Ali Higg

“ Ali Baba and his sons have a feud on their hands.
“Now a feud, Jimgrim, has its price! It would do my old heart good to see the blood of Ali Higg and his heretics, for it is written that we should smite the heretic and spare not. But we should also despoil him of his goods, or the Prophet will not be pleased with us!”
“That is the talk of a rooster on a dung-hill,” Grim answered. “A rooster crows a mile away. Another answers with a challenge, but the camels draw the plow in ten fields between them. That is like a blood-feud between you and Ali Higg. ”

“ There was another cave opening into that in which he sat; and it, too, was richly decorated; but the sound of women’s voices that we heard came from a third cave around the corner of the cliff wall, not connected. Ali Higg was apparently in no mood for female company—or any other kind.
In the shadow of the overhanging rock he looked so like Grim it was laughable. He was a caricature of our man, with all the refinement and humor subtly changed into irritable anger. He looked as if he would scream if you touched him, and no wonder ”

“ The crowd gave way before us, and Ayisha thrust herself this and that way among them, breaking up groups, striking me over the wrist with the stick she had for flogging the camel because I tried to regain the rifle.
By the time the rusty, creaking, groaning rattletrap of a train drew up there was not an element of cohesion left in the crowd. She knew too much to drive them away to where they might have regained something of determination, but let them stand there under her eye where they could see in herself the ruthless symbol of Ali Higg's ruthlessness. ”

“ The moon was a bit behind us by that time, so that I did not have much chance to observe Jael Higg narrowly until she turned her face to speak to me. But she was not long about doing that—say fifteen minutes—nine hundred seconds; suppressed curiosity can work up a pretty high pressure in that time,
“Who is this man who looks like Ali Higg?” she asked me suddenly, and I had a good look at her face; you don’t have to answer questions without thinking, just because they are asked by a woman in a friendly tone of voice. ”

“ We didn’t move far that night, for there was no need, and Grim was careful not to go where Ali Baba could not find him. We passed through acres of oleander-scrub into a valley twelve miles wide at its mouth, that narrowed gradually until the high red sandstone cliffs shut out the moonlight. It was like the mouth of ——, and suffocating, for the cliff-sides were giving off the heat they had sucked up through the day.
The surest sign that Ali Higg was either overconfident or seriously engaged elsewhere was that there was no guard in the ravine. Ten men properly placed could have destroyed us. ”

“ Shout to ’em; d’you hear!”
“Ayisha! What does this mean? Ali? Ali Higg? You here? I don’t understand!”
“You’ll be dead before you understand if you don’t call those men off,” Grim answered; and his pistol demonstrated that he meant it, for her men were closing in on us.
So she knelt up on her camel and cried out that Ali Higg was there, bidding them keep their distance.
“But what does this mean? Ali? And you speak English? Since when? Oh! I must be mad! You are not Ali Higg! No! ”

“ There is Ali Higg at Petra and he grinds the face of the poor and is a great chief and will make us prisoners and sell us for slaves or have us turned into eunuchs, and we said (gasp) that we are msakin [1] and not afraid of Ali Higg and he may as well have us as anybody, and if it is written that we shall be eunuchs then it is written and who shall change it? (Gasp.)
“And she said what made us think the great sheikh will take us to Petra, and we said because he had promised but he may be a big liar and we don’t know yet.” ”

“ No, Jael; I invited you to talk sense. You’ve got to make shift with Ali Higg ‘as is.’ If you don’t like it, say so now and I’ll tell off three or four of my thieves to escort you over the border into British territory while I play this game without you.
“What you’ve got to understand first and last is that I’m dead set on clipping Ali Higg’s claws. I don’t care a row of imitation pewter shucks about any man’s ambition, or any woman’s past. My job in the world is to do what I’m able to do, and I’m going to prevent war in this land if I get killed doing it and have to ruin you in the bargain! ”

“ Grim smiled with perfect good humor, but a blind man could not have mistaken his refusal.
“Oh, you’re all hypocrites, you men—Americans, English, French—you’re all alike; glad to see a man die, if he’s a nuisance, but afraid to admit you’d a hand in it. But you needn’t fear. You can send your hakim uninstructed. He’s an Indian, isn’t he? Well, Ali Higg is sure to insult him to the very marrow of his bones, and you can safely leave Indian revengefulness to do the rest.” ”

