by Talbot Mundy
“Empty your pockets, effendim!” he ordered at last. “Six cartridges each for rifle, and six each for pistol must be all. Your cartridges I know they are. But my people are in extremity!”
When he rode away at last, sitting his horse in the fashion of a Don Cossack and shepherding Maga in front of him because she kept checking her gray stallion for another look at Will, he left us no alternative than to take to the mountains swiftly unless we cared to starve. We watched Monty’s back disappear over a rise, with Rustum Khan close behind, and then Fred signed to one of the three Zeitoonli to lead on.
All three of the men Kagig had left with us were surly, mainly, no doubt, because they disliked separation from their friends. But there was fear, too, expressed in their manner of riding close together, and in the fidgety way in which they watched the smoke of burning Armenian villages that smudged the sky to our left.
“If they try to bolt after Kagig and leave us in the lurch I’m going to waste exactly one cartridge as a warning,” Fred announced. “After that — !”
“Probably Kagig ‘ud skin them if they turned up without us,” remarked Will.
There was something in that theory, for we learned later what Kagig’s ferocity could be when driven hard enough. But from first to last those men of Zeitoon never showed a symptom of treachery, although their resentment at having to turn their backs toward home appeared to deepen hourly.
With strange unreason they made no haste, whereas we were in a frenzy of impatience; and when Fred sought to improve their temper by singing the songs that had hitherto acted like charms on Kagig’s whole command, they turned in their saddles and cursed him for calling attention to us.
“Inch goozek?” demanded one of them (What would you like?), and with a gesture that made the blood run cold he suggested the choice between hanging and disembowelment.
Will solved the speed problem by striving to push past them along the narrow track; and they were so determined to keep in front of us that within half an hour from the start our horses were sweating freely. Then we began to climb, dismounting presently to lead our horses, and all notions of speed went the way of other vanity.
Several times looking back toward our right hand we caught sight of Kagig’s string threading its way over a rise, or passing like a line of ants under the brow of a gravel bank. But they were too far away to discern which of the moving specks might be Monty, although Kagig was now and then unmistakable, his air of authority growing on him and distinguishing him as long as he kept in sight.
We saw nothing of the footprints in soft earth that Maga had read so offhandedly. In fact we took another way, less cluttered up with roots and bushes, that led not straight, but persistently toward an up-towering crag like an eye-tooth. Below it was thick forest, shaped like a shovel beard, and the crag stuck above the beard like an old man’s last tooth.
But mountains have a discouraging way of folding and refolding so that the air-line from point to point bears no relation to the length of the trail. The last kites were drooping lazily toward their perches for the night when we drew near the edge of the forest at last, and were suddenly brought to a halt by a challenge from overhead. We could see nobody. Only a hoarse voice warned us that it was death to advance another yard, and our tired animals needed no persuasion to stand still.
There, under a protruding lock as it were of the beard, we waited in shadow while an invisible somebody, whose rifle scraped rather noisily against a branch, eyed every inch of us at his leisure.
“Who are you?” he demanded at last in Armenian, and one of our three men enlightened him in long-drawn detail.
The explanation did not satisfy. We were told to remain exactly where we were until somebody else was fetched. After twenty minutes, when it was already pitch-dark, we heard the breaking of twigs, and low voices as three or four men descended together among the trees. Then we were examined again from close quarters in the dark, and there are few less agreeable sensations. The goose-flesh rises and the clammy cold sweat takes all the comfort out of waning courage.
But somebody among the shadowy tree-trunks at last seemed to think he recognized familiar attitudes, and asked again who we might be. And, weary of explanations that only achieved delay our man lumped us all in one invoice and snarled irritably:
“These are Americans!”
The famous “Open sesame” that unlocked Ali Baba’s cave never worked swifter then. Reckless of possible traps no less than five men flung themselves out of Cimmerian gloom and seized us in welcoming arms. I was lifted from the saddle by a man six inches shorter than myself, whose arms could have crushed me like an insect.
“We might have known Americans would bring us help!” he panted in my ear. His breath came short not from effort, but excitement.
Fred was in like predicament. I could just see his shadow struggling in the embrace of an enthusiastic host, and somewhere out of sight Will was answering in nasal indubitable Yankee the questions of three other men.
“This way! Come this way! Bring the horses, oh, Zeitoonli! Americans!
Americans! God heard us — there have come Americans!”
Threading this and that way among tree-trunks that to our unaccustomed eyes were simply slightly denser blots on blackness, Will managed to get between Fred and me.
“We’re all of us Yankees this trip!” he whispered, and I knew he was grinning, enjoying it hugely. So often he had been taken for an Englishman because of partnership with us that he had almost ceased to mind; but he spared himself none of the amusement to be drawn out of the new turn of affairs, nor us any of the chaff that we had never spared him.
“Take my advice,” he said, “and try to act you’re Yanks for all you’ve got. If you can make blind men believe it, you may get out of this with whole skins!”
I expected the retort discourteous to that from Fred, who was between Will and me, shepherded like us by hard-breathing, unseen men. But he was much too subtly skilful in piercing the chain-mail of Will’s humor — even in that hour.
