by Talbot Mundy
Chapter Nine"And you left your friend to help me?"
WITH NEW TONGUES
Oh, bard of Avon, thou whose measured museMost sweetly sings Elizabethan viewsTo shame ungentle smiths of journaleseWith thy sublimest verse, what words are theseThat shine amid the lines like jewels setBut ere thine hour no bard had chosen yet?Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much lawNot only limn the truths no others sawBut also, lord not slave of written word,Lend ear to what no other poet heardAnd, liberal minded on the Mermaid benchWith bow for blade and chaff for serving wenchAwait from overseas slang-slinging JackWho brought the new vocabulary back?
So we three stood still in a row disconsolate, with three raggedmen of Zeitoon holding our horses and theirs, and watched Monty rideaway in the midst of Kagig's motley command, he not turning to waveback to us because he did not like the parting any better than wedid, although he had pretended to be all in favor of it.
Kagig had left us one mule for our luggage, and the beast was unlikelyto be overburdened, for at the last minute he had turned surly, andas he sat like a general of division to watch his patch-and-stringcommand go by he showed how Eye of Zeitoon only failed him for atitle in giving his other eye--the one he kept on us--too littlecredit. It was a good-looking crowd of irregulars that he reviewed,and every bearded, goat-skin clad veteran in it had a word to sayto him, and he an answer--sometimes a sermon by way of answer. Buthe saw every item that we removed from the common packs, and sternlyreproved us when we tried to exceed what he considered reasonable.At that he based our probable requirements on what would have beensurfeit of encumbrance for himself.
"Empty your pockets, effendim!" he ordered at last. "Six cartridgeseach for rifle, and six each for pistol must be all. Your cartridgesI know they are. But my people are in extremity!"
When he rode away at last, sitting his horse in the fashion of aDon Cossack and shepherding Maga in front of him because she keptchecking her gray stallion for another look at Will, he left us noalternative than to take to the mountains swiftly unless we caredto starve. We watched Monty's back disappear over a rise, with RustumKhan close behind, and then Fred signed to one of the three Zeitoonlito lead on.
All three of the men Kagig had left with us were surly, mainly, nodoubt, because they disliked separation from their friends. Butthere was fear, too, expressed in their manner of riding close together,and in the fidgety way in which they watched the smoke of burningArmenian villages that smudged the sky to our left.
"If they try to bolt after Kagig and leave us in the lurch I'm goingto waste exactly one cartridge as a warning," Fred announced."After that--!"
"Probably Kagig 'ud skin them if they turned up without us,"remarked Will.
There was something in that theory, for we learned later what Kagig'sferocity could be when driven hard enough. But from first to lastthose men of Zeitoon never showed a symptom of treachery, althoughtheir resentment at having to turn their backs toward home appearedto deepen hourly.
With strange unreason they made no haste, whereas we were in a frenzyof impatience; and when Fred sought to improve their temper by singingthe songs that had hitherto acted like charms on Kagig's whole command,they turned in their saddles and cursed him for calling attention to us.
"Inch goozek?" demanded one of them (What would you like?), and witha gesture that made the blood run cold he suggested the choice betweenhanging and disembowelment.
Will solved the speed problem by striving to push past them alongthe narrow track; and they were so determined to keep in front ofus that within half an hour from the start our horses were sweatingfreely. Then we began to climb, dismounting presently to lead ourhorses, and all notions of speed went the way of other vanity.
Several times looking back toward our right hand we caught sightof Kagig's string threading its way over a rise, or passing likea line of ants under the brow of a gravel bank. But they were toofar away to discern which of the moving specks might be Monty, althoughKagig was now and then unmistakable, his air of authority growingon him and distinguishing him as long as he kept in sight.
We saw nothing of the footprints in soft earth that Maga had readso offhandedly. In fact we took another way, less cluttered up withroots and bushes, that led not straight, but persistently toward anup-towering crag like an eye-tooth. Below it was thick forest, shapedlike a shovel beard, and the crag stuck above the beard like an oldman's last tooth.
