Little Lost Lambs From the Colliery

by Harold Lamb

  A HAND pulled the quilt off his shoulders, and he was conscious of a dim lantern shining over him. Three men were standing by his bed, and one of them had Shotha’s weasel face, and a ghostly robe in his hand. They all carried swords.

  “Time to go?” Donovan yawned, feel­ing for his coat and putting it on. The wallet was still in the pocket.

  “Yes, hurry!” said Shotha. He put the ghostly garment on the American, and it proved to be a long sheepskin overcoat. Then he belted a saber on Donovan, saying that it was a yataghan. Another man handed over a mug of steaming tea.

  But Donovan was hardly awake when he climbed into the saddle of a shaggy pony and looked around at Shotha and the other two, who were also mounted and armed like himself with yataghans. There was no sign of the Russian chauf­feur.

  “Where’s Mr. Nicolai?” he asked.

  “He is not coming.” Shotha hesitated a moment. “It is too dark, and he is afraid. Yes, sir, he is not afraid of the ti-gar—only of the—who do you say?— the unburied dead who ride in the-e dark, looking for graves and crying out like hawks.” The mountaineer shivered, fumbling with the reins. “But now you must hurry, sir, or the ti-gar will be away from his sleeping place.”

  “Look here,” said Donovan, “are you going after a tiger without a rifle?”

  “That is our way of hunting,” Shotha almost snarled. “If you arre afraid, you pay me the-e ten dollars.”

  “The hell I will!”

  By then they were dropping down out of the sky glow into drifting mist. By the action of his horse, he could tell that they were going down a steep descent—until they passed an outcropping of limestone half an hour later, and came out in level grass.

  By then the sun was breaking through the mist, and out of it appeared a small stone tower. Beside it, two men in sheepskins mounted on ponies were bending over another, who lay out­stretched before the tower.

  Shotha swore under his breath. “The robber-bandit David!” he whispered.

  One of the riders turned, and set him­self in the saddle. Straight for them he rode, whipping out a length of steel. Donovan looked into a broad, bearded face, alight with rage.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed. “What in—”

  He started to rein aside, and then he was fighting for his life. Instinctively parrying the savage slashes of the rider, feeling the jar of the steel up his shoul­der muscles.

  His adversary, a heavy man, was like a whirlwind in sheepskins—driving his horse into Donovan’s. He panted as he struck, trying to beat down the Ameri­can’s guard. Donovan grew madder by the second, and slashed the other’s shoulder. But the steel caught in the heavy wool.

  And the shaggy man yelled, slashing at Donovan’s head. The American flung himself back from the steel, as his horse plunged, and he found himself on the ground with his empty hands gripping the grass.

  The pony of the strange rider was stamping near his head. The man—ob­viously David—was peering down at him uncertainly, sword in hand. And his companion, dismounting, had caught the rein of Donovan’s horse and picked up his yataghan from the ground.

  Shotha and the others had vanished into the thinning mist—Donovan could hear them crashing away up the hillside. Donovan got to his feet slowly.

  “Well,” he growled, “what now?”

  David paid no attention to the Eng­lish words. Whacking Donovan over the shoulders with the flat of his sword blade, he pointed toward the tower.

  And at the tower the American saw something that cooled his anger. The third man, lying on the ground, was dead—the back of his neck gashed open as if by the blow of a knife. David looked at him for a while in silence, then said something to his follower, who lifted the dead man and slung him across the back of Donovan’s horse.

  Then David grunted and motioned with his head. They started along the trail. Presently Donovan heard the clang-clang of bells again, and looked back over his shoulder. David’s servant was bringing up the rear, driving three cows.

  “Now what,” Donovan thought, “is the idea of all this?”

  No tiger, he knew, had killed that fel­low at the tower. But he wouldn’t have been surprised, just then, to see a tiger come out of the brush and join the pro­cession. Instead of that he found him­self, presently, at a house.