“Sure!” he answered. “I guess any gosh-durned rube in these parts ‘ll know without being told what neck o’ the woods I hail from. Schenectady’s my middle name! I’m—”
“Oh, my God!” groaned Will. “We don’t talk that way in the States.
The missionaries—”
“I’m the guy who put the ‘oh!’ in Ohio!” continued Fred. “I’m running mate to Colonel Cody, and I’ve ridden herd on half the cows in Hocuspocus County, Wis.! I can sing The Star-Spangled Banner with my head under water, and eat a chain of frankforts two links a minute! I’m the riproaring original two-gun man from Tabascoville, and any gink who doubts it has no time to say his prayers!”
There were paragraphs more of it, delivered at uneven intervals between deep gasps for breath as we made unsteady progress up-hill among roots and rocks left purposely for the confusion of an enemy. At first it filled Will with despair that set me laughing at him. Then Will threw seriousness to the winds and laughed too, so that the spell of impending evil, caused as much as anything by forced separation from Monty, was broken.
But it did better than put us in rising spirits. It convinced the Armenians! That foolish jargon, picked up from comic papers and the penny dreadfuls, convince more firmly than any written proof the products of the mission schools, whose one ambition was to be American themselves, and whose one pathetic peak of humor was the occasional glimpse of United States slang dropped for their edification by missionary teachers!
“By jimminy!” remarked an Armenian near me.
“Gosh-all-hemlocks!” said another.
Thenceforward nothing undermined their faith in us. Plenty of amused repudiation was very soon forthcoming from another source, but it passed over their heads. Fred and I, because we used fool expressions without relation to the context or proportion, were established as the genuine article; Will, perhaps a rather doubtful quantity with his conservative grammar and quiet speech, was accepted for our sakes.
They took an arm on either side of us to help us up the hill, and in proof of heart-to-heart esteem shouted “Oopsidaisy!” when we stumbled in the pitchy dark. When we were brought to a stand at last by a snarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answered with the chorus of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to have died an unnatural death almost a quarter of a century before.
Suddenly we smelt Standard oil, and a man emerged through a gap in ancient masonry less than six feet away carrying a battered, cheap “hurricane” lantern whose cracked glass had been reenforced with patches of brown paper. He was armed to the teeth — literally. He had a long knife in his mouth, a pistol in his left hand, and a rifle slung behind him, but after one long look at us, holding the lantern to each face in turn, he suddenly discarded all appearances of ferocity.
“You know about pistols?” he demanded of me in English, because I was nearest, and thrust his Mauser repeater under my nose. “Why won’t this one work? I have tried it every way.”
“Lordy!” remarked Will.
“Lead on in!” I suggested. Then, remembering my new part, “It’ll have to be some defect if one of us can’t fix it!”
The gap-guard purred approval and swung his lantern by way of invitation to follow him as he turned on a naked heel and led the way. We entered one at a time through a hole in the wall of what looked like the dungeon of an ancient castle, and followed him presently up the narrow stone steps leading to a trap-door in the floor above. The trap-door was made of odds and ends of planking held in place by weights. When he knocked on it with the muzzle of his rifle we could hear men lifting things before they could open it.
When a gap appeared overhead at last there was no blaze of light to make us blink, but a row of heads at each edge of the hole with nothing but another lantern somewhere in the gloom behind them. One by one we went up and they made way for us, closing in each time to scan the next-comer’s face; and when we were all up they laid the planks again, and piled heavy stones in place. Then an old man lighted another lantern, using no match, although there was a box of them beside him on the floor, but transferring flame patiently with a blade of dry grass. Somebody else lit a torch of resinous wood that gave a good blaze but smoked abominably.
“What has become of our horses?” demanded Fred, looking swiftly about him.
We were in a great, dim stone-walled room whose roof showed a corner of star-lit sky in one place. There were twenty men surrounding us, but no woman. Two trade-blankets sewn together with string hanging over an opening in the wall at the far end of the room suggested, nevertheless, that the other sex might be within ear-shot.
“The horses?” Fred demanded again, a bit peremptorily.
One of the men who had met us smirked and made apologetic motions with his hands.
“They will be attended to, effendi—”
“I know it! I guarantee it! By the ace of brute force, if a horse is missing — ! Arabaiji!”
One of our three Zeitoonli stepped forward.
“Take the other two men, Arabaiji, and go down to the horses. Groom them. Feed them. If any one prevents you, return and tell me.” Then he turned to our hosts. “Some natives of Somaliland once ate my horse for supper, but I learned that lesson. So did they! I trust I needn’t be severe with you!”
There was no furniture in the room, except a mat at one corner. They were standing all about us, and perfectly able to murder us if so disposed, but none made any effort to restrain our Zeitoonli.
“Now we’re three to their twenty!” I whispered, and Will nodded.
But Fred carried matters with a high hand.
“Send a man down with them to show them where the horses are, please!”
There seemed to be nobody in command, but evidently one man was least of all, for they all began at once to order him below, and he went, grumbling.
