Chapter XXI: Master and Friend

Pitchouné, who might have been considered as one of the infinitesimal atoms in the economy of the universe, ran over the sands away from his master. He was an infinitesimal dot on the desert's face. He was only a small Irish terrier in the heart of the Sahara. His little wiry body and his color seemed to blend with the dust. His eyes were dimmed by hunger and thirst and exhaustion, but there was the blood of a fighter in him and he was a thoroughbred. Nevertheless, he was running away. It looked very much like it. There was no one to comment on his treachery; had there been, Pitchouné would not have run far.

It was not an ordinary sight to see on the Sahara--a small Irish terrier going as fast as he could.

Pitchouné ran with his nose to the ground. There were several trails for a dog to follow on that apparently untrodden page of desert history. Which one would he choose? Without a scent a dog does nothing. His nostrils are his instinct. His devotion, his faithfulness, his intelligence, his heart--all come through his nose. A man's heart, they say, is in his stomach--or in his pocket. A dog's is in his nostrils. If Pitchouné had chosen the wrong direction, this story would never have been written. Michette did not give birth to the sixth puppy, in the stables of the garrison, for nothing. Nor had Sabron saved him on the night of the memorable dinner for nothing.

With his nose flat to the sands Pitchouné smelt to east and to west, to north and south, took a scent to the east, decided on it--for what reason will never be told--and followed it. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten as hour after hour Pitchouné ran across the Sahara. Mercifully, the sun had been clouded by the precursor of a wind-storm. The air was almost cool. Mercifully, the wind did not arise until the little terrier had pursued his course to the end.

There are occasions when an animal's intelligence surpasses the human. When, toward evening of the twelve hours that it had taken him to reach a certain point, he came to a settlement of mud huts on the borders of an oasis, he was pretty nearly at the end of his strength. The oasis was the only sign of life in five hundred miles. There was very little left in his small body. He lay down, panting, but his bright spirit was unwilling just then to leave his form and hovered near him. In the religion of Tatman dogs alone have souls.

Pitchouné panted and dragged himself to a pool of water around which the green palms grew, and he drank and drank. Then the little desert wayfarer hid himself in the bushes and slept till morning. All night he was racked with convulsive twitches, but he slept and in his dreams, he killed a young chicken and ate it. In the morning he took a bath in the pool, and the sun rose while he swam in the water.

If Sabron or Miss Redmond could have seen him he would have seemed the epitome of heartless egoism. He was the epitome of wisdom. Instinct and wisdom sometimes go closely together. Solomon was only instinctive when he asked for wisdom. The epicurean Lucullus, when dying, asked for a certain Nile fish cooked in wine.

Pitchouné shook out his short hairy body and came out of the oasis pool into the sunlight and trotted into the Arabian village.

* * * * * * *

Fatou Anni parched corn in a brazier before her house. Her house was a mud hut with yellow walls. It had no roof and was open to the sky. Fatou Anni was ninety years old, straight as a lance--straight as one of the lances the men of the village carried when they went to dispute with white people. These lances with which the young men had fought, had won them the last battle. They had been victorious on the field.

Fatou Anni was the grandmother of many men. She had been the mother of many men. Now she parched corn tranquilly, prayerfully.

"Allah! that the corn should not burn; Allah! that it should be sweet; Allah! that her men should be always successful."

She was the fetish of the settlement. In a single blue garment, her black scrawny breast uncovered, the thin veil that the Fellaheen wear pushed back from her face, her fine eyes were revealed and she might have been a priestess as she bent over her corn!

"Allah! Allah Akbar!"

Rather than anything should happen to Fatou Anni, the settlement would have roasted its enemies alive, torn them in shreds. Some of them said that she was two hundred years old. There was a charmed ring drawn around her house. People supposed that if any creature crossed it uninvited, it would fall dead.

The sun had risen for an hour and the air was still cool. Overhead, the sky, unstained by a single cloud, was blue as a turquoise floor, and against it, black and portentous, flew the vultures. Here and there the sun-touched pools gave life and reason to the oasis.

Fatou Anni parched her corn. Her barbaric chant was interrupted by a sharp bark and a low pleading whine.

She had never heard sounds just like that. The dogs of the village were great wolf-like creatures. Pitchouné's bark was angelic compared with theirs. He crossed the charmed circle drawn around her house, and did not fall dead, and stood before her, whining. Fatou Anni left her corn, stood upright and looked at Pitchouné. To her the Irish terrier was an apparition. The fact that he had not fallen dead proved that he was beloved of Allah. He was, perhaps, a genie, an afrit.

Pitchouné fawned at her feet. She murmured a line of the Koran. It did not seem to affect his demonstrative affection. The woman bent down to him after making a pass against the Evil Eye, and touched him, and Pitchouné licked her hand.

