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The Eye of Zeitoon

by Talbot Mundy · English · Gutenberg #5241 · 552,963 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Eye of Zeitoon

Author: Talbot Mundy


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5241]
                Most recently updated: June 3, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5241

Credits: Produced by M.R.J


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EYE OF ZEITOON ***




Produced by M.R.J.








THE EYE OF ZEITOON

By Talbot Mundy

Author of  Rung Ho,  King--of the Khyber Rifles,  Hira Singh,
The Ivory Trail, etc.


CONTENTS

Chapter                                                      Page

I  Parthians, Medes and Elamites .............................. 1
II  "How did sunshine get into the garden?  By whose leave came
      the wind?" .............................................. 21
III  "Sahib, there is always work for real soldiers!" ......... 40
IV  "We are the robbers, effendi!" ............................ 52
V  "Effendi, that is the heart of Armenia burning!" ........... 74
VI   "Passing the buck to Allah!" ............................. 91
VII  "We hold you to your word!" .............................. 118
VIII  "I go with that man!" ................................... 128
IX   "And you left your friend to help me?" ................... 142
X  "When I fire this pistol--" ................................ 163
XI   "That man's dose is death, and he dies unshriven!" ....... 176
XII   "America's way with a woman is beyond belief!" .......... 195
XIII   "'Take your squadron and go find him, Rustum Khan!'
      And I, sahib, obeyed my lord bahadur's orders." ......... 211
XIV  "Rajput, I shall hang you if you make more trouble!"...... 229
XV  "Scenery to burst the heart!" ............................. 243
XVI  "What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?"  257
XVII  "I knew what to expect of the women!"  .................. 277
XVIII  "Per terram et aquam" .................................. 290
XIX  "Such drilling as they have had--such little drilling!" .. 303
XX  "So few against so many!  I see death, and I am not sorry!" 316
XXI  "Those who survive this night shall have brave memories!". 333
XXII  "God go with you to the States, effendim!" .............. 349




Chapter One
Parthians, Medes and Elamites

SALVETE!

Oh ye, who tread the trodden path
And keep the narrow law
In famished faith that Judgment Day
Shall blast your sluggard mists away
And show what Moses saw!
Oh thralls of subdivided time,
Hours Measureless I sing
That own swift ways to wider scenes,
New-plucked from heights where Vision preens
A white, unwearied wing!
No creed I preach to bend dull thought
To see what I shall show,
Nor can ye buy with treasured gold
The key to these Hours that unfold
New tales no teachers know.
Ye'll need no leave o' the laws o' man,
For Vision's wings are free;
The swift Unmeasured Hours are kind
And ye shall leave all cares behind
If ye will come with me!
In vain shall lumps of fashioned stuff
Imprison you about;
In vain let pundits preach the flesh
And feebling limits that enmesh
Your goings in and out,
I know the way the zephyrs took
Who brought the breath of spring,
I guide to shores of regions blest
Where white, uncaught Ideas nest
And Thought is strong o' wing!
Within the Hours that I unlock
All customed fetters fall;
The chains of drudgery release;
Set limits fade; horizons cease
For you who hear the call
No trumpet note--no roll of drums,
But quiet, sure and sweet--
The self-same voice that summoned Drake,
The whisper for whose siren sake
They manned the Devon fleet,
More lawless than the gray gull's wait,
More boundless than the sea,
More subtle than the softest wind!

 * * * * * *

Oh, ye shall burst the ties that bind
If ye will come with me!


It is written with authority of Tarsus that once it was no mean
city, but that is a tale of nineteen centuries ago.  The Turko-Italian
War had not been fought when Fred Oakes took the fever of the place,
although the stage was pretty nearly set for it and most of the
leading actors were waiting for their cue.  No more history was
needed than to grind away forgotten loveliness.

Fred's is the least sweet temper in the universe when the ague grips
and shakes him, and he knows history as some men know the Bible--by
fathoms;  he cursed the place conqueror by conqueror, maligning them
for their city's sake, and if Sennacherib, who built the first
foundations, and if Anthony and Cleopatra, Philip of Macedon,
Timour-i-lang, Mahmoud, Ibrahim and all the rest of them could have
come and listened by his bedside they would have heard more personal
scandal of themselves than ever their contemporary chroniclers dared
reveal.

All this because he insisted on ignoring the history he knew so
well, and could not be held from bathing in the River Cydnus.
Whatever their indifference to custom, Anthony and Cleopatra knew
better than do that.  Alexander the Great, on the other hand, flouted
tradition and set Fred the example, very nearly dying of the ague
for his pains, for those are treacherous, chill waters.

Fred, being a sober man and unlike Alexander of Macedon in several
other ways, throws off fever marvelously, but takes it as some persons
do religion, very severely for a little while.  So we carried him
and laid him on a nice white cot in a nice clean room with two beds
in it in the American mission, where they dispense more than royal
hospitality to utter strangers.  Will Yerkes had friends there but
that made no difference;  Fred was quinined, low-dieted, bathed,
comforted and reproved for swearing by a college-educated nurse,
who liked his principles and disapproved of his professions just
as frankly as if he came from her hometown.  (Her name was
Van-something-or-other, and you could lean against the Boston
accent--just a little lonely-sounding, but a very rock of gentle
independence, all that long way from home!)

Meanwhile, we rested.  That is to say that, after accepting as much
mission hospitality as was decent, considering that every member of
the staff worked fourteen hours a day and had to make up for attention
shown to us by long hours bitten out of night, we loafed about the
city.  And Satan still finds mischief.

We called on Fred in the beginning twice a day, morning and evening,
but cut the visits short for the same reason that Monty did not go
at all:  when the fever is on him Fred's feelings toward his own
sex are simply blunt bellicose.  When they put another patient in
the spare bed in his room we copied Monty, arguing that one male
at a time for him to quarrel with was plenty.

Monty, being Earl of Montdidier and Kirkudbrightshire, and a privy
councilor, was welcome at the consulate at Mersina, twenty miles
away.

The consul, like Monty, was an army officer, who played good chess,
so that that was no place, either, for Will Yerkes and me.  Will
prefers dime novels, if he must sit still, and there was none.  And
besides, he was never what you could call really sedative.

He and I took up quarters at the European hotel--no sweet abiding-place.
There were beetles in the Denmark butter that they pushed on to the
filthy table-cloth in its original one-pound tin;  and there was a
Turkish officer in riding pants and red morocco slippers, back from
the Yemen with two or three incurable complaints.  He talked out-of-date
Turkish politics in bad French and eked out his ignorance of table
manners with instinctive racial habit.

To avoid him between meals Will and I set out to look at the historic
sights, and exhausted them all, real and alleged, in less than half
a day (for in addition to a lust for ready-cut building stone the
Turks have never cherished monuments that might accentuate their
own decadence).  After that we fossicked in the manner of prospectors
that we are by preference, if not always by trade, eschewing polite
society and hunting in the impolite, amusing places where most of
the facts have teeth, sharp and ready to snap, but visible.

We found a khan at last on the outskirts of the city, almost in sight
of the railway line, that well agreed with our frame of mind.  It
was none of the newfangled, underdone affairs that ape hotels, with
Greek managers and as many different prices for one service as there
are grades of credulity, but a genuine two-hundred-year-old Turkish
place, run by a Turk, and named Yeni Khan (which means the new rest
house) in proof that once the world was younger.  The man who directed
us to the place called it a kahveh;  but that means a place for donkeys
and foot-passengers, and when we spoke of it as kahveh to the obadashi--the
elderly youth who corresponds to porter, bell-boy and chambermaid
in one--he was visibly annoyed.

Truly the place was a khan--a great bleak building of four high outer
walls, surrounding a courtyard that was a yard deep with the dung
of countless camels, horses, bullocks, asses;  crowded with arabas,
the four-wheeled vehicles of all the Near East, and smelly with
centuries of human journeys' ends.

Khans provide nothing except room, heat and water (and the heat costs
extra);  there is no sanitation for any one at any price;  every
guest dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail into
the courtyard, to be trodden and wheeled under foot and help build
the aroma.  But the guests provide a picture without price that with
the very first glimpse drives discomfort out of mind.

In that place there were Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and all the
rest of the list.  There was even a Chinaman.  Two Hindus were unpacking
bundles out of a creaking araba, watched scornfully by an unmistakable
Pathan.  A fat swarthy-faced Greek in black frock coat and trousers,
fez, and slippered feet gesticulated with his right arm like a pump-handle
while he sat on the balcony-rail and bellowed orders to a crowd mixed
of Armenians, Italians, Maltese, Syrians and a Turk or two, who labored
with his bales of cotton goods below.  (The Italians eyed everybody
sidewise, for there were rumors in those days of impending trouble,
and when the Turk begins hostilities he likes his first opponents
easy and ready to hand.)

There were Kurds, long-nosed, lean-lipped and suspicious, who said
very little, but hugged long knives as they passed back and forth
among the swarming strangers.  They said nothing at all, those Kurds,
but listened a very great deal.

Tall, mustached Circassians, with eighteen-inch Erzerum daggers at
their waists, swaggered about as if they, and only they, were history's
heirs.  It was expedient to get out of their path alertly, but they
cringed into second place before the Turks, who, without any swagger
at all, lorded it over every one.  For the Turk is a conqueror,
whatever else he ought to be.  The poorest Turkish servant is
race-conscious, and unshakably convinced of his own superiority to
the princes of the conquered.  One has to bear that fact in mind
when dealing with the Turk;  it colors all his views of life, and
accounts for some of his famous unexpectedness.

Will and I fell in love with the crowd, and engaged a room over the
great arched entrance.  We were aware from the first of the dull red
marks on the walls of the room, where bed-bugs had been slain with
slipper heels by angry owners of the blood;  but we were not in search
of luxury, and we had our belongings and a can of insect-bane brought
down from the hotel at once.  The fact that stallions squealed and
fought in the stalls across the courtyard scarcely promised us
uninterrupted sleep;  but sleep is not to be weighed in the balance
against the news of eastern nights.

We went down to the common room close beside the main entrance, and
pushed the door open a little way;  the men who sat within with their
backs against it would only yield enough to pass one person in gingerly
at a time.  We saw a sea of heads and hats and faces.  It looked
impossible to squeeze another human being in among those already
seated on the floor, nor to make another voice heard amid all that
babel.

But the babel ceased, and they did make room for us--places of honor
against the far wall, because of our clean clothes and nationality.
We sat wedged between a Georgian in smelly, greasy woolen jacket,
and a man who looked Persian but talked for the most part French.
There were other Persians beyond him, for I caught the word poul--money,
the perennial song and shibboleth of that folk.

The day was fine enough, but consensus of opinion had it that snow
was likely falling in the Taurus Mountains, and rain would fall the
next day between the mountains and the sea, making roads and fords
impassable and the mountain passes risky.  So men from the ends of
earth sat still contentedly, to pass earth's gossip to and fro--an
astonishing lot of it.  There was none of it quite true, and some
of it not nearly true, but all of it was based on fact of some sort.

Men who know the khans well are agreed that with experience one learns
to guess the truth from listening to the ever-changing lies.  We
could not hope to pick out truth, but sat as if in the pit of an
old-time theater, watching a foreign-language play and understanding
some, but missing most of it.

There was a man who drew my attention at once, who looked and was
dressed rather like a Russian--a man with a high-bridged, prominent,
lean nose--not nearly so bulky as his sheepskin coat suggested, but
active and strong, with a fiery restless eye.  He talked Russian
at intervals with the men who sat near him at the end of the room
on our right, but used at least six other languages with any one
who cared to agree or disagree with him.  His rather agreeable voice
had the trick of carrying words distinctly across the din of countless
others.

"What do you suppose is that man's nationality?" I asked Will, shouting
to him because of the roar, although he sat next me.

"Ermenie!" said a Turk next but one beyond Will, and spat venomously,
as if the very name Armenian befouled his mouth.

But I was not convinced that the man with the aquiline nose was Armenian.
He looked guilty of altogether too much zest for life, and laughed
too boldly in Turkish presence.  In those days most Armenians thereabouts
were sad.  I called Will's attention to him again.

"What do you make of him?"

"He belongs to that quieter party in the opposite corner."  (Will
puts two and two together all the time, because the heroes of dime
novels act that way.)       "They're gipsies, yet I'd say he's not--"

"He and the others are jingaan," said a voice beside me in English,
and I looked into the Persian's gentle brown eyes.  "The jingaan
are street robbers pure and simple," he added by way of explanation.

"But what nationality?"

"Jingaan might be anything.  They in particular would call themselves
Rommany.  We call them Zingarri.  Not a dependable people--unless--"

I waited in vain for the qualification.  He shrugged his shoulders,
as if there was no sense in praising evil qualities.

But I was not satisfied yet.  They were swarthier and stockier than
the man who had interested me, and had indefinite, soft eyes.  The
man I watched had brown eyes, but they were hard.  And, unlike them,
he had long lean fingers and his gestures were all extravagant.
He was not a Jew, I was sure of that, nor a Syrian, nor yet a Kurd.

"Ermenie--Ermenie!" said the Turk, watching me curiously, and spitting
again.  "That one is Ermenie.  Those others are just dogs!"

The crowd began to thin after a while, as men filed out to feed cattle
and to cook their own evening meal.  Then the perplexing person got
up and came over toward me, showing no fear of the Turk at all.
He was tall and lean when he stood upright, but enormously strong
if one could guess correctly through the bulky-looking outer garment.

He stood in front of Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming
between a black beard and mustache.  The Turk got up clumsily, and
went out, muttering to himself.  I glanced toward the corner where
the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity
they were all feigning sleep.

"Eenglis sportmen!" said the man in front of us, raising both hands,
palms outward, in appraisal of our clothes and general appearance.

It was not surprising that he should talk English, for what the British
themselves have not accomplished in that land of a hundred tongues
has been done by American missionaries, teaching in the course of
a generation thousands on thousands.  (There is none like the American
missionary for attaining ends at wholesale.)

"What countryman are you?" I asked him.

"Zeitoonli," he answered, as if the word were honor itself and explanation
bound in one.  Yet he looked hardly like an honorable man.  "The
chilabi are staying here?" he asked.  Chilabi means gentleman.

"We wait on the weather," said I, not caring to have him turn the
tables on me and become interrogator.

He laughed with a sort of hard good humor.

"Since when have Eenglis sportmen waited on the weather?  Ah, but
you are right, effendi, none should tell the truth in this place,
unless in hope of being disbelieved!"  He laid a finger on his right
eye, as I have seen Arabs do when they mean to ascribe to themselves
unfathomable cunning.  "Since you entered this common room you have
not ceased to observe me closely.  The other sportman has watched
those Zingarri.  What have you learned?"

He stood with lean hands crossed now in front of him, looking at
us down his nose, not ceasing to smile, but a hint less at his ease,
a shade less genial.

"I have heard you--and them--described as jingaan," I answered, and
he stiffened instantly.

Whether or not they took that for a signal--or perhaps he made another
that we did not see--the six undoubted gipsies got up and left the
room, shambling out in single file with the awkward gait they share
in common with red Indians.

"Jingaan," he said, "are people who lurk in shadows of the streets
to rob belated travelers.  That is not my business."  He looked very
hard indeed at the Persian, who decided that it might as well be
supper-time and rose stiffly to his feet.  The Persians rob and murder,
and even retreat, gracefully.  He bade us a stately and benignant
good evening, with a poetic Persian blessing at the end of it.  He
bowed, too, to the Zeitoonli, who bared his teeth and bent his head
forward something less than an inch.

"They call me the Eye of Zeitoon!" he announced with a sort of savage
pride, as soon as the Persian was out of ear-shot.

Will pricked his ears--schoolboy-looking ears that stand out from
his head.

"I've heard of Zeitoon.  It's a village on a mountain, where a man
steps out of his front door on to a neighbor's roof, and the women
wear no veils, and--"

The man showed his teeth in another yellow smile.

"The effendi is blessed with intelligence!  Few know of Zeitoon."

Will and I exchanged glances.

"Ours," said Will, "is the best room in the khan, over the entrance
gate."

"Two such chilabi should surely live like princes," he answered without
a smile.  If he had dared say that and smile we would have struck
him, and Monty might have been alive to-day.  But he seemed to know
his place, although he looked at us down his nose again in shrewd
appraisal.

Will took out tobacco and rolled what in the innocence of his Yankee
heart he believed was a cigarette.  I produced and lit what he
contemptuously called a "boughten cigaroot"--Turkish Regie, with
the scent of aboriginal ambrosia.  The Zeitoonli took the hint.

"Yarim sa' at," he said. "Korkakma!"

"Meanin'?" demanded Will.

"In half an hour.  Do not be afraid!" said he.

"Before I grow afraid of you," Will retorted, "you'll need your friends
along, and they'll need knives!"

The Zeitoonli bowed, laid a finger on his eye again, smiled and backed
away.  But he did not leave the room.  He went back to the end-wall
against which he had sat before, and although he did not stare at
us the intention not to let us out of sight seemed pretty obvious.

"That half-hour stuff smacked rather of a threat," said Will.  "Suppose
we call the bluff, and keep him waiting.  What do you say if we go
and dine at the hotel?"

But in the raw enthusiasm of entering new quarters we had made up
our minds that afternoon to try out our new camp kitchen--a contraption
of wood and iron we had built with the aid of the mission carpenter.
And the walk to the hotel would have been a long one, through Tarsus
mud in the dark, with prowling dogs to take account of.

"I'm not afraid of ten of him!" said I.  "I know how to cook curried
eggs;  come on!"

"Who said who was afraid?"

So we went out into darkness already jeweled by a hundred lanterns,
dodged under the necks of three hungry Bactrian camels (they are
irritable when they want their meal), were narrowly missed by a mule's
heels because of the deceptive shadows that confused his aim, tripped
over a donkey's heel-rope, and found our stairway--thoroughly well
cursed in seven languages, and only just missed by a Georgian gentleman
on the balcony, who chose the moment of our passing underneath to
empty out hissing liquid from his cooking pot.

Once in our four-square room, with the rags on the floor in our especial
honor, and our beds set up, and the folding chairs in place, contentment
took hold of us;  and as we lighted the primus burner in the cooking
box, we pitied from the bottom of compassionate young hearts all
unfortunates in stiff white shirts, whose dinners were served that
night on silver and laundered linen.

Through the partly open door we could smell everything that ever
happened since the beginning of the world, and hear most of the elemental
music--made, for instance, of the squeal of fighting stallions, and
the bray of an amorous he-ass--the bubbling complaint of fed camels
that want to go to sleep, but are afraid of dreaming--the hum of
human voices--the clash of cooking pots--the voice of a man on the
roof singing falsetto to the stars (that was surely the Pathan!)--the
tinkling of a three-stringed instrument--and all of that punctuated
by the tapping of a saz, the little tight-skinned Turkish drum.

It is no use for folk whose finger-nails were never dirty, and who
never scratched themselves while they cooked a meal over the primus
burner on the floor, to say that all that medley of sounds and smells
is not good.  It is very good indeed, only he who is privileged must
understand, or else the spell is mere confusion.

The cooking box was hardly a success, because bright eyes watching
through the open door made us nervously amateurish.  The Zeitoonli
arrived true to his threat on the stroke of the half-hour, and we
could not shut the door in his face because of the fumes of food
and kerosene.  (Two of the eggs, like us, were travelers and had
been in more than one bazaar.)

But we did not invite him inside until our meal was finished, and
then we graciously permitted him to go for water wherewith to wash
up.  He strode back and forth on the balcony, treading ruthlessly
on prayer-mats (for the Moslem prays in public like the Pharisees
of old).

"Myself I am Christian," he said, spitting over the rail, and sitting
down again to watch us.  We accepted the remark with reservations.

When we asked him in at last, and we had driven out the flies with
flapping towels, he closed the door and squatted down with his back
to it, we two facing him in our canvas-backed easy chairs.  He refused
the "genuine Turkish" coffee that Will stewed over the primus.  Will
drank the beastly stuff, of course, to keep himself in countenance,
and I did not care to go back on a friend before a foreigner, but
I envied the man from Zeitoon his liberty of choice.

"Why do they call you the Eye of Zeitoon?" I asked, when time enough
had elapsed to preclude his imagining that we regarded him seriously.
One has to be careful about beginnings in the Near East, even as elsewhere.

"I keep watch!" he answered proudly, but also with a deeply-grounded
consciousness of cunning.  There were moments when I felt such strong
repugnance for the man that I itched to open the door and thrust him
through--other moments when compassion for him urged me to offer
money--food--influence--anything.  The second emotion fought all
the while against the first, and I found out afterward it had been
the same with Will.

"Why should Zeitoon need such special watching?" I demanded.  "How
do you watch?  Against whom?  Why?"

He laughed with a pair of lawless eyes, and showed his yellow teeth.

"Ha!  Shall I speak of Zeitoon?  This, then:  the Turks never conquered
it!  They came once and built a fort on the opposite mountain-side,
with guns to overawe us all.  We took their fort by storm!  We threw
their cannon down a thousand feet into the bed of the torrent, and
there they lie to-day!  We took prisoner as many of their Arab zaptiehs
as still were living--aye, they even brought Arabs against us--poor
fools who had not yet heard of Zeitoon's defenders!  Then we came
down to the plains for a little vengeance, leaving the Arabs for
our wives to guard.  They are women of spirit, the Zeitoonli wives!

