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 .............................. 1II "How did sunshine get into the garden? By whose leave came the wind?" .............................................. 21III "Sahib, there is always work for real soldiers!" ......... 40IV "We are the robbers, effendi!" ............................ 52V "Effendi, that is the heart of Armenia burning!" ........... 74VI "Passing the buck to Allah!" ............................. 91VII "We hold you to your word!" .............................. 118VIII "I go with that man!" ................................... 128IX "And you left your friend to help me?" ................... 142X "When I fire this pistol--" ................................ 163XI "That man's dose is death, and he dies unshriven!" ....... 176XII "America's way with a woman is beyond belief!" .......... 195XIII "'Take your squadron and go find him, Rustum Khan!' And I, sahib, obeyed my lord bahadur's orders." ......... 211XIV "Rajput, I shall hang you if you make more trouble!"...... 229XV "Scenery to burst the heart!" ............................. 243XVI "What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?" 257XVII "I knew what to expect of the women!" .................. 277XVIII "Per terram et aquam" .................................. 290XIX "Such drilling as they have had--such little drilling!" .. 303XX "So few against so many! I see death, and I am not sorry!" 316XXI "Those who survive this night shall have brave memories!". 333XXII "God go with you to the States, effendim!" .............. 349
Chapter OneParthians, Medes and Elamites
SALVETE!
Oh ye, who tread the trodden pathAnd keep the narrow lawIn famished faith that Judgment DayShall blast your sluggard mists awayAnd show what Moses saw!Oh thralls of subdivided time,Hours Measureless I singThat own swift ways to wider scenes,New-plucked from heights where Vision preensA white, unwearied wing!No creed I preach to bend dull thoughtTo see what I shall show,Nor can ye buy with treasured goldThe key to these Hours that unfoldNew 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 kindAnd ye shall leave all cares behindIf ye will come with me!In vain shall lumps of fashioned stuffImprison you about;In vain let pundits preach the fleshAnd feebling limits that enmeshYour goings in and out,I know the way the zephyrs tookWho brought the breath of spring,I guide to shores of regions blestWhere white, uncaught Ideas nestAnd Thought is strong o' wing!Within the Hours that I unlockAll customed fetters fall;The chains of drudgery release;Set limits fade; horizons ceaseFor you who hear the callNo trumpet note--no roll of drums,But quiet, sure and sweet--The self-same voice that summoned Drake,The whisper for whose siren sakeThey 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 bindIf ye will come with me!
It is written with authority of Tarsus that once it was no meancity, but that is a tale of nineteen centuries ago. The Turko-ItalianWar 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 theleading actors were waiting for their cue. No more history wasneeded than to grind away forgotten loveliness.
Fred's is the least sweet temper in the universe when the ague gripsand shakes him, and he knows history as some men know the Bible--byfathoms; he cursed the place conqueror by conqueror, maligning themfor their city's sake, and if Sennacherib, who built the firstfoundations, and if Anthony and Cleopatra, Philip of Macedon,Timour-i-lang, Mahmoud, Ibrahim and all the rest of them could havecome and listened by his bedside they would have heard more personalscandal of themselves than ever their contemporary chroniclers daredreveal.
All this because he insisted on ignoring the history he knew sowell, and could not be held from bathing in the River Cydnus.Whatever their indifference to custom, Anthony and Cleopatra knewbetter than do that. Alexander the Great, on the other hand, floutedtradition and set Fred the example, very nearly dying of the aguefor his pains, for those are treacherous, chill waters.
Fred, being a sober man and unlike Alexander of Macedon in severalother ways, throws off fever marvelously, but takes it as some personsdo religion, very severely for a little while. So we carried himand laid him on a nice white cot in a nice clean room with two bedsin it in the American mission, where they dispense more than royalhospitality to utter strangers. Will Yerkes had friends there butthat 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 justas frankly as if he came from her hometown. (Her name wasVan-something-or-other, and you could lean against the Bostonaccent--just a little lonely-sounding, but a very rock of gentleindependence, all that long way from home!)
Meanwhile, we rested. That is to say that, after accepting as muchmission hospitality as was decent, considering that every member ofthe staff worked fourteen hours a day and had to make up for attentionshown to us by long hours bitten out of night, we loafed about thecity. 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 goat all: when the fever is on him Fred's feelings toward his ownsex are simply blunt bellicose. When they put another patient inthe spare bed in his room we copied Monty, arguing that one maleat a time for him to quarrel with was plenty.
