When Saleh grew old, he forbade the Thamudites to worship idols, and he spoke to them of the true and only God. But they said, “What miracle can you work, to prove that your mission is from God?”[275] Then he said, “Oh, my people, a she-camel that shall come from God shall be to you for a sign. Let her go and eat on the earth, and do her no injury, that a terrible retribution fall not upon you.”[276] Now Saleh had asked them what miracle they desired, and they had answered, “Bring out of the rock a camel with red hair, and a colt of a camel also with red hair; let them eat grass, and we will believe.” Saleh said to them, “What you ask is easy,” and he prayed. Then the rock groaned and clave asunder, and there came out a she-camel with her foal, and their hair was red, and they began to eat grass. Then the Thamudites exclaimed, “He is a magician!” and they would not believe in him. The camel went to the perpetual fountain, and she drank it up, so that from that day forward from their spring they could get no water, and they suffered from thirst. The Thamudites went to Saleh and said, “We need water!” Saleh replied, “The fountain shall flow one day for you, and one day for the camel.” So it was agreed that the camel should drink alternate days with the people of the land, and that alternate days each should be without water whilst the other was drinking. Then Saleh said, for he saw that the people hated the camel and her foal, “Beware that you slay not these animals, for the day that they perish, great shall be your punishment.” The she-camel lived thirty years among the Thamudites, but God revealed to Saleh that they were bent on slaying the camel, and he said, “The slayer will be a child with red hair and blue eyes.” Now the Thamudites ordered ten midwives to attend on the women in their confinement, and if a child were born with the signs indicated by the prophet, it was to be destroyed instantly. Nine children had thus been killed, and the parents conceived a deadly animosity against Saleh the prophet, and formed a design to slay him. One of the chiefs among the Thamudites had a son born to him with red hair and blue eyes, and the nurses would have destroyed it, but the nine men spake to the father of the child, and they banded together, and saved the infant. Now when this child had attained the age of eleven, he became great and handsome; and each of the parents whose children had been put to death, when he saw him, said, “Such an one would have been my son, had not he been slain at the instigation of Saleh.” And they combined to put the prophet to death. They said among themselves, “We will kill him outside the city, and returning, say we were elsewhere when he was murdered.” Having formed this project, they left the city and placed themselves under a rock, awaiting his exit from the gates. But God commanded the rock, and it fell and crushed them all.