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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, November 1914, with "King Dick"
LIKE diamonds, suspended from the dark blue-velvet dome of heaven, the stars that are Persia's own, appeared to sway above the Elburz Mountains—above virgin forests, nearly trackless—above a silver stream that bubbled from a natural amphitheater between the tree-fringed summits of twin peaks, to wind and sing and tinkle down seven thousand feet, to the Caspian below.
Hushed like the hours when the dawn of history was being planned, many more than a thousand men lay bidden amid the trees on every side; for where Russian gold and Russian promises have undermined, men hesitate before they come into the open. They lay by their arms and listened, breathing softly and missing not one word of a monologue that rang, clear-worded, through the night.
Dick Anthony of Arran—Scots gentleman, with barely a spare shirt to his name, but with a heart that was unafraid—stood out alone where the spring splashed. One hand rested on a rock that looked not very much unlike a rough-hewn throne, and in the other was a jeweled claymore that had been forged in a forgotten century, but whose blade was bright as silver.
He was speaking fluent Persian in a voice that carried with no apparent effort to the farthest limits of the amphitheater. He could see no more than shadow just beyond the pale ring of the moonbeams, and hear no more than, now and then, the clash of steel on steel when some one moved; but the moon just rising over the encircling fringe of trees silhouetted him—shone like wet silver on his red hair—even exaggerated the free angle of his chin and neck. He looked neat, lean and active—a man to lead and be obeyed.
Once, when he spoke of the knout he had seen Cossacks use on quivering Persian shoulders, he betrayed his own emotion and the way it moved him, for he swung the claymore high above his head and held it there, humming. Then, in an instant, the darkness was alive with a desire to shout— with wrath, hard-held—with tension, as older men restrained younger from leaping to their feet.
Then, too, a grizzly, tremendous man with one arm in a sling rose out of darkness from behind Dick and stood ready for emergencies, like Little John attendant on Robin Hood.
"Lie down again, Andry!" he ordered; and Andry Macdougal, who looked big enough to swallow him, grinned like a gargoyle and obeyed.
The unseen, undisciplined horde behind the shadows took its cue; the example was infectious, as intended, and once more the night breathed steadily.
"So, this I know surely," Dick concluded. "Russia is deliberately driving you to outlawry, to excuse the presence of Cossacks on this side of the border. I have seen the Cossacks stirring trouble; and the veriest fool could understand how trouble means more Cossacks, and again more trouble, until a Russian army is encamped on Persian soil. And, when that army is once here, treaties and conventions will be torn up and the very name of Persia will be part of her forgotten history. I would be less than man, did I not sympathize with Persia —more than brute—cur, were I Russia's friend! But—whatever my personal opinions—and you know them—I am first always a British officer, and bound by the restrictions that implies. Now, let your head-man speak."
Proof, if it were wanted, that Dick Anthony must not be reckoned in the run of ordinary men, is that these mountain outlaws had heard him uninterrupted to a finish; for Persia is a land of wordy talk—a land where poetry was born, away back in the womb of ages, to grow into a cult of utterly impractical ideas—a land where men talk all at once and weave word-spells to heal treason.
Now, as he sat down on the rock and looked—at his ease on it—more dignified than ever, a graybeard passed his rifle to another man and stepped out from the shadow of a mountain-oak to answer him. The old manlooked likea Druid priest about to sacrifice to the forest gods—savage —solemn—and a-tremble with dramatic fervor, he strode out into the circle of moonlight, as an actor makes for the middle of the stage, fully aware of its advantage.
"In the name of Allah," he began, bowing low to Dick, but gathering all attention to himself with a gesture that was studied, but seemed natural, "I speak for three thousand men of Iran, in these mountains—all loyal men—who hide in fear of Russia. God is my witness that our homes are cinders. Our families — our children — brothers — wives—are in Russian-guarded jails, or dead, or ravished. Our lives are worth one Cossack cartridge each, did we dare venture to the plains. On those plains there are two hundred thousand others—one with us at heart—who dare not make one cause with us because Russian guile and threats and bribery have rotted patriotic hearts. They hesitate—trusting nobody, and us least of all because—we have no man lo lead us!"
"I have said I am a British officer," Dick reminded him. There was something in his voice that might have hinted at regret, but there was no least suggestion of a thought of compromise. "I can help. I can carry an account to London. I can advise you. And I can stir public opinion until Great Britain for very shame must act on your behalf. But I can not lead you."
"Prince!" said the old man, giving Dick a title that is only courteous, but bowing low to emphasize it. "We are over-weary of the actions and unkept promises of your Faranghistan! Russia in the North cheats, steals, and lies to hide her villainy; but England is not very far behind her in the South!
Russia lends money and gives bribes; England buys oil-fields. Move against move, England and Russia go about to swallow Iran!
"Prince—most noble prince—we, who love Iran more than man loves woman, hope to make their meal a poisoned one! If they see the poison, and are warned and do not swallow—good! But—if they swallow— then the venom we will brew shall turn their stomachs so that they disgorge again! Heart and soul—body and brains—to the end, whatever that may be—they are for themselves. We, most noble prince—until the last man dies, or is flogged to death— are for Iran! Our cause is just—our invitation personal to you. We do no dishonor to the man we ask to lead us!"
Dick Anthony sat still and laughed. It was a strange, far-reaching laugh, unmusical as the devil, made up of three separate in-harmonies, and it had a weird effect as it went ringing through the night. Whatever it might mean—and Dick was not too often given to explaining things—it made men's backbones tingle. It stirred the waking fire in Usbeg Ali now, and the Afghan rose out of a shadow.
"Lead them, sahib! Lead them!" he urged. "I am no braggart—no light-o'-promise—I am a man whom seven more have followed up and down the world that they might see what I can show them! And by the blood of God I say, lead on, bahadur! I have found them and shown them a leader to whom I—I, Usbeg Ali—bow! These men lack nothing but a leader such as thou art, and their cause is just!"
Andry Macdougal, cot quite unjealous of the Afghan, had risen too out of his shadow and stood, in all the pride of good Scots service, where he could have reached and ripped apart the limbs of an intruder at a sign from Dick. He caught Dick's eye.
"Lead on, Macduff!" he quoted grimly.
The old Persian, who knew only Persian, sensed and understood. It seemed good to him to add Persian persuasion to the urging of the other two.
"Lead us against Russia! Great Britain fears lest Russia take the biggest bite. Defeat and drive out Russia, and Great Britain will evacuate! Lead us against Russia, noble Prince, and out of gratitude such as only patriots can feel we will heap on you riches, and far greater honors than the right to call yourself a British officer!"
"There is no greater honor," answered Dick.
"Then riches—power—"
"Halt!" rang a sudden order through the stillness; and the same instant the whole night became alive with the click of breech-bolts. Then silence—taut and fearful— followed. Not a man moved.
"IDIOT!" hissed Usbeg Ali Khan, for fear and he were not associates. The old Persian trembled in his grip. "Why speak to him of riches? Brother-of-a-buzzard! Hast thou not learned to know a sahib—a true sahib? Have I not told thee, over and over until my tongue is dry, that he is the Great Iskander come to life again? Are riches fit bait for such an one? Father-of-a-litter! Show him thy poverty and he may champion thy cause—talk to him of riches and he will turn his back on thee! I know his kind!"
"Silence!" ordered Dick, for he was Listening, and the Afghan's voice was Loud enough to distract attention. Unconsciously—but because the strength to do it lay in him and would come out, he had taken absolute command already; the next five minutes were to prove it, but the Afghan recognized it now and Andry was not far behind him. Both men grinned delightedly; but Usbeg Ah clapped a hand to his mouth, and satisfied the Persian that he dared not disobey, had he wanted to.
Then a new sound broke into the silence. A ragged outlaw, whose chief claim to notice was a rifle and a bandoleer, came stumbling over the stones by the little water-course, running into the moonlight like a shadow shot out of the night.
"A woman!" he panted. "Two women— and two Cossacks—four in all! Our outpost made them prisoners. They demand speech with Dee-k-Anthonee!"
He spoke to the head-man; but the headman turned to Dick. And Dick, who had heard every word of it, ignored the headman altogether. He was furious. Well he knew who was the only woman who would dare to track him through Elburz Mountain gorges to the haunt of Russia's enemies. The other could only be her maid. He had turned his back on the Princess Olga Karageorgovich at the head of a pass, amid Russian dead and wounded, fifty miles away, and he had thought every mile of the intervening climb worth while, because it was that much more trackless distance between him and her.
"Tell them they may go to " he began.
But the shadows burst to pieces and the darkness shook, as a thousand outlaws interrupted him and voiced one judgment.
"Stone them! Shoot them! Burn them alive! They are Russians—they come to win him over—take and burn them! Treat them as the Cossacks treated ours!"
In a world that is full of all the kinds of horror there is nothing that can match that blood-cry of a masterless mob, hungry for vengeance. It is worse than the yell of a looting army—worse than the din of battle or the shriek of women—worse than anything. So—more than any other thing there is on earth—it brings the greatness of a grown man to the surface.
"Silence!" thundered Dick, and his voice was like the sudden crashing of the elements.
The din of savagery died away and ceased. The night was still again.
"Weigh my words well! Ye say ye are patriots and men of honor. I am a man of honor! Ye say ye have a cause worth fighting for. Ye ask me to lend ear to it. Yet, what is this shouting?"
He paused, but not for an answer, and none dared give him any. He had forgotten Andry and Usbeg Ali Khan who stood behind him with seven others. He was only aware of what he did not mean to tolerate, and of his own spirit that bade him dare a thousand men.
"If I lead, I will lead men, not wolves! If ye are like the Cossacks—are but violators of defenseless women—liars—cowards —dogs, without mercy or respect—then count me your enemy and begin the fighting now!"
His defiance rang to the farthest limits of the amphitheater, but not a murmur answered him. He had no notion how he looked, bare-headed in the moonlight; nor did be know what Usbeg Ali had told behind his back, about his being Alexander of Macedon come to life again. He knew nothing, in that minute, except that he stood and faced a thousand in a ring of pale light beyond which he could not see. But they could see; and they had heard; and they had never seen nor heard the like of him. Usbeg Ali Khan—artist in his own way, as well as gentleman adventurer—chose just that second to insert his weight into the scale.
"Hear him!" he shouted. "Hear one man dare a thousand, and yet none answer him! Was it thus with you before he came? Choose ye, men of Iran!"
He stepped out to where the moon shone brightest—yet far enough away from Dick to be out of reach of that two-edged sword —and there was laughter in his voice—the laughter that convinces by its very confidence.
"Choose ye!" he mocked. "Is this cause fit for a Dee-k-Anthonee to champion? Or are ye brothers of the Russian bear—liars and murderers? Choose carefully! Take time and much thought for the choosing! Choose ye well!"
Dick did not move toward him—did not look at him—did not speak for the moment; yet Usbeg Ali Khan became aware that he had stirred displeasure, and another sentence he had ready died in his black beard.
"You might write down the rest of it," suggested Dick, in hard King's English, and Andry, reaching out a huge arm, drew Usbeg Ali to him.
"Wull ye no learn?" he demanded. "Oor business—mine an' yours—is to fecht like twa de'ils when Mr. Dicky gies the word, keepin' verra mum meanwhiles. Na-na! Pit y'r pistols doon!"
The Afghan found himself enveloped by an arm that was tough as a wire hawser, and he was crushed until the desire to defend his dignity oozed out of him; nor did he make the mistake of shouting to his seven to rescue him; injured arm or not, he knew that the huge Scotsman could have crushed him dead while the seven hesitated.
Dick saw nothing of the by-play—heard no word of it. He was rapt—intent—sensing the wordless change that was taking place amid the trees. The mob that had so long been weary of its lawlessness was beginning to have one mind and to be aware of it. For the first time it faced a man whose voice rang true—who dared dictate to it— who offered it no compromise, and only two alternatives—obey or fight!
There was a rustling amid the trees, that trespassed on the silence and then grew to whispering; and there was a thrill, such as only born leadership can stir, that went outward through the crowd in rings, invisible, inaudible, but tangible as the weather.
"Prince!" said the old head-man, bowing very low. "It is time, now, to give orders!"
But Dick had not had his answer yet, and
he chose to have it, straight from the many-minded mob, before he gave his own.
"Ye take a long while choosing between right and wrong!" he taunted them.
He did not want their leadership and did not care to have it thrust upon him. But the first clear article of his iron creed was that always—under any circumstances—anywhere—a man may be a gentleman; and so, he chose to try to save the life of a woman he detested. He did not know that they could have denied him nothing that he asked for, standing that way, with the moonlight streaming over him, and the claymore, like a strip of shimmering silver, in his hand.
"Are we friends or enemies?" he mocked.
And then the whispering swelled to words, and the words gathered like a thunderstorm until the wooded hollow roared and heaven echoed it.
"Zindabad!" yelled somebody with leather lungs. Prom opposite another yell answered him—then ten more—then a hundred. Then the timber on the hillsides shook as the whole crowd roared together and Dick Anthony received his answer.
"Zindabad Dee-k-Anthonee Shah!—Long live King Dick Anthony!"
An older man with more experience, who did not want to be their leader, would have acted otherwise; but Dick had in mind the safety of two women, and as usual no thought of his own advantage. Up went that strange, bright sword of his, humming again in the moon-rays.
"Silence!" he thundered, and instantly the whole glade seemed to cease to breathe.
Never had there been another man whom all, at once, desired to hear and to obey. They gasped amazement at their own obedience and then grew still again.
"Send men to bring those women in!" he ordered. "In my name—on my responsibility—let them be promised honorable treatment! Send the Cossacks back about their business. Promise them, in my name, that they shall not be molested until they reach the Russian lines. Tell the women they shall have a bigger, more efficient escort to take them back again!"
They waited, thinking there was more to come, or perhaps an explanation. But Dick was not given to explaining things or wasting words.
"It is an order!" he said, and took his seat on the rock again to await obedience.
Then the glades awoke to the birth of discipline. Men who had never yet obeyed, unless they were forced with a whip or bribed, raced to be first to carry out the order, and it needed instant action to prevent a mad, undignified stampede.
