Hound of the Wilderness

by Achmed Abdullah

 

Hound of the Wilderness

By Achmed Abdullah

Illustrated By James H. Crank

“I am by trade a bully, a bravo, a steel-rattling swashbuckler. But I am also a singer of sweet songs—a loyal friend!—a ruthless enemy!—a lover of women!” Such was the boast of Mehmet el-Wahab, a hound of the wilderness, and he made it good, until his desperate encounter with Umteyra, dark daughter of the desert. Captain Abdullah's recital of this tale of oriental adventure and oriental love constitutes perhaps the greatest short story this famous story-teller has yet written.

FOR man years after Mehmet el-Wahab's going away into the West, there was about him much prating and cackling and gossiping. Some said that he had gone as far as Stamboul where he had joined the army of the Sultan, the Commander of the Faithful, the Lion of Allah, and had fought so bravely that he had become a Pasha, with a beard, a paunch, a jeweled sword, seventeen Circassian slave girls, and a great streaming of black horse tails carried ahead of him on a silver wand in token of rank and dignity.

Others claimed that, crossing the mountains of High Syria, he had been set upon by ninety-nine Druze robber but, a skilled sworder, had defended himself valiantly, and had at last vanquished the lot of them and was today their chief, doing a thriving business athwart the Damascus caravan trail.

Still others knew for certain that, three days' camel ride the other side of Mecca, he had met a female djinn, a ghost haunting that part of the desert, who had fallen in love with him. For Mehmet el-Wahab was always a fine-looking lad with a chest like a barrel and leg like oaks with curly, russet-brown hair, keen eyes greyish blue as the Autumn sky, a square, angular jaw and crimson, generous lips beneath a lean, arrogant beak of a nose.

But, whatever the tales about his future, the memory of Mehmet el-Wahab's deeds remained in the yellow plains and n the purple hills; and chiefly a memory of that last song which he tossed to the winds on the day of his going away.

A delightful song it was, melancholy and quavering pitched in a minor key, embellished with sobbing falsetto tremolo and quaint, baroque grace note.

“Fly away, O Mehmet el-Wahab, from the tumult of the world,
From the tumult of the world, fly away!
For your little queen has put upon your brow
The foot of separation
Of separation the foot upon your brow!”

The “little queen mentioned in the poem was Umteyra, which means “Born the Mist.” She was a daughter of Misshel Fariz, a petty sheik of the Benni Saadin who pitched his black tents at the ed of the oasis in the very shadow of the Benni G'dahs' huddled, dwarfed stone village that peaked above him with lone pines and jagged boulders.

Mehmet el-Wahab belonged to neither of the two clans. He was a stranger who came to that part of the country three months earlier. He came one morning, a rough, earth-brown burnoose folded across his back to give free play to his lungs, his long, bare, smoothly-muscled arms jerking up and down like the wings of a wind-mill; a leathern water bottle and a duffel bag with provisions and a change of clothing over one shoulder; a one-stringed rababa guitar over the other; nine daggers of various length and thickness and curve stuck in his waist shawl; and in his right hand a great, straight, silver-scabbarded Turkish sword which he used as a walking-stick.

He made himself a shelter of stones and branches in the laurel wold of the foot hills where the domains of the two clans met and mingled; and when herdsmen of the Benni Saadin and the Benni G'dah asked him his race, his tribe, his home, his own and his father's name, he replied in explosive Arabic: “I am Mehmet el-Wahab, the son of Ibn Rusud, of the tribe of the Benni Dur-Heej-ja, of the chieftainship of sheik Heech Adamy, from the Zurrut Kudur oasis, seven days' camel ride the other side of Peristan!”

This, most evidently, was a gorgeous and impudent lie. For it meant that his father's name was the Son of the Lion, that he was of the tribe of Nothing, of the chieftainship of sheik Nobody, from the Nowhere-at-all oasis, seven days' camel ride the other side of fairyland—a statement to be interpreted either as a jest or an insult. Sabihhudin Azif, a stocky hillman with bold eyes and vulpine, pock-marked features, chose the latter

“I declare,” he said with a bitter drawl—“aye! I declare by the teeth of Allah that you seem like a foreigner—an eater of pig's flesh from the North—of stinking pig's flesh, belike!” he added as an after-thought; and there was laughter all round, high-pitched, mocking, rasping.

“Better stinking pig's flesh in the North,” replied Mehmet el-Wahab, “than forged iron in the South!”—and one of his nine daggers leaped to his hand with a soft whit-whit.

