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 impregnable 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.
Distances were all foreshortened in that atmosphere, and it was
mid-afternoon before we came to a halt at last face to face with
blank wall. The track seemed to have been blocked by half the mountain
sitting down across it. We sat down to rest in the shadow of the
shoulder of an overhanging rock, and after half an hour some one
looked down on us, and whistled shrilly. Kagig with a rifle across
his knees looked down from a height of a hundred and fifty feet,
and laughed like a man who sees the bitter humor of the end of shams.
"Welcome!" he shouted between his hands. And his voice came echoing
down at us from wall to wall of the gorge. Five minutes later he
sent a man to lead us around by a hidden track that led upward,
sometimes through other houses, and very often over roofs, across
ridiculously tiny yards, and in between walls so closely set together
that a mule could only squeeze through by main force.
We stabled the mules in a shed the man showed us, and after that
Kagig received us four, and Anna, Gloria's self-constituted maid,
in his own house. It was bare of nearly everything but sheer
necessities, and he made no apology, for he had good taste, and
perfect manners if you allowed for the grim necessity of being curt
and the strain of long responsibility.
A small bench took the place of a table in the main large room.
There was a fireplace with a wide stone chimney at one end, and some
stools, and also folded skins intended to be sat on, and shiny places
on the wall where men in goat-skin coats had leaned their backs.
Two or three of the gipsy women were hanging about outside, and one
of the gipsies who had been with him in the room in the khan at Tarsus
appeared to be filling the position of servitor. He brought us yoghourt
in earthenware bowls--extremely cool and good it was; and after
we had done I saw him carry down a huge mess more of it to the house
below us, where many of the stragglers we had brought along were
quartered by Kagig's order.
"Where's Monty?" Fred demanded as soon as we entered the room.
"Presently!" Kagig answered--rather irritably I thought. He seemed
to have adopted Monty as his own blood brother, and to resent all
other claims on him.
The afternoon was short, for the shadow of the surrounding mountains
shut us in. Somebody lighted a fire in the great open chimney-place,
and as we sat around that to revel in the warmth that rests tired
limbs better than sleep itself, Kagig strode out to attend to a million
things--as the expression of his face testified.
Then in came Maga, through a window, with self-betrayal in manner
and look of having been watching us ever since we entered. She went
up to Will, who was squatted on folded skins by the chimney corner,
and stood beside him, claiming him without a word. Her black hair
hung down to her waist, and her bare feet, not cut or bruised like
most of those that walk the hills unshod, shone golden in the firelight.
I looked about for Peter Measel, expecting a scene, but he had taken
himself off, perhaps in search of her.
She had eyes for nobody but Gloria, and no smile for any one. Gloria
stared back at her, fascinated.
"You married?" she asked; and Gloria shook her head. "You 'eard
me, what I said back below there!"
Gloria nodded.
"You sing?"
"Sometimes."
"You dance?"
"Oh, yes. I love it."
"Ah! You shall sing--you shall dance--against me! First you sing--then
I sing. Then you dance--then I dance--to-night--you understan'?
If I sing better as you sing--an' if I dance better as you dance--then
I throw you over Zeitoon bridge, an' no one interfere! But if you
sing better as I sing--an' if you dance better as I dance--then you
shall make a servant of me; for I know you will be too big fool
an' too chicken 'earted to keel me, as I would keel you! You understan'?"
It rather looked as if an issue would have to be forced there and
then, but at that minute Gregor entered, and drove her out with an
oath and terrific gesture, she not seeming particularly afraid of
him, but willing to wait for the better chance she foresaw was coming.
Gregor made no explanation or apology, but fastened down the leather
window-curtain after her and threw more wood on the fire.
Then back came Kagig.
"Where the devil's Monty?" Fred demanded.
"Come!" was the only answer. And we all got up and followed him
out into the chill night air, and down over three roofs to a long
shed in which lights were burning. All the houses--on every side
of us were ahum with life, and small wonder, for Zeitoon was harboring
the refugees from all the district between there and Tarsus, to say
nothing of fighting men who came in from the hills behind to lend
a hand. But we were bent on seeing Monty at last, and had no patience
for other matters.
However, it was only the prisoners he had led us out to see, and
nothing more.
"Look, see!" he said, opening the heavy wooden door of the shed as
an armed sentry made way for him. (Those armed men of Zeitoon did
not salute one another, but preserved a stoic attitude that included
recognition of the other fellow's right to independence, too.) "Look
in there, and see, and tell me--do the Turks treat Armenian prisoners
that way?"
We entered, and walked down the length of the dim interior, passing
between dozens of prisoners lying comfortably enough on skins and
blankets. As far as one could judge, they had been fed well, and
they did not wear the look of neglect or ill-treatment. At the end,
in a little pen all by himself, was the colonel whom Rustum Khan
had made a present of to Gloria.
"What's the straw for?" Fred demanded.
"Ask him!" said Kagig. "He understands! If there should be treachery
the straw will be set alight, and he shall know how pigs feel when
they are roasted alive! Never fear--there will be no treachery!"
We followed him back to his own house, he urging us to make good
note of the prisoners' condition, and to bear witness before the
world to it afterward.
"The world does not know the difference between Armenians and Turks!"
he complained again and again.
Once again we arranged ourselves about his open chimney-place, this
time with Kagig on a foot-stool in the midst of us. Heat, weariness,
and process of digestion were combining to make us drowsily comfortable,
and I, for one, would have fallen asleep where I sat. But at last
the long-awaited happened, and in came Monty striding like a Norman,
dripping with dew, and clean from washing in the icy water of some
mountain torrent.
"Oh, hello, Didums!" Fred remarked, as if they had parted about an
hour ago. "You long-legged rascal, you look as if you'd been having
the time of your life!"
