When the last floating ends of Lord Tawdry’s face-banners had disappeared over the horizon, Musty Ale made bold to appear before Verbeena, who with eyes crossed was dipping deeply into a highball of Scotch which tended to denature the Sahara.

“Mademoiselle, it is time that we left, by Allah,” he said.

“It isn’t by my watch,” she replied, frowning. “Also, Musty, I am no longer to be called mademoiselle. After this mention me as Queen.”

“Sultana?”

“I don’t like that fruit-cracker word either, my good man. Queen! And don’t forget it. And don’t look cross at me in your mysterious Oriental way. You might as well get used to it. Perhaps I’m not a queen yet but,” as she filled her three slim gold cigarette cases, “I soon will be. Queen. Understand?”

“%—&&&&&*% *(*)#**’’*# —— —-!!!!.” muttered Musty in his native tongue. (A darned barefaced queen in britches! May the Prophet part me from my whiskers!)”

“What, sirrah?”

“Allah witness, I said nothing.”

“Keep right on doing that,” said Verbeena.

Her words came in a tone of authority which added to the fact that she accurately snapped a live fag end at his right eye, caused Musty to sink through his jelab or Sahara overcoat.

But after he had dug himself a shell hole in the desert, he said from deeply beneath his head wrappings:

“O, Queen, if we don’t start soon we are sure to miss perhaps some of the most select outgoing caravans. By the fringe of the Prophet—but we surely will!”

“The noise you are now making is entirely different,” commented Verbeena.

She arose and clicked her fingers over her left shoulder, a trick she had learned from a French officer from Alabama while trilling the cubes. “Let’s go!”

At last she was out on the desert on her very own! Out on the desert with her wild heart, her strangely stirring impulses, her uncharted passions, the mad caprices of her swift reactions from pants to skirts, from skirts to pants, though nothing like vice-versa had even touched her.

Free—free—FREE!

Of everything but Musty Ale, sixty-two mounted Sahara Siwashes at 9 centimes a day, eight exquisitely fragrant camels, the bright, tangible odor of garlic from the broiling meats of the camp fire and her faithful aura of mauve fag smoke wreathing her pruned, red locks, an aura that was kept going by the plumes which ever shot from the wide flanges of her flaming nostrils in symbolism of the fire seething beneath the icicles draping her ruby heart.

As a boy she was interesting.

But as a girl—Time would tell, for Time is no gentleman.

She thought of her purity and dug the spurs viciously into her indignant horse.

She remembered Bertie Butternut without a qualm. When his arms had been about her it had stirred no instinct in her but that to fight back. She perfectly understood that as to love and its languors, its high spots, its dumps, she was a mere unbaked bun.

She realized that she knew nothing of the other sex beyond the men’s underclothing advertisements.

And they had never impressed her.

She had better muscles herself than any the artists seemed able to draw.

Indeed, were these the pictures of men?

She remembered the sums she had received from time to time to pose for posters of young gentlemen wearing new style collars.

“Pooey!” exclaimed Verbeena. And lit her 18,462nd pill or cigarette.

But these Arabs! Ah, there was something to them! She felt that they had something more than bridge-whist, golf and billiards under their turbans, something more than mere hop-Scotches of the heart.

They smoked as many cigarettes as herself—nearly.

They glowered like devils and jammed their horses around and kicked the camels about with a refreshing brutality.

They scratched themselves so fearlessly!

They breathed garlic gloriously!

And they sang—always. And always the same tune to the simp-simp-simp of their two string ukeleles with the palm twig picks. It was beautiful to Verbeena that same, same tune, grateful to her ear that liquid, languorous simp-simp-simp, an ear as exquisitely tone deaf as that of any good, up-to-date composer.

Then suddenly black specks danced before her eyes!

Was it liver?

No!

By Jove, it was a caravan on the horizon of the jolly old Sahara!

As it finally came right up close the vim of Verbeena’s interest grew somewhat vitiated. There were twenty camels and a big bunch of horsemen, and proximity proved that they were bathed in sunlight alone. Several of the camels halted and knelt and a dozen figures jounced down from the palanquins whose curtains hadn’t been changed that Spring. The figures she knew to be those of Sahara ladies.

“How about this outfit, Queen?” asked Musty Ale.

“Nope—don’t care about ’em.”

“Good as any other, your majesty.”

“That’s what I get for paying you a flat rate for this job!” cried Verbeena fiercely, truculently. “You want to have it over as quickly as possible. Why, that caravan is going straight back to Biscuit! You know very well that it’s a month for me in the desert or nothing. I went all over it with you about six thousand times. Nothing under a month will do and it will not be until we have traveled six days deep on this old sandcarpet, Musty, you brass-faced blurb, before I’ll begin looking about for more permanent arrangements. What a ninny I was to have paid you two dollars in advance!”

O’er the swart features of the under Shereef shot a spasm of anger. But he dodged a cigarette butt with fine skill and masked his feelings under glinting eyes.

“Give my compliments to that grimy-looking [Pg 41]
[Pg 42]outfit,” said Verbeena tartly, “and let’s step along.”

MUSTY ALE, A LOW, UNSCRUPULOUS FELLOW.