Sabihhudin Azif receded. He backed up against a tree. He was startled, rather frightened. Thorn stick and clenched fist were his weapons. He knew nothing of sharper fighting-tools, neither in attack nor in parry. “W'elah—w'elah!” he cried, instinctively raising an arm to shield his face.

Mehmet el-Wahab smiled as he might at a babbling child, “Don't be afraid,” he said. “I shall not cut your throat—yet! But be careful! Keep that ugly, leaky-tongued head of yours steady—quite steady”—and there was a sudden flash and spurt, then a dull, splintering thud as the dagger whistled hilt foremost through the air and buried itself inch-deep in the tree, a hair's breadth from the hillman's left ear.

Momentarily, before the common danger, Benni Saadin and Benni G'dah forgot their enmity. They consulted each other with hooded, winking eyes. Should they attack this stranger? Should they make a concerted rush and pull him down?

Hands fingered thorn sticks. Then hands quickly withdrew again. For, while one of his daggers was gone, there were still eight protruding truculently from his waist shawl, not counting the great Turkish sword. Eight daggers, and a sword. Nine lives They could not risk it.

But they mumbled angrily; frothed foul abuse; and there was a wrinkled ancient's screech: “What manners be these, O descendant of Adam? We do not use naked steel in this part of the Sultan's domains. And who are you that you dare defy us among our own tents?”

“Best beloved,” said Mehmet el-Wahab, bowing sardonically, “I am by trade a bully, a bravo, a steel-rattling swashbuckler upon the blue hills and the yellow plains. I am a kalib el-khela, a hound of the wilderness—cousin to the wolf, second cousin to the grey-wolf, and uncle to the jackal—free, free! Why? Because Allah gave me a strong body, a fearless heart, and a lusty soul! Behold, O grandson of pimples!”

Unhurrying, he crossed over to where a savage, fox-red bull belonging to the Benni Saadin was tethered by heel rope and nose-ring rope. He cut both with a slash of his word. He receded a few steps as the bull charged with an angry roar; then leaped lithely into the air and dropped astride the brute's broad back, his hands gripping both horns. The bull lashed out right and left, snorting, bellowing, stamping, whisking its tufted tail, dancing about in its mad effort to shake off the strange burden. Finally Mehmet el-Wahab jumped down; and as the bull charged again, he struck it square between the eyes with the iron hilt of his sword, knocking it unconscious

Calmly he sat down on the animal's heaving flanks; calmly repeated his boast: “I am a bully, a bravo, a swashbuckler! But I am also various other magnificent things. For I am a singer of sweet songs—my own songs, in fact! A loyal friend! a ruthless enemy! A lover of women!”

Such was the stranger's introduction to the Benni Saadin and the Benni G'dah, and he lived up to his boast. His courage and strength and arrogance were prodigious, and it was by a combination of the three that he earned a living.

Thus one afternoon a herdsman of the Benni Saadin rushed home, covered with blood, yelling that there had been a ghrazzu, a raid. Robbers had pricked him with lances ‘w'elah! b'ilah! Curse Allah their mothers—mothers of the likes of them! Five head of plump cattle they killed for their supper, feasting like ghouls—and seventeen they stole, as well as six camels!”

Grief-stricken ululations in the tents of the Benni Saadin while the Benni G'dah laughed maliciously at the news until, the next morning, one of their goatherds limped up the rocks, tearing his hair, smiting his breast, crying a similar tale: “Allah rip up their bodies! Nineteen horsemen they were, and nineteen—great devils with black beards—riding upon war dromedaries! All my goats they stole—wah!—let their blood be poured out upon the sword!”

That night, as if by instinct, men of both clans met in the laurel wold, on the threshold of Mehmet el-Wahab's dwelling, and dinned their plaints in his ear. “Who are these raiders?” he asked

“I recognized them by their loutish speech,” replied the goatherd. “They are of the Benni Fathi. They pitch their tents in the Khey-Beyt valley, two days' ride to the East.”

“They will travel slowly, driving the stolen cattle,” said Mehmet el-Wahab. “Overtake them and give battle.”

“No, no!” came a shocked chorus; and as the stranger raised astonished eyebrows, Sabihhudin Azif explained: “We are few in numbers and do not hold with feud. And the Benni Fathi—ah, bless them not the Lord God!—if by chance we should kill one of them, will take blood toll even to the third and fourth generation.”

“Wah!” exclaimed Mehmet el-Wahab. “You have no beards, no manhood! Must then I, a stranger, single-handed, right this wrong to the disgrace of your noses?”

“You—” mumbled Sabihhudin Azif, half-truculent, half ashamed, “you claim that you are....”

“I am all I claim,” interrupted the other.

“Prove it!”