"I have!" said Monty. And after a short swift stare at him Fred
looked glum. Those two men understood each other as the clapper
understands the bell.
Chapter Sixteen
"What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?"
"IT WAS VERY GOOD"
(Genesis 1:31)
I saw these shambles in my youth, and said
There is no God! No Pitiful presides
Over such obsequies as these. The end
Alike is darkness whether foe or friend,
Beast, man or flower the event abides.
There is no heaven for the hopeful dead--
No better haven than forgetful sod
That smothers limbs and mouth and ears and eyes,
And with those, love and permanence and strife
And vanity and laughter that they thought was life,
Making mere compost of the one who dies.
To whose advantage? Nay, there is no God!
But He, whose other name is Pitiful, was pleased
By melting gentleness whose measures broke
The ramps of ignorance and keeps of lust,
Tumbling alike folly and the fool to dust,
To teach me womanhood until there spoke
Still voices inspiration had released,
And I heard truly. All the voices said:
Out of departed yesterday is grown to-day;
Out of to-day to-morrow surely breaks;
Out of corruption the inspired awakes;
Out of existence earth-clouds roll away
And leave all living, for there are no dead!
After we had made room for Monty before the fire and some one had
hung his wet jacket up to dry, we volleyed questions at him faster
than he could answer. He sat still and let us finish, with fingers
locked together over his crossed knee and, underneath the inevitable
good humor, a rather puzzled air of wishing above all things to
understand our point of view. Over and over again I have noticed
that trait, although he always tried to cover it under an air of
polite indifference and easy tolerance that was as opaque to a careful
observer as Fred's attempts at cynicism.
In the end he answered the last question first.
"My agreement with Kagig?"
"Yes, tell them!" put in Kagig. "If I should, they would say I lied!"
"It's nothing to speak of," said Monty offhandedly. "It dawned on
our friend here that I have had experience in some of the arts of
war. I proposed to him that if he would take a force and go to find
you, I would help him to the limit without further condition.
That's all."
"All, you ass? Didums, I warned you at the time when you let them
make you privy councilor that you couldn't ever feel free again to
kick over traces! Dammit, man, you can be impeached by parliament!"
"Quite so, Fred. I propose that parliament shall have to do something
at last about this state of affairs."
"You'll end up in an English jail, and God help you!--social position
gone--milked of your last pound to foot the lawyers' bills--otherwise
they'll hang you!"
"Let 'em hang me after I'm caught! I've promised. Remember what
Byron did for Greece? I don't suppose his actual fighting amounted
to very much, but he brought the case of Greece to the attention
of the public. Public opinion did the rest, badly, I admit, but
better badly and late than never. I'm in this scrimmage, Fred, until
the last bell rings and they hoist my number."
"Fine!" exclaimed Gloria, jumping to her feet. "So am I in it to
a finish!"
Monty smiled at her with understanding and approval.
"Almost my first duty, Miss Vanderman," he said kindly, "will be
to arrange that you can not possibly come to harm or be prejudiced
by any course the rest of us may decide on."
"Quite so!" Will agreed with a grin, and Fred began chuckling like
a schoolboy at a show.
"Nonsense!" she answered hotly. "I've come to harm already--see,
I'm wounded--I've been fighting--I'm already prejudiced as you call
it! If you're an outlaw, so am I!"
She flourished her bandaged wrist and looked like Joan of Arc about
to summon men to sacrifice. But the argument ready on her lips was
checked suddenly. The night was without wind, yet the outer door
burst open exactly as if a sudden hurricane had struck it, and Maga
entered with a lantern in her hand. She tried to kick the door shut
again, but it closed on Peter Measel who had followed breathlessly,
and she turned and banged his head with the bottom of the lantern
until the glass shattered to pieces.
"That fool!" she shouted. "Oh, that fool!" Then she let him come
in and close the door, giving him the broken lantern to hold, which
he did very meekly, rubbing the crown of his head with the other
hand; and she stood facing the lot of us with hands on her hips
and a fine air of despising every one of us. But I noticed that
she kept a cautious eye on Kagig, who in return paid very little
attention to her.
"Fight?" she exclaimed, pointing at Gloria. "What does she know
about fighting? If she can fight,--let her fight me! I stand ready--I
wait for 'er! Give 'er a knife, an' I will fight 'er with my
bare 'ands!"
Gloria turned pale and Will laid a hand on her shoulder, whispering
something that brought the color back again.
"Maga!"
Kagig said that one word in a level voice, but the effect was greater
than if he had pointed a pistol. The fire died from her eyes and
she nodded at him simply. Then her eyes blazed again, although she
looked away from Gloria toward a window. The leather blind was tied
down at the corners by strips of twisted hide.
She began to jabber in the gipsy tongue--then changed her mind and
spat it out in English for our joint benefit.
"All right. She is nothing to do with me, that woman, and she shall
come to a rotten end, I know, an' that is enough. But there is some
one listening! Not a woman--not with spunk enough to be a woman!
That dirty horse-pond drinking unshaven black bastard Rustum Khan
is outside listening! You think 'e is busy at the fortifying? Then
I tell you, No, 'e is not! 'E is outside listening!"
The surprising answer to that assertion was a heavy saber thrust
between the window-frame and blind and descending on the thong. Next
followed Rustum Khan's long boot. Then came the man himself with
dew all over his upbrushed beard, returning the saber to its scabbard
with an accompanying apologetic motion of the head.
"Aye, I was listening!" He spoke as one unashamed. "Umm Kulsum"
(that was his fancy name for Maga) "spoke truth for once! I came
from the fortifying, where all is finished that can be done to-night.