"Word reached Zeitoon presently that we were being hard pressed on
the plains.  It was told to the Zeitoonli wives that they might arrange
to have pursuit called off from us by surrendering those Arab prisoners.
They answered that Zeitoon-fashion.  How?  I will tell.  There is
a bridge of wood, flung over across the mountain torrent, five hundred
feet above the water, spanning from crag to crag.  Those Zeitoonli
wives of ours bound the Arab prisoners hand and foot.  They brought
them out along the bridge.  They threw them over one at a time, each
man looking on until his turn came.  That was the answer of the brave
Zeitoonli wives!"

"And you on the plains?"

"Ah!  It takes better than Osmanli to conquer the men of Zeitoon!"
he gave the Turks their own names for themselves with the air of
a brave fighting man conceding his opponent points.  "We heard what
our wives had done.  We were encouraged.  We prevailed!  We fell
back to-ward our mountain and prevailed!  There in Zeitoon we have
weapons--numbers--advantage of position, for no roads come near Zeitoon
that an araba, or a gun, or anything on wheels can use.  The only
thing we fear is treachery, leading to surprise in overwhelming force.
And against these I keep watch!"

"Why should you tell us all this?" demanded Will.

"How do you know we are not agents of the Turkish government?"

He laughed outright, throwing out both hands toward us.  "Eenglis
sportmen!" he said simply.

"What's that got to do with it?" Will retorted.  He has the unaccountable
American dislike of being mistaken for an Englishman, but long ago
gave up arguing the point, since foreigners refuse, as a rule, to
see the sacred difference.

"I am, too, sportman.  At Zeitoon there is very good sport.  Bear.
Antelope.  Wild boar.  One sportman to another--do you understand?"

We did, and did not believe.

"How far to Zeitoon?" I demanded.

"I go in five days when I hurry.  You--not hurrying--by
horse--seven--eight--nine days, depending on the roads."

"Are they all Armenians in Zeitoon?"

"Most.  Not all.  There are Arabs--Syrians--Persians--a few
Circassians--even Kurds and a Turk or two.  Our numbers have been
reenforced continually by deserters from the Turkish Army.  Ninety-five
per cent., however, are Armenians," he added with half-closed eyes,
suddenly suggesting that masked meekness that disguises most outrageous
racial pride.

"It is common report," I said, "that the Turks settled all Armenian
problems long ago by process of massacre until you have no spirit
for revolt left."

"The report lies, that is all!" he answered.  Then suddenly he beat
on his chest with clenched fist.  "There is spirit here!  There is
spirit in Zeitoon!  No Osmanli dare molest my people!  Come to Zeitoon
to shoot bear, boar, antelope!  I will show you!  I will prove my words!"

"Were those six jingaan in the common room your men?" I asked him,
and he laughed as suddenly as he had stormed, like a teacher at a
child's mistake.

"Jingaan is a bad word," he said. "I might kill a man who named me
that--depending on the man.  My brother I would kill for it--a stranger
perhaps not.  Those men are Zingarri, who detest to sleep between
brick walls.  They have a tent pitched in the yard."

"Are they your men?"

"Zingarri are no man's men."

The denial carried no conviction.

"Is there nothing but hunting at Zeitoon?" Will demanded.

"Is that not much?  In addition the place itself is wonderful--a
mountain in a mist, with houses clinging to the flanks of it, and
scenery to burst the heart!"

"What else?" I asked.  "No ancient buildings?"

He changed his tactics instantly.

"Effendi," he said, leaning forward and pointing a forefinger at
me by way of emphasis, "there are castles on the mountains near Zeitoon
that have never been explored since the Turks--may God destroy
them!--overran the land!  Castles hidden among trees where only bears
dwell! Castles built by the
Seljuks--Armenians--Romans--Saracens--Crusaders! I know the way to
every one of them!"

"What else?" demanded Will, purposely incredulous.

"Beyond Zeitoon to north and west are cave-dwellers.  Mountains so
hollowed out that only a shell remains, a sponge--a honeycomb!  No
man knows how far those tunnels run!  The Turks have attempted now
and then to smoke out the inhabitants.  They were laughed at!  One
mountain is connected with another, and the tunnels run for miles
and miles!"

"I've seen cave-dwellings in the States," Will answered, unimpressed.
"But just where do you come in?"

"I do not understand."

"What do you propose to get out of it?"

"Nothing!  I am proud of my country.  I am sportman.  I am pleased
to show."

We both jeered at him, for that explanation was too outrageously
ridiculous.  Armenians love money, whatever else they do or leave
undone, and can wring a handsome profit out of business whose very
existence the easier-going Turk would not suspect.

"See if I can't read your mind," said Will.  "You'll guide us for
some distance out of town, at a place you know, and your jingaan-gipsy
brethren will hold us up at some point and rob us to a fare-you-well.
Is that the pretty scheme?"

Some men would have flown into a fury.  Some would have laughed the
matter off.  Any and every crook would have been at pains to hide
his real feelings.  Yet this strange individual was at a loss how
to answer, and not averse to our knowing that.

For a moment a sort of low cunning seemed to creep over his mind,
but he dismissed it.  Three times he raised his hands, palms upward,
and checked himself in the middle of a word.

"You could pay me for my services," he said at last, not as if that
were the real reason, nor as if he hoped to convince us that it was,
but as if he were offering an excuse that we might care to accept
for the sake of making peace with our own compunctions.

"There are four in our party," said Will, apropos apparently of nothing.
The effect was unexpected.

"Four?"  His eyes opened wide, and he made the knuckle-bones of both
hands crack like caps going off.  "Four Eenglis sportman?"

"I said four.  If you're willing to tell the naked truth about what's
back of your offer, I'll undertake to talk it over with my other
friends.  Then, either we'll all four agree to take you up, or we'll
give you a flat refusal within a day or two.  Now--suit yourself."

"I have told the truth--Zeitoon--caves--boar--antelope--wild boar.
I am a very good guide.  You shall pay me handsomely."

"Sure, we'll ante up like foreigners.  But why do you make the proposal?
What's behind it?"

"I never saw you until this afternoon.  You are Eenglis sportmen.
I can show good sport.  You shall pay me.  Could it be simpler?"

It seemed to me we had been within an ace of discovery, but the man's
mind had closed again against us in obedience to some racial or religious
instinct outside our comprehension.  He had been on the verge of
taking us into confidence.

"Let the sportmen think it over," he said, getting up.  "Jannam!
(My soul!)  Effendi, when I was a younger man none could have made
me half such a sportmanlike proposal without an answer on the instant!
A man fit to strike the highway with his foot should be a judge of
men!  I have judged you fit to be invited!  Now you judge me--the
Eye of Zeitoon!"

"What is your real name?"

"I have none--or many, which is the same thing!  I did not ask your
names;  they are your own affair!"

He stood with his hand on the door, not irresolute, but taking one
last look at us and our belongings.

"I wish you comfortable sleep, and long lives, effendim!" he said
then, and swung himself out, closing the door behind him with an
air of having honored us, not we him particularly.  And after he
had gone we were not at all sure that summary of the situation was
not right.

We lay awake on our cots until long after midnight, hazarding guesses
about him.  Whatever else he had done he had thoroughly aroused our
curiosity.

"If you want my opinion that's all he was after anyway!" said Will,
dropping his last cigarette-end on the floor and flattening it with
his slipper.

"Cut the cackle, and let's sleep!"

We fell asleep at last amid the noise of wild carousing;  for the
proprietor of the Yeni Khan, although a Turk, and therefore himself
presumably abstemious, was not above dispensing at a price mastika
that the Greeks get drunk on, and the viler raki, with which Georgians,
Circassians, Albanians, and even the less religious Turks woo imagination
or forgetfulness.

There was knife-fighting as well as carousal before dawn, to judge
by the cat-and-dog-fight swearing in and out among the camel pickets
and the wheels of arabas.  But that was the business of the men who
fought, and no one interfered.




Chapter Two
"How did sunshine get into the garden?  By whose leave came the wind?"


A TIME AND TIMES AND HALF A TIME

When Cydnus bore the Taurus snows
To sweeten Cleopatra's keels,
And rippled in the breeze that sings
From Kara Dagh, where leafy wings
Of flowers fall and gloaming steals
The colors of the blowing rose,
Old were the wharves and woods and ways--
Older the tale of steel and fire,
Involved intrigue, envenomed plan,
Man marketing his brother man
By dread duress to glut desire.
No peace was in those olden days.
Hope like the gorgeous rose sun-warmed
Blossomed and blew away and died,
Till gentleness had ceased to be
And Tarsus knew no chivalry
Could live an hour by Cydnus' side
Where all the heirs of evil swarmed.
And yet--with every swelling spring
Each pollen-scented zephyr's breath
Repeats the patient news to ears
Made dull by dreams of loveless years,
"It is of life, and not of death
That ye shall hear the Cydnus sing!"


We awoke amid sounds unexplainable.  Most of the Moslems had finished
their noisy ritual ablutions, and at dawn we had been dimly conscious
of the strings of camels, mules and donkeys jingling out under the
arch beneath us.  Yet there was a great din from the courtyard of
wild hoofs thumping on the dung, and of scurrying feet as if a mile-long
caravan were practising formations.

So we went out to yawn, and remained, oblivious of everything but
the cause of all the noise, we leaning with elbows on the wooden
rail, and she laughing up at us at intervals.

The six Zingarri, or gipsies, had pitched their tent in the very
middle of the yard, ambitious above all other considerations to keep
away from walls.  It was a big, low, black affair supported on short
poles, and subdivided by them into several compartments.  One could
see unshapely bulges where women did the housekeeping within.

But the woman who held us spell-bound cared nothing for Turkish
custom--a girl not more than seventeen years old at the boldest guess.
She was breaking a gray stallion in the yard, sitting the frenzied
beast without a saddle and doing whatever she liked with him, except
that his heels made free of the air, and he went from point to point
whichever end up best pleased his fancy.

Travelers make an early start in Asia Minor, but the yard was by
no means empty yet;  some folk were still waiting on the doubtful
weather.  Her own people kept to the tent.  Whoever else had business
in the yard made common cause and cursed the girl for making the
disturbance, frightening camels, horses, asses and themselves.  And
she ignored them all, unless it was on purpose that she brought her
stallion's heels too close for safety to the most abusive.

It was only for us two that she had any kind of friendly interest;
she kept looking up at us and laughing as she caught our eyes, bringing
her mount uprearing just beneath us several times.  She was pretty
as the peep o' morning, with long, black wavy hair all loose about
her shoulders, and as light on the horse as the foam he tossed about,
although master of him without a second's doubt of it.

When she had had enough of riding--long before we were tired of the
spectacle--she shouted with a voice like a mellow bell.  One of the
gipsies ran out and led away the sweating stallion, and she disappeared
into the tent throwing us a laugh over her shoulder.

"D'you suppose those gipsies are really of that Armenian's party?"
Will wondered aloud.  "Now, if she were going to Zeitoon--!"

Feeling as he did, I mocked at him to hide my feelings, and we hung
about for another hour in hope of seeing her again, but she kept close.
I don't doubt she watched us through a hole in the tent.  We would
have sat there alert in our chairs until evening only Fred sent a
note down to say he was well enough to leave the hospital.

We found him with his beard trimmed neatly and his fevered eyes all
bright again, sitting talking to the nurse on the veranda about a
niece of hers--Gloria Vanderman.

"Chicken in this desert!" Will wondered irreverently, and Fred, who
likes his English to have dictionary meanings, rose from his chair
in wrath.  The nurse made that the cue for getting rid of us.

"Take Mr. Oakes away!" she urged, laughing.  "He threatened to kill
a man this morning.  There's too much murder in Tarsus now.  If he
should add to it--"

"You know it wasn't on my account," Fred objected.  "It was what
he wrote--and said of you.  Why, he has had you prayed for publicly
by name, and you washing the brute's feet!  Let me back in there
for just five minutes, and I'll show what a hospital case should
really look like!"

"Take him away!" she laughed.  "Isn't it bad enough to be prayed
for?  Must I get into the papers, too, as heroine of a scandal?"

The head missionary was not there to say good-by to, life in his
case being too serious an affair to waste minutes of a precious morning
on farewells, so we packed Fred into the waiting carriage and drove
all the way to Mersina, where we interrupted Monty's mid-afternoon
game of chess.

Fred Oakes and Monty were the closest friends I ever met--one problem
for an enemy--one stout, two-headed, most dependable ally for the
lucky man or woman they called friend.

"Oh, hullo!" said Monty over his shoulder, as our names were called
out by the stately consular kavass.

"Hullo!" said Fred, and shook hands with the consul.

"Thought you were due to be sick for another week?" said Monty, closing
up the board.

"I was.  I would have been.  Bed would have done me good, and the
nurse is a darling, old enough to be Will's mother.  But they put
a biped by the name of Peter Measel in the bed next mine.  He's a
missionary on his own account, and keeps a diary.  Seems be contributes
to the funds of a Welsh mission in France, and they do what he says.
He has all the people he disapproves of prayed for publicly by name
in the mission hall in Marseilles, with extracts out of his diary
by way of explanation, so that the people who pray may know what
they've got on their hands.  The special information I gave him about
you, Monty, will make Marseilles burn!  He's got you down as a drunken
pirate, my boy, with no less than eleven wives.  But he asked me
one night whether I thought what he'd written about the nurse was
strong enough, and he read it aloud to me.  You'd never believe what
the reptile had dared suggest in his devil's log-book!  I'm expelled
for threatening to kill him!"

"The nurse was right," said the consul gloomily.  "There'll be murder
enough hereabouts--and soon!"

He was a fairly young man yet in spite of the nearly white hair over
the temples.  He measured his words in the manner of a man whose
speech is taken at face value.

"The missionaries know.  The governments won't listen.  I've been
appealed to.  So has the United States consul, and neither of us
is going to be able to do much.  Remember, I represent a government
at peace with Turkey, and so does he.  The Turk has a side to his
character that governments ignore.  Have you watched them at prayer?"

We told him how close we had been on the previous night, and he laughed.

"Did you suppose I couldn't smell camel and khan the moment you came
in?"

"That was why Sister Vanderman hurried you off so promptly!" Fred
announced with an air of outraged truthfulness.  "Faugh!  Slangy
talk and stink of stables!"

"I was talking of Turks," said the consul.  "When they pray, you
may have noticed that they glance to right and left.  When they think
there is nobody looking they do more, they stare deliberately to
the right and left.  That is the act of recognition of the angel
and the devil who are supposed to attend every Moslem, the angel
to record his good deeds and the devil his bad ones.  To my mind
there lies the secret of the Turk's character.  Most of the time
he's a man of his word--honest--courteous--considerate--good-humored--even
chivalrous--living up to the angel.  But once in so often
he remembers the other shoulder, and then there isn't any limit to
the deviltry he'll do.  Absolutely not a limit!"

"I suppose we or the Americans could land marines at a pinch, and
protect whoever asked for protection?" suggested Monty.

"No," said the consul deliberately.  "Germany would object.  Germany
is the only power that would.  Germany would accuse us of scheming
to destroy the value of their blessed Baghdad railway."

A privy councilor of England, which Monty was, is not necessarily
in touch with politics of any sort.  Neither were we;  but it happened
that more than once in our wanderings about the world things had been
forced on our attention.

"They would rather see Europe burn from end to end!" Monty agreed.

"And I think there's more than that in it," said the consul.  "Armenians
are not their favorites.  The Germans want the trade of the Levant.
The Armenians are business men.  They're shrewder than Jews and more
dependable than Greeks.  It would suit Germany very nicely, I imagine,
to have no Armenians to compete with."

"But if Germany once got control of the Near East," I objected, "she
could impose her own restrictions."

The consul frowned.  "Armenians who thrive in spite of Turks--"

"Would skin a German for hide and tallow," nodded Will.

"Exactly.  Germany would object vigorously if we or the States should
land marines to prevent the Turks from applying the favorite remedy,
vukuart--that means events, you know--their euphemism for massacre
at rather frequent intervals.  Germany would rather see the Turks
finish the dirty work thoroughly than have it to do herself later on."

"You mean," said I, "that the German government is inciting to massacre?"

"Hardly.  There are German missionaries in the country, doing good
work in a funny, fussy, rigorous fashion of their own.  They'd raise
a dickens of a hocus-pocus back in Germany if they once suspected
their government of playing that game.  No.  But Germany intends
to stand off the other powers, while Turks tackle the Armenians;
and the Turks know that."

"But what's the immediate excuse for massacre?" demanded Fred.

The consul laughed.

"All that's needed is a spark.  The Armenians haven't been tactful.
They don't hesitate to irritate the Turks--not that you can blame
them, but it isn't wise.  Most of the money-lenders are Armenians;
Turks won't engage in that business themselves on religious grounds,
but they're ready borrowers, and the Armenian money-lenders, who
are in a very small minority, of course, are grasping and give a
bad name to the whole nation.  Then, Armenians have been boasting
openly that one of these days the old Armenian kingdom will be
reestablished.  The Turks are conquerors, you know, and don't like
that kind of talk.  If the Armenians could only keep from quarreling
among themselves they could win their independence in half a jiffy,
but the Turks are deadly wise at the old trick of divide et impera;
they keep the Armenians quarreling, and nobody dares stand in with
them because sooner--or later--sooner, probably--they'll split among
themselves, and leave their friends high and dry.  You can't blame 'em.
The Turks know enough to play on their religious prejudices and set
one sect against another.  When the massacres begin scarcely an Armenian
will know who is friend and who enemy."

"D'you mean to say," demanded Fred, "that they're going to be shot
like bottles off a wall without rhyme or reason?"

"That's how it was before," said the consul.  "There's nothing to
stop it.  The world is mistaken about Armenians.  They're a hot-blooded
lot on the whole, with a deep sense of national pride, and a hatred
of Turkish oppression that rankles.  One of these mornings a Turk
will choose his Armenian and carefully insult the man's wife or daughter.
Perhaps he will crown it by throwing dirt in the fellow's face.
The Armenian will kill him or try to, and there you are.  Moslem
blood shed by a dog of a giaour--the old excuse!"

"Don't the Armenians know what's in store for them?" I asked.

"Some of them know.  Some guess.  Some are like the villagers on
Mount Vesuvius--much as we English were in '57 in India, I
imagine--asleep--playing games--getting rich on top of a volcano.
The difference is that the Armenians will have no chance."

"Did you ever hear tell of the Eye of Zeitoon?" asked Will, apropos
apparently of nothing.

"No," said the consul, staring at him.

Will told him of the individual we had talked with in the khan the
night before, describing him rather carefully, not forgetting the
gipsies in the black tent, and particularly not the daughter of the
dawn who schooled a gray stallion in the courtyard.

The consul shook his head.

"Never saw or heard of any of them."

We were sitting in full view of the roadstead where Anthony and
Cleopatra's ships had moored a hundred times.  The consul's garden
sloped in front of us, and most of the flowers that Europe reckons
rare were getting ready to bloom.

"Would you know the man if you saw him again, Will?" I asked.

"Sure I would!"

"Then look!"

I pointed, and seeing himself observed a man stepped out of the shadow
of some oleanders.  There was something suggestive in his choice
of lurking place, for every part of the oleander plant is dangerously
poisonous;  it was as if he had hidden himself among the hairs of death.

"Him, sure enough!" said Will.

The man came forward uninvited.

"How did you get into the grounds?" the consul demanded, and the
man laughed, laying an unafraid hand on the veranda rail.

"My teskere is a better than the Turks give!" he answered in English.
(A teskere is the official permit to travel into the interior.)

"What do you mean?"

"How did sunshine come into the garden?  By whose leave came the wind?"

He stood on no formality.  Before one of us could interfere (for
he might have been plying the assassin's trade) he had vaulted the
veranda rail and stood in front of us.  As he jumped I heard the
rattle of loose cartridges, and the thump of a hidden pistol against
the woodwork.  I could see the hilt of a dagger, too, just emerging
from concealment through the opening in his smock.  But he stood
in front of us almost meekly, waiting to be spoken to.

"You are without shame!" said the consul.

"Truly!  Of what should I be ashamed!"

"What brought you here?"

"Two feet and a great good will!  You know me."

The consul shook his head.

"Who sold the horse to the German from Bitlis?"

"Are you that man?"

"Who clipped the wings of a kite, and sold it for ten pounds to a
fool for an eagle from Ararat?"

The consul laughed.

"Are you the rascal who did that?"

"Who threw Olim Pasha into the river, and pushed him in and in again
for more than an hour with a fishing pole--and then threw in the
gendarmes who ran to arrest him--and only ran when the Eenglis consul
came?"

"I remember," said the consul.

"Yet you don't look quite like that man."

"I told you you knew me."

"Neither does to-day's wind blow like yesterday's!"

"What is your name?"

"Then it was Ali."

"What is it now?"

"The name God gave me?"

"Yes."

"God knows!"

"What do you want here?"

He spread out his arms toward us four, and grinned.

"Look--see!  Four Eenglis sportman!  Could a man want more?"

"Your face is hauntingly familiar," said the consul, searching old
memories.