USBEG ALI KHAN—veteran of fifty fights—was the man who touched the right cord and started order redeveloping from chaos. He beckoned his seven, and all eight of them took stand in the center of the patch of light.
"Zindabad Dee-k-Anthonee Shah!" they yelled with swords aloft; and the crowd took up the yell, until the mountain-tops reverberated. Calling him king reminded them that they were conferring an honor; and men who do that do it in order, decently. They began to form up—still thundering their ovation.
They were ready to do more than merely call him king. Unwittingly, he had done the one thing likely to appeal straight to their resentful hearts. He had meant, when he ordered the Cossacks sent away, to remove temptation—what he knew would be temptation to repay Russian treatment of prisoners in kind. To them, though, he seemed to have defied Russia. To promise an outlaw escort to take the women back again was humor—grim humor, of the kind they were willing to ram home.
"Zindabad Dee-k-Anthonee Shah!" they roared; and the woods and the hills were shaking to the thunder when a dozen men escorted two tired horses through the boulder-strewn gap, along the singing stream, into the amphitheater. On each horse sat a woman, astride on a Cossack saddle. Each was blindfolded, for that is outlaw custom the wide world over—designed far more to emphasize outlaw majesty than for the purpose of maintaining secrecy. The rear woman of the two rode heavily—despondently—dead weary and afraid; but she in front had a high chin, and even the cloth that had been thrown over her head was made to lend her added grace and the hint of coquetry, with an art that is born in" some women.
Quietness shut down on them as they were led in front of Dick, and halted facing him.
"Why are they blindfolded?" he asked. "Are ye afraid of them?"
Unordered—uninvited—the Princess Olga Karageorgovich raised both hands and untied the cloth that hid her face.
"So, it is 'Zindabad Anthony Shah!' already? she said smiling. And, tired though she must have been, her smile was a thing to wonder at—to dare death for, if a man were built that way. "Oh Richard, oh my king—what did I tell you long ago in Egypt? Did I not offer you a kingdom then? Did I not say you were born for one? And now—after you have run away three times—what are you? Not Dick Anthony of Arran any longer, but of Persia!"
"Of Arran!" answered Dick; and she laughed at him with a musical tinkling laugh that was not very much unlike a peal of silver bells.
"Dick Anthony of Arran escaped to sea —was drowned—and is forgotten!" she answered. "He whom the gods would make a king can never escape a throne! Long ago I told you that the world was at your feet if only you would look—now you are made to look! But I weary of sire, of this high saddle and this altogether miserable horse —yet I have no cavalier, and my escort was sent galloping away at your majesty's express command!"
Whether she was mocking him or not— and nobody could ever be certain of her mood—she was entitled to the outward forms of courtesy that ought to be the symbols of a man's own self-respect. Dick well knew she could spring from the saddle unassisted. She was tired, but her willowy, lithe form—her every least movement— betrayed cat-like strength as well as health and youth. She waited, though, until he walked up to her stirrup, and she let him lift her to the ground. Perhaps she lingered just a little longer in his arms than she need have done, for he made an excuse to turn away from her.
"Help the maid down, Andry!" he ordered; and he knew perfectly well, without looking, that Andry was in the act of doing it.
The maid had not had courage enough left in her to pull the cloth from her head; she had sat the horse in a state of dismal lethargy, preferring not to see the next horror that the night would yield. She toppled over into Andry's arm when he touched her, and it was he who withdrew the blindfold. Then she screamed, for Andry was not beautiful.
"Ugh! Le diable! Aie-ee! Encore le monstre—le cannibale écossais! "But she lay still enough in Andry's huge, encircling arm and seemed glad enough to have him carry her. He laid her on his own coat where a deep black shadow fell beyond the ring of moonlight.
"There now, lassie!" he consoled her. "There's naethin' in the worrrld can harrrm ye, f'r I'm watchin' oot! Lie still an' rest ye awhile!
"C'est l'enfer!" she murmured. "Regardez seulement les diables! Voyez leur prince! Mon dieu!"
But she did not scream any more nor make any effort to escape him. And Andry, who knew no French at all, was quite content to let her murmur what she pleased; besides, he had one eye on Dick again.
Dick stood facing the Princess with an expression on his face that would have baffled an arch-inquisitor; only Andry, who had known him from a boy, could read it.
"Puir lassie!" Andry commented. "She's a bad ane—an' he's a good ane! 'Tis verra peetiful!"
"I have a word for your private ear," said the Princess, "and I have ridden far and hard to tell it you. Will you speak to me alone?"
She glanced round at the shadowy trees between whose boles other shadows moved.
"No," said Dick. And she threw her head back—looked straight into his eyes— and laughed at him deliciously.
"Monsieur the king of bandits!" she said, pointing an accusing finger. "You must make yourself King of Persia now, or hang! I am here to tell you how to do one, and to avoid the other!"
THE ring of blackness that hedged in the moonlight seemed to crowd closer and listen as Dick stared hard at her, and knew himself to stand at bay-Nobody but this one woman had ever yet made him feel helpless. Always, whatever shape they took, he had known himself able to dominate other situations. But how in thunder, he asked himself, could a man deal other than politely with a woman?
Yet he was beginning to bow to the inevitable—beginning to realize that there are limits to a woman's license. Even the watching mountain-men—all eyes for anything that might affect their destiny—detected indignation boiling underneath his outward calm. She saw the signs of dawning desperation and flinched; for a man with a jaw like his, and an eye as calm as his, is worse than loosed flood-water when the barrier of his grim reserve is down.
He offered her his rock-seat with the air of a gentleman conferring favors, and she chose there and then to prove up her judgment of his frame of mind. She made room for him beside her, and his manner as he drew back instantly brought a quick, delicious laugh from her; it sounded like a peal of fairy bells, ringing through the night.
She thought that for once, perhaps, he might be goaded into speaking first, and she waited; but he let her wait. He seemed able to wait forever, and presently she hurried to begin, for the silence was too one-sided in its unnerving effect. It gave her love for him too great opportunity to grow, just sitting there and looking at him, standing like a demi-god in the mysterious, dim light, unconscious of his poise and charm.
She wanted him furious—in a mood to take the bit between his teeth and dare whatever came of it—and herself enough in hand to guide him when he burst the bonds of self-restraint.
"Monsieur le superbe!" she called him. "Monsieur le roi des bandits!" She thought that mockery might help stir him into action. "You are going to need all your pride and resolution now—all your courage—all your brains."
"Meaning, I suppose," said Dick with perfect outward calm, "that you have invented a new game and hope to drag me into it. You'll fail!"
"Mon sire," she laughed, "I can imagine you fighting with an ax! But never mind, I came for straight talking. This time the game is not mine; you are in the toils in spite of me and I am here to help you."
Her rock-seat was low and she had to look up at him. The moon, that outlined his neat figure and hinted at his iron strength, made her seem fragile, unimportant, desperate; she might have been a wisp of misery dropped and left there by the wind. It was not easy for her to seem jubilant—to try to take the upper hand of him and to pretend she held all trumps. She needed all her energy and skill to concentrate on Dick, and the eyes that peered at her through the night from every hand made her nervous.
"Your pack, monsieur le roi des loups, may be in your royal confidence," she mocked, "but is not in mine. I came to talk confidences. Will your majesty dismiss them, or shall we two adjourn elsewhere?"
But ridicule fell off Dick's broad shoulders and left him unaffected, just as threats only put him on his guard. Once on his guard, attempts to get him at a disadvantage made him adamant.
"I will have food brought you," he said stiffly, "and blankets if there are any to be had. You may sleep under that tree, and I will set a guard to see that you are not molested. One hour after dawn you and your maid go back to where you came from, with an escort big enough to deliver you safely at the other end. I have nothing to say to you. If you have anything to say to me you. may say it here, and I will listen."
She flinched again; for in all her experience of him that was the first time he had ever shown his hand to her in advance, and now his promise proved as direct, blunt and uncompromising as his deeds had always been.
Well she knew that he would listen! He always had listened to the end, and then he had always acted with a suddenness that beggared speed. His manner now was unmistakable — judicial — stern — it branded him as an Anthony of Arran. She was not the only one who diagnosed it. Usbeg Ali Khan, watching through the dark with soldier eyes that missed nothing, recognized the attitude of grim conclusion and drew nearer, swearing into his black. beard because the talk was not in Persian that he understood so much more readily. Then Andry, jealous as a faithful hound, came closer on the other hand and lay down in a shadow within reach. The Princess saw both men, and though she looked at Dick, her words were meant for all three.
"You are in a net, Monsieur Anthony of Persia!" She mocked him, and pointed an accusatory finger that was meant to impress the crowd, for she could act best when her case was most difficult and desperate. "No, not of Arran any longer, but of Persia now! You are a leopard who has changed his spots! A leopard trapped by Russia's secret government that has never yet let its victims go again! Trapped—but a royal leopard—one who can burst the trap by dint of brain and courage! I—who confess myself to you a member of that secret government—am here to help you. I am the little mouse who will gnaw the strands and let the leopard out! Refuse my aid and you are lost—tricked, made use of, thrown aside and damned!"
"Quite a catalog of ills!" said Dick with the air of a man who did not believe a word she said.
"You will be hunted through these hills, monsieur le roi des loups, until the hunting is no longer profitable. When Northern Persia is at last Russia's, by reason of the presence of so many regiments, all brought down here, one at a time, to try to catch you, then some one of your own entourage will be bribed, most likely—with quite a little sum—and you will die by poison, or by a dagger in the dark."
Dick laughed at her.
"The hunting won't last long!" he said, and the mockery in his voice was real, where hers had been acted. "A man took a letter for me late last night. Great Britain takes a hand next!"
"Shall I tell you to whom the letter was, and what you wrote?" she asked.
He did not answer her. Suddenly the painstaking completeness of the net began to dawn upon him.
"You wrote to the British Minister at Teheran! You said—"
"Enough!" said Dick. "You intercepted it. What next?"
"It was a gentlemanly letter, monsieur le roi—a kingly letter—dignified! It did not mention me, who am responsible for your predicament because I chose you in the first place! A mean man, or a coward, would have blamed the woman just as poor old Adam did. Man that you are, you ignored me and demanded to stand trial yourself! I am glad, mon sire, that I got the letter, and not your Minister; for he is a mere diplomat and could not appreciate stark honesty!"
He did not answer. His thoughts were away and away, trying to reform themselves on a new plane on which the British flag did not appear and a man must fight for justice on his own account. She laughed as she watched his face, and the note grew softer, more seducing. But his lips grew stern and thin.
"Richard Anthony," she purred, "was drowned on the Themistokles! The Russian Government reported to the British Government that his body was recovered, and then sunk feet foremost by a passing Russian ship! Who is this man who poses now as Richard Anthony of Arran? Who but an impostor, eh?"
"Jezebel!" swore Andry from between set teeth; but Dick held out a hand and the big man crouched lower to the ground.
"Who but an impostor—monsieur le roi des loups—would send abroad such stories of his ancestry? Northern Persia is alive with rumors of this imitation Richard Anthony, and of his sword, and of a boast that he is Alexander come to life again to establish Islam throughout all the world! Do you suppose the British Minister in Teheran has not heard the whisperings? Should you apply to him, what could he do but hand you over to the Russian Government for trial and punishment? Is not this a 'Russian Sphere of Influence'?"
The shame of the thought that his name was gone from him—that he might have to fight to prove his very birthright—overwhelmed Dick for the moment. That name —Anthony of Arran—had meant more to him than a stranger could have guessed. He was nonplused—taken off his guard.
"There are others who know me—who can identify me!" he argued weakly.
"For instance—who?" She was mocking him again.
"Lancaster!"
"Lancaster met you less than a week ago on this shore of the Caspian! He knows you for a man who crossed the Caspian in a stolen Russian boat—who forthwith burned the boat—who headed straight for the mountains on stolen horses—yes, mon sire, stolen horses—who placed himself at the head of these bandits and attacked a Cossack regiment! N'est-ce pas? He knows you for a man who calls himself Richard Anthony of Arran. Has he any proof?"
Dick muttered to himself something that the Princess could not catch. He set his teeth; and in the darkness just behind him, Usbeg Ali Khan, the Afghan, shuddered. He had had no leave from Dick to send abroad those tales, nor had Dick known anything about them. Unknown to each other, and with different ends in view, he and the Princess had been furthering the same plan to force Dick into leadership of a rebellion, and now it looked as if the Afghan might be called on for an explanation. But —as he explained it after to his seven—the hand of Allah intervened and saved him. Dick blamed the Princess for all of it!
"Who—unless you—could have devised such deviltry?" demanded Dick. "Who but you could have devised it and then have had the impudence to come here and offer help? Who but you would dare risk my holding you prisoner until—"
>"Do it!" she burst out, leaping to her feet so that Dick stepped backward to avoid her. "Richard—my king of bandits —my king of wolves—my king-to-be— do it! Make me your prisoner and all Persia—all the World, if you will—is yours!"
She stepped toward him with her arms outheld, and he took no more steps backward; but as she came very close to him she stopped. It needed more courage than even hers to fling her into Dick's arms then.
"I don't want the World," he said; and she watched his lips as if she expected something more. She watched for half a minute and the listening darkness throbbed, for the dumb play was now obvious. So he answered the unspoken question too.
"Or you, Princess," he added quietly.
"But I want you, Dick Anthony! The Okhrana has you in its grip, and I love you —I would die, if you die! Only I can or dare help free you! I got you into the trap but I can lead you out again! Already— Dick—already I have dared too much for my own safety, unless you listen to me!"
"Did I ever seek your acquaintance, or ask you once to interfere on my behalf?" asked Dick; and she ignored that thrust, since it was unanswerable.
"They will hunt you from place to place! They mean to let you gain strength enough to be a menace, but never to let you grow too strong. They will let you have arms and ammunition—they will leave them for you to capture! Even money! They want a good, obvious, demonstrable excuse for marching more Cossacks down across the border. Beat them at their own game, then! Grow too strong for them, Dick Anthony! Be King Dick, with a vengeance! Make me your prisoner—aye, make me! You and I—together, Dick—with my knowledge and your courage—with my secrets and your ability to lead—can win all Persia—all Asia—the World! Listen, man—don't answer yet—just listen!"