I have been the rounds. I have inspected everything. I report all
well. On my way hither I saw Umm Kulsum, with that jackal trotting
at her heel--he made a scornful gesture in the direction of Peter
Measel, who winced perceptibly, at which Fred Oakes chuckled and
nudged me--"and I followed Umm Kulsum, to observe what harm she might
intend."
"Black pig!" remarked Maga, but Rustum Khan merely turned his splendid
back a trifle more toward her. His color, allowing for the black beard,
was hardly darker than hers.
"Why should I not listen, since my heart is in the matter? Lord
sahib--Colonel sahib bahadur!--take back those words before it is
too late! Undo the promise made to this Armenian! What is he to
thee? Set me instead of thee, sahib! What am I? I have no wives,
no lands any longer since the money-lenders closed their clutches
on my eldest son, no hope, nor any fellowship with kings to lose!
But I can fight, as thou knowest! Give me, sahib, to redeem thy
promise, and go thou home to England!"
"Sit down, Rustum Khan!"
"But, sahib--"
"Sit down!" Monty repeated.
"I will not see thee sacrificed for this tribe of ragged people,
Colonel sahib!"
Monty rose to his feet slowly. His face was an enigma. The Rajput
stood at attention facing him and they met each other's eyes--East
facing West--in such fashion that manhood seemed to fill the smoky
room. Every one was silent. Even Maga held her breath. Monty strode
toward Rustum Khan; the Rajput was the first to speak.
"Colonel sahib, I spoke wise words!"
It seemed to me that Monty looked very keenly at him before he answered.
"Have you had supper, Rustum Khan? You look to me feverish from
overwork and lack of food."
"What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?" the Rajput
answered. "Shall I live to see Turks fling thy carcass to the birds?
I have offered my own body in place of thine. Am I without honor,
that my offer is refused?"
Monty answered that in the Rajput tongue, and it sounded like the
bass notes of an organ.
"Brother mine, it is not the custom of my race to send substitutes
to keep such promises. That thou knowest, and none has reason to
know better. If thy memories and honor urge thee to come the way
I take, is there no room for two of us?"
"Aye, sahib!" said the Rajput huskily. "I said before, I am thy
man. I come. I obey!"
"Obey, do you?" Monty laid both hands on the Rajput's shoulders,
struck him knee against knee without warning and pressed him down
into a squatting posture. "Then obey when I order you to sit!"
The Rajput laughed up at him as suddenly sweet-tempered as a child.
"None other could have done that and not fought me for it!" he said
simply. "None other would have had the strength!" he added.
Monty ignored the pleasantry and turned to Maga, so surprising that
young woman--that she gasped.
"Bring him food at once, please!"
"Me? I? I bring him food? I feed that black--"
"Yes!" snapped Kagig suddenly. "You, Maga!"
Maga's and Kagig's eyes met, and again he had his way with her instantly.
Peter Measel, standing over by the door, looked wistful and
sighed noisily.
"Why should you obey him?" he demanded, but Maga ignored him as she
passed out, and Fred nudged me again.
"A miracle!" he whispered. "Did you hear the martyred biped suggest
rebellion to her? He'll be offering to fight Kagig next! Guess
what is Kagig's hold over the girl--can you?"
But a much greater miracle followed. Rather than disobey Monty again;
rather than seem to question his authority, or differ from his judgment
in the least, Rustum Khan forebore presently from sending for his
own stripling servant and actually accepted food from Maga's hands.
As a Mahammadan, he made in theory no caste distinctions. But as
a Rajput be had fixed Hindu notions without knowing it, and almost
his chief care was lest his food should be defiled by the touch of
outcasts, of whom he reckoned gipsies lowest, vilest and least
cleansible. Nevertheless he accepted curds that had been touched
by gipsy fingers, and ate greedily, in confirmation of Monty's diagnosis;
and after a few minutes he laid his head on a folded goat-skin in
the corner, and fell asleep.
Then Monty sent a servant to his own quarters for some prized possession
that he mentioned in a whisper behind his hand. None of us suspected
what it might be until the man returned presently with a quart bottle
of Scotch whisky. Kagig himself got mugs down from a shelf three
inches wide, and Monty poured libations. Kagig, standing with legs
apart, drank his share of the strong stuff without waiting; and
that brought out the chief surprise of the evening.
"Ah-h-h!" he exclaimed, using the back of his hand to wipe mobile
lips. "Not since I drank in Tony's have I tasted that stuff! The
taste makes me homesick for what never was my home, nor ever can be!
Tony's--ah!"
"What Tony's?" demanded Will, emerging from whispered interludes
with Gloria like a man coming out of a dream.
"Tony's down near the Battery."
"What--the Battery, New York--?"
"Where else? Tony was a friend of mine. Tony lent me money when
I landed in the States without a coin. It was right that I should
take a last drink with Tony before I came away forever."
Fred reached into the corner for a lump of wood and set it down
suggestively before the fire. Kagig accepted and sat down on it,
stretching his legs out rather wearily.
"I noticed you've been remembering your English much better than
at first," said Will. "Go on, man, tell us!"
Kagig cleared his throat and warmed himself while his eyes seemed
to search the flames for stories from a half-forgotten past.
"Weren't the States good enough for you?" Will suggested, by way
of starting him off.
"Good enough? Ah!" He made all eight fingers crack like castanets.
"Much too good! How could I live there safe and comfortable--eggs
and bacon--clean shirt--good shoes--an apartment with a bath in it--easy
work--good pay--books to read--kindness--freedom--how could
I accept all that, remembering my people in Armenia?"
He ran his fingers through his hair, and stared in the fire
again--remembering America perhaps.
