by Talbot Mundy
Chapter Twenty-one"Those who survive this night shall have brave memories!"
FRAGMENT
Oh, fear and hate shall have their spate(For both of the twain are one)And lust and greed devour the seedThat else had growth begun.Fiercely the flow of death shall goAnd short the good man's shrift!All hell's awake full toll to take,And passions hour is swift.
But there be cracks in evil's tracksWhere seed shall safe abide,And living rocks shall breast the shocksOf overflowing tide.Castle and wall and keep shall fall,Prophet and plan shall fail,And they shall thank nor wit nor rankWho in the end prevail.
Looking back after this lapse of time there seems little differencebetween the disordered dreams of unconsciousness and the actualwaking turmoil of that night. At first as I came slowly to my sensesthere seemed only a sea of voices all about me, and a constant thumping,as of falling weights.
There were great pine torches set in the rusty old rings on the wall,and by their fitful light I saw that I lay on a cot in the castle keep.Monty, Fred, Will, Kagig and Rustum Khan were conversing at a table.Gloria sat on an up-ended pine log near me. A dozen Armenians,including the "elders" who had disagreed with Kagig, stood arguingrather noisily near the door.
"What is the thumping?" I asked, and Gloria hurried to the cot-side.But I managed to sit up, and after she had given me a drink I foundthat my foot was still the most injured part of me. It was swollenunbelievably, whereas my bandaged head felt little the worse forwear, and the knife-wound did not hurt much.
"They're bringing in wood," she answered.
"Why all that quantity?"
The thumping was continuous, not unlike the noise good stevedoresmake when loading against time.
"To burn the castle!"
At that moment Rustum Khan left the table, and seeing me sittingup strode over.
"Good-by, sahib!" he said, reaching out for my hand.
"The lord sahib has given me a post of honor and I go to hold it.Those who survive this night shall have brave memories!"
I got to my feet to shake hands with him, and I think he appreciatedthe courtesy, for his stern eyes softened for a moment. He salutedGloria rather perfunctorily as became his attitude toward women,and strode away to a point half-way between the door and Monty.There he turned, facing the table.
"Lord sahib bahadur!" he said sonorously.
Monty got up and stood facing him.
"Salaam!"
"Salaam, Rustum Khan!" Monty answered, returning the salute, andthe others got to their feet in a hurry, and stood at attention.
Then the Rajput faced about and went striding through the doorlessopening into the black night--the last I was destined to see ofhim alive.
"May we all prove as faithful and brave as that man!" said Monty,sitting down again, and Kagig cracked his knuckles.
Gloria and I went over and sat at the table, and seeing me in a stateto understand things Monty gave me a precis of the situation.
"We're making a great beacon of this castle," he said. "Three hundredmen and women are piling in the felled logs and trees anddown-wood--everything that will burn. We shall need light on the scene.Rustum Khan has gone to hold the clay ramp and make sure the Turksturn up this castle road. Fred is to hold the corner; we've fortifiedthe Zeitoon side of the road, and Fred and his men are to make surethe Turks don't spread out through the trees. Kagig, Will and I,with twenty-five very carefully picked men for each of us, wait forthe Turks at the bottom of the road and put up a feint of resistance.Our business will be to make it look as little like a trap and asmuch like a desperate defense as possible. We hope to make it seemwe're caught napping and fighting in the last ditch."
"Last ditch is true enough!" Fred commented cheerfully. Fred wasobviously in his best humor, faced by a situation that needed nocynicism to discolor it--full of fight and perfectly contented.
"Practically all of the rest of the men and women who are not watchingthe enemy on the other side of Beirut Dagh," Monty went on, "arehidden, or will be hidden in the timber on either side of the road.We're hoping to God they'll have sense enough to keep silent untilthe beacon is lighted. You're to light the beacon, since you'rerecovering so finely--you and Miss Vanderman."
"Yes, but when?" said I.
"When the bugles blow. We've got six bugles--"
"Only two of them are cornets and one's a trombone," Fred put in.
"And when they all sound together, then set the castle alight andkill any one you see who isn't an Armenian!"
"Or us!" said Fred. "You're asked not to kill one of us!"
"As a matter of fact," said Monty, "I rather expect to be near youby that time, because we don't want to give the signal until as manyTurks as possible are caught in the road like rats. At the signalwe dose the road at both ends; Rustum Khan and Fred from the bottomend, and we at the top."