Fatou Anni screamed, dropped him, went into the house and made her ablutions. When she came out Pitchouné sat patiently before the parched corn, and he again came crawling to her.

The Arabian woman lived in the last hut of the village. She could satisfy her curiosity without shocking her neighbors. She bent down to scrutinize Pitchouné's collar. There was a sacred medal on it with sacred inscriptions which she could not read. But as soon as she had freed him this time, Pitchouné tore himself away from her, flew out of the sacred ring and disappeared. Then he ran back, barking appealingly; he took the hem of her dress in his mouth and pulled her. He repeatedly did this and the superstitious Arabian believed herself to be called divinely. She cautiously left the door-step, her veil falling before her face, came out of the sacred ring, followed to the edge of the berry field. From there Pitchouné sped over the desert; then he stopped and looked back at her. Fatou Anni did not follow, and he returned to renew his entreaties. When she tried to touch him he escaped, keeping at a safe distance. The village began to stir. Blue and yellow garments fluttered in the streets.

"Allah Akbar," Fatou Anni murmured, "these are days of victory, of recompense."

She gathered her robe around her and, stately and impressively, started toward the huts of her grandsons. When she returned, eight young warriors, fully armed, accompanied her. Pitchouné sat beside the parched corn, watching the brazier and her meal. Fatou Anni pointed to the desert.

She said to the young men, "Go with this genie. There is something he wishes to show us. Allah is great. Go."

* * * * * * *

When the Capitaine de Sabron opened his eyes in consciousness, they encountered a square of blazing blue heaven. He weakly put up his hand to shade his sight, and a cotton awning, supported by four bamboo poles, was swiftly raised over his head. He saw objects and took cognizance of them. On the floor in the low doorway of a mud hut sat three little naked children covered with flies and dirt. He was the guest of Fatou Anni. These were three of her hundred great-great-grandchildren. The babies were playing with a little dog. Sabron knew the dog but could not articulate his name. By his side sat the woman to whom he owed his life. Her veil fell over her face. She was braiding straw. He looked at her intelligently. She brought him a drink of cool water in an earthen vessel, with the drops oozing from its porous sides. The hut reeked with odors which met his nostrils at every breath he drew. He asked in Arabic:

"Where am I?"

"In the hut of victory," said Fatou Anni.

Pitchouné overheard the voice and came to Sabron's side. His master murmured:

"Where are we, my friend?"

The dog leaped on his bed and licked his face. Fatou Anni, with a whisk of straw, swept the flies from him. A great weakness spread its wings above him and he fell asleep.

Days are all alike to those who lie in mortal sickness. The hours are intensely colorless and they slip and slip and slip into painful wakefulness, into fever, into drowsiness finally, and then into weakness.

The Capitaine de Sabron, although he had no family to speak of, did possess, unknown to the Marquise d'Esclignac, an old aunt in the provinces, and a handful of heartless cousins who were indifferent to him. Nevertheless he clung to life and in the hut of Fatou Anni fought for existence. Every time that he was conscious he struggled anew to hold to the thread of life. Whenever he grasped the thread he vanquished, and whenever he lost it, he went down, down.

Fatou Anni cherished him. He was a soldier who had fallen in the battle against her sons and grandsons. He was a man and a strong one, and she despised women. He was her prey and he was her reward and she cared for him; as she did so, she became maternal.

His eyes which, when he was conscious, thanked her; his thin hands that moved on the rough blue robe thrown over him, the devotion of the dog--found a responsive chord in the great-grandmother's heart. Once he smiled at one of the naked, big-bellied great-great-grandchildren. Beni Hassan, three years old, came up to Sabron with his finger in his mouth and chattered like a bird. This proved to Fatou Anni that Sabron had not the Evil Eye. No one but the children were admitted to the hut, but the sun and the flies and the cries of the village came in without permission, and now and then, when the winds arose, he could hear the stirring of the palm trees.

Sabron was reduced to skin and bone. His nourishment was insufficient, and the absence of all decent care was slowly taking him to death. It will never be known why he did not die.

Pitchouné took to making long excursions. He would be absent for days, and in his clouded mind Sabron thought the dog was reconnoitering for him over the vast pink sea without there--which, if one could sail across as in a ship, one would sail to France, through the walls of mellow old Tarascon, to the château of good King René; one would sail as the moon sails, and through an open window one might hear the sound of a woman's voice singing. The song, ever illusive and irritating in its persistency, tantalized his sick ears.

Sabron did not know that he would have found the château shut had he sailed there in the moon. It was as well that he did not know, for his wandering thought would not have known where to follow, and there was repose in thinking of the Château d'Esclignac.

