"FIN TIREUR" By Robert Hichens Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers Copyright, 1905 Two years ago I was travelling by diligence in the Sahara Desert on thegreat caravan route, which starts from Beni-Mora and ends, they say, atTombouctou. For fourteen hours each day we were on the road, and eachevening about nine o'clock we stopped at a Bordj, or Travellers' House, ate a hasty meal, threw ourselves down on our gaudy Arab rugs, and sleptheavily till the hour before dawn, drugged by fatigue, and by thestrong air of the desert. In the late afternoon of the third day of ourjourneying we drove into a sandstorm. A great wind arose, carryingwith it innumerable multitudes of sand grains, which whirled aboutthe diligence and the struggling horses, blotting out the desert ascompletely as a London fog blots out the street on a November day. The cold became intense, and very soon I began to long for the nexthalting-place. "Where do we stop to-night?" I shouted to the French driver, who, withhis yellow toque pulled down over his ears, was chirping encouragementto his horses. "Sidi-Hamdane, " he answered, without turning his head. "At the inn of'Fin Tireur. '" Three hours later we drew up before a low building, from which alight shone kindly, and I scrambled down stiffly, and lurched into thelonged-for shelter. There was a man in the doorway, a short, sturdy, middle-aged Frenchman, with strong features, a tuft of grey beard, heavy eyebrows, and dark, prominent eyes, with a hot, shining look in them. "_Bon soir, m'sieu_, " he said. "_Bon soir!_, " I answered. This was my host, the innkeeper whom the driver had called "Fin Tireur. " I found out afterwards that he was not only landlord of the desolateinn, but cook, garçon; in fact, the whole personnel. He lived thereabsolutely alone, and was the only European in this Arab village lost inthe great spaces of the Sahara. This information I drew from him whilehe waited upon me at dinner, which I ate in solitude. My companionsof the diligence were Arabs, who had melted away like ghosts into thedesolation so soon as the diligence had rolled into the paved courtyardround which the one-storied house was built. When I had finished dinner I lit a cigar. I was now quite alone in thebare _salle-à-manger_. The storm was at its height; the sand was drivenlike hail against the wooden shutters of the windows, and I felt drearyenough. The French driver was no doubt supping in the kitchen withthe landlord, perhaps beside a fire, I began to long for company, forwarmth, and I resolved to join them. I opened the door, therefore, andpeered out into the passage. There was no sound of voices; but I saw alight at a little distance, went towards it, and found myself in a smallkitchen, where the landlord was sitting alone by a red wood fire in themidst of his pots and pans, smoking a thin black cigar, and readinga dirty number of the _Journal Anti-Juif_ of Algiers. He put it downpolitely as I came in. "You're alone, monsieur, " I said. "Yes, m'sieu. The driver has gone to see to the horses. " I offered him one of my Havanas, which he accepted with alacrity, anddrew up with him before the fire. "You have been living here long, monsieur?" "Twenty years, m'sieu. " "Twenty years alone in this desert place!" "Nineteen years alone, m'sieu. Before that I had my little Marie. " "Marie?" "My child, m'sieu. She is buried in the sand behind the inn. " I looked at him in silence. His brown, wrinkled face was calm, but inhis prominent eyes there was still the hot shining look I had observedin them when I arrived. "The palms begin there, " he added. "Year by year I have saved what Icould, and now I have bought all the palm-trees near where she lies. " He puffed away at his Havana. "You come from France?" I asked presently. "From the Midi--I was born at Cassis, near Marseille. " "Don't you ever intend to go back there?" "Never, m'sieu. Would you have me desert my child?" "But, " I said gently, "she is dead. " "Yes; but I have promised her that her _bon papa_ will lie with herpresently for company. Leave her alone with the Arabs!" A sudden look of horror came into his face. "You don't like the Arabs?" "Like the dirty dogs! You haven't been told about me, m'sieu?" "Only that your name was Fin Tireur. '" "'Fin Tireur. ' Yes; that's what they call me in the desert. " "You're a sportsman? A 'capital shot'?" He laughed suddenly, and his laugh made me feel cold. "Oh! they don't call me 'Fin Tireur' because I can hit gazelle, andbring them home for supper. No, no! Shall I tell you why?" He looked at me half defiantly, half wistfully, I thought. "But if I do, perhaps your stomach will turn against the food I cookedwith these hands, " he added suddenly, stretching out his hands towardsme, "You are English, m'sieu?" "Yes. " "Then I daresay you won't understand. " "I think I shall, " I answered, looking full at him. The way he had spoken of his child had drawn me to him. Whatever he haddone, I