"Most of the murder," Fred explained cheerfully, "will be done bythe women hidden in the trees on either flank. As long as they don'tshoot across the road and kill one another it'll be a picnic!"
"How do you know the Turks will walk into the trap?" I asked.
"Ten 'traitors,'" said Monty, "have let themselves get caught atintervals since noon. One of Kagig's spies has got across to uswith news that Mahmoud means to finish the hash of Zeitoon to-night.His men have been promised all the loot and all the women."
"Except one!" Fred added with a glance at Gloria.
"Two! Except two!" remarked Kagig with a glance at the door. Welooked, and held our breath.
Maga Jhaere stood there, with a hand on the masonry on each side!
"You fool, Kagig, what you fill this castle full of wood for?"she demanded.
Kagig beckoned to her.
"To burn little traitoresses!" he answered tenderly. "Come here!"
She walked over to him, and he put his arm around her waist, lookingup from his seat into her face as if studying it almost for thefirst time. She began running her fingers through his hair.
"Is she not beautiful?" he asked us naively. Then, not waiting foran answer: "She is my wife, effendim. You would not have me berevengeful--not toward my wife, I think?"
"Your wife? Why didn't you tell us that before?"
Gloria seemed the most surprised, as well as the most amused, althoughwe were all astonished.
"Not tell you before? Oh--do you remember Abraham--in the Bible--yes?She has been my best spy now and then. As Kagig's wife what goodwould she be?" Yet, had I not married her, I should have lost theservices of most of my best spies--Gregor Jhaere for one. He isnot her father, no. They call her their queen. She is daughterof another gipsy and of an Armenian lady of very good family. Shehas always hoped to see me a monarch!"
He laughed, and cracked his finger-joints.
"To make of me a monarch, and to reign beside me! Ha-ha-ha! I didthose gipsies a favor by marrying her, for she was something of aproblem to them, no gipsy being good enough in her eyes, and no busne(Gentile) caring for the honor until I saw and fell in love! Oh,yes, I fell in love! I, Kagig, the old adventurer, I fell in love!"
He drew her down and kissed her as tenderly as if she were a littlechild; then rose to his feet.
"You forgive her, effendim?" he asked. "You forgive her for my sake?"
None answered him. Perhaps he asked too much.
"Never mind me, then, effendim. Not for my sake, but for the goodwork she has so often done, and for the work she shall do--youforgive her?"
We all looked toward Gloria. It was her prerogative. Gloria tookMaga's left hand in her right.
"I don't blame you," she said, "for coveting Will. I've covetedhim myself! But you needn't have let your men handle me so roughly!"
"No?" said Maga blandly. "Then why did you 'urt two of them so badlythat they run away? Did not you shoot that other one? So--I give'im to you. I give you that Will Yerkees--"
"Thanks!" put in Will, but Maga ignored the interruption.
"--not because you are cl
everer than me--or more beautiful. Youare uglee! You can not dance, and as for fighting, I could keelyou with one 'and! But because I like Kagig better after all!"
At that Kagig suddenly dismissed all such trivialities as treacheryand matrimony from his mind with one of his Napoleonic gestures.
"It is time, effendim, to be moving!" He led the way out withoutanother word, I limping along last and the Armenian "elders"following me.
It was pitchy dark in the castle courtyard, and without the lightfrom numerous kerosene lanterns it would not have been possible tofind the way between the heaped-up logs. There was only a crooked,very narrow passage left between the keep and the outer gate, andthey had long ago left off using the gate for the lumber, but werehoisting it over the wall with ropes. One improvised derrick squealedin the darkness, and the logs came in by twos and tens and dozens.No sooner were we out of the keep than women came and tossed in logsthrough the door and windows, until presently that building, too,contained fuel enough to decompose the stone. And over the wholeof it, here, there and everywhere, men were pouring cans and cansof kerosene, while other men were setting dry tinder instrategic places.
There was no moon that night. Or if there was a moon, then thedark clouds hid it. No doubt Mahmoud thought he had a night afterhis own heart for the purpose of overwhelming our little force;for how should he know that we were ready for the massed battalionsforming to storm the gorge again. At a little after eight o'clockMahmoud resumed the offensive with his artillery, and a messengerthat Monty sent down to watch returned and reported the shells allbursting wild, with Rustum Khan's men taking careful cover in theditches they had zigzagged down the whole face of the ramp.
