by Talbot Mundy
Chapter Six"Passing the buck to Allah!"
LAUS LACHRIMABILIS
So now the awaited ripe reward--Your cactus crown! Since I have urged"Get ready for the untoward"Ye bid me reap the wrath I dirged;And I must show the darkened way,Who beckoned vainly in the light!I'll lead. But salt of Dead Sea sprayWere sweeter on my lips to-night!
Oh, days of aching sinews, when I trod the choking dustWith feet afire that could not tire, atremble with the trustMore mighty in my inner man than fear of men without,The word I heard on Kara Dagh and did not dare to doubt--Timely warning, clear to me as starlight after rainWhen, sleepless on eternal hills, I saw the purpose plainAnd left, swift-foot at dawn, obedient, to breakThe news ye said was no avail--advice ye would not take!
Oh,--nights of tireless talking by the hearth of hidden fires--On roofs, behind the trade-bales--among oxen in the byres--Out in rain between the godowns, where the splashing puddles warnOf tiptoeing informers; when I faced the freezing dawnWith set price on my head, but still the set resolve untamed,Not melted by the mockery, by no suspicion shamed,To hide by day in holes, abiding dark and wind and rainThat loosed me straining to the task ye ridiculed again!
Oh, weeks of empty waiting, while the enemy designedIn detail how to loot the stuff ye would not leave behind!Worse weeks of empty agony when, helpless and alone,I watched in hiding for the crops from that seed I had sown;
For dust-clouds that should prove at last Armenia awake--A nation up and coming! I had labored for your sake,I had hungered, I had suffered. Ye had well rewarded thenIf ye had come, and hanged me just to prove that ye were men!
But all the pride was promises, the criticism jeers;Ye had no heart for sacrifice, and I no time for tears.I offered--nay, I gave! I squandered body and breath and soul,I bared the need, I showed the way, I preached a goodly goal,I urged you choose a leader, since your faith in me was dim,I swore to serve the chief ye chose, and teach my lore to him,So he should reap where I had sown. And yet ye bade me wait--And waited till, awake at last, ye bid me lead too late!
And so, in place of ripe reward,Your cactus crown! And I, who urged"Get ready for the untoward"Must drink the dregs of wrath I dirged!Ye bid me set time's finger back!And stage anew the opened fight!I'll lead. But slime of Dead Sea wrackWere sweeter on my lips this night!
The first thought that occurred to each of us four was that Kagighad probably lied, or that he had merely voiced his private opinion,based on expectation. The glare in the distance seemed too big andsolid to be caused by burning houses, even supposing a whole villagewere in flames. Yet there was not any other explanation we couldoffer. A distant cloud of black smoke with bulging red under-bellyrolled away through the darkness like a tremendous mountain range.
We stood in silence trying to judge how far away the thing mightbe, Kagig standing alone with his foot on the parapet, his goat-skincoat hanging like a hussar's dolman, and Monty pacing up and downalong the roof behind us all. The gipsies seemed able to converseby nods and nudges, with now and then one word whispered. Aftera little while Maga whispered in Will's ear, and he went below withher. All the gipsies promptly followed. Otherwise in the darknesswe might not have noticed where Will went.
"That proves she is no gipsy!" vowed Rustum Khan, standing betweenFred and me. "They, would have trusted one of their own kind."
"They call her Maga Jhaere," said I. "The attaman's name is Jhaere.Don't you suppose he's her father?"
"If he were her father he would have no fear," the Rajput answered."All gipsies are alike. Their women will dance the nautch, and promiseunchastity as if that were a little matter. But when it comes toperformance of promises the gitana* is true to the Rom.** It isbecause she is no gipsy that they follow her now to watch. And itis because men say that Americans are Mormons and polygamous, andvery swift in the use of revolvers, that all follow instead of oneor two!"
--------------* Gitana, gipsy young woman.** Rom--Gipsy husband, or family man.--------------
"Go down then, and make sure they don't murder him!" commanded Monty,and Rustum Khan turned to obey with rather ill grace. He contrivedto convey by his manner that he would do anything for Monty, evento the extent of saving the life of a man he disliked. At the momentwhen he turned there came the sound of a troop of horses gallopingtoward us.
"I will first see who comes," he said.
"The blood of Yerkes sahib on your head, Rustum Khan!" Monty answered.At that he went below.
But neither were we destined to remain up there very long. We heardcolossal thumping in the kahveh beneath us and presently the Rajput'shead reappeared through the opening in the roof.
"The fools are barricading the door," he shouted. "They make surethat an enemy outside could burn us inside without hindrance!"