"There was a time when I forgot. All young men forget for a while
if you feed them well enough. The sensation of having money in my
pocket and the right to spend it made me drunk. I forgot Armenia.
I took out what are called first papers. I was very prosperous--very
grateful."
He lapsed into silence again, holding his head bowed between his
hands.
"Why didn't you become a citizen?" asked Will.
"Ah! Many a time I thought of it. I am citizen of no land--of no
land! I am outlaw here--outlaw in the States! I slew a Turk. They
would electrocute me in New York--for slaying the man who--have you
heard me tell what happened to my mother, before my very eyes?
Well--that man came to America, and I slew him!"
"Why did you leave Armenia in the first place?" asked Gloria, for
he seemed to need pricking along to prevent him from getting off
the track into a maze of silent memory.
"Why not? I was lucky to get away! That cursed Abdul Hamid had
been rebuked by the powers of Europe for butchering Bulgars, so he
turned on us Armenians in order to prove to himself that he could
do as he pleased in his own house. I tell you, murder and rape in
those days were as common as flies at midsummer! I escaped, and
worked my passage in the stoke-hole of a little merchant steamer--they
were little ships in those days. And when I reached America
without money or friends they let me land because I had been told
by the other sailors to say I was fleeing from religious persecution.
The very first day I found a friend in Tony. I cleaned his windows,
and the bar, and the spittoons; and he lent me money to go where
work would be plentiful. Those were the days when I forgot Armenia."
He began to forget our existence again, laying his face on his forearms
and staring down at the floor between his feet.
"What brought it back to memory?" asked Gloria.
"The Turk brought it back--Fiamil--who bought my mother from four
drunken soldiers, and ill-treated her before my eyes. He came to
the Turkish consulate, not as consul but in some peculiar position;
and by that time I was thriving as head-waiter and part-owner of
a New York restaurant. Thither the fat beast came to eat daily.
And so I met him, and recognized him. He did not know me.
"Remember, I was young, and prosperous for the first time in all
my life. You must not judge me by too up-right standards. At first
I argued with myself to let him alone. He was nothing to me. I
no longer believed in God. My mother was long dead, and Armenia
no more my country. My money was accumulating in a savings bank.
I was proud of it, and I remember I saw visions of great restaurants
in every city of America, all owned by me! I did not like to take
any step that should prevent that flow of money into the savings bank.
"But Fiamil inflamed my memory, and I saw him every day. And at
last it dawned on me what his peculiar business in America must be.
He was back at his old games, buying women. He was buying American
young women to be shipped to Turkey, all under the seal of consular
activity. One day, after he had had lunch and I had brought him
cigarettes and coffee, he made a proposal. And although I did not
care very deeply for the women of a free land who were willing to
be sold into Turkish harems, nevertheless, as I said, he inflamed
my memory. A love of Armenia returned to me. I remembered my people,
I remembered my mother's shame, and my own shame.
"After a little reflection I agreed with Fiamil, and met him that
night in an up-stairs room at a place he frequented for his purposes.
I locked the door, and we had some talk in there, until in the end
he remembered me and all the details of my mother's death. After
that I killed him with a corkscrew and my ten fingers, there being
no other weapon. And I threw his body out of the window into the
gutter, as my mother's body had been thrown, myself escaping from
the building by another way.
"Not knowing where to hide, I kept going--kept going; and after
two days I fell among sportmen--cow-punchers they called themselves,
who had come to New York with a circus, and the circus had gone broke.
To them I told some of my story, and they befriended me, taking me
West with them to cook their meals; and for a year I traveled in
cow camps. In those days I remembered God as well as Armenia, and
I used to pray by starlight.
"And Armenia kept calling--calling. Fiamil had wakened in me too
many old memories. But there was the money in the savings bank that
I did not dare to draw for fear the police might learn my address,
yet I had not the heart to leave behind.
"So I took a sportman into my confidence, and told him about my money,
and why I wanted it. He was not the foreman, but the man who took
the place of foreman when the real foreman was too drunk--the hungriest
man of all, and so oftenest near the cook-fire. When I had told him,
he took me to a township where a lawyer was, and the lawyer drew
up a document, which I signed.
"Then the sportman--his name was Larry Atkins, I remember--took that
document and went to draw the money on my behalf. And that was the
last I saw of him. Not that he was not sportman--all through. He
told me in a letter afterward that the police arrested him, supposing
him to be me, but that he easily proved he was not me, and so got
away with the money. Enclosed in the package in which the letter
came were his diamond ring and a watch and chain, and he also sent
me an order to deliver to me his horse and saddle.
"He explained he had tried to double my money by gambling, but had
lost. Therefore he now sent me all he had left, a fair exchange
being no robbery. Oh, he was certainly sportman!
"So I sold his watch and chain and the horse--but the diamond ring
I kept--behold it!--see, on Maga's hand!--it was a real diamond that
a woman had given him; and with the proceeds I came back to Armenia.
In Armenia I have ever since remained, with the exception of one
or two little journeys in time of war, and one or two little temporary
hidings, and a trip into Persia, and another into Russia to
get ammunition.
"How have I lived? Mostly by robbery! I rob Turks and all friends
of Turks, and such people as help make it possible for Turks as a
nation to continue to exist! I--we--I and my men--we steal a cartridge
sooner than a piaster--a rifle sooner than a thousand roubles! Outlaws
must live, and weapons are the chief means! I am the brains and
the Eye of Zeitoon, but I have never been chieftain, and am not now.
Observe my house--is it not empty? I tell you, if it had not been
for my new friend Monty there would have been six or seven rival
chieftains in Zeitoon to-night! As it is, they sulk in their houses,
the others, because Monty has rallied all the fighting men to me!
Now that Monty has come I think there will be unity forever in Zeitoon!"
