by Talbot Mundy
Chapter Eight"I go with that man!"
LO HERE! LO THERE!
Ye shall not judge men by the drinks they take,Nor by unthinking oath, nor what they wear,For look! the mitered liars protest makeAnd drinking know they lie, and knowing swear.No oath is round without the rounded fruit,Nor pompous promise hides the ultimate.In scarlet as in overalls and tailored suitTo-morrows truemen and the traitors waitUntold by trick of blazonry or voice.But harvest ripens and there come the reaping daysWhen each shall choose one path to bide the choice,And ye shall know men when they face dividing ways.
To those who have never ridden knee to knee with outlaws full peltinto unknown darkness, with a burning house behind, and a whole horizonlit with the rolling glow of murdered villages, let it be writtenthat the sensation of so doing is creepy, most amazing wild, andnot without unrighteous pleasure.
There was a fierce joy that burned without consuming, and a consciousnessof having crossed a rubicon. Points of view are left behind in amoment, although the proof may not be apparent for days or weeks,and I reckon our mental change from being merely hunters of an ancientcastle and big game-tourists-trippers, from that hour. As we gallopedbehind Kagig the mesmerism of respect for custom blew away in thewind. We became at heart outlaws as we rode--and one of us a privycouncilor of England!
The women, Maga included, were on in front. The night around andbehind us was full of the thunder of fleeing cattle, for the Zeitoonlihad looted the owner of the kahveh's cows and oxen along with theirown beasts and were driving them helter-skelter. The crackling flamesbehind us were a beacon, whistling white in the early wind, thatwe did well to hurry from.
It was Monty who called Kagig's attention to the idiocy of tiringout the cattle before dawn, and then Kagig rode like an arrow untilhe could make the gipsies hear him. One long keening shout thatpenetrated through the drum of hoofs brought them to a walk, butthey kept Maga in front with them, screened from our view untilmorning by a close line of mounted women and a group of men. TheTurkish prisoners were all behind among the fifty Armenians fromZeitoon, looking very comfortless trussed up on the mounts that nobodyelse had coveted, with hands made fast behind their backs.
A little before dawn, when the saw-tooth tips of the mountain rangeon our left were first touched with opal and gold, we turned offthe araba track along which we had so far come and entered a ravineleading toward Marash. Fred was asleep on horseback, supported betweenWill and me and snoring like a throttled dog. The smoke of the guttedkahveh had dwindled to a wisp in the distance behind us, and therewas no sight or sound of pursuit.
No wheeled vehicle that ever man made could have passed up thisnew track. It was difficult for ridden horses, and our loaded beastshad to be given time. We seemed to be entering by a fissure intothe womb of the savage hills that tossed themselves in ever-increasinggrandeur up toward the mist-draped heights of Kara Dagh. Oftenerthan not our track was obviously watercourse, although now and thenwe breasted higher levels from which we could see, through gaps betweenhill and forest, backward along the way we had come. There was smokefrom the direction of Adana that smudged a whole sky-line, and betweenthat and the sea about a dozen sooty columns mushroomed against theclouds.
There was not a mile of the way we came that did not hold a hundredhiding-places fit for ambuscade, but our party was too numerous andwell-armed to need worry on that account. Monty and Kagig drew ahead,quite a little way behind the gipsies still, but far in front of us,who had to keep Fred upright on his horse.
"My particular need is breakfast," said I.
"And Will's is the woman!" said Fred, admitting himself awake at last.Will had been straining in the stirrups on the top of every rise hishorse negotiated ever since the sun rose. It certainly was a mysterywhy Maga should have been spirited away, after the freedom permittedher the day before.
"Rustum Khan has probably made off with her, or cut her head off!"remarked Fred by way of offering comfort, yawning with the consciousluxury of having slept. "I don't see Rustum Khan. Let's hope it'strue! That 'ud give the American lady a better chance for her lifein case we should overtake her!"
Will and Fred have always chosen the most awkward places and theleast excuse for horseplay, and the sleep seemed to have expelledthe last of the fever from Fred's bones, so that he felt like a schoolboyon holiday. Will grabbed him around the neck and they wrestled,to their horses' infinite disgust, panting and straining mightilyin the effort to unseat each other. It was natural that Will shouldhave the best of it, he being about fifteen years younger as wellas unweakened by malaria. The men of Zeitoon behind us checked towatch Fred rolled out of his saddle, and roared with the delightof fighting men the wide world over to see the older campaigner suddenlyrecover his balance and turn the tables on the younger by a trick.
