“Have you guys taken root?” demanded the familiar voice and we heard Will’s returning footsteps.

“No, America.  But I have to sit down when my shin hurts and I’m seized with the gift of prophecy.”

“Huh!  We’ll find Miss Vanderman tired of waiting for us with the women.  Since when has a crack on the shin made a baby of you?  You used to be tough enough!”

“D’you get the idea?” chuckled Fred.  “We’re coming, Will, we’re coming.”

Perfectly unconsciously Will took the lead, and most outrageously he drove us.  Not that his driving was not shrewd, for his usually practical and quick mind seemed to take on added brilliancy.  And since we first joined partnership—­he and Monty and Fred and I—­we had always been contented to follow the lead of whichever held it at the moment.  But there was new efficiency, and impatience of a brand-new kind that would not rest until every man and animal had been rummaged in darkness out of that old ruin, and men, horses, cows, goats, bags of grain, and fifty cases of cartridges were driven down through the forest like water forced through a sieve, and were gathered in the only open space discoverable.

There we cooled our heels, fearful and full of vague imaginings until Miss Vanderman should bring the women, not at all encouraged by shouts in the distance that well might be the exulting of plundering Kurds, nor by occasional rifle-shots that sounded continually nearer, nor by the angry crimson glow of burning roofs that lighted half the horizon.

We waited an hour, Will objecting whenever either of us proposed to return and speed Miss Vanderman.

“Aw, what’s the use?  D’you suppose she doesn’t know we’re waiting?”

At last Fred proposed that Will himself go and investigate.  He went through the form of demurring, but yielded gracefully.

“The spirit,” Fred chuckled, “is weak, and the flesh is willing!”

Will handed his mule’s reins to an Armenian and started alone up-hill through the pitch-dark forest; and because the world is mixed of unexpectedness and grim jest in fairly equal proportions, five minutes after he left us Gloria Vanderman came leading the women by another path.

To avoid confusion with our part, and for sake of silence, she had led them a circuit, and except for the occasional wail of a child and a little low talking that blended like the hum of insects with the night, they made very little noise.  The rear was brought up by the strongest women carrying the sick and wounded on litters that had been improvised in a hurry, and like most things of the sort were much too heavy.

“Your mule is ready,” said I. But she shook her head.

“You gentlemen must give your mules up to the sick and wounded.  We well ones can walk.”