He turned toward Monty with a gesture of really magnificent approval.
Caesar never declined a crown with greater dignity.
"You, my brother, have accomplished in a few days what I have failed
to do in years! That is because you are sportman! Just as Larry
Atkins was sportman! He sent me all he had, and could not do more.
I understood him. Why did he do it? Simply sportman--that is all!
Why do you do this? Why do you throw your life into the hot cauldron
of Zeitoon? Because you are sportman! And my people see, and
understand. They understand, as they have never understood me!
I will tell you why they have never understood me. This is why:
"I have always kept a little in reserve. At one time money in a bank.
At another time money buried. Sometimes a place to run and hide in.
Now and then a plan for my own safety in case a defense should fail.
Never have I given absolutely quite all, burning all my bridges.
Had I been Larry Atkins I would not have gambled with the money of
a man who trusted me; but, having lost the money, I would not have
sent my diamond and the watch and chain! Neither, if the horse and
saddle bad been within my reach would I have sent an order to deliver
those! That is why Zeitoon has never altogether trusted me! Some,
but never all, until to-night!
"My brother--"
He stood up, with the motions of a man who is stiff with weariness.
"I salute you! You have taught me my needed lesson!"
"I wonder!" whispered Fred to me. "Remember Peter at the fireside?
Methinks friend Kagig doth too much protest! We'll see. Nemesis
comes swiftly as a rule."
I shoved Fred off his balance, rolled him over, and sat on him, because
cynicism and iconoclasm are twin deities I neither worship nor respect.
But at times Fred Oakes is gifted with uncanny vision. While he
struggled explosively to throw me off, the door began resounding
to steady thumps, and at a sign from Kagig, Maga opened it.
There strode in nine Armenians, followed closely by one of the gipsies
of Gregor Jhaere's party, who whispered to Maga through lips that
hardly moved, and made signals to Kagig with a secretive hand like
a snake's head. I got off Fred's stomach then, and when he had had
his revenge by emptying hot pipe ashes down my neck he sat close
beside me and translated what followed word for word. It was all
in Armenian, spoken in deadly earnest by hairy men on edge with anxiety
and yet compelled to grudging patience by the presence of strangers
and knowledge of the hour's necessity.
When the gipsy had finished making signals to Kagig be sat down and
seemed to take no further interest. But a little later I caught
sight of him by the dancing fire-light creeping along the wall, and
presently he lay down with his head very close to Rustum Khan's.
Nothing points more clearly to the clarifying tension of that night
than the fact that Rustum Khan with his notions about gipsies could
compel himself to lie still with a gipsy's head within three inches
of his own, and sham sleep while the gipsy whispered to him. I was
not the only one who observed that marvel, although I did not know
that at the time.
The nine Armenians who had entered were evidently influential men.
Elders was the word that occurred as best describing them. They
were smelly with rain and smoke and the close-kept sweat beneath
their leather coats--all of them bearded--nearly all big men--and
they strode and stood with the air of being usually heard when they
chose to voice opinion. Kagig stood up to meet them, with his back
toward the fire--legs astraddle, and hands clasped behind him.
"Ephraim says," began the tallest of the nine, who had entered first
and stood now nearest to Kagig and the firelight, "that you will
yourself be king of Armenia!"
"Ephraim lies!" said Kagig grimly. "He always does lie. That man
can not tell truth!"
Two of the others grunted, and nudged the first man, who made an
exclamation of impatience and renewed the attack.
"But there is the Turk--the colonel whom your Indian friend took
prisoner--he says--"
"Pah! What Turk tells the truth?"
"He says that the Indian--what is his name? Rustum Khan--was purposing
to use him as prisoner-of-war, whereas in accordance with a private
agreement made beforehand you were determined to make matters easy
for him. He demands of us better treatment in fulfilment of promise.
He says that the army is coming to take Zeitoon, and to make you
governor in the Sultan's name. He offered us that argument thinking
we are your dupes. He thought to--"
"Dupes?" snarled Kagig. "How long have ye dealt with Turks, and
how long with me, that ye take a Turk's word against mine?"
"But the Turk thought we are your friends," put in a harsh-voiced
man from the rear of the delegation. "Otherwise, how should he have
told us such a thing?"
"If he had thought you were my friends," Kagig answered, "he would
never have dared. If you had been my friends, you would have taken
him and thrown him into Jihun River from the bridge!"
"Yet he has said this thing," said a man who had not spoken yet.
"And none has heard you deny it, Kagig!" added the man nearest the door.
"Then hear me now!" Kagig shouted, on tiptoe with anger. Then he
calmed himself and glanced about the room for a glimpse of eyes
friendly to himself. "Hear me now. Those Turks--truly come to set
a governor over Zeitoon. I forgot that the prisoner might understand
English. I talked with this friend of mine--he made a gesture toward
Monty. "Perhaps that Turk overheard, he is cleverer than he looks.
I had a plan, and I told it to my friend. The Turk was near, I
remember, eating the half of my dinner I gave him."
"Have you then a plan you never told to us?" the first man asked
suspiciously.
"One plan? A thousand! Am I wind that I should babble into heedless
ears each thought that comes to me for testing? First it was my
plan to arouse all Armenia, and to overthrow the Turk. Armenia failed
me. Then it was my plan to arouse Zeitoon, and to make a stand here
to such good purpose that all Armenia would rally to us. Bear me
witness whether Zeitoon trusted me or not? How much backing have
I had? Some, yes; but yours?
"So it was plain that if the Turks sent a great army, Zeitoon could
only hold out for a little while, because unanimity is lacking.
And my spies report to me that a greater army is on the way than
ever yet came to the rape of Armenia. These handful of hamidieh
that ye think are all there is to be faced are but the outflung
skirmishers. It was plain to me that Zeitoon can not last. So I
made a new plan, and kept it secret."
