HI JOLLY!

By Jim Kjelgaard

Illustrated by Kendall Rossi

Dodd, Mead & Company New York 1960

© by Eddy Kjelgaard, 1959.

Second printing

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher

The general situation and many of the events described in this book are based upon historical facts. However, the fictional characters are wholly imaginative: they do not portray and are not intended to portray any actual persons.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-6197

Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N. Y.

Dedicated to
DOROTHY AND ED HANSEN

Contents

1. Ali Finds the Dalul

The first gray light of very early morning was just starting to thin the black night when Ali opened his eyes. He came fully awake, with no lingering period that was part sleep and part wakefulness, but he kept exactly the same position he had maintained while slumbering. Until he knew just what lay about him, he must not move at all.

Motion, even the faintest stir and even in this dim light, was sure to attract the eye of whoever might be near. In this Syrian desert, where only the reckless turned their backs to their own caravan companions, whoever might be near—or for that matter far—could be an enemy.

When Ali finally moved, it was to extend his right hand, very slowly and very stealthily, to the jeweled dagger that lay snugly sheathed beneath the patched and tattered robe that served him as burnous by day, and bed and bed covering by night. When his fingers curled around the hilt, he breathed more easily. Next to a camel—of course a dalul, or riding camel—a dagger was the finest and most practical of possessions, as well as the best of friends.

As for owning a dalul, Ali hadn't even hoped to get so much as a baggage camel for this journey. When it finally became apparent that the celestial rewards of a trip to Mecca would be augmented by certain practical advantages if he made his pilgrimage now, he had just enough silver to pay for the ihram, or ceremonial robe that he must don before setting foot in the Holy City. Even then, it had been necessary to provide Mustapha, that cheating dog of a tailor, with four silver coins—and two lead ones—and Mustapha had himself to thank for that! When Ali came to ask the price, it was five pieces of silver. When he returned to buy, it was six.

But the ihram, as well as the fifth silver coin which Mustapha might have had if he'd retained a proper respect for a bargain, were now safe beneath Ali's burnous. The dagger was a rare and beautiful thing. It had been the property of some swaggering desert chief who, while visiting Damascus, Ali's native city, had imprudently swaggered into a dark corner.

Though he frowned upon killing fellow humans for other than the most urgent reasons, and he disapproved completely of assassins who slew so they might rob, it never even occurred to Ali that he was obliged to do anything except disapprove. He knew the usual fate of swaggering desert chieftains who entered the wrong quarters of Damascus, and, when the inevitable happened, he did not spring to the rescue. That was not required by his code of self-preservation. So the assassin snatched his victim's purse and fled without any intervention. Ali got the dagger.

In the light of the journey he was undertaking, and the manner in which he was undertaking it, a dagger was infinitely more precious than the best-filled purse. Mecca was indeed a holy city, but of those who traveled the routes leading to it, not all confined themselves to holy thoughts and deeds. Many a pilgrim had had his throat slit for a trifle, or merely because some bandit felt the urge to practice throat slitting. A dagger smoothed one's path, and, as he waited now with his hand on the hilt of his protective weapon, Ali thought wryly that his present path was in sore need of smoothing.

He'd left Damascus two weeks ago, intending to offer his services, as camel driver, to the Amir of the nearby village of Sofad. He would then travel to Mozarib with his employer's caravan. The very fact that there would be force behind