An hour later the Turk's infantry was reported moving, and shortlybefore ten o'clock we heard the opening rattle of Rustum Khan'sstinging defense. There was intended to be no deception about thatpart of our arrangements; nor was there. The oncoming enemy wasmet with a hail of destruction that checked and withered his ranks,and made the succeeding companies only too willing to turn at thecastle road instead of struggling straight forward.
Nor was the turn accomplished without further loss; for our Zeitoonli,still entrenched on the flank of the pass, loosed a murderous stormof lead through the dark that swept every inch of the open castleroad, and the turn became a shambles.
But Mahmoud had reckoned the cost and decided to pay it. Companyafter company poured up the gorge in the rear of the front ones,and turned with a roar up the road, butchered and bewildered, butever adding to the total that gained shelter beyond the first turnin the road.
Those, however, had to deal at once with Monty, Will and Kagig, whoopened on them guerrilla warfare from behind trees--never opposingthem sufficiently to check them altogether, but leading them steadilyforward into the two-mile trap. From where I stood on the top ofthe castle wall I could judge pretty accurately how the fight went;and I marveled at the skill of our men that they should retire upthe road so slowly, and make such a perfect impression of desperatedefense. Gloria refused from the first to remain inactive besideme, but went through the trees down the line of the road, crossingat intervals from side to side, urging and begging our ambushedpeople to be patient and reserve their fire until the chorus of buglesshould blow.
About eleven o'clock a breathless messenger came to say that theTurks had renewed the attack on the other side of Beirut Dagh; butI did not even send him on to Kagig. If the attack was a feint,as was probable, intended to distract us from the main battle, thenthere were men enough there to deal with it. If, on the other hand,Mahmoud had divided forces and sent a formidable number around themountain, then our only chance was nevertheless to concentrate onour great effort, and defeat the nearest first. There was not theslightest wisdom in sending down a message likely to distract Montyor Will or Kagig from their immediate task.
The women kept piling in the pine trees, until I thought the veryweight of lumber might defeat our purpose by delaying the blaze toolong. But Kagig had requisitioned every drop of kerosene in Zeitoon,and the stuff was splashed on with the recklessness that comes ofthrowing parsimony to the winds. Then I grew afraid lest they shouldfire the stuff too soon, or lest some stray spark from a man's pipeor an overturned lantern should do the work. Every imaginable fearpresented itself, because, having no active part in the fighting,I had nothing to distract me from self-criticism. It became almosta foregone conclusion after a while that the night's work was destinedto be spoiled entirely by some oversight or stupidity of mine.
The battle down in the valley dinned and screamed like the end ofthe world, although the Turks could not use their artillery forfear of slaughtering their own men. I could hear Fred hotly engaged,holding the corner of the turn where the Turks were seeking in vainto widen it. Probably the Turks supposed he was put there with ahundred men to defend the road, instead of to drive their thinnedbattalions up it.
In the end it was an accident that set the bugles blowing, and probablythat accident saved our fortunes. Monty shouted to a man to runand ask for news of the fighting below. Mistaking the words in thedin, the messenger ran to the rock in the clearing on which themusicians waited, and a minute later the first bars of the Marseillaiserang clearly through the trees.
The almost instant answer was a volley from each side of the roadthat sounded like the explosion of the whole world. And the Turkshardly half into the trap yet! Monty and Will and Kagig broughttheir men back up the road at the double, as the only way to escapethe fire of our ambushed friends. I was two minutes fumbling withmatches in the wind before I could light the kindling set ready inthe entrance arch; and it was about three minutes more before thefirst long flame shot skyward and the beacon we had set began todo its appointed work.
Then, though, that castle proved to be a very Vesuvius, for thedraught poured in through the doorless arch and hurried the hotflames skyward to be mushroomed roaring against the belly of blackclouds. None of us knew then where Mahmoud was, nor that he hadgiven the order that minute to his trapped battalions to halt, facethe trees on either side, and advance in either direction in orderto widen their front.
The firing of the castle, for some mad reason of the sort that mothersevery catastrophe, caused them to disobey that order and, instead,to charge forward at the double. In a moment the new fury (for itwas not panic, nor yet exactly the reverse) communicated itself allalong the road, and the regiments at the rear, in spite of the murderousfire from our ambush, yelled and milled to drive the men in frontmore swiftly.
