"Keep your word to them too! Surely you haven't promised them to
make us prisoner?"
"But if I am your servant--if I must obey you for two piasters a
day, how shall I serve my nation?"
"Wait and see!" suggested Monty blandly.
Kagig bowed stiffly, from the neck.
"It would surprise you, effendi," he said grimly, "to know how many
long years I have waited, in order that I may see what other men
will do!"
Monty never answered that remark. There came a yell of "Fire!" and
in less than ten seconds flames began to burst through the door that
shut off the Turks' private quarters, and to lick and roar among
the roof beams. The animals at the other end of the room went crazy,
and there was instant panic, the Armenians outside trying to get
in to help, and fighting with the men and animals and women and children
who choked the way. Then the hay in the upper story caught alight,
and the heat below became intolerable. Monty saw and instantly pounced
on an ax and two crow-bars in the corner.
"Through the wall!" he ordered.
Fred, Will and I did that work, he and Kagig looking on. It was
much easier than at first seemed likely. Most of the stones were
stuck with mud, not plaster, and when the first three or four were
out the rest came easily. In almost no time we had a great gap ready,
and the extra draft we made increased the holocaust, but seemed to
lift the heat higher. Then some of the Zeitoonli saw the gap, and
began to hurry blindfolded horses through it and in a very little
while the place seemed empty. I saw the Turkish owner and several
of his sons looking on in fatalistic calm at about the outside edge
of the ring of light, and it occurred to me to ask a question.
"Hasn't that Turk a harem?" I asked.
In another second we four were hurrying around the building, and
Will and I burst in the door at the rear with our crow-bars. Monty
and Fred rushed past us, and before I could get the smoke out of
my eyes and throat they were hurrying out again with two old women
in their arms--the women screaming, and they laughing and coughing
so that they could hardly run. Then Will made my blood run cold
with a new alarm.
"The biped!" he shouted. "The Measel in the corn-bin!"
They dropped the old ladies, and all four of us raced back to our
hole in the wall--plunged into the hell-hot building, pulled the
lid off the corn-bin (it was fastened like an ancient Egyptian coffin-lid
with several stout Wooden pegs), dragged Measel out, and frog-marched
him, kicking and yelling, to the open, where Fred collapsed.
"Measel," said Will, stooping to feel Fred's heart, "if you're the
cause of my friend Oakes' death, Lord pity you!"
Fred sat up, not that he wished to save the "biped" any anguish,
but the wise man vomits comfortably when he can, the necessity being
bad enough without additional torment.
"See!" said a voice out of darkness. "He empties himself! That
is well. It is only the end of the fever. Now he will be a man
again. But the sahibs should have left that writer of characters
in the corn-bin, where he could have shared the fate of his master
without troubling us again!"
Rustum Khan strode into the light, with half his fierce beard burned
away from having been the last to leave by the front entrance, and
a decided limp from having been kicked by a frantic mule.
"What have you done with the German?" demanded Monty.
"I, sahib? Nothing. In truth nothing. It was the seven sons of
the Turk--abetted I should say by gipsies. It was the German who
set the place alight. The girl, Maga Jhaere they call her, saw him
do it. She watched like a cat, the fool, hoping to amuse herself,
while he burned off his ropes with a brand that fell his way out
of the fire. When another brand jumped half across the room he set
the place alight with it, tossing it over the party wall. He was
an able rascal, sahib."
"Was?" demanded Monty.
"Aye, sahib, was! In another second he released the Turkish lieutenant
and shouted in his ear to escape and say that Armenians burned this
kahveh! Gregor Jhaere slew the Turk, however. And Maga followed
the German into the open, where she denounced him to some of the
Zeitoonli who recently arrived. They took him and threw him back
into the fire--where he remained. I begin to like these Zeitoonli.
I even like the gipsies more than formerly. They are men of some
discernment, and of action!"
"Man of blood!" growled Monty. "What of the Turkish owner and his
seven sons?"
"They shall burn, too, if the sahib say so!"
"If they burn, so shall you! Where is Kagig?"
"Seeing that the sahibs' horses are packed and saddled. I came to
find the sahibs. According to Kagig it is time to go, before Turks
come to take vengeance for a burned road-house. They will surely
say Armenians burned it, whether or not there is a German to support
their accusation!"
Then we heard Kagig's high-pitched "Haide--chabuk!" and picked up
Peter Measel, and ran around the building to where the horses were
already saddled, and squealing in fear of the flames. We left the
Turk, and his wives and seven sons, to tell what tale they pleased.
Chapter Eight
"I go with that man!"