“I shall—as the Lord liveth!”

Minutely he had them describe the lay of the land as far as the Khey-Beyt valley; took note of a water hole, called Wild Horse Tanks, that marked the half-way and beyond which there was no more water until the trail dipped into the valley; borrowed a rifle and ammunition; and within the hour atop a lean racing-dromedary.

Four days later he returned, driving the stolen live-stock before him and bearing a solemn pledge of the Benni Fathi that never again—“as long as rivers run and the wind bloweth”—would they harry the flocks of the Benni Saadin and the Benni G'dah; nor did he need much urging to relate how he had turned the trick: “Did I not tell you that I am cousin to the grey-wolf in courage—aye!—but also in subtle, devious cunning? Why did Allah give me this curly, rather handsome pate of mire, except to think?”

He described how, knowing that the robbers encumbered with the stolen cattle would travel slowly, he had taken a short cut toward the Wild Horse Tanks where he had hidden behind a rock. When the nomads came in sight, parched and aching for water, he had sent a few shots whistling about their ears as warning, and had then begun to parley—a decidedly one-sided parley since the Benni Fathi were perishing of thirst, had no rifles, only lances and sticks, and were absolutely helpless.

So the night of his return Mehmet el-Wahab was in his element. There was merriment in domed tents and squat stone huts, and impartially he went from one clan to the other and back again, doubling and trebling his supper. The sheiks of the two clans kissed his hands and the hem ot his burnoose; they prepared his water-pipe with strong green Persian tobacco; they bathed his feet. At night the feasting continued; then morning came and with it a slight revulsion of feeling.

Not that the tribesmen were less grateful to Mehmet el Wahab. In fact, had he asked them, they would have given him the best of whatever poor treasures they possessed and sent him on his way. Yes. Only too gladly would they have wished him God-speed. For there was yet another boast of his which he proved true; he was indeed as great a lover as a fighter and singer. His methods were primitive—but successful.

ONE day Umteyra, the daughter of Misshel Fariz who, these last six months, since before Mehmet el-Wahab's coming, had been visiting her maternal grandmother in Mecca, returned to the black tents; and on the afternoon of her arrival he saw her as she crossed the laurel wold—saw her small and delightful, with smooth, raven-black hair that framed an impudent, waxen little face, brown eyes flecked with gold, the reddest lips in the world, and sweet with the lissom sweetness of her sixteen years.

She looked neither to right nor left. For she was on her way to meet Sabihhudin Azif whose clan, the Benni G'dah, had been enemies to her own clan, the Benni Saadin, these many centuries, but whom she loved with all her heart.

A voice came out of the deep bed of moss where Mehmet el-Wahab lay stretched out: “Your name, Crusher of Souls!”

She stopped, startled. He rose, walked up to her. She was silent; and he repeated his question: “Your name, Crusher of Souls!”

“I am Umteyra, the daughter of Misshel Fariz.”

“A charming name Yet, hereafter, I shall call you Musk Drop. Ask me why.” She did not speak.

“Ask me why!” he demanded again.

“Well—why?”

“Because Musk is sweet, and because it is my favorite perfume. Come, small Musk Drop! I am very tall, and you are very tiny. Reach up a little so that I may kiss your lips.”

Then something happened that had never happened to him before. She reached up indeed—but with her hard, clenched little fist she struck him across the face.

He receded a step. At first he was furious. Then he laughed. “I like you the more because of your savagery,” he said; and he was about to sweep her into his arms when she ran away.

He followed, unnoticed by her, gliding like a shadow through the undergrowth. He saw her reach a clearing, deeply hid den in the laurel wold; saw the outline of a man against a space of sky between the trees. It was Sabihhudin Azif, the vulpine, pock-marked hillman. She rushed up to him. She threw her arms about his neck—and, suddenly, Mehmet el-Wahab's heart stopped beating as if it had been plunged into ice. For the first time in his life he knew the bitter pangs of jealousy, because for the first time in his life he knew the sweet pangs of love. He felt dizzy; steadied himself against a tree; was about to advance toward the two, his great, hairy hands flexing and unflexing. But he reconsidered.

He saw Umteyra the next day. She was sitting in front of her father's tent, rocking a blown-up milk skin upon her knees till the butter rolled yellow and frothy. “Crusher of Souls,” he said, “it was my boast in the past that I had never yet loved. This boast is true no longer. I love you!” And when she did not reply, did not even look up from her work, he asked: “Perhaps—ah—some day you could love me—a little?”

“No!” she answered tersely.

“Why not?”

“Because!”

And then, again, for the first time in his life, he spoke humbly, so humbly; spoke soft words, words filled with a high, driving tenderness.

