Talbot Mundy

“ And presently we emerged into a clump of pine-trees that were startling because so unexpected in that land, where men have cut for fuel whatever bears no fruit that men can eat and the goats have seen to it that nothing grows again. There were thirty or forty pines with grass beneath them, clean and well-kept.
“Care to see Abraham’s Oak?” asked Grim—showman again; he could not rest until you had seen everything. “I think Ali Baba and his gang will come here before dawn; they always used to. We’ll have to beat it soon, but you’ve time to see the tree. ”

“ The great tree developed slowly out of pearl-colored mist as the sun rose, looking weary and decrepit now that the cloak of night was off, its gnarled, gray lower limbs propped up on wooden beams and the huge trunk split under the weight of centuries. ”

“ They are worthy of it. They are bold. The right spirit is in both of them! We agree!”
“And nothing in this agreement shall be construed to mean that Ali Baba and his gang shall not all or severally go to jail, if convicted of breaking the law in future. They go to jail in the proper spirit, without malice, if caught and convicted.”
“Taib! Agreed!”
“Very well,” said Grim. “Now three or four of you pick up that Egyptian, and take him to the jail at once!” ”

“ Ali Baba answered solemnly. And at that they all sat down, in a circle as before, with Grim standing in the midst. So he moved the stone deliberately with his foot and sat down too, whereat they all clothed themselves in a new contentment. The Arab thinks far more highly of a judgment given sitting. ”

“ Modern happenings amuse me more when I can follow their roots back into the subsoil of time; but that leads to brown study and hurt shins. I barked mine against a modern American plow, as Grim turned aside along the hilltop and picked up a big stone, to thunder with it on the wooden door of a high square tower. ”

“ Sure, give me another one!”
“Can you spare me one policeman, Crep?”
“Which?”
“Any one at all who knows Abraham’s Oak and the caves thereabouts,” Grim answered.
“Righto! I’ll dig you out a man.”
“Tell him to bring handcuffs.”
“When d’you want him?”
“Now. I’ve got to move quickly. Our side-show’s scheduled for tomorrow night and we don’t want a rival act playing the same pitch. We’ve got to pull up that fire-gift by the roots. Besides, we need the makings. Some of the notables are likely to call on you at dawn, ’Crep, and tell you their version of tonight’s events. ”

“ The policeman’s steel-capped boots struck sparks behind us and the noise we made set little foxes scampering, then brought them back again to leap on the wall and look. Surely all nature wonders at the clumsiness of man.
░ WE WERE in open country at the end of half a mile, but that brought us small advantage, for the tilled hillsides to left and right of us were so much blackness, and how in the world Grim proposed to find any given cave, or the man who hid in it, was more than I could guess. ”

“ He was a perfectly good policeman, raised in the don’t-do-it school, and faithful as an old work-horse, with a horse’s sense of what is due him on the grades.
We found Grim waiting for us behind a big rock, and when the Arab had recovered breath enough to swear with we got orders to engage.
“Can you see the back of a man’s head just beyond the olive-tree? ”