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Read Ebook: Fin Tireur 1905 by Hichens Robert
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"FIN TIREUR"
Two years ago I was travelling by diligence in the Sahara Desert on the great caravan route, which starts from Beni-Mora and ends, they say, at Tombouctou. For fourteen hours each day we were on the road, and each evening 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 slept heavily till the hour before dawn, drugged by fatigue, and by the strong air of the desert. In the late afternoon of the third day of our journeying we drove into a sandstorm. A great wind arose, carrying with it innumerable multitudes of sand grains, which whirled about the diligence and the struggling horses, blotting out the desert as completely 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 next halting-place.
"Where do we stop to-night?" I shouted to the French driver, who, with his yellow toque pulled down over his ears, was chirping encouragement to 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 a light shone kindly, and I scrambled down stiffly, and lurched into the longed-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.
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 desolate inn, but cook, gar?on; in fact, the whole personnel. He lived there absolutely alone, and was the only European in this Arab village lost in the great spaces of the Sahara. This information I drew from him while he waited upon me at dinner, which I ate in solitude. My companions of the diligence were Arabs, who had melted away like ghosts into the desolation so soon as the diligence had rolled into the paved courtyard round which the one-storied house was built.
"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, and drew 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 in his prominent eyes there was still the hot shining look I had observed in them when I arrived.
"The palms begin there," he added. "Year by year I have saved what I could, 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."
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, and bring 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 cooked with these hands," he added suddenly, stretching out his hands towards me, "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 had done, I felt that chivalry and tenderness were in this man.
"Why do they call you 'Fin Tireur'?" "The men of the Midi, m'sieu, are not like the men of the rest of France," said Fin Tireur--"at least so they say. We are boasters, perhaps; but we've got more love of adventure, 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've done. I heard them at Cassis when I was a boy, and one day I saw a Zouave in front of the inn balcony, where folks come on f?te days to eat the bouillabaisse. The talk I had heard made me wish to rove; but when I saw the Zouave, in his big red trousers and blue and red jacket, I said to myself: 'As soon as my three years' service is over I'll go to Africa, 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 I didn't come alone."
He puffed at his cigar for a minute or two, and the hot look in his eyes became 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 I who put it into her head that there were things to be seen better than rocks, 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. Her name 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 heads were full of I don't know what. We thought we were clever ones, and should do well in a country like Africa. And so we did at first. We got into a hotel at Algiers. She was housemaid, and I was porter in the hall, and what with the goings and comings--strangers giving us a little when 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 obvious effort to be calm: "You see, m'sieu, at Algiers we had nothing to say to the Arabs. With the money we'd saved we left Algiers, and came into the desert to take a caf? 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 there weren't many strangers in Beni-Mora. The railway had only just come there, and it was wild enough. Very few, except the Arabs. Well, they were 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 we made 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 lost his former consciousness of my close observation.
"But they know how to please women, m'sieu.
"They are often very handsome," I said.
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