Yet----

Verbeena stirred.

That decided him.

Swiftly he filtered through the flap in the tent and out under the stars.

He stepped carefully over Spaghetti but Spaghetti was so nervous these times he awakened very easily.

"Shush, not a word!" quavered the Sheik.

Pathetically Spaghetti ostriched and _donna-mobilay_.

With stupendous caution Amut stalked among the steeds. His ego was so inherently erased that he touched the nose of Sunstroke apologetically, fearsome that even his own horse might say him nay.

But Sunstroke laughed good-naturedly. A horse laugh, to be sure, yet nevertheless nothing nasty in it. Sunstroke was only a kid and full of larks. He was all for the notion of churning the desert in the small hours of the night and whizzled his tail gayly to indicate it.

For that, the Sheik kissed him.

He was so very grateful to meet one in whom the urge of travel was prevalent.