Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  And the moment that began to happen he was the same sweet Peter Measel with the same assurance of every other body’s wickedness and his own divinity, only with something new in his young life to add poignancy.

  “What were you doing there?” demanded Fred, as we got him to towing along between us at last.

  “I was looking for her.”

  “For whom?”

  “For Maga Jhaere.”

  Fred allowed his ribs to shake in silent laughter that annoyed the mule, and we had to catch Measel all over again because the beast’s crude objections filled the martyred biped full of the desire to run.

  “Somebody must save that girl!” he panted. “And who else can do it? Who else is there?”

  “There’s only you!” Fred agreed, choking down his mirth.

  “I’m glad you agree with me. At least you have that much blessedness, Mr. Fred. D’you know that girl was willing to be a murderess? Yes! She tried to murder Rustum Khan. Rustum Khan ought to be hanged, for he is a villain — a black villain! But she must not have blood on her hands — no, no!”

  “Why didn’t she murder him?” demanded Fred. “Qualms at the last moment?”

  “No. I’m sorry to say no. She has no God-likeness yet. But that will come. She will repent. I shall see to that. It was I who prevented her, and she all but murdered me! She would have murdered me, but Kagig held her wrist; and to punish her he gave an order that I should preach to her morning, afternoon, and evening — three times a day. So I had my opportunity. There was a guard of gipsy women set to see that she obeyed.”

  “Continue,” said Fred. “What happened?”

  “She broke away, and came down to see the fighting.”

  “Why did you follow her? Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Oh, Mr. Fred, if you only knew! Yet I felt impelled to find her.

  I could not trust her out of sight.”

  “Why not? She seems fairly well able to look after herself.”

  “Oh, I can not allow wickedness. I must make it to cease! It entered my head that she intended to find Kagig!”

  “Well? Why not?”

  “Oh, Mr. Fred — tell me! You may know — you perhaps as well as any one, for you are such an ungodly man! What are her relations with Kagig? Does he — is he — is there wickedness between them?”

  “Dashed if I know. She’s a gipsy. He’s a fine half-savage. Why should it concern you?”

  “Oh, I could not endure it! It would break my heart to believe it!”

  “Then why think about it?”

  “How can I help it? I love her! Oh, I love her, Mr. Fred! I never loved a woman in all my life before. It would break my heart if she were to be betrayed into open sin by Kagig! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? I love her! What shall I do?”

  “Do?” said Fred, looking forward in imagination to new worlds of humor, “why — make love, if you love her! Make hot love and strong!”

  “Will you help me, Mr. Fred?” the biped stammered. “You see, she’s rather wild — a little unconventional — and I’ve never made love even to a sempstress. Will you help me?”

  “Certainly!” Fred chuckled. “Certainly. I’ll guarantee to marry her to you if you’ll dig up the courage. Have you a ring?”

  Peter Measel produced a near-gold ring with a smirk almost of recklessness, a plain gold ring whose worn appearance called to mind the finger taken from a dead Kurd’s cartridge pouch. It may be that Measel bought it, but neither Fred nor I spoke to him again, for half an hour.

  Chapter Fifteen “Scenery to burst the heart!”

  THE REBEL’S HYMN

  The seeds that swell within enwrapping mould,

  Gray buds that color faintly in the northing sun,

  Deep roots that lengthen after winter’s rest,

  The flutter of year’s youth in April’s breast

  As young leaves in the warming hour unfold —

  These and my heart are one!

  Go dam the river-course with carted earth;

  Or bind with iron bands that riven stone

  That century on century has slept

  Until into its heart a tendril crept,

  And in the quiet majesty of birth

  New nature broke into her own!

  Or bid the sun stand still! Or fashion wings

  To herd the heaven’s stars and make them be

  Subservient to will and rule and whim!

  Or rein the winds, and still the ocean’s hymn!

  More surely ye shall manage all these things

  Than chain the Life in me!