"No doubt.  Who carried your honor's letter to Adrianople in time
of war, and received a bullet, but brought the answer back?"

"What--are you that man--Kagig?"

Instead of replying the man opened his smock, and pulled aside an
undershirt until his hairy left breast lay bare down to where the
nipple should have been.  Why a bullet that drilled that nipple so
neatly had not pierced the heart was simply mystery.

"Kagig, by jove!  Kagig with a beard!  Nobody would know you but
for that scar."

"But now you know me surely?  Tell these Eenglis sportman, then,
that I am good man--good guide!  Tell them they come with me to Zeitoon!"

The consul's face darkened swiftly, clouded by some notion that he
seemed to try to dismiss, but that refused to leave him.

"How much would you ask for your services?" he demanded.

"Whatever the effendim please."

"Have you a horse?"

He nodded.

"You and your horse, then, two piasters a day, and you feed yourself
and the beast."

The man agreed, very bright-eyed.  Often it takes a day or two to
come to terms with natives of that country, yet the terms the consul
offered him were those for a man of very ordinary attainments.

"Come back in an hour," said the consul.

Without a word of answer Kagig vaulted back across the rail and
disappeared around the corner of the house, walking without hurry
but not looking back.

"Kagig, by jove!  It would take too long now to tell that story of
the letter to Adrianople.  I've no proof, but a private notion that
Kagig is descended from the old Armenian kings.  In a certain sort
of tight place there's not a better man in Asia.  Now, Lord Montdidier,
if you're in earnest about searching for that castle of your Crusader
ancestors, you're in luck!"

"You know it's what I came here for," said Monty.  "These friends
of mine are curious, and I'm determined.  Now that Fred's well--"

"I'm puzzled," said the consul, leaning back and looking at us all
with half-closed eyes.  "Why should Kagig choose just this time to
guide a hunting party?  If any man knows trouble's brewing, I suspect
be surely does.  Anything can happen in the interior.  I recall,
for instance, a couple of Danes, who went with a guide not long ago,
and simply disappeared.  There are outlaws everywhere, and it's more
than a theory that the public officials are in league with them."

"What a joke if we find the old family castle is a nest of robbers,"
smiled Monty.

"Still!" corrected Fred.

I was watching the consul's eyes.  He was troubled, but the prospect
of massacre did not account for all of his expression.  There was
debate, inspiration against conviction, being fought out under cover
of forced calm.  Inspiration won the day.

"I was wondering," he said, and lit a fresh cigar while we waited
for him to go on.

"I vouch for my friends," said Monty.

"It wasn't that.  I've no right to make the proposal--no official
right whatever--I'm speaking strictly unofficially--in fact, it's
not a proposal at all--merely a notion."

He paused to give himself a last chance, but indiscretion was too
strong.

"I was wondering how far you four men would go to save twenty or
thirty thousand lives."

"You've no call to wonder about that," said Will.

"Suppose you tell us what you've got in mind," suggested Monty, putting
his long legs on a chair and producing a cigarette.

The consul knocked out his pipe and sat forward, beginning to talk
a little faster, as a man who throws discretion to the winds.

"I've no legal right to interfere.  None at all.  In case of a massacre
of Armenians--men, women, little children--I could do nothing.  Make
a fuss, of course.  Throw open the consulate to refugees.  Threaten
a lot of things that I know perfectly well my government won't do.
The Turks will be polite to my face and laugh behind my back, knowing
I'm helpless.  But if you four men--"

"Yes--go on--what?"

"Spill it!" urged Will.

"--should be up-country, and I knew it for a fact, but did not know
your precise whereabouts, I'd have a grown excuse for raising most
particular old Harry!  You get my meaning?"

"Sure!" said Will. "Monty's an earl.  Fred's related to half the
peerages in Burke.  Me and him"--I was balancing my chair on one
leg and he pushed me over backward by way of identification--"just
pose as distinguished members of society for the occasion.  I get you."

"It might even be possible, Mr. Yerkes, to get the United States
Congress to take action on your account."

"Don't you believe it!" laughed Will.  "The members for the Parish
Pump, and the senators from Ireland would howl about the Monroe Doctrine
and Washington's advice at the merest hint of a Yankee in trouble
in foreign parts."

"What about the United States papers?"

"They'd think it was an English scheme to entangle the United States,
and they'd be afraid to support action for fear of the Irish.  No,
England's your only chance!"

"Well," said the consul, "I've told you the whole idea.  If I should
happen to know of four important individuals somewhere up-country,
and massacres should break out after you had started, I could supply
our ambassador with something good to work on.  The Turkish government
might have to stop the massacre in the district in which you should
happen to be.  That would save lives."

"But could they stop it, once started?" I asked.

"They could try.  That 'ud be more than they ever did yet."

"You mean," said Monty, "that you'd like us to engage Kagig and make
the trip, and to remain out in case of--ah--vukuart until we're rescued?"

"Can't say I like it, but that's what I mean.  And as for rescue,
the longer the process takes the better, I imagine!"

"Hide, and have them hunt for us, eh?"

"Would it help," I suggested, "if we were to be taken prisoner by
outlaws and held for ransom?"

"It might," said the consul darkly.  "I'd take to the hills myself
and send back a wail for help, only my plain duty is here at the
mission.  What I have suggested to you is mad quixotism at the best,
and at the worst--well, do you recall what happened to poor Vyner,
who was held for ransom by Greek brigands?  They sent a rescue party
instead of money, and--"

"Charles Vyner was a friend of mine," said Monty quietly.

Fred began to look extremely cheerful and Will nudged me and nodded.

"Remember," said the consul, "in the present state of European politics
there's no knowing what can or can't be done, but if you four men
are absent in the hills I believe I can give the Turkish government
so much to think about that there'll be no massacres in that one district."

"Whistle up Kagig!" Monty answered, and that was the end of the argument
as far as yea or nay had anything to do with it.  Prospect of danger
was the last thing likely to divide the party.

"How about permits to travel?" asked Will.  "The United States consul
told me none is to be had at present."

The consul rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

"It may cost a little more, that's all," he said.  "You might go
without, but you'd better submit to extortion."

He called the kavass, the uniformed consular attendant, and sent
him in search of Kagig.  Within two minutes the Eye of Zeitoon was
grinning at us through a small square window in the wall at one end
of the veranda.  Then he came round and once more vaulted the veranda
rail, for he seemed to hold ordinary means of entry in contempt.
His eye looked very possessive for that of one seeking employment
as a guide, but he stood at respectful attention until spoken to.

"These gentlemen have decided to employ you," the consul announced.

"Mashallah!" (God be praised!)  For a Christian he used unusual expletives.

"They want to find a castle in the mountains, to hunt bear and boar,
and to see Zeitoon."

"I shall lead them to ten castles never seen before by Eenglismen!
They shall kill all the bears and pigs!  Never was such sport as
they shall see!"

He exploded the word pigs as if he had the Osmanli prejudice against
that animal.  Yet he wore a pig-skin cartridge belt about his middle.

"They will need enormous lots of ammunition!" he announced.

"What else would the roadside robbers like them to bring?"

"No Turkish servants!  They throw Turks over a bridge-side in Zeitoon!
I myself will provide servants, who shall bring them back safely!"

It seemed to me that he breathed inward as he said that.  A Turk
would have added "Inshallah!"--if God wills!

"Make ready for a journey of two months," he said.

"When and where shall the start be?"

It would obviously be unwise to start from the consulate.

"From the Yeni Khan in Tarsus," said Will.

"That is very good--that is excellent!  I will send Zeitoonli servants
to the Yeni Khan at once.  Pay them the right price.  Have you horses?
Camels are of no use, nor yet are wheels--you shall know why later!
Mules are best."

"I know where you can hire mules," said the consul, "with a Turkish
muleteer to each pair."

"Oh, well!" laughed Kagig, leaning back against the rail and moving
his hands palms upward as if he weighed one thought against another.
"What is the difference?  If a few Turks move or less come to an
end over Zeitoon bridge--"

It was only for moments at a time that he seemed able to force himself
to speak as our inferior.  A Turk of the guide class would likely
have knelt and placed a foot of each of us on his neck in turn as
soon as he knew we had engaged him.  This Armenian seemed made of
other stuff.

"Then be on hand to-morrow morning," ordered Monty.

But the Eye of Zeitoon had another surprise for us.

"I shall meet you on the road," he announced with an air of a social
equal.  "Servants shall attend you at the Yeni Khan.  They will say
nothing at all, and work splendidly!  Start when you like;  you will
find me waiting for you at a good place on the road.  Bring not plenty,
but too much ammunition!  Good day, then, gentlemen!"

He nodded to us--bowed to the consul--vaulted the rail.  A second
later he grinned at us again through the tiny window.  "I am the
Eye of Zeitoon!" he boasted, and was gone.  A servant whom the consul
sent to follow him came back after ten or fifteen minutes saying
he had lost him in a maze of narrow streets.

His latter, offhanded manner scarcely auguring well, we debated whether
or not to search for some one more likely amenable to discipline
to take his place.  But the consul spent an hour telling us about
the letter that went to Adrianople, and the bringing back of the
answer that hastened peace.

"He was shot badly.  He nearly died on the way back.  I've no idea
how he recovered.  He wouldn't accept a piaster more than the price
agreed on."

"Let's take a chance!" said Will, and we were all agreed before he
urged it.

"There's one other thing," said the consul.  "I've been told a Miss
Gloria Vanderrnan is on her way to the mission at Marash--"

"Gee whiz!" said Will.

The consul nodded.  "She's pretty, if that's what you mean.  It was
very unwise to let her go, escorted only by Armenians.  Of course,
she may get through without as much as suspecting trouble's brewing,
but--well--I wish you'd look out for her."

"Chicken, eh?"

Will stuck both hands deep in his trousers pockets and tilted his
chair backward to the point of perfect poise.

"Cuckoo, you ass!" laughed Fred, kicking the chair over backward,
and then piling all the veranda furniture on top, to the scandalized
amazement of the stately kavass, who came at that moment shepherding
a small boy with a large tray and perfectly enormous drinks.




Chapter Three
"Sahib, there is always--work for real soldiers!"


WHERE TWO OR THREE

Oh, all the world is sick with hate,
And who shall heal it, friend o' mine?
And who is friend? And who shall stand
Since hireling tongue and alien hand
Kill nobleness in all this land?
Judas and Pharisee combine
To plunder and proclaim it Fate.

Days when the upright dared be few
Are they departed, friend o' mine?
Are bribery and rich largesse
Fair props for fat forgetfulness,
Or anodynous of distress?
Oh, would the world were drunk with wine
And not this last besotting brew!

Oh, for the wonderful again--
The greatly daring, friend o' mine!
The simply gallant blade unbought,
The soul compassionate, unsought,
With no price but the priceless thought
Nor purpose than the brave design
Of giving that the world may gain!


So we took two rooms at the Yeni Khan instead of one, not being minded
to sleep as closely as the gentry of Asia Minor like to.  Will hurried
us down there for a look at the gipsy girl.  But the tent was gone
and the gipsies with it, and when we asked questions about them people
spat.

Your good Moslem--and a Moslem is good in those parts who makes a
mountain of observances, regarding mole-hills of mere morals not
at all--affects to despise all giaours; but a giaour, like a gipsy,
who has no obvious religion of any kind, he ranks below the pig in
order of reverence.  It did not redound to our credit that we showed
interest in the movements of such people.

Monty brought an enormous can of bug-powder with him, and restored
our popularity by lending generously after he had treated our quarters
sufficiently for three days' stay.  Fred did nothing to our
quarters--stirred no finger, claiming convalescence with his tongue in
his cheek, and strolling about until he fell utterly in love with the
khan and its crowd, and the khan with him.

That very first night he brought out his concertina on the balcony,
and yowled songs to its clamor;  and whether or not the various crowd
agreed on naming the noise music, all were delighted with the friendliness.

Fred talks more languages fluently than he can count on the fingers
of both hands.  He began to tell tales in a sing-song eastern snarl--a
tale in Persian, then in Turkish, and the night grew breathless,
full of listening, until pent-up interest at intervals burst bonds
and there were "Ahs" and "Ohs" all amid the dark, like little breaths
of night wind among trees.

He found small time for sleep, and when dawn came, and four Zeitoonli
servants according to Kagig's promise, they still swarmed around
him begging for more.  He went off to eat breakfast with a khan from
Bokhara, sitting on a bale of nearly priceless carpets to drink overland
tea made in a thing like a samovar.

All the rest of that day, and the next, sleeping only at intervals,
while Monty and Will and I helped the Zeitoonli servants get our
loads in shape, Fred sharpened his wonder-gift of tongues on the
fascinated men of many nations, giving them London ditties and tales
from the Thousand Nights and a Night in exchange for their news of
caravan routes.  He left them well pleased with their bargain.

Monty went off alone the second day to see about mules.  The Turk
with a trade to make believes that of several partners one is always
"easier" than the rest;  consequently, one man can bring him to see
swifter reason than a number can.  He came back that evening with
twelve good mules and four attendants.

"One apiece to ride, and two apiece to carry everything.  Not another
mule to be had.  Unpack the loads again and make them smaller!"

Fred came and sat with us that night before the charcoal brazier
in his and Monty's room.

"They all talk of robbers on the road," he said.  "Northward, through
the Circassian Gates, or eastward it's all the same.  There's a man
in a room across the way who was stripped stark naked and beaten
because they thought he might have money in his clothes.  When he
reached this place without a stitch on him he still had all his money
in his clenched fists!  Quite a sportsman--what?  Imagine his juggling
with it while they whipped him with knotted cords!"

"What have you heard about Kagig?"

"Nothing.  But a lot about vukuart.*  It's vague, but there's something
in the air.  You'll notice the Turkish muleteers are having nothing
whatever to say to our Zeitoonli, although they've accepted the same
service.  Moslems are keeping together, and Armenians are getting
the silence cure.  Armenians are even shy of speaking to one another.
I've tried listening, and I've tried asking questions, although that
was risky.  I can't get a word of explanation.  I've noticed, though,
that the ugly mood is broadening.  They've been polite to me, but
I've heard the word shapkali applied more than once to you fellows.
Means hatted man, you know.  Not a serious insult, but implies contempt."

--------------
* Turkish word:  happenings, a euphemism for massacre.
--------------

Nothing but comfort and respectability ever seemed able to make Fred
gloomy.  He discussed our present prospects with the air of an epicure
ordering dinner.  And Monty listened with his dark, delightful
smile--the kindliest smile in all the world.  I have seen unthoughtful
men mistake it for a sign of weakness.

I have never known him to argue.  Nor did he then, but strode straight
down into the khan yard, we sitting on the balcony to watch.  He
visited our string of mules first for an excuse, and invited a Kurdish
chieftain (all Kurds are chieftains away from home) to inspect a
swollen fetlock.  With that subtle flattery he unlocked the man's
reserve, passed on from chance remark to frank, good-humored questions,
and within an hour had talked with twenty men.  At last he called
to one of the Zeitoonli to come and scrape the yard dung from his
boots, climbed the stairs leisurely, and sat beside us.

"You're quite right, Fred," he said quietly.

Then there came suddenly from out the darkness a yell for help in
English that brought three of us to our feet.  Fred brushed his fierce
mustaches upward with an air of satisfaction, and sat still.

"There's somebody down there quite wrong, and in line at last to
find out why!" he said.  "I've been waiting for this.  Sit down."

We obeyed him, though the yells continued.  There came blows suggestive
of a woman on the housetops beating carpets.

"D'you recollect the man I mentioned at the consulate--the biped
Peter Measel, missionary on his own account, who keeps a diary and
libels ladies in it?  Well, he's foul of a thalukdar* from Rajputana,
and of a Prussian contractor, recruiting men for work on the Baghdad
railway.  I wasn't allowed to murder him.  I see why now--finger
of justice--I'd have been too quick.  Sit down, you idiots!  You've
no idea what he wrote about Miss Vanderman.  Let him scream, I like it!"

---------------
* Punjabi Word--landholder.
---------------

"Come along," said Monty.  "If he were a bad-house keeper he has
had enough!"

But Will had gone before us, headlong down the stairs with the speed
off the mark that they taught him on the playing field at Bowdoin.
When we caught up he was standing astride a prostrate being who sobbed
like a cow with its throat cut, and a Rajput and a German, either
of them six feet tall, were considering whether or not to resent
the violence of his interference.  The German was disposed to yield
to numbers.  The Rajput not so.

"Why are you beating him?" asked Monty.

"Gott in Hinimel, who would not!  He wrote of me in his diary--der
Liminel!--that I shanghai laborers."

"Do you, or don't you?" asked Monty sweetly.

"Kreutz-blitzen!  What is that to do with you--or with him?  What
right had he to write that people in France should pray for me in church?"

The Rajput all this while was standing simmering, as ready as a boar
at bay to fight the lot of us, yet I thought with an air about him,
too, of half-conscious surprise.  Several times he took a half-pace
forward to assert his right of chastisement, looked hard at Monty,
and checked mid-stride.

"You've done enough," said Monty.

"Who are you that says so?" the German retorted.

"He--who--will--attend--to--it--that--you--do--no--more!"  Monty's
smooth voce had become without inflection.

"Bah!  That is easy, isn't it?  You are four to one!"

"Five to one!"

The Rajput's gruff throat thrilled with a new emotion.  He sprang
suddenly past me, and thrust himself between Monty and the German,
who took advantage of the opportunity to walk away.

"Lord Montdidier, colonel sahib bahadur, burra salaam!"

He made no obeisance, but stood facing Monty eye to eye.  The words,
as be roiled them out, were like an order given to a thousand men.
One almost heard the swish of sabers as the squadrons came to the
general salute.

"I knew you, Rustum Khan, the minute I set eyes on you.  Why were
you beating this man?"

"Sahib bahadur, because he wrote in his book that people in France
should pray for me in church, naming my honorable name, because,
says he--but I will not repeat what he says.  It is not seemly."

"How do you know what is in his diary?" Monty asked.

"That German read it out to me.  We were sitting, he and I, discussing
how the Turks intend to butcher the Armenians, as all the world knows
is written.  They say it shall happen soon.  Said he to me--the German
said to me--'I know another,' said he, 'who if I had my way should
suffer first in that event.'  Saying which he showed the written
book that he had found, and read me parts of it.  The German was
for denouncing the fellow as a friend of Armenians, but I was for
beating him at once, and I had my way."

"Where is the book?" demanded Monty.

"The German has it."

"The German has no right to it."

"I will bring it."

Rustum Khan strode off into the night, and Monty bent over the sobbing
form of the self-appointed missionary.  We were all alone in the midst
of the courtyard, not even watched from behind the wheels of arabas,
for a fight or a thrashing in the khans of Asia Minor is strictly
the affair of him who gets the worst of it.

"Will you burn that book of yours, Measel, if we protect you from
further assault?"

The man sobbed that he would do anything, but Monty held him to the
point, and at last procured a specific affirmative.  Then Rustum
Khan came back with the offending tome.  It was bulky enough to contain
an account of the sins of Asia Minor.

Fred and I picked the poor fellow up and led him to where the cooking
places stood in one long row.  Will carried the book, and Rustum
Khan stole wood from other folks' piles, and fanned a fire.  We watched
the unhappy Peter Measel put the book on the flames with his own hands.

"You're old enough to have known better than keep such a diary!"
said Monty, stirring the charred pages.

"I am at any rate a martyr!" Measel answered.

The man could walk by that time--he was presumably abstemious and
recovered from shock quickly.  Monty sent me to see him to his room,
which turned out to be next the German's, and until Will came over
from our quarters with first-aid stuff from our chest I spent the
minutes telling the German what should happen to him in case he should
so far forget discretion as to resume the offensive.  He said nothing
in reply, but sat in his doorway looking up at me with an expression
intended to make me feel nervous of reprisals without committing him
to deeds.

Later, when we had done our best for "the martyred biped Measel,"
as Fred described him, Will and I found Rustum Khan with Fred and
Monty seated around the charcoal brazier in Monty's room, deep in
the valley of reminiscences.  Our entry rather broke the spell, but
Rustum Khan was not to be denied.

"You used to tell in those days, Colonel sahib bahadur," he said,
addressing Monty with that full-measured compliment that the chivalrous,
old East still cherishes, "of a castle of your ancestors in these
parts.  Do you remember, when I showed you the ruins of my family
place in Rajputana, how you stood beside me on the heights, sahib,
and vowed some day to hunt for that Crusaders' nest, as you called it?"

"That is the immediate purpose of this trip of ours," said Monty.

"Ah!" said the Rajput, and was silent for about a minute.  Fred Oakes
began to hum through his nose.  He has a ridiculous belief that doing
that throws keen inquirers off a scent.

"Colonel sahib, since I was a little butcha not as high as your knee
I have spoken English and sat at the feet of British officers.  Little
enough I know, but by the beard of God's prophet I know this:  when
a British colonel sahib speaks of 'immediate purposes,' there are
hidden purposes of greater importance!"

"That well may be," said Monty gravely.  "I remember you always were
a student of significant details, Rustum Khan."

"There was a time when I was in your honor's confidence."

Monty smiled.

"That was years ago.  What are you doing here, Rustum Khan?"

