Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “This writing says that you did not run away until you had made quite sure we were in difficulties. So, if you should run too soon, and we should not be in difficulties after all, Kagig would learn that sooner or later. What would Kagig do in that case?”

  “He would throw me over the bridge at Zeitoon — if he could catch me! Nay! I play no tricks.”

  “Good. Then go and hide. Hide within call. Within an hour, or at most two hours we shall know how the land lies. If all should be well I will change that writing for another one, and send you to Kagig in any case. No more words now — go and hide!”

  He put his pipe out with his thumb, and took two strides into a shadow, and was gone. Then I went back through the gap in the dungeon wall, and stumbled to the stairs. Apparently not missing me yet, they had covered up the trap, and I had to hammer on it for admission. They were not pleased when my head appeared through the hole, and they realized that I had probably held communication with our men. I suppose Fred saw by my face that I had accomplished what I went for, because he let out a laugh like a fox’s bark that did nothing toward lessening the tension.

  On the other hand it was quite clear that during my absence Miss Vanderman had not been idle. Excepting the two men who had admitted me, every one was seated — she on the floor among the women, with her back to the wall, and the rest in a semicircle facing them. Two of the women had their arms about her, affectionately, but not without a hint of who controlled the situation.

  “What have you been doing?” Fred demanded, and he laughed at Gloria

  Vanderman with an air of triumph.

  “Making preparations,” I said, “to take Miss Vanderman to Tarsus.”

  I wish I could set down here a chart of the mixed emotions then expressed on that young lady’s face. She did not look at Will, knowing perhaps that she already had him captive of her bow and spear. Neither did Will look at us, but sat tracing figures with a forefinger in the dust between his knees, wondering perhaps how to excuse or explain, and getting no comfort.

  If my guess was correct, Gloria Vanderman was about equally distracted between the alternative ignominy of submitting her free will to Armenians or else to us. Compassion for the women in their predicament weighed one way — knowledge that our friend Monty was in durance vile contingent on her actions pulled heavily another Fred was frankly enjoying himself, which influenced her strongly toward the Armenian side, she being young and, doubtless the idol of a hundred heart-sick Americans, contemptuous of forty-year-old bachelors.

  “Of course we shall not let you go!” one of the Armenians assured her in quite good English, and I began fumbling at the pistol in my inner pocket, for if Arabaiji was to run to Zeitoon, then the sooner the better. But it needed only that imputation of helplessness to tip the beam of Miss Gloria’s judgment.

  “You can attend to the sick ones. You can play music for us all.

  Doubtless these other two have qualifications.”

  I was too busy admiring Gloria to know what effect that announcement had on Fred and Will. She shook herself free from the women, and stood up, splendid in the flickering yellow light. There was a sort of swift move by every one to be ready against contingencies, and I judged it the right moment to spring my own surprise.

  “When I fire this pistol,” I said, producing it, “a man will start at once for Zeitoon to warn Kagig. He has a note in his pocket written to Kagig. Judge for yourselves how long it will take Kagig and his men to reach this place!”

  The nearest man made a very well-judged spring at me and pinned my elbows from behind. Another man knocked the pistol from my hand. The women seized Gloria again. But Fred was too quick — drew his own pistol, and fired at the roof.

  “Twice, Fred!” I shouted, and he fired again.

  “There!” said I. “Do what you like. The messenger has gone!”

  And then Gloria shook herself free a last time, and took command.

  “Is that true?” she demanded.

  I nodded. “The best of our three men was to start on his way the minute he heard the second shot.”

  Then I was sure she was Boadicea reincarnate, whether the old-time

  British queen did or did not have blue eyes and brown hair.

  “I will not have brave men brought back here on my account! Kagig must be a patriot! He needs all his men! I don’t blame him for making a hostage of Lord Montdidier! I would do the same myself!”