  Great mountains shedding the reluctant snow,

  Vision of the finish of the thing begun,

  Spirit of the beauty of the torrent’s song,

  Unconquerable peal of carillon,

  And secrets that in conquest overflow —

  These and my heart are one!

  Yet another night we were destined to spend on the Zeitoon road, for we had not the heart to leave behind us the stragglers who balked fainting in the gut of the pass. Some were long past the stage where anything less than threats could make impression on them, and only able to go forward in a dull dream at the best. But there were numbers of both men and women unexpectedly capable of extremes of heroism, who took the burden of misery upon themselves and exhibited high spirits based on no evident excuse. Nothing could overwhelm those, nothing discourage them.

  “To Zeitoon!” somebody shouted, as if that were the very war-cry of the saints of God. Then in a splendid bass voice he began to sing a hymn, and some women joined him. So Fred Oakes fell to his old accustomed task, and played them marching accompaniments on his concertina until his fingers ached and even he, the enthusiast, loathed the thing’s bray. In one way and another a little of the pall of misery was lifted.

  Kagig sent us down bread and yoghourt at nightfall, so that those who had lived thus far did not die of hunger. Women brought the food on their heads in earthen crocks — splendid, good-looking women with fearless eyes, who bore the heavy loads as easily as their mountain men-folk carried rifles. They did not stay to gossip, for we had no news but the stale old story of murder and plunder; and their news was short and to the point.

  “Come along to Zeitoon!” was the burden of it, carried with a singsong laugh. “Zeitoon is ready for anything!”

  Before we had finished eating, each two of them gathered up a poor wretch from our helpless crowd and strode away into the mountains with a heavier load than that they brought.

  “Come along to Zeitoon!” they called back to us. But even Fred’s concertina, and the hymns of the handful who were not yet utterly spent, failed to get them moving before dawn.

  We did not spend the night unguarded, although no armed men lay between us and the enemy. We could hear the Kurds shouting now and then, and once, when I climbed a high rock, I caught sight of the glow of their bivouac fires. Imagination conjured up the shrieks of tortured victims, for we had all seen enough of late to know what would happen to any luckless straggler they might have caught and brought to make sport by the fires. But there was no imagination about the calls of Kagig’s men, posted above us on invisible dark crags and ledges to guard against surprise. We slept in comfortable consciousness that a sleepless watch was being kept — until fleas came out of the ground by battalions, divisions and army corps, making rest impossible.

  But even the flea season was a matter of indifference to the hapless folk who lay around us, and although we fussed and railed we could not persuade them to go forward before dawn broke. Then, though, they struggled to their feet and started without argument. But an hour after the start we reached the secret of the safety of Zeitoon, without which not even the valor of its defenders could have withstood the overwhelming numbers of the Turks for all those scores of years; and there was new delay.

  The gut of the pass rose toward Zeitoon at a sharp incline — a ramp of slippery wet clay, half a mile long, reaching across from buttress to buttress of the impr
egnable hills. It was more than a ridden mule could do to keep its feet on the slope, and we had to dismount. It was almost as much as we ourselves could do to make progress with the aid of sticks, and we knew at last what Kagig had meant by his boast that nothing on wheels could approach his mountain home. The poor wretches who had struggled so far with us simply gave up hope and sat down, proposing to die there. The martyred biped copied them, except that they were dry-eyed and he shed tears. “To think that I should come to this — that I should come to this!” he sobbed. Yet the fool must have come down by that route, and have gone up that way once.

  We should have been in a quandary but for the sound of axes ringing in the mountain forest on our left — a dense dark growth of pine and other evergreens commencing about a hundred feet above the naked rock that formed the northerly side of the gorge. Where there were axes at work there was in all likelihood a road that men could march along, and our refugees sat down to let us do the prospecting.

  “It would puzzle Napoleon to bring cannon over this approach, and the Turks don’t breed Napoleons nowadays!” Fred shouted cheerily. “Give me a hundred good men and I’ll hold this pass forever! Wait here while I scout for a way round.”

  He tried first along the lower edge of the line of timber, encouraged by ringing axes, falling trees, and men shouting in the distance.

  “It looks as if there once had been a road here,” he shouted down to us, “but nothing less than fire would clear it now, and everything is sopping wet. I never saw such a tangle of roots and rocks. A dog couldn’t get thought!”

  Will volunteered to cross to the right-hand side and hunt over there for a practicable path. Gloria stayed beside me, and I had my first opportunity to talk with her alone. She was very pale from the effects of the wound in her wrist, which was painful enough to draw her young face and make her eyes burn feverishly. Even so, one realized that as an old woman she would still be beautiful.

  I watched the eagles for a minute or two, wondering what to say to her, and she did not seem to object to silence, so that I forced an opening at last as clumsily as Peter Measel might have done it.

  “What is it about Will that makes all women love him?” I asked her.

  “Oh, do they all love him?”

  “Looks like it!” said I.

  She still wore the bandolier they had stripped from the man with the bandaged feet, although Will had relieved her of the rifle’s weight. To the bottom of the bandolier she had tied the little bag of odds and ends without which few western women will venture a mile from home. Opening that she produced a small round mirror about twice the size of a dollar piece, and offered it to me with a smile that disarmed the rebuke.

  “Perhaps it’s his looks,” she suggested.

  I took the mirror and studied what I saw in it. In spite of a cracking headache due to that and the gaining sun (for I had lost my hat when the Kurd rode me down with his lance) the episode of Rustum Khan carrying me back out of death’s door on his bay mare had not lingered in memory. There had been too much else to think about. Now for the first time I realized how near that lance-point must have come to finishing the chapter for me. I had washed in the Jihun when we bivouacked, but had not shaved; later on, my scalp had bled anew, so that in addition to unruly hair tousled and matted with dry blood I had a week-old beard to help make me look like a graveyard ghoul.

  “I beg pardon!” I said simply, handing her the mirror back.

  At that she was seized with regret for the unkindness, and utterly forgot that I had blundered like a bullock into the sacred sanctuary of her newborn relationship to Will.

  “Oh, I don’t know which of you is best!” she said, taking my hand with her unbandaged one. “You are great unselfish splendid men. Will has told me all about you! The way you have always stuck to your friend Monty through thick and thin — and the way you are following him now to help these tortured people — oh, I know what you are — Will has told me, and I’m proud—”

  The embarrassment of being told that sort of thing by a young and very lovely woman, when newly conscious of dirt and blood and half-inch-long red whiskers, was apparently not sufficient for the mirth of the exacting gods of those romantic hills. There came interruption in the form of a too-familiar voice.

  “Oh, that’s all right, you two! Make the most of it! Spoon all you want to! My girl’s in the clutches of an outlaw! Kiss her if you want to — I won’t mind!”

  I dropped her hand as if it were hot lead. As a matter of fact I had hardly been conscious of holding it.

  “Oh, no, don’t mind me!” continued the “martyred biped” in a tone combining sarcasm, envy and impudence.

  “Shall I kill him?” I asked.

  “No! no!” she said. “Don’t be violent — don’t—”

  Peter Measel, whom we had inevitably utterly forgotten, was sitting up with his back propped against a stone and his legs stretched straight in front of him, enjoying the situation with all the curiosity of his unchastened mind. I hove a lump of clay at him, but missed, and the effort made my headache worse.

  “If you think you can frighten me into silence you’re mistaken!” he sneered, getting up and crawling behind the rock to protect himself. But it needed more than a rock to hide him from the fury that took hold of me and sent me in pursuit in spite of Gloria’s remonstrance.

  Viewed as revenge my accomplishment was pitiful, for I had to chase the poor specimen for several minutes, my headache growing worse at every stride, and he yelling for mercy like a cur-dog shown the whip, while the Armenians — women and little children as well as men — looked on with mild astonishment and Gloria objected volubly. He took to the clay slope at last in hope that his light weight would give him the advantage; and there at last I caught him, and clapped a big gob of clay in his mouth to stop his yelling.

  Even viewed as punishment the achievement did not amount to much. I kicked him down the clay slope, and he was still blubbering and picking dirt out of his teeth when Will shouted that he had found a foot-track.

  “Do you understand why you’ve been kicked?” I demanded.

  “Yes. You’re afraid I’ll tell Mr. Yerkes!”

  “Oh, leave him!” said Gloria. “I’m sorry you touched him. Let’s go!”

  “It was as much your fault as his, young woman!” snarled the biped, getting crabwise out of my reach. “You’ll all be sorry for this before I’m through with you!”

  I was sorry already, for I had had experience enough of the world to know that decency and manners are not taught to that sort of specimen in any other way than by letting him go the length of his disgraceful course. Carking self-contempt must be trusted to do the business for him in the end. Gloria was right in the first instance. I should have let him alone.

  However, it was not possible to take his threat seriously, and more than any man I ever met he seemed to possess the knack of falling out of mind. One could forget him more swiftly than the birds forget a false alarm. I don’t believe any of us thought of him again until that night in Zeitoon.

  The path Will had discovered was hardly a foot wide in places, and mules could only work their way along by rubbing hair off their flanks against the rock wall that rose nearly sheer on the right hand. From the point of view of an invading army it was no approach at all, for one man with a rifle posted on any of the overhanging crags could have held it against a thousand until relieved. It was a mystery why Kagig, or some one else, had not left a man at the foot of the clay slope to tell us about this narrow causeway; but doubtless Kagig had plenty to think about.

  He and most of his men had gone struggling up the clay slope, as we could tell by the state of the going. But they were old hands at it and knew the trick of the stuff. We had all our work cut out to shepherd our poor stragglers along the track Will found, and even the view of Zeitoon when we turned round the last bend and saw the place jeweled in the morning mist did not do much to increase the speed.

  As Kagig had once promised us, it was
“scenery to burst the heart!” Not even the Himalayas have anything more ruggedly beautiful to show, glistening in mauve and gold and opal, and enormous to the eye because the summits all look down from over blowing cloud-banks.

  There were moss-grown lower slopes, and waterfalls plunging down wet ledges from the loins of rain-swept majesty; pine trees looming blue through a soft gray fog, and winds whispering to them, weeping to them, moving the mist back and forth again; shadows of clouds and eagles lower yet, moving silently on sunny slopes. And up above it all was snow-dazzling, pure white, shading off into the cold blue of infinity.

  Men clad in goat-skin coats peered down at us from time to time from crags that looked inaccessible, shouting now and then curt recognition before leaning again on a modern rifle to resume the ancient vigil of the mountaineer, which is beyond the understanding of the plains-man because it includes attention to all the falling water voices, and the whispering of heights and deeps.

  We came on Zeitoon suddenly, rising out of a gorge that was filled with ice, or else a raging torrent, for six months of the year. Over against the place was a mountainside so exactly suggesting painted scenery that the senses refused to believe it real, until the roar and thunder of the Jihun tumbling among crags dinned into the ears that it was merely wonderful, and not untrue.

  The one approach from the southward — that gorge up which we trudged — was overlooked all along its length by a hundred inaccessible fastnesses from which it seemed a handful of riflemen could have disputed that right of way forever. The only other line of access that we could see was by a wooden bridge flung from crag to crag three hundred feet high across the Jihun; and the bridge was overlooked by buildings and rocks from which a hail of lead could have been made to sweep it at short range.

  Zeitoon itself is a mountain, next neighbor to the Beirut Dagh, not as high, nor as inaccessible; but high enough, and inaccessible enough to give further pause to its would-be conquerors. Not in anything resembling even rows, but in lawless disorder from the base to the shoulder of the mountain, the stone and wooden houses go piling skyward, overlooking one another’s roofs, and each with an unobstructed view of endless distances. The picture was made infinitely lovely by wisps of blown mist, like hair-lines penciled in the violet air.