Osman Bâki was entertained. He watched the contest with twinkling china blue eyes—his mother had been a Georgian slave and he was as fair as a Swede.
“For whom? For what?” Ortho exclaimed. “If she slips past me the infantry will catch her, or some farmer who will beat her life out. Why does she object to me? I have treated her kindly—as kindly as she will allow.”
Osman twirled his little yellow mustache. “Truly, but these people have no reason, only a mad pride. One cannot reason with madness, Kaid. Oh, I know them. When I was in the service of the deys . . .”
He delivered an anecdote from his unexampled repertoire proving the futility of arguing with a certain class of Arab with anything more subtle than a bullet.
“Sell her in Morocco,” he advised. “She is pretty, will fetch a good sum.”
“No, I’m going to try my hand first,” said Ortho stubbornly.
“You’ll get it bitten,” said the Turk, eying the telltale marks on Ortho’s face with amusement. “For my part I prefer a quiet life—in the home.”
They straggled into Morocco City ten days later to find the Sultan in residence for the winter, building sanctuaries and schools with immense energy.
Ortho hoped for the governorship of an outlying post where he would be more or less his own master, get some pig-hunting and extort backsheesh from the country folk under his protection; but it was not to be. He was ordered to quarter his stalwarts in the kasba and join the Imperial Guard. Having been in the Guard before at Mequinez, having influence in the household and getting a wind-fall in the way of eight months’ back pay, he contrived to bribe himself into possession of a small house overlooking the Aguedal Gardens, close to the Ahmar Gate.
There he installed the Arab girl and a huge old negress to look after her.
Then he set to and gave his unfortunate men the stiffening of their lives.
He formed his famous black horses into one troop, graded the others by colors and drilled the whole all day long.
Furthermore, he instituted a system of grooming and arm-cleaning hitherto unknown in the Moroccan forces—all on the Fleischmann recipe. Did his men show sulks, he immediately up-ended and bastinadoed them. This did not make him popular, but Osman Bâki supported him with bewildered loyalty and he kept the _mokadem_ and the more desperate rascals on his side by a judicious distribution of favors and money. Nevertheless he did not stroll abroad much after dark and then never unattended.