"A fair enough question!  I hang my head.  As you know, sahib, I
am a rangar.  My people were all Sikhs for several generations back.
We converts to Islam are usually more thorough-going than born Moslems
are.  I started to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, riding overland
alone by way of Persia.  As I came, missing few opportunities to
talk with men, who should have been the lights of my religion, I
have felt enthusiasm waning.  These weeks past I have contemplated
return without visiting Mecca at all.  I have wandered to and fro,
hoping for the fervor back again, yet finding none.  And now, sahib,
I find you--I, Rustum Khan, at a loose end for lack of inspiration.
I have prayed.  Colonel sahib bahadur, I believe thou art the gift
of God!"'

Monty sought our eyes in turn in the lantern-lit darkness.  We made
no sign.  None of us but he knew the Rajput, so it was plainly his affair.

"Suit yourself," said Will, and the rest of us nodded.

"We are traveling into the interior," said Monty, "in the rather
doubtful hope that our absence from a coast city may in some way
help Armenians, Rustum Khan."

The Rajput jumped to his feet that instant, and came to the salute.

"I might have known as much.  Colonel Lord Montdidier sahib, I offer
fealty!  My blood be thine to spill in thy cause!  Thy life on my
head--thine honor on my life--thy way my way, and God be my witness!"

"Don't be rash, Rustum Khan.  Our likeliest fate is to be taken prisoner
by men of your religion, who will call you a renegade if you defend
Armenians.  And what are Armenians to you?"

"Ah, sahib!  You drive a sharp spur into an open sore!  I have seen
too much of ill-faith--cruelty--robbery--torture--rapine--butchery,
all in the name of God!  It is this last threat to the Armenians
that is the final straw!  I took the pilgrimage in search of grace.
The nearer I came to the place they tell me is on earth the home
of grace, the more unfaith I see!  Three nights ago in another place
I was led aside and offered the third of the wealth of a fat Armenian
if I would lend my sword to slit helpless throats--in the name of
God, the compassionate, be merciful!  My temper was about spoilt
forever when that young idiot over the way described me in his book
as--never mind how he described me--he paid the price!  Sahib bahadur,
I take my stand with the defenseless, where I know thou and thy friends
will surely be!  I am thy man!"

"It is not included in our plans to fight," said Monty.

"Sahib, there is always work for real soldiers!"

"What do you fellows say?  Shall we let him come with us?"

"I travel at my own charges, sahib.  I am well mounted and well armed."

"Sure, let him come with us!" said Will.  "I like the man."

"He has my leave to come along to England afterward," said Fred,
"if he'll guarantee to address me as the 'gift of God' in public!"

I left them talking and returned to see whether the "martyred biped
Measel" needed further help.  He was asleep, and as I listened to
his breathing I heard voices in the next room.  The German was talking
in English, that being often the only tongue that ten men have in
common.  Through the partly opened door I could see that his room
was crammed with men.

"They are spies, every one of them!" I heard him say.  "The man I
thrashed is of their party.  You yourselves saw how they came to
his rescue, and seduced the Indian by means of threats.  This is
the way of the English.  ("Curse them!" said a voice.)  They write
notes in a book, and when that offense is detected they burn the
book in a corner, as ye saw them do.  I saw the book before they
burned it.  I thrashed the spy who wrote in the book because he had
written in it reports on what it is proposed to do to infidels at
the time ye know about.  I tell you those men are all spies--one
is as bad as the other.  They work on behalf of Armenians, to bring
about interference from abroad."

That he had already produced an atmosphere of danger to us I had
immediate proof, for as I crossed the yard again I dodged behind
an araba in the nick of time to avoid a blow aimed at me with a sword
by a man I could not see.

"All your charming is undone!" I told Fred, bursting in on our party
by the charcoal brazier.  Almost breathless I reeled off what I had
overheard.  "They'll be here to murder us by dawn!" I said.

"Will they?" said Monty.

We were up and away two hours before dawn, to the huge delight of
our Turkish muleteers, who consider a dawn start late, yet not too
early for the servants of the khan, who knew enough European manners
to stand about the gate and beg for tips.  Nor were we quite too
early for the enemy, who came out into the open and pelted us with
clods of dung, the German encouraging from the roof.  Fred caught
him unaware full in the face with a well-aimed piece of offal.  Then
the khan keeper slammed the gate behind us and we rode into the unknown.




Chapter Four
"We are the robbers, effendi!"


THE ROAD

There is a mystery concerning roads
And he who loves the Road shall never tire.
For him the brooks have voices and the breeze
Brings news of far-off leafiness and leas
And vales all blossomy.  The clinging mire
Shall never weary such an one, nor yet their loads
O'ercome the beasts that serve him. Rock and rill
Shall make the pleasant league go by as hours
With secret tales they tell; the loosened stone,
Sweet turf upturned, the bees' full-purposed drone,
The hum of happy insects among flowers,
And God's blue sky to crown each hill!
Dawn with her jewel-throated birds
To him shall be a new page in the Book
That never had beginning nor shall end,
And each increasing hour delights shall lend--
New notes in every sound--in every nook
New sights----new thoughts too wide for words,
Too deep for pen, too high for human song,
That only in the quietness of winding ways
From tumult and all bitterness apart
Can find communication with the heart--
Thoughts that make joyous moments of the days,
And no road heavy, and no journey long!


The snow threatened in the mountains had not materialized, and the
weather had changed to pure perfection.  About an hour after we started
the khan emptied itself behind us in a long string, jingling and
clanging with horse and camel bells.  But they turned northward to
pass through the famed Circassian Gates, whereas we followed the
plain that paralleled the mountain range--our mules' feet hidden
by eight inches of primordial ooze.

"Wish it were only worse!" said Monty.  "Snow or rain might postpone
massacre.  Delay might mean cancellation."

But there was no prospect whatever of rain.  The Asia Minor spring,
perfumed and amazing sweet, breathed all about us, spattered with
little diamond-bursts of tune as the larks skyrocketed to let the
wide world know how glad they were.  Whatever dark fate might be
brooding over a nation, it was humanly impossible for us to feel
low-spirited.

Our Zeitoonli Armenians trudged through the mud behind us at a splendid
pace--mountain-men with faces toward their hills.  The Turks--owners
of the animals another man had hired to us--rode perched on top of
the loads in stoic silence, changing from mule to mule as the hours
passed and watching very carefully that no mule should be overtaxed
or chilled.  In fact, the first attempt they made to enter into
conversation with us was when we dallied to admire a view of Taurus
Mountain, and one of them closed up to tell us the mules were catching
cold in the wind.  (If they had been our animals it might have been
another story.)

Their contempt for the Zeitoonli was perfectly illustrated by the
difference in situation.  They rode; the Armenians walked.  Yet the
Armenians were less afraid;  and when we crossed a swollen ford where
a mule caught his forefoot between rocks and was drowning, it was
Armenians, not Turks, who plunged into the icy water and worked him
free without straining as much as a tendon.

The Turks were obsessed by perpetual fear of robbers.  That, and
no other motive, made them tolerate the hectoring of Rustum Khan,
who had constituted himself officer of transport, and brought up
the rear on his superb bay mare.  As he had promised us he would,
he rode well armed, and the sight of his pistol holsters, the rifle
protruding stock-first from a leather case, and his long Rajput saber
probably accomplished more than merely keeping Turks in countenance;
it prevented them from scattering and bolting home.

His own baggage was packed on two mules in charge of an Armenian
boy, who was more afraid of our Turks than they of robbers.  Yet,
when we demanded of our muleteers what sort of men, and of what nation
the dreaded highwaymen might be they pointed at Rustum Khan's lean
servant.  At the khan the night before one of them had pointed out
to Monty two Circassians and a Kurd as reputed to have a monopoly
of robbery on all those roads.       Nevertheless, they made the new
accusation without blinking.

"All robbers are Armenians--all Armenians are robbers!" they assured
us gravely.

When we halted for a meal they refused to eat with our Zeitoonli,
although they graciously permitted them to gather all the firewood,
and accepted pieces of their pasderma (sun-dried meat) as if that
were their due.  As soon as they had eaten, and before we had finished,
Ibrahim, their grizzled senior, came to us with a new demand.  On
its face it was not outrageous, because we were doing our own cooking,
as any man does who has ever peeped into a Turkish servant's
behind-the-scene arrangements.

"Send those Armenians away!" he urged.  "We Turks are worth twice
their number!"

"By the beard of God's prophet!" thundered Rustum Khan, "who gave
camp-followers the right to impose advice?"

"They are in league with highwaymen to lead you into a trap!" Ibrahim
answered.

Rustum Khan rattled the saber that lay on the rock beside him.

"I am hunting for fear," he said.  "All my life I have hunted for
fear and never found it!"

"Pekki!" said Ibrahim dryly.  The word means "very well."  The tone
implied that when the emergency should come we should do well not
to depend on him, for he had warned us.

We were marching about parallel with the course the completed Baghdad
railway was to take, and there were frequent parties of surveyors
and engineers in sight.  Once we came near enough to talk with the
German in charge of a party, encamped very sumptuously near his work.
He had a numerous armed guard of Turks.

"A precaution against robbers?" Monty asked, and I did not hear what
the German answered.

Rustum Khan laughed and drew me aside.

"Every German in these parts has a guard to protect him from his
own men, sahib!  For a while on my journey westward I had charge
of a camp of recruited laborers.  Therefore I know."

The German was immensely anxious to know all about us and our intentions.
He told us his name was Hans von Quedlinburg, plainly expecting us
to be impressed.

"I can direct you to good quarters, where you can rest comfortably
at every stage, if you will tell me your direction," he said.

But we did not tell him.  Later, while we ate a meal, he came and
questioned our Turks very closely;  but since they were in ignorance
they did not tell him either.

"Why do you travel with Armenian servants?" he asked us finally before
we moved away.

"We like 'em," said Monty.

"They'll only get you in trouble.  We've dismissed all Armenian laborers
from the railway works.  Not trustworthy, you know.  Our agents are
out recruiting Moslems."

"What's the matter with Armenians?"

"Oh, don't you know?"

"I'm asking."

The German shrugged his shoulders.

"I'll tell you one thing.  This will illustrate.  I had an Armenian
clerk.  He worked all day in my tent.  A week ago I found him reading
among my private papers.  That proves you can't trust an Armenian."

"Ample evidence!" said Monty without a smile, but Fred laughed as
we rode away, and the German stared after us with a new set of emotions
pictured on his heavy face.

Late in the afternoon we passed through a village in which about
two hundred Armenian men and women were holding a gathering in a
church large enough to hold three times the number.  One of them
saw us coming, and they all trooped out to meet us, imagining we
were officials of some kind.

"Effendi," said their pastor with a trembling hand on Monty's saddle,
"the Turks in this village have been washing their white garments!"

We had heard in Tarsus what that ceremony meant.

"It means, effendi, they believe their purpose holy!  What shall
we do--what shall we do?"

"Why not go into Tarsus and claim protection at the British consulate?"
suggested Fred.

"But our friends of Tarsus warn us the worst fury of all will be
in the cities!"

"Take to the hills, then!" Monty advised him.

"But how can we, sir?  How can we?  We have homes--property--children!
We are watched.  The first attempt by a number of us to escape to
the hills would bring destruction down on all!"

"Then escape to the hills by twos and threes.  You ask my advice--I
give it."

It looked like very good advice.  The slopes of the foot-hills seemed
covered by a carpet of myrtle scrub, in which whole armies could
have lain in ambush.  And above that the cliffs of the Kara Dagh
rose rocky and wild, suggesting small comfort but sure hiding-places.

"You'll never make me believe you Armenians haven't hidden supplies,"
said Monty.  "Take to the hills until the fury is over!"

But the old man shook his head, and his people seemed at one with
him.  These were not like our Zeitoonli, but wore the settled gloom
of resignation that is poor half-brother to Moslem fanaticism, caught
by subjection and infection from the bullying Turk.  There was nothing
we could do at that late hour to overcome the inertia produced by
centuries, and we rode on, ourselves infected to the verge of misery.
Only our Zeitoonli, striding along like men on holiday, retained
their good spirits, and they tried to keep up ours by singing their
extraordinary songs.

During the day we heard of the chicken, as Will called her, somewhere
on ahead, and we spent that night at a kahveh, which is a place with
all a khan's inconveniences, but no dignity whatever.  There they
knew nothing of her at all.  The guests, and there were thirty besides
ourselves, lay all around the big room on wooden platforms, and talked
of nothing but robbers along the road in both directions.  Every man
in the place questioned each of us individually to find out why we
had not been looted on our way of all we owned, and each man ended
in a state of hostile incredulity because we vowed we had met no
robbers at all.  They shrugged their shoulders when we asked for
news of Miss Gloria Vanderman.

There was no fear of Ibrahim and his friends decamping in the night,
for the Zeitoonli kept too careful watch, waiting on them almost
as thoughtfully as they fetched and carried for us, but never forgetting
to qualify the service with a smile or a word to the Turks to imply
that it was done out of pity for brutish helplessness.

These Zeitoonli of ours were more obviously every hour men of a different
disposition to the meek Armenians of the places where the Turkish
heel had pressed.  But for our armed presence and the respect accorded
to the Anglo-Saxon they would have had the whole mixed company down
on them a dozen times that night.

"I'm wondering whether the Armenians within reach of the Turks are
not going to suffer for the sins of mountaineers!" said Fred, as
we warmed ourselves at the great open fire at one end of the room.

"Rot!" Will retorted.  "Sooner or later men begin to dare assert
their love of freedom, and you can't blame 'em if they show it foolishly.
Some folk throw tea into harbors--some stick a king's head on a
pole--some take it out for the present in fresh-kid stuff.  These
Zeitoonli are men of spirit, or I'll eat my hat!"

But if we ourselves had not been men of spirit, obviously capable
of strenuous self-defense, our Zeitoonli would have found themselves
in an awkward fix that night.

We supped off yoghourt--the Turkish concoction of milk--cow's, goat's,
mare's, ewe's or buffalo's (and the buffalo's is best)--that is about
the only food of the country on which the Anglo-Saxon thrives.
Whatever else is fit to eat the Turks themselves ruin by their way
of cooking it.  And we left before dawn in the teeth of the owner
of the kahveh's warning.

"Dangerous robbers all along the road!" he advised, shaking his head
until the fez grew insecure, while Fred counted out the coins to
pay our bill.  "Armenians are without compunction--bad folk!  Ay,
you have weapons, but so have they, and they have the advantage of
surprise!  May Allah the compassionate be witness, I have warned you!"

"There will be more than warnings to be witnessed!", growled Rustum
Khan as he rode away.  "Those others, who sharpened weapons all night
long, and spoke of robbers, have been waiting three days at that
kahveh till the murdering begins!"

That morning, on Rustum Khan's advice, we made our Turkish muleteers
ride in front of us.  The Zeitoon men marched next, swinging along
with the hillman stride that eats up distance as the ticked-off seconds
eat the day.  And we rode last, admiring the mountain range on our
left, but watchful of other matters, and in position to cut off retreat.

"The last time a Turk ran away from me he took my Gladstone bag with
him!" said Fred.  "No, only Armenians are dishonest.  It was obedience
to his prophet, who bade him take advantage of the giaour--quite
a different thing!  Ibrahim's sitting on my kit, and I'm watching
him.  You fellows suit yourselves!"

We passed a number of men on foot that morning all coming our way,
but no Armenians among them.  However, we exchanged no wayside gossip,
because our Zeitoonli in front availed themselves of privilege and
shouted to every stranger to pass at a good distance.

That is a perfectly fair precaution in a land where every one goes
armed, and any one may be a bandit.  But it leads to aloofness.
Passers-by made circuits of a half-mile to avoid us, and when we
spurred our mules to get word with them they mistook that for proof
of our profession and bolted.  We chased three men for twenty minutes
for the fun of it, only desisting when one of them took cover behind
a bush and fired a pistol at us with his eyes shut.

"Think of the lies he'll tell in the kahveh to-night about beating
off a dozen robbers single-handed!"  Will laughed.

"Let's chase the next batch, too, and give the kahveh gang an ear-full!"

"I rather think not," said Monty.  "They'll say we're Armenian criminals.
Let's not be the spark."

He was right, so we behaved ourselves, and within an hour we had
trouble enough of another sort.  We began to meet dogs as big as
Newfoundlands, that attacked our unmounted Zeitoonli, refusing to
be driven off with sticks and stones, and only retreating a little
way when we rode down on them.

"Shoot the brutes!" Will suggested cheerfully, and I made ready to
act on it.

"For the lord's sake, don't!" warned Monty, riding at a huge black
mongrel that was tearing strips from the smock of one of our men.
The owner of the dog, seeing its victim was Armenian, rather encouraged
it than otherwise, leaning on a long pole and grinning in an unfenced
field near by.

"The consul warned me they think more of a dog's life hereabouts
than a man's.  In half an hour there'd be a mob on our trail.  Take
the Zeitoonli up behind us."

Rustum Khan was bitter about what he called our squeamishness.  But
we each took up a man on his horse's rump, and the dogs decided the
fun was no longer worth the effort, especially as we had riding whips.
But skirmishing with the dogs and picking up the Armenians took time,
so that our muleteers were all alone half a mile ahead of us, and
had disappeared where the road dipped between two hillocks, when
they met with the scare they looked for.

They came thundering back up the road, flogging and flopping on top
of the loads like the wooden monkeys-on-a-stick the fakers used to
sell for a penny on the curb in Fleet Street, glancing behind them
at every second bound like men who had seen a thousand ghosts.

We brought them to a halt by force, but take them on the whole, now
that they were in contact with us, they did not look so much frightened
as convinced.  They had made up their minds that it was not written
that they should go any farther, and that was all about it.

"Ermenie!" said Ibrahim.  And when we laughed at that he stroked
his beard and vowed there were hundreds of Armenians ambushed by
the roadside half a mile ahead.  The others corrected him, declaring
the enemy were thousands strong.

Finally Monty rode forward with me to investigate.  We passed between
the hillocks, and descended for another hundred yards along a gradually
sloping track, when our mules became aware of company.  We could
see nobody, but their long ears twitched, and they began to make
preparations preliminary to braying recognition of their kin.

Suddenly Monty detected movement among the myrtle bushes about fifty
yards from the road, and my mule confirmed his judgment by braying
like Satan at a side-show.  The noise was answered instantly by a
chorus of neighs and brays from an unseen menagerie, whereat the
owners of the animals disclosed themselves--six men, all smiling,
and unarmed as far as we could tell--the very same six gipsies who
had pitched their tent in the midst of the khan yard at Tarsus.

Then in a clearing at a little distance we saw women taking down
a long low black tent, and between us and them a considerable herd
of horses, mostly without halters but headed into a bunch by gipsy
children.  Somebody on a gray stallion came loping down toward us,
leaping low bushes, riding erect with pluperfect hands and seat.

"I've seen that stallion before!" said I.

"And the girl on his back is looking for somebody who owns her heart!"
smiled Monty.  "Hullo!  Are you the lucky man?"'

She reined the stallion in, and took a good, long look at us, shading
her eyes with her hand but showing dazzling white teeth between coral
lips.  Suddenly the smile departed, and a look of sullen disappointment
settled on her face, as she wheeled the stallion with a swing of
her lithe body from the hips, and loped away.  Never, apparently,
did two men make less impression on a maiden's heart.  The six gipsies
stood staring at us foolishly, until one of them at last held his
hand up palm outward.  We accepted that as a peace signal.

"Are you waiting here for us?" Monty asked in English, and the oldest
of the six--a swarthy little man with rather bow legs--thought he
had been asked his name.

"Gregor Jhaere," he answered.

For some vague reason Monty tried him next in Arabic and then in
Hindustanee, but without result.  At last he tried halting Turkish,
and the gipsy replied at once in German.  As Monty used to get
two-pence or three-pence a day extra when he was in the British army,
for knowing something of that tongue, we stood at once on common ground.

"Kagig told us to wait here and bring you to him," said Gregor Jhaere.

"Where is Kagig?" Monty asked, and the man smiled blankly--much more
effectively than if he had shrugged his shoulders.

"We obey Kagig at times," he said, as if that admission settled the
matter.  Then there was interruption.  Rustum Khan came spurring
down the road with his pistol holsters unbuttoned and his saber clattering
like a sutler's pots and pans, to see whether we needed help.  He
had no sooner reined in beside us than I caught sight of Will, drawn
between curiosity and fear lest the muleteers might bolt, standing
in his stirrups to peer at us from the top of the track between the
hillocks.  Somebody else caught sight of him too.

There came a shrill about from over where the women were packing
up, and everybody turned to look, Gregor Jhaere included.  As hard
as the gray stallion could take her in a bee line toward Will the
daughter of the dawn with flashing teeth and blazing eyes was riding
ventre a terre.

"Maga!" Gregor shouted at her, and then some unintelligible gibberish.
But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a crow on
a branch.  In a minute she was beside Will, talking to him, and from
over the top of the rise we could hear Fred shouting sarcastic
remonstrance.

"She is bad!" Gregor announced in English.  It seemed to be all the
English he knew.