“You see, effendi, we have no meat at all,” said the man who had spoken first.
“But you don’t look hungry,” asserted Fred.
They were a ragged crowd, unshaven and not too clean, with the usual air of men whose only clothes are on their backs and have been there for a week past. All sorts of clothes they wore — odds and ends for the most part, probably snatched and pulled on in the first moment of a night alarm.
“Not yet, effendi. But we have no meat, and soon we shall have eaten all the grain.”
“Well,” said Fred, “if you need horse-meat, gosh durn you, take it from the Turks!”
“Gosh durn you!” grinned three or four men, nudging one another.
They were lost between a furtive habit born of hiding for dear life, a desire to be extremely friendly, and a new suspicion of Fred’s high hand. Fred’s next words added disconcertment.
“Where is Miss Vanderman?” he demanded, suddenly.
Before any one had time to answer Will made a swift move to the wall, and took his stand where nobody could get behind him. He did not produce his pistol, but there was that in his eye that suggested it. I followed suit, so that in the event of trouble we stood a fair chance of protecting Fred.
“What do you mean?” asked three Armenians together.
“Did you never see men try to cover a secret before?” Will whispered.
“Or give it away?” I added. Six of the men placed themselves between Fred and the opening where the blankets hung, ostentatiously not looking at the blankets.
“Have you an American lady with you?” Fred asked, and as he spoke he reached a hand behind him. But it was not his pistol that he drew. He carries his concertina slung to him by a strap with the care that some men lavish on a camera. He took it in both hands, and loosed the catch.
“Have you an American lady named Miss Vanderman with you?” he repeated.
“Effendi, we do not understand.”
He repeated in Armenian, and then in Turkish, but they shook their heads.
“Very well,” he said, “I’ll soon find out. A mission-school pupil might sing My Country, ’Tis of Thee or Suwannee River or Poor Blind Joe. You know Poor Blind Joe, eh? Sung it in school? I thought so. I’ll bet you don’t know this one.”
He filled his impudent instrument with wind and forthwith the belly of that ancient castle rang to the strains of a tune no missionaries sing, although no doubt the missionary ladies are familiar with it yet from where the Arctic night shuts down on Behring Sea to the Solomon Islands and beyond — a song that achieved popularity by lacking national significance, and won a war by imparting recklessness to typhus camps. I was certain then, and still dare bet to-day that those ruined castle walls re-echoed for the first time that evening to the clamor of ‘ — a hot time in the old town to-night!”
Seeing the point in a flash, we three roared the song together, and then again, and then once more for interest, the Armenians eying us spell-bound, at a loss to explain the madness. Then there began to be unexplained movements behind the blanket hanging; and a minute later a woman broke through — an unmistakable Armenian, still good-looking but a little past the prime of life, and very obviously mentally distressed. She scarcely took notice of us, but poured forth a long flow of rhetoric interspersed with sobs for breath. I could see Fred chuckling as he listened. All the facial warnings that a dozen men could make at the woman from behind Fred’s back could not check her from telling all she knew.
Nor were Will and I, who knew no Armenian, kept in doubt very long as to the nature of her trouble. We heard another woman’s voice, behind two or three sets of curtains by the sound of it, that came rapidly nearer; and there were sounds of scuffling. Then we heard words.
“Please play that tune again, whoever you are! Do you hear me?
Do you understand?”
“Boston!” announced Will, diagnosing accents.
“You bet your life I understand!” Fred shouted, and clanged through half a dozen bars again.
That seemed satisfactory to the owner of the voice. The scuffling was renewed, and in a moment she had burst through the cru
de curtains with two women clinging to her, and stood there with her brown hair falling on her shoulders and her dress all disarrayed but looking simply serene in contrast to the women who tried to restrain her. They tried once or twice to thrust her back through the curtain, although clearly determined to do her no injury; but she held her ground easily. At a rough guess it was tennis and boating that had done more for her muscles than ever strenuous housework did for the Armenians.
“Who are you?” she asked, and Will laughed with delight.
“I reckon you’ll be Miss Vanderman?’ suggested Fred in outrageous
Yankee accent. She stared hard at him.
“I am Miss Vanderman. Who are you, please.
I sat down on the great stone they had rolled over the trap, for even in that flickering, smoky light I could see that this young woman was incarnate loveliness as well as health and strength. Will was our only ladies’ man (for Fred is no more than random troubadour, decamping before any love-affair gets serious). The thought conjured visions of Maga, and what she might do. For about ten seconds my head swam, and I could hardly keep my feet.
Will left the opening bars of the overture to Fred, with rather the air of a man who lets a trout have line. And Fred blundered in contentedly.
“I’ll allow my name is Oakes — Fred Oakes,” he said.
“Please explain!” She looked from one to the other of us.
“We three are American towerists, going the grand trip.” (Remember, a score of Armenians were listening. Fred’s intention was at least as much to continue their contentment as to extract humor from the situation.) “You being reported missing we allowed to pick you up and run you in to Tarsus. Air you agreeable?”