A FRIEND IN NEED
He whirled. "I'll fire!" he warned, staring into the dark, but his
eyes, dazed with the sun, discerned nothing, and in utter ignorance
he faced the black possibilities.
"A man--a hand----" Arlee gasped incoherently.
"Good Lord, what is it?" said a voice so near at hand that both were
startled.
"Burroughs!" ejaculated Billy. "Is it you--Burroughs?"
"Yes, it's I, Burroughs," the owner of the voice retorted irritably.
"And who the deuce are you?"
"Hill--Billy B. Hill," came the jubilant answer, and "Billy be
damned!" said the astonished voice, with sudden joviality, and a
dark shape strode up to them. "What on earth are you doing here? And
what about that firing? Think I was a robber bold?"
"Well, there are three robber sneaks outside that we are hiding
from, so I wasn't sure.... Great Cæsar, old scout, but I'm glad to
see you! That puts us out of the woods at last.... It's the
excavator friend," he added, turning to Arlee. "Burroughs, I present
you to Miss Beecher. She and I have been having a thoroughly
impossible adventure."
"Let's have a little light upon these introductions," returned the
excavator, and a click was heard, and a light jumped out overhead,
flooding the tunnel-like place with brightness. In its beams the
three stood staring queerly at each other.
Arlee saw a slim, wiry young American, in rough khaki clothes
stained with work, a browned, unshaven young man with sleepy looking
eyes and a mouth like a steel trap.
What the excavator saw was more surprising. There was his friend
Billy, whom two weeks before he had seen off on a Nile steamer
returning to Cairo, in tropic splendor of white serge and Panama
hat, now a scarlet spectacle of sunburn and dirt, in most
disgraceful tweeds, and beside him what Burroughs took to be a child
in tatterdemalion white, a silky, fluttering white, which even his
untrained observation knew was hardly elected for desert wear. The
little girl's hair was hanging tangled over her shoulders, and was
much the color of the sand with which her face was coated, and
underneath that coating he saw that she was red as a peony with sun
and wind. They were a startling pair.
Gravely, with unchanging eyes, he acknowledged the introduction, and
then, "What's this about robbers?" he went on. "What kind of a yarn
are you putting over?"
"Nothing I want put over on the general public." Billy was thinking
very hard. "You're going to be our salvation, Burroughs, but even to
you--well, I'll put it briefly. We were having a desert ride and
some Turkish fellows who have annoyed her before chased us. There
are our camels, just outside. And you can see one of the fellows on
horseback keeping watch. The others are somewhere about.... And now,
for heaven's sake, get us a drink of water."
Burroughs walked to the door of the tomb and looked out an instant,
then he turned and went toward the back, returning with a small
native jar full of water.
"I've no glass, but if you can manage this----?" he said to Arlee,
and she clutched the cool pottery with two hot little hands and,
murmuring a quick affirmative, she put it to her lips.
Then she held it out to Billy.
"I suppose--we mustn't---drink as much as we want."
"I couldn't," said Billy, after a grateful swallowing. "I'd drain
the Nile.... Got a camp here?"
"Yes. You'd have seen my men any other time of day, but we knocked
off a while out of the sun," Burroughs explained. "I've rigged up
this tomb as living quarters while I'm here. Now what do you want me
to do? Would you like a guard?"
"We'd like a guard and a bath and cold cream," said Billy joyfully.
"And then we'd like dinner and donkeys."
Burroughs grunted.
"Umph--I should say you'd one donkey already in your
party--careering around the desert with a little girl like this," he
vouchsafed, and Arlee's eyes widened at his brusque nod at her. She
was staring about her now with a curious interest, for all her
aching tiredness, gazing wonderingly at the dazzling white walls
with their strange and brilliant paintings. She saw they were in a
long, deep chamber, from which other openings led to unimagined
deeps.
"I guess you never were in a place like this before?" Burroughs
inquired, and she shook her head dumbly, feeling suddenly too spent
for words.
"Can she get a rest here?" said Billy anxiously. "We've had the
devil of a ride."
"The place is all hers," returned Burroughs. "I'll send you some
food and cold cream--you mustn't wash that sunburn, you know, or
you'll be a sorry girl to-morrow--and then you can rest as long as
you like. How much of a hurry are you in?" he added to Billy.
