Page:Talbot Mundy - Eye of Zeitoon.djvu/338

318 It was part and parcel of him to praise those he had drilled and scorn the others. I shook hands and said nothing. It did not seem my place to contradict him.

"Let us hope these people are the gainers by our finish!" he called over his shoulder, riding on after his command. "They are not at all bad people—only undrilled, and a little too used to the ways of the Turk! Good-by, sahib!"

Within the castle gate I found a woman, whom they all addressed as Marie, very busy sorting out the bundles they had thrown against the wall. She was putting all the food together into a common fund, and as I entered she shouted to her own nominees among the other women to get their cooking pots and begin business.

Still pondering Rustum Khan's advice, in the dark whether or not he meant it seriously, I chose Marie Chandrian to take command. She made no bones about it, but accepted with a great shrill laugh that the rest of them seemed to recognize—and to respect for old acquaintance' sake. She turned out to have her husband with her—an enormous, hairy man with a bull's voice, who ought to have been in one or other of the firing-lines but had probably held back in obedience to his better half. She made him her orderly at once, and it was not long before every soul in the castle had his or her place to hold.

Then I mounted once more and rode at top speed down the new road that Monty was defending, taking another horse this time, not so good, but much less afraid of the din of battle.

I found Monty scarcely fifty paces from the track, on the outside edge of the fringe of trees that the Turks had been unable to cut down. There were numbers of