—today is the Day of the Sucklings!”

He cried out, “May my mother be bereaved—has Akwaʿ caught up with us at daybreak?”

“Yes, you enemy of your own soul,” I replied.

It was in fact the same man I had wounded that morning, so I loosed another shaft; two arrows were now lodged in him.

They abandoned two horses, and I drove both to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, who was still at the water-hole from which I had turned them back—Dhū Qarad—with five hundred men around him. There was Bilāl, who had slaughtered a camel from the spoil I had left behind and was roasting it for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. I said,

“O Messenger of Allah, allow me to pick a hundred of your companions. I shall overtake them under cover of darkness so that not one of them will survive to bear tidings.”

He asked, “Would you really do that, Salamah?”

“Yes,” I said.

He laughed until I could see his molars gleaming in the firelight, then added, “By now they are being entertained in the territory of Ghatafān.”

Before long a man arrived and reported that the raiders had stopped with a certain Ghatafānī who slaughtered a camel for them; but as they began to skin it they saw a cloud of dust and fled.

When morning came, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared, “The finest of our horsemen is Abū Qatādah, and the finest of our foot soldiers is Salamah.”

He awarded me the share of both a mounted man and an infantryman, then seated me behind him on al-ʿAḍbāʾ and we set off homeward to Medina.

When we were about a forenoon’s distance away, a man renowned for never being outpaced kept calling out, “Who will race me to Medina?”

He repeated the challenge several times, so I said, “Will you not honor the honorable or respect the noble?”

“None save the Messenger of Allah ﷺ,” he replied.

I said, “O Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be your ransom, let me race him.”

He said, “If you wish.”

So I told the challenger, “Go.” I let him gain a rise or two so that I could conserve my strength, then I sprinted, caught up with him, tapped him between the shoulders and said, “By Allah, I have beaten you”—or words to that effect.

The Prophet laughed and said, “I thought as much,” and we continued until we entered Medina.