Then Fred saw the castle flames, and led his men forward to plugup the lower end of the road. Next Rustum Khan saw it, and advancedthree hundred down the ramp to hold the ditch at the bottom and preventreserves from coming to the rescue.
It was then, so he told us afterward, that Fred realized who wasthe person in authority who had sought to change the line of battleat the critical moment. Mahmoud himself, surrounded by his staff,had ridden forward to see what the true nature of the difficultymight be, and had got caught in the trap when Fred closed it andRustum Khan cut off the flow of men!
Fred did his best by rapid fire to put an end to Mahmoud, staff andall. But the light from the castle did not reach down in among thetrees, and when he told the nearest men who the target was that onlymade the shooting wilder. Nor was Mahmoud a man without decision.Realizing that he was trapped, at any rate from behind, he gallopedforward with his staff, scattering bewildered men to right and leftof him, to find out whether the trap could not be forced from theupper end, knowing that there were plenty of men on the road alreadyto account for any possible total we could bring against them, ifonly they could be led forward and deployed.
So it came about that Mahmoud on a splendid war-horse, and five ofhis mounted staff, arrived at the head of the oncoming column; andKagig saw them in a moment when the flare from the castle roaredlike a rocket hundreds of feet high and scattered all the shadowson that section of the road. Kagig passed the word along, but itwas Monty who d
evised the instant plan, and one of Will's men whocame running to find me.
So I forgot pain and disability in the excitement of having a partto play. Gloria had found her way back to the castle, and it wasshe who rallied all the men and women who had worked at piling fuel,and brought them to where I lay. Then I begged her to get backsomewhere and hide, but she laughed at me.
Our business was to burry down the road and plug it against Mahmoudand his men, while Kagig got behind him by sheer hand-to-hand fighting,and Monty and Will approached him from the flanks. We had to becautious about shooting, because of Kagig, for one thing, but foranother, Will had sent the message, "Don't kill Mahmoud." And that,of course, was obvious. Mahmoud alive would be worth a thousandto us of any Mahmoud dead.
Gloria ran down the road beside me, and Will caught sight of herin the dancing light. I heard him shout something in United StatesEnglish about women and hell-fire and burned fingers, but beyondthat it was not polite, and was intended for me as much as for Gloria,I did not get the gist of it. Then the battle closed up around us,and we all fought hand to hand--women harder than the men--to closein on Mahmoud and drag him from his horse.
Three times in the fitful dark and even more deceptive dancing lightwe almost had him. But the first time he fought free, and hiswar-horse kicked a clear way for him for a few yards through thescrimmage. Then Kagig closed in on him from the rear. But threeof the staff engaged Kagig alone, and twenty or thirty of Mahmoud'sinfantry drove Kagig's men back on the still advancing column. Kagigwent down, fighting and shouting like a Berserker, and Monty letMahmoud go to run to Kagig's rescue.
Monty did not go alone, for his men leapt after him like hounds.But he fought his way in the lead with a clubbed rifle, and stoodover Kagig's body working the weapon like a flail. That was allI saw of that encounter, for Mahmoud decided to attempt escape bythe upper way again, and it was I who captured him. I landed onhim through the darkness with my clenched fist under the low hungangle of his jaw and, seizing his leg, threw him out of the saddle.There Gloria helped me sit on him; and the greater part of whatwe had to do was to keep the women from tearing him to pieces.
At last Gloria and I, with a dozen of them, took Mahmoud up-hilland made him sit down in full firelight with his back against arock. He had nothing to say for himself, but stared at Gloria witheyes that explained the whole philosophy of all the Turks; and she,for sake of the decency that was her birthright, went and stood onthe far side of the rock and kept the bulge of it between them.
Then I sent for Kagig, and Monty, and Will; And after they had seento the barricading of the upper end of the road with fallen treesand a fairly wide ditch, Kagig and Will came, followed by half adozen of the elders, who had been lending a stout hand during thatpart of the night's work. Kagig was out of breath, but apparentlynot hurt much.
They came so slowly that I wondered. Gloria, who could see muchfarther through the dark than I, gave a little scream and ran forward.I saw then by a sudden burst of flame from the castle that they werecarrying something heavy, and I guessed what it was although my heartrebelled against belief; but I did not dare leave Mahmoud, whoseemed inclined to take advantage of the first stray opportunity.I stuck my pistol into his ear and dared him to move hand or foot.