HE WAS listening. It was no habit of his to interrupt when the enemy's plans were being spread before him. The bursting desire to speak, that she sensed, came from Andry and Usbeg Ali Khan who wanted to jump up and urge him too. Dick's mind had been made up minutes ago. Why should he speak? He stood like a statue—silent, proud and grim.
"Let me prove myself to you!" she begged him. "You don't believe me. Let me teach you to trust me! Let me prove my pure good-will and my power to help you! Reward me afterward, or not, just as you please!"
Actress among artists — artist among actresses—she could even be humble when humility seemed suited to her part. She shaded the inflections of her voice and posed in subtle harmony with the strange, mysterious silence. There is nothing more magnetic than. the silence of a thousand men; yet, instead of being affected by it, she used it to her own advantage as a background for her acting. Had she. been Titania and he Oberon, her part could never have been better played.
"Dick, dear—I love you! I loved you back in the beginning, when we met in Egypt. I made the mistake of trying to make use of you because I wanted you great, as you deserve to be. Now turn the tables, Dick, and use me! You make me speak before these cattle—me who have ridden fifty miles through jungle to warn you! And yet I love you! I could forgive you anything! Dick! King Dick! I would die for you! I will die, if you die! I have risked life, and limb, and reputation for you —and even more than those three, Dick. You would never guess the fate in store for me, were the Okhrana to guess that I am playing false! Now, Dick, at this minute I am running the gravest risk a woman can i in—offering to betray the Okhrana to you! Dick, dear—are you listening? Are you deaf? Are you insensible?"
"You're consistent!" Dick assured her. "Consistent and persistent! I admire your determination very much. I'm only sorry you've bent all your springs to capture me. I could applaud your efforts to capture some other man, but—not being in love—I—ah— have to—to decline to make you prisoner! Your escort will be ready for you one hour after dawn!"
"Dick! Listen to me!"
But he bowed to her with a dignity that granted her acknowledgment in full of all her charm, and backed away.
"Are we enemies?" she asked.
"I would not willingly be any woman's enemy."
"Then, thank God, I am your friend!" she answered, speaking very, gently—acting with all the power in her; death or success were the only possible alternatives in the fight she had entered on. "Truly—truly I am sorry that I ever interfered with you— that I harmed you! May I not try to make amends? May I not help you now? For I can help if you will let me."
"There is only one thing you may do," said Dick.
"Name it! I will do anything!"
"This. Tell the British Minister in Teheran, over your own signature or by word of mouth in person, that I am Dick Anthony of Arran—that I did not drown on the Themistokles—that you were with me on that ship and know me well. Assure him—as you can truthfully if you care to—that I am the victim of your damned Russian secret-police,—of the so-called Okhrana—and that I have done nothing of which a British officer need be ashamed. Ask him to allow me to surrender to him in Teheran and be heard in my own defense. You, and very nearly only you in Persia, can prove my identity and prove, too, how I come to be in this predicament. Wilt you do it?"
She hesitated. It was obvious. He had asked the last thing she expected; and her face, that could usually hide emotion or betray at will emotion that she did not feel, darkened as she fought with a desire to bargain with him. He watched her lose her self-mastery and then win it back again.
"Yes!" she said suddenly. And before she said it he knew well she was about to lie.
"Very well," he said, bowing punctiliously. "I shall make an opportunity to thank you—afterward. In the meantime, I will send you food. I hope you will sleep well. Fresh horses will be ready for you one hour after dawn!"
He turned on his heel, then, and strode into the shadow of the trees. Instantly "Re was surrounded by a hundred men—fierce, wide-eyed, hungry men—who wanted to know facts. The night awoke to the murmur of a thousand tongues, for if his fate rested in the balance, so lay theirs and they lacked his strong patience to await the outcome.
"What is it, prince? What said she? What is to be done with her? What news of the Cossacks? Was it truth—God's truth —that she is to be sent back unmolested?"
"If you think you are dealing with a liar," answered Dick in no mood to be argued with, "you had better choose yourselves another leader! Myself, I would spit on a leader who lied—I would not follow him one furlong!"
"Then prince—then thou art leader—leader indeed?"
"Yes," said Dick curtly.
No one word ever gave a thousand men more joy, nor set the tree-tops ringing to a yell of greater exultation.
"Hear him! We have heard him! He has promised! He has said!"
Out and out into the darkness, up the hillsides in ever widening rings, the news went out that Richard Anthony was king—chief —champion—their leader against Russia!
"Zindabad!" yelled somebody with lungs like plates of brass.
"Zindabad!" a hundred echoed him.
And then like a salvo of artillery there crashed across the amphitheater "Zindabad Dee-k-Anthonee Shah!"
If the Princess or her maid could sleep under the looted blankets that were brought them, then they were sweethearts of the slumber-god; for the night became a noise through which silence broke occasionally for an instant to give contrast to the din. They lit watch-fires, for who cared now whether or not the Cossack outposts saw a red glow on the sky and marked the location down? They had a leader. They dared flout a Russian army! The watch-fires grew to bonfires, and they dragged whole trees to cast into the flames.
The cost of cartridges became a jest—a nightmare of the past. By bandoleersful the bullets whistled skyward, to fall where they listed, so be the noise was great enough. And when Dick asked them where they expected to find other cartridges, the old bowed head-man gave a true Persian answer.
"Prince—we obey in all things. Therefore, we look up for all things to our chief whom we obey!"
"Very well," said Dick. "Cease firing!"
It took a little while to let that order percolate; but one by one it reached them and they saw the wisdom of it. Then it was borne in on them that they had a leader who could think calmly, even in the minute of his elevation, and then they exulted on a new chord, howling to the night about his wisdom. That one brief order did more for him than a night of preaching could have done. He* became Dee-k-Anthonee the Wise, and ever afterward his lightest words had weight with them.
Andry's eyes met Usbeg Ali Khan's, and —soldiers both—they read in each other recognition of the crowd's new voice, pitched in the key in which the tune of discipline is played. They grinned, and Andry strode to where an English leather bag lay underneath a tree, guarded by Usbeg Ali's seven followers. He drew bagpipes out. They were Dick's but he did not care for that.
There is music that is sweeter than he made. There are tunes that are better suited to the ear of cities, and to those occasions when the calm, sweet thoughts of gentlefolk are uppermost. There are melodies more soothing to the savage breast. But there is neither instrument nor melody with half that power to knit a swarm of men in single purpose. To their savage, under-droned inharmony the chanter skirled, and screamed, and taunted Fear. The woods grew silent while the skirly, creepy music rose and fell, and the mountain-men looked sideways at one another to see whether the other fellow, too, had water in his eyes.
"Cock o' the North" is a foolish tune, and the words are mere nonsense, if you measure either by the school rule. But, like Yankee-doodle, and another tune or two, it can pluck at the heart-strings of a fighting man and send him roaring to be first in the van of a forlorn hope. It is basic, true heart-music when you try the marching test. The Persians listened to it, and then marched to it—round and round the tree-hid amphitheater, thundering mad Persian versions of the song, extemporized as the tune took hold of them.
Then Dick took a turn, and he was an expert, whereas Andry was just Scots piper. The crowd stood still again, as he strode out alone and the pipes wailed new thoughts to them. They listened now to the melancholy minor music that has helped make Scotia what she is, and—savage as Mother Asia could breed them and Russian tyranny could make—they needed no interpreter. They knew the notes of manhood yearning to be free—of bravery sobbing at defeat— of wild, free spirit defying tyranny, and of clan-comradeship defying odds.
And, presently, he left the measured age-old tunes behind and improvised, as Scotsmen love to do. He played his way into their hearts, then wove history and personality and pride into one wild epic and played it to them until they groaned for his sorrow—swore all in chorus for his wrongs —and wept at his bravery. Before the moon died and the utter darkness came to herald dawn, they loved him—they who had buried all but hate and had looked on him merely as a man to rally round.
When the darkness quivered at last, and the mountain-sides began to glitter with the morning tints; when Dick sat down again, and Andry stowed the pipes away, they looked to see again what kind of man this was who had won their allegiance forever in a night. Had they been dreaming? Were they really, truly pledged to obey one man at last and take the fight to Russia?
They pressed around him. And as they looked through a gap between two tree-tops a sun-ray lit on him—the first glittering advance-guard of another day—gilding his red hair and showing Kim in outline against the trunk of a great tree. He shook himself to throw off the burden of a sleepless night; and they knew that minute—they knew surely! They had not been dreaming —were not fooled! He stood before them— shook himself in front of them—held up his chin and eyed them—smiled—and then ordered them—a man!
"Zindabad Dee-k-Anthonee Shah!" they began to yell again; but he held his hand up and they stopped.
"Enough of that!" he said in Persian. "Enough of promises! Now for breakfast, and performances!"
They brought him the best they had to eat, and at his orders fed the Princess and her maid; wonder of wonders, they obeyed him to the letter and showed both women the strictest courtesy. Then, as Dick had promised, exactly one hour after dawn the Princess and her maid set off on their return journey surrounded by an escort of fifty mounted-men—every single mounted-man, that was, who owned Dick as his chief.
"Will he not come and say good-by to me?" the Princess asked.
"No!" they assured her. "Forward!"
"Nichevo!" she answered. "It does not matter! I will help him first, and he will thank me afterward!"
A man rode back to report that little speech of hers to Dick.
"Do you believe her promises?" asked Dick.
"In the name of Allah, no! I believe nothing that a Russian says!"
"Then ride on—hold your tongue—and do your duty!" answered Dick, turning at once to Usbeg Ali Khan and dismissing the Princess for the time being from his memory.
THE Okhrana—Russia's secret bane as well as secret-service—is vile from the inside outward. Cancers inside it prey on its growing strength, just as it preys on Russia; and nowhere, where the Russian tongue is understood, is there any freedom from its lies, and subterfuge, and greed, and infamy.
While Dick Anthony, many a mile away amid the tree-clad Elburz Mountains, was trying to reject a leadership he had not sought, a Cossack guard paced up and down outside a dingy little house in Astrabad. He marched like a machine—thirty paces one way, and right about turn—thirty paces the other way, and right about turn—indifferent — unintelligent — obedient. Inside the house, in a little up-stairs room, two gentlemen in neatly fitting uniforms discussed plans, for which he and his fraternity were to furnish the dumb motive-power.
"So we've got him at last!" said the older of the. two, who might have been an accredited diplomat, he looked so distinguished and innocuous. "He's rounded-up and harnessed. All he needs is plenty of whip and work!"
"The difficulty I see," said his vis-ŕ-vis, adjusting his spectacles and fingering the long white scar down one side of his face, "is that he has already killed too many Cossacks. The next regiment sent against him is likely to get out of hand and kill him. Then where's your beautiful brigand?"
"Never fear!" said the first man. "My orders have been given and are understood. Should anything of that kind happen, the whole regiment, including officers, will go to do jail-guard duty in Siberia. They know that promise will be kept! Anthony won't be killed until I give the word!"
"Well—as long as he's alive, and at large in the Elburz range, he's a perfectly good excuse, of course, for sending for more Cossacks. Persia can't object. England can't object. Nobody can. He's a brigand, and under the treaty we've a right to proceed against him."
"That's not all of it," the other man answered. "We' re in better luck than we expected. Details have just come in over the wire. Anthony, it seems, has an uncle who hates the sight of him. Almost the minute we sent word that Anthony's body had been picked up at sea and identified by papers in one of the pockets, this uncle applied to the courts for leave to administer the estate. Anthony is now removed from the British Army list—officially dead—and buried!"
"Well?"
"Sooner or later—and probably very soon —Anthony will send a message to the British—"
>He was interrupted by a clatter of hoofs below and a sharp challenge that was answered just as sharply. A pass-word was given in a low voice, and a moment later both men listened to the sound of heavy footsteps clambering the narrow stairs. A resounding thump on the door was followed by the appearance of a very dusty Cossack who saluted and presented a letter to the older of the two men.
"Very well," he nodded, and the Cossack started for the stairs again.
Both men listened until they heard his steps on the threshold and then the stamping of his horse as he mounted.
"Here it is!" said the older man, tapping the letter with his finger, and smiling as if there were a check inside it. "A letter from Richard Anthony to the British Minister at Teheran! What did I tell you?"
He laid the letter on the table and rubbed his hands together delightedly.
"Our little Princess is managing famously! See her initials in the corner of the envelope? Never knew such a woman for putting her trademark on her handiwork! Thinks it will get her credit, I suppose! Now—I dare bet you I can tell you nearly word for word what's in that letter!"
"Never mind! I won't bet! Open it and read!"
The senior picked up the letter again and drew out two closely written pages. The handwriting was as clear and dignified as the words; there was not a blot nor an erasure from start to finish, nor a sentence that could have two meanings. The man chuckled as he read.
"Could have told you every word of it! Claims he is Richard Anthony of Arran— officer in the Territorials—gives date of his appointment—claims to be the victim of Russian spies and secret-police—gives his version of the incident at Baku—and winds up by demanding his right to surrender to the Minister at Teheran and be heard in his own defense. Couldn't be better! Couldn't be better! Now—it may surprise you—but I'm going to forward this letter at once to the British Minister!"
"But why? What good would that do? Aren't things difficult enough already?"
"Too difficult! We want to make them easy! You see, my friend, it's quite a few days since we notified the Minister that a man masquerading as Richard Anthony, and claiming to be a British officer, was telling fabulous tales about his sword and his ancestry and stirring rebellion in the Elburz range. The Minister wired London. London wired back that the real Richard Anthony is dead, having had that information by wire from us. So the Minister notified us duly that this man must be an impostor, and invited us to hurry up and catch him! Now—this letter from Anthony, twice opened and sealed up again but sent on straight to the Minister to whom it is directed, will look like awfully good faith on our part. He probably won't answer it; but if he does he will probably advise Anthony to surrender to us. Whatever he does, we wire for two more regiments of Cossacks! Understand that much?"