At that Kagig came along the roof to our corner and looked into Monty'seyes. Fred and I stood between the two of them and the parapet,because for the first few seconds we were not sure the Armenian didnot mean murder. His eyes glittered, and his teeth gleamed. Itwas not possible to guess whether or not the hand under his goat-skincoat clutched a weapon.
"It is now that you Eenglis sportmen shall endure a test!" he remarked.
Exactly as in the Yeni Khan in Tarsus when we first met him therewas a moment now of intense repulsion, entirely unaccountable, succeededinstantly by a wave of sympathy. I laughed aloud, remembering howstrange dogs meeting in the street to smell each other are sweptby unexplainable antipathies and equally swift comradeship. He thoughtI laughed at him.
"Neye geldin?" he growled in Turkish. "Wherefore didst thou come?To cackle like a barren hen that sees another laying? Nichevo,"he added, turning his back on me. And that was insolence in Russian,meaning that nobody and nothing could possibly be of less importance.He seemed to keep a separate language for each set of thoughts."Let us go below. Let us stop these fools from making too much trouble,"he added in English. "One man ought to stay on the roof. One oughtto be sufficient."
Since he had said I did not matter, I remained, and it was thereforeI who shouted down a challenge presently in round English at a partywho clattered to the door on blown horses, and thundered on it asif they had been shatirs* hurrying to herald the arrival of the sultanhimself. There was nothing furtive about their address to the decrepitdoor, nor anything meek. Accordingly I couched the challenge interms of unmistakable affront, repeating it at intervals until theleader of the new arrivals chose to identify himself.
-----------------* Shatir, the man who runs before a personage's horse.-----------------
"I am Hans von Quedlinburg!" he shouted. But I did not rememberthe name.
"Only a thief would come riding in such a hurry through the night!"said I. "Who is with you?"
Another voice shouted very fast and furiously in Turkish, but I couldnot make head or tail of the words. Then the German resumed thesong and dance.
"Are you the party who talked with me at my construction camp?"
"We talk most of the time. We eat food. We whistle. We drink.We laugh!" said I.
"Because I think you are the people I am seeking. These are Turkishofficials with me. I have authority to modify their orders, onlylet me in!"
"How many of you?" I asked. I was leaning over at risk of my life,for any fool could have seen my head to shoot at it against the luminousdark sky; but I could not see to count them.
"Never mind how many! Let us in! I am Hans von Quedlinburg. Myname is sufficient."
So I lied, emphatically and in thoughtful detail.
"You are covered," I said, "by five rifles from this roof. If youdon't believe it, try something. You'd better wait there while Iwake my chief."
"Only be quick!" said the German, and I saw him light a cigarette,whether to convince me he felt confident or because he did feel soI could not say. I went below, and found Monty and Kagig standingtogether close to the outer door. They had not heard the whole ofthe conversation because of the noise the owner's sons had made re
moving,at their orders, the obstructions they had piled against the doorin their first panic. Every one else had returned to the sleepingplatforms, except the Turkish owner, who looked awake at last, andwas hovering here and there in ecstasies of nervousness.
I repeated what the German had said, rather expecting that Kagigat any rate would counsel defiance. It was he, however, who beckonedthe Turk and bade him open the door.
"But, effendi--"
"Chabuk! Quickly, I said!"
"Che arz kunam?" the Turk answered meekly, meaning "What petitionshall I make?" the inference being that all was in the hands of Allah.
"Of ten men nine are women!" sneered Kagig irritably, and led theway to our place beside the fire. The Turk fumbled interminablywith the door fastenings, and we were comfortably settled in ourplaces before the new arrivals rode in, bringing a blast of coldair with them that set the smoke billowing about the room and madeevery man draw up his blankets.
"Shut that door behind them!" thundered Kagig. "If they come tooslowly, shut the laggards out!"
"Who is this who is arrogant?" the German demanded in English.
He was a fine-looking man, dressed in civilian clothes cut as nearlyto the military pattern as the tailor could contrive without transgressinglaw, but with a too small fez perched on his capable-looking headin the manner of the Prussian who would like to make the Turks believehe loves them. Rustum Khan cursed with keen attention to detailat sight of him. The man who had entered with him became busy inthe shadows trying to find room to stall their horses, but Von Quedlinburggave his reins to an attendant, and stood alone, akimbo, with thefirelight displaying him in half relief.
"I am a man who knows, among other things, the name of him who bribedthe kaimakam.* on Chakallu," Kagig answered slowly, also in English.
---------------* Kaimakam, headman (Turkish).---------------
The German laughed.
