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"Thought you were due to be sick for another week?" said Monty, closing up the board. "I was. I would have been. Bed would have done me good, and the nurse is a darling, old enough to be Will's mother. But they put a biped by the name of Peter Measel in the bed next mine. He's a missionary on his own account, and keeps a diary.
According to Kagig it is time to go, before Turks come to take vengeance for a burned road-house. They will surely say Armenians burned it, whether or not there is a German to support their accusation!" Then we heard Kagig's high-pitched "Haide chabuk!" and picked up Peter Measel, and ran around the building to where the horses were already saddled, and squealing in fear of the flames.
On my way hither I saw Umm Kulsum, with that jackal trotting at her heel he made a scornful gesture in the direction of Peter Measel, who winced perceptibly, at which Fred Oakes chuckled and nudged me "and I followed Umm Kulsum, to observe what harm she might intend." "Black pig!" remarked Maga, but Rustum Khan merely turned his splendid back a trifle more toward her.
"I am at any rate a martyr!" Measel answered. The man could walk by that time he was presumably abstemious and recovered from shock quickly.
I asked unguardedly, knowing well that whatever their open pretenses, gipsies despise all religion except diabolism. They study creeds for the sake of plunder, just as hunters study the habits of the wild. "Maybe nothing maybe much! Peter Measel, he say " She paused, as if in doubt whether she was using the right argument.
Fred and I picked the poor fellow up and led him to where the cooking places stood in one long row. Will carried the book, and Rustum Khan stole wood from other folks' piles, and fanned a fire. We watched the unhappy Peter Measel put the book on the flames with his own hands. "You're old enough to have known better than keep such a diary!" said Monty, stirring the charred pages.
I watched the eagles for a minute or two, wondering what to say to her, and she did not seem to object to silence, so that I forced an opening at last as clumsily as Peter Measel might have done it. "What is it about Will that makes all women love him?" I asked her. "Oh, do they all love him?" "Looks like it!" said I.
Peter Measel, whom we had inevitably utterly forgotten, was sitting up with his back propped against a stone and his legs stretched straight in front of him, enjoying the situation with all the curiosity of his unchastened mind. I hove a lump of clay at him, but missed, and the effort made my headache worse.
"Then I will sleep again," said Rustum Khan, and suited action to the word, laying his head on the same folded goat-skin he had used before and breathing deeply within the minute. Nobody spoke. Rustum Khan's first deep snore had not yet announced his comment on the situation, and we all stood waiting for Kagig to say something. But it was Peter Measel who spoke first. "I will pray," he announced.
An' then last night in the darkness Peter Measel he is coming on a 'orse with Mahmoud because Mahmoud is not trusting him out of sight. An' I see him, an' 'e see me, an' 'e call me, an' I go to 'im through all the fighting, an' 'e get off the 'orse an' reach out 'is arms to me, an' I keel 'im with my knife so! An' now you know all about it!" "What next?" Will demanded dryly. "Next?" said Kagig.