But mountains have a discouraging way of folding and refolding sothat the air-line from point to point bears no relation to the lengthof the trail. The last kites were drooping lazily toward their perchesfor the night when we drew near the edge of the forest at last, andwere suddenly brought to a halt by a challenge from overhead. Wecould see nobody. Only a hoarse voice warned us that it was deathto advance another yard, and our tired animals needed no persuasionto stand still.
There, under a protruding lock as it were of the beard, we waitedin shadow while an invisible somebody, whose rifle scraped rathernoisily against a branch, eyed every inch of us at his leisure.
"Who are you?" he demanded at last in Armenian, and one of our threemen enlightened him in long-drawn detail.
The explanation did not satisfy. We were told to remain exactlywhere we were until somebody else was fetched. After twenty minutes,when it was already pitch-dark, we heard the breaking of twigs, andlow voices as three or four men descended together among the trees.Then we were examined again from close quarters in the dark, andthere are few less agreeable sensations. The goose-flesh rises andthe clammy cold sweat takes all the comfort out of waning courage.
But somebody among the shadowy tree-trunks at last seemed to thinkhe recognized familiar attitudes, and asked again who we might be.And, weary of explanations that only achieved delay our man lumpedus all in one invoice and snarled irritably:
"These are Americans!"
The famous "Open sesame" that unlocked Ali Baba's cave never workedswifter then. Reckless of possible traps no less than five men flungthemselves out of Cimmerian gloom and seized us in welcoming arms.I was lifted from the saddle by a man six inches shorter than myself,whose arms could have crushed me like an insect.
"We might have known Americans would bring us help!" he panted inmy ear. His breath came short not from effort, but excitement.
Fred was in like predicament. I could just see his shadow strugglingin the embrace of an enthusiastic host, and somewhere out of sightWill was answering in nasal indubitable Yankee the questions of threeother men.
"This way! Come this way! Bring the horses, oh, Zeitoonli! Americans!Americans! God heard us--there have come Americans!"
Threading this and that way among tree-trunks that to our unaccustomedeyes were simply slightly denser blots on blackness, Will managedto get between Fred and me.
"We're all of us Yankees this trip!" he whispered, and I knew hewas grinning, enjoying it hugely. So often he had been taken foran Englishman because of partnership with us that he had almost ceasedto mind; but he spared himself none of the amusement to be drawnout of the new turn of affairs, nor us any of the chaff that we hadnever spared him.
"Take my advice," he said, "and try to act you're Yanks for all you'vegot. If you can make blind men believe it, you may get out of thiswith whole skins!"
I expected the retort discourteous to that from Fred, who was betweenWill and me, shepherded like us by hard-breathing, unseen men. Buthe was much too subtly skilful in piercing the chain-mail of Will'shumor--even in that hour.
"Sure!" he answered. "I guess any gosh-durned rube in these parts'll know without being told what neck o' the woods I hail from.Schenectady's my middle name! I'm--"
"Oh, my God!" groaned Will. "We don't talk that way in the States.The missionaries--"
"I'm the guy who put the 'oh!' in Ohio!" continued Fred. "I'm runningmate to Colonel Cody, and I've ridden herd on half the cows in HocuspocusCounty, Wis.! I can sing The Star-Spangled Banner with my head underwater, and eat a chain of fra
nkforts two links a minute! I'm theriproaring original two-gun man from Tabascoville, and any gink whodoubts it has no time to say his prayers!"
There were paragraphs more of it, delivered at uneven intervals betweendeep gasps for breath as we made unsteady progress up-hill amongroots and rocks left purposely for the confusion of an enemy. Atfirst it filled Will with despair that set me laughing at him. ThenWill threw seriousness to the winds and laughed too, so that thespell of impending evil, caused as much as anything by forced separationfrom Monty, was broken.
But it did better than put us in rising spirits. It convinced theArmenians! That foolish jargon, picked up from comic papers andthe penny dreadfuls, convince more firmly than any written proofthe products of the mission schools, whose one ambition was to beAmerican themselves, and whose one pathetic peak of humor was theoccasional glimpse of United States slang dropped for their edificationby missionary teachers!
"By jimminy!" remarked an Armenian near me.
"Gosh-all-hemlocks!" said another.
