efore it and today occupy a position
of honor and affluence in their former land."

They stared at him.

"And give up the old ways?" Guemama demanded. "Become no longer
nomads, no longer honorable warriors, but serfs, slaves, working with
one's hands upon the land and with the oil-dirty machines of the
Roumi?"

The chiefs muttered angrily.

Crawford said hurriedly, "No! Never! In our great conferences, my
viziers and I decided that the Tuareg could never so change. The
Tuareg must die, as did the Northern Cheyenne before he would become a
city dweller, a worker of the land."

"Bismillah!" someone muttered.

"Too often," Crawford explained, "do the bringers of these things of
the future, be they Roumi or others, fail to utilize the potential
services of the people of the lands they over-sweep."

"I do not understand you, El Hassan," Melchizedek grumbled. "There is
no room for the Tuareg in this new world of bringing trees to the
desert, of the great trucks which speed across the erg a score of time
the pace of a _hejin_ racing camel, of larger and ever larger oases
with their great towns, their schools, their new industries. If the
Tuareg remains Tuareg, he cannot fit into this new world, it destroys
the old traditions, the old way which is the Tuareg way."

Homer Crawford now turned on the pressure. His voice took on overtones
of the positive, his personality seemed to reach out and seize them,
and even his physical stature seemed to grow.

"Some indeed of the ways of the bedouin must go," he entoned, "but the
Tuareg will survive under my leadership. A people who have throve a
millennium and more in the great wastes of the Sahara have strong
survival characteristics and will blossom, not die, in my new world.
Know, O Melchizedek, that it has been decided that the Ahaggar Tuareg
will be the heart of my Desert Legion. In times of conflict, armed
with the new arms, and riding the new vehicles, they will adapt their
old methods of warfare to this new age. In times of peace they will
patrol the new forests, watching for fire and other disaster, they
will become herdsmen of the new herds and be the police and rescue
forces of this wide area. As the Cheyennes of the olden times of the
land of my birth could have become herdsmen and forest rangers and
have performed similar tasks had they been shown the way."

Homer Crawford let his eyes go from one of them to the next, and his
personality continued to dominate the