"Ah-h-h! So that was the way you took us into confidence? Always
secrets behind secrets, Kagig! That is our complaint!"
"Listen, ye who would rather suspect than give credit!" He used
one word in the Armenian. "It was my plan--my new plan, that seeing
the Turks insist on giving us a governor, and are able to overwhelm
us if we refuse, then I would be that governor!"
"Ah-h-h! What did we say! Unable to be king, you will be governor!"
"I talked that over with my new friend, and he did not agree with
me, but I prevailed. Now hear my last word on this matter: I will
not be governor of Zeitoon! I will lead against this army that is
coming. If you men prevent me, or disobey me, or speak against me,
I will hang you--every one! I will accept no reward, no office,
no emolument, no title--nothing! Either I die here, fighting for
Zeitoon, or I leave Zeitoon when the fighting is over, and leave
it as I came to it--penniless! I give now all that I have to give.
I burn my bridges! I take inviolable oath that I will not profit!
And by the God who fed me in the wilderness, I name my price for
that and take my payment in advance! I will be obeyed! Out with
you! Get out of here before I slay you all! Go and tell Zeitoon
who is master here until the fight is lost or won!"
He seized a great firebrand and charged at them, beating right and
left, and they backed away in front of him, protesting from under
forearms raised to protect their faces. He refused to hear a word
from them, and drove, them back against the door.
Strange to say, it was Rustum Khan who gave up all further pretense
at sleeping and ran round to fling the door open--Rustum Khan who
took part with Kagig, and helped drive them out into the dark, and
Rustum Khan who stood astraddle in the doorway, growling after them
in Persian--the only language he knew thoroughly that they likely
understood:
"Bismillah! Ye have heard a man talk! Now show yourselves men,
and obey him, or by the beard of God's prophet there shall be war
within Zeitoon fiercer than that without! Take counsel of your
women-folk! Ye--" (he used no drawing-room word to intimate their
sex)--"are too full of thoughts to think!"
Then he turned on Kagig, and held out a lean brown hand. Kagig
clasped it, and they met each other's eyes a moment.
"Am I sportman?" Kagig asked ingenuously.
"Brother," said Rustum Khan, "next after my colonel sahib I accept
thee as a man fit to fight beside!"
We were all standing. A free-for-all fight had seemed too likely,
and we had not known whether there were others outside waiting to
reinforce the delegation. Rustum Khan sought Monty's eyes.
"You have the news, sahib?"
Kagig laughed sharply, and dismissed the past hour from his mind
with a short sweep of the hand.
"No. Tell me," said Monty.
"The gipsy brought it. A whole division of the Turkish regular army
is on the march. Their rear-guard camps to-night a day's march this
side of Tarsus. Dawn will find the main body within sight of us.
Half a brigade has hurried forward to reenforce the men we have just
beaten. Are there any orders?"
Fred's face fell, and my heart dropped into my boots. A division
is a horde of men to stand against.
"No," said Monty. "No orders yet."
"Then I will sleep again," said Rustum Khan, and suited action to
the word, laying his head on the same folded goat-skin he had used
before and breathing deeply within the minute.
Nobody spoke. Rustum Khan's first deep snore had not yet announced
his comment on the situation, and we all stood waiting for Kagig
to say something. But it was Peter Measel who spoke first.
"I will pray," he announced. "I saw that gipsy whispering to the
Indian, and I know there is treachery intended! O Lord--O righteous
Lord--forgive these people for their bloody and impudent plans!
Forgive them for plotting to shed blood! Forgive them for arrogance,
for ambition, for taking Thy name in vain, for drinking strong drink,
for swearing, for vanity, and for all their other sins. Forgive
above all the young woman of the party, who is not satisfied with
a wound already but looks forward with unwomanly zest to further
fighting! Forgive them for boasting and--"
"Throw that fool out!" barked Kagig suddenly.
"O Lord forgive--"
Fred was nearest the door, and opened it. Maga laughed aloud. I
was nearest to Peter Measel, so it was I who took him by the neck
and thrust him into outer darkness. Kagig kicked the door shut
after him; but even so we heard him for several minutes grinding
out condemnatory prayers.
"Now sleep, sportmen all!" said Kagig, blessing us with both hands.
"Sleep against the sport to-morrow!"
Chapter Seventeen
"I knew what to expect of the women!"
"AND DELILAH SAID--"
Always at fault is the fellow betrayed
(Majorities murder to prove it!)
As Samson discovered, Delilah lies,
The stigma's stuck on by the cynical wise,
And nothing can ever remove it.
We'll cast out Delilah and spit on her dead,
(That revenge is remarkably human),
And pity the victim of underhand tricks
So be that it's moral (the sexes don't mix);
But, oh, think what the cynical wise would have said
If Judas were only a woman!
We slept until Monty called us, two hours before dawn, although I
was conscious most of the night of stealthy men and women who stepped
over me to get at Kagig and whisper to him. His marvelous spy system
was working full blast, and he seemed to run no risks by letting
the spies report to any one but himself. Fred, who slept more lightly
than I did, told me afterward that the women principally brought
him particulars of the workings of local politics; the men detailed
news of the oncoming concrete enemy.
There was breakfast served by Maga in the dark--hot milk, and a
strange mess of eggs and meat. For some reason no one thought of
relighting the fire, and although the ashes glowed we shivered until
the food put warmth in us.
By the light of the smoky lamp I thought that Monty wore a strangely
divided air, between gloom and exultation. Fred had been wide awake
and talking with him since long before first cock-crow and was obviously
out of sorts, shaking his head at intervals and unwilling more than
to poke at his food with a fork. I crossed the room to sit beside
them, and came in for the tail end of the conversation.
