‘Phew! what a trudge!’ grumbled Pierre. ‘I thought we should never get here. Let’s hope we shall have some success.’
‘It’ll be a lark even if we get nothing at all,’ grinned Toto, and he winked at Boru and snapped his fingers.
‘Have we ever failed yet?’ said Julius; ‘would I have brought you here if I hadn’t been confident?’
‘Come on, what’s the plan of attack?’ said Marcel. He was the eldest, sometimes he resented this leadership by the youngest boy.
‘You owe me money, my friend,’ said Julius; ‘have you made any reckoning?’
Marcel reddened and shuffled his feet. ‘You might give me till to-morrow,’ he muttered. ‘We shall see what happens to-day.’
‘The three weeks at ten per cent interest are up,’ said Julius; ‘after to-day my interest is fifteen per cent.’
‘Oh! very well, you shall have it now. I cannot afford more interest.’
The coins changed hands.
‘Meanwhile, I’ve decided our plan,’ said Julius. ‘The merchant will soon appear along the road. There’s a stretch of three kilometres or more he has to cover before he reaches the shade of these trees. He’ll be tired from the sun. He will want to rest his feet. You must hide here and I’ll begin conversation with him. When I give the signal you will burst from the trees and run to the mules. Boru is used to managing animals; he will take charge of two. The rest of us will take one apiece. Then ride like the devil, shouting at the top of your voices. This will scare the mules, and they’ll bolt. Hold on tight and don’t let yourselves be thrown.’
‘Supposing the merchant tries to follow us?’
‘He’ll not follow us, I shall see to that,’ said Julius. The boys glanced at each other, half excited, half scared.
‘What will you do?’ asked Toto.
Julius patted his pocket. ‘The same as David did to Goliath,’ he said.
They blinked stupidly, they did not understand. Julius laughed and turned on his heel. ‘I am a Jew, I know everything,’ he said. Then he walked away from the belt of trees to a high position where he could watch the long winding road and the dust from a merchant travelling with his mules.
Julius crouched in a ditch by the side of the road, his chin resting in his hands, and an hour had passed before he finally saw the little cavalcade approaching in the distance. The five mules were harnessed one behind the other, a gap of four feet or more between them, and the Arab merchant himself brought up the rear on the sixth mule, lopping backwards and forwards in the high saddle, his head bowed over his breast in weariness.
Julius rose from his hiding-place in the ditch and walked slowly along the road to meet him.When he came within hailing distance he lifted his hand. ‘Good day to you,’ he shouted. ‘May Allah protect you and your sons and your grandsons. Can you give me a cigarette?’ The merchant gazed down at him with sullen eyes. ‘I’ve travelled ever since noon, I’m weary and pressed for time. Let me get on with my business.’ He cracked his long whip, he called out to his mules. Julius backed aside from their hoofs, he fumbled in his pocket. ‘You are the seventh merchant to pass this way,’ he said; ‘they were all driving mules. You will find the market glutted when you reach Alger.’ The Arab turned in his saddle, exposing his full face in astonishment. ‘Impossible ...’ he began, but he did not finish his sentence, for the boy had taken careful aim and the stone spun from the catapult and struck him between the eyes. The Arab fell into the road with a groan, kicked a moment and lay still. Julius darted to his side and fumbling with his belt he took the heavy purse from the stunned merchant and tucked it hastily down his own shirt; then glancing around him he propped the man into a humped sitting position at the side of the road and stuck a cigarette between his lips. From a distance he might have been taken for someone resting, overcome by fatigue.
Only then did Julius give his signal, and the boys ran out from behind their clump of trees, each one seizing the bridle of a mule and cutting the rope that bound them together. They flung themselves on to the backs of the frightened animals, shouting at the pitch of their lungs, and the mules kicked and plunged in terror, shaking their heads and bolting in a cloud of dust down the long white road.
Julius bent over the Arab. Still he had not moved, but sat hunched and motionless, a deep cleft between his eyes where the stone had struck him. Julius climbed into the saddle of the sixth mule, and clinging to the high supports he dug his heels into the creature’s sides, shouting, and pressing with his knees.