"Then you know without further argument that I am not to be denied!"he answered. "What I say to-night the government officials willconfirm to-morrow! Are you Kagig, whom they call the Eye of Zeitoon?"
"I am no jackal," said Kagig dryly, punning on the name Chakallu,which means "place of jackals."
The German coughed, set one foot forward, and folded both arms onhis breast. He looked capable and bold in that attitude, and knewit. I knew at last who he was, and wondered why I had not recognizedhim sooner--the contractor who had questioned us near the railwayencampment along the way, and had offered us directions; but hismanner was as different now from then as a bully's in and out ofschool. Then he had sought to placate, and had almost cringed toMonty. Everything about him now proclaimed the ungloved upper hand.
His party, finding no room to stall their horses, had begun to turnours loose, and there was uproar along the gipsy side of the room--noaction yet, but a threatening snarl that promised plenty of it.Will was half on his feet to interfere, but Monty signed to him tokeep cool; and it was Monty's aggravatingly well-modulated voicethat laid the law down.
"Will you be good enough," he asked blandly, "to call off your menfrom meddling with our mounts?" He could not be properly said todrawl, because there was a positive subacid crispness in his voicethat not even a Prussian or a Turk on a dark night could haveover-looked.
The German laughed again.
"Perhaps you did not hear my name," he said. "I am Hans von Quedlinburg.As over-contractor on the Baghdad railway I have the privilege ofprior accommodation at all road-houses in this province--for myselfand my attendants. And in addition there are with me certain Turkishofficers, whose rights I dare say you will not dispute."
Monty did not laugh, although Fred was chuckling in confident enjoymentof the situation.
"You need a lesson in manners," said Monty.
"What do you mean?" demanded Hans von Quedlinburg.
Monty rose to his feet without a single unnecessary motion.
"I mean that unless you call off your men--at once this minute frominterfering with our animals I shall give you the lesson you need."
The German saluted in mock respect. Then he patted his breast-pocketso as to show the outline of a large repeating pistol. Monty tooktwo steps forward. The German drew the pistol with an oath. WillYerkes, beyond Fred and slightly behind the German, coughed meaningly.The German turned his head, to find that he was covered by a pistolas large as his own.
"Oh, very well," he said, "what is the use of making a scene?" Hethrust his pistol back under cover and shouted an order in Turkish.Monty returned to his place and sat down. The newcomers at the rearof the room tied their horses together by the bridles, and Hans vonQuedlinburg resumed his well-fed smile.
"Let it be clearly understood," he said, "that you have interferedwith official privilege."
"As long as you do your best in the way of manners you may go onwith your errand," said Monty.
Suddenly Fred laughed aloud.
"The martyred biped!" he yelped.
He was right. Peter Measel, missionary on his own account, and sometimekeeper of most libelous accounts, stepped out from the shadows andessayed to warm himself, walking past the German with a sort of mincinggait not calculated to assert his manliness. Hans von Quedlinburgstretched out a strong arm and hurled him back again into the darknessat the rear.
"Tchuk-tchuk! Zuruck!" he muttered.
It clearly disconcerted him to have his inferiors in rank assertthemselves. That accounted, no doubt, for the meek self-effacementof the Turks who had come with him. Peter Measel did not appearto mind being rebuked. He crossed to the other side of the room,and proceeded to look the gipsies over with the air of a learnedethnologist.
"You speak of my errand," said Hans von Quedlinburg, "as if you imagineI come seeking favors. I am here incidentally to rescue you andyour party from the clutches of an outlaw. The Turkish officialswho are with me have authority to arrest everybody in this place,yourselves included. Fortunately I am able to modify that. Kagig--thatrascal beside you--is a well-known agitator. He is a criminal.His arrest and trial have been ordered on the charge, among otherthings, of stirring up discontent among the Armenian laborers onthe railway work. These gipsies are all his agents. They are allunder arrest. You yourselves will be escorted to safety at the coast."
"Why should we need an escort to safety?" Monty demanded.
"Were you on the roof?" the German answered. "And is it possibleyou did not see the conflagration? An Armenian insurrection hasbeen nipped in the bud. Several villages are burning. The otherinhabitants are very much incensed, and all foreigners are indanger--yourselves especially, since you have seen fit to travel incompany with such a person as Kagig."
"What has Peter Measel got to do with it?" demanded Fred. "Has hebeen writing down all our sins in a new book?"
"He will identify you. He will also identify Kagig's agents. Hebrings a personal charge against a man named Rustum Khan, who mustreturn to Tarsus to answer it. The charge is robbery with violence."
Rustum Khan snorted.
