Taking the saddle like a lamb, Sunstroke nevertheless hopped forth as of a piece of cyclone.

On the Sahara even a horse is granted rubber heels.

Noiseless the departure.

"Fare well, well, well, Verbeena!" shunted the Sheik Amut softly to the handsome stars.

The stars are really very handsome on the Sahara. And so close. One feels like picking them. On some kinds of drinks one often tries.

But Sheik Amut Ben Butler knew that he must not linger to become so engaged.

With Allah quiescently concurring, Sheik Amut hoped ere morn to pull Sunstroke up, lathered with foam necessarily, in Tipzaza or perhaps Tlemcen although in a vague way he dreamed of Fez because there was a big, stone wall around that, and gladsomely he killed many miles of the desert but----

Alas! Allah would have appeared to have quit him altogether.

His dreams of freedom were due to detonated dispersal.

There was the crack of a pistol!

Sunstroke sat down ultimately.

From the sandpile where Amut found himself sitting on a troubled head the Sheik began to reason that Verbeena was arrived.

Counsel couldn't help him he very well knew.

It was positively she. Because he heard her voice demanding:

"How dare you? What do you mean by it? Answer me this instant! Who were you making off to see--Ayah or Beeyah or----"

"Aw, what the d.i.c.kens," said the Sheik Amut, with a half show of spirit. "All you caught me was a horse!"

She slung him across her saddle as even once he had slung her and she frequently held him head down on the journey for as she said to him, this sends the blood to the head and he could the better therefore think of the atrocity he had planned. Now and then she would dip his head in the sand to brush up his repentance.

That same night at home, the Sheik made a harrowing error. His diplomacy proved catastrophical. For he dug up a treasure bag and out of it drew a necklace of gorgeous, pallid greenstones, and dangled them before her eyes.

"After all," said he, "it is you only I can ever love, Verbeena! Ah, Verbeena! You fascinating baby mine! Here--take it--this small token of the burning regard of my Sahara disposition!"

Instead of graciously accepting she nearly drove his turban through the north wall of the tent. His head was in the turban.

"I get your Oriental subtlety, you wild Eastern oaf!" cried Verbeena her red curls straightening and standing upright. "You think I'm a jade, do you?"

On the Sahara has pa.s.sed into song and story the family simoon which then blew across, in, out, about, over and under tent of Amut Ben Butler.

CHAPTER X

_Cous cous_ had given way to good old English bacon and eggs and marmalade on the breakfast table of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

"Chief," said the Sheik half-heartedly to Verbeena, slipping a piece of bacon to his big, dangerous Persian hound that Verbeena was in the habit of kicking around so freely, "would you mind if I had a friend come and stay for a bit?"

"What kind of a character may this be?" demanded Verbeena.

"A literary light, one nearly as large as a moon. He sells an awful lot of books."

"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Queen Verbeena readily inducting the atmosphere.

"Robert," the Sheik paused because he was very sure of his grounds, "Hitchings."

"Literary men," said Verbeena, "are usually terrible loafers and like late breakfasts but as to Mr. Hitchings I am agreeable. I am fully confident as regards Mr. Hitchings, I don't mind saying. He is always interesting. I think it was reading his works which started me on this trip."

"It rejoices me to have you so inclined," said the Sheik. "And Bob will be pleased."

"That's up to him," smiled Verbeena, taking a heavy smash at the marmalade. "Although I have every confidence that he will give little trouble. From his tales of pa.s.sion I am certain he is well-behaved.

But in view of the event I think, Amut, we should really move to a larger oasis. It's possible he carries his adjectives with him."

"Wonderfully thoughtful," murmured the Sheik.

"What did you say?" asked Verbeena.

"I said, 'h.e.l.lo, kid!'"

"h.e.l.lo," said Verbeena.

To the Sheik her affability was immeasurably amazing.

The Ben Butlers had moved to Oasis No. 12. This was a suburb of Oudjda from whence, if you were out of things, you could always get breakfast at Guercif.

For three days Mr. Hitchings had been taking his meals and notes with the Ben Butlers.

His observations of the Sheik and Verbeena had moved his heart to pity. So that he had very little left when the Sheik was carried in by two men. A horse had refused to be trained and the Sheik A. Ben Butler was therefore invested with six broken ribs.

He breathed like a dice-box in full cry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ALLEGED MR. HITCHINGS.]

Verbeena prodded the Sheik somewhat and, deciding that he wouldn't die, came into the outer tent and caused Mr. Hitchings to pause in the taking of his notes by pulling his chair from under him.

"Did you wish to speak to me?" said Mr. Hitchings under the chair and circ.u.mstances.

"A little, Robert. Who, you know, after all, is he?"

"You mean Sheik Amut?"