I AM JUST A trifle ashamed of the luxury of those camps of ours, and our enjoyment of them. Sleeping on the ground this last summer in Montana, where I had gone to “ride the circle” on a cow and calf round-up, I found old Mother Earth just a bit harder than I had remembered her. Is it that the years are moving on? Or is the luxury of yesterday the necessity of today?
I told some of those cowboys of our iron beds, with springs and mattresses, of our tables and washstands, our eight chairs and our Oriental rugs, and they were extremely impressed.
“How much does a camel pack?” they asked. And I airily told them a thousand pounds. But I am not sure of this; I only know that when one of them had ceased to rumble like distant thunder and began a pitiful sort of squeal, the Arabs would callously go on loading. And the wretched beast, the rope finally unloosed from its doubled knees as it knelt, would stagger to its feet and take a tentative step or two.
If it did not collapse, then the load was all right.
One of the earliest experiences of the trip was with a luggage camel, as we prepared to leave our first camp. It was a great gray beast, and when the pack saddle had been adjusted it gave a snort of defiance, broke its ropes and started for home. The last vision we had of it as it ran was as it topped a sand dune at forty miles an hour, its pack straps flying, while all ten of the men picked up their long skirts and raced after it.
They found it in the Arab village four miles away, whimpering against a mud wall, and beat it well and brought it back. But somehow I never could think of that flight as funny; it was despairing, tragic.
On this rebel and three other camels, then, our camp was carried. Three large circular tents were our shelters, erected umbrella-fashion oil great center poles, each pole carried in two sections; the tops were extended by ropes fastened to stakes driven into the sand, and the side walls were then hung from the tops.
Set in a row on the desert, the first one was always the cook tent. In it sat the boxes and panniers which carried our supplies and the charcoal stove on which Mohammed, the cook, produced his seven-course dinners. That stove in itself was a masterpiece of simplicity. It consisted merely of an iron trough on legs. The bottom of the trough was filled with small holes like a sieve, for air, and on its bed of burning charcoal Mohammed set out his pots and kettles in a row, a battered but savory procession which flaunted its rich and odorous jets of steam like banners.
Next the dining tent.
No ordinary tent this, but one of the finest specimens of the tent-maker’s art. It had been made in the Street of the Tent-Makers in Cairo, where all day long men sit cross-legged on the earthen floors of their workrooms, their hands calloused from the heavy canvas, cutting out designs in vivid colors and sewing them to the thick cream-colored base.
Here was Cleopatra, in red and blue, reclining on a yellow barge upon a bright green Nile; here was Seti I as a youth, in a rose skirt and not much more, except the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt; here were slaves in golden yellow collars, and Sphinxes and camels, pyramids and donkeys, and gods with the heads of beasts and sacred bulls—all in strong and primitive colors. And all sewed with millions of stitches to make our tent a gorgeous thing, and to bring into the desert the color it so badly lacks.
No wonder the Bedouin loves color, and puts it in his dress. No wonder the rugs of the desert dwellers are studies in color rather than in design. For the desert has no color, save in the sky at sunset. Then there comes an hour when rose gilds the tips of the rolling dunes, and violet shadows rise in the valleys, but all too soon they are gone. For an hour, or less, the desert borrows the finery of the sunset and glows in borrowed raiment. Then night falls, and it is like an Arab woman, clad in soft and trailing black.
So—our dining tent.
As we rode into the camp after our roundabout day Abou Taleb, the waiter, would be standing there, ready to serve us our tea. A red tarbush, a long white gown held in with a bright red belt, and red slippers, that was Abou Taleb. No stockings, for Abou Taleb was really happiest when his bare feet were on the warm sand. All day long he marched afoot with the caravan, his slippers packed carefully away. But at five o’clock, ready to serve tea, he put them on again.
They were, in a way, his livery.
But we are not through with the dining tent.
Inside there would be a table. A real table, already laid for dinner, with a white cloth, napkins, glassware, china and silver. Even two tall brass candle-sticks with candles! The sand was covered with Oriental rugs, and at one side of the tent inside the door was Abou Taleb’s serving table. On it already were his extra plates, the dinner wine, Scotch and soda, nuts, raisins and candies!
It was at this point in my narrative that those cowboys in the Montana mountains Degan to stir uneasily on the ground. They had swallowed the tents and the rugs, but they stuck at the candy.
“And you packed all that stuff in?”
“We did indeed.”
“Hi, dad!” they called to the cook. “You come here and learn something.”
Usually, however, we arrived too early for dinner. The camels would kneel, we would slide off them stiffly, take our respective sunburns and our weary bodies to the bedroom tent, and Mohammed would boil the water for our tea.