"Yes," said the man with the scar. "Very well. How about Lancaster? What is he doing?"
"Sending cablegrams in code."
"Have we a copy of the code?"
"Surely. Every telegram he has sent, and every answer received by him, has been decoded and copied. Some of his telegrams have been—er—edited, to give them a clearer meaning. Here are all the copies. Read this one—this is Lancaster's own—no need to edit it—see where he assures them that Anthony can make Persia too hot to hold us? Read this one—no, this one asking for money, arms and ammunition for Anthony. Now read this answer—note how High Finance is interested—see? 'Where shall we send them, and by what route?' Pretty good, eh?"
The man who might have been a diplomat perused the little pile of copies carefully, penciling notes on the margins of some of them. Suddenly he looked up.
"Lancaster is in the way!" he snapped. "He's unnecessary! Put him in jail! Hurry him across the border! Siberia! Let Strom-ski do deputy for him. Stromski's got brains; Stromski's done this kind of thing before. But keep an eye on Stromski. In all probability Lancaster's safe in Teheran contains all his papers, and the key is certain to be in the man's pocket. See that Stromski gets the key—let Stromski study the whole case and get in touch with these financiers. Explain to him just how we stand with them, and tell him to wire them repeatedly to send money and ammunition; that will save us expense and commit them. Let some of the money reach Anthony and use the rest for bribing Persian officials, or for whatever other purpose I direct from time to time...."
"But—suppose they send some one out to see Lancaster, or to relieve him? We can't forge more than his signature! He's one-eyed, and ugly, and recognizable more than a mile away!"
"Bah! Cross bridges when you reach them! Have you understood me? Then obey!"
The man with the scar and spectacles left the room at once and walked to the office where a force of government clerks were handling the telegraphic business. A weasel-faced man in the comer nodded to him.
"News for you, Stromski!" said the man in" spectacles, passing through to an inner room.
The man addressed as Stromski tugged his military tunic straight, licked-his lips, showed an eye-tooth in a momentary lapse of caution, and then allowed his facial expression to settle into blank uninterest. He looked at himself in a little pocket-mirror before he rose and followed.
"Poul!" said the man in spectacles, when Stromski closed the door behind him. The word is the commonest in the Persian language, and has almost reached the dignity of being slang.
"Whose money, and how much?" asked Stromski, taking the seat opposite.
Each man laid his elbows on the table and rested his face between his fists; the space between their faces was like the zone over which electric sparks are made to jump. The words were like little sharp explosions. Only the faces were expressionless.
"The money of half the financiers in Europe, and all we can get of it, my boy! You're to take these telegrams and this code-book and be Lancaster until further orders. Lancaster goes into the lock-up ten minutes from now, and thence over the border out of the way. Study the case thoroughly and get all these fool financiers to cable all the money they will. I may use 'some' of it to 'bribe Persian officials.' That mean anything to you?"
Stromski nodded.
"I'll find a puppet. He shall lend whatever money comes, for our joint account. The easiest thing in the world is to get Persians to borrow money at any rate at all. The hardest thing is to make them repay. But—here's where you and I come in, Stromski—a division of Cossacks is under my orders, with artillery. I'm sending for two more regiments and one battery at once. We'll lend the money at cent, per cent., and the Cossacks shall collect for us! Is that clear?".
"Perfectly," said Stromski.
Stromski screwed his face into a knot, and then unscrewed it. He seemed to be thinking hard.
"Haven't these financiers any check on Lancaster?" he asked. "Will they cable money just because I ask for it?"
"There are three men who check him up regularly—two "in Teheran and one here. They are all in our pay. And there are two men in our pay at the other end as well! Have no qualms, Stromski—the way is paved!"
Stromski twisted up his face again and untwisted it by sections at a time. He seemed satisfied.
"So Anthony is to be forced to raise hell, eh? If he's half the man he's said to be, he may prove costly! He has killed fifty of our-men already. It would look ridiculous to send an army corps against him yet— and, by regiments at a time, he may cost us half a dozen regiments, plus plunder!"
"Not much plunder left in this part of Persia!" said the man in spectacles, smiling reminiscently; and Stromski laughed.
"There won't be many Cossacks either, if Anthony turns out to be a real rebel!"
"Nichevo!" said the man in spectacles, shrugging his shoulders. "Are there no more where they came from?"
"Poor devils!" said Stromski. "So you and I get rich, eh?"
"If cent, per cent, can do it, yes! Keep in touch with me, move by move. I'm off now to see about Lancaster's arrest and to choose our puppet money-lender. If you're in doubt about anything, ask me; otherwise know nothing and, above all, be silent!"
Stromski nodded.
"Afternoon then, Stromski. I'll send you Lancaster's bunch of keys within an hour,"
"Good afternoon!" said Stromski.
HE was a new Dick Anthony who turned to Usbeg Ali Khan when the Princess disappeared through the gap that led out of the amphitheater. He no longer lost time. He no longer dallied with responsibility—it was his—he had accepted it.
"Usbeg Ali Khan!" he said in a voice that reverberated.
"Bahadur?"
"I wish you to be second-in-command!"
The Afghan saluted him with dignity, but eyed Andry Macdougal sideways. Of Asia —deep-dyed, hard-bitten — he knew jealousy of old.
"Andry!" commanded Dick.
"Sir?"
"Salute Usbeg Ali Khan!"
The great, grim Scotsman swung a hand like a semaphore and did as he was told. The expression on his wrinkled face, as the freckles worked up and down, was enigmatic; if he felt surprised, he certainly contrived to hide it, but if he felt pleased he hid that, too.
"You're third. You know no Persian. Your value lies in your loyalty and your soldier training. If you could speak or understand Persian I would have made you second-in-command, but as it is I expect you to pick up a smattering of Persian if you can, and—er—always pay Usbeg Ali Khan the respect due to his position. No more talk about 'black men'! Do you understand?"
"Aye. I ken."
"I'm a dead man, Andry! They've stricken Dick Anthony from the list—taken his name away!"
"Man—Mr. Dicky—ye've only her bare word for it—mak' verra certain before ye leap at conclusions!"
"I've leaped!" said Dick. "She spoke the truth this time. I'm a dead man. I'm going to be the liveliest dead man Russia or any other country ever buried!"
"Aye, I believe ye!"
"As a dead man, they can't bring me to account! I'm officially dead and buried, Andry! I owe no fealty to any country, nor obedience to any human law! I'm dead— rotten by this time! The worms have got me! Do you see the point? You're going to take orders from a ghost—you and Usbeg Ali!"
Andry grinned — the grin slowly growing to a cavern from which laughter pealed, as appreciation dawned. Usbeg Ali Khan did not laugh; instead his jaw dropped, for he saw the hand of Allah in the business. Who but Allah had put tales into his Asiatic head about Dick being a dead man come to life again? Who but Allah could have made him take a chance and tell them? Who but Allah—now—after the tales were told and had gone creeping through the Persian bazaars—could have made men in a distant country write down this Dick Anthony as dead?
"There is no God but God!" he muttered, in his beard. "Yalam Allah wa'l zaman mu'allimi God knows, and time will disclose His plans—may I be there!"
A quick survey, in the light of his new resolve, told Dick that he held a fist of trumps. Usbeg Ali Khan had been trained in war and lived in the hope of it; military drill and method—the art of making soldiers out of savages—were at his fingers' ends, and he had seven Afghan followers who had all served in the Afghan Amir's army where discipline is grim. Andry, too, was a soldier, trained in a Scots regiment. Only he himself was an amateur; and he had worked so hard in his boyhood days to fit himself for what he thought, then, was to be his future that he knew more military lore than Usbeg Ah Khan and Andry both together. He only lacked their experience; and to make up for that he had a genius for leadership.
"I'm King Dick, am I? Very well! The game begins!"
And it did begin, that minute.
WITHIN an hour he had chosen. seventy men from among the bandits, and in tens had set them to drilling under Usbeg Ali's seven. Seven, who have heart enough to follow one man all through Asia in the mere hope of a brawl, can do wonders when it comes to teaching others—particularly when the others want to learn.
The words of command were English;
Usbeg Ali saw to that. Long ago, before they started out, he had taught his seven to give orders and understand them in the tongue in which three parts of the fighting of the modern world has been directed. As worthy followers of a gentleman adventurer, it became them to be prepared. Andry and Usbeg Ali both hovered here and there, eLiminating men who showed no aptitude. Dick busied himself selecting substitutes and organizing a party to go foraging.
Hitherto among those mountains it had been each man for himself, and he who could not steal might starve. Now, in a band one hundred strong under their old "head-man," Dick sent them to swoop down on a village in the plain below, where a contractor was accumulating stores to sell to Russia; a Joseph of Egypt in his own small way, he had a big granary full. It needed the forced labor* of four villages and all the pressed cattle of a countryside to carry the loot up into the mountains.
And he appointed hunters; his own stomach and Andry's, if not those of Usbeg Ali and his seven, were likely to do better service on a meat regime. Indiscriminate hunting, without plan, had been one thing; the hunters had gone hungry formerly, while the game grew ever wilder; but this new, systematic, carefully instructed searching of the hillsides soon produced a larder millionaire epicures might well have envied.
The rest of the men were set to watch the seventy at drill, and soon the tens were trebled into thirties, Dick drove them remorselessly, but drove the instructors harder yet; by the third day the seven were commanding a hundred each, and there were five more hundreds drilling under the most promising recruits. Then Dick, Andry and Usbeg Ali Khan each -took in hand a section of four hundred, and evolutions were the order of the day.
It was ragged work at first. They milled, and murmured, and grew miserable; but the voices they were learning now to trust rose and fell, rose and fell steadily, and by what seemed a miracle long lines of riflemen would untie themselves from a headless, tailless knot. Then they would do the thing again, still wondering. Then not wondering so much—then grinning—then, at last, almost bored by the simplicity of the thing, and obviously wondering why they could not do it right at first.
It was still ragged work. The orders had still to be translated into Persian, and the one-third who learned quickest led the denser two-thirds. No army in the civilized world would have dared parade so clumsily; no army but would have sneered at the thought of calling this one anything but mob. And yet, already—because it wanted to be one, and because each member of it tried from dawn to dark with all the heart he had—this was beginning to be an army that a force of conscripts twice as strong might wisely run away from. To a man, it marched with the weirdy expectant thrill of corning conquest.
IT WAS after dawn on the fifth day when a spent horse galloped by the brook into the amphitheater, and a ragged Persian fell from it—staggered to his feet again—and tottered to Dick Anthony.
"Prince!" he said, speaking with great effort. "Lo! We were an escort! Lo! We bore a white flag! Lo! We did thy bidding! Lo! A white flag met us! There was parleying! We gave them their two women, unharmed and with nothing taken from them. They bade us wait. She who is named the Princess bade us wait, that we might be given presents. Lo! We waited, with our white flag still in front of us. Then came an officer of Cossacks—all alone— who spoke with us. He asked us questions and we boasted to him of our new chief. Lo! Even while we boasted, came the Cossacks and surrounded us!"
"Speak on!" said Dick grimly.
"Prince! God is my witness that I lie not!. They took our white flag away. They took our horses. Lo! They tied us! They beat us dreadfully with knouts! Ten of us they shot and hung from tree-tops, and the rest of us they tied together two by two! Only yesterday they cut me loose and gave me a horse, and bade me say—"
He hesitated. In the East a man thinks twice, and prays to Allah, before delivering an insult or a message of ill-omen; he is likely to be the first victim of the listener's resentment.
"You have my leave to speak!" said Dick.
"They bade me say — he said — it was their officer who said—'Lo!' said he, 'tell him we come to flog his majesty!'"
"Did they court-martial the ten who were shot?" demanded Dick.
"Nay, they shot them!"
"No trial at all? No pretense of one?"
"They slew them as a butcher slays a sheep, save that bullets did duty for a knife!"
"And the rest are prisoners?"
"God is my witness that thirty-and-nine are prisoners, very badly beaten, and ill-fed."
"Oh!" said Dick; and the veins stood on his temples. Along his lips there ran a little tine of white, and his left hand, clutching his sword-hilt, tightened until the knuckles seemed about to tear the skin.
"Attend to that man!" he ordered; and a Persian who had been trained as hospital-orderly in some mission-station led the messenger away.
"Form three sides of a hollow square!" commanded Dick.
It was the first time that order had been given, and the skill of Usbeg Ali Khan was sorely taxed as he shepherded them, company by company. The shouted orders, and mistaken orders rose and fell like the din of Babel; but always the will to obey was there, and so at last three sides of a square evolved from zigzagging confusion and the panting lines looked left and right in pride at their last achievement.
"I had meant," said Dick in Persian, when the panting ceased, and a man could make himself heard yet keep his dignity, "to drill longer and be readier before we marched. But Allah has seen fit—" he fell into Eastern idiom and phrase with an case that delighted them—"to make the Russians mad, that we might have excuse at once for whelming them! We march to the whelming now! But—" he held his hand up, for he caught the beginning of a cheer —the rasp of indrawn breath and the quick eye-glance left and right—"listen, and weigh my words well! They—the Russians —have behaved like animals. We will behave like men! We go to rescue nine-and-thirty who are prisoners, and to teach a lesson; but the man who disregards a white flag—who tortures or kills a prisoner—who disobeys an officer or questions an order— the man, in fact, who behaves in manner unbecoming to a soldier fighting in a just cause — will die by my hand! I have spoken!"
He looked at them — slowly — once up, and once all down the line; and they eyed him." In breathless silence they recognized a true man speaking truth, and with a sigh that was their first real joint expression of united will they decided to obey. He knew, and they knew, from that minute that there was only one commander there; he knew he need not give another thought to his authority; he might lead them where he would, and order what he would.
He made each man turn into a common reserve every cartridge he owned more than thirty, and the reserve he ordered packed on the few mean pack-animals there were in camp. Each man was ordered to burden himself with a week's scant rations, and when the lines fell in again Dick passed along each rank and made them discard unnecessaries; whatever he refused to allow carried on the march he ordered cached, and he picked out ten old men to stay behind and guard the cache.
Then he sent Usbeg Ali Khan ahead with the advance guard, ordering him to fall back and command the left wing when the enemy were once discovered and engaged.
