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Page 104
Very silently he returned to Burroughs, and when he had made a
trifle of a toilet and eaten far from a trifle of lunch, the two
young men stretched themselves out in the shade, just beyond the
entrance of the tomb, conversing in low tones, while around them the
labor song of Burroughs' workmen rose and fell in unvarying
monotony, as from a nearby hole they carried out baskets of sand
upon their heads and poured the contents upon the heap where the
patient sifters were at work.
Burroughs talked of his work, the only subject of which he was
capable of long and sustained conversation. He dilated upon a rare
find of some blue-green tiles of the time of King Tjeser, a third
dynasty monarch, and a mummy case of one of the court of King Pepi,
of the sixth dynasty, "about 3300 B.C.," he translated for
Billy, and then suddenly he saw that Billy's eyes were absent and
Billy's pipe was out.
In sudden silence he knocked out the ashes from his own pipe and
slowly refilled it. "Congratulations," he ejaculated, and at Billy's
slow stare he jerked his head back toward the tomb. "I say,
congratulations, old man."
"Oh!" Billy became ludicrously occupied with the dead pipe.
"Nothing doing," he returned decidedly.
"No? ... I thought----"
"You sounded as if you had been thinking. Don't do it again."
"And also I had been remembering," said Burroughs, with caustic
emphasis, "knowing that in the past wherever youth and beauty was
concerned----"
So successfully had that past been sponged from Billy's concentrated
heart, so utterly had other youth and beauty ceased to exist for
him, that he greeted the reminder with belligerent unwelcome.
"I tell you it was all an accident," he retorted irritably. "There's
nothing more to it.... Hello, our horseman is coming this way
again!"
Grateful for the interruption to this ticklish excursion into his
sacred emotions, he jumped to his feet and went out to meet the man
who was riding slowly toward them, the two others in his train.
Burroughs went with him, and a brief parley followed.
"He says," Burroughs translated, "that these are his camels and he
is going to take them away. He says you stole them from him at
Assiout."
"That's right," Billy confirmed easily. "He can have 'em," and
Burroughs, vouchsafing no comment on this curious development, gave
the message to the Nubian. Then he turned again to Billy. "He wants:
the money for their hire."
"For their----! Of all the dad-blasted, iron-clad cheek! You just
tell him for me that he'll get his 'hire' all right if he hangs
around me. Tell him I'll have him arrested for molesting and robbing
travelers; and tell him to tell his master that if he shows his head
near an English girl again I'll have him hanged as high as
Haman--and shot to pieces while he swings! The infernal
scoundrel----"
Whatever work Burroughs made of this translation it sent the sullen,
inscrutable-looking fellow off in silence, his followers leading the
recovered camels.
"And may that be the last of them," said Billy B. Hill, in fervent
thanksgiving. "Except Kerissen. I've got to meet him again--just
once."
* * * * *
Perhaps it was the hairpins. Perhaps it was the bathed face and the
sleep-brightened eyes and the rearranged gown. But certainly
Burroughs stared in amazement at the slim little figure that issued
from the entrance, and a queer, a very queer confusion seized upon
him. Not even outrageous sunburn and pathetic blisters could hide
Arlee's young loveliness. They only added an utterly upsetting
tenderness to the beholder, and a most dangerous compassion.
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