Produced by Mark R. Jaqua
by Talbot Mundy
I. "Allah Makes All Things Easy!"
II. "Trust in God, But Tie Your Camel!"
III. "Ali Higg's Brains Live in a Black Tent!"
IV. "Go and Ask the Kites, Then, At Dat Ras!"
V. "Let That Mother of Snakes Beware!"
VI. "Him and Me—Same Father!"
VII. "You Got Cold Feet?"
VIII. "He Cools His Wrath in the Moonlight, Communing with Allah!"
IX. "I Think We've Got the Lion of Petra on the Hip!"
X. "There's No Room for Two of You!"
XI. "That We Make a Profit from This Venture?"
XII. "Yet I Forgot to Speak of the Twenty Aeroplanes!"
XIII. "There is a Trick to Ruling!"
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"Allah Makes All Things Easy!"
This isn't an animal story. No lions live at Petra nowadays,at any rate, no four-legged ones; none could have survivedcompetition with the biped. Unquestionably there were tamer,gentler, less assertive lions there once, real yellow cats withno worse inconveniences for the casual stranger than teeth,claws, and appetites.
The Assyrian kings used to come and hunt near Petra, and bragabout it afterward; after you have well discounted the lies theymade their sculptors tell on huge stone monoliths when they gotback home, they remain a pretty peppery line of potentates. Butfor imagination, self-esteem, ambition, gall, and picturesquedepravity they were children—mere chickens—compared to themodern gentleman whom Grim and I met up with A.D. 1920.
You can't begin at the beginning of a tale like this, because itsroots reach too far back into ancient history. If, on the otherhand, you elect to start at the end and work backward thepredicament confronts you that there wasn't any end, norany in sight.
As long as the Lion of Petra has a desert all about him and achoice of caves, a camel within reach, and enough health to keephim feeling normal—never mind whose camel it is, nor what powerclaims to control the desert—there will be trouble for somebodyand sport for him.
So, since it can have no end and no beginning, you might definethis as an episode—a mere interval between pipes, as it were, inthe amusing career of Ali Higg ben Jhebel ben Hashim, self-styledLion of Petra, Lord of the Wells, Chief of the Chiefs of theDesert, and Beloved of the Prophet of Al-Islam; not forgetting,though, that his career was even supposed to amuse his victims orcompetitors. The fun is his, the fury other people's.
The beginning as concerns me was when I moved into quarters inGrim's mess in Jerusalem. As a civilian and a foreigner I couldnot have done that, of course, if it had been a real mess; butGrim, who gets fun out of side-stepping all regulations, hadestablished a sort of semi-military boarding-house for juniorofficers who were tired of tents, and he was too high up in theIntelligence Department for anybody less than the administratorto interfere with him openly.
He did exactly as he pleased in that and a great many othermatters—did things that no British-born officer would have dareddo (because they are all crazy about precedent) but what theywere all very glad to have Grim do, because he was a ballyAmerican, don't you know, and it was dashed convenient and allthat. And Grim was a mighty good fellow, even if he did likesyrup on his sausages.
The main point was that Grim was efficient. He delivered thegoods. He was perfectly