Monty, being Earl of Montdidier and Kirkudbrightshire, and a privycouncilor, was welcome at the consulate at Mersina, twenty milesaway.
The consul, like Monty, was an army officer, who played good chess,so that that was no place, either, for Will Yerkes and me. Willprefers dime novels, if he must sit still, and there was none. Andbesides, 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 thefilthy table-cloth in its original one-pound tin; and there was aTurkish officer in riding pants and red morocco slippers, back fromthe Yemen with two or three incurable complaints. He talked out-of-dateTurkish politics in bad French and eked out his ignorance of tablemanners with instinctive racial habit.
To avoid him between meals Will and I set out to look at the historicsights, and exhausted them all, real and alleged, in less than halfa day (for in addition to a lust for ready-cut building stone theTurks have never cherished monuments that might accentuate theirown decadence). After that we fossicked in the manner of prospectorsthat we are by preference, if not always by trade, eschewing politesociety and hunting in the impolite, amusing places where most ofthe facts have teeth, sharp and ready to snap, but visible.
We found a khan at last on the outskirts of the city, almost in sightof the railway line, that well agreed with our frame of mind. Itwas none of the newfangled, underdone affairs that ape hotels, withGreek managers and as many different prices for one service as thereare grades of credulity, but a genuine two-hundred-year-old Turkishplace, run by a Turk, and named Yeni Khan (which means the new resthouse) in proof that once the world was younger. The man who directedus to the place called it a kahveh; but that means a place for donkeysand foot-passengers, and when we spoke of it as kahveh to the obadashi--theelderly youth who corresponds to porter, bell-boy and chambermaidin one--he was visibly annoyed.
Truly the place was a khan--a great bleak building of four high outerwalls, surrounding a courtyard that was a yard deep with the
dungof countless camels, horses, bullocks, asses; crowded with arabas,the four-wheeled vehicles of all the Near East, and smelly withcenturies of human journeys' ends.
Khans provide nothing except room, heat and water (and the heat costsextra); there is no sanitation for any one at any price; everyguest dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail intothe courtyard, to be trodden and wheeled under foot and help buildthe aroma. But the guests provide a picture without price that withthe very first glimpse drives discomfort out of mind.
In that place there were Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and all therest of the list. There was even a Chinaman. Two Hindus were unpackingbundles out of a creaking araba, watched scornfully by an unmistakablePathan. A fat swarthy-faced Greek in black frock coat and trousers,fez, and slippered feet gesticulated with his right arm like a pump-handlewhile he sat on the balcony-rail and bellowed orders to a crowd mixedof Armenians, Italians, Maltese, Syrians and a Turk or two, who laboredwith his bales of cotton goods below. (The Italians eyed everybodysidewise, for there were rumors in those days of impending trouble,and when the Turk begins hostilities he likes his first opponentseasy and ready to hand.)
There were Kurds, long-nosed, lean-lipped and suspicious, who saidvery little, but hugged long knives as they passed back and forthamong the swarming strangers. They said nothing at all, those Kurds,but listened a very great deal.
Tall, mustached Circassians, with eighteen-inch Erzerum daggers attheir waists, swaggered about as if they, and only they, were history'sheirs. It was expedient to get out of their path alertly, but theycringed into second place before the Turks, who, without any swaggerat all, lorded it over every one. For the Turk is a conqueror,whatever else he ought to be. The poorest Turkish servant israce-conscious, and unshakably convinced of his own superiority tothe princes of the conquered. One has to bear that fact in mindwhen dealing with the Turk; it colors all his views of life, andaccounts for some of his famous unexpectedness.
Will and I fell in love with the crowd, and engaged a room over thegreat arched entrance. We were aware from the first of the dull redmarks on the walls of the room, where bed-bugs had been slain withslipper heels by angry owners of the blood; but we were not in searchof luxury, and we had our belongings and a can of insect-bane broughtdown from the hotel at once. The fact that stallions squealed andfought in the stalls across the courtyard scarcely promised usuninterrupted sleep; but sleep is not to be weighed in the balanceagainst the news of eastern nights.
We went down to the common room close beside the main entrance, andpushed the door open a little way; the men who sat within with theirbacks against it would only yield enough to pass one person in gingerlyat a time. We saw a sea of heads and hats and faces. It lookedimpossible to squeeze another human being in among those alreadyseated on the floor, nor to make another voice heard amid all thatbabel.