Thenceforward nothing undermined their faith in us. Plenty of amusedrepudiation was very soon forthcoming from another source, but itpassed over their heads. Fred and I, because we used fool expressionswithout relation to the context or proportion, were established asthe genuine article; Will, perhaps a rather doubtful quantity withhis conservative grammar and quiet speech, was accepted for our sakes.They took an arm on either side of us to help us up the hill, andin proof of heart-to-heart esteem shouted "Oopsidaisy!" when we stumbledin the pitchy dark. When we were brought to a stand at last by asnarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answeredwith the chorus of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to havedied an unnatural death almost a quarter of a century before.
Suddenly we smelt Standard oil, and a man emerged through a gap inancient masonry less than six feet away carrying a battered, cheap"hurricane" lantern whose cracked glass had been reenforced withpatches of brown paper. He was armed to the teeth--literally. Hehad a long knife in his mouth, a pistol in his left hand, and a rifleslung behind him, but after one long look at us, holding the lanternto each face in turn, he suddenly discarded all appearances of ferocity.
"You know about pistols?" he demanded of me in English, because Iwas nearest, and thrust his Mauser repeater under my nose. "Whywon't this one work? I have tried it every way."
"Lordy!" remarked Will.
"Lead on in!" I suggested. Then, remembering my new part, "It'llhave to be some defect if one of us can't fix it!"
The gap-guard purred approval and swung his lantern by way of invitationto follow him as he turned on a naked heel and led the way. We enteredone at a time through a hole in the wall of what looked like thedungeon of an ancient castle, and followed him presently up the narrowstone steps leading to a trap-door in the floor above. The trap-doorwas made of odds and ends of planking held in place by weights.When he knocked on it with the muzzle of his rifle we could hearmen lifting things before they could open it.
When a gap appeared overhead at last there was no blaze of lightto make us blink, but a row of heads at each edge of the hole withnothing but another lantern somewhere in the gloom behind them.One by one we went up and they made way for us, closing in each timeto scan the next-comer's face; and when we were all up they laidthe planks again, and piled heavy stones in place. Then an old manlighted another lantern, using no match, although there was a boxof them beside him on the floor, but transferring flame patientlywith a blade of dry grass. Somebody else lit a torch of resinouswood that gave a good blaze but smoked abominably.
"What has become of our horses?" demanded Fred, looking swiftlyabout him.
We were in a great, dim stone-walled room whose roof showed a cornerof star-lit sky in one place. There were twenty men surroundingus, but no woman. Two trade-blankets sewn together with string hangingover an opening in the wall at the far end of the room suggested,nevertheless, that the other sex might be within ear-shot.
"The horses?" Fred demanded again, a bit peremptorily.
One of the men who had met us smirked and made apologetic motionswith his hands.
"They will be attended to, effendi--"
"I know it! I guarantee it! By the ace of brute force, if a horseis missing--! Arabaiji!"
One of our three Zeitoonli stepped forward.
"Take the other two men, Arabaiji, and go down to the horses. Groomthem. Feed them. If any one prevents you, return and tell me."Then he turned to our hosts. "Some natives of Somaliland once atemy horse for supper, but I learned that lesson. So did they! Itrust I needn't be severe with you!"
There was no furniture in the room, except a mat at one corner.They were standing all about us, and perfectly able to murder usif so disposed, but none made any effort to restrain our Zeitoonli.
"Now we're three to their twenty!" I whispered, and Will nodded.But Fred carried matters with a high hand.
"Send a man down with them to show them where the horses are, please!"
There seemed to be nobody in command, but evidently one man was leastof all, for they all began at once to order him below, and he went,grumbling.
"You see, effendi, we have no meat at all," said the man who hadspoken first.
"But you don't look hungry," asserted Fred.
They were a ragged crowd, unshaven and not too clean, with the usualair of men whose only clothes are on their backs and have been therefor a week past. All sorts of clothes they wore--odds and ends forthe most part, probably snatched and pulled on in the first momentof a night alarm.
"Not yet, effendi. But we have no meat, and soon we shall have eatenall the grain."
"Well," said Fred, "if you need horse-meat, gosh durn you, take itfrom the Turks!"
"Gosh durn you!" grinned three or four men, nudging one another.
