Part 9

For a while he sat entranced as a wild deer that cannot turn its eyes from some fascinating thing, then his flight was sudden as the deer's when the intriguing but unknown object is abruptly recognized as a dreaded enemy. Wheeling Ben Akbar, Ali rode downriver at top speed. He did not dare look around, and he did not think of slackening the pace until even Ben Akbar could no longer maintain it and slowed of his own accord. Instantly contrite, Ali drew his mount to a halt.

"I'm sorry, oh brother, that I could let you run so far and fast," he apologized. "Great fear stole my senses. Perhaps I am becoming craven."

The panting Ben Akbar nosed his arm and accepted and ate a lump of sugar. Ali dared look back up the river. He heaved a mighty sigh of relief.

Not only had Ben Akbar run far beyond the sight of any wagons, but far beyond hearing. Here was only the peaceful river, its tule-lined banks disturbed by nothing except a horde of waterfowl and an occasional ripple that marked the wake of a great fish hunting smaller ones in the shallows.

Ali grinned sheepishly. Certainly there had been no real danger; he had fled from shadows. Tongues would wag along many caravan routes if it were known that Hadji Ali had run away from nothing. Just the same, Ali liked this better. He decided to ride farther down the riverbank before crossing.

The farther he went, the lonelier it became and the better he liked it. Presently, his wild flight seemed more amusing than otherwise, and Ali chuckled throatily, but he had no thought of going back up the river. He rounded a bend and saw a dwelling.

Built of driftwood and roofed with adobe, it was a one-room affair. Glassless windows had been cut in such a manner as to admit the morning sun. An adobe fireplace was built against an outside wall and an adobe chimney rose a little above the flat roof.

Ali halted Ben Akbar. He was no longer afraid. There had never been anything about such houses to frighten him. However, if there was any livestock about, he would avoid argument by circling around. If not, it was safe to go directly past.

Then a man came from the house and hailed him, "Come on, stranger! Come on an' light!"

Ali rode ahead to meet a wiry, fierce-eyed man whose uncut hair and long beard were snow-white, but who fought the advancing years as furiously as he had once battled advancing Indians. Everything about him, from his buckskins to the way he had built his house, marked him for what he was. Here was one of the wild men, who had gone where he wished and done as he pleased, and never fretted about anything if he had a gun in his hands and a knife at his belt. Grown too old for such a life, he had chosen to spend the rest of his days here in this isolated spot.

Ali dismounted and the old man extended his hand. "I'm Hud Perkins an' you're welcome."

"I'm Hi Jolly." Ali gave the Americanized version of his name.

Hud Perkins said, "I looked out an' saw a man comin' on a camel, I couldn't believe it! Of course, lots of men come, hardly a week passes but what somebody goes up or down river, but not on camels. Is he tame?"

"Tamer than he was at one time," Ali answered. "He has been among so many people that almost anybody can pet him now."

Hud Perkins said, "Don't know as I'd hold with pettin' him, but such a critter sure makes a man think. On my way out here, I run across a passel of 'em."

Ali's interest quickened. "You did? Where?"

"On the Heely River," Hud Perkins stated, "an' there wasn't rightly a passel. There was five, but five such critters look like a passel. Will yours stay about or do you picket him?"

"He'll stay."

"Then take his gear off an' let him fill up. Plenty of grass hereabouts an' nary a critter to eat it most times."

Ali removed Ben Akbar's saddle and bridle and the big _dalul_ padded out to forage. Intrigued by his host's reference to five camels on the Heely River, Ali straightened to ask for more information and found Hud Perkins staring at Ben Akbar.

He turned to Ali. "What's wrong with him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is he good's a horse or mule?"

"Much better," Ali stated.

The old man shook a puzzled head. "That don't hardly jibe with those camels on the Heely. Wasn't nobody payin' them no mind, 'cept some heathen Papagoes that was fixin' to eat 'em. I was tempted to ketch one an' see how it rode, but a cowboy said they wasn't worth ketchin'. The Army fetched 'em from some place in Texas, he said, an' turned 'em loose on the Heely on account they was more fuss than worth."