felt that chivalry and tenderness were in this man. "Why do they call you 'Fin Tireur'?" "The men of the Midi, m'sieu, arenot like the men of the rest of France, " said Fin Tireur--"at leastso they say. We are boasters, perhaps; but we've got more love ofadventure, more wish to see the world, and do something big in it. They're talkers, you know, in the Midi, and they tell of what they'vedone. I heard them at Cassis when I was a boy, and one day I saw aZouave in front of the inn balcony, where folks come on fête days to eatthe bouillabaisse. The talk I had heard made me wish to rove; but when Isaw the Zouave, in his big red trousers and blue and red jacket, Isaid to myself: 'As soon as my three years' service is over I'll go toAfrica, and make my fortune. ' I did my three years at Grenoble, m'sieu, and when it was done I carried out my resolve. I came to Africa; but Ididn't come alone. " He puffed at his cigar for a minute or two, and the hot look in his eyesbecame more definite, like a fanned flame. "You took a comrade?" "I took a wife, a girl of Cassis. A good girl she was then. " He paused again, then continued, in rather a loud voice: "She was good, m'sieu, because she had seen nothing. That's often the way. It was Iwho put it into her head that there were things to be seen better thanrocks, and dead white dusty roads, and fishing boats against the quay. I've thought of that since I--since I got my name of Fin Tireur. Hername was Marie, and she was eighteen when we stood before the priest. Next day we went to Marseille, and took the boat for Algiers. Our headswere full of I don't know what. We thought we were clever ones, andshould do well in a country like Africa. And so we did at first. Wegot into a hotel at Algiers. She was housemaid, and I was porter in thehall, and what with the goings and comings--strangers giving us a littlewhen we'd done our best for them--we made some money, and we saved it. And I wish to God we'd spent it, every sou!" His voice became fierce for a moment. Then he continued, with an obviouseffort to be calm: "You see, m'sieu, at Algiers we had nothing to say tothe Arabs. With the money we'd saved we left Algiers, and came into thedesert to take a café which was to let near the station at Beni-Mora. " "I've just come from there. " "They call it 'Au Retour du Sahara. '" "I've had coffee there. " "That was ours, and there little Marie was born. In those days thereweren't many strangers in Beni-Mora. The railway had only just comethere, and it was wild enough. Very few, except the Arabs. Well, theywere often our customers. We learned to talk a bit of their language, and they a bit of ours; and, having no friends out there, I might say wemade sort of friends with some of them. The dirty dogs! The camels!" He struck his clenched hand down on the table. As he talked he had losthis former consciousness of my close observation. "But they know how to please women, m'sieu. "They are often very handsome, " I said. "It isn't only that. They can stare a woman down as a wild beastcan, and that's what women like. I never so much as looked on them asmen--not in that way, for a Cassis woman, m'sieu. But Marie----" He choked, ground his teeth on his cigar stump, let it drop, and stampedout the glowing end on the brick floor with his heel. "She served them, m'sieu, " he resumed, after clearing his throat. "ButI was mostly there, and I don't see how--but women can always find theway. Well, one day she went to what they call a sand-diviner. She didn'tpretend anything. She told me she wanted to go, and I was ready. I wasalways ready that she should have any little pleasure. I couldn't leavethe café, so she went off alone to a room he had by the Garden of theGazelles, at the end of the dancing-street. " "I know--over the place where they smoke the kief. " "She didn't answer, but went and sat down under the arbour, opposite towhere they wash the clothes. I followed her, for she looked ill. "'Did he read in the sand for you?' I said. "'Yes, ' she said; 'he did. ' "'What things did he read?' "She turned, and looked right at me. 'That my fate lies in the sand, 'she said--'and yours, and hers. ' "And she pointed at little Marie, who was playing with a yellow kid wehad then just by the door. "'What's that to be afraid of?' I asked her. 'Haven't we come to thedesert to make our fortune, and isn't there sand in the desert?' "'Not much by here, ' she said. "And that's true, m'sieu. It's hard ground, you know, at Beni-Mora. " "Yes, " I said, offering him another cigar. He refused it with a quick gesture. "She never would say another word as to what the sand-diviner had toldher; but she was never the same from that day. She was as uneasy as alost bitch, m'sieu; and she made me uneasy too. Sometimes she wouldn'tspeak to our little one when the child ran to her, and sometimes she'dcatch her up, and kiss her till the little one's cheek was as red as ifyou'd been striking it. And then one day, after dark, she went. " "Went!" "I'd been ill with fever, and gone to spend the night at the sulphurbaths; you know, m'sieu, Hammam-Salahkin, under the mountains. I cameback just at dawn to open the café. When I got off my mule at the doorI heard"--his face twitched convulsively--"the most horrible crying ofa child. It was so horrible that I just stood there, holding on to thebridle of the mule, and listening, and didn't dare go in. I'd heardchildren cry often enough before; but--_mon Dieu!