CHAPTER XX

FOUR AGAINST ONE

The sound of a reveille awoke Curtis, and he looked out into the dim, dewy morning. The wigwams of muskets had disappeared, and the little army had already fallen in. Several horses, saddled and bridled, stood by the village fountain. One, a young and sleek charger, was impatiently pawing the earth and another was drinking. Kostakes was sitting at a table, giving some orders to his second in command, the veteran with the scar. A sword attached to a leather belt kept company on the cloth with a pile of eggs, a loaf of bread and a pot of steaming coffee.

"_Bon jour_," cried the Captain gaily, springing to his feet, as he espied the American. "How have you slept, and how is the foot?"

"I got a little sleep, despite the pain, but the foot seems no better. I am getting very anxious to see that doctor of yours."

"To-morrow, I promise you without fail. And now for breakfast, as we must be off."

The Captain and his Lieutenant ran to the American, who put an arm about the neck of each and hopped to the table, groaning ostentatiously. After the hurried breakfast, Panayota was summoned. She came forth, pale as death, a beautiful, living statue of despair. Kostakes offered to help her, but she repulsed him with loathing, and climbed into her saddle as a refuge from his attentions. There were dark circles under her swollen eyes. As she looked about her, as though in hopeless search for the missing dear one, her features trembled on the verge of tears. Groaning:

"Ach, my God!" She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared into vacancy. Her beautiful hair was disheveled and her long white cuffs were wrinkled and soiled. The chivalry in Curtis' nature prompted him to speak and comfort her, although the words sounded hollow and false to his own ear.

"Take comfort," he said, "your father is surely alive. Believe me, he has escaped."

She smiled sadly.

"You do not know the Turks," she replied.

"Did I not tell you, my darling?" cried Kostakes eagerly, "of course he has escaped."

She did not even look at him, but murmured:

"Murderer! perjurer!"

Kostakes shrugged his shoulders, as who would say, "See!" and turning to Curtis cried:

"But Monsieur speaks Greek famously!"

"Only a few words and those with much difficulty."

"_Mais non_! On the contrary I find your Greek very perfect. And now _allons_!"

They pushed briskly up the narrow street, through a scene of utter desolation. The whirlwind of war had struck the town and wrecked it. As they turned a corner a long-legged, half-grown fowl broke for cover and tilted away, balancing its haste with awkward, half-fledged wings. They came unexpectedly upon a little Orthodox church and a putrid odor assailed Curtis' nostrils. Their path led them around to the front door.

"My God!" he gasped. A sight had met his eyes that was destined to thrill him with sickness and horror to the latest day of his life, as often as the black phantom of its recollection should arise in his mind. The village priest, an old, gray-bearded man, had died about a month before and had been buried in his robes. There was the body, hanging to its own church door, like the skin of a great black bat. Nails had been driven through the clothing at the shoulders, and the weight of the carcass, sinking down into the loose garment, had left it pulled up above the head into the semblance of joints in a vampire's wings.

From a bonfire of bones, half-decayed corpses and sacred _eikons_--the last named gathered from the houses and the church--a disgusting odor arose and filled the air. The Turks broke forth in derisive laughter as their eyes fell upon the horrid spectacle.

"My rascals have eluded my vigilance, I see," observed Kostakes, "and have been having a little fun in their own way."

"Different nations have different ideas about a joke," gasped Curtis through his handkerchief.

Emerging from the town, they picked their way through a large patch of freshly felled olive trees. The sound of the nocturnal chopping was now explained. About eleven o'clock they stopped for dinner in a small, deserted hamlet. During the progress of the meal a wounded Bashi Bazouk rode into the town and up to the table where Curtis and Kostakes were sitting. The man wore a red turban, which gave to his pallid face a tint similar to that of the underside of a toadstool. His soft shirt had sagged into a little bagful of blood, that dripped out like the whey from a sack of cottage cheese, upon his yellow sash and blue breeches. He said a few words with mouth wide open, as though his under jaw had suddenly grown heavy, and then, reeling, was caught by two soldiers, dragged from the saddle and carried into a hut.

"I must ask you to excuse me for several hours," said Kostakes, rising. "My Bashi Bazouks, whom I left with certain commissions to execute, are being defeated at Reveni, about an hour's march from here. How fifty Bashi Bazouks can find any difficulty with a little place like Reveni is more than I can understand! But I shall soon put a new face on affairs when I arrive!"