"Well, we want to take a train to Luxor to-night. I suppose Girgeh's
the next station?"
"You suppose? You _are_ at sea--where did you start from, anyway?"
But hastily Burroughs sped from that inquisitive question. "Balliana
is your next station," he reported. "You've all the time you want,
and I'll take you over myself. Now make yourself as comfortable as
you can," he added to Arlee, handing her a big jar of cold cream and
lugging forward an armful of rugs. "I'll be back with some food in a
jiffy."
"You're very kind," Arlee spoke stanchly, but as soon as the two men
stepped from the tomb, she seemed to wilt down into the rugs and lay
there, too tired to stir.
Outside Burroughs blew sharply on a whistle, and from the mouth of
another cave a file of black boys in ragged robes made a straggling
appearance. Burroughs gave orders which resulted in a kindling of
fire and the opening of boxes, and then he walked back to where
Billy was surveying the weary camels. At a distance, like an
equestrian statue, the watching horseman was standing. Burroughs
stared hard at the distant Nubian, then stared harder at Billy.
"This is wonderful luck," Billy said to him, very soberly. "I didn't
think of you as nearer than Thebes."
"We just heard of some fresh finds here, so I'm combing over the
tombs.... But you--it's none of my business, Billy, but what in hell
are you doing racing over Egypt with a ten-year old kid?"
"Ten-year-old--Great Cæsar, man, that's a _real girl_! She's _grown
up_! She's old enough to vote--or nearly."
Burroughs stared harder than ever.
Then, "I shouldn't call that an extenuating circumstance," he
mentioned wryly.
"Extenuating nothing! Look here, let me----"
"You needn't tell me anything, you know," Burroughs suggested in
great indifference.
"Oh, shut up!" Billy spoke with deep disgust. "You've got to help us
out of this and then forget the whole business." He paused a moment;
then, "Miss Beecher made the mistake of taking a rash ride with me.
She was traveling alone, to meet some friends, to Luxor--and the
indiscretion is entirely mine, you understand. I got her into it.
And then, as I said, a Turkish fellow, that had been making himself
objectionable by following her, got his men out after us and chased
us down here. Her trunks have gone on to Luxor where those friends
are, and we have to find some presentable wraps for her and get her
to the first train. _Verstehen_?"
"Grasped--and forgotten," said his friend laconically. Just for an
instant his sleepy gaze touched Billy's rugged face, then fell
casually away. "I suppose any comments that occur to me are
superfluous?" he pleasantly observed.
"Completely.... And, Lord Harry, but I'm glad to see you!"
"Same here." Burroughs gave Billy's arm a friendly grip and Billy
spun fiercely about on him. "Don't you do that again!" he warned.
"Take the other one. That's got a--a scratch."
"A scratch? One of those fellows wing you out there? Let me have a
look----"
"No, it's all right--it's nothing----"
"Let me see, you old chump----"
"It's all right, I tell you. It's been taken care of--it's just a
relic of Cairo."
"Cairo!" Slowly Burroughs let fall the hand he had laid upon Billy's
arm. "You do seem to be having a lively trip," he commented,
grinning. "Here, hurry up, you rascals, hurry up with that big jug."
Taking the large jar from them, he returned to the tomb, stopping
abruptly at sight of Arlee's weary abandon. She half sat up, a
frail, exhausted little figure, whose grace was strangely appealing
through all her sandy dishevelment.
"Some water--for washing," he stammered.
"You're very thoughtful."
"I'll have to beg your pardon," he blurted, for Burroughs was no
squire of dames. "I thought you were a little girl and spoke to you
as if----"
"It's just the hairpins that make the difference, isn't it?" said
Arlee, with a whimsical smile. "I don't suppose you have any of
those in camp that I could borrow?"
He shook his head regretfully. Then his brain seized upon the
problem. "Bent wires?" he suggested. "I might try----"
"Do," she besought. "I'll be grateful forever."
He withdrew to make the attempt, and in his place came Billy with a
tray of luncheon.
"Just--put it down," Arlee said faintly. "I'll eat--by and by."
Worriedly Billy looked down on the girl. Her eyes closed. Excitement
had ebbed, leaving her like some spent castaway on the shores. He
dropped on his knees beside her, dipping a clean handkerchief in the
jar of cold cream.
"Just let me get this off," he said quietly. "You'll feel better."