"I might have known it, Didums, when I let you go on alone. I'll
never forgive myself. I had a premonition and disobeyed it. You
pose as a cast-iron materialist with no more ambition than money
enough to retrieve your damned estates, and all the while you're
the most romantic ass who ever wore out saddle-leather! Found it,
have you? Then God help us all! I know what's coming! You're about
to 'vert back to Crusader days, and try to do damsilly deeds of
chivalry without the war-horse or the suit of mail!"
"No need for you to join me, Fred. You take charge of the others
and get them away to safety."
"Take charge of hornets! I'd leave you, of course, like a shot!
But can you see Will Yerkes, for instance, riding off and leaving
you to play Don Quixote? Damn you, Didums, can't you see--?"
"Destiny, Fred. Manifest destiny."
"Can't you see crusading is dead as a dead horse?"
"So am I, old man. I'm no use but to do this very thing. I can serve
these people. If I'm killed, there'll be a howl in the papers.
If I'm taken, there'll be a row in parliament."
"You don't intend to be taken--I know you!"
"Honest, Fred, I--"
"Have I known you all these years to be fooled now? Smelling rats
'ud be subtle to it--I can feel the air bristling! You mean to raise
the Montdidier banner and die under it, last of your race. But you're
not last, you bally ass!"
"Last in the direct line, Fred."
"Yes, but there's that rotter Charles ready to inherit! If you're
bent on suicide--"
"I'm not. You know I'm not."
"--you might have the decency to kill that miserable cousin first
and bring the line to an end in common honor! He'll survive you,
and as sure as I sit here and swear at you, he'll bring the Montdidier
name into worse disgrace than Judas Iscariot's!"
"I've no intention of suicide, Fred. I assure you--"
But Fred waved the argument aside contemptuously, and stood up to
gather our attention.
"Listen!" He thrust forward his Van Dyke beard that valiantly strove
to hide a chin like a piece of flint. "Monty has found the robbers'
nest that used to belong to his infernal ancestors. I charge any
of you who count yourselves his friends to help me prevent him from
behaving like an idiot!"
"That'll do, Fred!" said Monty, pressing him back against the wall.
"The fact is," he twisted at his black mustache and eyed us each
for a second in turn, looking as handsome as the devil, "that I have
found what I originally set out to look for. It overlooks Zeitoon,
hidden among trees. I propose to use it. As for quixotism--is
there any one here not willing to fight in the last ditch to help
Kagig and these Armenians?"
"I'm with you!" laughed Gloria, and she and Will had a scuffle over
near the fireplace.
"I knew what to expect of the women," said Monty rather bitterly.
"I'm speaking to Fred and the men!"
"Where's Peter Measel?" I asked. But the others did not see
the connection.
"Come along," said Monty. "Seems to me we're wasting time," and
he strode out through the window on to the roof of the house
below--usually the shortest way from point to point in Zeitoon. Kagig
followed him, and then Rustum Khan. The stars were no longer shining
in the pale sky overhead, but it was dark where we were because of
the mountains that shut out the dawn. Fred came last, grumbling
and stumbling, too disturbed to look where he was going.
"Fancy me acting Cassandra at my time of life and none to believe
me!" he muttered. Then, louder: "I warn you all! I know that
fellow Monty. If he comes out of this alive it'll be because we
haul him out by the hair! Won't you listen?"
Outside the window I remembered the field-glasses I had laid down
in a corner, and returned to get them. In the room were Maga and
the woman Anna, who had appointed herself Gloria Vanderman's maid;
they were apparently about to sweep the floor and tidy the place,
but as I crossed the room an older gipsy woman entered by the door,
and she and Maga promptly drove Anna out through the window after
my party. Then the old woman came close to me, her beady bright
eyes fixed on mine, and went through the suggestive gipsy motions
that invite the crossing of a palm with silver.
There seemed at first no excuse for listening to her. Every gipsy
will beg, whether there is need or not, and knowledge of their habits
did not make me less short-tempered; besides I had no silver within
reach, nor time to waste.
"Not now!" I said, pushing her aside.
But Maga came to her rescue, and clutched my arm.
"See!" she said, and took a Maria Theresa dollar from some hiding-place
in her skirt. "I give silver for you. So." The old hag pouched
the coin with exactly the same avidity with which she would have
taken it from me. "Now she will make magic. Then I see. Then I
tell you something. You listen!"
It began to dawn on me that I would better listen after all. Every
human is superstitious, whether or not he admits if to himself;
but the particular fraud of pretending to tell fortunes never did
happen to find the joint in my own armor. It seemed likely these
two women had some plan that included the preliminary deception of
myself, and the sooner I knew something about it the better. So
I sat down on Kagig's stool, to give them a better opinion of their
advantage over me, there being nothing like making the enemy too
confident. Then I held out the palm of my hand for inspection and
tried to look like a man pretending he does not believe in magic.
Whatever Maga thought, the old hag was delighted. She began to croak
an incantation, shuffling first with one foot, then with the other,
and finally with both together in a weird dance that almost shook
her old frame apart. Then she went through a pantomime of
finger-pointing, as if transferring from herself to Maga the gift
of divining about me.
Presently, standing a little to one side of me, with eyes on the
old hag's and my hand held between her two, Maga began chanting in
English. The fact that her voice was musical and low where the bag's
had been high-pitched and rasping heightened interest, if nothing else.
"You now four men," she began, with a little pause, and something
like a swallow between each sentence. "You all love one another
ver' much. You all like Kagig. Kagig is liking you. But Turks
are coming presently, and they keel Kagig--keel heem, you understan'?