Ali's heart sank at this first news in more than two years of the camels left behind at Camp Verde, but he told himself that he should have expected nothing else. He drew some comfort from a quick assurance that neither Mimico nor Major Wayne could possibly have accompanied any expedition that would abandon camels. Whoever had loosed those five in the Arizona desert, where they would certainly find conditions to their liking, knew nothing of camels and cared less.

Ali said, "Who left those camels did not know what he was doing."

"Might be I ought to have caught me one anyway, eh?"

"You'd have found it worth your while," Ali assured him.

"Well, I didn't an' I don't know as it would of been doin' me or the camel any favor if I did. Ridin' anythin' don't set like it used to. Come on in, Hi. I'll rouse up some rations."

Ali walked with the old man to his house and sat down on a wooden bench while Hud Perkins busied himself preparing fish from the river and vegetables from his garden. He queried, "If I might ask, where ye been?"

Ali answered, "For the past two years, I've been here in California."

"_Hmm-ph._ Didn't know they landed any such critters out thisaway."

"They didn't," Ali informed him. "Lieutenant Beale brought twenty-five camels with him when he surveyed the wagon road from Fort Defiance."

"_Wagh!_" Hud Perkins ejaculated. "Then 'tis so!"

"What's so?"

"I heard tell of such when I was leavin' Santa Fe to come here," his host informed him. "Some fool, 'twas said, was goin' from Fort Defiance to Californy, usin' camels to lay out a road. Not many believed it. Of them as did, nobody thought the camels would get a pistol shot from Fort Defiance."

"It's true," Ali said. "I was with the expedition."

"Well tie that one!" Hud Perkins marveled. "So camels did come to Californy! What happened to 'em?"

Ali had no immediate answer, for after reaching California, nothing worthwhile had happened. The camels had been shown in various places, including Los Angeles, and had attracted the usual onlookers and sparked the usual stampedes. A few months after arriving, Lieutenant Beale took fourteen of the animals and started back along the surveyed road.

The rest of the herd, with Ali as keeper, had been sent to and was still at Fort Tejon, where Army brass amused itself by putting camels through the usual meaningless paces. Seeing no opportunity for a change, and with all he could stomach of Fort Tejon, Ali had taken Ben Akbar and departed.

Ali answered his host, "They're at Fort Tejon."

Hud Perkins snorted. "Don't blame you for leavin', got no use for Army posts myself. You goin' east?"

"Not all the way," Ali said. "Too far east is no better than too far west. I think I'll go back along the road. I saw a lot of free country there."

Hud Perkins was silent for a long while, then he said quietly, "You saw it two years ago."

"But--" Ali was startled. "It isn't all taken?"

"I don't know," Hud Perkins spoke as a bewildered old man who no longer knew about anything. "Was a time when I figgered the West'd never settle an' a man would always find room. But--Anyhow it's two years since I come out."

Ali asked gravely, "Have there really been so many others?"

His host answered moodily, "I've seen a passel of wagon roads opened up. Whenever there was one, people boiled along it like water pours out of a busted beaver dam."

The specter Ali had seen lurking behind the wagons at Beale's Crossing was again present and again threatened panic.

"Perhaps," he said doubtfully, "I'd better go somewhere else."

"If you can still find such a place," Hud Perkins replied. "Still, like I said, it's two years since I come out. I could be wrong. Why not find out?"

"How?" Ali asked.

"Ride back along the road," Hud Perkins advised him. "See for yourself if it's what you think it is. It's the one way you'll ever know."

Ali said, "I'll do it."

When the leading team of mules swung around the sandy butte, Ali turned Ben Akbar away from the road. It was somehow different from the numerous times he'd swung to one side or the other, so that wagons might pass without the panic that always resulted when livestock met a camel. This time there would be no turning back.

Ali and his mount were swallowed up in a pine forest before anyone saw them. Except for the leading mule team, that spooked when they smelled Ben Akbar's fresh tracks, nobody in the whole train suspected that a camel had been here.