And at that very second, as Will landed feet first on the gravelpanting for breath, Maga Jhaere arrived full gallop from the rear,managing her ugly gray stallion with consummate ease. Her blackhair streamed out in the wind, and what with the dew on it and theslanting sun-rays she seemed to be wearing all the gorgeous jewelsout of Ali Baba's cave. She was the loveliest thing to lookat--unaffected, unexpected, and as untamed as the dawn, with partedlips as red as the branch of budding leaves with which she beather horse.
But the smile turned to a frown of sudden passion as she saw Willland on the ground and Fred get ready for reprisals. She screameddefiance--burst through the ranks of the nearest Zeitoonli--set herstallion straight at us--burst between Fred and me--beat Fred savagelyacross the face with her sap-softened branch--and wheeled on herbeast's haunches to make much of Will. He laughed at her, and triedto take the whip away. Seeing he was neither hurt nor indignant,she laughed at Fred, spat at him, and whipped her stallion forwardin pursuit of Kagig, breaking between him and Monty to pour newsin his ear.
"A curse on Rustum Khan!" laughed Fred, spitting out red buds. "Hedidn't do his duty!"
He had hardly said that when the Rajput came spurring and thunderingalong from the rear. He seemed in no hurry to follow farther, butdrew rein between us and saluted with the semi-military gesture withwhich he favored all who, unlike Monty, had not been Colonels ofIndian regiments.
"I tracked Umm Kulsum through the dark!" he announced, rubbing theburned nodules out of his singed beard and then patting his mare'sneck. "I saw her ride away alone an hour before you reached thatfork in the road and turned up this watercourse. 'By the teeth ofGod,' said I, 'when a good-looking woman leaves a party of men tocanter alone in the dark, there is treason!' and I followed."
I offered the Rajput my cigarette case, and to my surprise he acceptedone, although not without visible compunction. As a Muhammadan bycreed he was in theory without caste and not to be defiled by Europeantouch, but the practises of most folk fall behind their professions.A hundred yards ahead of us Maga was talking and gesticulating furiously,evidently railing at Kagig's wooden-headedness or unbelief. Montysat listening, saying nothing.
"What did you see, Rustum Khan?" asked Fred.
"At first very little. My eyes are good, but that gipsy-woman'sare better, and I was kept busy following her; for I could not keepclose, or she might have heard. The noise of her own clumsy stallionprevented her from hearing the lighter footfalls of my mare, andby that I made sure she was not expecting to meet an enemy. 'Sherides to betray us to her friends!' said I, and I kept yet fartherbehind her, on the alert against ambush."
"Well?"
"She rode until dawn, I following. Then, when the light was scarcelyborn as yet, she suddenly drew rein at an open place where the trackshe had been following emerged out of dense bushes, and dismounted.From behind the bushes I watched, and presently I, too, dismountedto hold my mare's nostrils and prevent her from whinnying. Thatwoman, Maga Jhaere, knelt, and pawed about the ground like a dogthat hunts a buried bone!"
In front of us Maga was still arguing. Suddenly Kagig turned on herand asked her three swift questions, bitten off like the snap of
a closing snuff-box lid. Whether she answered or not I could notsee, but Monty was smiling.
"I suspect she was making signals!" growled Rustum Khan. "Towhom--about what I do not know. After a little while she mounted androde on, choosing unerringly a new track through the bushes. I wentto where she had been, and examined the ground where she had madeher signals. As I say, my eyes are good, but hers are better. Icould see nothing but the hoof-marks of her clumsy gray brute ofa stallion, and in one place the depressions on soft earth whereshe had knelt to paw the ground!"
Monty was beginning to talk now. I could see him smiling at Kagigover Maga's head, and the girl was growing angry. Rustum Khan waswatching them as closely as we were, pausing between sentences.
"It may be she buried something there, but if so I did not find it.I could not stay long, for when she rode away she went like wind,and I needed to follow at top speed or else be lost. So I let mymare feel the spurs a time or two, and so it happened that I gainedon the woman; and I suppose she heard me. Whether or no, she waitedin ambush, and sprang out at me as I passed so suddenly that I knownot what god of fools and drunkards preserved her from being cutdown! Not many have ridden out at me from ambush and lived to tellof it! But I saw who she was in time, and sheathed my steel again,and cursed her for the gipsy that she half is. The other half isspawn of Eblis!"
A hundred yards ahead of us Kagig had reached a decision, but itseemed to be not too late yet in Maga's judgment to try to converthim. She was speaking vehemently, passionately, throwing down herreins to expostulate with both hands.