  It stood at the edge of a small lake where white swans floated, and it was made of rough stones, running up the hill. After the bandits had driven the cows up to a rude corral built on the hill­side and the flat top of the house, they made Donovan climb a ladder into the upper room, where David pulled the sheepskin overcoat off him. The big man seemed surprised when he saw the American’s clothes. And he puzzled over the contents of the wallet—peering at the American banknotes as if he had never seen the like before.

  “Maga!” he called.

  A girl answered the call, climbing in the opening by the ladder—a girl as slight as the bandit David was big. When she noticed David, she stopped as if struck.

  Then she saw the American money, and cried out: “Akhi mhendruli!” Snatching the wallet and money from David, she thrust them back into Dono­van’s hands.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she cried, “are you American?”

  “Yeah,” Chuck assented, “from Texas.”

  “Tex-as. I remember that. It is on the Gulf of Mex-ico.”

  SHE looked as scared as if she had seen a ghost. For a moment she poured out words at the impassive David, who answered with growls. Then she turned on Donovan. “Tell me, for why do you ’unt David? For why do you attack him in his own place?”

  “For why ?” Donovan asked, surprised. “Ask him—he started it. I was going after a tiger with Mr. Nicolai’s men, when he jumped me with a sword.”

  “After w’at?”

  “I told you—a tiger.”

  “I do not know w’at a tiger is.”

  Donovan explained what a tiger was, and she shook her head impatiently. “You mean a pelenk. No pelenk comes so ’igh as this on a mountain. No one ’unts pelenks with ’orses and swords. Don’t lie like a fool!”

  She was telling Donovan what he had figured out pretty well for himself. And she was growing angrier by the minute.

  “If you want to know,” Donovan said lazily, “I’m not lying. Suppose you tell me what this racket of yours is, young lady, and what these bandits want to get out of me.”

  “David is not a bandit. He never does ’arm no one.”

  Donovan grinned. “All right then, he doesn’t. He was only having a little saber practice with me.”

  Her dark eyes gleamed forbiddingly. Sarcasm was lost on her.

  “Look here,” he said, “how do you happen to speak English, and what are you doing in this godforsaken place?”

  “I have been to your school, at Robert College in Istanbul. And this is not a godforsaken place. Look!” Running to a wooden chest, she pulled a book out from under some clothes and showed it to the American. It was a cheap Bible and it looked as if it had been used. The shaggy David watched her, like a drowsy bear. “Now you swear by this that you will tell me the truth—everything that happens up at Mr. Nicolai’s house.”

  It gave Donovan a strange feeling, as if he were called to the witness box. He told her exactly what had happened in the last eighteen hours. And the girl—Maga her name was—listened intently.

  At the end she seemed to droop. The fire went out of her eyes. Instead of answering Donovan, she spoke quietly with the man David.

  “Our house is ruined,” she said at last.

  SHE looked white and fragile—hungry, he thought. With the shadow of weariness under those expressive eyes.

  “Maga,” he said, nodding toward the big man, “he doesn’t understand English, does he? Well, will you help me get out of this bandit’s—”

  To his surprise, Maga began to laugh softly. “Okh—okh. He is not like you say a robber. He is a good Christian. And, likewise, David is my ’usband.” Then David, hearing his name, began to talk. And Maga stopped laughing on the inst
ant.

  “David says,” she interpreted, “he is sorry he did not know you were an American, but he ’as never seen an American. He is sorry he ’urt your ’and, and he wants you to eat a festival dinner with him. Now you are his guest, and he has not a guest since the trouble be­gan.”

  “Why—sure.”

  “David,” she went on, “is Kartvelian. That is what you call Georgian, and also he is mhendruli, that is warrior with a sword. Like all of his fathers. He says you handle a sword well, but you cannot ride a ’orse like an abrek. That is, like a man of these mountains.”

  The big man’s beard twitched in a smile, and he added a word or two.

  “He wants you to know surely that his ’eart is made big, because he has an American guest in his ’ouse.”

  Donovan thought of something. “Why did you say I’d ruined your house, Maga?”

  “Because you ’ave done it.” Her slight shoulders moved impatiently. “You do not understand nothing.” Suddenly her dark eyes flamed. “Mr. Nicolai is a dog-born dog. He is sadist. He is—like Nathan’s rich man.”