Riding due south, Ali did not look around even once. Again he was fleeing, but this time he knew why. At one time, the wagon road had offered everything he wanted. Now it offered nothing.

The wagons lined up and awaiting their turn on the ferry at Beale's Crossing had seemed an overwhelming multitude only because there had been no basis for comparison. After nineteen days on the wagon road, Ali was able to fit them into their proper niche, one small ripple in a surging tide. He still did not know how this had come about, although he could not have believed unless he saw it. Two short years after the camels had composed the first organized caravan to come this way, everybody seemed to be following.

Besides an endless stream of wagons on the road, there were ranches beside it. The flocks and herds that were sure to come some time seemed to have grown overnight, as though they were mushrooms. There were homes, villages, towns, even the cities that, Ali had once thought, might arise after several generations.

Swimming Ben Akbar across the Colorado at Hud Perkins' house, Ali circled to come back on the road well east of Beale's Crossing--and found more people. Unwilling to believe what became increasingly evident and hoping to find even one place that was as it had been, he rode east. Hope died when he found a village in the very heart of the desert where the expedition had been lost. The village's source of water was the same water hole from which Ben Akbar had stampeded the Indians. He rode on only to find a better place for leaving the road, and now he had left it.

When he finally halted Ben Akbar and made camp, Ali knew that he had acted wisely. Once again he was at peace, for, even though the old trail was closed, nothing was ever lost as long as a new one beckoned. The next morning, he resumed his southward journey.

The pine forest was long behind him, the desert all about, when Ben Akbar mounted a hill from whose summit Ali finally saw the Gila River. He dismounted, standing a bit in front of the big _dalul_ and holding the camel's rein lightly as he studied that which he had come so far to see.

Here in the desert, the Gila was sluggish, lazy and silt-laden. It had nothing in common with the clear and sparkling streams that have inspired poet and artist alike, but it belonged in this hot desert, even as the others fitted their rugged valleys. Who could not see beauty in the Gila, could not see.

For no special reason, Ali glanced at the rein in his hand and a vast mortification swept over him. While working for the Army, he had never even thought about certain essential needs because Army pay and rations provided all he needed. Now he had neither, though food was still no problem because everybody in this land was happy to share whatever food he might have. But man could not live by bread alone.

True, not a great deal more was necessary and Ali attached little importance to his own threadbare clothing and battered shoes. But his very soul revolted when he looked at Ben Akbar's worn rein, a sorry thing, unfitted for even the poorest baggage camel. Ali must somehow contrive to earn some money. But the peace that had come to him when he finally turned from the wagon road did not desert him when he remounted. He had come to the Gila with a plan. He would find and catch the abandoned camels and hire out as packer--and surely packers were needed. All would be well.

Two days later, in a delightful little haven where the Gila periodically overflowed its banks and ample water brought luxurious growth, Ali found the camels. He smiled with happiness when he noted Amir, an old friend from Camp Verde, and two more old acquaintances in a pair of the young Camp Verde females. The herd numbered seven and not five, as Hud Perkins had told him, but Ali remembered that the old man had come this way two years ago. All five camels he'd seen must have been from Camp Verde. Two had been killed by something or other--Hud had mentioned Indians--and the four were Amir's daughters and son.

They watched nervously--and probably would have run if approached by anyone else. Ali, who knew how to converse with camels, advanced slowly, talking as he did so.

Amir himself finally trotted forward to renew old friendship.

* * * * *

Riding Ben Akbar and trailed by his string of camels, there were eleven now, Ali did not look back. The eleven would follow, just as they always followed him. Nor were they at fault because their sorry rewards had never equalled their unswerving devotion and loyalty.

Maybe nothing was really at fault, but the mine owners to whom Ali had offered his services and that of his camels were either too poor to hire any packer; or so rich that they might hire what they chose, and they chose mules. There was no use in going even near the ranches, camels terrified cattle, too. Finally, reduced to packing water, Ali found that those whose need was most desperate were almost never able to pay. Unable to go on because of maximum expense and minimum income, Ali must now do the best he could for his baggage animals.

