Chapter Fourteen “Rajput, I shall hang you if you make more trouble!”

“LO, THIS IS THE MAN—­” (Psalm 52)

Choose, ye forefathers of to-morrow, choose! 
These easy ways there be
Uncluttered by the wrongs each other bears,
And warmly we shall walk who can not see
How thin some other fellow’s garment wears,
Nor need to notice whose.

Choose, ye stock-owners in to-morrow, choose! 
The road these others tread
Is littered deep with jetsam and the bones
Of their dishonored dead. 
What altruism for defeat atones? 
Have ye not much to lose?

Choose, ye inheritors of ages, choose! 
What owe ye to the past? 
The burly men who Magna Charta wrung
>From tyranny entrenched would stand aghast
To see the ripples from that stone they flung,
They, too, had selfish views.

Choose, ye investors in the future, choose! 
Ye need pick cautious odds;
To-morrow’s fruit is seeded down to-day,
And unwise purpose like the unknown gods
Tempts on a wasteful way. 
“Ware well what guide ye use!

We went and bivouacked by the brawling Jihun under a roof of thatch, whose walls were represented by more or less upright wooden posts and debris; for Kagig would not permit anything to stand even for an hour that Turks could come and fortify.  None of us believed that the repulse of that handful of Kurdish plunderers and the capture of a Turkish colonel would be the end of hostilities—­rather the beginning.

Kagig, when Gloria asked him what he proposed to do with Rustum Khan’s prisoner, smiled cynically and ordered him searched by two of the Zeitoonli standing guard.  Rustum Khan was standing just out of low ear-shot absorbed in contemplation of the lie of the country.  I noticed that Fred began to look nervous, but he did not say anything.  Will was too busy fussing with Gloria’s wound, making a new bandage for it and going through the quite unnecessary motions of keeping up her spirits, to observe any other phenomena.  An Armenian woman named Anna, who had attached herself to Gloria because, she said, her husband and children had been killed and she might as well serve as weep, sat watching the two of them with quiet amusement.

The Turk offered no further objection than a shrug of his fatalist shoulders and a muttered remark about Ermenie and bandits.  Even when the mountaineers laughed at the chink of stolen money in all his pockets he did not exhibit a trace of shame.  They shook him, and pawed him, and poured out gold in little heaps on the ground (out of the magnanimity of his official heart he had doubtless left all silver coin for his hamidieh to pouch); but Kagig only had eyes for the papers they pulled out of his inner pocket and tossed away.  He pounced on them.

“Hah!” he laughed.  “There!  Did I tell you?  These are his orders —­signed by a governor’s secretary—­countersigned by the governor himself—­to ’set forth with his troops and rescue Armenians in the Zeitoon district.’  Rescue them!  Have you seen?  Did you observe his noble rescue work?  Here—­see the orders for yourselves!  Observe how the Stamboulis propose to prove their innocence after the event!”