Part 24 (2/2)

Blenkiron played Patience, and Peter and I took a hand at picquet, butaway from that infernal city had cheered us up wonderfully Noere out on the open road, uns At the worst, we should not perish like rats in a sewer We would be all together, too, and that was a comfort I think we felt the relief which a ht back to his battalion Besides, the thing had gone clean beyond our power to direct It was no good planning and scheht be We were fatalists now, believing in Kismet, and that is a co of Hilda von Einely complexion on it for him It was curious to see how she affected the differentPeter did not care a rush: riff were the sa plans to round up an old lion in a patch of bush, taking the facts as they ca at them as if they were a suood denying it: horribly impressed-but ere too interested to be scared, and eren't a bit fascinated We hated her too much for that But she fairly struck Blenkiron dumb He said himself it was just like a rattlesnake and a bird

I et worse It was a strange thing that this man, the eous I have ever met, should be paralysed by a sliht of her made the future to him as black as a thunder cloud It took the power out of his joints, and if she was going to be ht be counted out

I suggested that he was in love with her, but this he veheot no sort of affection for the lady My trouble is that she puts onist I guess we A with that kind of female We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin Gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life Consequently, e strike one playing the biggest kind oftheels and children I wish I had had you boys' upbringing'

Angora was like my notion of some place such as Amiens in the retreat from Mons It was one mass of troops and transport-the neck of the bottle, for le eastern road The toas pande to introduce some order They didn't worry much about us, for the heart of Anatolia wasn't a likely hunting-ground for suspicious characters We took our passport to the commandant, who visaed theet us transport We spent the night in a sort of hotel, where all four crowded into one little bedroo a reat nay sort of Studebaker, and another two to get the petrol and spare tyres As for a chauffeur, love or money couldn't find hiout into bare bleak downs patched with scrubby woodlands There was no snow here, but a as blowing from the east which searched the marrow Presently we cliineered to begin with, grew as rough as the channel of a stream No wonder, for the traffic was like what one saw on that awful stretch between Cassel and Ypres, and there were no gangs of Belgian roadmakers towith their ions drawn by sturdy little Anatolian horses, and, co in the contrary direction, ons of the wounded We had to crawl for hours on end, till we got past a block Just before the darkening we seemed to outstrip the first press, and had a clear run for about ten et anxious about the car, for it was a poor one at the best, and the road was guaranteed sooner or later to knock even a Rolls-Royce into scrap iron

All the saain Peter's face wore a new look, and he sniffed the bitter air like a stag There floated up fro-fires That, and the curious acrid winter sreat wind-blown spaces, will always coht me peace of mind and resolution I felt as I had felt when the battalion first -up and wild expectation I' about Constantinople had slackened my fibre Now, as the sharp wind buffeted us, I felt braced to any kind of risk We were on the great road to the east and the border hills, and soon we should stand upon the farthest battle-front of the war This was no cooing into the firing-zone, going to take part in what ht be the downfall of our ene those enemies, and would probably share their downfall if ere not shot earlier The truth is, I had got out of the way of regarding the thing as a struggle between armies and nations I hardly bothered to think where my sympathies lay First and foremost it was a contest between the four of us and a crazy woonisround

We slept that night like logs on the floor of a dirty khan, and started next h up now, and it was perishi+ng cold The Companion-his name sounded like Hussin-had travelled the road before and toldtolot of troops, a brigade at least, ung along at a great pace with a fine free stride that I don't think I have ever seen bettered Iave hihter, and I felt very bitter that Gered him into this dirty business They halted for a meal, and we stopped, too, and lunched off sos and a flask of very sour wine I had a feords with one of the officers who spoke a little Gerht for Russia, since there had been a great Turkish victory in the Caucasus 'We have beaten the French and the British, and now it is Russia's turn,' he said stolidly, as if repeating a lesson But he added that he was mortally sick of war

In the afternoon we cleared the column and had an open road for some hours The land now had a tilt eastward, as if ere an tofrom the east with a new look in their faces The first lots of wounded had been the ordinary thing you see on every front, and there had been soanization But these new lots were very weary and broken; they were often barefoot, and they see You would find a group stretched by the roadside in the last stages of exhaustion Then would co, so tired that they never turned their heads to look at us Almost all ounded, some badly, and most were horribly thin I wondered how ht to his reat victory They had not the air of the backwash of a conquering army

Even Blenkiron, as no soldier, noticed it

'These boys look ot to hustle, Major, if we're going to get seats for the last act'

That was et on faster, for I saw that big things were happening in the East I had reckoned that four days would take us froora to Erzerum, but here was the second nearly over and ere not yet a third of the way I pressed on recklessly, and that hurry was our undoing