She only shook her head. “I do not love you,” she said. “I have heard about you. We do not want you here. Go back to your own people.” And as he went on pleading she exclaimed impatiently, each word like the sting of a whip: “Allah! Don't you understand Arabic, O great buffalo? I do not love you! I love another!”

Suddenly the terrible rage of the Bedawins rose in his throat. The blood receded from his brain, leaving it dry and crimson. He spoke thickly: “I know. I saw you yesterday—you and Sabihhudin Azif, he of the Benni G'dah, the enemies of your people. If I should go and tell your father....”

She looked up, a queer smile curling her lips. “You will not go and tell my father—you will not—because you love me!”

He bowed his head. “As the Lord liveth!” he murmured. And he walked away.

Shortly afterwards was the great Moslem festival of the ayd eth-thahia when sheep were slaughtered and fresh girdle-bread baked; when every girl prepared her best finery, her gaudiest burnoose and kerchief. Umteyra had never dared whisper her lover's name in the black tents. But she was loyal to him, had no friend among the young men of her own clan—none, therefore, to bring her flowers to twist in her hair on the day of the feast.

So her mother upbraided her: “What about tomorrow? Ah—what a disgrace! You will have to dance without flowers in your hair unless—” ironically—“your father will make you a garland of thorn bush and alfa grass, fodder for cow and camel!”

Mehmet el-Wahab—for he spent half his time in the vicinity of the girl's tent—happened to overhear; and early on the morning of the festival he went into the farther hills where none of the tribesmen risked going because of the danger of timber wolf and wild cat, and brought back a great armful of tawny orchids spotted with heliotrope. Umteyra accepted them negligently.

And that night—when the young girls chose their partners and« the dancers formed in parallel lines, reeling-and swaying and wavering, and the children beat drums and tom-toms, and the old men, squatting on their haunches, clapped their hands—that night Umteyra, the orchids twisted in her hair, walked straight past Mehmet el-Wahab and up to a youth of the Benni Saadin, a one-eyed, large-eared, particularly ugly and particularly stupid youth, the butt of the village, whom all the other girls had avoided. “I choose you, Ibrahim, son of Mustaffa el-Hosseny,” she said, and tripped away with him over the crossed swords.

This time Mehmet el-Wahab's temper snapped. His fingers, moist and throbbing, closed upon the hilt of his dagger; let it go again almost at once. But a cry, a single cry, high, broken, squeaky, grotesque, terrible, rose from his throat and shivered through the air: “Hai!” and he turned, rushed away, boring through the crowd with crashing elbows and kicking feet, cutting through it as a knife cuts through cheese, and leaped up the rocky path that led to the height of the Jebel Sfa.

Umteyra's father looked after him. “Assuredly,” he said, “the Hound of the Wilderness is himself again.”

“Assuredly, he is himself again,” he repeated the next morning when gossip drifted into the black tents that the night before, after he had left the desert-men, Mehmet el-Wahab had gone to the village of the hillmen, who, too, were celebrating the ayd eth-thahia. There, deliberately, he had picked a quarrel with Sabihhudin Azif. He had beaten him brutally with a knotted rhinoceros-hide whip, nearly killing him. He had desisted only when a wandering dervish, a guest in the huts of the Benni G'dah, at the risk of his own life, had pulled him away, exclaiming: “Do it not, O son of Adam! His blood will stain your soul!”

When Umteyra heard the telling of it she trembled, and came near fainting. But she controlled herself, left the tent, and hurried to the secret trysting place where every day she met her lover. He was there, waiting for her. She kissed his bloody, bandaged face, calling him many endearing names; spoke to him at length, outlining a plan. He agreed to everything she said. She had always been the more clever of the two.

She went straight from there to Mehmet el-Wahab who sat in front of his dwelling. He did not look up. Not that he was ashamed of his brutality of the night before, but he said to himself that he had lost this girl who was dearer to him than his salvation. Glancing from beneath lowered lids, he saw her standing there. He wished that she would go away. Doubtless, presently, she would taunt him, pour on him a flood of hate and abuse.

He rose, turned, and was halfway across the threshold of his hut when there was a soft, quick rush behind him and, the next moment, he felt her arms about his neck, heard her passionate whisper: “I love you, O my hero! You are strong and ruthless—” her voice broke a little—“I only played with you—to make you jealous! I love you, my lord....” Man-like, he became at once the conqueror, self-possessed, calm, even slightly bored:

“I always knew you loved me. Allah! Women are like that. I forgive you, Crusher of Souls. Now I shall go to your father and ask for his blessing.”