When he came to the meadow on the Gila where he had found the original seven, he led his herd far into it. Then, still not looking behind, he whirled Ben Akbar and was off at top speed. Though they would still try to follow, the baggage camels could not match Ben Akbar's speed for very long and must soon fall behind.

There must be another journey along a new trail. Ben Akbar's rein was no longer even a rein, but a piece of rope found at a water hole. His saddle was falling apart and Ali must do something, but this time he would.

He had heard of much gold in the northern desert.

13. Reunion

The village of Quartzite was never calculated to overwhelm with metropolitan sweep or impress with architectural grandeur. Completely surrounded by the Arizona desert, sometimes it was oddly like a captive village, a prisoner of the desert. But in a very real sense Quartzite was a true monument, a tribute to the human beings who first had the courage to trespass in such a forbidding land and then dared build homes and live there.

The men gathered at a Quartzite inn varied in various ways, but all bore the stamp of the desert. Tiny wrinkles etched the eyes of each man, and, though none were aware of it, even here in the cool and shaded inn, they squinted. That was something they learned in the desert, where they faced a blazing sun for hours on end and squinted to shield their eyes, until the habit became so ingrained that they never forgot to practice it. The door opened and another man entered. One of those present greeted him with, "Welcome, stranger!"

The newcomer grinned. "Thought I'd best have me a look at civilization, been away so long that the other day I found myself talkin' with a pack rat. Saw the darndest thing when I walked in."

"What?"

"A camel." At once the newcomer was the center of interest. "A big red camel."

"Go on!" his friend exclaimed.

"It's true," the newcomer insisted. "He's right where Boney Wash crosses Skull Canyon. Layin' down, he is, like he might be sick or hurt. But he's there."

The only man present who did not gather around the speaker had been sitting alone and unnoticed. He rose. An old man with snow-white hair and beard, there was that about him which spoke of many burdens carried, and yet he bore the weight of his years with a certain assurance. When he walked to and opened the door and slipped into the overcast early spring afternoon, his absence went as unnoticed as his presence had been.

Ali closed the door behind him. Safe from prying eyes, he quivered with excitement.

The last arrival was a prospector, one of many original optimists who constantly roamed the desert, engaged in prodigious labors that were seldom granted the smallest reward and never once doubted that they had only to keep on and all the desert's dazzling riches would be yielded up to them. Recently, he'd been working in hills to the north, and his best way to Quartzite would be down Skull Canyon.

A red camel, the man had said, lay at the junction of Skull Canyon and Boney Wash. Ali couldn't remember how many times his own prospecting trips had taken him up Skull Canyon. He left the village and started to run, but his legs were no longer capable of running far, so he dropped back to a walk. The increasingly cooler evening wind, one of various reasons why Ali had finally turned his back on the desert to live with generous friends at Quartzite, he scarcely noticed.

He had gone to live at Quartzite six years ago, three years before the turn of the century and a few days before his seventieth birthday. Ben Akbar was old too, but even if he'd been welcome in Quartzite, he wouldn't have been happy there. Ali's last trip into the desert had been for the sole purpose of taking Ben Akbar to the most isolated spot he knew--and no man knew more than Ali about the wildest and most inaccessible areas--and leaving him there.

Escorting camels into the desert and turning them loose was nothing new. Twenty times in years gone by Ali had thus disposed of beasts he was no longer able to support. Invariably, however, he either went and got them again or found some new herd for some new venture. Though not one other person in the entire Southwest shared his conviction that camels would eventually triumph--Ali's faith never flickered.

He'd loosed all the camels in the best places he knew. Ben Akbar, however, was a special case.

Though camels thrived in the desert and might have multiplied, as far as anyone knew, only camel ghosts had come to the water holes in recent years. Finding them gentle and easy to approach, Indians and white men alike killed them for food, and sometimes merely for killing's sake. Many had been captured and were with various circuses or zoos. Ben Akbar was both the last to have been in any active and useful service and the last American camel not in confinement.