"God help the poor people," prayed Curtis, inaudibly.

"I shall leave three of my men behind to look after your wants and those of the young lady. I shall explain to the one I leave with you that he is your servant--that he must bring you anything you ask for. He speaks Greek, so you will be able to get along with him."

Five minutes afterward Kostakes was riding away at the head of his troop. He turned once in the saddle and waved his hand to Curtis. The American picked up his hat from the table and swung it in the air.

"_Au revoir_, Kostakes," he cried. "The devil confound you and your whole crew of cutthroats--I wonder if this beggar speaks English?"

He glanced suspiciously at the tall, sallow-faced Turk who stood a short distance away, leaning upon his musket.

"No, I guess not. He'd give some sign if he did."

Two other Turks, with musket on shoulder, were pacing back and forth before the door of the hut where Panayota was imprisoned. Curtis could feel his heart thumping against his breast. He struck the place with his doubled fist.

"Keep still, curse you," he muttered, "and let me think. Here is the opportunity--but how? how?"

The army was crawling along a white road that streamed like a ribbon athwart the foot of a hill. The ribbon fluttered as the dust rose in the wind. The bayonets twinkled in a dun cloud.

"Four against one," mused Curtis. "Four Turks against one Yankee trick--but how?"

Kostakes plunged into the hill and disappeared, and the blazing bayonets, line after line, were extinguished in a billow of green thyme. The American looked back over his shoulder at the door of a stone hut--the one into which the wounded Bashi Bazouk had been carried.

"Hey!" he called, "you there, hey!"

The Turk left ostensibly as Curtis' servant, but actually as his guard, stepped briskly forward, and, taking in his own the American's extended hand, pulled him to his feet.

"Help me into the house," said Curtis. "Now bring me that bench."

The man complied, after which he went to the door, and, leaning against the jamb, looked wistfully at his fellows. At one end of the room was a fireplace, filled with ashes and charred pieces of log. It was a primitive concern, the only vent for smoke being a hole in the roof directly overhead. Board platforms on each side the fireplace served as couches for the family. On one of these, flat on his back, lay the wounded man.

"I wonder how badly he's hurt," mused Curtis. "There isn't strength enough left in him to put up a fight, but there's enough left to pull a trigger if I tackle the other chap. Hello, he's got the hiccoughs; why, that's queer."

The man became quiet, and again Curtis relapsed into thought, to be disturbed a second time by the sound of knocking on boards. Looking around, his eyes fell directly upon the eyes of the Bashi Bazouk, and he felt as though he heard some one crying for help when no help was near. The man was resting upon his back and both elbows. For a moment those bloodshot, praying, awful eyes were fixed upon Curtis; then they swept the dingy hut and went out like panes of glass when the light is extinguished in a room. The man fell backward, fluttered on the hard planks and was still. Curtis shuddered.

"That wasn't nice," he muttered, "but this is no time for sentiment."

The other Turk stood by the body of his dead comrade, looking down at the ghastly, upturned face. Curtis pinched the muscles of his own right arm with the fingers and thumb of his left hand, and moved his doubled fist tentatively up and down.

"Where shall I hit him?" he mused. "In the chin or back of the ear? He must never know what struck him."

Bending over, he untied the long strip of cloth about his foot and unwound it. Taking it in his hands he pulled several times on it, to test its strength.

"Strong as a hemp rope. You could hang a man with that."

It was Panayota's blue homespun.

"Hey!" he called to the Turk. "You there. Say, look at this foot of mine, will you, and see what you think of it."

The man kneeled. Curtis drew back his arm, but realized that he could not get sufficient swing in a sitting posture.

"O, hold on a minute. Let me try the foot on the ground and see how it goes."

They rose to their feet together, and the unsuspecting soldier reeled backward, stunned by a vicious punch on the temple. But he did not fall, and Curtis, maddened by a great fear lest he bungle his opportunity, sprang forward and delivered a swinging, sledgehammer-like blow upon his victim's ear, throwing into it the entire strength of his body. The Turk dropped like an ox under the butcher's hammer. Then Curtis hastily bound him, hand and foot, with Panayota's bandage, and, tearing the lining from the man's coat, stuffed it down his throat. Pulling up a plank from the platform by the fireplace, he thrust the limp form out of sight and closed up the opening.

"I hope I didn't kill you," he muttered; "but, as old Lindbohm says, 'you must yust take your chances!'"

