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Updated: May 26, 2025
But on reaching the summit of a longer steeper incline that had perceptibly slowed the galloping horses, he saw spread out before him a level tract of country stretching far into the distance, with a faint blue smudge beyond of the chain of hills that Said told him marked the boundary of the territory that Mukair Ibn Zarrarah regarded as his own, the boundary, too, of French jurisdiction.
He had met them half-way, sinking his own inclinations and disarming their suspicions of him. At the same time he had let it be clearly understood that he meant to be absolute as his father had been. In spite of the civilisation that had bitten so deeply he was still too much an Arab, too much the son of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, to be anything but an autocrat at heart.
Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, elderly when his sons had been born, had aged with startling suddenness since the death of Omar. He had all at once become an old man, unable to rally from the shock of his bereavement, bewailing the fate of his elder and favourite son, and trembling for the future of his beloved tribe left to the tender mercies of a man he now recognised to be more Frenchman than Arab.
To old injuries had been added this crowning insult, and the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, roused to the highest pitch of fury, were resolved to a man to exterminate or be exterminated.
To rule a tribe who have become too powerful to have enemies; to listen to interminable tales of theft and disputed inheritances and administer justice to people who swear by the Koran and then lie in your face; to marry a wife and beget sons that the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah may not die out. Grand Dieu, what a life!" The tragic misery of his voice left no doubt as to his sincerity.
Craven looked suddenly exhausted, and Yoshio who had stolen in noiselessly, was standing at the head of the bed beyond the range of his master's eyes making urgent signals to the visitor to go. With a jest and a cheery word Said obediently removed his picturesque person. It was nearly four months before Craven left the camp of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah.
Numbed with the pain of memory and self-loathing he was unaware of the renewal of noisy demonstration in the camp that to Yoshio's attentive and interested ears pointed to the arrival of yet another adherent of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, an adherent of some special standing, judging from the warmth of his reception.
And it had been really a subconscious presage of such an outbreak that had brought him back to the camp of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah.
For generations the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah had been at feud with another powerful tribe which, living further to the south and virtually beyond the suzerainty of the nominal rulers of the country, harried the border continually.
But, aware of the growing power and resources of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, for many years the marauders had avoided collision with him and confined their attention to less dangerous adversaries. The apparent neglect of his hereditary enemies had not, however, lessened the old Sheik's precautions.
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