  Will had evidently given her a pretty complete synopsis of our adventure while I was outside talking with Arabaiji. It is always a mystery to the British that Americans should hold themselves a race apart and rally to each other as if the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race were foreigners, but those two had obeyed the racial rule. They understood each other — swiftly — a bar and a half ahead of the tune.

  “This old castle is no good!” she went on, not raising her voice very high, but making it ring with the wholesomeness of youth, and youth’s intolerance of limits. “The Turks could come to this place and burn it within a day if they chose!”

  “The Turks won’t trouble. They’ll send their friends the Kurds instead,”

  Fred assured her.

  “Ah-h-h-gh!” growled the Armenians, but she waved them back to silence.

  “How much food have you? Almost none! How much ammunition?”

  “Ah-h-h-h!” they chorused in a very different tone of voice.

  “D’you mean you’ve got cartridges here?” Fred demanded.

  “Fifty cases of cartridges for government Mauser rifles!” bragged the man who was nearest to Will.

  “Gee! Kagig ‘ud give his eyes for them!” (Will devoted his eyes to the more poetic purpose of exchanging flashed encouragement with Gloria.)

  “Men, women and children — how many of you are there?”

  “Who knows? Who has counted? They keep coming.”

  “No, they don’t. You’ve set a guard to keep any more away for fear the food won’t last — I know you have! Well — what does it matter how many you are? I say let us all go to Zeitoon and help Kagig!”

  “Oh, bravo!” shouted Fred, but it was Will’s praise that proved acceptable and made her smile.

  “Second the motion!”

  I added a word or two by way of make-weight, that did more as a matter of fact than her young ardor to convince those very skeptical men and women. No doubt she broke up their determination to sit still, but it was my words that set them on a course.

  “Kagig will be angry when he comes. He’s a ruthless man,” said I, and the Armenians, men as well as women, sought one another’s eyes and nodded.

  “Kagig must be more of a ruthless bird than we guessed!” Will whispered.

  Counting women, there was less than a score of refugees in the room, and if we had only had them to convince, our work was pretty nearly done. There was the guard among the trees down-hill that we knew about still to be converted, or perhaps coerced. But just at the moment when we felt we held the winning hand, there came a ladder thrust down through the hole in the corner of the roof, and a man whom they all greeted as Ephraim began to climb down backward. He was so loaded with every imaginable kind of weapon that he made more noise than a tinker’s cart.

  Nor was Ephraim the only new arrival. Man after man came down backward after him, each man cursed richly for treading on his predecessor’s fingers — a seeming endless chain of men that did not cease when the room was already uncomfortably overcrowded. Some of these men wore clothes that suggested Russia, but the majority were in rags. The ladder swayed and creaked under them, and finally, at a word from Ephraim, the last-comers sat on the upper rungs, bending the frail thing with their weight into a complaining loop.

  Several of the newcomers had torches, and their acrid smoke turned the twice-breathed air of the place into evil-tasting fog.

  Three men put their faces close to Ephraim’s and proceeded to enlighten him as to what had passed. He seemed to be recognized as some sort of chieftain, and carried himself
with a commanding air, but so many men talked at once, and all in Armenian, that we could not pick out more than a word or two here and there. Even Fred, with his gift of tongues, could hardly make head or tail of it.

  We three pressed through the swarm and took our stand beside Gloria, not hesitating to thrust the other women aside. They dragged at their men-folk to call attention to us, but the argument was too hot to be missed, and the women clawed and screamed in vain.

  “I believe we could get out!” I shouted in Will’s ear. But he shook his head. At least six men were standing on the trap, and we could not have driven them off it because there was no other space on the floor that they could occupy. So I turned to Fred.

  “Couldn’t we shake those ruffians off the ladder, and climb up it and escape?” I shouted. But Fred shook his head, and went on listening, trying to follow the course of the dispute.

