The Hidden Treasure
allowed my reproaches to slide off him absent-mindedly
until Alidad gave some small opening for blame by not
producing an Arkwaz tent where one was promised; where-
upon the whole weight of the probably foodless day was
shifted on to him with a promptitude creditable to the
Philosopher's resourcefulness.
Alidad took the matter amiss: he walked along with his
one eye shut, boiling for a quarrel; while Shah Riza, enthroned
on the pack-mule some little way behind, talked to his cigarette
in a voice of remonstrance, lamenting the hungry hours that
lay before the lady. The new muleteer meanwhile dashed
hither and thither among the little dells, looking for a last
habitation before the empty hills began, where a chicken
might be captured; and, as it happened, we came upon one
black tent round a corner, and finally carried off a raucous
cockerel with yellow eyes, and set him on our saddle-bow for
the sum of fivepence.
We now began to climb, attacking the mountain without
any sort of diplomacy, to where limestone needles took off
from beds of scree. The path zig-zagged with a scrunch of
loose stones among which shell fossils were still visible. Oak
trees grew rarer, interspersed more and more with keikum
which turns red in autumn, with wan trees and gigantic bushes
of gum tragacanth that spread like shallow Japanese umbrellas
close to the ground. The hard structure of the range grew
visible: it leaped up against the blue sky in rocky fluted ribs,
like the manifold sheaves of late Gothic pillars surrounding the
rounded high summit called Walantar with a palisade of spikes.
The path was so steep that even the lightly laden mules had
to be disburdened of our weight. In little over two hours
we climbed 2,000 feet.
" This bitterness, this roughness, for the sons of Adam,"
said the new muleteer, as he followed me.
[86]