It was drawing on to ten in the morning, and I had dozed off for about the dozenth time, with my horse in pretty much the same condition, when I heard Will’s voice at last, and looked up.  He was standing alone on a ledge overlooking the track, but I could see the ends of rifles sticking up close by.  If we had been an enemy, we should have stood small chance against him.

“Where are the rest of you?” I asked, and he laughed!

“Women, kids and wounded all swore a pitched battle was raging behind them.  Most of them wanted to turn back and lend a hand.  I thought you guys mighty cruel to put all that scare into a crowd in their condition—­but I see—­”

“Guests, America!  My country’s at peace with Turkey!  Where shall we stow our guests?”

“There’s a village below here.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  But behind him was the apex of a spur thrust out in midcurve of the mountainside, and one could not see around that.  We had emerged out of the straggling outposts of the forest high above the plain, and to our right the whole panorama lay snoozing in haze.  The path by which we had turned our backs on Monty and Kagig went winding away and away below, here and there an infinitesimal thin line of slightly lighter color, but more often suggested by the contour of the hills.  Our Zeitoonli in their zeal to return to their leader had been evidently cutting corners.  If the smudge of smoke to the right front overhung Marash, then we were probably already nearer Zeitoon than when we and Kagig parted company.

“Come up and see for yourselves,” said Will.

Fred passed the line that held his prisoners in tow to an Armenian, and we climbed up together on foot.  Around the corner of the spur, within fifty feet of where Will stood, was an almost sheer escarpment, and at the foot of that, a thousand feet below us, with ramparts of living rock on all four sides, crouched a little village fondled in the bosom of the mountains.

“They’ve piled down there and made ’emselves at home.  The place was deserted, prob’ly because it ’ud be too easy to roll rocks down into it.  But I can’t make ’em listen.  Ours is a pretty chesty lot, with guts, and our taking part with ’em has stiffened their courage.  They claim they’re goin’ to hold this rats’ nest against all the Turks and Kurds in Asia Minor!”

“That’s where the rest of us are,” said Will

“Where’s Miss Vanderman?”

“Asleep—­down in the village.  The’re all asleep.  You guys go down there and sleep, too.  I’ll follow, soon as I’ve posted these men on watch.  That small square hut next the big one in the middle is ours.  She’s in the big one with a crowd of women.  Now don’t make a fool row and wake her!  Tie your horses in the shade where you see the others standing in line; there’s a little corn for them, and a lot of hay that the owners left behind.”

So we undertook not to wake the lady, and left Will there carefully choosing places, in which the men fell fast asleep almost the minute his back was turned.  Sleep was in the air that morning—­not mere weariness of mind and limb that a man could overcome, but inexplicable coma.  Whole armies are affected that way on occasion.  There was a man once named Sennacherib.