  At last somebody with louder lungs than any other man made Ephraim understand that it was I who sent the messenger to Zeitoon. Instantly that solved the problem to his mind. I should be hanged, and that would be all about it. He gesticulated. The men swarmed down off the ladder to the already overcrowded floor, and mistaking Will for me several men started to thrust him forward. A face appeared through the hole in the roof and its owner was sent running for a rope. I had not recovered my pistol, and my rifle was slung at my back where I could not possibly get at it for the crowd. But Fred had a Colt repeater handy in his hip-pocket and he promptly screwed the muzzle of it into Ephraim’s ear. What he said to him I don’t know, but Ephraim’s convictions underwent a change of base and he began to yell for silence. The men who had seized Will let go of him just as the rope with a disgusting noose in the end was lowered through the roof. And then Ossa was imposed on Pelion.

  A new face appeared at the hole. Not that we could see the face. We could only see the form of a man who shook the bloody stump of a forearm at us, and shrieked unintelligible things. After thirty seconds even the men in the far corner were aware of him, and then there was stony silence while he had his say. He repeated his message a dozen times, as if he had it by heart exactly, spitting foam out of his mouth and never ceasing to shake the butchered stump of an arm. At about the dozenth time he fainted and fell headlong down the ladder bringing up on the shoulders of the men below.

  “What does he say?” I bellowed in Fred’s car. But Fred was forcing his way closer to Gloria, to tell her.

  “He says the Kurds are coming! He says two regiments of Kurdish

  cavalry have been turned loose by the Turks with orders to ‘rescue’

  Armenians. They are on their way, riding by night for a wonder.

  They cut both his hands off, but he got away by shamming dead.

  He says they are cutting off the feet of people and bidding them walk to Tarsus. They are taking the women and girls for sale. Old women and very little children they are making what they call sport with. Have you heard of Kurds? Their ideas of sport are worse than the Red-man’s ever were.”

  Every tongue in the room broke loose. In another second every man was still. They looked toward Ephraim. He who could order a hanging so glibly should shoulder the new responsibility.

  But Ephraim was not ready with a plan, and could not speak English.

  Wild-eyed, he seized the lapel of my coat in trembling fingers, and

  with a throat grown suddenly parched, crackled a question at me in

  Armenian. I could have understood Volopuk easier.

  “What does he say, Fred?”

  “He wants to know how soon Kagig can be here.”

  “Kagig!” Ephraim echoed, clutching at my collar. “Yes, yes, yes!

  Kagig! Come — how soon?”

  “We shall be all right,” said another man in English over on the far side of the room. His hoarse voice sounded like a bellow in the silence. “Kagig will come presently. Kagig will butcher the Kurds. Kagig will certainly save us.”

  “Kagig!” Ephraim insisted. “Come —— how soon?”

  But I knew Kagig would not come, that night or at any time, and Ephraim shook me in frenzied impatience for an answer.

  Chapter Eleven “That man’s dose is death, and he dies unshriven!”

  “MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM”

  The ancient orders pass. The fetters fall.

  All-potent inspiration stirs dead peoples to new birth.

  And over bloodied fields a new, clear call

  Rings kindlier on deadened ears of earth.

  Man — male — usurping — unwise overlord,

  Indoctrinated, flattered, by himself betrayed

  And all-betraying since with idiot word

  He bade his woman bear and be afraid,

  Awakes to see delusion of the past

  Unmourned along with all injustice die,

  Himself by woman wisdom blessed at last

  And her unchallenged right the reason why.

  Now for a moment I became the unwilling vortex of that mob of anxious men and women — I who by, my own confession knew Kagig, I who had sent Kagig a message, I who five minutes ago was on the verge of being hanged in the greasy noose that still swung above the ladder through the hole in the roof — I who therefore ought to be thoroughly plastic-minded and obedient to demands.

  The place had become as evil smelling as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Everybody was sweating, and they shoved and milled murderously in the effort to get near me and learn, each with his own ears from my lips, just when Kagig might be expected. Ephraim, their presumptive leader, got shuffled to the outside of the pack — the only silent man between the four walls, watchful for new opportunity.