No dallying! Not too much strategy! Twelve hundred scarce-drilled Persians against a regiment of possibly eight hundred Russians—the odds were still on the Russian side! Above all, there rode at the head of the main body, in an unstarched shirt and without a collar, a good Scots gentleman who had thrown his weight in with the under-dog and who had taught himself to know that Justice is a wonder of a cause to join. He had no doubt at all about the outcome; he was riding to see Justice win, and he believed himself the tool of Justice.
To have divided his force would have been madness. He understood now, quite, that it was his own personality that knitted the twelve hundred into one, and until a little of his own idealism had found its way into their understanding he meant to keep them close and use their weight in quick, shock-tactics. He meant that every man of them should he able to see all the others when the moment came to put courage to the test. And so, he marched them down from the mountain-tops in a half-mile column, letting them grow used to the tramp of companies in step. Before long it amused them to feel the level places shake as twelve hundred feet would strike the earth together, then a hint of the strength of unity crept through the ranks and Dick could hear—in the column's changing voice—the growth of a new heart in them.
And, as once in Bible days when the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, the elements took sides with Dick and did the unexpected to confuse the Russians. Never at that season of the year was there a storm on the lower slopes of the Elburz range. Brown, dry grass, and water-courses shrunk to half their size, betrayed the season when a man might sleep out in the open without tent or blankets and be comfortable. Yet —as the head of the column reached the lower slopes, and at times from some projecting mound the Russian tents were visible—the sky grew cloudy. Big, black, lowering storm-clouds gathered and hung motionless above the plain.
So the Russian foraging parties rode back to camp, and the outposts were called in closer. Not more than half a watch was kept. Nobody believed, or could believe, that there was any danger, and the chief topic of conversation was the prospect of having to penetrate the mountains in bad weather and hunt starving outlaws through jungle-growth. News of the looting of the contract-corn had been brought in; it was necessary to recapture it—not for the contractor's sake, but to rob the mountain-men of a season's keep. But corn seemed a poor bait to tempt a regiment into the mountains under threatening, unseasonable clouds; the Cossacks dallied; and dallying—the mere idea of it—rots military manners.
IT WAS night and they were sleeping—many of their sentries, too, were sleeping — when the storm burst. Thunder that was like the bursting of a thousand guns shook the whole plain they camped on; then came the wind, hell-twisted from the mountain-heights and whirled, all wet and whistling, through gorge and valley from a dozen sides at once until it smote the camp. Lightning, forked and blue, showed a hundred fluttering spooks that had been tents all pitched in line. Instantly—before they were awake —men fought with wind and wet canvas in the drenching rain, shouting frantic orders that the thunder drowned—chilled to the marrow—disheartened—and a great deal more than half afraid, for a Cossack is not far removed from savagery and its superstitions cling.
Rain-softened, in ten minutes the whole plain was a mud-bed, out of which the tent-pegs drew as worms come at the bidding of a bird. Then a hundred horses, fastened together in a line, pulled their stakes free, and a minute later hell's delight was making as the hundred loosed themselves together through the frantic camp. 'Thunder, and rain, and whistling wind silenced the shouted orders; trumpets were another note of misery, with no more meaning to their call; the only light was the blue, forked flash that gave momentary glimpses of disaster gone amuck. And into that confusion, at the head of his twelve hundred, burst Dick Anthony!
The Cossacks tried to rally, but there was none to rally round. There was neither head, nor tail, nor center to the mad, mud-worried tangle, nor any one who knew enough of what was happening to get a crowd together and stem the stampede of the rest. A dozen lifted swords and shouted in a dozen places—to be swept aside as a string of tethered horses plunged it knew not whither, or a knot of men raced blindly for the outer, unencumbered spaces of the night.
It was butcher's work to fire into that mill; but war is war, and what the Cossacks suffered they had purchased at their own figure in advance. The marvel was that a bullet missed its billet, or a Cossack lived to shudder at the recollection of that night. A greater marvel yet was that Dick Anthony was able—in that darkness—in that din—to stay the avenging hand of mountain outlaws, and force—not beg, or persuade, or implore, but force—his will on them. He rode here and there like the spirit of the storm, and where his voice rang harsh through the ghastly din men listened.
That only a hundred and eighteen Cossacks died that night was due to Dick and his ability to bridle savagery. He sensed the surrender of the Russians—for no man could see ten yards away on either hand, nor could anybody hear the voice of a leader in the camp where there was none. Galloping through the blackness he found Andry—made him stop the wild pipe-music that was maddening the Persians into fury —ordered him to make his men cease fire— and then rode back along the long line, picking out each officer and forcing obedience on him.
Then he rode like the devil through a storm of wind and rain and bullets to where he guessed Usbeg Ali Khan might be; and he took that fierce border-soldier by the throat and shook him when he found him.
"Cease firing, d'you hear me! Call 'em off!"
"Bahadur, I—"
"Yes you can! Cease fire, I say! If there's another shot fired in ten. minutes I'll shoot you! Come on—make 'em cease fire! ' Work 'em round the camp—surround it better—there is probably a gap they can break through to the North!"
Perhaps it was not ethical to threaten his subordinates with death unless his will had been imposed on savages within ten minutes; but, ethical or not, it worked! More quickly almost than the storm had burst, this second storm of bullets died away, and presently the dark, distressful camp was ringed around by men who leaned on hot rifles and called jests to one another through the rain. Then a voice yelled through the blackness:
"We surrendered long ago! Is there no quarter?"
"Is there a woman in the camp?" demanded Dick in Persian, for he did not mean to let it be known that he knew Russian until he had exhausted all the possibilities of seeming not to understand it.
"No. No women!"
"Thank God!" muttered Dick between his teeth.
"There were thirty-nine Persian prisoners!" said the same voice, "though where they are now God knows!"
"Find them!" demanded Dick. "Loose them and send them to me to be counted!"
"Who are you?" said the same voice. "To whom have we surrendered?"
"I am a dead man!" answered Dick. "I was drowned at sea and buried by the crew of a Russian ship! Obey me—find those prisoners and send them here—or I will teach you another lesson from the grave!"
There was no answer. Except that a string of horses plunged and snorted, where the lot had fallen, there was silence now from end to end of the stricken camp. Only, the wind shrieked over it in lessening fury, and the rain swished as if to wash away the horror. Then men began calling to each other, asking where the prisoners were. They were found soon, huddled under fallen tents, and were sent with their hands still tied behind them straight into the teeth of the rain to where Dick sat his horse. He counted them and let them pass behind him to be cared for. There was one man missing; but the others swore that they had seen him run away into the night.
"Now!" said Dick. "Whoever was commanding may advance and parley!"
Then a Commandant of Cossacks dragged his riding-boots uncomfortably through the mud for four hundred yards, and passed his sword hilt-first to Dick who took it and passed it to his Persian orderly.
"Provided my instructions are obeyed," said Dick, speaking Persian very slowly, "as many of you as are left may all go free at dawn. But any attempt to damage property—rifles, for instance—will result in your all being marched into the mountains and held there indefinitely! Have I made my meaning clear?"
The Russian did not answer.
"Is my meaning clear to you?"
"Yes. I am memorizing what you say. My government will be interested to know what the actual words were."
"Then, listen further! You will go back and order your men to lay down their arms. Then—under your orders—each man will advance straight ahead in the direction he chances to be facing, taking nothing with him but the clothes he stands in. Any man who has a weapon when he reaches the cordon that surrounds your camp will be shot instantly; whoever has no weapons may pass through unscathed. At dawn your men will be allowed to form up and march away under your command. Too much delay in disarming and passing through the cordon will be met by a resumption of hostilities. You had better hurry back!"
"You have delicious manners!" sneered the Russian.
"I have noticed the delicious state of the backs of prisoners you people make!" said Dick. "I don't pretend to regard you as a white man or a gentleman! I have given you some orders which I now advise you to hurry and obey!"
"Damn you!" said the Russian, speaking all the English that he knew; then he turned on his heel before Dick could answer him and went squelching back to where his men waited in miserable, dark uncertainty.
Dick sent orderlies, then, careering through the murk to make his bandits understand what was intended. Within ten minutes Usbeg Ali came galloping back:
"Bahadur!" he exclaimed, when he had found Dick. "They will not do it! They refuse! They say 'kill all the Cossacks, or else make them prisoners!' What can I do?"
"You can enforce my orders!" answered Dick. "Be the blood of each murdered Cossack on your head, Usbeg Ali! Join your men, sir—and obey!"
Dick was obeyed, though no man ever knew what desperate seconds he and Andry and Usbeg Ali lived through while obedience and savagery swung against each other on the scales. Again and again, and twenty times again, the three passed up and down between the vengeful mountain-outlaws and loot, that lay for the taking in the rain. They murmured; but dawn found the ring around the stricken camp unbroken, with the Russian prisoners-of-war outside it and the dead and the loot within.
Dick had won a bigger fight than any one but he took time to realize, although his men were not disposed to underestimate. The sight of eight hundred rifles—ammunition — tents — money — food — nearly seven hundred horses—a machine-gun— swords — lances — and a mass of heterogeneous loot—enabled them to forgive the morbid-mindedness that let the prisoners go free, carrying their wounded. Only Dick, slinging a pair of looted binoculars across his shoulder, realized that he had bitted a blood-hungry mob, and reined it with the prey in sight. He wondered, as he remembered who had called him "king", how many real kings there were who could have saved one Cossack life that night, out of those eight hundred.
THE Osmanli proverb has it that "of ten men, nine are women!" Change it about; rob the saying of its Eastern misogyny, and we have the truth that of ten women one will be a man! The Princess Olga Karageorgovich, as a man in man's garments, might have risen to a throne by dint of sheer, shrewd energy and courage. But her sex handicapped her, and her love now for Dick Anthony turned out to be a fetter that she could not burst. She had laughed at sex and love!
She really loved Dick in her own strange, savage way. His straight way of striking at the heart of things—his true pride, where she had no pride at all—above all, his brave honesty that appealed to her because she was utterly dishonest—had captivated her and made her slave to the heart-throbs she despised not long ago. Now life without Dick Anthony seemed as empty and mean to her as that other married life that she avoided only by serving the Okhrana.
Had she been any but a she-devil, who loved tiger-wise, she might have won; for she was very beautiful, and Dick was a man to whom grim persistence appealed strongly. But love made her cruel, and he hated cruelty—revolted at the thought of it. What would have made another woman pitiful, stirred her to use underhanded ways of trying to bring Dick to his stubborn knees; and she did not realize that, once hers, once humbled to her level, she would have thoroughly despised him. Love, that should have been ennobling, made her false; she-was ready to be false to Dick, herself, and the Okhrana all at once. She was ready, and more she was anxious to sacrifice a hundred thousand lives and money reckoned by the tax-wrung million, that she might make Dick her slave; and, with Russia's secret government behind her, she was probably the only woman in the world who could have tried, even, to pay such wanton's price.
She made many a mistake as she planned her moves; but not the least of them was in forgetting there were other women who might love, and love far more humanly. It never entered her inventive head to guess that her maid, Marie Mouquin, who had screamed at mere sight of grim, tremendous Andry, could really love the big man and pity him with all her heart even when dubbing him "Scots cannibal"! But, while the Princess loved her tawny-headed Dick, and stood ready to betray Russia—the Okhrana —anybody for him, Marie Mouquin loved the red-polled Andry—reveled while she shuddered at his tearing, crunching strength —and was ready, any minute, to betray the Princess!
The girl was not altogether in the Princess' confidence; but it is not possible for princess or commoner to let herself be waited on, day in, day out, by one servant without sharing almost if not all her secrets with that servant. The maid was French but could speak Russian fluently; she even knew a little English and some German, picked up on her travels; there was not a tongue in which the Princess could converse that her maid could not listen to and understand. And, like most good listeners, she had a useful memory.
So she was in a position to be dangerous, and was not at all a safe person to ignore. The Princess forgot how often she had slapped and pinched her—how many thousand different excuses she had given her to bear resentment. When she started into Persia on a trail that would have frightened nine men out of ten, and on a quest that ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have flinched from, she argued that the maid's refusal to be left behind was due to love, or loyalty, or to some other sentiment that the lower classes feel. A suggestion that the maid loved Andry would have met with ridicule.
So she rode out of Dick's forest-glade without looking once behind her. Dick would not come and say good-by, and therefore her next business lay ahead where men were who could help make him repent. She rode with her eyes straight forward and did not see her maid look back, nor Andry, the tremendous, throwing kisses. Later she did not notice that Marie Mouquin stroked some parts of her body tenderly—an elbow ,—half a dozen ribs—that had been crushed in the Scotsman's huge embrace.
She recalled, perhaps, that Andry had once been useful to her by reason that he thought himself "a de'il wi' the lassies"; but the maid, when she spoke of him, called him a devil pure and simple, and the Princess believed the woman spoke the truth. So she rode down-hill with a loose rein, busy with the future, not the past.
A night's rest under the protecting shadow of Dick's oak-tree had revived her, and she rode at a pace and with a fearlessness that put the outlaw escort on its mettle. The maid complained and the escort muttered, but headlong down the twisty trail she led them at a gallop, and kept them galloping until the maid's sufferings drew pity from men who had forgotten almost what the word meant.
Farther and farther ahead the Princess rode; farther and farther to the rear lagged Marie Mouquin; until at last a conversation started between her and a man who reined his horse into pace with hers, and dallied to keep her company. He knew enough Russian to understand her and to say the few things that occurred to him, but she began with the only Persian word she knew, knowing that it was the key to conversation under any circumstances.
"Poul!" said Marie Mouquin, and the ragged horseman legged his mount nearer.
"Money?" he asked eagerly. "How much money, and for what?"
She spoke very slowly—very clearly—in Russian—one word to about ten paces of the horse, allowing no chance for misinterpretation provided he knew any of the language.
"Me — I — give — you — money — if — you — follow — us — to — Astrabad — and take—message—back!"
"Message back to whom?" he asked.
"That very big, great, ugly man!"
"Annreema — Doogeel?" he asked, for Andry Macdougal is not a name that lends itself to Persian utterance.