It grew terribly hot. Fatou Anni, by his side, fanned him with a fan she had woven. The great-great-grandchildren on the floor in the mud fought together. They quarreled over bits of colored glass. Sabron's breath came panting. Without, he heard the cries of the warriors, the lance-bearers--he heard the cries of Fatou Anni's sons who were going out to battle. The French soldiers were in a distant part of the Sahara and Fatou Anni's grandchildren were going out to pillage and destroy. The old woman by his side cried out and beat her breast. Now and then she looked at him curiously, as if she saw death on his pale face. Now that all her sons and grandsons had gone, he was the only man left in the village, as even boys of sixteen had joined the raid. She wiped his forehead and gave him a potion that had healed her husband after his body had been pierced with arrows. It was all she could do for a captive.

Toward sundown, for the first time Sabron felt a little better, and after twenty-four hours' absence, Pitchouné whined at the hut door, but would not come in. Fatou Anni called on Allah, left her patient and went out to see what was the matter with the dog. At the door, in the shade of a palm, stood two Bedouins.

It was rare for the caravan to pass by Beni Medinet. The old woman's superstition foresaw danger in this visit. Her veil before her face, her gnarled old fingers held the fan with which she had been fanning Sabron. She went out to the strangers. Down by the well a group of girls in garments of blue and yellow, with earthen bottles on their heads, stood staring at Beni Medinet's unusual visitors.

"Peace be with you, Fatou Anni," said the older of the Bedouins.

"Are you a cousin or a brother that you know my name?" asked the ancient woman.

"Every one knows the name of the oldest woman in the Sahara," said Hammet Abou, "and the victorious are always brothers."

"What do you want with me?" she asked, thinking of the helplessness of the village.

Hammet Abou pointed to the hut

"You have a white captive in there. Is he alive?"

"What is that to you, son of a dog?"

"The mother of many sons is wise," said Hammet Abou portentously, "but she does not know that this man carries the Evil Eye. His dog carries the Evil Eye for his enemies. Your people have gone to battle. Unless this man is cast out from your village, your young men, your grandsons and your sons will be destroyed."

The old woman regarded him calmly.

"I do not fear it," she said tranquilly. "We have had corn and oil in plenty. He is sacred."

For the first time she looked at his companion, tall and slender and evidently younger.

"You favor the coward Franks," she said in a high voice. "You have come to fall upon us in our desolation."

She was about to raise the peculiar wail which would have summoned to her all the women of the village. The dogs of the place had already begun to show their noses, and the villagers were drawing near the people under the palms. Now the young man began to speak swiftly in a language that she did not understand, addressing his comrade. The language was so curious that the woman, with the cry arrested on her lips, stared at him. Pointing to his companion, Hammet Abou said:

"Fatou Anni, this great lord kisses your hand. He says that he wishes he could speak your beautiful language. He does not come from the enemy; he does not come from the French. He comes from two women of his people by whom the captive is beloved. He says that you are the Mother of sons and grandsons, and that you will deliver this man up into our hands in peace."

The narrow fetid streets were beginning to fill with the figures of women, their beautifully colored robes fluttering in the light, and there were curious eager children who came running, naked save for the bangles upon their arms and ankles.

Pointing to them, Hammet Abou said to the old sage:

"See, you are only women here, Fatou Anni. Your men are twenty miles farther south. We have a caravan of fifty men all armed, Fatou Anni. They camp just there, at the edge of the oasis. They are waiting. We come in peace, old woman; we come to take away the Evil Eye from your door; but if you anger us and rave against us, the dogs and women of your town will fall upon you and destroy every breast among you."

She began to beat her palms together, murmuring:

"Allah! Allah!"

"Hush," said the Bedouin fiercely, "take us to the captive, Fatou Anni."

Fatou Anni did not stir. She pulled aside the veil from her withered face, so that her great eyes looked out at the two men. She saw her predicament, but she was a subtle Oriental. Victory had been in her camp and in her village; her sons and grandsons had never been vanquished. Perhaps the dying man in the hut would bring the Evil Eye! He was dying, anyway--he would not live twenty-four hours. She knew this, for her ninety years of life had seen many eyes close on the oasis under the hard blue skies.

To the taller of the two Bedouins she said in Arabic:

"Fatou Anni is nearly one hundred years old. She has borne twenty children, she has had fifty grandchildren; she has seen many wives, many brides and many mothers. She does not believe the sick man has the Evil Eye. She is not afraid of your fifty armed men. Fatou Anni is not afraid. Allah is great. She will not give up the Frenchman because of fear, nor will she give him up to any man. She gives him to the women of his people."

With dignity and majesty and with great beauty of carriage, the old woman turned and walked toward her hut and the Bedouins followed her.