That man Monty is also keel--keel dead. That man Fred--I not know--I
not see. You I see----you I see two ways. First way, you marry
that woman Gloria--you go away--all well--all good. Second way--you
not marry her. Then you all die--dam' quick--Monty, Fred, Will,
you, Gloria, everybody--an' Zeitoon is all burn' up by bloody Turks!"
She paused and looked at me sidewise under lowered eyelids. I stared
straight in front of me, as if in the state of self-hypnotism that
is the fortune-teller's happy hunting-ground.
"You understan'?"
"Yes," I said. "I think I see. But how shall I marry Miss Gloria?
Suppose she does not want me?"
"You must! Never mind what she want! Listen! This is only way
to save your frien's and Zeitoon! I am giving men--four--five--six
men. They are seizing Gloria. You go with them. They take you
safe away. Then Zeitoon is also safe, an' your frien's are also safe."
"Monty, too?" I asked.
"Yes, then he is also safe." But--I felt her hands tremble slightly
as she said that.
"Do you mean I should leave him?" I asked.
"You must! You must!" She almost screamed at me, and shook my hand
between her two palms as if by that means to drive the fact into
my consciousness. The old hag had her eyes fixed on my right temple
as if she would burn a hole there, and between them they were making
a better than amateur effort to control me by suggestion. It seemed
wise to help them deceive themselves. Maga let go my hand gently,
and began passing her ten fingers very softly through my hair, and
there are other men who will bear me witness that there exists sensation
less appealing than when a pretty girt does that.
"You must!" she said again more quietly. "That is the only way to
save Zeitoon. God is angry."
"What do you know about God?" I asked unguardedly, knowing well that
whatever their open pretenses, gipsies despise all religion except
diabolism. They study creeds for the sake of plunder, just as hunters
study the habits of the wild.
"Maybe nothing--maybe much! Peter Measel, he say--"
She paused, as if in doubt whether she was using the right argument.
And in that moment I recalled what Rustum Khan had once said about
her being no true gipsy.
"Go on," I urged her. "Peter Measel is an expert. He's a high priest.
He knows it all."
"Peter Measel is saying, God is ver' angry with Zeitoon and is sending
to destroy such bloody people what plan fighting and rebellion."
"I'll think it over," I said, moving to get up. But independent
thinking was the last thing that Maga intended to permit me.
"No, no! No, no, no! You must dee-cide now--at once! There is
no time. Now--now I give you five--six mens--now they seize that
woman Gloria--now you carry 'er away into the mountains--now you
make 'er yours--your own, you understan', so as she is ashamed to
deny it afterward--yes?--you see?"
"Where are the men?" I demanded.
"I fetch them quick!"
I could see the hilt of her knife, and the bulge of her repeating
pistol, but I could also feel the weight of my own loaded Colt against
my hip. I did not doubt I could escape before her men could arrive
on the scene, but that would have been to leave some secret only
part uncovered. There was obviously more behind this scheme than
met the ear. It is my experience that if we throw fear to the winds,
and are willing to wait in tight places for the necessary inspiration,
then we get it.
"Very well," I said. "I agree. Bring your men."
"You wait. I get 'em."
I nodded, and she said something in the gipsy language to the old
hag, who went out through the door in a hurry. Alone with Maga I
felt less than half as safe as I had been. She proceeded to make
use of every moment in the manner they say makes millionaires.
"Gloria, she is ver' nice girl!" She made a wonderful gesture of
both hands that limned in empty air the curves of her detested rival.
"You will love her. By-and-by she love you--also ver' much."
The thought flashed through my head again that I ought to escape
whole while I had the chance; but the answer to that was the certainty
that she would thence-forward be on guard against me without having
given me any real information. I was perfectly convinced there was
a deep plot underlying the foolishness she had proposed. The fact
that she considered me so venial and so gullible was no proof that
the hidden purpose was not dangerous. The mystery was how to seem
to be fooled by her and yet get in touch with my friends. Then
suddenly I recalled that she and the hag had been trying to use
the gipsy's black art. Unless they can trick their victim into a
mental condition in which innate superstition becomes uppermost,
players of that dark game are helpless.
Yet gipsies are more superstitious than any one else. Hanging to
her neck by a skein of plaited horse-hair was the polished shell
of a minute turtle--smaller than a dollar piece.
"Give me that," I said, "for luck," and she jumped at the idea.
"Yes, yes--that is to bring you luck--ver' much luck!"
She snatched it off and hung it around my neck, pushing the turtle-shell
down under my collar out of sight.
"That is love-token!" she whispered. "Now she love you immediate'!
Now you 'ave ver' much luck!"
The last part of her prophecy was true. The luck seemed to change.
That instant the key was given me to escape without making her my
relentless enemy, a voice that I would know among a million began
shouting for me petulantly from somewhere half a dozen roofs away.
"What in hell's keeping you, man? Here's Monty getting up a tourist
party to his damned ancestral nest and you're delaying the whole shebang!
Good lord alive! Have you fallen in love with a woman, or taken
the belly-ache, or fallen down a well, or gone to sleep again, or
all of them, or what?"
"Coming, Fred!" I shouted. "Coming!"
"You'd better!"
He began playing cat-calls on his concertina--imitation bugle-calls,
and fragments of serenades. For a second Maga looked reckless--then
suspicious--then, as it began to dawn on her from studying my face
that I, too, was afraid of Fred, relieved.
"Does he know anything?" I asked her.
"He? That Fred? No! No, no, no! An' you no tell 'im. You 'ear
me? You no tell 'im! You go now--go to 'im, or else 'e is get
suspicious--understan'? My men--they go an' get that woman. When
they finish getting that woman, then I send for you an' you come
quick--understan'?"