They were lost between a furtive habit born of hiding for dear life,a desire to be extremely friendly, and a new suspicion of Fred'shigh hand. Fred's next words added disconcertment.
"Where is Miss Vanderman?" he demanded, suddenly.
Before any one had time to answer Will made a swift move to the wall,and took his stand where nobody could get behind him. He did notproduce his pistol, but there was that in his eye that suggestedit. I followed suit, so that in the event of trouble we stood afair chance of protecting Fred.
"What do you mean?" asked three Armenians together.
"Did you never see men try to cover a secret before?" Will whispered.
"Or give it away?" I added. Six of the men placed themselves betweenFred and the opening where the blankets hung, ostentatiously notlooking at the blankets.
"Have you an American lady with you?" Fred asked, and as he spokehe reached a hand behind him. But it was not his pistol that he drew.He carries his concertina slung to him by a strap with the care thatsome men lavish on a camera. He took it in both hands, and loosedthe catch.
"Have you an American lady named Miss Vanderman with you?" he repeated.
"Effendi, we do not understand."
He repeated in Armenian, and then in Turkish, but they shook theirheads.
"Very well," he said, "I'll soon find out. A mission-school pupilmight sing My Country, 'Tis of Thee or Suwannee River or Poor BlindJoe. You know Poor Blind Joe, eh? Sung it in school? I thoughtso. I'll bet you don't know this one."
He filled his impudent instrument with wind and forthwith the bellyof that ancient castle rang to the strains of a tune no missionariessing, although no doubt the missionary ladies are familiar with ityet from where the Arctic night shuts down on Behring Sea to theSolomon Islands and beyond--a song that achieved popularity by lackingnational significance, and won a war by imparting recklessness totyphus camps. I was certain then, and still dare bet to-day thatthose ruined castle walls re-echoed for the first time that eveningto the clamor of '--a hot time in the old town to-night!"
Seeing the point in a flash, we three roared the song together, andthen again, and then once more for interest
, the Armenians eyingus spell-bound, at a loss to explain the madness. Then there beganto be unexplained movements behind the blanket hanging; and a minutelater a woman broke through--an unmistakable Armenian, still good-lookingbut a little past the prime of life, and very obviously mentallydistressed. She scarcely took notice of us, but poured forth a longflow of rhetoric interspersed with sobs for breath. I could seeFred chuckling as he listened. All the facial warnings that a dozenmen could make at the woman from behind Fred's back could not checkher from telling all she knew.
Nor were Will and I, who knew no Armenian, kept in doubt very longas to the nature of her trouble. We heard another woman's voice,behind two or three sets of curtains by the sound of it, that camerapidly nearer; and there were sounds of scuffling. Then weheard words.
"Please play that tune again, whoever you are! Do you hear me?Do you understand?"
"Boston!" announced Will, diagnosing accents.
"You bet your life I understand!" Fred shouted, and clanged throughhalf a dozen bars again.
That seemed satisfactory to the owner of the voice. The scufflingwas renewed, and in a moment she had burst through the crude curtainswith two women clinging to her, and stood there with her brown hairfalling on her shoulders and her dress all disarrayed but lookingsimply serene in contrast to the women who tried to restrain her.They tried once or twice to thrust her back through the curtain,although clearly determined to do her no injury; but she held herground easily. At a rough guess it was tennis and boating that haddone more for her muscles than ever strenuous housework did for theArmenians.
"Who are you?" she asked, and Will laughed with delight.
"I reckon you'll be Miss Vanderman?' suggested Fred in outrageousYankee accent. She stared hard at him.
"I am Miss Vanderman. Who are you, please.
I sat down on the great stone they had rolled over the trap, foreven in that flickering, smoky light I could see that this youngwoman was incarnate loveliness as well as health and strength. Willwas our only ladies' man (for Fred is no more than random troubadour,decamping before any love-affair gets serious). The thought conjuredvisions of Maga, and what she might do. For about ten seconds myhead swam, and I could hardly keep my feet.
Will left the opening bars of the overture to Fred, with rather theair of a man who lets a trout have line. And Fred blunderedin contentedly.
"I'll allow my name is Oakes--Fred Oakes," he said.
