THE ARAB of the desert always fights for what he wants. he prefers to engage in a fray rather than use unfair means for gain. He will not turn into a common thief even if given the opportunity to keep something he has found.

I was Shaykh Khalid Ibn Sha'lan's guest when one of his sons became ill with typhoid.

This disease is rare in the desert, for the roaming life of the Bedouins is very healthful. The farther one travels into the interior, the more sterile air and soil become from the influence of the sun and elements. However, water may become very dangerous when it is found stagnant in rain-pools and waterholes and the carcasses of dead animals have been left in it. The Bedouin, therefore, rarely touches water. He prefers to drink the milk of his herds.

I treated the typhoid-infected boy for more than two weeks before I was assured of his recovery. During the time we continued to migrate daily and carried Khalid's son in a crescent-shaped camel litter in which the women and children of the chiefs are accustomed to ride. When camp was set up each afternoon, I immediately paid a visit to the tent of my friend, Khalid, to take care of his son.

At the entrance there was always a white mare standing between the tent ropes. She was a sorry sight, a poor, emaciated looking animal, apparently so weak and wasted that no one cared to ride her. Many race-camels and war-mares after long, exhaustive raids are left alone for almost a year to recover slowly, but they are taken care of with extra barley, dates and milk. This worn-out little mare kept on wandering with the tribe and seemed to favor her master's home, as I found her always there.

I asked Khalid what disease his mare was suffering or what terrible strain she had undergone, and what Khalid had done to alleviate her pain and relieve her of such a condition. Some Bedouins are superstitious about sick people and animals and one has to be careful not to show any curiosity, as one can easily hurt their feelings. But Khalid knew me and was always very open-minded toward me. I was, therefore, very much surprised when Khalid answered rather indifferently that he did not care to do a thing about her illness.

I could find only one answer to Khalid's strange behavior: His irrational fear regarding some supernatural influence from the dying mare. Perhaps Khalid felt that his mare had to die so that her waning strength would pass on to his own sick child and bring recovery to him.

Without hesitation I asked Khalid if such a superstitious idea occupied his mind. My friend smiled and said:

"If the mare was my own I would not sacrifice her to save my child."

His answer had sounded very cruel, but I had learned to take his words with a grain of salt. Relieved, I asked:

"But whose mare is she?"

Khalid replied that she must have belonged to a raiding party of some enemy. The owner might have been killed, or his mare might have strayed away while he spied upon our camp by night. At any rate, Khalid clearly did not know to whom the horse belonged. If her owner still lived, he would most certainly be looking for her. She was not of Khalid's tribe, or someone would have claimed her.

According to the unwritten law of the desert, he who recovers a stray animal is not supposed to feed or otherwise take care of the unfortunate beast. One is not even supposed to touch her nor lead her to water. She has to be left to her fate. When the owner shows up and discovers that his lost animal has been cared for, he assumes that the attention was for selfish and gainful reasons. From years of experience with Bedouins I knew that they never mistreated their animals nor were cruel to them except for reasons which are based on their strange barbaric life and on ancient traditions. In this most unfortunate case of the stray mare it fell on Khalid. Upon him had been imposed, by the unwritten law of the desert, the duty of appearing indifferent. His absence of attention to the dying animal amounted to savage cruelty indeed.

The poor mare was dying of hunger and thirst before our eyes. The Bedouins who knew her to be a stray mare avoided paying her even a casual glance. No one had pity on her.

I remembered that during that great hunger-march, after the last world war, Khalid let his own children go without food for days to spare milk for Ibn Kawakib's famous Habdah-mare. The mare of Khalid's neighbor lived, but two of Khalid's own boys almost died. They were so weakened by the ordeal that they were too sick to walk for many months, and recovered only when they were sent to Jluwi, Nuri's slave in Kaf, an oasis in Wadi Sirhan, where they rested a whole winter in a garden and lived on fruit and milk.

Khalid was a stern man and perhaps a cruel father, but his love for his own children and the "Khiyul Al-'Arab" (the horses of the Arabs) was only equal in respect for those ancient customs which he regarded sacred in regard to his children and horses too.

Khalid could not be bent, there was no exception to the law of the desert in his mind. The stray mare did not exist for him. But the sight of the innocent mare, dying in such agony, almost broke my heart.

I asked Khalid if I might lead the horse to my tent and care for her. His look was solemn, intent, and he sat in silence for some time. Then he replied that he had no right to object to my wish as I was a foreigner and his guest, but Khalid added the fair warning that I would be despised for my action.

I was always careful not to hurt the feelings of my Bedouin friends, but this time the compassion of my heart overcame all other considerations.

I rose and went back to my tent, picked up a large wooden bowl and milked two of my camels, and took the vessel of fresh milk to the mare. As I approached her, she suddenly lifted her head. She had smelled the sweet milk. The scent of the fragrant beverage had given her new strength already. With a weak neigh she placed her feverish muzzle into the foam and emptied the bowl with one deep draft. Thrice I had to return to my camels, who donated the total of perhaps seven or eight quarts of their sustenance.

From that day on I kept the mare at my tent. She recovered rapidly, and only a week later I began to ride her to new pasture grounds.

Several months passed and the owner of the stray animal had not appeared. My friends were strange and shy with me. They seemed to despise me, though I had proclaimed that I would return the mare to her master. I had shown Rukhwa to our visitors and guests from other tribes and asked them to help me find the owner. But all I received were fair warnings that I had interfered with the hand of God.

One day a stranger and his slave came, and were reported at ease in the chief's tent. I went over too, and sat in the council of men, listening to their talk. We knew, after they arrived, that our guests were enemies, but the tradition of the Arabs allowed them to live with us, migrate and hunt with us as long as they pleased, without ever revealing to us their identity.