There were still rumors of desert-roaming camels, but all such were born in somebody's imagination and there were no reliable reports. Nor had there been since Ali loosed Ben Akbar, which might mean that Ali had succeeded in taking him so far away that nobody had yet found him. Or it might mean that he was no longer to be found; passing years had probably not spared the camel any more than the master.

Just before nightfall, the wind lulled and then died down. A bright moon rode high, lighting the path but softening harsh angles and shadowing into gentle harmlessness all that was seen as hard and harsh under the sun's pitiless glare. Presently, every cactus was bedecked in a sparkle of rare jewels as moonlight glanced from frosty branches. Ali's thoughts went to a snug cave he knew, plenty big enough for a camel who was no longer as restless as he once had been.

Ali walked on, resentful of both his necessarily slow pace and a growing skepticism that came over him as he drew farther from the town and deeper into the desert. A red camel, the prospector had said, but there had been several red camels with the herd and there was still seventy miles of desert to cross before reaching the place where Ben Akbar was freed. Though there had been a time when seventy miles would have meant no more than a pleasant jaunt, could an aging Ben Akbar walk so far?

Then Ali came to the junction of Skull Canyon and Boney Wash. He stopped--and instantly he knew!

At this point, Skull Canyon was about fifty yards from the base of one rocky wall to the foot of another. Boney Wash had been born when torrential rains crumbled a rift in the east wall. The flood that had poured through then had ripped a ragged ditch in the canyon floor. Above the ditch, the canyon was level, for the most part pebble-strewn, but here and there was a boulder or copse of cactus. Under the gentle moonlight, the canyon became gentle.

All four legs curled beneath him and head cushioned against his flank, apparently Ben Akbar had been on his way down the canyon and had lain down to rest when forbidding Boney Wash gaped before him. Ali's eyes softened, for it seemed no accident that on this night the moon should glow in such a fashion. The Ben Akbar Ali had last seen had shown the sunken cheeks, shriveled neck, worn teeth and stiffened joints of the aging. Under the magic moon, the Ben Akbar he met might have been the proud young _dalul_ he had rescued from the Druse and who, in turn, had rescued him. Even the many hairs that were no longer red, but white, could have been sparkling with frost.

Ali went a step nearer and crooned, "I greet thee, oh prince among _dalul_."

There was a ripple along flanks and ribs, but only after a marked interval was Ben Akbar able to raise his head. Ali dropped beside him and eased the proud head into his lap. He stroked it gently.

"We meet again, oh, brother," he murmured. "It is well."

He continued to caress Ben Akbar, and, under the soft moon, a thoughtful expression came over his face. There had been a very long time and a very long journey since he had boarded the _Supply_. Now he sat in the desert, comforting the last remaining camel of all that were brought to America. How could such an auspicious beginning lead to this end?

The failure could not be charged to the camels. Lieutenant Beale himself had declared that any one of them was worth any six mules. Then who, or what, was to blame? Ali considered various explanations that had been advanced.

Some declared that the entire experiment was fore-doomed by anonymous but invincible forces interested in perpetuating large profits derived from horse and mule trading. Their combined strength overwhelmed the advocates of camel transport. These reports were partly right, Ali conceded, but not entirely so. He could not imagine Major Wayne or Lieutenant Beale yielding to the combined power of anything. Anyhow, it went without saying that these forces had done all they could to prevent the importation of camels in the first place. They had not succeeded.

It was true that neither Major Wayne nor Lieutenant Beale had been active in the Camel Corps for years, and Jefferson Davis no longer mattered after the Confederacy he headed lost the War between the States. But adverse influence alone had never defeated the camels.

Many contended that the War itself was responsible. Nobody had time for camels while the battles raged and nobody was interested when peace came. Another part truth, Ali decided, but by no means a whole truth. To say that the War between the States doomed camels was as absurd as declaring it doomed railroads.

Even the popular refusal to accept camels--that sometimes mounted to flaring resentment against them--was not to blame for their downfall. That which has practical worth cannot forever remain unnoticed and camels had proved themselves superior to any other beast of burden.