Gloria came back in tears, and took Mahmoud's cape and my jacket,and spread them on the ground. On these they laid Monty very tenderly,Kagig looking on with cracking finger-joints that I could hear quiteplainly in spite of the awful rage of battle that thundered andcrashed and screamed among the woods. It was as one sometimes hearsthe ticking of a watch beneath the pillow in a nightmare.
Monty was alive, but in spite of what Gloria could do the dark bloodwas welling out from a sword gash on his right side, and we had nota surgeon within miles of us. From somewhere out of the darknessMaga appeared, bringing water, her face all black with the filthof fighting among trees, and her eyes on fire.
Monty seemed to be listening to the noise of battle--Kagig to thinkof nothing but his loss. He pointed at Mahmoud, who was eying Montycuriously.
"See the prisoner!" he said. "Ha! I would give a hundred of hima hundred times for Monty, my brother!"
Monty turned his head to see Mahmoud, and appeared partly satisfied.
"You hold the key," he said painfully. "Mahmoud will make terms.But it will take time to stop the fighting. You must send downreserves to Fred and Rustum Khan--that is where the strain is--youmust see that surely--the enemy from below will be trying to comeforward, and those in the trap to return. Fred and Rustum Khan arebearing all the brunt. Relieve them!"
It did not look good to me that Will should leave Gloria again;and Kagig must surely stay there to do the bargaining. So I tookMonty's hand to bid him good-by, and limped off through the darkto try to find men who would come with me to the shambles below.It wag Kagig and Will together who overtook me, picked me off myfeet, and dragged me back, and Will went down alone, with a waveof the hand to Gloria, and a laugh that might have made the devilthink he liked it.
Then began the conference, I holding a mere watching brief with apistol reasonably close to Mahmoud's ear. And for a time, whileMonty lived, the elders supported Kagig and insisted on the fullconcession of his demands. But Monty, with his head on Gloria'slap, died midway of the proceedings; and after that the elders'suspicion of Kagig reawoke, so that Mahmoud took courage and grewmore obstinate. Kagig called them aside repeatedly to make themlisten to his views.
"You fools!" he swore at them, cracking his knuckles and twistingat his beard alternately. "Do you not realize that Mahmoud isambitious! Do you not understand that he must yield all, if youinsist! Otherwise we hang him here to a tree in sight of the burningcastle and his own men! No ambitious rascal is ever willing tobe hanged! Insist! Insist!"
"Ah, Kagig!" one of them answered. "Speak for yourself. You wouldnot like to be hanged perhaps! But we must concede him something,or how shall he satisfy ambition? He must be able to go back withsomething to his credit in order to satisfy the politicians."
"Oh, my people! Oh, my people!" grumbled Kagig. "Can you never see?"
But they went back to Mahmoud with a fresh proposal, milder thanthe first; and eventually, after yielding point by point, untilKagig begged them kindly to blow his brains out and bury him withMonty, they reached a basis on which Mahmoud was willing tocapitulate--or to oblige them, as he expressed it.
He won his main point: Zeitoon was to accept a Turkish governor.They won theirs, that the governor was to bring no troops with him,but to be contented with a body-guard of Zeitoonli. For the rest:Mahmoud was to go free, taking his wounded with him, but surrenderingall the uninjured Turkish soldiers in the trap as hostages for therelease of all Armenian prisoners taken anywhere between Tarsus andZeitoon. It was agreed there were to be no subsequent reprisalsby either side, and that hostages were not to be released until afterMahmoud's army corps should have returned to whence it came.
Kagig wrote the terms in Turkish by the light of the holocaust inMonty's ancestral keep, and Mahmoud signed the paper in the presenceof ten witnesses. But whether he, or his brother Turks, have kept,for instance, the last clause of the agreement, history can answer.
Chapter Twenty-two"God go with you to the States, effendim!"
ARMENIA
First of the Christian nations; the first of us all to feelThe fire of infidel hatred, the weight of the pagan heel;Faithfullest down the ages tending the light that burned,Tortured and trodden therefore, spat on and slain and spurned;Branded for others' vices, robbed of your rightful fame,Clinging to Truth in a truthless land in the name of the ancient Name;Generous, courteous, gentle, patient under the yoke,Decent (hemmed in a harem land ye were ever a one-wife folk);Royal and brave and ancient--haply an hour has struckWhen the new fad-fangled peoples shall weary of raking muck,And turning from coward counsels and loathing the parish lies,In shame and sackcloth offer up the only sacrifice.Then thou who hast been neglected, who hast called
o'er a world in vainTo the deaf deceitful traders' ears in tune to the voice of gain,Thou Cinderella nation, starved that our appetites might live,When we come with a hand outstretched at last--accept it, and forgive!
