Chapter Eight “I go with that man!”

LO HERE!  LO THERE!

Ye shall not judge men by the drinks they take,
Nor by unthinking oath, nor what they wear,
For look! the mitered liars protest make
And drinking know they lie, and knowing swear. 
No oath is round without the rounded fruit,
Nor pompous promise hides the ultimate. 
In scarlet as in overalls and tailored suit
To-morrows truemen and the traitors wait
Untold by trick of blazonry or voice. 
But harvest ripens and there come the reaping days
When each shall choose one path to bide the choice,
And ye shall know men when they face dividing ways.

To those who have never ridden knee to knee with outlaws full pelt into unknown darkness, with a burning house behind, and a whole horizon lit with the rolling glow of murdered villages, let it be written that the sensation of so doing is creepy, most amazing wild, and not without unrighteous pleasure.

There was a fierce joy that burned without consuming, and a consciousness of having crossed a rubicon.  Points of view are left behind in a moment, although the proof may not be apparent for days or weeks, and I reckon our mental change from being merely hunters of an ancient castle and big game-tourists-trippers, from that hour.  As we galloped behind Kagig the mesmerism of respect for custom blew away in the wind.  We became at heart outlaws as we rode—­and one of us a privy councilor of England!

The women, Maga included, were on in front.  The night around and behind us was full of the thunder of fleeing cattle, for the Zeitoonli had looted the owner of the kahveh’s cows and oxen along with their own beasts and were driving them helter-skelter.  The crackling flames behind us were a beacon, whistling white in the early wind, that we did well to hurry from.

It was Monty who called Kagig’s attention to the idiocy of tiring out the cattle before dawn, and then Kagig rode like an arrow until he could make the gipsies hear him.  One long keening shout that penetrated through the drum of hoofs brought them to a walk, but they kept Maga in front with them, screened from our view until morning by a close line of mounted women and a group of men.  The Turkish prisoners were all behind among the fifty Armenians from Zeitoon, looking very comfortless trussed up on the mounts that nobody else had coveted, with hands made fast behind their backs.

A little before dawn, when the saw-tooth tips of the mountain range on our left were first touched with opal and gold, we turned off the araba track along which we had so far come and entered a ravine leading toward Marash.  Fred was asleep on horseback, supported between Will and me and snoring like a throttled dog.  The smoke of the gutted kahveh had dwindled to a wisp in the distance behind us, and there was no sight or sound of pursuit.