"Are you her father?" Monty asked, and Gregor answered in very
slipshod German:

"She is the daughter of the devil.  She shall be soundly thrashed!
The chalana!* And he a Gorgio!"**

----------------
* Chalana--She jockey (a compliment).
** Gorgio--Gentile (an insult).
----------------

Suddenly Fred began to shout for help then, and we rode back, the
gipsies following and Rustum Khan remaining on guard between them
and their camp with his upbrushed black beard bristling defiance
of Asia Minor.  Our Turkish muleteers had decided to make a final
bolt for it, and were using their whips on the Zeitoonli, who clung
gamely to the reins.  As soon as we got near enough to lend a hand
the Turks resigned themselves with a kind of opportune fatalism.
The Zeitoonli promptly turned the tables on them by laying hold of
a leg of each and tipping them off into the mud.  Ibrahim showed
his teeth, and reached for a hidden weapon as he lay, but seemed
to think better of it.  It looked very much as if those four Zeitoonli
knew in advance exactly what the interruption in our journey meant.

Will was out of the running entirely, or else the rest of us were,
depending on which way one regarded it.  He had eyes for nobody and
nothing but the girl, nor she for any one but him, and nobody could
rightfully blame either of them.  Yankee though he is, Will sat his
mule in the western cowboy style, and he was wearing a cowboy hat
that set his youth off to perfection.  She looked fit to flirt with
the lord of the underworld, answering his questions in a way that
would have made any fellow eager to ask more.  Strangely enough,
Gregor Jhaere, presumably father of the girl appeared to have lost
his anger at her doings and turned his back.

Fred, smiling mischief, started toward them to horn in, as Will would
have described it, but at that moment about a dozen of the gipsy
women came padding uproad, fostered watchfully by Rustum Khan, who
seemed convinced that murder was intended somehow, somewhere.  They
brought along horses with them--very good horses--and Fred prefers
a horse trade to triangular flirtation on any day of any week.

The gipsies promptly fell to and off-saddled our loads under Gregor
Jhaere's eye, transferring them to the meaner-looking among the beasts
the women had brought, taking great care to drop nothing in the mud.
And at a word from Gregor two of the oldest hags came to lift us
from our saddles one by one, and hold us suspended in mid-air while
the saddles were transferred to better mounts.  But there is an indignity
in being held out of the mud by women that goes fiercely against
the white man's grain, and I kicked until they set me back in
the saddle.

Monty solved the problem by riding to higher, clean ground near the
roadside, where we could stand on firm grass.

Seeing us dismounted, the gipsies underwent a subtle mental change
peculiar to all barbarous people.  To the gipsy and the cossack,
and all people mainly dependent on the horse, to be mounted is to
signify participation in affairs.  To be dismounted means to stand
aside and "let George do it."

Gregor Jhaere became a different man.  He grew noisy and in response
to his yelped commands they swooped in unprovoked attack on our unhappy
muleteers.  Before we could interfere they had thrown each Turk face
downward, our Zeitoonli helping, and were searching them with swift
intruding fingers for knives, pistols, money.

The Turk leaves his money behind when starting on a journey at some
other man's expense;  but they did draw forth a most astonishing
assortment of weapons.  They were experts in disarmament.  Maga Jhaere
lost interest in Will for a moment, and pricked her stallion to a
place where she could judge the assortment better. Without any hesitation
she ordered one of the old women to pass up to her a mother-o'-pearl
ornamented Smith & Wesson, which she promptly hid in her bosom. Judging
by the sounds he made, that pistol was the apple of Ibrahim's old
eye, but he had seen the last of it.  When we interfered, and he
could get to her stirrup to demand it back, Maga spat in his face;
which was all about it, except that Monty made generous allowance
for the thing when paying the reckoning presently.  As our servants,
those Turks were, of course, entitled to our protection, and besides
that weapon we had to pay for five knives that were gone beyond hope
of recovery.

Monty paid our Turks off (for it was evident that even had they been
willing they would not have been allowed to proceed with us another
mile).  Then, as Ibrahim mounted and marshaled his party in front of him,
he forgot manners as well as the liberal payment.

"Mashallah!" (God be praised!) he shouted, with the slobber of excitement
on his lips and beard.  "Now I go to make Armenians pay for this!
Let the shapkali,* too, avoid me!  Ya Ali, ya Mahoma, Alahu!"  (Oh,
Ali, oh, Mahomet, God is God!)

---------------
* Shapkali--hatted man-foreigner.
---------------

"Let's hope they haven't a spark of honesty!" said Monty cryptically,
watching them canter away.

"Why on earth--?"

"Let's hope they ride back to the consul and swear they haven't received
one piaster of their pay.  That would let him know we're clear away!"

"Optimist!" jeered Will.  "That consul's a Britisher.  He'd take
their lie literally, and deduce we're no good!"

For the moment the girl on the gray stallion had ridden away from
Will and was giving regal orders to the mob of women and shrill children,
who obeyed her as if well used to it.  Gregor Jhaere and his men
stood staring at us, Gregor shaking his head as if our letting the
Turks go free had been a bad stroke of policy.

"Aren't you afraid to travel with all that mob of women and cattle?"
asked Monty.  "We've heard of robbers on the road."

"We are the robbers, effendi!" said Gregor with an air of modesty.
The others smirked, but he seemed disinclined to over-insist on the
gulf between us.

"Hear him!" growled Rustum Khan.  "A thief, who boasts of thieving
in the presence of sahibs!  So is corruption, stinking in the sun!"

He added something in another language that the gipsies understood,
for Gregor started as if stung and swore at him, and Maga Jhaere
left her women-folk to ride alongside and glare into his eyes.  They
were enemies, those two, from that hour forward.  He, once Hindu,
now Moslem, had no admiration whatever to begin with for unveiled
women.  And, since the gipsy claims to come from India and may therefore
be justly judged by Indian standards, and has no caste, but is beneath
the very lees of caste, he loathed all gipsies with the prejudice
peculiar to men who have deserted caste in theory and in self-protection
claim themselves above it.  It was a case of height despising deep
in either instance, she as sure of her superiority as he of his.

There might have been immediate trouble if Monty had not taken his
new, restless, fresh horse by the mane and swung into the saddle.

"Forward, Rustum Khan!" he ordered.  "Ride ahead and let those keen
eyes of yours keep us out of traps!"

The Rajput obeyed, but as he passed Will he checked his mare a moment,
and waiting until Will's blue eyes met his he raised a warning finger.

"Kubadar, sahib!"

Then he rode on, like a man who has done his duty.

"What the devil does he mean?" demanded Will.

"Kubadar means, 'Take care'!" said Monty.  "Come on, what are we
waiting for?"

That was the beginning, too, of Will's feud with the Rajput, neither
so remorseless nor so sudden as the woman's, because he had a different
code to guide him and also had to convince himself that a quarrel
with a man of color was compatible with Yankee dignity.  We could
have wished them all three either friends, or else a thousand miles
apart two hundred times before the journey ended.

As we rode forward with even our Zeitoonli mounted now on strong
mules, Maga Jhaere sat her stallion beside Will with an air of
owning him.  She was likely a safer friend than enemy, and we did
nothing to interfere.  Monty pressed forward.  Fred and I fell to
the rear.

"Haide!"* shouted Gregor Jhaere, and all the motley swarm of women
and children caught themselves mounts--some already loaded with the
gipsy baggage, some with saddles, some without, some with grass halters
for bridles.  In another minute Fred and I were riding surrounded
by a smelly swarm of them, he with big fingers already on the keys
of his beloved concertina, but I less enamored than he of the company.

-----------------
* Haide!--Turkish, "Come on!"
-----------------

Women and children, loaded, loose and led horses were all mixed together
in unsortable confusion, the two oldest hags in the world trusting
themselves on sorry, lame nags between Fred and me as if proximity
to us would solve the very riddle of the gipsy race.  And last of
all came a pack of great scrawny dogs that bayed behind us hungrily,
following for an hour until hope of plunder vanished.

"That little she-devil who has taken a fancy to Will," said Fred
with a grin, "is capable of more atrocities than all the Turks between
here and Stamboul!  She looks to me like Santanita, Cleopatra, Salome,
Caesar's wife, and all the Borgia ladies rolled in one.  There's
something added, though, that they lacked."

"Youth," said I.  "Beauty.  Athletic grace.  Sinuous charm."

"No, probably they all had all those."

"Then horsemanship."

"Perhaps.  Didn't Cleopatra ride?"

"Then what?" said I, puzzled.

"Indiscretion!" he answered, jerking loose the catch of his infernal
instrument.

"Don't be afraid, old ladies," he said, glancing at the harridans
between us.  "I'm only going to sing!"

He makes up nearly all of his songs, and some of them, although
irreverent, are not without peculiar merit;  but that was one of
his worst ones.

The preachers prate of fallen man
And choirs repeat the chant,
While unco' guid with unction urge
Repression of the joys that surge,
And jail for those who can't.
The poor deluded duds forget
That something drew the sting
When Adam tiptoed to his fall,
And made it hardly hurt at all.
Of Mother Eve I sing!

CHORUS
Oh, Mother Eve, dear Mother Eve,
The generations come and go,
But daughter Eve's as live as you
Were back in Eden years ago!

Oh, hell's not hell with Eve to tell
Again the ancient tale,
But Eden's grassy ways and bowers
Deprived of Eve to ease the hours
Would very soon grow stale!
Red cherry lips that leap to laugh,
And chic and flick and flair
Can make black white for any one--
The task of Sisyphus good fun!
So what should Adam care!

CHORUS
Oh, daughter Eve, dear daughter Eve,
The tribulations go and come,
But no adventure's ever tame
With you to make surprises hum!




Chapter Five
"Effendi, that is the heart of Armenia burning."


THE PATTERAN

(I)

Aye-yee--I see--a cloud afloat in air af amethyst
I know its racing shadow falls on banks of gold
Where rain-rejoicing gravel warms the feeding roots
And smells more wonderful than wine.
I know the shoots of myrtle and of asphodel now stir the mould
Where wee cool noses sniff the early mist.
Aye-yee--the sparkle of the little springs I see
That tinkle as they hunt the thirsty rill.
I know the cobwebs glitter with the jeweled dew.
I see a fleck of brown--it was a skylark flew
To scatter bursting music, and the world is still
To listen.  Ah, my heart is bursting too--Aye-yee!

Chorus:
(It begins with a swinging crash, and fades away.)

Aye-yee, aye-yah--the kites see far
(But also to the foxes views unfold)--
No hour alike, no places twice the same,
Nor any track to show where morning came,
Nor any footprint in the moistened mould
To tell who covered up the morning star.
      Aye-yee--aye-yah!


(2)
Aye-yee--I see--new rushes crowding upwards in the mere
Where, gold and white, the wild duck preens himself
Safe hidden till the sun-drawn, lingering mists melt.
I know the secret den where bruin dwelt.
I see him now sun-basking on a shelf
Of windy rock.  He looks down on the deer,
Who flit like flowing light from rock to tree
And stand with ears alert before they drink.
I know a pool of purple rimmed with white
Where wild-fowl, warming for the morning flight,
Wait clustering and crying on the brink.
And I know hillsides where the partridge breeds.  Aye-yee!

Chorus:
Aye-yee, aye-yah--the kites see far
(But also to the owls the visions change)--
No dawn is like the next, and nothing sings
Of sameness--very hours have wings
And leave no word of whose hand touched the range
Of Kara Dagh with opal and with cinnabar.
      Aye-yee, aye-yah!

(3)
Aye-yee--I see--new distances beyond a blue horizon flung.
I laugh, because the people under roofs believe
That last year's ways are this!
No roads are old! New grass has grown!
All pools and rivers hold New water!
And the feathered singers weave
New nests, forgetting where the old ones hung!
Aye-yah--the muddy highway sticks and clings,
But I see in the open pastures new
Unknown to busne* in the houses pent!
I hear the new, warm raindrops drumming on the tent,
I feel already on my feet delicious dew,
I see the trail outflung!  And oh, my heart has wings!


Chorus:
Aye-yee, aye-yah--the kites see far
(But also on the road the visions pass)--
The universe reflected in a wayside pool,
A tinkling symphony where seeping waters drool,
The dance, more gay than laughter, of the wind-swept grass--
Oh, onward!  On to where the visions are!
      Aye-yee--aye-yah!

---------------------
* Busne--Gipsy word--Gentile, or non-gipsy.
---------------------


Russia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Persia, Armenia were all one
hunting-ground to the troupe we rode with.  Even the children seemed
to have a smattering of most of the tongues men speak in those intriguing
lands.  Will and the girl beside him conversed in German, but the
old hag nearest me would not confess acquaintance with any language
I knew.  Again and again I tried her, but she always shook her head.

Fred, with his ready gift of tongues, attempted conversation with
ten or a dozen of them, but whichever language he used in turn appeared
to be the only one which that particular individual did not know.
All he got in reply was grins, and awkward silence, and shrugs of
the shoulders in Gregor's direction, implying that the head of the
firm did the talking with strangers.  But Gregor rode alone with
Monty, out of ear-shot.

Maga (for so they all called her) flirted with Will outrageously,
if that is flirting that proclaims conquest from the start, and sets
flashing white teeth in defiance of all intruders.  Even the little
children had hidden weapons, but Maga was better armed than any one,
and she thrust the new mother-o-pearl-plated acquisition in the face
of one of the men who dared drive his horse between hers and Will's.
That not serving more than to amuse him, she slapped him three times
back-handed across the face, and thrusting the pistol back into her
bosom, drew a knife.  He seemed in no doubt of her willingness to
use the steel, and backed his horse away, followed by language from
her like forked lightning that disturbed him more than the threatening
weapon.  Gipsies are great believers in the efficiency of a curse.

Nothing could be further from the mark than to say that Will tried
to take advantage of Maga's youth and savagery.  Fred and I had shared
a dozen lively adventures with him without more than beginning yet
to plumb the depths of his respect for Woman.  Only an American in
all the world knows how to meet Young Woman eye to eye with totally
unpatronizing frankness, and he was without guile in the matter.
But not so she.  We did not know whether or not she was Gregor Jhaere's
daughter;  whether or not she was truly the gipsy that she hardly
seemed.  But she was certainly daughter of the Near East that does
not understand a state of peace between the sexes.  There was nothing
lawful in her attitude, nor as much as the suspicion that Will might
be merely chivalrous.

"America's due for sex-enlightenment!" said I.

"Warn him if you like," Fred laughed, "and then steer clear!  Our
America is proud besides imprudent!"

Fred off-shouldered all responsibility and forestalled anxiety on
any one's account by playing tunes, stampeding the whole cavalcade
more than once because the horses were unused to his clanging concertina,
but producing such high spirits that it became a joke to have to
dismount in the mud and replace the load on some mule who had expressed
enjoyment of the tune by rolling in slime, or by trying to kick clouds
out of the sky.

And strangely enough he brought about the very last thing he intended
with his music--stopped the flirtation's immediate progress.  Maga
seemed to take to Fred's unchastened harmony with all the wildness
that possessed her.  Some chord he struck, or likelier, some abandoned
succession of them touched off her magazine of poetry.  And so she sang.

The only infinitely gorgeous songs I ever listened to were Maga's.
Almighty God, who made them, only really knows what country the gipsies
originally came from, but there is not a land that has not felt their
feet, nor a sorrow they have not witnessed.  Away back in the womb
of time there was planted in them a rare gift of seeing what the
rest of us can only sometimes hear, and of hearing what only very
few from the world that lives in houses can do more than vaguely
feel when at the peak of high emotion.  The gipsies do not understand
what they see, and hear, and feel;  but they are aware of infinities
too intimate for ordinary speech.  And it was given to Maga to sing
of all that, with a voice tuned like a waterfall's for open sky,
and trees, and distances--not very loud, but far-carrying, and flattened
in quarter-tones where it touched the infinite.

Fred very soon ceased from braying with his bellowed instrument.
Her songs were too wild for accompaniment--interminable stanzas of
unequal length, with a refrain at the end of each that rose through
a thousand emotions to a crash of ecstasy, and then died away to
dreaminess, coming to an end on an unfinished rising scale.

All the gipsies and our Zeitoonli and Rustum Khan's lean servant
joined in the refrains, so that we trotted along under the snow-tipped
fangs of the Kara Dagh oblivious of the passage of time, but very
keenly conscious of touch with a realm of life whose existence hitherto
we had only vaguely guessed at.

The animals refused to weary while that singing testified of tireless
harmonies, as fresh yet as on the day when the worlds were born.
We rattled forward, on and upward, as if the panorama were unrolling
and we were the static point, getting out of nobody's way for the
best reason in the world--that everybody hid at first sight or sound
of us, except when we passed near villages, and then the great
fierce-fanged curs chased and bayed behind us in short-winded fury.

"The dogs bark," quoted Fred serenely, "but the caravan moves on!"

An hour before dark we swung round a long irregular spur of the hills
that made a wide bend in the road, and halted at a lonely kahveh--a
wind-swept ruin of a place, the wall of whose upper story was
patched with ancient sacking, but whose owner came out and smiled
so warmly on us that we overlooked the inhospitable frown of his
unplastered walls, hoping that his smile and the profundity of his
salaams might prove prophetic of comfort and cleanliness within.
Vain hope!

Maga left Will's side then, for there was iron-embedded custom to
be observed about this matter of entering a road-house.  In that
land superstition governs just as fiercely as the rest those who
make mock of the rule-of-rod religions, and there is no man or woman
free to behave as he or she sees fit.  Every one drew aside from
Monty, and he strode in alone through the split-and-mended door,
we following next, and the gipsies with their animals clattered noisily
behind us.  The women entered last, behind the last loaded mule,
and Maga the very last of all, because she was the most beautiful,
and beauty might bring in the devil with it only that the devil is
too proud to dawdle behind the old hags and the horses.

We found ourselves in an oblong room, with stalls and a sort of pound
for animals at one end and an enormous raised stone fireplace at
the other.  Wooden platforms for the use of guests faced each other
down the two long sides, and the only promise of better than usual
comfort lay in the piles of firewood waiting for whoever felt rich
and generous enough to foot the bill for a quantity.

But an agreeable surprise made us feel at home before ever the fire
leaped up to warm the creases out of saddle-weary limbs.  We had
given up thinking of Kagig, not that we despaired of him, but the
gipsies, and especially Maga, had replaced his romantic interest
for the moment with their own.  Now all the man's own exciting claim
on the imagination returned in full flood, as he arose leisurely
from a pile of skins and blankets near the hearth to greet Monty,
and shouted with the manner of a chieftain for fuel to be piled on
instantly--"For a great man comes!" he announced to the rafters.
And the kahveh servants, seven sons of the owner of the place, were
swift and abject in the matter of obeisance.  They were Turks.  All
Turks are demonstrative in adoration of whoever is reputed great.
Monty ignored them, and Kagig came down the length of the room to
offer him a hand on terms of blunt equality.

"Lord Montdidier," he said, mispronouncing the word astonishingly,
"this is the furthest limit of my kingdom yet.  Kindly be welcome!"

"Your kingdom?" said Monty, shaking hands, but not quite accepting
the position of blood-equal.  He was bigger and better looking than
Kagig, and there was no mistaking which was the abler man, even at
that first comparison, with Kagig intentionally making the most of
a dramatic situation.

Kagig laughed, not the least nervously.

"Mirza," he said in Persian, "duzd ne giriftah padshah ast!"  (Prince,
the uncaught thief is king.)

He was wearing a kalpak--the head-gear of the cossack, which would
make a high priest look outlawed, and a shaggy goat-skin coat that
had seen more than one campaign.  Unmistakably the garment had been
slit by bullets, and repaired by fingers more enthusiastic than adept.
There was a pride of poverty about him that did not gibe well with
his boast of being a robber.

"That's the first gink we've met in this land who didn't claim to
be something better than he looked!" Will whispered.

"Hopeless, I suppose!" Fred answered.  "Never mind.  I like the man."

It was evident that Monty liked him, too, for all his schooled reserve.
Kagig ordered one of the owner's sons to sweep a place near the fire,
and there he superintended the spreading of Monty's blankets, close
enough to his own assorted heap for conversation without mutual offense.
Will cleaned for himself a section of the opposite end of the platform,
and Fred and I spread our blankets next to his.  That left Rustum
Khan in a quandary.  He stood irresolute for a minute, eying first
the gipsies, who had stalled most of their animals and were beginning
to occupy the platform on the other side;  then considering the wide
gap between me and Monty.  The dark-skinned man of breeding is far
more bitterly conscious of the color-line than any white knows how to be.

We watched, disinclined to do the choosing for him, racial instinct
uppermost.  Rustum Khan strolled back to where his mare was being
cleaned by the lean Armenian servant, gave the boy a few curt orders,
and there among the shadows made his mind up.  He returned and stood
before Monty, Kagig eying him with something less than amiability.
He pointed toward the ample room remaining between Monty and me.

"Will the sahib permit?  My izzat (honor) is in question."

"Izzat be damned!" Monty answered.

Rustum Khan colored darkly.

"I shared a tent with you once on campaign, sahib, in the days before--the
good days before--those old days when--"

"When you and I served one Raj, eh? I remember," Monty answered.
"I remember it was your tent, Rustum Khan.  Unless memory plays tricks
with me, the Orakzai Pathans had burned mine, and I had my choice
between sharing yours or sleeping in the rain."