But the babel ceased, and they did make room for us--places of honoragainst 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 snowwas likely falling in the Taurus Mountains, and rain would fall thenext day between the mountains and the sea, making roads and fordsimpassable and the mountain passes risky. So men from the ends ofearth sat still contentedly, to pass earth's gossip to and fro--anastonishing lot of it. There was none of it quite true, and someof 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 learnsto guess the truth from listening to the ever-changing lies. Wecould not hope to pick out truth, but sat as if in the pit of anold-time theater, watching a foreign-language play and understandingsome, but missing most of it.
There was a man who drew my attention at once, who looked and wasdressed rather like a Russian--a man with a high-bridged, prominent,lean nose--not nearly so bulky as his sheepskin coat suggested, butactive and strong, with a fiery restless eye. He talked Russianat intervals with the men who sat near him at the end of the roomon our right, but used at least six other languages with any onewho cared to agree or disagree with him. His rather agreeable voicehad the trick of carrying words distinctly across the din of countlessothers.
"What do you suppose is that man's nationality?" I asked Will, shoutingto 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 laughedtoo boldly in Turkish presence. In those days most Armenians thereaboutswere 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." (Willputs two and two together all the time, because the heroes of dimenovels 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 jingaanare street robbers pure and simple," he added by way of explanation.
"But what nationality?"
"Jingaan might be anything. They in particular would call themselvesRommany. 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 thanthe man who had interested me, and had indefinite, soft eyes. Theman 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 spittingagain. "That one is Ermenie. Those others are just dogs!"
The crowd began to thin after a while, as men filed out to feed cattleand to cook their own evening meal. Then the perplexing person gotup and came over toward me, showing no fear of the Turk at all.He was tall and lean when he stood upright, but enormously strongif one could guess correctly through the bulky-looking outer garment.
He stood in front of Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleamingbetween a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, andwent out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner wherethe self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimitythey 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 Britishthemselves have not accomplished in that land of a hundred tongueshas been done by American missionaries, teaching in the course ofa generation thousands on thousands. (There is none like the Americanmissionary for attaining ends at wholesale.)
"What countryman are you?" I asked him.
"Zeitoonli," he answered, as if the word were honor itself and explanationbound in one. Yet he looked hardly like an honorable man. "Thechilabi are staying here?" he asked. Chilabi means gentleman.
"We wait on the weather," said I, not caring to have him turn thetables on me and become interrogator.
He laughed with a sort of hard good humor.
"Since when have Eenglis sportmen waited on the weather? Ah, butyou are right, effendi, none should tell the truth in this place,unless in hope of being disbelieved!" He laid a finger on his righteye, as I have seen Arabs do when they mean to ascribe to themselvesunfathomable cunning. "Since you entered this common room you havenot ceased to observe me closely. The other sportman has watchedthose Zingarri. What have you learned?"
He stood with lean
hands crossed now in front of him, looking atus 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, andhe stiffened instantly.
Whether or not they took that for a signal--or perhaps he made anotherthat we did not see--the six undoubted gipsies got up and left theroom, shambling out in single file with the awkward gait they sharein common with red Indians.
"Jingaan," he said, "are people who lurk in shadows of the streetsto rob belated travelers. That is not my business." He looked veryhard indeed at the Persian, who decided that it might as well besupper-time and rose stiffly to his feet. The Persians rob and murder,and even retreat, gracefully. He bade us a stately and benignantgood evening, with a poetic Persian blessing at the end of it. Hebowed, too, to the Zeitoonli, who bared his teeth and bent his headforward something less than an inch.
"They call me the Eye of Zeitoon!" he announced with a sort of savagepride, as soon as the Persian was out of ear-shot.
Will pricked his ears--schoolboy-looking ears that stand out fromhis head.
"I've heard of Zeitoon. It's a village on a mountain, where a mansteps out of his front door on to a neighbor's roof, and the womenwear 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 entrancegate."
"Two such chilabi should surely live like princes," he answered withouta smile. If he had dared say that and smile we would have struckhim, and Monty might have been alive to-day. But he seemed to knowhis place, although he looked at us down his nose again in shrewdappraisal.
Will took out tobacco and rolled what in the innocence of his Yankeeheart he believed was a cigarette. I produced and lit what hecontemptuously called a "boughten cigaroot"--Turkish Regie, withthe 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 friendsalong, and they'll need knives!"
The Zeitoonli bowed, laid a finger on his eye again, smiled and backedaway. But he did not leave the room. He went back to the end-wallagainst which he had sat before, and although he did not stare atus the intention not to let us out of sight seemed pretty obvious.