Like a child she submitted, lying with closed eyes while with
anxious care he took the sand from her delicate, burning skin. He
did the same for her listless hands; he brushed back her hair and
put water on her temples; he dabbed more cold cream tenderly on the
pathetic little blisters on her lips.
"I'm--all right." The blue eyes looked suddenly up at him with a
clear smile. "I'm--just resting."
"And now you'll eat a bit?"
Obediently she took the sandwich he made for her, and lifted her
head to drink the cup of tea.
"I'm a--nuisance," she murmured.
"You're a _brick_!" he gave back, with muffled intensity. "You're a
perfect brick!"
Then he backed hastily out of her presence, for fear his stumbling
tongue would betray him--or his clumsy, longing hands--or his
foolish eyes. He felt choking with the tenderness he must not
express. He ached with his Big Brother pity for her, and with his
longing for her, which wasn't in the least Big Brotherly, and with
all the queer, bewildering jumble of emotion that she had power to
wake in him.
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.
And just as each man is smitten with madness after the manner of his
kind, so Burroughs, the taciturn, was struck into amazing
volubility. As they sat about a cracker box of a table at an early
supper, he became a perfect fount of information, pouring out to
this girl an account of his diggings that would have astounded any
of his intimates, and would surely have amazed Billy B. Hill if that
young man had been in a condition to notice his friend's
performances. But he was wrapped in a personal gloom that had
descended on him like a cloud of unreason. The escapade was nearly
over. The little girl comrade was gone, the little girl whose face
he had so tenderly scrubbed of its grimy sand. A very self-possessed
young lady was sitting beside him, drinking her coffee, an utterly
lovely and gracious young lady--but unfathomably remote--elusive....
Perhaps, again, it was the hairpins.
Off to town on donkey back the three Americans rode slowly, a native
escort filing after, and there in town the bazaars yielded a long
pongee dust coat and a straw hat and a white veil, "to escape
detection," Arlee gaily said, and a satchel which she filled with
mysterious purchases, and then, clad once more in the semblance of
her traveling world, safe and sound and undiscovered, she stood upon
the station platform, awaiting the train to Luxor.
Beside her, two very quiet young men responded but feebly to the
flow of spirits that had amazingly succeeded her exhaustion.
Burroughs was suddenly suffering from a depression most unfamiliar
to his practical mind, which caused him to moon about his work for
days and made his depleted jar of cold cream a wincing memory, and
Billy was increasingly glum.
It was all over now. The girl, who for two winged days had been so
magically his gypsy comrade, was returning to her own world, the
world in which he played so infinitesimal a part. For very pride's
sake now he could never force himself upon her ... as he might
before ...
He stared down at her eagerly, hopefully, for a sign of regret at
the ending of this strange companionship, much as a big Newfoundland
might watch for a caress from a cherished but tyrannic hand, but not
a scrap of regret was evidenced. She was as blithe as a cricket. Her
only pang was for discovery.
"You're sure," she murmured as Burroughs left them to interview the
station clerk, "you're sure they'll never know?"
"I'm positive," he stolidly responded. "Just stick to your story."
"The Evershams won't question--they are never interested in other
people," she mused, with thankfulness. "But Mr. Falconer----"
"Won't have a doubt," said Billy firmly. His gloom closed in thickly
about him.
* * * * *
It was a local, a train of corridor compartments. In one, marked
"Ladies Alone," Arlee was ensconced, with an Englishwoman and her
maid, and two pleasant German women, and in another Billy B. Hill
sat opposite some young Copts and lighted pipe after pipe. When the
train started out on the High Bridge across the Nile to the eastern
bank, he came out in the corridor to look out the wide glass windows
there, and found Arlee beside him.
"How do you do?" she said brightly. "How nice to meet accidentally
like this--you see, I'm rehearsing my story," she added under her
breath.
"Let's see if you have it straight," he told her.
"I arrive on a local which left Cairo this morning.... Did I come
alone?"
"You'd better invent some nice traveling friend----"
She shook her head in flat refusal. "I won't. I'm not equal to
inventing anything. It's bad enough now to--to tell the _necessary_
lies I have to." The brightness left her face looking suddenly wan
and sorry. "I suppose it's part of my--punishment--for my dreadful
folly," she said in a low tone.
