Those who survive this night shall have brave memories!"
I got to my feet to shake hands with him, and I think he appreciated the courtesy, for his stern eyes softened for a moment. He saluted Gloria rather perfunctorily as became his att.i.tude toward women, and strode away to a point half-way between the door and Monty. There he turned, facing the table.
"Lord sahib bahadur!" he said sonorously.
Monty got up and stood facing him.
"Salaam!"
"Salaam, Rustum Khan!" Monty answered, returning the salute, and the others got to their feet in a hurry, and stood at attention.
Then the Rajput faced about and went striding through the doorless opening into the black night-the last I was destined to see of him alive.
"May we all prove as faithful and brave as that man!" said Monty, sitting down again, and Kagig cracked his knuckles.
Gloria and I went over and sat at the table, and seeing me in a state to understand things Monty gave me a precis of the situation.
"We"re making a great beacon of this castle," he said. "Three hundred men and women are piling in the felled logs and trees and down-wood-everything that will burn. We shall need light on the scene. Rustum Khan has gone to hold the clay ramp and make sure the Turks turn up this castle road. Fred is to hold the corner; we"ve fortified the Zeitoon side of the road, and Fred and his men are to make sure the Turks don"t spread out through the trees. Kagig, Will and I, with twenty-five very carefully picked men for each of us, wait for the Turks at the bottom of the road and put up a feint of resistance. Our business will be to make it look as little like a trap and as much like a desperate defense as possible. We hope to make it seem we"re caught napping and fighting in the last ditch."
"Last ditch is true enough!" Fred commented cheerfully. Fred was obviously in his best humor, faced by a situation that needed no cynicism to discolor it-full of fight and perfectly contented.
"Practically all of the rest of the men and women who are not watching the enemy on the other side of Beirut Dagh," Monty went on, "are hidden, or will be hidden in the timber on either side of the road. We"re hoping to G.o.d they"ll have sense enough to keep silent until the beacon is lighted. You"re to light the beacon, since you"re recovering so finely-you and Miss Vanderman."
"Yes, but when?" said I.
"When the bugles blow. We"ve got six bugles-"
"Only two of them are cornets and one"s a trombone," Fred put in.
"And when they all sound together, then set the castle alight and kill any one you see who isn"t an Armenian!"
"Or us!" said Fred. "You"re asked not to kill one of us!"
"As a matter of fact," said Monty, "I rather expect to be near you by that time, because we don"t want to give the signal until as many Turks as possible are caught in the road like rats. At the signal we dose the road at both ends; Rustum Khan and Fred from the bottom end, and we at the top."
"Most of the murder," Fred explained cheerfully, "will be done by the women hidden in the trees on either flank. As long as they don"t shoot across the road and kill one another it"ll be a picnic!"
"How do you know the Turks will walk into the trap?" I asked.
"Ten "traitors,"" said Monty, "have let themselves get caught at intervals since noon. One of Kagig"s spies has got across to us with news that Mahmoud means to finish the hash of Zeitoon to-night. His men have been promised all the loot and all the women."
"Except one!" Fred added with a glance at Gloria.
"Two! Except two!" remarked Kagig with a glance at the door. We looked, and held our breath.
Maga Jhaere stood there, with a hand on the masonry on each side!
"You fool, Kagig, what you fill this castle full of wood for?" she demanded.
Kagig beckoned to her.
"To burn little traitoresses!" he answered tenderly. "Come here!"
She walked over to him, and he put his arm around her waist, looking up from his seat into her face as if studying it almost for the first time. She began running her fingers through his hair.
"Is she not beautiful?" he asked us naively. Then, not waiting for an answer: "She is my wife, effendim. You would not have me be revengeful-not toward my wife, I think?"
"Your wife? Why didn"t you tell us that before?"
Gloria seemed the most surprised, as well as the most amused, although we were all astonished.
"Not tell you before? Oh-do you remember Abraham-in the Bible-yes? She has been my best spy now and then. As Kagig"s wife what good would she be?" Yet, had I not married her, I should have lost the services of most of my best spies-Gregor Jhaere for one. He is not her father, no. They call her their queen. She is daughter of another gipsy and of an Armenian lady of very good family. She has always hoped to see me a monarch!"