The mule bolted after the others, and Julius was flung up and down in the saddle, his nose bumping the arched neck of the mule, his hair falling over his face - shaking with mingled laughter and pain, the dust blowing up into his eyes and the sweat becoming part of it, grimy and caked. The scared animals would not stop now, they galloped as though possessed by the devil, and it seemed to Julius there was no breath left in his body, so shaken he was and exhausted, the heat rising in him like a clammy, suffocating blanket, yet he could not stop laughing as he reeled in the saddle, hysterical at the sight of the other boys each as helpless as himself on the backs of the strong mules, and in spite of his bruised flesh and his agony of fatigue there was something exhilarating and grand in this mad screaming gallop in the dust under the burning sun, something splendid in the way his blood pounded and his heart throbbed, in the fierce motion itself, in the smell of sweat and dust, in the tearing clatter of hoofs upon the hard road.
It was joy and it was hell at the same time; the pain, the intolerant thirst ‘scorching’ his throat, the warm flesh of the mule against his nose, and a vision of trees and sun and sky flashing past him, the black scared face of Boru beside him, showing the whites of his eyes.
The road began to slope, they were coming to the outskirts of Alger - Marcel pointed ahead jabbering meaninglessly, and as the bend in the road brought them up against a wall the mules shied nervously, unseating the boys, a couple of them pitching head-foremost into the ditch, Boru clinging on to the reins of his two animals and being dragged for fifty yards or more, Marcel landing on his tender parts into a cactus bush screaming with the pain. Julius lay with his face in a dung-heap helpless with laughter; it was Toto who pulled him out and brushed the filth from his clothes. Boru and Pierre had secured all the six mules, and the boys stood in a group panting, heaving, grinning at each other, the breath and the laughter exploding from them like a steam engine.
‘Marcel in the cactus bush,’ yelled Julius. ‘I shall never forget it, never - nor Boru split in two between his mules, one foot on the ground - oh! what a glorious life.’
‘And you,’ pointed Toto, ‘your face covered in dung; what d’you think you look like?’
Julius crumpled in the ditch once more, helpless with mirth. ‘What are we going to do with these blasted animals?’ asked Marcel.
‘Soon, my friend, soon,’ said Julius weakly. ‘Let’s go and drink somewhere just for the love of God. The cattle market must wait.’
Toto helped him to his feet once more, and gathering the reins of the poor animals, who still sniffed about them in terror, the boys went down the hill into Alger, laughing and lurching over the stones, brushing the dirt from their coats and shaking their caps. Three little Arab urchins, begging for sous, looked after the mules whilst Julius and his companions went into a café to quench their thirst.
Julius, filthy in his dusty dung-bespattered clothes, demanded a wash. It was good to plunge his head and shoulders into the cold water, to shake the drips from his hair and to feel the water trickle down beneath his shirt to his streaming body. He opened his mouth wide and gasped, he drew his head up from the basin snuffling like a wet puppy. His ribs were bruised, his arms nearly pulled from his sockets and his legs black and blue from bumping against the side of the mule, but he felt fine - strong, somehow. He lit a cigarette and tied a soaking handkerchief round his head to keep cool.
The boys were leaning against the bar, clamouring for attention, thumping with their fists.
Julius pushed his way in amongst them and flung down a five-franc piece.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’re pressed for time; we’ve got to sell half a dozen animals in the cattle market before sundown. Be sharp or we’ll take our custom elsewhere.’
In less than twenty minutes all the boys were drunk except Julius. He was used to drinking and could carry more than this, but he was burning inside and if his hand was steady and his eye was clear, there was a reckless something within him that made him care for nothing and for no one.
‘Come on, you dribbling bastards,’ he said, and the older boys followed him, flushed and stupid like so many sheep.
‘We’ll ride to the market in style,’ said Julius carelessly, and he hauled himself up into the saddle once more and jerked savagely at the reins. He clattered through the streets of Alger scattering the people to right and left, waving his hand to an old fellow who shook his stick at him and cursed, nearly running down a woman who screamed in terror, clutching her children by the hands.