“ Anyhow Ali Higg is quite a ladies’ man, and he happened to be crossing the map with part of his gang of thieves somewhere down Beersheba way. He agreed with the pasha on the point of taste and carried off the girl. So old wool-merchant Rafiki had to refund the purchase price—not that he admitted that to me, of course. ”

“ I'm a human. He's from Arabia, you're from the Balkans, I'm from the U.S. We're all three foreigners, aren't we?"
"Yes. But he and I are foreigners who will drive the British out—"
"And let French or Italians in."
"Ali Higg is a fighter, I tell you! He's an Arab, and he knows how to control Arabs just as the Prophet Mohammed did. He has only begun in a small way, but—"
"But he'll wind up like a small-town sport in the lock-up, the way he's going," said Grim. "Now, see here, Jael, I'm just as set on doing my bit in the world as Ali Higg is. ”

“ He stood and boomed out a sonorous Arab blessing; and if ever a man felt and looked like a trapped wild beast it was that Lord of the Limits of the Desert and Lion of Petra, Ali Higg.
However, Narayan Singh and I had played our part and got him weak enough; he could not even jump to grab his rifle. The rest was clearly up to Grim, who looked in no hurry at all.
He stood in the cave entrance with the light behind him, turning slightly sidewise to let Ali Higg see him in profile. The Lion’s jaw dropped. Grim’s very head-dress was striped like Ali Higg’s. His cloak was the same color. ”

“ He has taken his name. He has taken his wife. And now he will take his den. Akbar, Jimgrim Ali Higg of Petra!”
Mahommed the poet was riding two or three behind us in the line, and heard that. He took the cue and began his song. In a minute the whole line was roaring the refrain, and it broke like volleys on the night:
“Akbar! Akbar! Jimgrim Ali Higg!”
Jael Higg laughed.
“He has a fool’s luck and a lusty band of followers,” she said. “It was only because Ayisha called out that he caught me. But a fool’s luck is like a breath of wind that passes.” ”

“ It was rather a hard laugh without much mirth in it.
"Your words are a liar's, but your voice rings true," she said.
"I think you're only another of these diplomatists."
"I'm that diplomatic I'm chancing my hide to save other peoples," he answered. "Let's be quite frank, Jael. I'm in danger out here. All I've got with me besides two respectable men are thieves from El-Kalil. That little army of Ali Higg's lies between me and the border, and I'm no kind of a darn-fool optimist when it comes to figuring on Ali Higg's hospitality in Petra. ”

“ It always pays to stage a close-up in a game like this. We’ve caught our friend Ali Higg between soup and fish!”
“Get in quick, then, and kidnap him,” I urged.
“Man alive,” he answered, “we’ve no kind of right to do that. Bring her down,” he told Narayan Singh, “and then have Mujrim tie those four men of Ayisha’s so they’ve no chance to escape.”
Jael Higg came down in a livid passion—altogether too near home to enjoy taking second-hand orders from an Indian in the dark. She was still less amused when she discovered that Grim knew her little scheme. ”

“ But suppose you tell him to—"
"I won't, Jael."
"Now don't you be a fool, James Grim! You can't deceive me into thinking you're above such things. That haughty attitude is British, not American; you've been defiled by contact with them. Come out into the open like an unhypocritical American. Talk business.
"I've tried to make a man of Ali Higg, but he's only an animal after all. The best I can ever do with him will be failure compared to what I could make of you, James Grim. You look enough like him to make it possible to substitute you with care. Go ahead and send your hakim." ”

“ If we wait word's bound to reach him that some one's posing as himself, and he'll sally forth to make an example of us—do a good job of it too!
"I'd hate to be caught out in the desert with twenty men by Ali Higg! He's a rip-roaring typhoon. But the worst typhoon the world ever saw had a soft spot in the middle.
"You know what the Arab say? `A dog can scratch fleas, but not worms in his belly!' We've got to be worms in the belly of Ali Higg, and where the man is there will be his belly also. We've got to stage what the movie people call a close-up." ”