When the stranger casually mentioned that he had lost his mare and described her ot us, Khalid told him that such a horse had been found. He pointed to me and asked his guest to be forgiven that he had allowed me to take care of his mare. The owner might go now to claim his rightful possession.

Silently the guest rose with his slave, and asked to be shown to my tent. I gladly offered to go with them and mentioned how happy I was that they had found their horse. The man looked silently ahead, never addressing me. His mare greeted him with a loud joyful neigh of recognition.

there was no doubt he was the owner.

When he mounted his mare and rode her away, he turned his head to me and spoke two words of utter scorn:

"Thou their!"

He had not used the word "Faris" which would have been a flattering term, meaning a "horse thief," or rather a raider who, like a her, had gone into his enemy's pasture to "take" a mare--and ever after be called a "cavalier," a brave man.

I had been insulted with a most humiliating word. The man had called me a petty thief.

I resented the rudeness of his manner. I asked him a question, while I laid my hand on the halter of his mare--a question which forced him to reveal his identity. I said:

"Thou art crafty enough to come to our camp to claim this mare. How will I be able to inquire among thy people that they may bear witness that thou art the owner?"

This insult stung. He jumped off his mare and drew his dagger, but his own slave disarmed him, and begged him not to bring disgrace upon his family by shedding blood while they were yet guests in Khalid's camp. The slave then had to speak to me with forced courtesy, because his master thought it beneath his dignity to address me:

"We are 'Amarat of Ibn Hadhdhal's clan, and the mare is rightfully ours."

Khalid, my host, had joined us with his retinue of relatives and slaves. He warned the 'Amarat that three days hence, after the bread and meat of which they had partaken in our tent had "turned" in their "bellies," he would be released from all obligations of hospitality and pursue them to take their camels and the mare by the right of the raiders.

The 'Amarat only sneered at us as he remounted Rukhwa. His derisive remarks included his good wishes that we ride faster camels than his own and more enduring horses than his own mare, a Hamdaniyah-Simriyah of Ibn-Khayam of the Mutayr.

We live in a modern world and I have always regretted that automobiles were introduced to Arabia, but for once in my life in the desert I was glad that I had a car with me, and I offered it to Khalid to pursue his enemy.

Khalid, with two men of his bodyguard and I, followed the 'Amarat three days after their departure from our camp. Though we lost their tracks at times, we always picked them up again in the Waudiyan, a network of dry river beds, and overtook our enemies in eight hours, covering a distance that would have taken us on camels, with horses tied to their saddle-cinches, almost as many days.

Without fight the 'Amarat and his slave surrendered, and we captured the stray mare.

When I mounted Rukhwa to ride away, I saw tears in the eyes of her master. I placed the halter rope in the hand of the 'Amarat and asked him:

"Did I acquire thy mare by the standards of thy ancestors, with the strength of my own hands?"

"Indeed," he answered, and I said: "I return her to thee before these witnesses, but let her first-born be mine."

Without another word the 'Amarat tied her to the cinch of his camel saddle and rode away with his slave. This time I felt a lump in my own throat, but I consoled myself that I had taught a lesson to our enemy that I had taught a lesson to our enemy who had seemed so haughty and ungrateful to me.

When I expressed my doubts to Khalid that the 'Amarat would keep his word (though unspoken, by accepting the mare he had agreed to my wish) to let me have a foal of Rukhwa, Khalid held up his hand. He pointed out to me that the individual fingers of the human hand were not of equal length and that four of them stayed together, but one, the thumb, remained apart from the rest.

It is the same with people, Khalid philosophized, all are different, but in general they get along together. Once in awhile there is one who prefers to keep apart, though he may never be entirely away from them, but co-operate when compelled so to do.

I felt that our enemy was not the kind of man that could be compelled by the kindness of his heart. Perhaps there dwelled not even honor in this man's soul. Khalid said that the 'Amarat was a "thumb," presumptuous, ungrateful and arrogant. Such men do not dwell in the society of desert-people. They are trouble-makers, and their word cannot be easily trusted.

I began to doubt that I ever would receive the first born of Rukhwa, the stray mare I had become so attached to; Rukhwa, with whom (I felt it now that she had gone from me) I had fallen in love.

To wait for a foal that has not even been conceived is an ungrateful job. But a Bedouin will not forget his word, it seems.

Neither to Khalid, nor to me, was the integrity of our enemy revealed until a filly was born to Rukhwa, the stray mare of the 'Amarat. Her master sent word that he had called her "Sakkah" (She-Who-Is-Fettered-With-Iron_Shackles) because she was "fettered" with a sacred promise to me before she was born.

Not before Sakkah was a two-year-old did she come into my possession. I had been travelling back and forth between California and Arabia, and had not been with the 'Amarat for years, though with many other tribes.

Ramal Ibn-Dahamishah was the name of Rukhwa's and Sakkah's master, the man who had called me in scorn, a thief. His slave handed to me the "image" of her mother, when I came to stay with Khalid. The filly was indeed an image of her mother, except for her color. Sakkah was a bay and Rukhwa, the dam, was a white mare, and white was--as the Bedouins say--the heart of Ramal Ibn-Dahamishah, her master. He had dispatched one of his slaves with Rukhwa's daughter to Khalid's tent when the filly was a year old, as Khalid expected me that year to be his guest for the winter, and had informed his enemy about it. But at that time I was back in California.

Patiently the slave waited a whole year for me. He had orders from his master to turn the filly over to me with his own hands, or else never return to his tribe. This is the law of the desert and time is not important. Only the word they pledge is of great and grave consequence, because speech, planted on the tongue of man, is from the "beginning," a sacred communication from God to man, an assurance that in the wilderness man lives with man by faith and in solemn assurance of their word.

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