"The violence was only too gentle, and too soon ended. As for robbery,if I have robbed him of a little self-conceit, I will answer to Godfor that when my hour shall come! How is it your affair to dragthat whimpering fool through Asia at your tail--you a German andhe English?"
The German had a hot answer ready for that, but the Turks had discoveredMaga Jhaere in hiding in the shadows between two old women. Shescreamed as they tried to drag her forth, and the scream broughtus all to our feet. But this time it was Kagig who was swiftest,and we got our first proof of the man's enormous strength. Fred,Will and I charged together round behind the newcomers' horses, inorder to make sure of cutting off retreat as well as rescuing Maga.Monty leveled a pistol at the German's head. But Kagig did not wastea fraction of a second on side-issues of any sort. He flew at theGerman's throat like a wolf at a bullock. The German fired at him,missed, and before he could fire again he was caught in a grip hecould not break, and fighting for breath, bal
ance and something more.
One of the gipsies, who had not seen the need of hurrying to Maga'said, now proved the soundness of his judgment by divining Kagig'spurpose and tossing several new faggots on the already prodigious fire.
"Good!" barked Kagig, bending the struggling German this and thatway as it pleased him.
Seeing our man with the upper hand, Monty and Rustum Khan now hurriedinto the melee, where two Turkish officers and eight zaptieh werefighting to keep Maga from four gipsies and us three. Nobody hadseen fit to shoot, but there was a glimmering of cold steel amongthe shadows like lightning before a thunder-storm. Monty used hisfists. Rustum Khan used the flat of a Rajput saber. Maga, leavingmost of her clothing in the Turk's hands, struggled free and in anothersecond the Turks were on the defensive. Rustum Khan knocked therevolver out of an officer's hand, and the rest of them were strugglingto use their rifles, when the German shrieked. All fights are fullof pauses, when either side could snatch sudden victory if alertenough. We stopped, and turned to look, as if our own lives werenot in danger.
Kagig had the German off his feet, face toward the flames, kickingand screaming like a madman. He whirled him twice--shouted a sortof war-cry--hove him high with every sinew in his tough framecracking--and hurled him head-foremost into the fire.
The Turks took the cue to haul off and stand staring at us. We allwithdrew to easier pistol range, for contrary to general belief,close quarters almost never help straight aim, especially when ina hurry. There is a shooting as well as a camera focus, and eachman has his own.
Pretty badly burnt about the face and fingers, Hans von Quedlinburgcrawled backward out of the fire, smelling like the devil, of singedwool. Kagig closed on him, and hurled him back again. This timethe German plunged through the fire, and out beyond it to a spacebetween the flames and the back wall, where it must have been hotenough to make the fat run. He stood with a forearm covering hisface, while Kagig thundered at him voluminous abuse in Turkish.I wondered, first, why the German did not shoot, and then why hisloaded pistol did not blow up in the heat, until I saw that in furtherproof of strength Kagig had looted his pistol and was standing withone foot on it.
Finally, when the beautiful smooth cloth of which his coat was madebad taken on a stinking overlay of crackled black, the German choseto obey Kagig and came leaping back through the fire, and lay groaningon the floor, where the kahveh's owner's seven sons poured wateron him by Kagig's order. His burns were evidently painful, but notnearly so serious as I expected. I got out the first-aid stuff fromour medicine bag, and Will, who was our self-constituted doctor onthe strength of having once attended an autopsy, disguised as a reporter,in the morgue at the back of Bellevue Hospital in New York City,beckoned a gipsy woman, and proceeded to instruct her what to do.
However, Hans von Quedlinburg was no nervous weakling. He snatchedthe pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuffliberally on his face and hands, and sat up--resembling an unknownkind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off exceptfor a stray, outstanding whisker here and there. In a voice likea bull's at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted throughthe flames, and commanded his Turks to arrest the lot of us.
Kagig laughed at that, and spoke to him in English, I suppose inorder that we, too, might understand.
"Those Turks are my prisoners!" he said. "And so are you!"
It was true about the Turks. They had not given up their weaponsyet, but the gipsies were between them and the door, and even thegipsy women were armed to the teeth and willing to do battle. Icaught sight of Maga's mother-o'-pearl plated revolver, and the Turkishofficer at whom she had it leveled did not look inclined to disputethe upper hand.
