Page:Red Rugs of Tarsus.djvu/141

 THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS

Dostumian hunted wildly and fruitlessly for his mother and little sister among the crowd. Harutun urged that he, on account of his red hair, would not be taken for an Armenian. He could find them. When he got to the house, he put the mother on his back and ran to us be- fore the Bashi-bazouks knew what he was up to. When he took the mother, he hid the little girl in a corner by piling sticks of wood on her. Told her to keep quiet, and wait for him to come back.

By the time he returned to excavate the youngster, and had put her on his back, and climbed to the roof of the house, the Bashi-bazouks were after him. Oh, the flat Oriental roofs! Harutun skipped from one to the other, taking amazing distances, with the child on his back. Danger is a prod. He got to a place on some roof beside which a foreign construction company had set up a pole in anticipation of the electric lighting system. Down that pole slipped Harutun. He ran

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