“No!” she exclaimed, hiding a smile, for everything was happening as she wished it. “We Benni Saadin do not mate with strangers. It is against the ancient traditions. My father will say no.”

“He will not dare. If he does, I shall make him eat stick.”

“You must not. He is my father. I love him.”

“Then—what....?”

“Run away with me!”

“Wah!” he cried. “But you are the girl for me! When shall I....?”

“I shall be back in a short while. Then we can make our plans.”

Nor had Umteyra lied when she told him that it was against the traditions of her clan to mate with strangers. Only... “Indeed,” said her mother when not long afterwards, skillfully, the girl broached the subject, “we always marry cousins except when women are captured in raid. But—” crossly—“why ask me? To speak of honey will not make the mouth sweet. None of your own people wants you as wife, and there will be no desert rider ever to risk his bones for the sake of your kisses. You will always be an old spinster.”

“You are wrong, mother. There is one, a fighting, brawling stranger, who has spoken to me of marriage—”

“Eh—who is he?”

“Mehmet el-Wahab.”

“Hayah!” exclaimed the mother, “Praise be to Allah!”

“Praise be to Allah!” echoed Misshel Fariz when he heard the news, and so did the elders of the Benni Saadin. After all, they decided, it might be a good thing, for the sake of prestige as well as for more practical considerations, to adopt by marriage this swashbuckler. So they arranged that when Mehmet el-Wahab came that night atop a swift dromedary to steal the girl, there would be no real resistance—only a mere pretense of thorn sticks and stones thrown harmlessly, to satisfy tribal traditions and honor.

“Go and tell him, O pride of your father's tent!” Umteyra's mother said to her; and she went back to Mehmet el-Wahab, related to him what had happened.

“At midnight, Crusher of Souls!”

She left while he entered his hut to adorn himself as became a bridegroom, a fighter, and a minstrel, arranging well the folds of his waist shawl, perfuming his hair with pungent oil of geranium, polishing his sword and nine daggers, restringing his guitar and, as midnight drew near, throwing a voluminous burnoose about his shoulders and veiling his face so that only the eyes showed.

Evening waned. Midnight came, with clustering shadows and green stars. He mounted his dromedary and rode into the village of the Benni Saadin. Black it lay beneath the black vaulting of the skies Nobody was abroad. No sound, except a slow wind rattling the palm fronds

He stopped at Misshel Fariz' tent. Umteyra had told him that she would be waiting for him there. He bent from the saddle, staring into the darkness. He saw no sign of her. “Umteyra!” he called softly. “Umteyra....” Silence—complete, swathing.

He raised his voice a little: “Umteyra—O Umteyra!” Still no answer. He wondered. Had the Benni Saadin gone back on their decision to make a pretense at resistance? Was this a trap? Were they in hiding somewhere to pounce on him, perhaps to wipe out with blood the insults which he had heaped on them in the past?

Very well. If they wanted a fight, they could have it. He dismounted. He drew his sword. He lifted the flap of Misshel Fariz' tent, and strode inside. “Umteyra!” he shouted. “I have come for you!”

Inside, a voice stammered, sleepy, frightened: “Allah—Allah—what....?”

Steel struck tinder. A light flared up, cutting with yellow fingers through the gloom. Misshel Fariz sat up in bed, by the side of his wife. Both stared at the cloaked, veiled figure; did not recognize it.

“What—what is it?” demanded Misshel Fariz with trembling lips and clicking teeth.

“I want Umteyra!”

“But—who.... who are you....?”

“I am Mehmet el-Wahab, your future son-in-law, O ancient and malodorous goat!” and he tore off his veil.

Misshel Fariz blinked: shook his head. “I don't understand,” he mumbled. “Two hours ago, at ten, as arranged, you came. You lifted Umteyra into the saddle. You galloped away....”

“What? I came—I—at ten?”

“Yes! Cloaked and veiled—as you are now! I—” wailed the older man—“I don't understand!”

“I do understand!” Mehmet el-Wahab exclaimed suddenly. “It was Sabihhudin Azif—may Allah curse his parents!”

And then, for the first time in his life, tears came into his eyes. Tears of shame, and also of grief. He sank on the floor, crying bitterly, with high, cracked sobs.

So, early the next morning, Mehmet el-Wahab went away into the West, leaving behind him many motley, picaresque tales of his prowess and strength and arrogance; leaving behind him, too, that last song which he tossed to the winds as he disappeared into the desert:

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“Fly away, O Mehmet el-Wahab, from the tumult of the world,
From the tumult of the world fly away!
For your little queen has put upon your brow
The foot of separation,
Of separation the foot upon your brow...”