"Please explain!" She looked from one to the other of us.
"We three are American towerists, going the grand trip." (Remember,a score of Armenians were listening. Fred's intention was at leastas much to continue their contentment as to extract humor from thesituation.) "You being reported missing we allowed to pick you upand run you in to Tarsus. Air you agreeable?"
The women were still clinging to her as if their whole future dependedon keeping her prisoner, yet without hurt. She looked down at thempathetically, and then at the men, who were showing no dispositionto order her release.
"I don't understand in the least yet. I find you bewildering. Canyou contrive to let us talk for a few minutes alone?"
"You bet your young life I can!"
Fred stepped to the wall beside us, but we none of us drew pistolyet. We had no right to presume we were not among friends.
"Thirty minutes interlude!" he announced. "The man who stands inthis room one minute from now, or who comes back to the room withoutmy leave, is not my friend, and shall learn what that means!"
He repeated the soft insinuation in Armenian, and then in Turkishbecause he knows that language best. There is not an Armenian whohas not been compelled to learn Turkish for all official purposes,and unconsciously they gave obedience to the hated conquerors' tongue,repressing the desire to argue that wells perennially in Armenianbreasts. They had not been long enough enjoying stolen liberty toovercome yet the full effects of Turkish rule.
"And oblige me by leaving that lady alone with us!" Fred continued."Let those dames fall away!"
Somebody said something to the women. Another Armenian remarkedmore or less casually that we should be unable to escape from theroom in any case. The others rolled the great stone from the trapand shoved the smaller stones aside, and then they all filed downthe stone stairs, leaving us alone--although by the trembling blanketsit was easy to tell that the women had not gone far. The last manwho went below handed the spluttering torch to Miss Vanderman, asif she might need it to defend herself, and she stood there shakingit to try and make it smoke less until the planks were back in place.She was totally unconscious of it, but with the torch-light gleamingon her hair and reflected in her blue eyes she looked like the spiritof old romance come forth to start a holy war.
"Now please explain!" she begged, when I had pushed the last stonein place. "First, what kind of Americans can you possibly be? Doyou all use such extraordinary accents, and such expressions?"
"Don't I talk American to beat the band?" objected Fred. "Sit downon this rock a while, and I'll convince you."
She sat on the rock, and we gathered round her. She was not morethan twenty-two or three, but as perfectly assured and fearless asonly a well-bred woman can be in the presence of unshaven men shedoes not know. Fred would have continued the tomfoolery, but Willoared in.
"I'm Will Yerkes, Miss Vanderman."
"Oh!"
"I know Nurse Vanderman at the mission."
"Yes, she spoke of you."
"Fred Oakes here is--"
"Is English as they make them, yes, I know! Why the amazing efforts to--"
"I stand abashed, like the leopard with the spots unchangeable!"said Fred, and grinned most unashamedly.
"They're both English."
"Yes, I see, but why--"
"It's only as good Americans that we three could hope to enter herealive. They're death on all other sorts of non-Armenians now they'vetaken to the woods. We supposed you were here, and of course wehad to come and get you."
She nodded. "Of course. But how did you know?"
"That's a long story. Tell us first why you're here, and why you'rea prisoner."
"I was going to the mission at Marash--to stay a year there and help,before returning to the States. They warned me in Tarsus that thetrip might be dangerous, but I know how short-handed they are atMarash, and I wouldn't listen. Besides, they picked the best menthey could find to bring me on the way, and I started. I had a Turkishpermit to travel--a teskere they call it--see, I have it here. Itwas perfectly ridiculous to think of my not going."
"Perfectly!" Fred agreed. "Any young woman in your place would havecome away!"
She laughed, and colored a trifle. "Women and men are equals inthe States, Mr. Oakes."
"And the Turk ought to know that! I get you, Miss Vanderman! Isee the point exactly!"
"At any rate, I started. And we slept at night in the houses ofArmenians whom my guides knew, so that the journey wasn't bad atall. Everything was going splendidly until we reached a sort ofcrossroads--if you can call those goat-tracks roads without stretchingtruth too far--and there three men came galloping toward us on blownhorses from the direction of Marash. We could hardly get them tostop and tell us what the trouble was, they were in such a hurry,but I set my horse across the path and we held them up."