"You Germans are all alike," sneered Kagig. "A dog could read yourreasoning. You thought these foreigners would turn against me.It never entered your thick skull that they might rather defy youthan see me made prisoner. Fool! Did men name me Eye of Zeitoonfor nothing? Have I watched for nothing! Did I know the very wordingof the letters in your private box for nothing? Are you the onlyspy in Asia? Am I Kagig, and do I not know who advised dismissingall Armenians from the railway work? Am I Kagig, and do I not knowwhy? Kopek! (Dog!) You would beggar my people, in order to curryfavor with the Turk. You seek to take me because I know your ways!Two months ago you knew to within a day or two when these new massacreswould begin. One month, three weeks, and four days ago you orderedmen to dig my grave, and swore to bury me alive in it! What shallhinder me from burning you alive this minute?"
There were five good hindrances, for I think that Rustum Khan wouldhave objected to that cruelty, even had he been alone. Kagig caughtMonty's eye and laughed.
"Korkakma!" he jeered. "Do not be afraid!" Then he glanced swiftlyat the Turks, and at Peter Measel, who was staring all-eyes at Magaon the far side of the room.
"Order your pigs of zaptieh to throw their arms down!"
Instead, the German shouted to them to fire volleys at us. He wasnot without a certain stormy courage, whatever Kagig's knowledgeof his treachery.
But the Turks did not fire, and it was perfectly plain that we fourwere the reason of it. They had been promised an easy prey--capturedwomen--loot--and the remunerative task of escorting us to safety.Doubtless Von Quedlinburg had promised them our consul would be lavishwith rewards on our account. Therefore there was added reason whythey should not fire on Englishmen and an American. We had not madea move since the first scuffle when we rescued Maga, but the Turkishlieutenant had taken our measure. Perhaps he had whispered to hismen. Perhaps they reached their own conclusions. The effect wasthe same in either case.
"Order them to throw their weapons down!" commanded Kagig, kickingthe German in the ribs. And his coat had been so scorched in thefierce heat that the whole of one side of it broke off, like acinder slab.
This time Hans von Quedlinburg obeyed. For one thing the pain ofhis burns was beginning to tell on him, but he could see, too, thathe had lost prestige with his party.
"Throw down your weapons!" he ordered savagely.
But he had lost more prestige than he knew, or else he had less inthe beginning than be counted on. The Turkish lieutenant--a manof about forty with the evidence of all the sensual appetites veryplainly marked on his face--laughed and brought his men to attention.Then he made a kind of half-military motion with his hand towardeach of us in turn, ignoring Kagig but intending to convey that weat any rate need not feel anxious.
It was Maga Jhaere who solved the riddle of that impasse. She washardly in condition to appear before a crowd of men, for the Turksbad torn off most of her clothes, and she had not troubled to findothers. She was unashamed, and as beautiful and angry as a panther.With panther suddenness she snatched the lieutenant's sword and pistol.
It suited neither his national pride nor religious prejudices tobe disarmed by a gipsy woman; but the Turk is an amazing fatalist,and unexpectedness is his peculiar quality.
"Che arz kunam?" he muttered--the perennial comment of the Turk whohas failed, that always made Kagig bare his teeth in a spasm of contempt."Passing the buck to Allah," as Will construed it.
But disarming the mere conscript soldiers was not quite so simple,although Maga managed it. They had less regard for their own skinsthan handicapped their officer, and yet more than his contempt forthe female of any human breed.
They refused point-blank to throw their rifles down, bringing a laughand a shout of encouragement from the German. But she screwed themuzzle of her pistol into the lieutenant's ear, and bade him enforceher orders, the gipsy women applauding with a chorus of "Ohs" and"Ahs." The lieutenant succumbed to force majeure, and his men, whowere inclined to die rather than take orders from a woman, obeyedhim readily enough. They laid their rifles down carefully, withouta suggestion of resentment.
"So. The women of Zeitoon are good!" said Kagig with a curt nodof approval, and Maga tossed him a smile fit for the instigationof another siege of Troy.
The gipsy women picked the rifles up, and Maga went to hunt throughthe mule-packs for clothing. Then Kagig turned on us, motioningwith his toe toward Hans von Quedlinburg, who continued to treathimself extravagantly from our jar of ointment.
"You do not know yet the depths of this man's infamy!" he said."The world professes to loathe Turks who rob, sell and murder womenand children. What of a German--a foreigner in Turkey, who instigatesthe murder--and the robbery--and the burning--and the butchery--forhis own ends, or for his bloody country's ends? This man isan instigator!"
"You lie!" snarled Von Quedlinburg. "You dog of an Armenian, you lie!"Kagig ignored him.
