The Eye of Zeitoon Part 26

The men had treated the hanging blankets with the respect the ancient Jews accorded to the veil of the Holy of Holies. (We learned afterward that there was an Armenian man of the party who had followed a circus one summer all across the States, and had brought that sensible precaution home with him as rule number one for successful management of mixed a.s.semblies.) Gloria Vanderman made a run for the curtain and dived behind it. We heard the women welcome her.

"Let's go!" said Will.

Will had ever been our ladies' man in all our wanderings, because women could never resist his unaffected comrades.h.i.+p. Even among Americans he was rare in his gift of according to women equality not only of liberty, but of understanding and good sense, and it went like wine to the heads of some we had met, so that Will was seldom without a s.e.x-problem on his hands and ours. But Will was too good a comrade to be surrendered to any woman lightly.

"d.a.m.n that chicken!" murmured Fred by way of praying fervently, pausing in the breach in the wall to rub his s.h.i.+n. "Feel that bruise, will you! No young woman ever brought me luck yet!"

"What are you waiting for?" complained a voice from outer darkness.

"Come on, you rummies!"

Fred sat down on the protruding stone that had injured his s.h.i.+n, and detained me with his arm across the opening.

"Mark my words! In order that that young woman may be educated to consider Will Yerkes a paragon of unimaginable virtues, we-you and I-are going to have to do what he calls 'hustle.' We're going to see speed, and we're going to sweat, trying to catch up. There isn't a scatterbrained adventure conceivable that we're not going to be forced into, nor an imaginable peril that we're not going to have to pull him out of. We're going to be cursed for our trouble, and ridiculed to make amus.e.m.e.nt for her majesty. And at the end of it all we're going to be patronized for a couple of ignorant d.a.m.ned fools who don't know better than be bachelors. What's worse, we're going to submit tamely. What is infinitely worse, we're going to like it! There are times when I doubt the sanity of my whole s.e.x!"

"Have you guys taken root?" demanded the familiar voice and we heard Will's returning footsteps.

"No, America. But I have to sit down when my s.h.i.+n hurts and I'm seized with the gift of prophecy."

"Huh! We'll find Miss Vanderman tired of waiting for us with the women. Since when has a crack on the s.h.i.+n made a baby of you? You used to be tough enough!"

"D'you get the idea?" chuckled Fred. "We're coming, Will, we're coming."

Perfectly unconsciously Will took the lead, and most outrageously he drove us. Not that his driving was not shrewd, for his usually practical and quick mind seemed to take on added brilliancy. And since we first joined partners.h.i.+p-he and Monty and Fred and I-we had always been contented to follow the lead of whichever held it at the moment. But there was new efficiency, and impatience of a brand-new kind that would not rest until every man and animal had been rummaged in darkness out of that old ruin, and men, horses, cows, goats, bags of grain, and fifty cases of cartridges were driven down through the forest like water forced through a sieve, and were gathered in the only open s.p.a.ce discoverable.

There we cooled our heels, fearful and full of vague imaginings until Miss Vanderman should bring the women, not at all encouraged by shouts in the distance that well might be the exulting of plundering Kurds, nor by occasional rifle-shots that sounded continually nearer, nor by the angry crimson glow of burning roofs that lighted half the horizon.

We waited an hour, Will objecting whenever either of us proposed to return and speed Miss Vanderman.

"Aw, what's the use? D'you suppose she doesn't know we're waiting?"

At last Fred proposed that Will himself go and investigate. He went through the form of demurring, but yielded gracefully.

"The spirit," Fred chuckled, "is weak, and the flesh is willing!"

Will handed his mule's reins to an Armenian and started alone up-hill through the pitch-dark forest; and because the world is mixed of unexpectedness and grim jest in fairly equal proportions, five minutes after he left us Gloria Vanderman came leading the women by another path.

