" who seldom spoke to her husband save to defend one of their
number from his fits of anger, and who, with her golden hair and her
skin of snow that the fierce sun could not darken, was like the shining
angel who walks at the right hand of a good Mohammedan. They saw no
wrong in Ahmara's presence; but she was haughty and high-tempered, and
took part against them with Stanton. The whisper ran that the
dancing-woman had brought bad luck to the expedition for so long as she
was with the caravan; whereas, if fortune were to come, it would come
through the white girl who nursed the sick and had a smile or a kind
word for the humblest porter. This whisper reached Ahmara's ears through
the wives of the camel-drivers, and at first she was anxious to keep it
from Stanton lest it should prejudice him and put into his head the idea
of leaving her at one of the far apart oasis towns where the caravan
took supplies. But the more she turned over the thought in her
unenlightened mind, the more impossible it seemed to her that Stanton
would give her up. Besides, he was very brave, even braver than the
great chiefs of her own race, for they feared unseen things and omens,
whereas he laughed at their superstition. She used every art of the
professional charmer upon Stanton for the next few days, while she asked
herself whether to tell what she had learnt, or not to tell, were wiser.

When she was convinced that she had made herself more indispensable than
ever, Ahmara put the story into the form that seemed to her very good.
She said that nothing which passed in the caravan could escape her,
because the life of the leader was her life. She wished to be for him
like a lighted candle set at the door of his tent, the flame her spirit,
which felt each breath of evil threatening his safety. The men who hated
the Chief for his power or because he had punished them hated her also
because she was true to him as the blood that beat in his heart.

"Those who are cowards and find the greatness of thy adventures too
great for them, now they have tasted hardship, mutter in secret against
thee," Ahmara said. "There are some who mean to band together and refuse
to follow thee past the last-known oasis which is marked on thy maps.
They say, that from what they have heard, thou art indeed mad to think
that a caravan can live in unknown deserts where there is no water. Once
they believed in thee so firmly if thou hadst told them thou couldst
cause water t