“The trouble with Arizona is that the Earps are already there,” Happy Jack Marco said. “We’ve all seen enough of the dang Earps, I guess.”

“I’ve no doubt they’re surly,” Isinglass said, “but it ain’t likely they’re as surly as Mesty, when he’s bent on war.”

He looked down the street. We all looked down the street, and not since Cook informed me that J. M. Chittim had just died have I had such a shock.

A red camel stood there, and on the red camel sat the tallest black man anyone in Greasy Corners had ever seen.

22.

In my novelette The Negro of the Nile; or, Son of the Mahdi I made up a good deal of nonsense about Mesty-Woolah, and the history boys later mixed some of it in with the truth, which in this case is easily related.

Lord Snow, Isinglass’s partner, had been a great one for expeditions; he took one to the Nile with the notion of acquiring some camels as breeding stock, his plan being to get the U.S. Army interested in a camel cavalry of some sort.

Mesty-Woolah was not the son of the Mahdi, but he was the greatest camel thief in his part of Africa. When Lord Snow met Mesty-Woolah, Mesty’s youngest son was at the point of death with a fever, which Lord Snow promptly cured with some good English medicine. In gratitude Mesty-Woolah agreed to accompany Lord Snow to Texas to handle his camel herd; they had scarcely arrived when Lord Snow, who was forever wandering off without his coat, got caught in a plains blizzard, developed a pneumonia which was beyond the reach of even the best English medicines, and died.

Neither the army nor Isinglass had any patience with the notion of a camel cavalry at that time. I believe the army later tried it down in the Geronimo country, with poor success.

Most of Lord Snow’s camel herd went wild—I’m told there are still wild camels in the Texas desert. Mesty-Woolah owed no debt to Isinglass, yet he stayed on at the Whiskey Glass ranch, becoming far and away the most feared man in the West.

“Mesty stayed for the warring,” Isinglass informed me during one of those grim dinners at the castle, with him dripping meat drippings as Cecily Snow dripped contempt.

“I would have thought he could find plenty of war in Africa,” I said.

“Not enough to suit Mesty,” Isinglass said. “He says the A-rabs and the bush niggers have about lost their ginger. He thought highly of the Comanches as fighting men, and he compliments the Apache, up to a point.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Oh, Mesty has no respect for me, or any white man,” Isinglass said. “I just provide the targets.”

“Living targets, of course,” Cecily said lightly.

“Once Mesty chooses you for a target, the living is brief,” the old man replied.