_--never like that. Atlast I dropped the bridle, and went in, with my legs shaking under me. I found the little one alone in the house, and like a mad thing. She'dbeen alone all night. " His face set rigidly. "And her mother knew I should be all night at the Hammam, " he said. "FinTireur--yes, it was coming back, and finding my little one left likethat in such a place, made me earn the name. " He fell suddenly into a moody silence. I broke it by saying: "It was thesand-diviner?" He looked at me sharply. "I don't know. " "You never found out?" "At Beni-Mora the women go veiled, " he said harshly. Suddenly I realised the horror of the situation: the deserted husbandliving on with his child in the midst of the ordained and close secrecyof Beni-Mora, where many of the women never set foot out of doors, andthose who do, unless they are the public dancers, are so heavily veiledthat their features cannot be recognised. "What did you do?" I asked. "I searched, as far as one can search in an Arab town, and found outnothing. I wanted to tear the veil from every woman in the place; andthen I was sent away from Beni-Mora. " "By whom?" "The French authorities, my own countrymen, " he laughed bitterly. "Tosave me from getting myself murdered, m'sieu. " "You would have been. " "Why not? Then I came here to keep the inn for the diligence thatcarries the mails to the south, for I wouldn't leave the countrytill----" He paused. "And the sand-diviner?" "I left him at Beni-Mora. He smiled, and said he knew no more than I;and perhaps he didn't. How was I to tell?" "But your name of Fin Tireur?" "Ah!"--the thing in his eyes glowed like a thing red-hot--"I'd been hereeleven months when, one afternoon of summer, just near sunset, I hearda noise of drums beating and African pipes screaming, and the snarl ofcamels on the road you came to-night. I was in the house, in this roomwhere we are sitting now, and little Marie was playing just outside bythe well, so that I could see her through the window. By the sounds, Iknew a great caravan was coming up, and passing towards the south. Theyalways water at the well, and I stood by the window to see them. LittleMarie stood too, shading her eyes with her bit of a hand. The drums andpipes got louder, and round the corner of the inn came as big a caravanas I've ever seen; near a hundred camels, horsemen, and led mules anddonkeys, Kabyle dogs and goats, the music playing all the time, and aCaïd's flag flying in the front. They made for the well, as I knew theywould, and little Marie stood all the while watching them. M'sieu, therewere square packs on some of the camels, and veiled women on the packs. " He looked across at me hard. "Veiled women?" I repeated. "When they got to the well they made the camels kneel for the women toget down; and one of the women, when she was down, caught sight of Mariestanding there, with her little hand shading her eyes. That woman gave agreat cry behind her veil. I heard it, m'sieu, as I stood by the windowthere, and I saw the woman run at the little one. " He got up from his seat slowly, and stood by the wooden shutter, againstwhich the sand was driven by the wind. "In a place like this, m'sieu, one keeps a revolver here. " He put his hand to a pocket at the back of his breeches, brought out arevolver, and pointed it at the shutter. "When I heard the woman cry I took my revolver out. When I saw the womanrun I fired, and the bullet struck the veil. " He put the revolver back into his pocket, and sat down again quietly. "And that's why they call me Fin Tireur. " I said nothing, and sat staring at him. "When the camels had been watered the caravan went on. " "But--but the Arabs------" "The Caïd had the body tied across a donkey--they told me. " "You didn't see?" "No. I took the little one in. She was screaming, and I had to seeto her. It was two days afterwards, when I was at the market, that ascorpion stung her. She was dead when I came back. Well, m'sieu, are yousorry you ate your supper?" Before I could reply, the door opening into the courtyard gaped, and thedriver entered, followed by a cloud of whirling sand grains. "_Nom d'un chien!_" he exclaimed. "Get me a tumbler of wine, for thelove of God, Fin Tireur. My throat's full of the sand. _Sacré nom d'unnom d'un nom!_" He pulled off his coat, turned it upside down, and shook the sand outof the pockets, while Fin Tireur went over to the corner of the kitchenwhere the bottles stood in a row against the earthen wall.