"Truly, huzoor."

"I don't recollect that I mouthed very much about honor on that occasion.
If anybody's honor was in question then, I fancy it was yours.  I
might have inconvenienced myself, and dishonored you, I suppose,
by sleeping in the wet.  You can dishonor the lot of us now, if you
care to, by--oh, tommyrot!  Tell your man to put your blankets in
the only empty place, and behave like a man of sense!"

"But, huzoor--"

Monty dismissed the subject with a motion of his hand, and turned
to talk with Kagig, who shouted for yoghourt to be brought at once;
and that set the sons of the owner of the place to hurrying in great
style.  The owner himself was a true Turk.  He had subsided into
a state of kaif already over on the far side of the fire, day-dreaming
about only Allah knew what rhapsodies.  But the Turks intermarry
with the subject races much more thoroughly than they do anything
else, and his sons did not resemble him.  They were active young
men, rather noisy in their robust desire to be of use.

The gipsies, with Gregor Jhaere nearest to the owner of the kahveh
and the fireplace, occupied the whole long platform on the other
side, each with his women around him--except that I noticed that
Maga avoided all the men, and made herself a blanket nest in deep
shadow almost within reach of a mule's heels at the far end.  I believed
at the moment that she chose that position so as to be near to Will,
but changed my mind later.  Several times Gregor shouted for her,
and she made no answer.

The place had no other occupants.  Either we were the only travelers
on that road that night or, as seemed more likely, Kagig had exercised
authority and purged the kahveh of other guests.  Certainly our coming
had been expected, for there was very good yoghourt in ample quantity,
and other food besides--meat, bread, cheese, vegetables.

When we had all eaten, and lay back against the stone wall looking
at the fire, with great fanged shadows dancing up and down that made
the scene one of almost perfect savagery,  Gregor called again for
Maga.  Again she did not answer him.  So he rose from his place and
reached for a rawhide whip.

"I said she shall be thrashed!" he snarled in Turkish, and he made
the whip crack three times like sudden pistol-shots.  Will did not
catch the words, and might not have understood them in any case,
but Rustum Khan, beside me, both heard and understood.

"Atcha!" he grunted.  "Now we shall see a kind of happenings.  That
girl is not a true gipsy, or else my eyes lie to me.  They stole
her, or adopted her.  She lacks their instincts.  The gitanas, as
they call their girls, are expected to have aversion to white men.
They are allowed to lure a white man to his ruin, but not to make
hot love to him.  She has offended against the gipsy law.  The attaman*
must punish.  Watch the women.  They take it all as a matter of course."

----------------
*Attaman, gipsy headman.
----------------

"Maga!" thundered Gregor Jhaere, cracking the great whip again.
I thought that Kagig looked a trifle restless, but nobody else went
so far as to exhibit interest, except that the old Turk by the fire
emerged far enough out of kaif to open one eye, like a sly cat's.

The attaman shouted again, and this time Maga mocked him.  So he
strode down the room in a rage to enforce his authority, and dragged
her out of the shadow by an arm, sending her whirling to the center
of the floor.  She did not lose her feet, but spun and came to a
stand, and waited, proud as Satanita while he drew the whip slowly
back with studied cruelty.  The old Turk opened both eyes.

Nothing is more certain than that none of us would have permitted
the girl to be thrashed.  I doubt if even Rustum Khan, no admirer
of gipsies or unveiled women, would have tolerated one blow.  But
Will was nearest, and he is most amazing quick when his nervous New
England temper is aroused.  He had the whip out of Gregor's hand,
and stood on guard between him and the girl before one of us had
time to move.  The old Turk closed his eyes again, and sighed resignedly.

"Our preux chevalier--preux but damned imprudent!" murmured Fred.
"Let's hope there's a gipsy here with guts enough to fight for title
to the girl.  It looks to me as if Will has claimed her by patteran*
law.  The only man with right to say whether or not a woman shall
be thrashed is her owner.  Once that right is established--"

---------------
* Patteran, a gipsy word: trail.
---------------

"Touch her and I'll break your neck!" warned Will, without undue
emotion, but truthfully beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The gipsy stood still, simmering, and taking the measure of the capable
American muscles interposed between him and his legal prey.  Every
gipsy eye in the room was on him, and it was perfectly obvious that
whatever the eventual solution of the impasse, the one thing he could
not do was retreat.  We were fewer in number, but much better armed
than the gipsy party, so that it was unlikely they would rally to
their man's aid.  Kagig was an unknown quantity, but except that
his black eyes glittered rather more brightly than usual he made
no sign;  and we kept quiet because we did not want to start a
free-for-all fight.   Will was quite able to take care of any single
opponent, and would have resented aid.

Suddenly, however, Gregor Jhaere reached inside his shirt.  Maga
screamed.  Rustum Khan beside me swore a rumbling Rajput oath, and
we all four leapt to our feet.  Maga drew no weapon, although she
certainly had both dagger and pistol handy.  Instead, she glanced
toward Kagig, who, strangely enough, was lolling on his blankets
as if nothing in the world could interest him less.  The glance took
as swift effect as an electric spark that fires a mine.  He stiffened
instantly.

"Yok!" he shouted, and at once there ceased to be even a symptom
of impending trouble.  Yok means merely no in Turkish, but it conveyed
enough to Gregor to send him back to his place between his women
and the Turk unashamedly obedient, leaving Maga standing beside Will.
Maga did not glance again at Kagig, for I watched intently.  There
was simply no understanding the relationship, although Fred affected
his usual all-comprehensive wisdom.

"Another claimant to the title!" he said.  "A fight between Will
and Kagig for that woman ought to be amusing, if only Will weren't
a friend of mine.  Watch America challenge him!"

But Will did nothing of the kind.  He smiled at Maga, offered her
a cigarette, which she refused, and returned to his place beyond
Fred, leaving her standing there, as lovely in the glowing firelight
as the spirit of bygone romance.  At that Kagig shouted suddenly
for fuel, and three of the Turk's seven hoydens ran to heap it on.

Instantly the leaping flames transformed the great, uncomfortable,
draughty barn into a hall of gorgeous color and shadows without limit.
There was no other illumination, except for the glow here and there
of pipes and cigarettes, or matches flaring for a moment. Barring
the tobacco, we lay like a baron's men-at-arms in Europe of the Middle
Ages, with a captive woman to make sport with in the midst, only
rather too self-reliant for the picture.

Feeling himself warm, and rested, and full enough of food, Fred flung
a cigarette away and reached for his inseparable concertina.  And
with his eyes on the great smoked beams that now glowed gold and
crimson in the firelight, he grew inspired and made his nearest to
sweet music.  It was perfectly in place--simple as the savagery
that framed us--Fred's way of saying grace for shelter, and adventure,
and a meal.  He passed from Annie Laurie to Suwannee River, and all
but made Will cry.

During two-three-four tunes Maga stood motionless in the midst of
us, hands on her hips, with the fire-light playing on her face, until
at last Fred changed the nature of the music and seemed to be trying
to recall fragments of the song she had sung that afternoon.  Presently
he came close to achievement, playing a few bars over and over, and
leading on from those into improvization near enough to the real
thing to be quite recognizable.

Music is the sure key to the gipsy heart, and Fred unlocked it.
The men and women, and the little sleepy children on the long wooden
platform opposite began to sway and swing in rhythm.  Fred divined
what was coming, and played louder, wilder, lawlessly.  And Maga
did an astonishing thing.  She sat down on the floor and pulled her
shoes and stockings off, as unselfconsciously as if she were alone.

Then Fred began the tune again from the beginning, and he had it
at his finger-ends by then.  He made the rafters ring.  And without
a word Maga kicked the shoes and stockings into a corner, flung her
outer, woolen upper-garment after them, and began to dance.

There is a time when any of us does his best.
Money--marriage--praise--applause (which is totally another thing
than praise, and more like whisky in its
workings)--ambition--prayer--there is a key to the heart of each of us
that can unlock the flood-tides of emotion and carry us nolens volens
to the peaks of possibility.  Either Will, or else Fred's music, or
the setting, or all three unlocked her gifts that night.  She danced
like a moth in a flame--a wandering woman in the fire unquenchable
that burns convention out of gipsy hearts, and makes the
patteran--the trail--the only way worth while.

Opposite, the gipsies sprawled in silence on their platform, breathing
a little deeper when deepest approval stirred them, a little more
quickly when her Muse took hold of Maga and thrilled her to expression
of the thoughts unknown to people of the dinning walls and streets.

We four leaned back against our wall in a sort of silent revelry,
Fred alone moving, making his beloved instrument charm wisely, calling
to her just enough to keep a link, as it were, through which her
imagery might appeal to ours.  Some sort of mental bridge between
her tameless paganism and our twentieth-century twilight there had
to be, or we never could have sensed her meaning.  The concertina's
wailings, mid-way between her intelligence and ours, served well enough.

My own chief feeling was of exultation, crowing over the hooded
city-folk, who think that drama and the tricks of colored light and
shade have led them to a glimpse of the hem of the garment of Unrest--a
cheap mean feeling, of which I was afterward ashamed.

Maga was not crowing over anybody.  Neither did she only dance of
things her senses knew.  The history of a people seized her for a
reed, and wrote itself in figures past imagining between the crimson
firelight; and the shadows of the cattle stalls.

Her dance that night could never have been done with leather between
bare foot and earth.  It told of measureless winds and waters--of
the distances, the stars, the day, the night-rain sweeping down--dew
dropping gently--the hundred kinds of birds-the thousand animals
and creeping things--and of man, who is lord of all of them, and
woman, who is lord of man--man setting naked foot on naked earth
and glorying with the thrill of life, new, good, and wonderful.

One of the Turk's seven sons produced a saz toward the end--a little
Turkish drum, and accompanied with swift, staccato stabs of sound
that spurred her like the goads of overtaking time toward the peak
of full expression--faster and faster--wilder and wilder--freer and
freer of all limits, until suddenly she left the thing unfinished,
and the drum-taps died away alone.

That was art--plain art.  No human woman could have finished it.
It was innate abhorrence of the anticlimax that sent her, having
looked into the eyes of the unattainable, to lie sobbing for short
breath in her corner in the dark, leaving us to imagine the ending
if we could.

And instead of anticlimax second climax came.  Almost before the
echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a
voice cried from the roof in Armenian, and Kagig rose to his feet.

"Let us climb to the roof and see, effendim," he said, pulling on
his tattered goat-skin coat.

"See what, Ermenie?" demanded Rustum Khan.  The Rajput's eyes were
still ablaze with pagan flame, from watching Maga.

"To see whether thou hast manhood behind that swagger!" answered
Kagig, and led the way.  No man ever yet explained the racial aversions.

"Kopek!--dog, thou!" growled the Rajput, but Kagig took no notice
and led on, followed by Monty and the rest of us.  Maga and the gipsies
came last, swarming behind us up the ladder through a hole among
the beams, and clambering on to the roof over boxes piled in the
draughty attic.  Up under the stars a man was standing with an arm
stretched out toward Tarsus.

"Look!" he said simply.

To the westward was a crimson glow that mushroomed angrily against
the sky, throbbing and swelling with hot life like the vomit of a
crater.  We watched in silence for three minutes, until one of the
gipsy women began to moan.

"What do you suppose it is?" I asked then.

"I know what it is," said Kagig simply.

"Tell then."

"'Effendi, that is the heart of Armenia burning.  Those are the homes
of my nation--of my kin!"

"And good God, where d'you suppose Miss Vanderman is?" Fred exclaimed.

Will was standing beside Maga, looking into her eyes as if he hoped
to read in them the riddle of Armenia.




Chapter Six
"Passing the buck to Allah!"


LAUS LACHRIMABILIS

So now the awaited ripe reward--
Your cactus crown!  Since I have urged
"Get ready for the untoward"
Ye bid me reap the wrath I dirged;
And I must show the darkened way,
Who beckoned vainly in the light!
I'll lead.  But salt of Dead Sea spray
Were sweeter on my lips to-night!

Oh, days of aching sinews, when I trod the choking dust
With feet afire that could not tire, atremble with the trust
More mighty in my inner man than fear of men without,
The word I heard on Kara Dagh and did not dare to doubt--
Timely warning, clear to me as starlight after rain
When, sleepless on eternal hills, I saw the purpose plain
And left, swift-foot at dawn, obedient, to break
The news ye said was no avail--advice ye would not take!

Oh,--nights of tireless talking by the hearth of hidden fires--
On roofs, behind the trade-bales--among oxen in the byres--
Out in rain between the godowns, where the splashing puddles warn
Of tiptoeing informers;  when I faced the freezing dawn
With set price on my head, but still the set resolve untamed,
Not melted by the mockery, by no suspicion shamed,
To hide by day in holes, abiding dark and wind and rain
That loosed me straining to the task ye ridiculed again!

Oh, weeks of empty waiting, while the enemy designed
In detail how to loot the stuff ye would not leave behind!
Worse weeks of empty agony when, helpless and alone,
I watched in hiding for the crops from that seed I had sown;

For dust-clouds that should prove at last Armenia awake--
A nation up and coming!  I had labored for your sake,
I had hungered, I had suffered.  Ye had well rewarded then
If ye had come, and hanged me just to prove that ye were men!

But all the pride was promises, the criticism jeers;
Ye had no heart for sacrifice, and I no time for tears.
I offered--nay, I gave!  I squandered body and breath and soul,
I bared the need, I showed the way, I preached a goodly goal,
I urged you choose a leader, since your faith in me was dim,
I swore to serve the chief ye chose, and teach my lore to him,
So he should reap where I had sown.  And yet ye bade me wait--
And waited till, awake at last, ye bid me lead too late!

And so, in place of ripe reward,
Your cactus crown! And I, who urged
"Get ready for the untoward"
Must drink the dregs of wrath I dirged!
Ye bid me set time's finger back!
And stage anew the opened fight!
I'll lead.  But slime of Dead Sea wrack
Were sweeter on my lips this night!


The first thought that occurred to each of us four was that Kagig
had probably lied, or that he had merely voiced his private opinion,
based on expectation. The glare in the distance seemed too big and
solid to be caused by burning houses, even supposing a whole village
were in flames.  Yet there was not any other explanation we could
offer.  A distant cloud of black smoke with bulging red under-belly
rolled away through the darkness like a tremendous mountain range.

We stood in silence trying to judge how far away the thing might
be, Kagig standing alone with his foot on the parapet, his goat-skin
coat hanging like a hussar's dolman, and Monty pacing up and down
along the roof behind us all.  The gipsies seemed able to converse
by nods and nudges, with now and then one word whispered.  After
a little while Maga whispered in Will's ear, and he went below with
her.  All the gipsies promptly followed.  Otherwise in the darkness
we might not have noticed where Will went.

"That proves she is no gipsy!" vowed Rustum Khan, standing between
Fred and me.  "They, would have trusted one of their own kind."

"They call her Maga Jhaere," said I.  "The attaman's name is Jhaere.
Don't you suppose he's her father?"

"If he were her father he would have no fear," the Rajput answered.
"All gipsies are alike.  Their women will dance the nautch, and promise
unchastity as if that were a little matter.  But when it comes to
performance of promises the gitana* is true to the Rom.**  It is
because she is no gipsy that they follow her now to watch.  And it
is because men say that Americans are Mormons and polygamous, and
very swift in the use of revolvers, that all follow instead of one
or two!"

--------------
* Gitana, gipsy young woman.
** Rom--Gipsy husband, or family man.
--------------

"Go down then, and make sure they don't murder him!" commanded Monty,
and Rustum Khan turned to obey with rather ill grace.  He contrived
to convey by his manner that he would do anything for Monty, even
to the extent of saving the life of a man he disliked.  At the moment
when he turned there came the sound of a troop of horses galloping
toward us.

"I will first see who comes," he said.

"The blood of Yerkes sahib on your head, Rustum Khan!" Monty answered.
At that he went below.

But neither were we destined to remain up there very long.  We heard
colossal thumping in the kahveh beneath us and presently the Rajput's
head reappeared through the opening in the roof.

"The fools are barricading the door," he shouted.  "They make sure
that an enemy outside could burn us inside without hindrance!"

At that Kagig came along the roof to our corner and looked into Monty's
eyes.  Fred and I stood between the two of them and the parapet,
because for the first few seconds we were not sure the Armenian did
not mean murder.  His eyes glittered, and his teeth gleamed.  It
was not possible to guess whether or not the hand under his goat-skin
coat clutched a weapon.

"It is now that you Eenglis sportmen shall endure a test!" he remarked.

Exactly as in the Yeni Khan in Tarsus when we first met him there
was a moment now of intense repulsion, entirely unaccountable, succeeded
instantly by a wave of sympathy.  I laughed aloud, remembering how
strange dogs meeting in the street to smell each other are swept
by unexplainable antipathies and equally swift comradeship.  He thought
I laughed at him.

"Neye geldin?" he growled in Turkish.  "Wherefore didst thou come?
To cackle like a barren hen that sees another laying?  Nichevo,"
he added, turning his back on me.  And that was insolence in Russian,
meaning that nobody and nothing could possibly be of less importance.
He seemed to keep a separate language for each set of thoughts.
"Let us go below.  Let us stop these fools from making too much trouble,"
he added in English.  "One man ought to stay on the roof.  One ought
to be sufficient."

Since he had said I did not matter, I remained, and it was therefore
I who shouted down a challenge presently in round English at a party
who clattered to the door on blown horses, and thundered on it as
if they had been shatirs* hurrying to herald the arrival of the sultan
himself.  There was nothing furtive about their address to the decrepit
door, nor anything meek.  Accordingly I couched the challenge in
terms of unmistakable affront, repeating it at intervals until the
leader of the new arrivals chose to identify himself.

-----------------
* Shatir, the man who runs before a personage's horse.
-----------------

"I am Hans von Quedlinburg!" he shouted.  But I did not remember
the name.

"Only a thief would come riding in such a hurry through the night!"
said I.  "Who is with you?"

Another voice shouted very fast and furiously in Turkish, but I could
not make head or tail of the words.  Then the German resumed the
song and dance.

"Are you the party who talked with me at my construction camp?"

"We talk most of the time.  We eat food.  We whistle.  We drink.
We laugh!" said I.

"Because I think you are the people I am seeking.  These are Turkish
officials with me.  I have authority to modify their orders, only
let me in!"

"How many of you?" I asked.  I was leaning over at risk of my life,
for any fool could have seen my head to shoot at it against the luminous
dark sky; but I could not see to count them.

"Never mind how many!  Let us in!  I am Hans von Quedlinburg.  My
name is sufficient."

So I lied, emphatically and in thoughtful detail.

"You are covered," I said, "by five rifles from this roof.  If you
don't believe it, try something.  You'd better wait there while I
wake my chief."

"Only be quick!" said the German, and I saw him light a cigarette,
whether to convince me he felt confident or because he did feel so
I could not say.  I went below, and found Monty and Kagig standing
together close to the outer door.  They had not heard the whole of
the conversation because of the noise the owner's sons had made removing,
at their orders, the obstructions they had piled against the door
in their first panic.  Every one else had returned to the sleeping
platforms, except the Turkish owner, who looked awake at last, and
was hovering here and there in ecstasies of nervousness.

I repeated what the German had said, rather expecting that Kagig
at any rate would counsel defiance.  It was he, however, who beckoned
the Turk and bade him open the door.

"But, effendi--"

"Chabuk! Quickly, I said!"

"Che arz kunam?" the Turk answered meekly, meaning "What petition
shall I make?" the inference being that all was in the hands of Allah.

"Of ten men nine are women!" sneered Kagig irritably, and led the
way to our place beside the fire.  The Turk fumbled interminably
with the door fastenings, and we were comfortably settled in our
places before the new arrivals rode in, bringing a blast of cold
air with them that set the smoke billowing about the room and made
every man draw up his blankets.

"Shut that door behind them!" thundered Kagig.  "If they come too
slowly, shut the laggards out!"

"Who is this who is arrogant?" the German demanded in English.

He was a fine-looking man, dressed in civilian clothes cut as nearly
to the military pattern as the tailor could contrive without transgressing
law, but with a too small fez perched on his capable-looking head
in the manner of the Prussian who would like to make the Turks believe
he loves them.  Rustum Khan cursed with keen attention to detail
at sight of him.  The man who had entered with him became busy in
the shadows trying to find room to stall their horses, but Von Quedlinburg
gave his reins to an attendant, and stood alone, akimbo, with the
firelight displaying him in half relief.

"I am a man who knows, among other things, the name of him who bribed
the kaimakam.* on Chakallu," Kagig answered slowly, also in English.

---------------
* Kaimakam, headman (Turkish).
---------------

The German laughed.

"Then you know without further argument that I am not to be denied!"
he answered.  "What I say to-night the government officials will
confirm to-morrow!  Are you Kagig, whom they call the Eye of Zeitoon?"

"I am no jackal," said Kagig dryly, punning on the name Chakallu,
which means "place of jackals."

The German coughed, set one foot forward, and folded both arms on
his breast.  He looked capable and bold in that attitude, and knew
it.  I knew at last who he was, and wondered why I had not recognized
him sooner--the contractor who had questioned us near the railway
encampment along the way, and had offered us directions; but his
manner was as different now from then as a bully's in and out of
school.  Then he had sought to placate, and had almost cringed to
Monty.  Everything about him now proclaimed the ungloved upper hand.