The fighting lasted nearly until dawn, because of the difficultyof conveying Mahmoud's orders to the Turks, and Kagig's orders toour own tree-hidden firing-line. But a little before sunrise thelast shot was fired, at about the time when most of the castle wallsfell in and a huge shower of golden sparks shot upward to the palingsky. The cease fire left all Zeitoon's defenders with scarcely athousand rounds of rifle ammunition between them; but Mahmoud didnot know that.
An hour after dawn Fred joined us. He had the news of Monty's deathalready, and said nothing, but pointed to something that his ownmen bore along on a litter of branches. A minute or two later theylaid Rustum Khan's corpse beside Monty's, and we threw one blanketover both of them.
I don't remember that Fred spoke one word. He and Monty had beencloser friends than any brothers I ever knew. No doubt the awfulstrain of the fighting at the corner of the woods had left Fred numbto some extent; but he and Monty had never been demonstrative intheir affection, and, as they had lived in almost silent understandingof each other, hidden very often for the benefit of strangers bykeen mutual criticism, so they parted, Fred not caring to make publicwhat he thought, or knew, or felt.
Kagig, not being in favor with the elders, vanished, Maga followingwith food for him in a leather bag, and we saw neither of them againuntil noon that day, by which time we ourselves had slept a littleand eaten ravenously. Then he came to us where we still sat by thegreat rock with Mahmoud under guard (for nobody would trust him tofulfil his agreement until all his troops had retired from the district,leaving behind them such ammunition and supplies as they had carriedto the gorge below the ramp).
We had laid both bodies under the one blanket in the shade, andKagig pointed to them.
"I have found the place--the proper place, effendim!" he said simply."Maga has made it fit."
Not knowing what he meant by that last remark, we invited some bigArmenians to come with us to carry our honored dead, and followedKagig one by one up a goat track (or a bear track, perhaps it was)that wound past the crumbled and blackened castle wall and followedthe line of the mountain. Here and there we could see that Kagighad cleared it a little on his way back, and several times it wasobvious that there had been a prepared, frequented track inancient days.
"It took time to find," said Kagig, glancing back, "but I thoughtthere must be such a place near such a castle."
Presently we emerged on a level ledge of rock, from a square holein the midst of which a great slab had been levered away with theaid of a pole that lay beside it. All around the opening Maga hadspread masses of wild flowers, and either she or Kagig had spreadout on the rock the great banner with its ships and wheat-sheavesthat the women had made by night in Monty's honor.
We could read the motto plainly now--Per terram et aquam--By landand sea; and Kagig pointed to some marks on the stone slab. Mosshad grown in them and lichens, but he or else Maga had scraped themclean; and there on the stone lay the same legend graven bold anddeep, as clear now as when the last crusader of the family was buriedthere, lord knew how many centuries before.
The tomb was an enormous place--part cave, and partly hewn--twentyfeet by twenty by as many feet deep at the most conservative guess;and on four ledges, one on each side, not in their armor, but inthe rags of their robes of honor, lay the bones of four earlierMontdidiers--all big men, broad-shouldered and long of shin and thigh.
We did not need to go down into the tomb and break the peace ofcenturies. Under the very center of the opening was a raised tableof hewn rock, part of the cavern floor, about eight feet by eightthat seemed to have been left there ready for the next man, or nexttwo men when their time should come.
Down on to that we lowered Monty's body carefully with leather ropes,and then Rustum Khan's beside him, Rustum Khan receiving Christianburial, as neither he nor his proud ancestors would have preferred.But his line was as old as Monty's, and he died in the same causeand the selfsame battle, so we chose to do his body honor; and ifthe prayers that Fred remembered, and the other cheerfuller prayersthat Gloria knew, were an offense to the Rajput's lingering ghost,we hoped he might forgive us because of friendship, and esteem, andthe homage we did to his valor in burying his body there.
We covered Monty's body with the banner the women had made, andRustum Khan's with flowers, for lack of a better shroud; thenlevered and shoved the great slab back until it rested snugly inthe grooves the old masons had once cut so accurately as to preservethe bones beneath.