"Kagig isn't the man you'd think a young woman would choose to befamiliar with," Fred said quietly to me, and I wondered what he wasdriving at. He is always observant behind that superficial air ofmockery he chooses to assume, but what he had noticed to set himthinking I could not guess.
Rustum Khan threw away the cigarette I had given him, and went onwith his tale.
"That woman has no virtue."
"How do you know?" demanded Will.
"She laughed when I cursed her! Then she asked me what I had seen."
"What did you say?"
"To test her I said I had seen her lover, and would know him againby his smell in the dark!"
"What did she say to that?'
"She laughed again. I tell you the woman has no shame! Then shesaid if I would tell that tale to Kagig as soon as I see him shewould reward me with leave to live for one whole week and an extrahour in which to pray to the devil----meaning, I suppose, that sheintends to kill me otherwise. Then she wheeled her stallion--thebrute was trying to tear out the muscles of my thigh all that time--androde away--and I followed--and here I am!"
"How much truth is there in your assertion that you saw her lover?"Will demanded.
"None. I but said it to test her."
"Why in thunder should she want it believed?"
"God knows, who made gipsies!"
At that moment the advance-guard rode into an open meadow, crossedby a shallow, singing stream at which Kagig ordered a halt to waterhorses. So we closed up with him, and he repeated to us what hehad evidently said before to Monty.
"Maga says--I let her go scouting--she says she met a man who toldher that Miss Gloria Vanderman and a party of seven were attackedon the road, but escaped, and now have doubled on their tracks sothat they are far on their return to Tarsus."
Rustum Khan met Monty's eyes, and his lips moved silently.
"What do you know, sirdar?" Monty asked him.
"The woman lies!"
Maga was glaring at Rustum Khan as a leopardess eyes an enemy. Ashe spoke she made a significant gesture with a finger across herthroat, which the Rajput, if he saw, ignored.
"To what extent?" demanded Kagig calmly.
"Wholly! I followed her. She met no man, although she pawed theground at a place where eight ridden horses had crossed soft grounda day ago."
Kagig nodded, recognizing truth--a rather rare gift.
If the Rajput's guess was wrong and Maga did know shame, at any rateshe did not choose that moment to betray it.
"Oh, very well!" she sneered. "There were eight horses. They weregalloping. The track was nine hours old."
Kagig nodded without any symptom of annoyance or reproach.
"There is an ancient castle in the hills up yonder," he said, "inwhich there may be many Armenians hiding."
He took it for granted we would go and find out, and Maga recognizedthe drift.
"Very well," she said. "Let that one go, and that one," pointingat Fred and me.
"You'll appreciate, of course," said Monty, "that it's out of thequestion for us to go forward until we know where that lady is."
Kagig bowed gravely.
"I am needed at Zeitoon," he answered.
Then Maga broke in shrilly, pointing at Will:
"Take that one for hostage!" she advised. "Bring him along to Zeitoon.Then the rest will follow!"
Kagig looked gravely at her.
"I shall take this one," he answered, laying a respectful hand onMonty's sleeve. "Effendi, you are an Eenglis lord. Be your lifeand comfort on my head, but I need a hostage for my nation's sake.You others--I admit the urgency--shall hunt the missionary lady.If I have this one"--again he touched Monty--"I know well you willcome seeking him! You, effendi, you understand my--necessity?"
Monty nodded, smiling gravely. There was a fire at the back of Monty'seyes and something in his bearing I had never seen before.
"Then I go with my colonel sahib!" announced Rustum Khan. "Thatgipsy woman will kill him otherwise!"
"Better help hunt for the lady, Rustum Khan."
"Nay, colonel sahib bahadur--thy blood on my head! I go with thee--intohell and out beyond if need be!"
"You fellows agreeable?" asked Monty. "There is no disputing Kagig'sdecision. We're at his mercy."
"We've got to find Miss Vanderman!" said Will.
"You are not at my mercy, effendi," grumbled Kagig. The man wasobviously distressed. "You are rather at my discretion. I amresponsible. For my nation's sake and for my honor I dare not loseyou. Who has not seen how a cow will follow the calf in a wagon?So in your case, if I hold the one--the chief one--the noble one--thelord--the cousin of the Eenglis king" (Monty's rank was mountinglike mercury in a tube as Kagig warmed to the argument)--"you otherswill certainly hunt him up-hill and down-dale. Thus will my honorand my country's cause both profit!"
Monty smiled benignantly.
"It's all one, Kagig. Why labor the point? I'm going with you.Rustum Khan prefers to come with me." Kagig looked askance at RustumKhan, but made no comment. "One hostage is enough for your purpose.Let me talk with my friends a minute."