She nodded.
"How much money?" he inquired.
"A hundred roubles!"
"Not enough!"
"Then, two hundred!"
Had she risen by five roubles at a time they might have compromised for some price in the neighborhood of a hundred and forty roubles; but, since she seemed inclined to rise by hundreds, he saw fit to encourage her.
"Five hundred!" he demanded.
"Two hundred and fifty then—not a rouble more! I have no more! I am a poor woman! I have only two hundred and fifty roubles in the world!"
She lied, and he did not believe her; but then, lies are fair exchange along that frontier, and are likely to remain so until Russia's arm is palsied and her grip is loosed. They argued for an hour or more of downhill bumping, and agreed at last on three hundred roubles as a reasonable basis for discussion of the main idea.
"When we reach the Cossack camp, what next?" she asked.
"We give you two women to the Cossacks, and—inshallah—we ride back."
"Then, no three hundred roubles!"
"Beard of Allah's Prophet! For three hundred roubles am I asked to disobey my orders, having sworn only a few hours ago to obey in all things? Do I dream? Or art thou mad? What, then, are three hundred roubles?"
"Three hundred roubles are the price!" she answered. "Hide—follow me secretly to Astrabad—find me there—and take a message back—or no three hundred roubles!"
"Allah!" swore the Persian. "I have heard said Hell is full of women!" Then in painstaking Russian he demanded, "Who guarantees me? Who guarantees me I will not be beaten, or even killed, for carrying back insults to my new chief and his man?"
"And thou a Persian! I thought all Persians would take any chances for three hundred roubles! Think, man—three—hundred—roubles!"
"I have yet to see them and feel their weight! Now payment in advance—"
>"Will not be contemplated!" said the maid.
With a wisdom learned from much experience of driving bargains, she left the discussion where it was then and whipped her tired horse in an endeavor to catch up with her mistress. When the Persian came abreast of her and tried to reopen the discussion, she only laughed at him and shook her head.
"Three hundred roubles! Are you afraid?" she mocked.
He had drawn no more out of her by evening when a Russian challenge brought them to a halt. When the Princess summoned the maid to her side and rode past Cossack outposts to the camp, the man was in a state of mind peculiar to no nation and no age; he feared, lusted and disbelieved in turn—was hot and cold in turn—and no more dared commit himself than he dared refuse, for fear some other man might earn the money.
DOWN on the plain in the Cossack camp in the circling hollow of a hill-spur, the Princess had opportunity at last to show her temper,
"Food!" she demanded; and while they made it ready she gave orders that were obeyed unhesitatingly, whatever the officers and men thought of them.
"Surround the rabble that brought us here! Shoot ten of them and hang them to trees! Whip all the rest and put them in irons! Which ten? What do I care? Shoot any ten! Give Anthony something to simmer over up in those hills of his! Give me time to make Astrabad and then send one prisoner back; let him take an insolent message—one that will sting friend Anthony where he keeps his Scots pride! He needs rousing!"
A little later on she smiled as she heard the shots that took ten lives at her caprice. She walked nearer, to a place whence she could bear the swish and crack of a Cossack whip descending on naked backs. She smiled quite sweetly as she listened. Yet, down in her inmost heart, she actually thought that sooner or later she could win Dick Anthony and make him love her for herself alone—Dick Anthony who would rather die any day, and anyhow, than forget to be a gentleman!
Later, she slept, smiling in her sleep; and she rose at dawn refreshed, sweet-tempered, and so full of hope that she was like a ray of sunshine in the camp. She smiled on the Cossack escort that awaited her—complimented the under-lieutenant who commanded the ten men—chaffed him until he fell head over heels in love with her and was ready to die for her that minute—and mounted without help, springing to the saddle like a man.
She was off, then, without another word to anybody, leaving maid, officer and escort to follow her as best they could—off, full-pelt, for Astrabad and the hidden heart of things. She rode like a devil possessed of devils. She halted at midday for an hour, and not again until at evening the horses could not gallop another mile without rest.
After a cold supper she lay down near her horse and slept in the open without pillow or more than horse-rug. Her only care seemed to be lest the start at dawn should be delayed, and only she of all her party slept at all; the maid sobbed all night from utter weariness.
Dawn saw her off again—first in the saddle and first away. All that morning—half that afternoon—she rode at full gallop, until the horses swayed on numb, weak legs, and even the tough Cossacks of her escort groaned aloud. The maid, half fainting, clung to the saddle by the peak and prayed.
At four in the afternoon the cavalcade rattled and pounded into Astrabad, and the poor leg-weary horses dropped their heads, to stand blowing by a Cossack-guarded door. The Princess sprang to the ground just as the knees of her own horse gave under it, and it lurched forward in the roadway dead; then, not troubling to thank or to dismiss her escort, she half-ran up the steps between two Cossack guards and disappeared through a door marked "Private —No Admittance" in three languages— Russian, Persian, French.
Two of the escort lifted the maid down and helped her to the steps where she sat with her head between her hands and waited until, at dusk, the Princess came out again on the arm of a man in uniform. She was laughing, and the man—who, by the ribbons on his breast, was a person of importance—showed her a deference that seemed incongruous, considering her dustiness and saddle-tired dishevelment.
He waited for her while she rallied the Cossack officer for looking more pinched and weary than his horse—dismissed the escort without thanks—and stood to laugh at the stiff leg-action as the weary horses trotted off. Then she took her companion's arm and turned with a little laugh at the dead horse that had carried her.
"Your maid?" he asked. "She seems ill."
The Princess looked triumphant, and in her case triumph and cruelty were generally one. She turned again to survey the girl with a glance that had not one spark of pity in it.
"I need a woman of wire and leather to keep pace with me!" she said. "That Marie Mouquin is good enough for town-life, but for campaigning!" She laughed, and shrugged her shoulders. "Come along! Let her follow if she can!"
"If she can not follow I will—"
"Come along!" the Princess interrupted with another shoulder-shrug; and she did not trouble to look around once to see whether the maid came after her or not.
"Where's Lancaster?" she asked.
"In jail."
"What idiot ordered that?"
"Stromski has been cast to act for him, Stromski is busy signing Lancaster's name to telegrams. High Finance is being asked to cable money for Richard Anthony!"
"Have a care!" she said sharply, "It is tricks of that sort—monkey-tricks of that sort—that ruin well-laid plans'. Who was the idiot who ordered it?"
"We are being very, very careful," he assured her. "He is incommunicado." He used a Russian word that only bears translation into Spanish, though it implies more rigor than the Spaniards generally use. "When the road is clear, and there is opportunity, he goes over the border. Siberia!"
"What idiot ordered it?" she asked.
"Princess, I——"
"What idiot ordered it?"
"The idea was mine. I—"
"Idiot! Meddler! Monkey, putting fingers in machinery it doesn't understand! Idiot, d'you hear me?"
They had reached a Persian palace that looked from the outside like a jail. Four high walls, pierced in places by little slit-like windows, but mostly blank, fronted on four different streets; only a door, deeply carved and set in a centuries-old frame, hinted at splendor and luxury within. They stopped in front of the door to finish their conversation, and still neither of them turned to notice that the maid had followed and was close behind.
"Princess! Lancaster is safe! He is locked in the old jail—the one-cell jail—and is guarded day and night! If you prefer it he—"
"Idiot! Since the mistake is made, keep him alive! A prisoner is a mystery not to be spoken of. A dead man is the subject for a tale! Hurry him over the border when the next convoy goes, and do what you like with him on that side; but let nothing happen to him here! Be careful that he gets no message to Anthony! And listen, my friend—"
>She came a step closer to him to tap his beribboned chest, and he looked terrified.
"It is I who make plans and who give orders on this side of the boundary! You are he who hears them, and obeys! Do you understand?"
He did not answer.
"Do you understand, my friend?"
"Yes," he said sulkily.
"Then remember! And—don't try to grow too rich!"
"Princess, I—"
"And don't let your subordinates—say, for instance, Stromski—grow too rich! Remember!"
She produced a key, then, and without another word to him opened the old carved door into a courtyard that was filled with the scent of flowering shrubs—in which a fountain splashed—and in which it did not seem possible to think of the dusty world outside. The maid slipped through behind her, and the door was then slammed shut by a big black Ethiopian. The man in uniform saluted the door, in a sort of stupor, and passed on.
WHAT goes on in a Persian house is mystery, unless the eunuchs or the women can be made or coaxed to speak. All day long, day after day, messages and telegrams were carried in to the Princess, and answers carried out again.
Two new regiments of Cossacks and a battery of artillery were marched in through the town, to take up quarters in a confiscated palace. The city was a-hum, and there was much talk in the by-streets and bazaars about Dick Anthony. A reward was placarded about the town for him, offered by the Russian government. Instead of Persian, the city might have been a Russian border-stronghold.
The Russian flag floated in a dozen places, in flagrant violation of one recent treaty and a hundred promises. Russian officers and Russian clerks swaggered here and there; Cossack non-commissioned officers bullied and ill-treated the inhabitants. Every jail available was filled to the stifling point with Persians who had been unwise enough to show resentment at the Russian breach of faith.
In only one prison — the old one-cell prison — was a man who had elbow-room and air enough to breathe. It was a small, square building with a high stone-wall around it, and a ditch. In front of its one entrance a Cossack sentry paced, and he was in full view all the day from a dozen windows, behind which sat Russian officers and clerks.
Marie Mouquin—recovered after three or four days from the physical effects of her adventure in the hills, and back again in favor for the sake of her good services as maid—sallied out to see things, and soon found the little jail; but, though she watched and asked cautious questions, she failed to discover a means of communicating with its solitary prisoner. Three times a day food was taken in. Once-in four hours, day and night, the guard was changed. Only after dark was the man on guard not overseen from a dozen windows. But what could she—one woman-—do at night?
She knew Lancaster to be a one-eyed, ugly Englishman, connected in some way with financial houses, but of no conceivable interest to herself. She would not have given him or his jail and guards a thought, but for having overheard that he was not to be allowed to communicate" with Anthony. Where Anthony was, was Andry also. What must not be allowed to reach Dick would almost certainly be good for him to hear; and what was good for him was good for Andry, too. Not for nothing, nor yet quite passively, was she in love with grim, gigantic Andry!
She began to scheme—to plan—to disguise herself and wander when she dared, and where she dared about the city, hoping to pick up some thread or other that might lead to a solution of the problem she had set herself to solve.
It was late on an afternoon when she had gone, veiled like a Persian woman, to the outskirts of the city, and paused while a muezzin chanted from his tower, that the link between her, Lancaster and Andry came to her out of the unexpected.
"Allah is mighty!" boomed the voice above her. "I declare there is no God but God! Hie ye to prayer! Hie ye to salvation! There is no God but God!"
The man paused and the city seemed to hush, waiting for him to begin again. She heard him hawk as he cleared his throat for a second effort.
"Allah il akbar!" he began again; but then he stopped.
She looked up and saw him leaning outward—gaping—his jaw dropped in astonishment and his hands clutched tight on the stone rail of his little balcony. Something uncanny, almost-inhuman in his attitude made her forget caution, wisdom, and every other thing but curiosity. She ran to the tower steps—opened the little door—and hurried, panting and stumbling, up the winding stone steps to the top. There she too leaned far out over the rail and stared in amazement at the sight on the plain beyond.
There came a column of men, marching in fours, who hung their heads. It was most of a regiment, without its horses or its arms, dragging its feet painfully. It was led by a commanding-officer who limped in tight riding-boots, unclean, unshaven. There was no advance-guard to announce their coming; they came in silence, overhung by a pall of powdery dust that seemed like the blanket of their shame.
They had reached the city gate before anybody thought of running to announce them; and they were inside the city before the alarm had reached headquarters and a dozen mounted orderlies went clattering through the streets to ask excited questions. Then it was too late to halt them and keep them where Persians of the streets and cellars would not ask questions, too, and answer them themselves. They were permitted to march through the streets before they rode out to harry Dick Anthony.
"Dee-k-Anthonee has fought his first fight, and has won it!" went the murmur through by-ways and down passages; until the whole of native Astrabad was a-whisper, and a spirit of unrestfulness—a hint of the reawakening of courage of a people—went abroad; and the Russian officers who recognized it talked of stem precautions—talked too late!
"Where are their weapons? Where are their horses? See what he has done to them? But see! Come and see! The tales about him are surely—must be—true!"
Marie Mouquin ignored the questions and outraged talk of the muezzin. She hurried down the steps and found her way to the palace where her mistress waited for her, fuming with impatience. She hoped to be first with the news, and first to judge the effect of it.
But she was stopped at the palace-corner by a tattered man who plucked her skirt and pulled so hard at it that she was forced to turn and speak to him.
"Poult" he said quietly; and she recognized the man who had ridden beside her down from Dick's amphitheater in the mountains.
"Three hundred roubles was the price!" he said, pushing his face close to hers.
"Come back tonight—at midnight!" she ordered him. "There will be a letter ready, to be taken back."
"And the roubles? Where will the roubles be?"
"They will be ready, too! Wait! Listen! How did you know me, dressed like this?"
The Persian laughed—laughed for a minute at her, showing her the inside of his throat, and a dozen blackened, rotting teeth. Then he pointed to her shoes.
"Does one of our women wear shoes like a man's, made in Faranghistan?" he asked. "And walk any of our women this wise?"
He imitated a European woman's walk that looks grotesque to Persian eyes; nor did he spare her feelings; his caricature was crude and very far from kind.
"Ay!" he said, laughing again. "Here I will be tonight, at midnight to the minute! And let the roubles be here too, or I will raise a howl that will bring the eunuchs running! Be ready with thy letter for 'Doo-geel, for I, too, have a message for Dee-k-Anthonee. See my shoulders!"
He displayed a mess of Cossack whip-weals. Then he laughed again and left her.
"Midnight, tonight!" he called back from the corner.
SO it happened that two letters reached Dick's mountain glade within an hour one afternoon; one was for himself, and one for Andry. The men who carried them crept into camp anxiously, for one had been sent by Dick before he assumed the chieftainship; he had no means of knowing just what had happened in the meantime, and he did know that he bore unpleasant news, for the letter had been handed him with scowls; it bore the mark of the British Legation and a Russian frankas well.