His party, finding no room to stall their horses, had begun to turn
ours loose, and there was uproar along the gipsy side of the room--no
action yet, but a threatening snarl that promised plenty of it.
Will was half on his feet to interfere, but Monty signed to him to
keep cool;  and it was Monty's aggravatingly well-modulated voice
that laid the law down.

"Will you be good enough," he asked blandly, "to call off your men
from meddling with our mounts?"  He could not be properly said to
drawl, because there was a positive subacid crispness in his voice
that not even a Prussian or a Turk on a dark night could have
over-looked.

The German laughed again.

"Perhaps you did not hear my name," he said. "I am Hans von Quedlinburg.
As over-contractor on the Baghdad railway I have the privilege of
prior accommodation at all road-houses in this province--for myself
and my attendants.  And in addition there are with me certain Turkish
officers, whose rights I dare say you will not dispute."

Monty did not laugh, although Fred was chuckling in confident enjoyment
of the situation.

"You need a lesson in manners," said Monty.

"What do you mean?" demanded Hans von Quedlinburg.

Monty rose to his feet without a single unnecessary motion.

"I mean that unless you call off your men--at once this minute from
interfering with our animals I shall give you the lesson you need."

The German saluted in mock respect.  Then he patted his breast-pocket
so as to show the outline of a large repeating pistol.  Monty took
two steps forward.  The German drew the pistol with an oath.  Will
Yerkes, beyond Fred and slightly behind the German, coughed meaningly.
The German turned his head, to find that he was covered by a pistol
as large as his own.

"Oh, very well," he said, "what is the use of making a scene?"  He
thrust his pistol back under cover and shouted an order in Turkish.
Monty returned to his place and sat down.  The newcomers at the rear
of the room tied their horses together by the bridles, and Hans von
Quedlinburg resumed his well-fed smile.

"Let it be clearly understood," he said, "that you have interfered
with official privilege."

"As long as you do your best in the way of manners you may go on
with your errand," said Monty.

Suddenly Fred laughed aloud.

"The martyred biped!" he yelped.

He was right.  Peter Measel, missionary on his own account, and sometime
keeper of most libelous accounts, stepped out from the shadows and
essayed to warm himself, walking past the German with a sort of mincing
gait not calculated to assert his manliness.  Hans von Quedlinburg
stretched out a strong arm and hurled him back again into the darkness
at the rear.

"Tchuk-tchuk!  Zuruck!" he muttered.

It clearly disconcerted him to have his inferiors in rank assert
themselves.  That accounted, no doubt, for the meek self-effacement
of the Turks who had come with him.  Peter Measel did not appear
to mind being rebuked.  He crossed to the other side of the room,
and proceeded to look the gipsies over with the air of a learned
ethnologist.

"You speak of my errand," said Hans von Quedlinburg, "as if you imagine
I come seeking favors.  I am here incidentally to rescue you and
your party from the clutches of an outlaw.  The Turkish officials
who are with me have authority to arrest everybody in this place,
yourselves included.  Fortunately I am able to modify that.  Kagig--that
rascal beside you--is a well-known agitator.  He is a criminal.
His arrest and trial have been ordered on the charge, among other
things, of stirring up discontent among the Armenian laborers on
the railway work.  These gipsies are all his agents.  They are all
under arrest.  You yourselves will be escorted to safety at the coast."

"Why should we need an escort to safety?" Monty demanded.

"Were you on the roof?" the German answered.  "And is it possible
you did not see the conflagration?  An Armenian insurrection has
been nipped in the bud.  Several villages are burning.  The other
inhabitants are very much incensed, and all foreigners are in
danger--yourselves especially, since you have seen fit to travel in
company with such a person as Kagig."

"What has Peter Measel got to do with it?" demanded Fred.  "Has he
been writing down all our sins in a new book?"

"He will identify you.  He will also identify Kagig's agents.  He
brings a personal charge against a man named Rustum Khan, who must
return to Tarsus to answer it.  The charge is robbery with violence."

Rustum Khan snorted.

"The violence was only too gentle, and too soon ended.  As for robbery,
if I have robbed him of a little self-conceit, I will answer to God
for that when my hour shall come!  How is it your affair to drag
that whimpering fool through Asia at your tail--you a German and
he English?"

The German had a hot answer ready for that, but the Turks had discovered
Maga Jhaere in hiding in the shadows between two old women.  She
screamed as they tried to drag her forth, and the scream brought
us all to our feet.  But this time it was Kagig who was swiftest,
and we got our first proof of the man's enormous strength.  Fred,
Will and I charged together round behind the newcomers' horses, in
order to make sure of cutting off retreat as well as rescuing Maga.
Monty leveled a pistol at the German's head.  But Kagig did not waste
a fraction of a second on side-issues of any sort.  He flew at the
German's throat like a wolf at a bullock.  The German fired at him,
missed, and before he could fire again he was caught in a grip he
could not break, and fighting for breath, balance and something more.

One of the gipsies, who had not seen the need of hurrying to Maga's
aid, now proved the soundness of his judgment by divining Kagig's
purpose and tossing several new faggots on the already prodigious fire.

"Good!" barked Kagig, bending the struggling German this and that
way as it pleased him.

Seeing our man with the upper hand, Monty and Rustum Khan now hurried
into the melee, where two Turkish officers and eight zaptieh were
fighting to keep Maga from four gipsies and us three.  Nobody had
seen fit to shoot, but there was a glimmering of cold steel among
the shadows like lightning before a thunder-storm.  Monty used his
fists.  Rustum Khan used the flat of a Rajput saber.  Maga, leaving
most of her clothing in the Turk's hands, struggled free and in another
second the Turks were on the defensive.  Rustum Khan knocked the
revolver out of an officer's hand, and the rest of them were struggling
to use their rifles, when the German shrieked.  All fights are full
of pauses, when either side could snatch sudden victory if alert
enough.  We stopped, and turned to look, as if our own lives were
not in danger.

Kagig had the German off his feet, face toward the flames, kicking
and screaming like a madman.  He whirled him twice--shouted a sort
of war-cry--hove him high with every sinew in his tough frame
cracking--and hurled him head-foremost into the fire.

The Turks took the cue to haul off and stand staring at us.  We all
withdrew to easier pistol range, for contrary to general belief,
close quarters almost never help straight aim, especially when in
a hurry.  There is a shooting as well as a camera focus, and each
man has his own.

Pretty badly burnt about the face and fingers, Hans von Quedlinburg
crawled backward out of the fire, smelling like the devil, of singed
wool.  Kagig closed on him, and hurled him back again.  This time
the German plunged through the fire, and out beyond it to a space
between the flames and the back wall, where it must have been hot
enough to make the fat run.  He stood with a forearm covering his
face, while Kagig thundered at him voluminous abuse in Turkish.
I wondered, first, why the German did not shoot, and then why his
loaded pistol did not blow up in the heat, until I saw that in further
proof of strength Kagig had looted his pistol and was standing with
one foot on it.

Finally, when the beautiful smooth cloth of which his coat was made
bad taken on a stinking overlay of crackled black, the German chose
to obey Kagig and came leaping back through the fire, and lay groaning
on the floor, where the kahveh's owner's seven sons poured water
on him by Kagig's order.  His burns were evidently painful, but not
nearly so serious as I expected.  I got out the first-aid stuff from
our medicine bag, and Will, who was our self-constituted doctor on
the strength of having once attended an autopsy, disguised as a reporter,
in the morgue at the back of Bellevue Hospital in New York City,
beckoned a gipsy woman, and proceeded to instruct her what to do.

However, Hans von Quedlinburg was no nervous weakling.  He snatched
the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff
liberally on his face and hands, and sat up--resembling an unknown
kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except
for a stray, outstanding whisker here and there.  In a voice like
a bull's at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted through
the flames, and commanded his Turks to arrest the lot of us.

Kagig laughed at that, and spoke to him in English, I suppose in
order that we, too, might understand.

"Those Turks are my prisoners!" he said.  "And so are you!"

It was true about the Turks.  They had not given up their weapons
yet, but the gipsies were between them and the door, and even the
gipsy women were armed to the teeth and willing to do battle.  I
caught sight of Maga's mother-o'-pearl plated revolver, and the Turkish
officer at whom she had it leveled did not look inclined to dispute
the upper hand.

"You Germans are all alike," sneered Kagig.  "A dog could read your
reasoning.  You thought these foreigners would turn against me.
It never entered your thick skull that they might rather defy you
than see me made prisoner.  Fool!  Did men name me Eye of Zeitoon
for nothing?  Have I watched for nothing!  Did I know the very wording
of the letters in your private box for nothing?  Are you the only
spy in Asia?  Am I Kagig, and do I not know who advised dismissing
all Armenians from the railway work?  Am I Kagig, and do I not know
why?  Kopek! (Dog!)  You would beggar my people, in order to curry
favor with the Turk.  You seek to take me because I know your ways!
Two months ago you knew to within a day or two when these new massacres
would begin.  One month, three weeks, and four days ago you ordered
men to dig my grave, and swore to bury me alive in it!  What shall
hinder me from burning you alive this minute?"

There were five good hindrances, for I think that Rustum Khan would
have objected to that cruelty, even had he been alone.  Kagig caught
Monty's eye and laughed.

"Korkakma!" he jeered.  "Do not be afraid!"  Then he glanced swiftly
at the Turks, and at Peter Measel, who was staring all-eyes at Maga
on the far side of the room.

"Order your pigs of zaptieh to throw their arms down!"

Instead, the German shouted to them to fire volleys at us.  He was
not without a certain stormy courage, whatever Kagig's knowledge
of his treachery.

But the Turks did not fire, and it was perfectly plain that we four
were the reason of it.  They had been promised an easy prey--captured
women--loot--and the remunerative task of escorting us to safety.
Doubtless Von Quedlinburg had promised them our consul would be lavish
with rewards on our account.  Therefore there was added reason why
they should not fire on Englishmen and an American.  We had not made
a move since the first scuffle when we rescued Maga, but the Turkish
lieutenant had taken our measure.  Perhaps he had whispered to his
men.  Perhaps they reached their own conclusions.  The effect was
the same in either case.

"Order them to throw their weapons down!" commanded Kagig, kicking
the German in the ribs.  And his coat had been so scorched in the
fierce heat that the whole of one side of it broke off, like a
cinder slab.

This time Hans von Quedlinburg obeyed.  For one thing the pain of
his burns was beginning to tell on him, but he could see, too, that
he had lost prestige with his party.

"Throw down your weapons!" he ordered savagely.

But he had lost more prestige than he knew, or else he had less in
the beginning than be counted on.  The Turkish lieutenant--a man
of about forty with the evidence of all the sensual appetites very
plainly marked on his face--laughed and brought his men to attention.
Then he made a kind of half-military motion with his hand toward
each of us in turn, ignoring Kagig but intending to convey that we
at any rate need not feel anxious.

It was Maga Jhaere who solved the riddle of that impasse.  She was
hardly in condition to appear before a crowd of men, for the Turks
bad torn off most of her clothes, and she had not troubled to find
others.  She was unashamed, and as beautiful and angry as a panther.
With panther suddenness she snatched the lieutenant's sword and pistol.

It suited neither his national pride nor religious prejudices to
be disarmed by a gipsy woman;  but the Turk is an amazing fatalist,
and unexpectedness is his peculiar quality.

"Che arz kunam?" he muttered--the perennial comment of the Turk who
has failed, that always made Kagig bare his teeth in a spasm of contempt.
"Passing the buck to Allah," as Will construed it.

But disarming the mere conscript soldiers was not quite so simple,
although Maga managed it.  They had less regard for their own skins
than handicapped their officer, and yet more than his contempt for
the female of any human breed.

They refused point-blank to throw their rifles down, bringing a laugh
and a shout of encouragement from the German.  But she screwed the
muzzle of her pistol into the lieutenant's ear, and bade him enforce
her orders, the gipsy women applauding with a chorus of "Ohs" and
"Ahs."  The lieutenant succumbed to force majeure, and his men, who
were inclined to die rather than take orders from a woman, obeyed
him readily enough.  They laid their rifles down carefully, without
a suggestion of resentment.

"So.  The women of Zeitoon are good!" said Kagig with a curt nod
of approval, and Maga tossed him a smile fit for the instigation
of another siege of Troy.

The gipsy women picked the rifles up, and Maga went to hunt through
the mule-packs for clothing.  Then Kagig turned on us, motioning
with his toe toward Hans von Quedlinburg, who continued to treat
himself extravagantly from our jar of ointment.

"You do not know yet the depths of this man's infamy!" he said.
"The world professes to loathe Turks who rob, sell and murder women
and children.  What of a German--a foreigner in Turkey, who instigates
the murder--and the robbery--and the burning--and the butchery--for
his own ends, or for his bloody country's ends?  This man is
an instigator!"

"You lie!" snarled Von Quedlinburg.  "You dog of an Armenian, you lie!"
Kagig ignored him.

"This is the German sportman who tried once to go to Zeitoon to shoot
bears, as he said.  But I knew he was a spy.  I am not the Eye of
Zeitoon merely because that title rolls nicely on the tongue.  He
has--perhaps he has it in his pocket now--a concession from the
politicians in Stamboul, granting him the right to exploit Zeitoon--a
place he has never seen!  He has encouraged this present butchery
in order that Turkish soldiers may have excuse to penetrate to Zeitoon
that he covets.  He wants you Eenglis sportmen out of the way.  You
were to be sent safely back to Tarsus, lest you should be witnesses
of what must happen.  Perhaps you do not believe all this?"'

He stooped down and searched the German's coat pockets with impatient
fingers that tugged and jerked, tossing out handkerchief and wallet,
cigars, matches that by a miracle had not caught in the heat, and
considerable money to the floor.  He took no notice of the money,
but one of the old gipsy women crept out and annexed it, and Kagig
made no comment.

"He has not his concession with him.  I can prove nothing to-night.
I said you shall stand a test.  You must choose.  This German and
those Turks are my prisoners.  You have nothing to do with it.  You
may go back to Tarsus if you wish, and tell the Turks that Kagig
defies them!  You shall have an escort as far as the nearest garrison.
You shall have fifty men to take you back by dawn to-morrow."

At that Rustum Khan turned several shades darker and glared truculently.

"Who art thou, Armenian, to frame a test for thy betters?" he demanded,
throwing a very military chest.  And Will promptly bridled at the
Rajput's attitude.

"You've no call to make yourself out any better than he is!" he
interrupted.  And at that Maga Jhaere threw a kiss from across the
room, but one could not tell whether her own dislike of Rustum Khan,
or her approval of Will's support of Kagig was the motive.

Fred began humming in the ridiculous way he has when he thinks that
an air of unconcern may ease a situation, and of course Rustum Khan
mistook the nasal noises for intentional insult.  He turned on the
unsuspecting Fred like a tiger.  Monty's quick wit and level voice
alone saved open rupture.

"What I imagine Rustum Khan means is this, Kagig:  My friends and
I have engaged you as guide for a hunting trip.  We propose to hold
you strictly to the contract."

Kagig looked keenly at each of us and nodded.

"In my day I have seen the hunters hunted!" he said darkly.

"In my day I have seen an upstart punished!" growled the Rajput,
and sat down, back to the wall.

"Castles, and bears!" smiled Monty.

Kagig grinned.

"What if I propose a different quarry?"

"Propose and see!" Monty was on the alert, and therefore to all outward
appearance in a sort of well-fed, catlike, dallying mood.

"This dog," said Kagig, and he kicked the German's ribs again, "has
said nothing of any other person he must rescue.  Bear me witness."

We murmured admission of the truth of that.

"Yet I am the Eye of Zeitoon, and I know.  His purpose was to leave
his prisoners here and hurry on to overtake a lady--a certain Miss
Vanderman, who he thinks is on her way to the mission at Marash.
He desired the credit for her rescue in order better to blind the
world to his misdeeds!  Nevertheless, now that she can be no more
use to him, observe his chivalry!  He does not even mention her!"

The German shrugged his shoulders, implying that to argue with such
a savage was waste of breath.

"What do you know of Miss Vanderman's where-abouts?" demanded Will,
and Maga Jhaere, at the sound of another woman's name, sat bolt upright
between two other women whose bright eyes peeped out from under blankets.

"I had word of her an hour before you came, effendi," Kagig answered.
"She and her party took fright this afternoon, and have taken to
the hills.  They are farther ahead than this pig dreamed"--once more
he kicked Von Quedlinburg--"more than a day's march ahead from here."

"Then we'll hunt for her first," said Monty, and the rest of us nodded
assent.

Kagig grinned.

"You shall find her.  You shall see a castle.  In the castle where
you find her you shall choose again!  It is agreed, effendi!"

Then he ordered his prisoners made fast, and the gipsies and our
Zeitoonli servants attended to it, he himself, however, binding the
German's hands and feet.  Will went and put bandages on the man's burns,
I standing by, to help.  But we got no thanks.

"Ihr seit verruckt!" he sneered.  "You take the side of bandits.
Passt mal auf--there will be punishment!"

The Zeitoonli were going to tie Peter Measel, but he set up such
a howl that Kagig at last took notice of him and ordered him flung,
unbound, into the great wooden bin in which the horse-feed was kept
for sale to wayfarers.  There he lay, and slept and snored for the
rest of that session, with his mouth close to a mouse-hole.

Then Kagig ordered our Zeitoonli to the roof on guard, and bade us
sleep with a patriarchal air of authority.

"There is no knowing when I shall decide to march," he explained.

Given enough fatigue, and warmth, and quietness, a man will sleep
under almost any set of circumstances.  The great fire blazed, and
flickered, and finally died down to a bed of crimson.  The prisoners
were most likely all awake, for their bonds were tight, but only
Kagig remained seated in the midst of his mess of blankets by the
hearth;  and I think he slept in that position, and that I was the
last to doze off.  But none of us slept very long.

There came a shout from the roof again, and once again a thundering
on the door.  The move--unanimous--that the gipsies' right hands
made to clutch their weapons resembled the jump from surprise into
stillness when the jungle is caught unawares.  A second later when
somebody tossed dry fagots on the fire the blaze betrayed no other
expression on their faces than the stock-in-trade stolidity.  Even
the women looked as if thundering on a kahveh door at night was nothing
to be noticed.  Kagig did not move, but I could see that he was breathing
faster than the normal, and he, too, clutched a weapon.  Von Quedlinburg
began shouting for help alternately in Turkish and in German, and
the owner of the place produced a gun--a long, bright, steel-barreled
affair of the vintage of the Comitajes and the First Greek War.
He and his sons ran to the door to barricade it.

"Yavash!" ordered Kagig.  The word means slowly, as applied to all
the human processes.  In that instance it meant "Go slow with your
noise!" and mine host so understood it.

But the thundering on the great door never ceased, and the kahveh
was too full of the noise of that for us to hear what the Zeitoonli
called down from the roof.  Kagig arose and stood in the middle of
the room with the firelight behind him.  He listened for two minutes,
standing stock-still, a thin smile flickering across his lean face,
and the sharp satyr-like tops of his ears seeming to prick outward
in the act of intelligence.

"Open and let them in!" he commanded at last.

"I will not!" roared the owner of the place.  "I shall be tortured,
and all my house!"

"Open, I said!"

"But they will make us prisoner!"

Kagig made a sign with his right hand.  Gregor Jhaere rose and whispered.
One by one the remaining gipsies followed him into the shadows, and
there came a noise of scuffling, and of oaths and blows.  As Gregor
Jhaere had mentioned earlier, they did obey Kagig now and then.
The Turks came back looking crestfallen, and the fastenings creaked.
Then the door burst open with a blast of icy air, and there poured
in nineteen armed men who blinked at the firelight helplessly.

"Kagig--where is Kagig?"

"You cursed fools, where should I be!"

"Kagig?  Is it truly you?"  Their eyes were still blinded by
the blaze.

"Shut that door again, and bolt it!  Aye--Kagig, Kagig, is it you!"

"It is Kagig!  Behold him!  Look!"

They clustered close to see, smelling infernally of sweaty garments
and of the mud from unholy lurking places.

"Kagig it is!  And has all happened as I, Kagig, warned you it
would happen?"

"Aye.  All.  More.  Worse!"

"Had you acted beforehand in the manner I advised?"

"No, Kagig.  We put it off.  We talked, and disagreed.  And then
it was too late to agree.  They were cutting throats while we still
argued.  When we ran into the street to take the offensive they were
already shooting from the roofs!"

"Hah!"

That bitter dry expletive, coughed out between set teeth, could not
be named a laugh.

"Kagig, listen!"

"Aye!  Now it is 'Kagig, listen!'  But a little while ago it was
I who was sayin 'Listen!'  I walked myself lame, and talked myself
hoarse.  Who listened to me?  Why should I listen to you?"

"But, Kagig, my wife is gone!"

"Hah!"

"My daughter, Kagig!"

"Hah!"

A third man thrust himself forward and thumped the butt of a long
rifle on the floor.