"That half-hour stuff smacked rather of a threat," said Will. "Supposewe call the bluff, and keep him waiting. What do you say if we goand dine at the hotel?"
But in the raw enthusiasm of entering new quarters we had made upour minds that afternoon to try out our new camp kitchen--a contraptionof 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 Tarsusmud 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 curriedeggs; 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 areirritable when they want their meal), were narrowly missed by a mule'sheels because of the deceptive shadows that confused his aim, trippedover a donkey's heel-rope, and found our stairway--thoroughly wellcursed in seven languages, and only just missed by a Georgian gentlemanon the balcony, who chose the moment of our passing underneath toempty out hissing liquid from his cooking pot.
Once in our four-square room, with the rags on the floor in our especialhonor, and our beds set up, and the folding chairs in place, contentmenttook hold of us; and as we lighted the primus burner in the cookingbox, we pitied from the bottom of compassionate young hearts allunfortunates in stiff white shirts, whose dinners were served thatnight on silver and laundered linen.
Through the partly open door we could smell everything that everhappened since the beginning of the world, and hear most of the elementalmusic--made, for instance, of the squeal of fighting stallions, andthe bray of an amorous he-ass--the bubbling complaint of fed camelsthat want to go to sleep, but are afraid of dreaming--the hum ofhuman voices--the clash of cooking pots--the voice of a man on theroof singing falsetto to the stars (that was surely the Pathan!)--thetinkling of a three-stringed instrument--and all of that punctuatedby the tapping of a saz, the little tight-skinned Turkish drum.
It is no use for folk whose finger-nails were never dirty, and whonever scratched themselves while they cooked a meal over the primusburner on the floor, to say that all that medley of sounds and smellsis not good. It is very good indeed, only he who is privileged mustunderstand, or else the spell is mere confusion.
The cooking box was hardly a success, because bright eyes watchingthrough the open door made us nervously amateurish. The Zeitoonliarrived true to his threat on the stroke of the half-hour, and wecould not shut the door in his face because of the fumes of foodand kerosene. (Two of the eggs, like us, were travelers and hadbeen in more than one bazaar.)
But we did not invite him inside until our meal was finished, andthen we graciously permitted him to go for water wherewith to washup. He strode back and forth on the balcony, treading ruthlesslyon prayer-mats (for the Moslem prays in public like the Phariseesof old).
"Myself I am Christian," he said, spitting over the rail, and sittingdown again to watch us. We accepted the remark with reservations.
When we asked him in at last, and we had driven out the flies withflapping towels, he closed the door and squatted down with his backto it, we two facing him in our canvas-backed easy chairs. He refusedthe "genuine Turkish" coffee that Will stewed over the primus. Willdrank the beastly stuff, of course, to keep himself in countenance,and I did not care to go back on a friend before a foreigner, butI envied the man from Zeitoon his liberty of choice.
"Why do they call you the Eye of Zeitoon?" I asked, when time enoughhad 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-groundedconsciousness of cunning. There were moments when I felt such strongrepugnance for the man that I itched to open the door and thrust himthrough--other moments when compassion for him urged me to offermoney--food--influence--anything. The second emotion fought allthe while against the first, and I found out afterward it had beenthe same with Will.
"Why should Zeitoon need such special watching?" I demanded. "Howdo 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 conqueredit! 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 threwtheir cannon down a thousand feet into the bed of the torrent, andthere they lie to-day! We took prisoner as many of their Arab zaptiehsas still were living--aye, they even brought Arabs against us--poorfools who had not yet heard of Zeitoon's defenders! Then we camedown to the plains for a little vengeance, leaving the Arabs forour wives to guard. They are women of spirit, the Zeitoonli wives!
"Word reached Zeitoon presently that we were being hard pressed onthe plains. It was told to the Zeitoonli wives that they might arrangeto have pursuit called off from us by surrendering those Arab prisoners.They answered that Zeitoon-fashion. How? I will tell. There isa bridge of wood, flung over across the mountain torrent, five hundredfeet above the water, spanning from crag to crag. Those Zeitoonliwives of ours bound the Arab prisoners hand and foot. They broughtthem out along the bridge. They threw them over one at a time, eachman looking on until his turn came. That was the answer of the braveZeitoonli wives!"
"And you on the plains?"
