Read Ebook: Hi Jolly! by Kjelgaard Jim Rossi Kendall Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 107 lines and 8204 words, and 3 pages

He did not dare look around, and he did not think of slackening the pace until even Ben Akbar could no longer maintain it and slowed of his own accord. Instantly contrite, Ali drew his mount to a halt.

"I'm sorry, oh brother, that I could let you run so far and fast," he apologized. "Great fear stole my senses. Perhaps I am becoming craven."

The panting Ben Akbar nosed his arm and accepted and ate a lump of sugar. Ali dared look back up the river. He heaved a mighty sigh of relief.

Not only had Ben Akbar run far beyond the sight of any wagons, but far beyond hearing. Here was only the peaceful river, its tule-lined banks disturbed by nothing except a horde of waterfowl and an occasional ripple that marked the wake of a great fish hunting smaller ones in the shallows.

Ali grinned sheepishly. Certainly there had been no real danger; he had fled from shadows. Tongues would wag along many caravan routes if it were known that Hadji Ali had run away from nothing. Just the same, Ali liked this better. He decided to ride farther down the riverbank before crossing.

The farther he went, the lonelier it became and the better he liked it. Presently, his wild flight seemed more amusing than otherwise, and Ali chuckled throatily, but he had no thought of going back up the river. He rounded a bend and saw a dwelling.

Built of driftwood and roofed with adobe, it was a one-room affair. Glassless windows had been cut in such a manner as to admit the morning sun. An adobe fireplace was built against an outside wall and an adobe chimney rose a little above the flat roof.

Ali halted Ben Akbar. He was no longer afraid. There had never been anything about such houses to frighten him. However, if there was any livestock about, he would avoid argument by circling around. If not, it was safe to go directly past.

Then a man came from the house and hailed him, "Come on, stranger! Come on an' light!"

Ali rode ahead to meet a wiry, fierce-eyed man whose uncut hair and long beard were snow-white, but who fought the advancing years as furiously as he had once battled advancing Indians. Everything about him, from his buckskins to the way he had built his house, marked him for what he was. Here was one of the wild men, who had gone where he wished and done as he pleased, and never fretted about anything if he had a gun in his hands and a knife at his belt. Grown too old for such a life, he had chosen to spend the rest of his days here in this isolated spot.

Ali dismounted and the old man extended his hand. "I'm Hud Perkins an' you're welcome."

"I'm Hi Jolly." Ali gave the Americanized version of his name.

Hud Perkins said, "I looked out an' saw a man comin' on a camel, I couldn't believe it! Of course, lots of men come, hardly a week passes but what somebody goes up or down river, but not on camels. Is he tame?"

"Tamer than he was at one time," Ali answered. "He has been among so many people that almost anybody can pet him now."

Hud Perkins said, "Don't know as I'd hold with pettin' him, but such a critter sure makes a man think. On my way out here, I run across a passel of 'em."

Ali's interest quickened. "You did? Where?"

"On the Heely River," Hud Perkins stated, "an' there wasn't rightly a passel. There was five, but five such critters look like a passel. Will yours stay about or do you picket him?"

"He'll stay."

"Then take his gear off an' let him fill up. Plenty of grass hereabouts an' nary a critter to eat it most times."

He turned to Ali. "What's wrong with him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is he good's a horse or mule?"

"Much better," Ali stated.

The old man shook a puzzled head. "That don't hardly jibe with those camels on the Heely. Wasn't nobody payin' them no mind, 'cept some heathen Papagoes that was fixin' to eat 'em. I was tempted to ketch one an' see how it rode, but a cowboy said they wasn't worth ketchin'. The Army fetched 'em from some place in Texas, he said, an' turned 'em loose on the Heely on account they was more fuss than worth."

Ali's heart sank at this first news in more than two years of the camels left behind at Camp Verde, but he told himself that he should have expected nothing else. He drew some comfort from a quick assurance that neither Mimico nor Major Wayne could possibly have accompanied any expedition that would abandon camels. Whoever had loosed those five in the Arizona desert, where they would certainly find conditions to their liking, knew nothing of camels and cared less.

Ali said, "Who left those camels did not know what he was doing."

"Might be I ought to have caught me one anyway, eh?"

"You'd have found it worth your while," Ali assured him.

"Well, I didn't an' I don't know as it would of been doin' me or the camel any favor if I did. Ridin' anythin' don't set like it used to. Come on in, Hi. I'll rouse up some rations."

Ali walked with the old man to his house and sat down on a wooden bench while Hud Perkins busied himself preparing fish from the river and vegetables from his garden. He queried, "If I might ask, where ye been?"

Ali answered, "For the past two years, I've been here in California."

"They didn't," Ali informed him. "Lieutenant Beale brought twenty-five camels with him when he surveyed the wagon road from Fort Defiance."

"What's so?"

"I heard tell of such when I was leavin' Santa Fe to come here," his host informed him. "Some fool, 'twas said, was goin' from Fort Defiance to Californy, usin' camels to lay out a road. Not many believed it. Of them as did, nobody thought the camels would get a pistol shot from Fort Defiance."

"It's true," Ali said. "I was with the expedition."

"Well tie that one!" Hud Perkins marveled. "So camels did come to Californy! What happened to 'em?"

Ali had no immediate answer, for after reaching California, nothing worthwhile had happened. The camels had been shown in various places, including Los Angeles, and had attracted the usual onlookers and sparked the usual stampedes. A few months after arriving, Lieutenant Beale took fourteen of the animals and started back along the surveyed road.

The rest of the herd, with Ali as keeper, had been sent to and was still at Fort Tejon, where Army brass amused itself by putting camels through the usual meaningless paces. Seeing no opportunity for a change, and with all he could stomach of Fort Tejon, Ali had taken Ben Akbar and departed.

Ali answered his host, "They're at Fort Tejon."

Hud Perkins snorted. "Don't blame you for leavin', got no use for Army posts myself. You goin' east?"

"Not all the way," Ali said. "Too far east is no better than too far west. I think I'll go back along the road. I saw a lot of free country there."

Hud Perkins was silent for a long while, then he said quietly, "You saw it two years ago."

"But--" Ali was startled. "It isn't all taken?"

"I don't know," Hud Perkins spoke as a bewildered old man who no longer knew about anything. "Was a time when I figgered the West'd never settle an' a man would always find room. But--Anyhow it's two years since I come out."

Ali asked gravely, "Have there really been so many others?"

His host answered moodily, "I've seen a passel of wagon roads opened up. Whenever there was one, people boiled along it like water pours out of a busted beaver dam."

The specter Ali had seen lurking behind the wagons at Beale's Crossing was again present and again threatened panic.

"Perhaps," he said doubtfully, "I'd better go somewhere else."

"If you can still find such a place," Hud Perkins replied. "Still, like I said, it's two years since I come out. I could be wrong. Why not find out?"

"How?" Ali asked.

"Ride back along the road," Hud Perkins advised him. "See for yourself if it's what you think it is. It's the one way you'll ever know."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet