FOUR AGAINST ONE
The sound of a reveille awoke Curtis, and he looked out into the dim,
dewy morning. The wigwams of muskets had disappeared, and the little
army had already fallen in. Several horses, saddled and bridled, stood
by the village fountain. One, a young and sleek charger, was
impatiently pawing the earth and another was drinking. Kostakes was
sitting at a table, giving some orders to his second in command, the
veteran with the scar. A sword attached to a leather belt kept company
on the cloth with a pile of eggs, a loaf of bread and a pot of steaming
coffee.
"_Bon jour_," cried the Captain gaily, springing to his feet, as he
espied the American. "How have you slept, and how is the foot?"
"I got a little sleep, despite the pain, but the foot seems no better.
I am getting very anxious to see that doctor of yours."
"To-morrow, I promise you without fail. And now for breakfast, as we
must be off."
The Captain and his Lieutenant ran to the American, who put an arm
about the neck of each and hopped to the table, groaning
ostentatiously. After the hurried breakfast, Panayota was summoned.
She came forth, pale as death, a beautiful, living statue of despair.
Kostakes offered to help her, but she repulsed him with loathing, and
climbed into her saddle as a refuge from his attentions. There were
dark circles under her swollen eyes. As she looked about her, as
though in hopeless search for the missing dear one, her features
trembled on the verge of tears. Groaning:
"Ach, my God!" She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared
into vacancy. Her beautiful hair was disheveled and her long white
cuffs were wrinkled and soiled. The chivalry in Curtis' nature
prompted him to speak and comfort her, although the words sounded
hollow and false to his own ear.
"Take comfort," he said, "your father is surely alive. Believe me, he
has escaped."
She smiled sadly.
"You do not know the Turks," she replied.
"Did I not tell you, my darling?" cried Kostakes eagerly, "of course he
has escaped."
She did not even look at him, but murmured:
"Murderer! perjurer!"
Kostakes shrugged his shoulders, as who would say, "See!" and turning
to Curtis cried:
"But Monsieur speaks Greek famously!"
"Only a few words and those with much difficulty."
"_Mais non_! On the contrary I find your Greek very perfect. And now
_allons_!"
They pushed briskly up the narrow street, through a scene of utter
desolation. The whirlwind of war had struck the town and wrecked it.
As they turned a corner a long-legged, half-grown fowl broke for cover
and tilted away, balancing its haste with awkward, half-fledged wings.
They came unexpectedly upon a little Orthodox church and a putrid odor
assailed Curtis' nostrils. Their path led them around to the front
door.
"My God!" he gasped. A sight had met his eyes that was destined to
thrill him with sickness and horror to the latest day of his life, as
often as the black phantom of its recollection should arise in his
mind. The village priest, an old, gray-bearded man, had died about a
month before and had been buried in his robes. There was the body,
hanging to its own church door, like the skin of a great black bat.
Nails had been driven through the clothing at the shoulders, and the
weight of the carcass, sinking down into the loose garment, had left it
pulled up above the head into the semblance of joints in a vampire's
wings.
From a bonfire of bones, half-decayed corpses and sacred _eikons_--the
last named gathered from the houses and the church--a disgusting odor
arose and filled the air. The Turks broke forth in derisive laughter
as their eyes fell upon the horrid spectacle.
"My rascals have eluded my vigilance, I see," observed Kostakes, "and
have been having a little fun in their own way."
"Different nations have different ideas about a joke," gasped Curtis
through his handkerchief.
Emerging from the town, they picked their way through a large patch of
freshly felled olive trees. The sound of the nocturnal chopping was
now explained. About eleven o'clock they stopped for dinner in a
small, deserted hamlet. During the progress of the meal a wounded
Bashi Bazouk rode into the town and up to the table where Curtis and
Kostakes were sitting. The man wore a red turban, which gave to his
pallid face a tint similar to that of the underside of a toadstool.
His soft shirt had sagged into a little bagful of blood, that dripped
out like the whey from a sack of cottage cheese, upon his yellow sash
and blue breeches. He said a few words with mouth wide open, as though
his under jaw had suddenly grown heavy, and then, reeling, was caught
by two soldiers, dragged from the saddle and carried into a hut.
"I must ask you to excuse me for several hours," said Kostakes, rising.
"My Bashi Bazouks, whom I left with certain commissions to execute, are
being defeated at Reveni, about an hour's march from here. How fifty
Bashi Bazouks can find any difficulty with a little place like Reveni
is more than I can understand! But I shall soon put a new face on
affairs when I arrive!"
"God help the poor people," prayed Curtis, inaudibly.
"I shall leave three of my men behind to look after your wants and
those of the young lady. I shall explain to the one I leave with you
that he is your servant--that he must bring you anything you ask for.
He speaks Greek, so you will be able to get along with him."
Five minutes afterward Kostakes was riding away at the head of his
troop. He turned once in the saddle and waved his hand to Curtis. The
American picked up his hat from the table and swung it in the air.
"_Au revoir_, Kostakes," he cried. "The devil confound you and your
whole crew of cutthroats--I wonder if this beggar speaks English?"
He glanced suspiciously at the tall, sallow-faced Turk who stood a
short distance away, leaning upon his musket.
"No, I guess not. He'd give some sign if he did."
Two other Turks, with musket on shoulder, were pacing back and forth
before the door of the hut where Panayota was imprisoned. Curtis could
feel his heart thumping against his breast. He struck the place with
his doubled fist.
"Keep still, curse you," he muttered, "and let me think. Here is the
opportunity--but how? how?"
The army was crawling along a white road that streamed like a ribbon
athwart the foot of a hill. The ribbon fluttered as the dust rose in
the wind. The bayonets twinkled in a dun cloud.
"Four against one," mused Curtis. "Four Turks against one Yankee
trick--but how?"
Kostakes plunged into the hill and disappeared, and the blazing
bayonets, line after line, were extinguished in a billow of green
thyme. The American looked back over his shoulder at the door of a
stone hut--the one into which the wounded Bashi Bazouk had been carried.
"Hey!" he called, "you there, hey!"
The Turk left ostensibly as Curtis' servant, but actually as his guard,
stepped briskly forward, and, taking in his own the American's extended
hand, pulled him to his feet.
"Help me into the house," said Curtis. "Now bring me that bench."
The man complied, after which he went to the door, and, leaning against
the jamb, looked wistfully at his fellows. At one end of the room was
a fireplace, filled with ashes and charred pieces of log. It was a
primitive concern, the only vent for smoke being a hole in the roof
directly overhead. Board platforms on each side the fireplace served
as couches for the family. On one of these, flat on his back, lay the
wounded man.
"I wonder how badly he's hurt," mused Curtis. "There isn't strength
enough left in him to put up a fight, but there's enough left to pull a
trigger if I tackle the other chap. Hello, he's got the hiccoughs;
why, that's queer."
The man became quiet, and again Curtis relapsed into thought, to be
disturbed a second time by the sound of knocking on boards. Looking
around, his eyes fell directly upon the eyes of the Bashi Bazouk, and
he felt as though he heard some one crying for help when no help was
near. The man was resting upon his back and both elbows. For a moment
those bloodshot, praying, awful eyes were fixed upon Curtis; then they
swept the dingy hut and went out like panes of glass when the light is
extinguished in a room. The man fell backward, fluttered on the hard
planks and was still. Curtis shuddered.
"That wasn't nice," he muttered, "but this is no time for sentiment."
The other Turk stood by the body of his dead comrade, looking down at
the ghastly, upturned face. Curtis pinched the muscles of his own
right arm with the fingers and thumb of his left hand, and moved his
doubled fist tentatively up and down.
"Where shall I hit him?" he mused. "In the chin or back of the ear?
He must never know what struck him."
Bending over, he untied the long strip of cloth about his foot and
unwound it. Taking it in his hands he pulled several times on it, to
test its strength.
"Strong as a hemp rope. You could hang a man with that."
It was Panayota's blue homespun.
"Hey!" he called to the Turk. "You there. Say, look at this foot of
mine, will you, and see what you think of it."
The man kneeled. Curtis drew back his arm, but realized that he could
not get sufficient swing in a sitting posture.
"O, hold on a minute. Let me try the foot on the ground and see how it
goes."
They rose to their feet together, and the unsuspecting soldier reeled
backward, stunned by a vicious punch on the temple. But he did not
fall, and Curtis, maddened by a great fear lest he bungle his
opportunity, sprang forward and delivered a swinging, sledgehammer-like
blow upon his victim's ear, throwing into it the entire strength of his
body. The Turk dropped like an ox under the butcher's hammer. Then
Curtis hastily bound him, hand and foot, with Panayota's bandage, and,
tearing the lining from the man's coat, stuffed it down his throat.
Pulling up a plank from the platform by the fireplace, he thrust the
limp form out of sight and closed up the opening.
"I hope I didn't kill you," he muttered; "but, as old Lindbohm says,
'you must yust take your chances!'"
He walked once or twice the length of the hut. The foot gave him
considerable pain, but it was possible to step on it.
"What'll I do with the other two?" he mused.
He picked up the gun lying on the floor and examined it. It was a
Mauser and charged with five shells. He peeped cautiously through the
doorway at Panayota's prison, concealing his body. The two guards
appeared at the corner and looked curiously in his direction.
"Bah! What a fool I am!" he thought, and hopped boldly into sight,
holding up his lame leg by passing his hand under it while he leaned
against the jamb. The guards faced about and disappeared, putting the
house between themselves and Curtis on their backward march to the
other end of their beat.
"I could pot one of them, and then--but no, I might miss, and then I'd
be in a pretty mess. And even if I did hit one, the other would have
me at a disadvantage."
There was a sound of kicking against the boards at the fireplace. He
sprang to the spot, rifle in hand, and tore up the plank. The man was
lying upon his back with his eyes open. A great light broke in upon
Curtis--an inspiration. He had thrust the Turk out of sight through
instinct.
"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "they can't both leave Panayota. If I call to
them, may be one will come out of curiosity, and I'll do this thing
right over again. But what'll I tie him with?"
He cast his eyes about the room. The inevitable chest, studded with
brass nails stood against the wall. He opened it.
"Cleaned out, by Jove!"
He went again to his victim, and taking a large jackknife from his
pocket, deliberately opened it. The man turned as white as veal, his
jaws worked convulsively on the gag as he made a vain effort to plead
for mercy, and a pitiful noise, a sort of gurgling bleat, sounded in
his throat.
"What the devil ails you?" asked Curtis. "O--I see," and he added in
Greek:
"No kill. Cut your clothes--see?"
[Illustration: The American thought of the Turk, and looked out]
And stooping, he slitted the Turk's sleeve from wrist to shoulder.
Following the seam around with the blade, he pulled away the large
rectangular piece of cloth. Seizing the other sleeve, he was about to
slash into it, when he thought he heard footsteps among the stones and
gravel outside the hut.
"My God!" he cried, in a hoarse whisper, and jumped into the corner
beside the door, just as one of the other two Turks walked boldly into
the room. Without a moment's thought Curtis brought the barrel of his
rifle down upon the man's head, who dropped his own gun and pitched
sprawling upon his face. For fully a minute, which seemed an hour, the
American stood motionless, breathless, in the attitude which had
followed the blow. Every muscle was set to knotted hardness; he held
the rifle in both hands, ready to throw it suddenly to his shoulder.
He did not breathe, and he listened so intently that he could hear his
own heart beating, and the breathing of the man at the fireplace.
Suddenly his muscles relaxed like an escaping spring, and he looked
nervously about for the detached sleeve. Picking it up, he stooped
over the second Turk, when the latter moved his left arm several times
with the palm of the hand down, feebly suggesting an effort to rise.
Then the arm dropped and the hand beat a faint tattoo on the earthen
floor. There was a great shiver of the whole body, a twitching of the
muscles, a queer rattle in the throat, and--silence. Curtis stared
with open mouth and dilated eyes, and a great, inexplicable horror came
over him. "Ah!" he gasped, and, dropping upon his knees, he ran his
fingers over the skull. The hair was matted with blood, and a deep,
ragged-edged dent bore witness to the terrible force with which the
rifle barrel had fallen.
"I've killed a man," he whispered, in an awestruck voice, rising to his
feet. Staring fixedly at the silent thing lying there before him, he
repeated the sentence over and over again:
"I've killed a man--I've killed a man!"
Then all at once a great change came over him, the joy and fierceness
of the lust for blood, and he laughed hysterically, gloating over the
dead man before him, as the victorious heroes used to do in the old
barbaric ages.
He thought of the other Turk, and looked out of the door just in time
to see him turn at the hither corner and disappear as he walked back on
his beat. Curtis made a dash for an olive tree about eight rods
distant, and, skulking behind it, peeped between the high gnarled
roots. When the guard had again appeared and turned back, he ran to a
rock and threw himself down behind it, instinctively using tactics by
which he had sometimes crept up on a diving duck. He was now within
listening distance. The next run brought him to the side of the house,
and he had just time to throw his gun to his shoulder when the guard
stepped into view. He might have taken him prisoner, but the thought
did not occur to him. He had tasted blood. Panayota came to the door
and looked wonderingly out. The American ran to her with the smoking
musket in his hand and seized her by the wrist. It was the natural act
of the savage who has won his woman in fight.
"Come, Panayota!" he cried, "you are free. They are all dead!"
And he started down the hill, pulling the girl with him. She came
without a word.