To avoid confusion with our part, and for sake of silence, she had led them a circuit, and except for the occasional wail of a child and a little low talking that blended like the hum of insects with the night, they made very little noise. The rear was brought up by the strongest women carrying the sick and wounded on litters that had been improvised in a hurry, and like most things of the sort were much too heavy.

"Your mule is ready," said I. But she shook her head.

"You gentlemen must give your mules up to the sick and wounded.

We well ones can walk."

I did not know how to answer her, although I knew she was wrong. The way to organize a marching column is not to level down to the ability of the weakest, although the pace of the weakest may have to be the measure of speed. We, who had to protect the column and shepherd it, would need our mounts; without them we should all be at the mercy of any enemy, with no corresponding gain to any one except the litter-bearers. All the same, I did not care to take issue with that capable young woman then and there. She would have put me in the wrong and left me speechless and indignant, after the fas.h.i.+on that is older than poor Shylock's tale.

But Fred is made of sterner stuff than I, and was never above amusing himself at the expense of anybody's dignity.

"Will is the youngest," he answered. "Besides, he's keeping us all waiting with his love-affairs! He ought to be made to walk!"

"His love-affairs?"

"He went into the woods to see a woman," Fred answered imperturbably.

"Let him forfeit his mule. Here he comes. Did you find her, America?"

Will emerged out of gloom with a grin on his face.

"Just my luck!" he said simply. "What are we waiting for? I can hear the Kurds. Let's start."

At that Gloria got excited.

"D'you mean you're willing to leave a woman behind alone in that forest?" she demanded, and Will's jaw dropped.

Fred nudged my ribs.

"Come on! We've given 'em a ground for their first quarrel. They'll never thank us if we wait a week. Mount! Walk-ride!"

We sent our two Zeitoonli in advance to show the way. True to his word, Arabaiji had left us, mule and all, and we missed him as we strove to get the unwieldy column marshaled and moving in line. We did not see Will and Gloria again that night, except when they pa.s.sed between us, walking, arguing-Will explaining-we sitting on our mules on either side of the track until the last of the swarm tailed by. Then we brought up the rear together, to drive the stragglers and look out for pursuit.

"Not that I know what the devil we'll do if the Kurds get after us!" said Fred.

"Let's hope they make for the castle to-night, and waste time plundering that."

"Piffle!" he answered.

"Why?"

"Because, you a.s.s, if they get to the place and find if empty they'll deduce, being less than idiots, that we're not far off and that we're at their mercy in the open! Let's hope to G.o.d they funk attacking in the dark, and wait out of range of the walls until daylight. In that case we've a chance. Otherwise-I've still got six rifle cartridges, and four for my pistol. How many have you?"

"Six of each."

"Then you owe me one for my pistol."

I pa.s.sed it to him.

"So. Now we're good for exactly twenty-two Kurds between us. If we're pursued I propose to give those two young lovers a chance by making every cartridge count from behind cover."

"They'd hear the shooting and-"

"Not if we drop far enough behind."

"They'd hear shooting and Will, at any rate, would ride back."

"He couldn't! He'd have to look after the girl and the column."

"All the same-Will's-"

"I know he is. Very well. I'll arrange it another way. You wait behind here."

So I rode along slowly, and he spurred his horse to a trot. But he did not hold the trot long. I could hear him objurgating, coaxing, encouraging, explaining, and the shrill voices of women answering, as he tried at one and the same time to pa.s.s the unfortunates in the dark and to make them see the grim necessity for speed. Soon I grew as busy as he, bullying litter-bearers and mothers burdened with crying babies. In times of ma.s.sacre and war, survivors are not necessarily those who enjoyed the best of it. Nearly-drowned men brought to life again would forego the process if the choice were theirs, and there were nearly twenty women who would have preferred death to that night's march. But I did not dare load my horse with babies, since it would likely be needed before dawn for sterner work.

It was more than an hour before Fred loomed in sight again, standing beside his horse in wait for me. He, too, had resisted the temptation to relieve mothers of their living loads (not that they ever expected it).