Dick—mounted on a Cossack charger— was drilling horsemen, now, on a big flat parallelogram of ground beyond and above the glade. To quote Andry, he was "makkin' siccar;" to give his own account of it, he could not believe that the British Minister would refuse eventually, when a letter reached him at last, to accept his surrender and grant him a fair trial; but he was taking precautions in case the Princess had forecasted accurately. And, as a matter of sheer fact, his genius for leadership had hold of him, and he was using every second to perfect his force, instead of theorizing.
He leaned from the saddle—snatched the letter from the ragged messenger—and tore it open. That was the first and the last time that a Persian ever saw him betray the least nervousness. At first the man thought that his lacerated shoulders showing through a blood-smeared shirt had made Dick blench. He tore the shirt to make a more ghastly showing, but "Go and have it seen to!" ordered Dick. His fingers trembled so that he could barely read. His charger had a hard mouth and fought for the bit constantly; but it could not have been the effort to restrain the horse that made his hand shake, for—as he read—his fingers clenched—his fist grew hard, and still, until the knuckles showed white through the brown skin—and his lips set tight. In another moment there was not a symptom left of anything but pride, and defiance absolute. The letter ran:
My good man, whatever your real came and nationality may be, let me inform you that Richard Anthony, of Arran in Scotland, has been dead many weeks, and he was the last male of his line. You are therefore a proved impostor. Your letter was forwarded to me through the courtesy of the Russian authorities to whom—whatever your nationality or your pretensions, and whatever your offense against the. law—I recommend you to surrender." I can take no official cognizance of you. I am, sir, etc
At the end was the penciled, scrawled signature of a man who would have risked his life willingly to help an Anthony of Arran, had he even half believed that a real Anthony really needed help.
Andry watched Dick's face from a little distance. Nothing could make the big man like a horse, or ride with the least enthusiasm; so, since the force was to be mounted infantry and Andry was a force on his own account on foot, he was allowed to watch the evolutions and find fault with them from the vantage ground of a boulder-top. There, from time to time, he played on Dick's bagpipes to encourage the horsemen; thence, at very frequent intervals, he shouted to call Dick's attention to some "loon, wha couldna ride Balaam's ass!" The man he singled out would be dismounted and replaced by one of the ever-swelling crowd of fugitives from the plains.
"Hoots! Hoots!" he muttered as he watched Dick now. "There'll be a stor-r-rm br-r-rewin'—a stor-r-rm worth twa o' any that's been yet! Ou-ay—weel I ken the signs!"
He got down from his rock and strode toward Dick—stood beside him, making the charger look almost like a pony m proportion—scratched his red hair and waited, since the moment seemed inopportune for speech. Dick let him wait until curiosity boiled over and the big man had to speak or burst.
"An' what would yon bit writin' be aboot?" he asked at last.
"About a fight!" said Dick.
"Her that's past—her wi' the Cossacks down below there?"
"No," said Dick. "About a fight to come. It seems, Andry, that I've got to prove myself an Anthony of Arran!"
"Ah!"
"Watch the drill!" commanded Dick. "I want to think a while!"
"Ou-ay!"
Andry sought Usbeg Ali Khan and nearly tore his horse's jaw off in an innocent attempt to halt him sooner than the law of gravity allowed.
"Dom the hor-r-rse!" he answered the Afghan, oath for oath.
He had forgotten who was second-in-command and his actual superior; on second thought—on second consideration of the strength that had brought the horse to a standstill—the Afghan did not venture to remind him.
"What is it, then?" asked Usbeg Ali.
"Naethin'—only this. Have ye been drillin' 'em? 'Twas little baby's play to what I bid ye do! Have ye put fire in 'em? Put bur-r-rnin' volcanoes in 'em noo, ma mon! Ar-r-re ye ready? Ar-r-re ye lookin' for-r-rward eagerly to what's ahead? Mon —y'r een'll be poppin' oot in a little while wi' sheer amazement! Mon—mon—there'll be a vena great deal o' seerious fechtin' sooner than a body would believe wi'out he knew. But I know! I ken the signs! I've just had wor-r-rd wi' Mr. Dicky! Aye! He's decided that it's time to prove himself an Anthony of Arran!"
Together he and Usbeg Ali held a consultation that was mostly listening on the Afghan's part and law laid down by Andry with a vehemence that defied answer.
"I agree wi' ye on a' the points!" said Andry at the end of it. "Ye're a consairvative, carefu' mon an' y'r arguments won't bear answerin'. There's naethin' more ridiculous than me givin' orders to several hundred men who don't understand more 'an the half I say. An' yon machine-gun we took fra the Roosians is the verra identical contraption that is suited to ma genius! Y'r in the right—dead right—an' I agree wi' ye! I think better of ye for havin' said so! As second-in-command, now, 'tis your affair to go to Mr. Dicky an' suggest the arrangement. Tak' one o' y'r ane men wi' ye, an' ask leave to promote him to my place. I'll go an' monkey wi' the mechanism while ye have y'r interview!"
He strode away and left the Afghan to do his bidding; and while Usbeg Ali talked with Dick he drove away the Persians who were trying to tell head from tail of the machine-gun, under the amateur tuition of one of the seven whom Usbeg Ali advertised as knowing everything pertaining to the art of war. In twenty minutes he had, back at his fingers' ends, all the carefully instilled machine-gun drill that is part of the training of British infantry. Then he counted the ammunition-boxes. Then he picked out a dozen men to learn to spring like lightning at the first spat syllable of a Highland oath. And while he was picking men the second note arrived. The tattered messenger brought it to him in a cleft stick and held it out at arm's length.
"Tak' it to Mr. Dicky yonder!" he said, pointing.
But the Persian shook his head and pushed the letter forward; so Andry took it. His face, when he saw that the stained envelope was addressed to Mr. Andry Mac-doogle, was a sight to have made all Asia laugh—mixed excitement, scorn for the spelling, and astonishment. He tore the envelope open under the eyes of a small army, whose attention had been caught by his grimaces.
Marie Mouquin wrote:
Lancasser is in jail. He is lock up now but I think they kill him presently. Perhaps he go to Siberia. The Cossacks came this evening, without horses, without rifles, without anything. All Astrabad is excited. She says it is very good, but they say it is too bad. The telegraph now says King Dick is too much and kill him quick. Positively yes, other Cossacks and artillery will march against King Dick very soon now. So, beware. Send another man to me and I will send all the news, I paid this man three hundred roubles.
Your loving
Marie Mouquin.
"An' I kissed her but three times!" said Andry to himself. "The lassie has a verra gude impression o' the meanin' of a fair return!" He walked over, grinning, to where Dick sat listening to Usbeg Ali's notion of a plan.
"There!" he said, holding out the letter, "That comes o' kissin' a wumman, instead o' treatin' her wi' scorn! Nex' time, mannie, ye'll do well to tak' y'r Princess i' baith arrrms an' squeeze nonsense oot o' her an' gude faith in!"
Dick read the letter, frowning. Then he tossed it back.
"All right," he said quietly. "Can you use that machine-gun?"
"I can indeed."
"How many rounds have you?"
"Six thousand an' a few more."
"D'you want to take command of the gun?"
"There's naethin' I'd like better!"
"Do it, then. Spend the rest of today teaching a crew to help you. D'you want men to draw it, or horses?"
"Dom horses!"
"Very well—choose the men. Take five hundred rounds tomorrow and practise at a target. And—listen!"
Andry had started off to his gun but he turned back.
"Next time you want anything—want any change made —ask me! It saves time."
"Well," said Andry, scratching his red head, "ye've read her letter. What I want noo is a man to run back an' forth, tween me an' her, an' bring messages."
"Choose one!" said Dick.
"And—"
"Well? What else?"
"Do ye know a worrrd or two o' Roosian, Mr. Dicky?"
Dick did not answer him.
"Because—what's the Roosian, say, f'r dearie, an' sweetheart, an' the like o' that?"
"I'll get Usbeg Ali Khan to write you down some sentences to copy out," said Dick, and Andry departed satisfied.
"How many men do the last arrivals say the Russians have in Astrabad?" asked Dick, resuming his talk with Usbeg Ali where he had left off.
"They say more than four thousand, bahadur, including guns."
"According to that letter, the guns are to start out after us. That means they'll send at least half the force with them. Guns would be no good in these mountains—or not much good—and they must know it. Probably they mean to coax me down into the open and smash me at longish range. Good! Very well, Usbeg Ali. Get your seven together some time tonight and give them a good talking to; put fire into them. But impress them with the need for exact obedience."
"Very good, Bahadir."
"Exercise the companies tomorrow, all together. I expect to be busy attending to about a thousand details."
"Yes, bahadur."
"And caution the men to be ready for a start at dawn the day after tomorrow. This time I shall serve out a hundred rounds per man, but otherwise we will march light."
"March on where, sahib?"
"On Astrabad, of course."
"Of course?"
"Of course!" said Dick; and Usbeg Ali went off wondering.
WHEN Marie Mouquin wrote Andry that the city of Astrabad was "excited," she omitted nine-tenths of the truth. Within its thirty-foot-high mud-wall the place hummed like a bee-hive, and the streets resounded to the clatter of galloping orderlies. The bazaar was not one whit less noisy than the quarter that had been made over to the Russians; it buzzed with wakening energy, and two sotnias of Cossacks were judged needful to parade the streets and force on the crowd a semblance of restraint.
In the palace where the Princess had her quarters was the most disturbance. There a constant stream of telegrams and answers flowed in and out, while men in uniform kept calling, to be interviewed and sent away again. The Cossacks, doing sentry duty at the outer door, looked red-faced out of sympathy with the tension strained within. The situation was out of hand and the Princess labored to regain control of it. She stormed; she showed authority in writing, that made her responsible for all that took place on the Persian-side of the border; the military granted it was genuine, saluted, and refused obedience.
"There has been disaster, for which you are responsible!" they answered. "Now we will remedy disaster in our own way, on our responsibility!"
She sent telegrams, and so did they. Answers came to the effect that she, and only she, had authority to act and issue orders. But, in the last resort, the military always manage to be conscious of the fact that might is theirs. Civilian power is theory; theirs is practise. By sheer weight of their count of guns and men their arguments began to have the better of it, and by grudging inches at a time the Princess yielded.
She wrote hurriedly:
Dick! Dear Dick!
Escape at once along tie mountain-range, to the unexplored country in the northeast! I can not check the flood of indignation! You beat them too thoroughly! Run, Richard—run, and fight again! I can not stop them from starting after you, with guns, nor from trying to capture and kill you this time. Run away to the mountain-tops in time!
She sent the letter to the mountains by the hand of a man whom she believed she could trust; but she confirmed her trust by the promise of a most prodigious money-bribe in case the man delivered the letter safely and brought back an answer.
In her letter she summed up the situation to a nicety. Just as well as the military could, she saw the genius behind Dick's release of prisoners. Had he marched them to the mountains, he might have exchanged them against the contents of the jails of Astrabad; but prisoners would have hampered his action awfully, and he would have had to send them back with their arms and the machine-gun if he hoped to make any exchange at all.
As it was, he left them only one course. The only place where they could get food, or rearm, was Astrabad. They had no horses; no one could ride ahead and save their faces for them; they had to march and be seen, and be laughed at. News travels in the East like a prairie-fire, and grows hotter—more disturbing—as it runs. Not only Astrabad but Persia began to crackle with the story of Dick Anthony; and Dick up in his mountains needed do no more than hold his tongue while an army flocked to him, and all through Persia other bands of men got ready to make progress easy for him. Anything was better than the Russian yoke!
The Russian military "men—no lovers of the Okhrana that always made use of them, and always robbed them of the fruit of all their toil—made up their minds to strike fast and hard before the gathering storm of Persian rebellion could burst. They dared not leave Astrabad undefended; nor were two regiments a man too many to leave behind. What remained then would be none too great a force with which to strike at a successful outlaw. But they dared not wait for reinforcements, because delay might mean the arrival of some personage with orders to compel inaction. They dared defy this woman; and the thought of rehabilitation in their own—the Army's—and Persia's eyes was sweet.
Quick action seemed their only chance. Her letter on its way, the Princess objected less and less, and finally gave in. It seemed better to her to give way gracefully, without committing herself by a direct consent, than to be overridden and so lose her prestige and whatever of authority was left. The arrival of somebody from Russia to supersede her would have been too great disaster to be borne.
She was present when they made their plan to send two regiments and a battery, and though she did not agree to it she contented herself by smiling enigmatically and saying nothing more against it. Later she wrote another note to Dick and sent it by a second messenger. Dick received neither message. A few hours before the Russian force marched out of Astrabad, he made his move. While they were thrashing out their plan to leave the guns on the plain and draw him down to them by fighting a slow rear guard action, when the rest had penetrated to the hills and got in touch—he was already off at the head of a force that had grown to three thousand men.
One of many reasons why he marched so soon—a reason that impelled him nearly as much as his desire to rescue Lancaster—was that the fugitives from Russian rule were gathering too quickly to his standard. He had a drilled force now, but it looked like being swamped by undrilled men whose one desire would probably be loot. So he marched while his fame was fresh and the result of capturing a regiment, with a loss of none, was still told in the language of respectful awe.
He had seven hundred mounted men and fifty gallopers. There were more than a thousand men who marched with the steady thunder that betokens spirit as well as drill. And there were fourteen hundred new-joined infantry who might be counted on to help a winning side, but who would only handicap him in the case of a reverse. He would have been more satisfied with none besides the drilled men; but it was there that his authority reached its high-water mark, for there were none who would have obeyed and stayed behind.
So the rows of looted Russian tents were struck and cached with the outlaw household goods and all the truck and litter that usually travels with a Persian army, but that Dick would not tolerate. Then Andry, striding by his gun, struck up a good Scots marching tune and Dick led off along the mountain-tops, choosing a watershed that circled around and down to the level land on the farther side of Astrabad. He had no hope of catching the Russians unawares this time, but he did mean to strike from the side where they felt safest and were least prepared.