‘We’ll have the soldiers after us if we’re not careful,’ shouted Pierre, but Julius laughed, caring not at all, and he charged his animal into the square cattle market packed with people, knocking into a flock of sheep as he did so. He looked around him, smiling; this was the sound he liked, the jabbering tongues of merchants bargaining with one another, hands spread wide, fingers tapping upon an open palm; nods and whispers, the clink of coins passing from one to the other. He made his way to the side of a tall fellow in a cloak and wearing a fez, who was feeling the legs of a thin poorly fed horse. This man had a loose, protruding underlip and big eyes like a fish, but his clothes were good. He looked wealthy and a fool. Julius had picked his man.
‘Half-starved beasts don’t give service,’ he said boldly; ‘anyone who sells such an animal is robbing the purse of the honest. Are you an expert in beasts?’
The fishy-eyed fellow shook his head. ‘I don’t mind about looks, it’s strength and carrying power I’m after,’ he said.
Julius nodded, twisting a cigarette.
‘I can see you know your business,’ he said; ‘you have already agreed that such horse is only fit for pasture. What you need is a mule, hefty and powerful.’ He bent and whispered in the man’s ear. ‘Listen, this is between ourselves. There is an animal here, Arab stock, arrived in Alger this morning from Aumale. His owner has asked me to sell him cheap, you understand?’ He laid his finger against his nose and winked.
The man in the fez was lost, but no matter. He winked too, as though he understood.‘Don’t let this go any further,’ muttered Julius, ‘the demand will be greater than the supply and the price will be raised automatically. But because I want no questions asked I am prepared to sell you this animal at the lowest possible price. For eight louis he is yours - cash down at once, take it or leave it.’
The fellow took off his fez and scratched his head. ‘That is double the price I meant to pay,’ he said.
Julius laughed. ‘For a starved, bloodless pony, you’re right, my friend. But for a mule, a thoroughbred straight from the stock of the sheik Abdullah Ben-Ahmed - eight louis is nothing, it is less than a jet of spittle. Look here - feel his shoulders; look at that head. You are a judge, I can tell that. You know a bargain when you see one.’
The man fumbled with his purse. ‘You are right, the mule is worth more than eight louis. Here is the money, I’ll take him at once.’
Julius’s hand was already outstretched. ‘An animal of his build will outlive you and your children,’ he said, ‘even your children’s children. Good evening to you,’ and he laid the reins over the man’s wrist and slipped away into the crowd.
The boys were not doing so well. Perhaps it was the drink or perhaps it was natural inefficiency, but a dealer had noticed them from the start and was rapidly persuading them to sell up all five mules at a low price in order to clear.
‘I will take them off your hands for fifteen louis,’ he said, thrusting his fingers into his palm, glancing from one to the other. ‘I can see the beasts have been stolen and you don’t care to be caught. Come now, I have made you an offer.’ Marcel shuffled his feet, red and awkward.
‘Hold on,’ interrupted Julius, ‘I have just sold my animal for five louis, and he was the smallest of the bunch. If we ask six louis for these it’s giving them away. Nor were they stolen, sir, they were part of my father’s legacy.You have had dealings with him, no doubt, El Taza of Aumale?’
‘El Taza is not dead?’ exclaimed the dealer.
‘He died at sundown yesterday, Allah rest his soul,’ lied Julius coolly, thinking of the stunned merchant on the road to Constantine. ‘I am his illegitimate son and I was the love of his heart. Will you give me six louis apiece for these animals?’
‘I will take three at five louis each, youngster.’
‘Five and a half and the bargain is yours.’
‘Done.’
The money exchanged hands and Julius nodded to the boys to follow him.
‘We’ve only two left,’ he said. ‘The best plan for us now is to put these beasts in the auction ring. I’ll give the fellow five francs to sweeten his gabble and to lay it on thick.’
The boys were too dazed and stupid with drink to take in a word of what he said.
‘Here - leave it to me,’ said Julius, and he led the two remaining mules to the auction ring. The salesman had just disposed of a flock of sheep and was wiping the sweat from his forehead. Julius slipped a five-franc piece into his hand.
‘Spin them the goods,’ he whispered. ‘I want you to get rid of these beasts for me. Don’t knock them down beneath four louis.’
He stood at the man’s elbow while the mules went up for sale; he listened with approval to the cheap clap-trap. In fifteen minutes the mules were sold, one for five louis, the smaller for four. Julius pocketed the cash and strolled back to the boys.