“ Grim chuckled.
"Wonder what Ali Higg will say when he's confronted by Ali Higg!"
"Wonder what he'll do, you mean, don't you!"
"What d'you keep looking back for?"
"Just keeping tabs on Ayisha."
"No need to worry about her. Now we've got Yussuf on our string it's a cinch we can use her whichever way the cat jumps. She'll be afraid he'll tell tales about her."
"Hell!" I said. "It seems to me this whole procession's crazy!
The best we've got with us is a gang of professional thieves.
"The farther we go the more we load up with sure-fire traitors. First Ayisha; she'd cut throats at so much per. ”

“ The camels were groaning and swearing as they always do at the prospect of a night’s work.
“As I see it, any tribe out there has as much right to elect Ali Higg leader as you and I have to elect a President,” said Grim. “I don’t suppose they did elect him, but they’ll claim they did. The point is, he’s got himself elected somehow. We’ve no veto. I don’t hold with murder; it sets a bad example and turns loose a horde of individual trouble-makers who were under something like control before. It might be easy to have him murdered ”

“ It reduced the real Ali Higg's prestige for a while all over the countryside; and in these days of League of Nations and mandates and whatnot it is hard enough in all conscience for brave villagers with muskets to find something to make up songs about. De Crespigny knew the truth about it as soon as our "escaped" man got to Hebron.
Before midnight we were well south of the Dead Sea and far beyond the border up to which the British mandate was supposed to be going to extend whenever the League of Nations Council should stop arguing. We were something like two thousand feet below sea-level now ”

“ Pussy isn’t lying after all—there he is,” and he pointed to a figure that rose suddenly out of the black stone of the idol’s back just as the guards had done.
It was Higgs, Higgs without a doubt; Higgs wearing his battered sun-helmet and his dark spectacles; Higgs smoking his big meerschaum pipe, and engaged in making notes in a pocket-book as calmly as though he sat before a new object in the British Museum. ”

“ Never shall I forget the scene after the arrival of Higgs in our hole, when the swinging boulder had been closed and made secure and the lamps lighted. There he sat on the floor, his red hair glowing like a torch, his clothes torn and bloody, his beard ragged and stretching in a Newgate frill to his ears. Indeed, his whole appearance, accentuated by the blue spectacles with wire gauze side-pieces, was more disreputable than words can tell; moreover, he smelt horribly of lion. He put his hand into his pocket, and produced his big pipe, which had remained unbroken in its case. ”

“ First, I will describe Higgs, who, I may state, is admitted, even by his enemies, to be one of the most learned antiquarians and greatest masters of dead languages in Europe, though this no one would guess from his appearance at the age of about forty-five. In build short and stout, face round and high-coloured, hair and beard of a fiery red, eyes, when they can be seen—for generally he wears a pair of large blue spectacles—small and of an indefinite hue, but sharp as needles. ”

“ Higgs, not knowing, said nothing, moving about now, puttings things in order and getting his master's bath ready.
“I've lost an old gentleman, Higgs,” said Pugeot, for Higgs was a confidential servant as well as a valet.
“Indeed, sir,” said Higgs, as if losing old gentlemen were as common as losing umbrellas.
“And the whole business is so funny I can scarcely believe it's true. I haven't a touch of the jimjams, have I, Higgs?”
“Lord, sir, no! You're all right.”
“Am I? See here, Higgs: yesterday morning I met old Mr. Simon Pettigrew, the lawyer. ”

“ But Higgs refused to come, and Orme, in whom his foolish taunt seemed still to rankle, only shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.
“Let the black curs go,” exclaimed the Professor as he polished his blue spectacles and mopped his face. “They are a white-livered lot of sneaks. Look! There she is, creeping off to the left. If we run round that sand-hill we shall meet her.” ”

“ Higgs seemed to divine his thoughts, and she laughed grimly.
"All right," said she. "All right. I'll come down. I wonder who can have put you in there now! It's one of those young rascals from over the way, I expect. They are always up to something. Don't you worry yourself; I'm coming!"
Her tone had become so reassuring that Max began to wonder whether the old woman might not be more innocent of the trick which had been played upon him than he had supposed. This impression increased when Mrs. Higgs went on:
"Why didn't you holloa out when you found yourself inside?" ”