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."
"_Hmm-ph._ Didn't know they landed any such critters out thisaway."
"They didn't," Ali informed him. "Lieutenant Beale brought twenty-five camels with him when he surveyed the wagon road from Fort Defiance."
"_Wagh!_" Hud Perkins ejaculated. "Then 'tis 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.