The newcomer shrugged. “I am Omar ben Crawf and these are my followers, Abrahim el Bakr Ma el Ainin, Keni Ballalou and Bey-ag-Akhamouk. We come today from Tamanrasset and we are smiths, as we can prove. As is known, there is high pay to be earned by working in the oil fields, at the dams on the Niger, in the afforestation projects, in the sinking of the new wells whose pumps utilize the rays of the sun, in the developing of the great new oases. There is much Rouma money to be made in such work and my men and I have bought these vehicles specially built in the new factories in Dakar for desert use.”

“Slave work!” one of Moussa-ag-Amastan’s kinsmen sneered.

Omar ben Crawf shrugged in obvious amusement, but there was a warmth and vitality in the man that quickly affected even strangers. “Perhaps,” he said. “But times change, as every man knows, and today there no longer need be hunger, nor illness, nor any want—if a man will but work a fraction of each day.”

“Work is for slaves,” Moussa-ag-Amastan barked.

The newcomer refused to argue. “But all slaves have been freed, and where in the past this meant nothing since the Bela had no place to go, no way to live save with his owner, today it is different and any man can go and find work on the many projects that grow everywhere. So the slaves slip away from the Tuareg, and the Teda and Chaamba. Soon there will be no more slaves to do the work about your encampments. And then what, man of the desert?”

“We’ll fight!” Moussa-ag-Amastan growled. “We Tuareg are warriors, bedouin, free men. We will never be slaves.”

“Inshallah. If God wills it,” the smith agreed politely.

“Show us your wares,” the old chieftain snapped. “We chatter like women. Talk can wait until the evening meal and in the men’s quarters of my tent.” He approached the now parked vehicles and his followers crowded after him. From the tents debouched women and children. The children were completely nude, and the Tuareg women were unveiled, for such are the customs of the Ahaggar Tuareg that the men go veiled but the women do not.