"Ah! It takes better than Osmanli to conque
r the men of Zeitoon!"he gave the Turks their own names for themselves with the air ofa brave fighting man conceding his opponent points. "We heard whatour wives had done. We were encouraged. We prevailed! We fellback to-ward our mountain and prevailed! There in Zeitoon we haveweapons--numbers--advantage of position, for no roads come near Zeitoonthat an araba, or a gun, or anything on wheels can use. The onlything 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. "Eenglissportmen!" he said simply.
"What's that got to do with it?" Will retorted. He has the unaccountableAmerican dislike of being mistaken for an Englishman, but long agogave up arguing the point, since foreigners refuse, as a rule, tosee 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--byhorse--seven--eight--nine days, depending on the roads."
"Are they all Armenians in Zeitoon?"
"Most. Not all. There are Arabs--Syrians--Persians--a fewCircassians--even Kurds and a Turk or two. Our numbers have beenreenforced continually by deserters from the Turkish Army. Ninety-fiveper cent., however, are Armenians," he added with half-closed eyes,suddenly suggesting that masked meekness that disguises most outrageousracial pride.
"It is common report," I said, "that the Turks settled all Armenianproblems long ago by process of massacre until you have no spiritfor revolt left."
"The report lies, that is all!" he answered. Then suddenly he beaton his chest with clenched fist. "There is spirit here! There isspirit in Zeitoon! No Osmanli dare molest my people! Come to Zeitoonto 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 achild's mistake.
"Jingaan is a bad word," he said. "I might kill a man who named methat--depending on the man. My brother I would kill for it--a strangerperhaps not. Those men are Zingarri, who detest to sleep betweenbrick 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--amountain in a mist, with houses clinging to the flanks of it, andscenery 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 atme by way of emphasis, "there are castles on the mountains near Zeitoonthat have never been explored since the Turks--may God destroythem!--overran the land! Castles hidden among trees where only bearsdwell! Castles built by theSeljuks--Armenians--Romans--Saracens--Crusaders! I know the way toevery one of them!"
"What else?" demanded Will, purposely incredulous.
"Beyond Zeitoon to north and west are cave-dwellers. Mountains sohollowed out that only a shell remains, a sponge--a honeycomb! Noman knows how far those tunnels run! The Turks have attempted nowand then to smoke out the inhabitants. They were laughed at! Onemountain is connected with another, and the tunnels run for milesand 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 pleasedto show."
We both jeered at him, for that explanation was too outrageouslyridiculous. Armenians love money, whatever else they do or leaveundone, and can wring a handsome profit out of business whose veryexistence the easier-going Turk would not suspect.
"See if I can't read your mind," said Will. "You'll guide us forsome distance out of town, at a place you know, and your jingaan-gipsybrethren 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 thematter off. Any and every crook would have been at pains to hidehis real feelings. Yet this strange individual was at a loss howto 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 thatwere 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 acceptfor 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 bothhands crack like caps going off. "Four Eenglis sportman?"
"I said four. If you're willing to tell the naked truth about what'sback of your offer, I'll undertake to talk it over with my otherfriends. Then, either we'll all four agree to take you up, or we'llgive 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'smind had closed again against us in obedience to some racial or religiousinstinct outside our comprehension. He had been on the verge oftaking 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 mademe 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 ofmen! I have judged you fit to be invited! Now you judge me--theEye of Zeitoon!"
"What is your real name?"
"I have none--or many, which is the same thing! I did not ask yournames; they are your own affair!"
He stood with his hand on the door, not irresolute, but taking onelast look at us and our belongings.
"I wish you comfortable sleep, and long lives, effendim!" he saidthen, and swung himself out, closing the door behind him with anair of having honored us, not we him particularly. And after hehad gone we were not at all sure that summary of the situation wasnot right.
We lay awake on our cots until long after midnight, hazarding guessesabout him. Whatever else he had done he had thoroughly aroused ourcuriosity.
"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 withhis slipper.
"Cut the cackle, and let's sleep!"
We fell asleep at last amid the noise of wild carousing; for theproprietor of the Yeni Khan, although a Turk, and therefore himselfpresumably abstemious, was not above dispensing at a price mastikathat the Greeks get drunk on, and the viler raki, with which Georgians,Circassians, Albanians, and even the less religious Turks woo imaginationor forgetfulness.
There was knife-fighting as well as carousal before dawn, to judgeby the cat-and-dog-fight swearing in and out among the camel picketsand the wheels of arabas. But that was the business of the men whofought, and no one interfered.