He laughed, and cracked his finger-joints.
"To make of me a monarch, and to reign beside me! Ha-ha-ha! I did those gipsies a favor by marrying her, for she was something of a problem to them, no gipsy being good enough in her eyes, and no busne (Gentile) caring for the honor until I saw and fell in love! Oh, yes, I fell in love! I, Kagig, the old adventurer, I fell in love!"
He drew her down and kissed her as tenderly as if she were a little child; then rose to his feet.
"You forgive her, effendim?" he asked. "You forgive her for my sake?"
None answered him. Perhaps he asked too much.
"Never mind me, then, effendim. Not for my sake, but for the good work she has so often done, and for the work she shall do-you forgive her?"
We all looked toward Gloria. It was her prerogative. Gloria took Maga"s left hand in her right.
"I don"t blame you," she said, "for coveting Will. I"ve coveted him myself! But you needn"t have let your men handle me so roughly!"
"No?" said Maga blandly. "Then why did you "urt two of them so badly that they run away? Did not you shoot that other one? So-I give "im to you. I give you that Will Yerkees-"
"Thanks!" put in Will, but Maga ignored the interruption.
"-not because you are cleverer than me-or more beautiful. You are uglee! You can not dance, and as for fighting, I could keel you with one "and! But because I like Kagig better after all!"
At that Kagig suddenly dismissed all such trivialities as treachery and matrimony from his mind with one of his Napoleonic gestures.
"It is time, effendim, to be moving!" He led the way out without another word, I limping along last and the Armenian "elders" following me.
It was pitchy dark in the castle courtyard, and without the light from numerous kerosene lanterns it would not have been possible to find the way between the heaped-up logs. There was only a crooked, very narrow pa.s.sage left between the keep and the outer gate, and they had long ago left off using the gate for the lumber, but were hoisting it over the wall with ropes. One improvised derrick squealed in the darkness, and the logs came in by twos and tens and dozens. No sooner were we out of the keep than women came and tossed in logs through the door and windows, until presently that building, too, contained fuel enough to decompose the stone. And over the whole of it, here, there and everywhere, men were pouring cans and cans of kerosene, while other men were setting dry tinder in strategic places.
There was no moon that night. Or if there was a moon, then the dark clouds hid it. No doubt Mahmoud thought he had a night after his own heart for the purpose of overwhelming our little force; for how should he know that we were ready for the ma.s.sed battalions forming to storm the gorge again. At a little after eight o"clock Mahmoud resumed the offensive with his artillery, and a messenger that Monty sent down to watch returned and reported the sh.e.l.ls all bursting wild, with Rustum Khan"s men taking careful cover in the ditches they had zigzagged down the whole face of the ramp.
An hour later the Turk"s infantry was reported moving, and shortly before ten o"clock we heard the opening rattle of Rustum Khan"s stinging defense. There was intended to be no deception about that part of our arrangements; nor was there. The oncoming enemy was met with a hail of destruction that checked and withered his ranks, and made the succeeding companies only too willing to turn at the castle road instead of struggling straight forward.
Nor was the turn accomplished without further loss; for our Zeitoonli, still entrenched on the flank of the pa.s.s, loosed a murderous storm of lead through the dark that swept every inch of the open castle road, and the turn became a shambles.
But Mahmoud had reckoned the cost and decided to pay it. Company after company poured up the gorge in the rear of the front ones, and turned with a roar up the road, butchered and bewildered, but ever adding to the total that gained shelter beyond the first turn in the road.
Those, however, had to deal at once with Monty, Will and Kagig, who opened on them guerrilla warfare from behind trees-never opposing them sufficiently to check them altogether, but leading them steadily forward into the two-mile trap. From where I stood on the top of the castle wall I could judge pretty accurately how the fight went; and I marveled at the skill of our men that they should retire up the road so slowly, and make such a perfect impression of desperate defense. Gloria refused from the first to remain inactive beside me, but went through the trees down the line of the road, crossing at intervals from side to side, urging and begging our ambushed people to be patient and reserve their fire until the chorus of bugles should blow.