Two letters from the Princess, and one from her maid, sought Dick among the hills and kept ahead of the advancing Russians, while Dick marched swiftly — tired the horses out—and pushed the men to their last, leg-weary limit. He wanted none but the die-hards with him. Each night—or at dawn after a cold sleep in the open—when they brought him news of fresh defections he was glad. On the march when men fell out by fours and dozens—even by half-companies—he sent back word that those might follow him who could and the others might go home again.
When he reached at last the lowest spur that overlooked the plain and the city of Astrabad was visible through a heat-haze in the distance, Usbeg Ali rode ahead to tell him the exact condition of the force.
"But nineteen hundred men, bahadur! Heh! Never was there army yet that could hold half that speed for days on end! Three days of forced marching along mountain-tops! Three nights in the open! The wonder is the nineteen hundred are not nine!"
"Men who can march can generally fight!" said Dick. "I have found out which the good men arc; the devil may take the rest!"
"But the horses! Horses, bahadur—"
"Are in Astrabad in plenty. We will help ourselves!"
"Young blood! Young blood!" the Afghan muttered. Then aloud, "Sahib," he said, "very far away in the distance yonder is a dust-cloud."
"I've been looking at it through these glasses," answered Dick.
"I think it is the rear-guard of a Russian force that has marched out of Astrabad but recently to hunt us in the hills."
"I can see it is," said Dick.
"Our proper course would have been, bahadur, to have rushed the city now, at once, while it is unprepared and before those soldiers can come back again. But heh! The men are weary, and the horses limp!"
"We'll rest here today and tonight!" said Dick. "And you may leave the selection of the proper course to me! Give orders that the man who shows himself, or lights a fire, will be shot. The same dose exactly for the man who leaves the spot he stands on, without permission. Throw out a screen of pickets, post the men carefully, and then report to me again! You have your orders, Usbeg AH Khan!"
"Oh, but ma bones ache wi' the march-in'!" grumbled Andry, appearing from behind and throwing himself down beside Dick. "I've lifted yon gun wi' these twa han's o'er more boulders than I thought there were in a' the wor-r-rld, an' I'm aweary!"
"Go and sleep!" said Dick. "D'you hear me? Go and sleep. We rest here until tomorrow. Then I want you in condition."
"I'll lie doon here beside ye, Mr. Dicky."
"Sleep by your gun!"
"Ou-ay!"
The big man walked away obediently, and Dick sat musing, staring at Astrabad through his binoculars and conning the land between, until Usbeg Ali came back and reported the outposts placed. Then Dick went round with him and checked them off, speaking to each man and assuring himself that they all understood their duty.
"Being king's a heavy business!" he laughed when they were back again on the brow of the hill. "How's being second, Usbeg Ali?"
"Like anything worth while, bahadur! A man pays the price!"
"Could you pass a night without sleep, do you think?"
"I? I am a soldier!"
"How far back was it that a hundred and twenty men or more fell out in a body all together?"
"That was last night, twenty miles away."
"They came a long way before they gave in!"
"Ay! They are good men. They swore they would rest and collect other stragglers and then follow."
"There might be five hundred of them, then, by this time?"
"Very likely more than that, bahadur."
"Will you go, then, Usbeg Ah"—now— and take charge of those men. Yes, ride at once. As early as you can tomorrow morning I want you to lead all the stragglers you can rally in a demonstration against the city from that side. Make all the noise you can, and seem to be as big a force as possible—extend your men, to that end. Get as near the city as you can. But, when your men want to run, let them; make it a retreat, if you can, and not a rout, but let them run and draw the Russians in pursuit. Then we will descend from this side and the city is ours. Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly, bahadur!"
"Then, good-by, Usbeg Ali!"
"We will meet in Astrabad, bahadur!"
"In Astrabad!" said Dick.
The Afghan saluted and was gone.
A LITTLE after dawn Dick, watching through his glasses, made out Usbeg Ali, riding at the head of somewhere near five hundred men, and he chuckled as he noted the formation. With soldier-skill, the Afghan had his men drawn up in such way as to seem to be a screen for a bigger force behind. Dick laughed aloud as he saw messengers sent back to the rear at intervals, and other messengers come running from the rear, as if to keep up communication with the other force.
Astrabad gave early warning of the trick's success. Dust rose above house-walls and betrayed the marching companies that concentrated in a hurry to oppose Usbeg Ali. It was all too circumstantial to be discredited, for the attack was coming from a side the outlaws would be bound to take, supposing they had made a flank-march through the hills; the Russian commandant brought almost every man from the other sides of the city to deal quickly with what he described as impudence. It suited him very well indeed to keep the credit to himself for avenging the disaster of a week ago, and he did not—just yet—send any messenger to tell the men who had marched away of what was happening.
Dick—descending an hour later at the head of a long, extended line, and making no noise—was not observed until the space between him and Astrabad was less than that between the Russians and the city. The Russians and Usbeg Ali were engaged and firing hotly before a lot of galloping and a hint of fresh formations in the Russian line warned Dick he had been seen. The Russians seemed to divine his intent of rushing on the city; they started to retreat and gave Usbeg Ali an opportunity that he was quick to seize. Swift, savage firing from the Afghan's line wrought havoc in the reforming Russian ranks and put such heart into the Persians that Dick changed his plan instantly, or rather carried it to its logical extreme. He sent all his infantry, and Andry with his machine-gun, to Usbeg Ali's aid, taking the Russians on their flank and forcing them to stand or else be routed. Then, like an avalanche—reckless of what opposition might be left, and only thoughtful of the end in view—he launched himself at the head of his horsemen and swept straight on Astrabad.
The Russians seemed to think he had decided, now, to attack their rear, for they changed formation once again and gave Usbeg Ali yet another chance to riddle them while at a disadvantage; the Afghan seized it. By the time the Russians realized that Dick was really heading for the city, Andry's machine-gun had added its hell-stutter to the rest; and then Usbeg AH galloped to the newcomers and placed himself at the head of the whole advancing force. After that there was nothing for the Russians but a grim, determined stand if they hoped for less than rout or else surrender.
And while they lay to fire, and set themselves doggedly to show mere outlaws how trained soldiers can recover from a setback, Dick galloped past them out of range —rode on, and on to the city gate. He had expected to have to take the gate, but Persians flung it wide for him, to yells of "Zindabad Dick Anthony Shah!"
He had expected some house-to-house fighting, and dreaded it because he knew it was more horrible than all the other kinds of war; but the streets were thronged with men who cheered for him, and if there were any Russian troops remaining in the city they kept out of view. There was never a king returning from conquest who received a greater ovation or a gladder one than Dick Anthony when he entered Astrabad.
IT was not Dick who cut wires, and shut off communication with the world outside, for he wanted the world to know that an Anthony was proving himself by striking for the freedom of a people; it was the Russians, hiding as ever under a cloak of secrecy until they should dare come into the light again, reenforced from the rear, or else regarnished with a brand-new set of lies. Whoever ordered the wires all cut was the man, too, who first sent gallopers with orders to bring back the guns and the regiments that had marched away to hunt Dick through the hills.
"Where is Lancaster?" demanded Dick of every man in the streets who seemed likely to know anything. But none knew. When a Russian arrest is secret, not even the jail-guards know the prisoner's name. It was the man whom Andry had sent with a message to Marie Mouquin who sprang out of the crowd to Dick's stirrup and offered to show the way.
He led up a street that passed the palace where the Princess had her quarters; but no Cossack guards did duty by the door now; instead, she and her maid stood on the steps and waved to Dick—and since she was a woman he saluted. But he rode on, though she called to him. The Cossack sentry, pacing back and forth before the one-cell jail, halted, saluted, and surrendered at the sight of Dick's cortege. Dick told a horseman to relieve the man of his rifle and ammunition, and then ordered him to open the jail-gate. But there were no keys and the man professed to have no knowledge of their whereabouts; so Dick let him run.
"Down with the gate!" he commanded, and a battering-ram was devised in thirty seconds. A house-beam, taken from the ruins of a building that the Russians had seen fit to spoil, thundered on the gate until it shattered inward. Dick rode in and fifty followed him. A minute more and the cell-door burst free of its hinges, to show Lancaster blinking his one eye at the unaccustomed light.
"Why did they put you in jail? What did they say?" demanded Dick.
"I don't know! I haven't the very least idea! Nobody has said a word to me that would give me any clue! I was seized— thrown into a cart—and trundled here, and the only man I've seen since is the jailer who brought my food. They have fed me like a dog. But what brought you? Who told you? Why do you take this risk? Man, where do you expect to run to?"
"You were arrested—or I suppose so— because of your connection with myself," said Dick. "Therefore, I am glad to have released you."
"I'll never be able to thank you. I—"
>"I know you won't! I don't want your thanks!" said Dick. "I consider you a cur! You left me in the lurch the minute danger showed up in the mountains, when promises to help me, vi et armis, had scarcely left your lips. You are free now, and I advise you to ride straight to the British Minister at Teheran! If you feel grateful to me, then tell the Minister exactly who I am!"
"But I don't know who you are! I have only heard you say who you are—I can't take oath as to your identity—I'm a banker—I have to be careful how I swear!"
"So do I," said Dick, "but I swear I'll kick you if you ever cross my path again! Give him a horse, some one! Dismount, you! Yes, you! Give him your horse! Now be off with you!" he ordered, as Lancaster struggled to the saddle and looked round. "Yes—that way lies Teheran!"
There was no need for Dick to waste time visiting the Russian barracks, nor any need for threats; the Persians flocked to him, begging to be given orders. Before Lancaster's back, stooped over the horse's neck, had disappeared, Dick had the situation well in hand; and though his opportunity was limited by time, he made the utmost of it.
"Horses!" he demanded; and they ran to bring all the Russian horses they could find. "Ammunition!"
The word went round, and they broke down the doors of Russian magazines and piled the contents on Russian wagons.
"Take the rest!" he ordered. "Loot any Russian property you find except what I have ordered brought me. Burn the Russian barracks! Send the horses and ammunition to the plain outside the city!"
Then he led his column through the streets again, past the palace where the Princess and her maid still stood before the door.
"Help!" they screamed. "Help!" And again, since they were women and he a gentleman, he took notice of them, coming to a halt.
"Will you leave us to the mercy of the mob?" asked the Princess.
"Aye! Leave her to the mob!" urged one of Usbeg All's seven who commanded the right wing of the horsemen and had ridden to Dick's stirrup to get orders. That reminded Dick of the likelihood that savagery would take charge in Astrabad when he had ridden out.
"Give those two women horses!" he commanded, and men ran to obey. But they came running back, to tell him that the stables were already emptied and the horses on the way toward the city gate. Dick hesitated; and in the minute while he paused to think a message came from Usbeg Ali, hell-clattering through the crowd.1 A Persian reined a blown horse at his saddle-bow.
"Usbeg Ali says," the man commenced without waiting to salute, "that now is the time to aim the big blow! 'Bid the bahadur come!' says Usbeg Ali. 'Bid him ride!'"
"That settles it!" swore Dick, with a last look at the crowd.
He recognized the certainty of what would happen should he leave the Russian women there. He said nothing but he rode close to the steps and took the Princess underneath the arms. She sprang, and he swung her up in front of him.
"My king!" she murmured, as he wheeled his horse, but he did not seem to hear; he was watching a Persian horseman gather up the maid.
"Forward!" he ordered then; and for the next ten minutes the Princess Olga Karageorgovich was much too busy keeping still and clinging to find breath for words, or brain for choosing them. Dick had the trick, that is born in some men, of conveying some of his own spirit to the horse he rode; so a flashing eye and back-laid ears —tight rein—bared teeth—jaw slugged aside, and a turn of speed that made the other horses struggle to keep up—told any one what Dick's sensations were.
He stopped outside the city long enough to let them bring a mount each for the Princess and her maid. He helped the Princess spring into the other saddle. Then he spoke to her.
"Do you see that hill?" he asked, pointing to the north to where the Atrak River marked the distant boundary of Russia.
"Yes," she said quietly—evidently not expecting what was coming next.
"Ride to it and wait there! Make straight for it if you value your life! Your countrymen—or as many as are left alive of them—will join you there presently! I'm off to round them up! You'll find Russia quite a little distance farther off in that direction!"
She stared hard at him, refusing to believe her senses, but he spurred away from her.
"By troops—to the right—on number one !" he roared, and in a minute more the long line swung, and swooped to a canter—then a gallop—then, with a roar like a tide-wave, launched itself full pelt—merciless—against the Russians. And the Russians ran. There was only half their number left alive, and they were not in a mood to count the numbers of oncoming cavalry.
Barely had the Princess time to reach the distant mound ahead of them; for she stopped to watch, believing they would form up again and make another stand. They made an effort to retire on the city, but Dick headed them, and then they saw the flames of their own barracks rise above the city wall. It was then that the Princess started after them, and then that the rout began in earnest and they scampered, close-pursued, for the mound that rose behind them on the road to Russia.
Usbeg Ali rode up grinning, to salute Dick and get a word of praise from him.
"That giant of thine is a wonder on the gun, bahadur!" he began, since praise is the seed of praise.
"You did well, Usbeg Ali!"
"Sahib, I did my best! Now Astrabad is ours!"
"Persia's!" corrected Dick.
"But the plunder?"
"Is Persia's. I have all the horses and the ammunition. Look!"
"But—"
"Back to the mountains where we came from, Usbeg Ali! We are brigands yet not kings! Use the wagons as far as the mountains, then pack the ammunition on horses. Man! There's a Russian army corps to the north of the boundary—two of them, for all we know! D'you want to be caught like a rat in a trap in Astrabad and be blown to pieces by artillery? We've got to move! We've got to keep on moving! Back to the crow's nest, man, where the Persians can gather round us, and the Russians can't penetrate! We're at war with Russia—with the world, for all we know! We're outlaws! Ho, there, Andry! Well laid, sir! Good shooting, man! What? No! Can't help it—the maid's gone with her mistress. We? We're off! Back to the mountains before the Cossack guns and cavalry get back to trouble us! Gather your men! Gather your wounded! We're off again!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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