"This is the German sportman who tried once to go to Zeitoon to shootbears, as he said. But I knew he was a spy. I am not the Eye ofZeitoon merely because that title rolls nicely on the tongue. Hehas--perhaps he has it in his pocket now--a concession from thepoliticians in Stamboul, granting him the right to exploit Zeitoon--aplace he has never seen! He has encouraged this present butcheryin order that Turkish soldiers may have excuse to penetrate to Zeitoonthat he covets. He wants you Eenglis sportmen out of the way. Youwere to be sent safely back to Tarsus, lest you should be witnessesof what must happen. Perhaps you do not believe all this?"'
He stooped down and searched the German's coat pockets with impatientfingers that tugged and jerked, tossing out handkerchief and wallet,cigars, matches that by a miracle had not caught in the heat, andconsiderable money to the floor. He took no notice of the money,but one of the old gipsy women crept out and annexed it, and Kagigmade no comment.
"He has not his concession with him. I can prove nothing to-night.I said you shall stand a test. You must choose. This German andthose Turks are my prisoners. You have nothing to do with it. Youmay go back to Tarsus if you wish, and tell the Turks that Kagigdefies them! You shall have an escort as far as the nearest garrison.You shall have fifty men to take you back by dawn to-morrow."
At that Rustum Khan turned several shades darker and glared truculently.
"Who art thou, Armenian, to frame a test for thy betters?" he demanded,throwing a very military chest. And Will promptly bridled at theRajput's attitude.
"You've no call to make yourself out any better than he is!" heinterrupted. And at that Maga Jhaere threw a kiss from across theroom, but one could not tell whether her own dislike of Rustum Khan,or her approval of Will's support of Kagig was the motive.
Fred began humming in the ridiculous way he has when he thinks thatan air of unconcern may ease a situation, and of course Rustum Khanmistook the nasal noises for intentional insult. He turned on theunsuspecting Fred like a tiger. Monty's quick wit and level voicealone saved open rupture.
"What I imagine Rustum Khan means is this, Kagig: My friends andI have engaged you as guide for a hunting trip. We propose to holdyou strictly to the contract."
Kagig looked keenly at each of us and nodded.
"In my day I have seen the hunters hunted!" he said darkly.
"In my day I have seen an upstart punished!" growled the Rajput,and sat down, back to the wall.
"Castles, and bears!" smiled Monty.
Kagig grinned.
"What if I propose a different quarry?"
"Propose and see!" Monty was on the alert, and therefore to all outwardappearance in a sort of well-fed, catlike, dallying mood.
"This dog," said Kagig, and he kicked the German's ribs again, "hassaid nothing of any other person he must rescue. Bear me witness."
We murmured admission of the truth of that.
"Yet I am the Eye of Zeitoon, and I know. His purpose was to leavehis prisoners here and hurry on to overtake a lady--a certain MissVanderman, who he thinks is on her way to the mission at Marash.He desired the credit for her rescue in order better to blind theworld to his misdeeds! Nevertheless, now that she can be no moreuse to him, observe his chivalry! He does not even mention her!"
The German shrugged his shoulders, implying that to argue with sucha savage was waste of breath.
"What do you know of Miss Vanderman's where-abouts?" demanded Will,and Maga Jhaere, at the sound of another woman's name, sat bolt uprightbetween two other women whose bright eyes peeped out from under blankets.
"I had word of her an hour before you came, effendi," Kagig answered."She and her party took fright this afternoon, and have taken tothe hills. They are farther ahead than this pig dreamed"--once morehe kicked Von Quedlinburg--"more than a day's march ahead from here."
"Then we'll hunt for her first," said Monty, and the rest of us noddedassent.
Kagig grinned.
"You shall find her. You shall see a castle. In the castle whereyou find her you shall choose again! It is agreed, effendi!"
Then he ordered his prisoners made fast, and the gipsies and ourZeitoonli servants attended to it, he himself, however, binding theGerman's hands and feet. Will went and put bandages on the man's burns,I standing by, to help. But we got no thanks.
"Ihr seit verruckt!" he sneered. "You take the side of bandits.Passt mal auf--there will be punishment!"
The Zeitoonli were going to tie Peter Measel, but he set up sucha howl that Kagig at last took notice of him and ordered him flung,unbound, into the great wooden bin in which the horse-feed was keptfor sale to wayfarers. There he lay, and slept and snored for therest of that session, with his mouth close to a mouse-hole.
Then Kagig ordered our Zeitoonli to the roof on guard, and bade ussleep with a patriarchal air of authority.
"There is no knowing when I shall decide to march," he explained.
Given enough fatigue, and warmth, and quietness, a man will sleepunder almost any set of circumstances. The great fire blazed, andflickered, and finally died down to a bed of crimson. The prisonerswere most likely all awake, for their bonds were tight, but onlyKagig remained seated in the midst of his mess of blankets by thehearth; and I think he slept in that position, and that I was thelast to doze off. But none of us slept very long.
