Adventure, December 1914 — page 84: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

82 he had drilled between their shoulder-blades. “Gather the Russian wounded!”’ ordered Dick, and Usbeg Ali Khan told off a dozen men to do it. “Put them on horses—two to a horse!” ‘“‘Gun-horses or ours?” “Ours. We want the gun-teams.”’ Usbeg Ali explained the order; then he hurried after Dick. But Dick sent him back again. “Order those six guards to bring the enemy’s major! Stand him on his feet be- fore his men!” Unmurmuring—for there was something in Dick’s manner that suggested dynamite —the Afghan, second-in-command though he was, acted the part of orderly, and three minutes later the Russian major stood in the center of the hollow square, flinching under Dick’s gaze. “Cut his bonds!’ commanded Dick, and somebody obeyed. The major rubbed his wrists and smiled between thin lips. ‘“‘Take this note!”’ said Dick, riding for- ward, and handing him a sheet from his memorandum book. The Russian took it, read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and folded it again. ‘‘Which of you is the doctor?”’ demanded Dick in French. An officer stepped out. ‘“‘You may go and search for your medi- cal kit, and carry away enough for the march back to Astrabad.”’ The surgeon-lieutenant walked off as- tonished, and Dick ordered an opening made at the far end of the square. It was done without shouting and with no confusion, for the men had their attention fixed now, and moved to the words of command as if hypnotized. “You have my leave to go!” said Dick in Persian, and the Russian major laughed. Dick held out the fountain-pen; the Russian refused it; so Dick let it fall, and it lies there now unless some freshet came and washed it into the Caspian. The Russian gave three quick orders to his men, and in an instant Dick’s forty- three found themselves surrounded. “Forward!”? came the order; and the Russians marched out of the square with the Persian prisoners in their midst. “Tell off twenty-five horsemen to follow, and make sure they march in the right di- rection!”’ ordered Dick, and Usbeg Ali hur- ried to obey. Adventure “Close up the square again!” Again Dick was obeyed as though his voice were the crack of Moslem doom and this judgment-day. Twice he rode round the square, and, as he passed, each man felt the back of his brain lie bare, for Dick’s extraordinary eyes missed nobody; each man felt as if singled out for special notice and particular resentement. ‘Now, listen to me!”’ he thundered, sit- ting the Russian major’s charger and sur- veying three sides of the square. ‘‘I said— when I agreed to lead you—that I would kill the man who did anything a soldier should not do. I have been better than my word. I have handed those men over to the Cossacks! I will leave all of you to worse than death—leaderless again at Russia’s mercy—if another prisoner is killed, or one more thing is done of which a decent soldier ought to be ashamed. That is all! Usbeg Ali Khan, pick out the men you want to handle those captured guns! Look alive now!” Picking them took very little time, for from the first all the efficiency of the little army had depended on prodigious efforts at selection. Usbeg Ali Khan and his seven, Andry Macdougal, and Dick, had each ex- erted a!l his skill with the result that the men fitted for promotion were all known. FA company commanders in place of six of Usbeg Ali’s Afghans; for they had been officers in Abdur Rahman’s field artillery and would have to serve now as gunners and gun-captains, instructors, ser- geants, bombardiers or drivers—in any capacity at all, so be the guns were gotten in position and then worked when Dick had need of them. Good, loyal soldiers that they were, they gave up their commands and rode forward to the new task with grins in lieu of grumbling; and being the only trained artillerymen there, only they appreciated what would be the task of making gunners from half-trained outlaw Persians. “Hurry those wounded away!” command- ed Dick. ‘‘Give the Russian doctor a horse!” Long ago Dick had organized a little, red-cross party of his own, under the com- mand of a man who had learned bandaging and a little doctoring in some mission- station; his own wounded were already THE main need was to promote comicloool C©