I have said that the Studebaker was a rotten old car Its steering-gear was pretty dicky, and the bad surface and continual hairpin bends of the road didn't i fairly deep, frozen hard and rutted by the big transport-wagons We bumped and bounced horribly, and were shaken about like peas in a bladder I began to be acutely anxious about the old boneshaker, the e I had proposed to spend the night in Twilight was falling and ere still in an unfeatured waste, crossing the shallow glen of a streas and earth which had apparently been freshly strengthened for heavy traffic As we approached it at a good pace the car ceased to answer to the wheel

I struggled desperately to keep it straight, but it swerved to the left and we plunged over a bank into aburound, and the whole party were shot out into the frozen slush I don't yet kno I escaped, for the car turned over and by rights I should have had , and Blenkiron, after shaking the snow out of his hair, joined hi the ly as it could be, for the front axle was broken

Here was a piece of hopeless bad luck We were stuck in the et a new axle there was as likely as to find soballs on the Congo It was all but dark and there was no tiot out the petrol tins and spare tyres and cached the soe froot to find us soht, and next day ould have a try for horses or a lift in soon I had no hope of another car Every automobile in Anatolia would now be at a pre a mishap that we all took it quietly It was too bad to be helped by hard swearing Hussin and Peter set off on different sides of the road to prospect for a house, and Blenkiron and I sheltered under the nearest rock and sely

Hussin was the first to strike oil He ca a couple of miles up the streae, Blenkiron and I plodded up the waterside Darkness had fallen thick by this tis When Hussin and Peter overtook us they found a better road, and presentlya light twinkle in the hollow ahead

It proved to be a wretched tu, muddy yard, a two-roomed hovel of a house, and a barn which was tolerably dry and which we selected for our sleeping-place The oas a broken old fellohose sons were all at the war, and he received us with the profound cal but unpleasantness from life

By this ti hard to put my new Kismet philosophy into practice I reckoned that if risks were foreordained, so were difficulties, and both must be taken as part of the day's work With the remains of our provisions and soer and curled ourselves up a the pease straw of the barn Blenkiron announced with a happy sigh that he had now been for two days quit of his dyspepsia

That night, I remember, I had a queer drea h as after ht, for I see me was more than human The place was horribly quiet and still, and there was deep snow lying everywhere, so that each step I took was heavy as lead A very ordinary sort of nighte feature in this one The night was pitch dark, but ahead of ht, and it showed a rum little hill with a rocky top: e call in South Africa a castrol or saucepan I had a notion that if I could get to that castrol I should be safe, and I panted through the drifts towards it with the avenger of blood at ling through the cracked rafters, and to hear Blenkiron say cheerily that his duodenuentle to fix the dream, but it all dissolved into haze except the picture of the little hill, which was quite clear in every detail I told myself it was a reminiscence of the veld, soh for the life of me I couldn't place it

I pass over the next three days, for they were one uninterrupted series of heart-breaks Hussin and Peter scoured the country for horses, Blenkiron sat in the barn and played Patience, while I haunted the roadside near the bridge in the hope of picking up some kind of conveyance My task was perfectly futile The colu the frozen rushes, but they could offer no help My friend the Turkish officer proora fro the state of affairs at Angora, I had no hope from that quarter Cars passed, plenty of them, packed with staff-officers, Turkish and Ger a hurry even to stop and speak The only conclusion I reached fro very warhbourhood of Erzerum Everybody on that road seeet away

Hussin was the best chance, for, as I have said, the Cohout the Turkish Empire But the first day he came back empty-handed All the horses had been coh he was certain that soet on their track The second day he returned with two-miserable screws and deplorably short in the wind from a diet of beans There was no decent corn or hay left in the countryside The third day he picked up a nice little Arab stallion: in poor condition, it is true, but perfectly sound For these beasts we paid good money, for Blenkiron ell supplied and we had no ti

Hussin said he had cleaned up the countryside, and I believed hi hi of the kind He was a good runner, he said, and could keep up with such horses as ours for ever If this was the etting to Erzeru of the fourth day, after the old farmer had blessed us and sold us so the heaviest, and Peter and I had the screws My worst forebodings were soon realized, and Hussin, loping along at my side, had an easy job to keep up with us We were about as slow as an ox-wagon The brutes were unshod, and with the rough roads I saw that their feet would very soon go to pieces We jogged along like a tinker's caravan, about five raced a highroad

The weather was now a drizzle, which increased oing at thirty miles an hour to mock our slowness None of us spoke, for the futility of the business clogged our spirits I bit hard on my lip to curb my restlessness, and I think I would have soldthat could move fast I don't know any sorer trial than to be etting ripe for any kind of desperate venture