Kagig nodded, and we four drew aside.
"Now," demanded Fred, who knew the signs, "what special quixotrydo you mean springing?"
"Shut up, Fred. There's no need for you fellows to follow Kagiganother yard. He'll be quite satisfied if he has me in keeping.That will serve all practical purposes. What you three must do isfind Miss Vanderman if you can, and take her back to Tarsus. Thereyou can help the consul bring pressure to bear on the authorities."
"Rot!" retorted Fred. "Didums, you're drunk. Where did you getthe drink?"
Monty smiled, for he held a card that could out-trump our best one,and he knew it. In fact he led it straight away.
"D'you mean to say you'd consider it decent to find that young womanin the mountains and drag her to Zeitoon at Kagig's tail, when Tarsusis not more than three days' ride away at most? You know the Turkswouldn't dare touch you on the road to the coast."
"For that matter," said Fred, "the Turks 'ud hardly dare touch MissVanderman herself."
"Then leave her in the hills!" grinned Monty. "Kagig tells me thatthe Kurds are riding down in hundreds from Kaisarich way. He saysthey'll arrive too late to loot the cities, but they're experts athunting along the mountain range. Why not leave the lady to thetender ministrations of the Kurds!"
"One 'ud think you and Kagig knew of buried treasure! Or has hepromised to make you Duke of Zeitoon?" asked Will. "Tisn't right,Monty. You've no call to force our band in this way."
"Name a better way," said Monty.
None of us could. The proposal was perfectly logical.
Three of us, even supposing Kagig should care to lend us some ofhis Zeitoonli horsemen, would be all too few for the rescue work.Certainly we could not leave a lady unprotected in these hills, withthe threat of plundering Kurds overhanging. If we found her we couldhardly carry her off up-country if there were any safer course.
"Time--time is swift!" said Kagig, pulling out a watch like a bigbrass turnip and shaking it, presumably to encourage the mechanism.
"The fact is," said Monty, drawing us farther aside, for Rustum Khanwas growing restive and inquisitive, "I've not much faith in Kagig'sprospects at Zeitoon. He has talked to me all along the road, andI don't believe he bases much reliance on his men. He counts moreon holding me as hostage and so obliging the Turkish government tocall off its murderers. If you men can rescue that lady in the hillsand return to Tarsus you can serve Kagig best and give me my bestchance too. Hurry back and help the consul raise Cain!"
That closed the arguments, because Maga Jhaere slipped past Kagigand approached us with the obvious intention of listening. Shehad discovered a knowledge of English scarcely perfect but astonishinglycomprehensive, which she had chosen to keep to herself when we firstmet--a regular gipsy trick. Fred threw down the gauntlet to her,uncovering depths of distrust that we others had never suspectedunder his air of being amused.
"Now, miss!" he said, striding up to her. "Let us understand eachother! This is my friend." He pointed to Monty. "If harm comesto him that you could have prevented, you shall pay!"
Maga tossed back her loose coils of hair and laughed.
"Never fear, sahib!" Rustum Khan called out. "If ought should happento my Colonel sahib that Umm Kulsum shall be first to die. Thewomen shall tell of her death for a generation, to frighten naughtychildren!"
"You hear that?" demanded Fred.
Maga laughed again, and swore in some outlandish tongue.
"I hear! And you hear this, you old--" She called Fred by a namethat would make the butchers wince in the abattoirs at Liverpool."If anything happens to that man,--she pointed to Will, and hereyes blazed with lawless pleasure in his evident discomfort--"Imyself--me--this woman--I alone will keel--keel--keel--torture firstand afterwards keel your friend 'at you call Monty! I am Maga! Youhave heard me say what I will do! As for that Rustum Khan--youshall never see him no more ever!"
Kagig pulled out the enormous watch again. He seemed oblivious ofMaga's threats--not even aware that she had spoken, although shewas hissing through impudent dazzling teeth within three yards of him.
"The time," he said, "has fleed--has fled--has flown. Now we mustgo, effendi!"
"I go with that man!" announced Maga, pointing at Will, but obviouslywell aware that nothing of the kind would be permitted.
"Maga, come!" said Kagig, and got on his horse. "You gentlemen maytake with you each one Zeitoonli servant. No, no more. No, theammunition in your pockets must suffice. Yes, I know the remainderis yours; come then to Zeitoon and get it! Haide--Haide! Mount!Ride! Haide, Zeitoonli! To Zeitoon! Chabuk!"