  “Like what?”

  “The one in the second book of Samuel, chapter twelve. Please don’t talk to me now. After dinner you can go away, where you like.”

  And she slipped away, down the ladder, David following. Donovan whistled softly and got out a cigarette. He felt as if he’d tumbled into a stage where everybody was acting. Every­body except himself. Why, he wondered, had Shotha and the other boys run off when David jumped him? And what were they doing now? Certainly Maga hated Mr. Nicolai, but why should she? She was an appealing little thing, with a temper. Thinking it over, Donovan was sure that the book of Samuel she men­tioned had something to do with the Bible.

  So he took up that volume, turning the leaves while he smoked. He hadn’t had one in his hands for twenty years, but it wasn’t hard to find chapter twelve of Samuel. Donovan read it through twice—that story Nathan told of the rich man who had exceeding many flocks and herds. The one who coveted the one ewe lamb of his poor neighbor. So, when a traveler came to the rich chap’s house, he spared to take of his own flock, and took the ewe lamb of the poor man—the one that played with the children and slept with the family—and dressed it for the traveler.

  FINISHING his cigarette, Donovan looked out of the hole in the wall. The Georgian servant was pounding down the earth with the flat of a spade, on a new grave. Up the trail a way David was sitting on a rock.

  Smoke curled up from the lower region of the stone hut. Donovan climbed down and found Maga bending over the iron bars above the charcoal embers of the fireplace, where the haunches of a pair of rabbits were sizzling. Rice steamed in a black pot.

  “That one ewe lamb,” said Donovan thoughtfully, “what is it?”

  “Me,” Maga explained briefly.

  Her hair fell loose about her face, her cheeks were flushed with the heat. Donovan drew the story out of her.

  More than a year ago, Mr. Nicolai had seen her face, when she had been out on the upper pastures with David’s sheep. And he had desired her, although he had his house full of Circassians and a gypsy or two, with a Persian half-breed. But Maga loved David, and she could not be enticed up to Mr. Nicolai’s house. Mr. Nicolai had dogs, servants, sheep—everything.

  Because Maga would not come to him, he had made things hard for the couple in the stone hut. His men had driven off David’s sheep, and had shot the dog. They were afraid of David because he would kill anyone who touched her.

  Now, Maga explained scornfully, Mr. Nicolai had caught David in a trap. He had baited the trap with an American tourist, and David had blundered into it, because David had been blind with rage when he found Kupri murdered at the watchtower, where the Georgian serv­ant had gone at sunrise as he always did when they drove out the cows to graze.

  “Now they will send a lie to the police at Tiflis. They will say that David attacked you and made you prisoner.” She sighed. “And that is just what he did, because he is stupid in the head, and does not know what a tourist is like.”

  Donovan grinned, thinking of the ten-dollar bet. “He can’t get away with a thing like that.”

  The girl lifted her tired eyes. “But he will. The Russian police will come to take David to prison, and after that Mr. Nicolai will come for me.”

  “Not much. Not if I go back to Tiflis and tell them exactly what happened.”

  Maga shook her head. “You do not understand what it is like here. They will shoot David, because he has made trouble for a tourist.”

  “I’ll talk to Nicolai—”

  “And he will laugh and say I am full of crazy lies. You are a good man, Mr. Donovan, only you understand nothing.”

  THINGS like that, Donovan thought, didn’t happen nowadays. He couldm’t believe it all, when they sat at the feast that evening. Maga had lighted candles for them, and dressed herself up in a velvet vest. She had combed out her hair and put on a silvery cap with a veil. And embroidered slippers. She talked to David, low-voiced, in their own speech, sitting by his knee—waiting un­til the men finished eating the rabbit and rice and cheesecake. It was not proper, she explained to Donovan, for her to eat with men.

  “Gaumerjuba!” David said, smiling, stroking her hair.

  “He means, be happy—victorious,” she said. “You do not have a word like it in English.”

  Donovan noticed how she’d put henna on her nails, when she brought them a silver basin to rinse their hands, after eating, and gave each of them a clean towel.