"As any young lady would have done!" Fred murmured.
"Never mind. I did it! They told us, when they could get their breathand quit looking behind them like men afraid of ghosts, that theTurks in Marash--which by all accounts is a very fanatical place--hadstarted to murder Armenians. They yelled at me to turn and run.
"'Run where?' I asked them. 'The Turks won't murder me!'
"That seemed to make them think, and they and my six men all talkedtogether in Armenian much too fast for me to understand a word ofit. Then they pointed to some smoke on the sky-line that they saidwas from burning Armenian homes in Marash.
"s'Why didn't you take refuge in the mission?' I asked the
m. Andthey answered that it was because the mission grounds were alreadyfull of refugees.
"Well, if that were true--and mind you, I didn't believe it--it wasa good reason why I should hurry there and help. If the missionstaff was overworked before that they would be simply overwhelmednow. So I told them to turn round and come to Marash with me andmy six men."
"And what did they say?" we demanded together.
"They laughed. They said nothing at all to me. Perhaps they thoughtI was mad. They talked together for five minutes, and then withoutconsulting me they seized my bridle and galloped up a goat-path thatled after a most interminable ride to this place."
"Where they hold you to ransom?"
"Not at all. They've been very kind to me. I think that at thebottom of their thoughts there may be some idea of exchanging mefor some of their own women whom the Turks have made away with.But a stronger motive than that is the determination to keep me safeand be able to produce me afterward in proof of their bona fides.They've got me here as witness, for another thing. And then, I'vestarted a sort of hospital in this old keep. There are literallyhundreds of men and women hiding in these hills, and the women arebeginning to come to me for advice, and to talk with me. I'm prettynearly as useful here as I would be at Marash."
"And you're--let's see--nineteen-twenty--one--two--not more thantwenty-two," suggested Fred.
"Is intelligence governed by age and sex in England." she retorted,and Fred smiled in confession of a hit.
"Go on," said Will. "Tell us."
"There's nothing more to tell. When I started to run towardthe--ah--music, the women tried to prevent me. They knew Americanshad come, and they feared you might take me away."
"They were guessing good!" grinned Will.
She shook her head, and the loosened coils of hair fell lower. Onecould hardly have blamed a man who had desired her in that lawlessland and sought to carry her off. The Armenian men must have beentemptation proof, or else there had been safety in numbers.
"I shall stay here. How could I leave them? The women need me.There are babies--daily--almost hourly--here in these lean hills,and no organized help of any kind until I came."
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"Nearly two days. Wait till I've been here a week and you'll see."
"We can't wait to see!" Will answered. "We've a friend of our ownin a tight place. The best we can do is to rescue you--"
"I don't need to be rescued!"
"--to rescue you--take you back to Tarsus, where you'll be safe untilthe trouble's over--and then hurry to the help of our own man."
"Who is your own man? Tell me about him."
"He's a prince."
"Really?"
"No, really an earl--Earl of Montdidier. White. White all throughto the wish-bone. Whitest man I ever camped with. He's the goods."
"If you'd said less I'd have skinned you for an ingrate!" Fredannounced. "Monty is a man men love."
Miss Vanderman nodded. "Where is he?"
"On the way to a place called Zeitoon," answered Will.
"He's a hostage, held by Armenians in the hope of putting pressureon the Turks. Kagig--the Armenians, that's to say--let us go torescue you, knowing that he was sufficiently important fortheir purpose."
"And you left your friend to help me?"
"Of course. What do you suppose?"
"And if I were to go with you to Tarsus, what then?"
"He says we're to ride herd on the consulate and argue."
"Will you?"
"Sure we'll argue. We'll raise particular young hell. Then backwe go to Zeitoon to join him!"
"Would you have gone to Tarsus except on my account?"
Will hesitated.
"No. I see. Of course you wouldn't. Well. What do you take mefor? You did not know me then. You do now. Do you think I'd consentto your leaving your fine friend in pawn while you dance attendanceon me? Thank you kindly for your offer, but go back to him! Ifyou don't I'll never speak to one of you again!"