There came a shout from the roof again, and once again a thunderingon the door. The move--unanimous--that the gipsies' right handsmade to clutch their weapons resembled the jump from surprise intostillness when the jungle is caught unawares. A second later whensomebody tossed dry fagots on the fire the blaze betrayed no otherexpression on their faces than the stock-in-trade stolidity. Eventhe women looked as if thundering on a kahveh door at night was nothingto be noticed. Kagig did not move, but I could see that he was breathingfaster than the normal, and he, too, clutched a weapon. Von Quedlinburgbegan shouting for help alternately in Turkish and in German, andthe owner of the place produced a gun--a long, bright, steel-barreledaffair of the vintage of the Comitajes and the First Greek War.He and his sons ran to the door to barricade it.
"Yavash!" ordered Kagig. The word means slowly, as applied to allthe human processes. In that instance it meant "Go slow with yournoise!" and mine host so understood it.
But the thundering on the great door never ceased, and the kahvehwas too full of the noise of that for us to hear what the Zeitoonlicalled down from the roof. Kagig arose and stood in the middle ofthe room with the firelight behind him. He listened for two minutes,standing stock-still, a thin smile flickering across his lean face,and the sharp satyr-like tops of his ears seeming to prick outwardin the act of intelligence.
"Open and let them in!" he commanded at last.
"I will not!" roared the owner of the place. "I shall be tortured,and all my house!"
"Open, I said!"
"But they will make us prisoner!"
Kagig made a sign with his right hand. Gregor Jhaere rose and whispered.One by one the remaining gipsies followed him into the shadows, andthere came a noise of scuffling, and of oaths and blows. As GregorJhaere had mentioned earlier, they did obey Kagig now and then.The Turks came back looking crestfallen, and the fastenings creaked.Then the door burst open with a blast of icy air, and there pouredin nineteen armed men who blinked at the firelight helplessly.
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"Kagig--where is Kagig?"
"You cursed fools, where should I be!"
"Kagig? Is it truly you?" Their eyes were still blinded bythe blaze.
"Shut that door again, and bolt it! Aye--Kagig, Kagig, is it you!"
"It is Kagig! Behold him! Look!"
They clustered close to see, smelling infernally of sweaty garmentsand of the mud from unholy lurking places.
"Kagig it is! And has all happened as I, Kagig, warned you itwould happen?"
"Aye. All. More. Worse!"
"Had you acted beforehand in the manner I advised?"
"No, Kagig. We put it off. We talked, and disagreed. And thenit was too late to agree. They were cutting throats while we stillargued. When we ran into the street to take the offensive they werealready shooting from the roofs!"
"Hah!"
That bitter dry expletive, coughed out between set teeth, could notbe named a laugh.
"Kagig, listen!"
"Aye! Now it is 'Kagig, listen!' But a little while ago it wasI who was sayin 'Listen!' I walked myself lame, and talked myselfhoarse. Who listened to me? Why should I listen to you?"
"But, Kagig, my wife is gone!"
"Hah!"
"My daughter, Kagig!"
"Hah!"
A third man thrust himself forward and thumped the butt of a longrifle on the floor.
--
"They took my wife and two daughters before my very eyes, Kagig!It is no time for talking now--you have talked already too much,Kagi,--now prove yourself a man of deeds! With these eyes I sawthem dragged by the hair down street! Oh, would God that I had putmy eyes out first, then had I never seen it! Kagig--"
"Aye--Kagig!"
"You shall not sneer at me! I shot one Turk, and ten more pouncedon them. They screamed to me. They called to me to rescue. Whatcould I do? I shot, and I shot until the rifle barrel burned myfingers. Then those cursed Turks set the house on fire behind me,and my companions dragged me away to come and find others to unitewith us and make a stand! We found no others! Kagig--I tellyou--those bloody Turks are auctioning our wives and daughters in thevillage church! It is time to act!"
"Hah! Who was it urged you in season and out of season--day andnight--month in, month out--to come to Zeitoon and help me fortifythe place? Who urged you to send your women there long ago?"
"But Kagig, you do not appreciate. To you it is nothing not to havewomen near you. We have mothers, sisters, wives--"
"Nothing to me, is it? These eyes have seen my mother, ravishedby a Kurd in a Turkish uniform!"
"Well, that only proves you are one with us after all! That onlyproves--"
"One with you! Why did you not act, then, when I risked life andlimb a thousand times to urge you?"