  “I am not ’ungry,” she explained, clearing away the remains of the feast. “Perhaps later.”

  But she didn’t eat anything. She sat with her head against the big man’s knee, her mind wandering somewhere out of the room. “Will you stay with David as long as you can?” she asked Donovan once.

  In spite of his protest, they gave him the couch in the upper room. After he’d blown out the candles, he tried to think of some answer to Maga’s tale. Prob­ably she suffered from a persecution complex, he reasoned. Certainly the whole thing could be cleared up ... he dozed off, thinking about it. Once he roused, hearing a rustling of paper, and he fancied the floor boards creaked.

  It was long after that, in the cold of early morning, when he heard flames crackling. Heavy boots moved over the floor, David stood in the room, holding a torch.

  Donovan sat up, as the big Georgian walked around the room.

  “Maga,” David said. He looked rest­less and anxious. Down below someone was moving hurriedly.

  When Donovan started to get out of the couch, a folded paper slipped to the floor. He had not seen it before, and he picked it up and glanced at it.

  It had a few words written on it in charcoal, in a round, schoolgirl hand. Mr. Donovan I am going away to the only place where I can so David he will not be killed. Please you do not tell him nothing but tell the G. P. U. in Tiflis he never does mean no harm and so goodby. Very truly yours, Maga.

  Maga’s grammar might be screwy but her meaning was clear enough. Only Donovan couldn’t think what she had done. Might have jumped in the lake, or gone off.

  DAVID fixed the torch in the wall while he took some things out of the chest.

  He took out what seemed to be a bundle of jangling steel chains. When he put it on over his head, it proved to be a shirt of chain mail, the links pol­ished until they gleamed. His arms in long white lambskin sleeves moved slowly, putting a steel cap on his head, and taking up his sword again.

  Then he went down the ladder with the torch, and Donovan followed. The servant was holding the stirrup of a sad­dled pony. David mounted, and rode away.

  Donovan wasn’t going to be left be­hind. He wanted to be up there, to ex­plain things to Mr. Nicolai when David arrived. But it took him some time to find the pony he’d ridden that morning, and saddle the restive beast with only a smoldering torch for light. By the time he was on the trail, David was far out of hearing.

  Lashing the pony into a canter, Dono­van let
him have his head—figuring that he’d find his way back to the Nicolai stables. After a while he sighted the tower of Nicolai’s house, and something else that he couldn’t make out at first. A white, gleaming figure pacing toward the darkness of Nicolai’s courtyard.

  This, he knew, would be David. Dogs were howling and snarling somewhere. And David was riding up to Nicolai’s front door. Riding slowly. Donovan lashed his pony into a gallop.

  He was almost up to David when a spurt of light came out of the darkness of the courtyard, followed by the crack of a revolver. Then a spattering of shots from two revolvers.

  Donovan started to get out of his sad­dle, down to the ground. The bullets were snapping over his head, but David kept on.

  “Nicolai!” Donovan yelled. “Shotha! What the hell are you firing at—”

  They must have heard him. He got in front of David, in that haze of moon­light, and the shooting stopped. Dono­van’s pony shied violently, and he noticed the dark blur of the mangled bear’s carcass on the ground. Getting out of the saddle, he walked forward.

  And Nicolai and Shotha emerged from the shadow of the house, thirty feet away, coming toward him.

  “Mr. Donovan, sir,” Shotha babbled, “what arre you doing? Come in here, sir, or that bandit he will surely kill you!”

  Donovan’s temper was getting hot. “That’s what you say. Now listen to me. Who killed this man’s servant? And where’s his wife? And what’s your reason for blazing away at us now?”

  Shotha’s jaw dropped, and he whis­pered to Mr. Nicolai.

  “You two,” Donovan told them, “will have plenty of questions to answer in Tiflis. I'll see to that—”

  Then he saw that Mr. Nicolai was shoving cartridges into the cylinder of a revolver, holding the other one under his arm. He looked frightened. His lips twitched back from his teeth, and he yelled with sudden rage.