      --

"They took my wife and two daughters before my very eyes, Kagig!
It is no time for talking now--you have talked already too much,
Kagi,--now prove yourself a man of deeds!  With these eyes I saw
them dragged by the hair down street!  Oh, would God that I had put
my eyes out first, then had I never seen it!  Kagig--"

"Aye--Kagig!"

"You shall not sneer at me!  I shot one Turk, and ten more pounced
on them.  They screamed to me.  They called to me to rescue.  What
could I do?  I shot, and I shot until the rifle barrel burned my
fingers.  Then those cursed Turks set the house on fire behind me,
and my companions dragged me away to come and find others to unite
with us and make a stand!  We found no others!  Kagig--I tell
you--those bloody Turks are auctioning our wives and daughters in the
village church!  It is time to act!"

"Hah!  Who was it urged you in season and out of season--day and
night--month in, month out--to come to Zeitoon and help me fortify
the place?  Who urged you to send your women there long ago?"

"But Kagig, you do not appreciate.  To you it is nothing not to have
women near you.  We have mothers, sisters, wives--"

"Nothing to me, is it?  These eyes have seen my mother, ravished
by a Kurd in a Turkish uniform!"

"Well, that only proves you are one with us after all!  That only
proves--"

"One with you!  Why did you not act, then, when I risked life and
limb a thousand times to urge you?"

"We could not, Kagig.  That would have precipitated--"

He interrupted the man with an oath like the aggregate of bitterness.

"Precipitated?  Did waiting for the massacre like chickens waiting
for the ax delay the massacres a day?  But now it is 'Come and lead
us, Kagig!'  How many of you are there left to lead?"

"Who knows?  We are nineteen--"

"Hah!  And I am to run with nineteen men to the rape of Tarsus
and Adana?"

"Our people will rally to you, Kagig!"

"They shall."

"Come, then!"

"They shall rally at Zeitoon!"

"Oh, Kagig--how shall they reich Zeitoon? The cursed Turks have ordered
out the soldiers and are sending regiments--"

"I warned they would!"

"The cavalry are hunting down fugitives along the roads!"

"As I foretold a hundred times!"

"They were sent to protect Armenians--"

"That is always the excuse!"

"And they kill--kill--kill!  A dozen of them hunted me for two miles,
until I hid in a watercourse!  Look at us!  Look at our clothes!
We are wet to the skin--tired--starving!  Kagig, be a man!"

He went back to his mess of blankets and sat down on it, too bitter
at heart for words.  They reproached him in chorus, coming nearer
to the fire to let the fierce heat draw the stink out of their clothes.

"Aye, Kagig, you must not forget your race.  You must not forget
the past, Kagig.  Once Armenia was great, remember that!  You must
not only talk to us, you must act at last!  We summon you to be our
leader, Kagig, son of Kagig of Zeitoon!"

He stared back at them with burning eyes--raised both bands to beat
his temples--and then suddenly turned the palms of his hands toward
the roof in a gesture of utter misery.

"Oh, my people!"

That glimpse he betrayed of his agony was but a moment long.  The
fingers closed suddenly, and the palms that had risen in helplessness
descended to his knees clenched fists, heavy with the weight of purpose.

"What have you done with the ammunition?" he demanded.

"We had it in the manure under John Zimisces' cattle."

"I know that.  Where is it now?"

"The Turks discovered it at dawn to-day.  Some one had told.  They
burned Zimisces and his wife and sons alive in the straw!"

"You fools!  They knew where the stuff was a week ago!  A month ago
I warned you to send it to Zeitoon, but somebody told you I was
treacherous, and you fools listened!  How much ammunition have you
left now?"

"Just what we have with us.  I have a dozen rounds."

"I ten."

"I nine."

"I thirty-three."

Each man had a handful, or two handfuls at the most.  Kagig observed
their contributions to the common fund with scorn too deep for expression.
It was as if the very springs of speech were frozen.

"We summon you to lead us, Kagig!"

Words came to him again.

"You summon me to lead?  I will!  From now I lead!  By the God who
gave my fathers bread among the mountains, I will, moreover, be obeyed!
Either my word is law--"

"Kagig, it is law!"

"Or back you shall go to where the Turks are wearing white, and the
gutters bubble red, and the beams are black against the sky!  You
shall obey me in future on the instant that I speak, or run back
to the Turks for mercy from my hand!  I have listened to enough talk!"

"Spoken like a man!" said Monty, and stood up.

We all stood up;  even Rustum Khan, who did not pretend to like him,
saluted the old warrior who could announce his purpose so magnificently.
Maga Jhaere stood up, and sought Will's eyes from across the room.
Fred, almost too sleepy to know what he was doing (for the tail end
of the fever is a yearning for early bed) undid the catch of his
beloved instrument, and made the rafters ring.  In a minute we four
were singing "For he's a jolly good fellow," and Kagig stood up,
looking like Robinson Crusoe in his goat-skins, to acknowledge the
compliment.

The noise awoke Peter Measel, and when we had finished making fools
of ourselves I walked over to discover what he was saying.  He was
praying aloud--nasally--through the mouse-hole--for us, not himself.
I looked at my watch.  It was two hours past midnight.

"You fellows," I said, "it's Sunday.  The martyred biped has just
waked up and remembered it.  He is praying that we may be forgiven
for polluting the Sabbath stillness with immoral tunes!"

My words had a strange effect.  Monty, and Fred, and Will laughed.
Rustum Khan laughed savagely.  But all the Armenians, including Kagig,
knelt promptly on the floor and prayed, the gipsies looking on in
mild amusement tempered by discretion.  And out of the mouse-hole
in the horse-feed bin came Peter Measel's sonorous, overriding periods:

"And, O Lord, let them not be smitten by Thine anger.  Let them not
be cut down in Thy wrath!  Let them not be cast into hell!  Give
them another chance, O Lord!  Let the Ten Commandments be written
on their hearts in letters of fire, but let not their souls be damned
for ever more!  If they did not know it was the Sabbath Day, O Lord,
forgive them! Amen!"

It was a most amazing night.




Chapter Seven
 "We hold you to your word!"


LIBERA NOS, DOMINE!

A priest, a statesman, and a soldier stood
Hand in each other's hand, by ruin faced,
Consulting to find succor if they could,
Till soon the lesser ones themselves abased,
Their sword and parchment on an altar laid
In deep humility the while the priest he prayed.

He prayed first for his church, that it might be
Upholden and acknowledged and revered,
And in its opal twilight men might see
Salvation if in truth enough they feared,
And if enough acknowledgment they gave
To ritual, and rosary, and creed that save.

Then prayed he for the state, that it should wean
Well-tutored counselors to do their part
Full profit and prosperity to glean
With dignity, although with contrite heart
And wisdom that Tradition wisdom ranks,
That church and state might stand and men give thanks.

Last prayed he for the soldier--longest, too,
That all the honor and the aims of war
Subserving him might carry wrath and rue
Unto repentance, and in trembling awe
The enemy at length should fault confess
And yield, to crave a peace of righteousness.

Behind them stood a patriot unbowed,
Not arrogant in gilt or goodly cloth,
Nor mincing meek, and yet not poorly proud;
With eyes afire that glittered not with wrath;
Aware of evil hours, and undismayed
Because he loved too well.  He also prayed.

"Oh, Thou, who gavest, may I also give,
Withholding not--accepting no reward;
For I die gladly if the least ones live.
Twice righteous and two-edged be the sword,
'Neath freedom's banner drawn to prove Thy word
And smite me if I'm false!"  His prayer was heard.


The remainder of that night was nightmare pure and simple--mules
and horses squealing in instinctive fear of action they felt
impending--gipsies and Armenians dragging packs out on the floor, to
repack everything a dozen times for some utterly godless reason--Rustum
Khan seizing each fugitive Armenian in turn to question him, alternating
fierce threats with persuasion--Kagig striding up and down with hands
behind him and his scraggly black beard pressed down on his chest--and
the great fire blazing with reports like cannon shots as one
of the Turk's sons piled on fuel and the resinous wet wood caught.

The Turk and his other six sons ran away and hid themselves as a
precaution against our taking vengeance on them.  With situations
reversed a Turk would have taken unbelievable toll in blood and agony
from any Armenian he could find, and they reasoned we were probably
no better than themselves.  The marvel was that they left one son
to wait on us, and take the money for room and horse-feed.

"Remember!" warned Monty, as we four sidled close together with our
backs against the wall.  "Until we're in actual personal danger this
trouble is the affair of Kagig and his men!"

"I get you.  If we horn in before we have to we'll do more harm than
good.  Give the Turks an excuse to call us outlaws and shoot instead
of rescue us.  Sure.  But what about Miss Vanderman?"  said Will.

"I foresee she's doomed!" Fred stared straight in front of him.
"It looks as if we'll lose our little Willy too!  One woman at a
time, especially when the lady totes a mother-o'-pearl revolver and
about a dozen knives! If you come out of this alive, Bill, you'll
be wiser!"

"Fond of bull, aren't you!  You'd jest on an ant-heap."

"There's nothing to discuss," said I.  "If there's a lady in danger
somewhere ahead, we all know what we're going to do about it."

Monty nodded.

"If we can find her and get word to the consul, that 'ud be one more
lever for him to pull on."

"D'you suppose they'd dare molest an Englishwoman?" I asked, with
the sudden goose-flesh rising all over me.

"She's American," said Will between purposely set lips.  But I did
not see that that qualified the unpleasantness by much.

One of the Armenians, whom Rustum Khan had finished questioning,
went and stood in Kagig's way, intercepting his everlasting sentry-go.

"What is it, Eflaton?"

"My wife, Kagig!"

"Ah!  I remember your wife.  She fed me often."

"You must come with me and find her, Kagig--my wife and two daughters,
who fed you often!"

"The daughters were pretty," said Kagig.  "So was the wife.  A young
woman yet.  A brave, good woman.  Always she agreed with me, I remember.
Often I heard her urge you men to follow me to Zeitoon and help to
fortify the place!"

"Will you leave a good woman in the hands of Turks, Kagig?  Come--come
to the rescue!"

"It is too bad," said Kagig simply.  "Such women suffer more terribly
than the hags who merely die by the sword.  Ten times by the
count--during ten succeeding massacres I have seen the Turks sell
Armenian wives and daughters at auction.  I am sorry, Eflaton."

"My God!" groaned Will.  "How long are we four loafers going to sit
here and leave a white woman in danger on the road ahead?"  He got
up and began folding his blankets.

The Armenian whom Kagig had called Eflaton threw himself to the floor
and shrieked in agony of misery.  Rustum Khan stepped over him and
came and stood in front of Monty.

"These men are fools," he said.  "They know exactly what the Turks
will do.  They have all seen massacres before.  Yet not one of them
was ready when the hour set for this one came.  They say--and they
say the truth, that the Turks will murder all Europeans they catch
outside the mission stations, lest there be true witnesses afterward
whom the world will believe."

"But a woman--scarcely a white woman?"  This from Will, with the
tips of his ears red and the rest of his face a deathly white.

"Depending on the woman," answered Rustum Khan.  "Old--unpleasing--"
He made an upward gesture with his thumb, and a noise between his
teeth suggestive of a severed wind-pipe.  "If she were good-looking--I
have heard say they pay high prices in the interior, say at Kaisarieh
or Mosul.  Once in a harem, who would ever know?  The road ahead
is worse than dangerous.  Whoever wishes to save his life would do
best to turn back now and try to ride through to Tarsus."

"Try it, then, if you're afraid!" sneered Will, and for a moment
I thought the Rajput would draw steel.

"I know what this lord sahib and I will do," he said, darkening three
or four shades under his black beard.  "It was for men bewitched
by gipsy-women that I feared!"

Will was standing.  Nothing but Monty's voice prevented blows.  He
rapped out a string of sudden rhetoric in the Rajput's own guttural
tongue, and Rustum Khan drew back four paces.

"Send him back, Colonel sahib!" he urged.  "Send that one back!
He and Umm Kulsum will be the death of us!"

Fred went off into a peal of laughter that did nothing to calm the
Rajput's ruffled temper.

"Who was Umm Kulsum?" I asked him, divining the cause.

"The most immoral hag in Asian legend!  The aggregated essence of
all female evil personified in one procuress!"

"Say, I'll have to teach that gink--"

Monty got up and stood between them, but it was a new alarm that
prevented blows.  A fist-blow in the Rajput's face would have meant
a blood-feud that nothing less than a man's life could settle, and
Monty looked worried.  There came a new thundering on the door that
brought everybody to his feet as if murder were the least of the
charges against us.  Only Kagig appeared at ease and unconcerned.

"Open to them!" he shouted, and resumed his pacing to and fro.

Our Armenian servants ran to the door, and in a minute returned to
say that fifty mounted men from Zeitoon were drawn up outside.  Kagig
gave a curt laugh and strode across to us.

"I said you Eenglis sportmen should see good sport."

Monty nodded, with a hand held out behind him to warn us to keep still.

"I said you shall shoot many pigs!"

"Lead on, then."

"Turks are pigs!"

Monty did not answer.  To have disagreed would have been like flapping
a red cloth at a tiger.  Yet to have agreed with him at once might
have made him jump to false conclusions.  The consul's last words
to us had been insistent on the unwisdom of posing as anything but
hunters, legitimately entitled to protection from the Turkish government.

"I would like you gentlemen for allies!"

"You are our servant at present."

"Would you think of holding me to that?" demanded Kagig with a gesture
of extreme irritation.  It is only the West that can joke at itself
in the face of crisis.

"If not to that," said Monty blandly, "then what agreements do you keep?"

Kagig saw the point. He drew a deep impatient breath and drove it
out again hissing through his teeth.  Then he took grim hold of himself.

"Effendi," he said, addressing himself to Monty, but including all
of us with eyes that seemed to search our hearts, "you are a lord,
a friend of the King of Eengland.  If I were less than a man of my
word I could make you prisoner and oblige your friend the King of
Eengland to squeeze these cursed Turks!"

Rustum Khan heard what he said, and made noise enough drawing his
saber to be heard outside the kahveh, but Kagig did not turn his
head.  Three gipsies attended to Rustum Khan, slipping between him
and their master, and our four Zeitoonli servants cautiously approached
the Rajput from behind.

"Peace!" ordered Monty.  "Continue, Kagig."

Kagig held both hands toward Monty, palms upward, as if he were offering
the keys of Hell and Heaven.

"You are sportmen, all of you.  Shall I keep my word to you?  Or
shall I serve my nation in its agony?"

Monty glanced swiftly at us, but we made no sign.  Will actually
looked away.  It was a rule we four had to leave the playing of a
hand to whichever member of the partnership was first engaged;  and
we never regretted it, although it often called for faith in one
another to the thirty-third degree.  The next hand might fall to
any other of us, but for the present it was Monty's play.

"We hold you to your word!" said Monty.

Kagig gasped.  "But my people!"

"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!"


LO HERE!  LO THERE!

Ye shall not judge men by the drinks they take,
Nor by unthinking oath, nor what they wear,
For look! the mitered liars protest make
And drinking know they lie, and knowing swear.
No oath is round without the rounded fruit,
Nor pompous promise hides the ultimate.
In scarlet as in overalls and tailored suit
To-morrows truemen and the traitors wait
Untold by trick of blazonry or voice.
But harvest ripens and there come the reaping days
When each shall choose one path to bide the choice,
And ye shall know men when they face dividing ways.


To those who have never ridden knee to knee with outlaws full pelt
into unknown darkness, with a burning house behind, and a whole horizon
lit with the rolling glow of murdered villages, let it be written
that the sensation of so doing is creepy, most amazing wild, and
not without unrighteous pleasure.

There was a fierce joy that burned without consuming, and a consciousness
of having crossed a rubicon.  Points of view are left behind in a
moment, although the proof may not be apparent for days or weeks,
and I reckon our mental change from being merely hunters of an ancient
castle and big game-tourists-trippers, from that hour.  As we galloped
behind Kagig the mesmerism of respect for custom blew away in the
wind.  We became at heart outlaws as we rode--and one of us a privy
councilor of England!

The women, Maga included, were on in front.  The night around and
behind us was full of the thunder of fleeing cattle, for the Zeitoonli
had looted the owner of the kahveh's cows and oxen along with their
own beasts and were driving them helter-skelter.  The crackling flames
behind us were a beacon, whistling white in the early wind, that
we did well to hurry from.

It was Monty who called Kagig's attention to the idiocy of tiring
out the cattle before dawn, and then Kagig rode like an arrow until
he could make the gipsies hear him.  One long keening shout that
penetrated through the drum of hoofs brought them to a walk, but
they kept Maga in front with them, screened from our view until
morning by a close line of mounted women and a group of men.  The
Turkish prisoners were all behind among the fifty Armenians from
Zeitoon, looking very comfortless trussed up on the mounts that nobody
else had coveted, with hands made fast behind their backs.

A little before dawn, when the saw-tooth tips of the mountain range
on our left were first touched with opal and gold, we turned off
the araba track along which we had so far come and entered a ravine
leading toward Marash.  Fred was asleep on horseback, supported between
Will and me and snoring like a throttled dog.  The smoke of the gutted
kahveh had dwindled to a wisp in the distance behind us, and there
was no sight or sound of pursuit.

No wheeled vehicle that ever man made could have passed up this
new track.  It was difficult for ridden horses, and our loaded beasts
had to be given time.  We seemed to be entering by a fissure into
the womb of the savage hills that tossed themselves in ever-increasing
grandeur up toward the mist-draped heights of Kara Dagh.  Oftener
than not our track was obviously watercourse, although now and then
we breasted higher levels from which we could see, through gaps between
hill and forest, backward along the way we had come.  There was smoke
from the direction of Adana that smudged a whole sky-line, and between
that and the sea about a dozen sooty columns mushroomed against the
clouds.

There was not a mile of the way we came that did not hold a hundred
hiding-places fit for ambuscade, but our party was too numerous and
well-armed to need worry on that account.  Monty and Kagig drew ahead,
quite a little way behind the gipsies still, but far in front of us,
who had to keep Fred upright on his horse.

"My particular need is breakfast," said I.

"And Will's is the woman!" said Fred, admitting himself awake at last.
Will had been straining in the stirrups on the top of every rise his
horse negotiated ever since the sun rose.  It certainly was a mystery
why Maga should have been spirited away, after the freedom permitted
her the day before.

"Rustum Khan has probably made off with her, or cut her head off!"
remarked Fred by way of offering comfort, yawning with the conscious
luxury of having slept.  "I don't see Rustum Khan.  Let's hope it's
true!  That 'ud give the American lady a better chance for her life
in case we should overtake her!"

Will and Fred have always chosen the most awkward places and the
least excuse for horseplay, and the sleep seemed to have expelled
the last of the fever from Fred's bones, so that he felt like a schoolboy
on holiday.  Will grabbed him around the neck and they wrestled,
to their horses' infinite disgust, panting and straining mightily
in the effort to unseat each other.  It was natural that Will should
have the best of it, he being about fifteen years younger as well
as unweakened by malaria.  The men of Zeitoon behind us checked to
watch Fred rolled out of his saddle, and roared with the delight
of fighting men the wide world over to see the older campaigner suddenly
recover his balance and turn the tables on the younger by a trick.

And at that very second, as Will landed feet first on the gravel
panting for breath, Maga Jhaere arrived full gallop from the rear,
managing her ugly gray stallion with consummate ease.  Her black
hair streamed out in the wind, and what with the dew on it and the
slanting sun-rays she seemed to be wearing all the gorgeous jewels
out of Ali Baba's cave.  She was the loveliest thing to look
at--unaffected, unexpected, and as untamed as the dawn, with parted
lips as red as the branch of budding leaves with which she beat
her horse.

But the smile turned to a frown of sudden passion as she saw Will
land on the ground and Fred get ready for reprisals.  She screamed
defiance--burst through the ranks of the nearest Zeitoonli--set her
stallion straight at us--burst between Fred and me--beat Fred savagely
across the face with her sap-softened branch--and wheeled on her
beast's haunches to make much of Will.  He laughed at her, and tried
to take the whip away.  Seeing he was neither hurt nor indignant,
she laughed at Fred, spat at him, and whipped her stallion forward
in pursuit of Kagig, breaking between him and Monty to pour news
in his ear.

"A curse on Rustum Khan!" laughed Fred, spitting out red buds.  "He
didn't do his duty!"

He had hardly said that when the Rajput came spurring and thundering
along from the rear.  He seemed in no hurry to follow farther, but
drew rein between us and saluted with the semi-military gesture with
which he favored all who, unlike Monty, had not been Colonels of
Indian regiments.

"I tracked Umm Kulsum through the dark!" he announced, rubbing the
burned nodules out of his singed beard and then patting his mare's
neck.  "I saw her ride away alone an hour before you reached that
fork in the road and turned up this watercourse.  'By the teeth of
God,' said I, 'when a good-looking woman leaves a party of men to
canter alone in the dark, there is treason!' and I followed."

I offered the Rajput my cigarette case, and to my surprise he accepted
one, although not without visible compunction.  As a Muhammadan by
creed he was in theory without caste and not to be defiled by European
touch, but the practises of most folk fall behind their professions.
A hundred yards ahead of us Maga was talking and gesticulating furiously,
evidently railing at Kagig's wooden-headedness or unbelief.  Monty
sat listening, saying nothing.

"What did you see, 

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