"It's just part of the coin the world has to be paid in for its
conventions," Billy quickly retorted. "_Don't_ let it worry you like
that--in a day no one will think to question you."
"I know--but--it's having the memory always there. Always knowing
that there is something I can't be honest about--something secret
and dreadful----"
She was staring unseeingly out the window, her soft lips twitching.
"The Egyptians were a most sensible people," said Billy. "They drew
up a list of commandments against the forty-two cardinal sins, and
one of them was this, 'Thou shalt not consume thy heart.' That is a
religious law against regret--vain, unprofitable, morbid,
devastating regret. And you must take that law for your own."
"Th--thank you." The low voice was suspiciously wavery. "I--you see,
I haven't had time to think about it till just now--we've been going
so fast----"
"And the best thing that could have happened. And now that you have
the time to think, you mustn't think _weakly_. It was just a
nightmare. And it's over."
"Just a nightmare.... And it's over," she repeated. Her eyes lifted
to Billy's in a look of ineffable softness and wonder. "It's
over--because _you_ came."
"I want you to forget that." The young man spoke with cold curtness
in his effort to combat the wild temptation of that moment. "I only
did what anyone else in my place would have done--to have
accomplished it is all the gratitude I want. Please don't speak of
it to me again. You must forget about it."
"Forget--as if I could help being grateful as long as I live!"
"But I don't _want_ you to be grateful. It--it's obnoxious to me!"
She was as blankly hurt as a slapped child. Then she looked away, a
little pulse in her throat beating fast. "Then I won't--try to thank
you," she answered in a very small voice, and stared harder and
harder out the window.
Billy felt that he had accomplished a tremendous stride. "A feeling
of obligation kills a friendship," he told her didactically, "and I
want you to be really my friend."
"I am." Her voice was distinct, though queerly lack-luster. And she
did not look at him again.
He went on: "The Evershams will be in on the boat about seven. From
the station I'll take you straight to the boat, where your stateroom
is surely being kept for you. Then to-morrow your trunks will arrive
from Cook's, and by the time you are through resting, you will be
ready to sally out and meet the world.... I hope my own trunk will
make its appearance, too," he added. "I telegraphed the hotel to
pack my things and send them on."
She made no comment on the obvious haste with which he had left
Cairo. She said slowly, "I want to do a little mathematics now. What
is the shocking sum I owe you?"
He shut his lips in an obstinate line. After a moment she added, "I
can't take _that_, you know."
It struck him as a trifle ludicrous that dollars were so important
among all the rest, but unwillingly enough he understood.
"Won't you just let it stand as it is?" he said under his breath.
"Let me have the whole thing--please."
"I can't."
"You mean you won't?"
"I can't," she repeated inflexibly, and then, with a childish flash,
"Since you dislike me to feel grateful--I should think you would be
glad to let me reduce the debt."
"All right." He spoke gruffly. "Then you owe me what you spent just
now and what your railroad ticket cost. Not a cent more. For what
went before I am absolutely responsible, and I decline to let you
pay _my_ debts."
This time he was inflexible. She repeated, with a spark of
resentment, "It's not fair to let you pay so much----"
"It was _my_ adventure," said Billy firmly.
She said, "Very well," in a voice that puzzled him. He felt she
was annoyed. And he realized more than ever that he could never
take advantage of her indebtedness to make her pay with her
companionship. It was becoming a queer tangle.... He felt they had
suddenly slipped out of tune.... She seemed to be escaping
him--withdrawing ...
He wondered, very unhappily, with no fine glow of altruism at all,
if he had rescued her for another man. Those things happened, they
happened with dismal frequency. Billy distinctly recalled the
experience of a college friend who had carried a girl out of a
burning hotel, to have her wildly embrace an unstirring youth below.
Yes, such things happened. But he had never contemplated having
anything like that happen to him.
He contemplated it now, however, contemplated it long and bitterly,
when Arlee had gone back to her compartment and he sat silent in his
beside the chattering Copts while the train rattled on and on. There
would be three days at Luxor before the boat proceeded upon its
southern journey. And then----
Three days.... Three miserable, paltry, insufficient days, blighted
by the chaperoning Evershams.... Frantically he hoped against his
dark foreboding that one menace at least might be averted--that by
now Luxor would have ceased to shelter a certain sandy-haired young
Englishman.