"We could not, Kagig. That would have precipitated--"
He interrupted the man with an oath like the aggregate of bitterness.
"Precipitated? Did waiting for the massacre like chickens waitingfor the ax delay the massacres a day? But now it is 'Come and leadus, Kagig!' How many of you are there left to lead?"
"Who knows? We are nineteen--"
"Hah! And I am to run with nineteen men to the rape of Tarsusand Adana?"
"Our people will rally to you, Kagig!"
"They shall."
"Come, then!"
"They shall rally at Zeitoon!"
"Oh, Kagig--how shall they reich Zeitoon? The cursed Turks have orderedout the soldiers and are sending regiments--"
"I warned they would!"
"The cavalry are hunting down fugitives along the roads!"
"As I foretold a hundred times!"
"They were sent to protect Armenians--"
"That is always the excuse!"
"And they kill--kill--kill! A dozen of them hunted me for two miles,until I hid in a watercourse! Look at us! Look at our clothes!We are wet to the skin--tired--starving! Kagig, be a man!"
He went back to his mess of blankets and sat down on it, too bitterat heart for words. They reproached him in chorus, coming nearerto the fire to let the fierce heat draw the stink out of their clothes.
"Aye, Kagig, you must not forget your race. You must not forgetthe past, Kagig. Once Armenia was great, remember that! You mustnot only talk to us, you must act at last! We summon you to be ourleader, Kagig, son of Kagig of Zeitoon!"
He stared back at them with burning eyes--raised both bands to beathis temples--and then suddenly turned the palms of his hands towardthe roof in a gesture of utter misery.
"Oh, my people!"
That glimpse he betrayed of his agony was but a moment long. Thefingers closed suddenly, and the palms that had risen in helplessnessdescended to his knees clenched fists, heavy with the weight of purpose.
"What have you done with the ammunition?" he demanded.
"We had it in the manure under John Zimisces' cattle."
"I know that. Where is it now?"
"The Turks discovered it at dawn to-day. Some one had told. Theyburned Zimisces and his wife and sons alive in the straw!"
"You fools! They knew where the stuff was a week ago! A month agoI warned you to send it to Zeitoon, but somebody told you I wastreacherous, and you fools listened! How much ammunition have youleft now?"
"Just what we have with us. I have a dozen rounds."
"I ten."
"I nine."
"I thirty-three."
Each man had a handful, or two handfuls at the most. Kagig observedtheir contributions to the common fund with scorn too deep for expression.It was as if the very springs of speech were frozen.
"We summon you to lead us, Kagig!"
Words came to him again.
"You summon me to lead? I will! From now I lead! By the God whogave my fathers bread among the mountains, I will, moreover, be obeyed!Either my word is law--"
"Kagig, it is law!"
"Or back you shall go to where the Turks are wearing white, and thegutters bubble red, and the beams are black against the sky! Youshall obey me in future on the instant that I speak, or run backto the Turks for mercy from my hand! I have listened to enough talk!"
"Spoken like a man!" said Monty, and stood up.
We all stood up; even Rustum Khan, who did not pretend to like him,saluted the old warrior who could announce his purpose so magnificently.Maga Jhaere stood up, and sought Will's eyes from across the room.Fred, almost too sleepy to know what he was doing (for the tail endof the fever is a yearning for early bed) undid the catch of hisbeloved instrument, and made the rafters ring. In a minute we fourwere singing "For he's a jolly good fellow," and Kagig stood up,looking like Robinson Crusoe in his goat-skins, to acknowledge thecompliment.
The noise awoke Peter Measel, and when we had finished making foolsof ourselves I walked over to discover what he was saying. He waspraying aloud--nasally--through the mouse-hole--for us, not himself.I looked at my watch. It was two hours past midnight.
"You fellows," I said, "it's Sunday. The martyred biped has justwaked up and remembered it. He is praying that we may be forgivenfor polluting the Sabbath stillness with immoral tunes!"
My words had a strange effect. Monty, and Fred, and Will laughed.Rustum Khan laughed savagely. But all the Armenians, including Kagig,knelt promptly on the floor and prayed, the gipsies looking on inmild amusement tempered by discretion. And out of the mouse-holein the horse-feed bin came Peter Measel's sonorous, overriding periods:
"And, O Lord, let them not be smitten by Thine anger. Let them notbe cut down in Thy wrath! Let them not be cast into hell! Givethem another chance, O Lord! Let the Ten Commandments be writtenon their hearts in letters of fire, but let not their souls be damnedfor ever more! If they did not know it was the Sabbath Day, O Lord,forgive them! Amen!"
It was a most amazing night.