  With my clothing nearly torn off and cars in agony from bellowed questions, the only remedy I could think of was to yell to Fred to start up a tune on his concertina; I had seen him change a crowd’s temper many a time in just that way. But even supposing my advice had been good, he could not get his arms free, and it was Gloria Vanderman who saved that day.

  Whoever has tried to write down the quality that makes the college girl, United States or English, what she is has failed, just as whoever has tried to muzzle or discredit her has failed. She is something new that has happened to the world, not because of men and women and the priests and pundits, but in spite of them. Part of the reason can be given by him who knows history enough, and commands almost unlimited leisure and page; but that would only be the uninteresting part that we could easily dispense with. The college girl has happened to the world, as light did in Genesis 1:3.

  Gloria Vanderman, with her back against the wall, struggled and contrived to get her foot on Will’s bent knee. Another struggle sent her breast-high above the sea of sweating faces. There was fitful light enough to see her by, because the man who held a pine torch was privileged. If there had not been hot sparks scattering from the thing doubtless they would have closed in on him and crushed it down, and out, but he had elbow-room, and accordingly Gloria’s face glowed golden in its frame of disordered chestnut hair. One heard her voice because it was clear, and sweet with reasonableness, so that it vibrated in an unobstructed orbit.

  “Surely you are not cowards?” she began, and they grew silent, because that idea called for consideration.

  “Kagig is a patriot. Kagig is fighting for all Armenia. Surely you are not the men to let brave Kagig be tempted away from his post of danger at Zeitoon? If I know you men and women you will hasten to meet Kagig, taking your food, and weapons, and children with you. You will hurry — hurry — hurry to meet him — to meet him as near Zeitoon as possible, so as to turn him back to his post of duty!”

  Then Ephraim saw his chance. Some whisperer translated to him and he owned a voice that was worth gold for political purposes.

  He took up the tale in Armenian, working himself up into a splendid fervor, and so amplifying the argument that he could almost fairly claim it as his own before he was half-done. She had introduced the light, but he exploited it, and he knew his nation — knew the tri
cks of speech most likely to spur them into action.

  Within five minutes they were shoving the stones off the trap at imminent risk of anybody’s legs, and the ladder bent groaning under the weight of twice as many as it ought to bear, as half of them essayed the short cut over the roof. A blast of sweet air through the opened trap ejected most of the smoky ten-times-breathed stuff out with the climbers; and as the room emptied and we wiped the grimy sweat from our faces I heard Will talking to Gloria Vanderman in a new tongue — new, that is to say, to the old world.

  “Good goods! Stampeded ’em! They’ll vote for you for any office — your pick! If that guy Ephraim plans buttering the slide we’ll set him on it — watch!”

  “You bet,” she answered sentimentally. “I wasn’t cheer leader for nothing. Besides, I delivered the valedictory — say, what are we waiting here for?”

  “Come on, then!” I urged her. “We’ll leave our mule-load behind in case they’ve eaten your horse. Come with us to the stables and—”

  But she interrupted me.

  “You men go down and get the horses. Do what you can with the crowd. I’ll get the women into something like order if that’s possible, and we’ll all meet wherever there’s open ground and moonlight at the foot of the hill.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Will proposed. “You’ll need—”

  “No you won’t! The women are easy. They’ve been taught to obey orders! It’ll take all the wit you three men own between you to get the men in line! Let’s get busy!”

  The men had treated the hanging blankets with the respect the ancient Jews accorded to the veil of the Holy of Holies. (We learned afterward that there was an Armenian man of the party who had followed a circus one summer all across the States, and had brought that sensible precaution home with him as rule number one for successful management of mixed assemblies.) Gloria Vanderman made a run for the curtain and dived behind it. We heard the women welcome her.

  “Let’s go!” said Will.