and set up shop to one side. A broken bolt
on an aged Lebel rifle was quickly repaired, a copper cooking pot
brazed, some harness tinkered with.

Of a sudden, Moussa-ag-Amastan said, "But your women, your families,
where are they?"

The one who had been introduced as Abrahim el Bakr, an open-faced man
whose constant smiling seemed to take a full ten years off what must
have been his age, explained. "On the big projects, one can find
employment only if he allows his children to attend the new schools. So
our wives and children remain near Tamanrasset while the children learn
the lore of books."

"Rouma schools!" one of the warriors sneered.

"Oh, no. There are few Roumas remaining in all the land now," the smith
said easily. "Those that are left serve us in positions our people as
yet cannot hold, in construction of the dams, in the bringing of trees
to the desert, but soon, even they will be unneeded."

"_Our_ people?" Moussa-ag-Amastan rumbled ungraciously. "You are smiths.
The smiths have no people. You are neither Kel Rela, Tegehe Mellet,
Taitoq, nor even Teda, Chaambra, or Ouled Tidrarin."

One of the smiths said easily, "In the great new construction camps, in
the new towns, with their many ways to work and become rich, the tribes
are breaking up. Tuareg works next to Teda and a Moor next to a former
Haratin serf." He added, as though unthinkingly, even as he displayed an
aluminum pan to a wide-eyed Tuareg matron, "Indeed, even the clans break
up and often Tuareg marries Arab or Sudanese or Rifs down from the
north ... or even we Enaden."

The clansmen were suddenly silent, in shocked surprise.

"That cannot be true!" the elderly chief snapped.

Omar ben Crawf looked at him mildly. "Why should my follower lie?"

"I do not know, but we will talk of it later, away from the women and
children who should not hear such abominations." The chief switched
subjects. "But you have no flocks with you. How are we to pay for these
things, these services?"

"With money."

The old man's face, what little could be seen through his teguelmoust,
darkened. "We have little money in the Ahaggar."

The one named Omar nodded. "But we are short of meat and will buy
several goats and perhaps a lamb, a chicken, eggs. Then, too, as you
have noted, we have left our women at home. We will need the services of
cooks, some one to bring water. We will hire servants."

The other said gruffly, "There are some Bela who will serve y