He walked once or twice the length of the hut. The foot gave him considerable pain, but it was possible to step on it.

"What'll I do with the other two?" he mused.

He picked up the gun lying on the floor and examined it. It was a Mauser and charged with five shells. He peeped cautiously through the doorway at Panayota's prison, concealing his body. The two guards appeared at the corner and looked curiously in his direction.

"Bah! What a fool I am!" he thought, and hopped boldly into sight, holding up his lame leg by passing his hand under it while he leaned against the jamb. The guards faced about and disappeared, putting the house between themselves and Curtis on their backward march to the other end of their beat.

"I could pot one of them, and then--but no, I might miss, and then I'd be in a pretty mess. And even if I did hit one, the other would have me at a disadvantage."

There was a sound of kicking against the boards at the fireplace. He sprang to the spot, rifle in hand, and tore up the plank. The man was lying upon his back with his eyes open. A great light broke in upon Curtis--an inspiration. He had thrust the Turk out of sight through instinct.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "they can't both leave Panayota. If I call to them, may be one will come out of curiosity, and I'll do this thing right over again. But what'll I tie him with?"

He cast his eyes about the room. The inevitable chest, studded with brass nails stood against the wall. He opened it.

"Cleaned out, by Jove!"

He went again to his victim, and taking a large jackknife from his pocket, deliberately opened it. The man turned as white as veal, his jaws worked convulsively on the gag as he made a vain effort to plead for mercy, and a pitiful noise, a sort of gurgling bleat, sounded in his throat.

"What the devil ails you?" asked Curtis. "O--I see," and he added in Greek:

"No kill. Cut your clothes--see?"

And stooping, he slitted the Turk's sleeve from wrist to shoulder. Following the seam around with the blade, he pulled away the large rectangular piece of cloth. Seizing the other sleeve, he was about to slash into it, when he thought he heard footsteps among the stones and gravel outside the hut.

"My God!" he cried, in a hoarse whisper, and jumped into the corner beside the door, just as one of the other two Turks walked boldly into the room. Without a moment's thought Curtis brought the barrel of his rifle down upon the man's head, who dropped his own gun and pitched sprawling upon his face. For fully a minute, which seemed an hour, the American stood motionless, breathless, in the attitude which had followed the blow. Every muscle was set to knotted hardness; he held the rifle in both hands, ready to throw it suddenly to his shoulder. He did not breathe, and he listened so intently that he could hear his own heart beating, and the breathing of the man at the fireplace. Suddenly his muscles relaxed like an escaping spring, and he looked nervously about for the detached sleeve. Picking it up, he stooped over the second Turk, when the latter moved his left arm several times with the palm of the hand down, feebly suggesting an effort to rise. Then the arm dropped and the hand beat a faint tattoo on the earthen floor. There was a great shiver of the whole body, a twitching of the muscles, a queer rattle in the throat, and--silence. Curtis stared with open mouth and dilated eyes, and a great, inexplicable horror came over him. "Ah!" he gasped, and, dropping upon his knees, he ran his fingers over the skull. The hair was matted with blood, and a deep, ragged-edged dent bore witness to the terrible force with which the rifle barrel had fallen.

"I've killed a man," he whispered, in an awestruck voice, rising to his feet. Staring fixedly at the silent thing lying there before him, he repeated the sentence over and over again:

"I've killed a man--I've killed a man!"

Then all at once a great change came over him, the joy and fierceness of the lust for blood, and he laughed hysterically, gloating over the dead man before him, as the victorious heroes used to do in the old barbaric ages.

He thought of the other Turk, and looked out of the door just in time to see him turn at the hither corner and disappear as he walked back on his beat. Curtis made a dash for an olive tree about eight rods distant, and, skulking behind it, peeped between the high gnarled roots. When the guard had again appeared and turned back, he ran to a rock and threw himself down behind it, instinctively using tactics by which he had sometimes crept up on a diving duck. He was now within listening distance. The next run brought him to the side of the house, and he had just time to throw his gun to his shoulder when the guard stepped into view. He might have taken him prisoner, but the thought did not occur to him. He had tasted blood. Panayota came to the door and looked wonderingly out. The American ran to her with the smoking musket in his hand and seized her by the wrist. It was the natural act of the savage who has won his woman in fight.

"Come, Panayota!" he cried, "you are free. They are all dead!"

And he started down the hill, pulling the girl with him. She came without a word.