Then, when Gloria had said the last prayer:
"What next, Kagig?" Will demanded.
Kagig was going to answer, but thought better of it and strode awayin the lead, we following. He did not stop until we reached theopen and the smoking ruins of the castle walls. When he stopped:
"Has any one seen Peter Measel?" I asked.
"Forget him!" growled Will.
"Why?" demanded Maga. "Will you bury him in that same hole withthem two?"
"Has any one seen him?" I asked again, uncertain why I asked, butcurious and insistent.
"Sure!" said Maga. "Yes. Me I seen 'im. I keel 'im--so--with aknife--las' night! You not believe?"
Whether we believed or not, the news surprised us, and we waitedin silence for an explanation.
"You not believe? Why not? That dog! 'E make of me a dam-fool!'E tell me about God. 'E say God is angry with Zeitoon, an' Kagigis as good as a dead man, an' I shall take advantage. 'E 'ope 'emarry me. I 'ope if Kagig die I marry Will Yerkees, but I agreewith Measel, making pretend, an' 'e run away to talk 'is fool secretswith the Turks. Then I make my own arrangements! But Mahmoud isnot succeeding, and I like Kagig better after all. An' then lastnight in the darkness Peter Measel he is coming on a 'orse withMahmoud because Mahmoud is not trusting him out of sight. An' Isee him, an' 'e see me, an' 'e call me, an' I go to 'im through allthe fighting, an' 'e get off the 'orse an' reach out 'is arms to me,an' I keel 'im with my knife--so! An' now you know all about it!"
"What next?" Will demanded dryly.
"Next?" said Kagig. "You effendim make your escape! The Turks willsurely seek to be revenged on you. I will show you a way across themountains into Persia."
"And you?" I asked.
"Into hiding!" he answered grimly. "Maga--little Maga, she shallcome with me, and teach me more about the earth and sky and windand water! Perhaps at last some day she shall make me--no, nevera king, but a sportman."
"Come with us," said Will. "Come to the States."
"No, no, effendi. I know my people. They are good folk. Theymistrust me now, and if I were to stay among them where they couldsee me and accuse me, and where the Turks could make a peg of meon which to hang mistrust, I should be a source of weakness to them.Nevertheless, I am ever the Eye of Zeitoon! I shall go into hiding,and watch! There will come an hour again--infallibly--when theTurks will seek to blot out the last vestige of Armenia. If I hidefaithfully, and watch well, by that time I shall be a legend amongmy people, and when I appear again in their desperation they willtrust me."
Will met Gloria's eyes in silence for a moment.
"I've a mind to stay with you, Kagig, and lend a hand," he said at last.
"Nay, nay, effendi!"
"We can attach ourselves to some mission station, and be lots of use,"Gloria agreed.
"Use?" said Kagig, cracking his fingers. "The missions have donegood work, but you can be of much more use--you two. You have eachother. Go back to the blessed land you come from, and be happy together.But pay the price of happiness! You have seen. Go back and tell!"
"Tell about Armenian atrocities?" said Will. "Why, man alive, thepapers are full of them at regular intervals!"
Kagig made a gesture of impatience.
"Aye! All about what the Turks have done to us, and how m
uch aboutus ourselves? America believes that when a Turk merely frowns theArmenian lies down and holds his belly ready for the knife! Whowould care to help such miserable-minded men and women? But youhave seen otherwise. You know the truth. You have seen that Armeniais undermined by mutual suspicion cunningly implanted by the Turk.You have also seen how we rally around one man or a handful whomwe know we dare trust!"
"True enough!" said Will. "I've wondered at it."
"Then go and tell America," Kagig almost snarled with blazing eyes,"to come and help us! To give us a handful of armed men to rally round!Tell them we are men and women, not calves for the shambles! Tellthem to reach us out but one finger of one hand for half a dozenyears, and watch us grow into a nation! Preach it from the house-tops!Teach it! Tell it to the sportmen of America that all we need isa handful to rally round, and we will all be sportmen too! Go andtell them--tell them!"
"You bet we will!" said Gloria.
"Then go!" said Kagig. "Go by way of Persia, lest the Turks findways of stopping up your mouths. Monty has died to help us. Ilive that I may help. You go and tell the sportmen all. Tell themwe show good sport in Zeitoon--in Armenia! God go with youall, effendim!"