Adventure, December 1914 — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

iz and the city’s inhabitants were up in arms, Once in the city, none but she could have led men unmolested through the streets; for with Dick’s good leave, the Persians had already looted every stick of Russian prop- erty that could be found, and the sight of fire—the very name of plunder—had aroused them. ‘They were in no mood to knuckle under any more to Cossack tyranny. But she said, “‘Open!”’ And they opened. She said, “‘Forward!’”’ And the Cossacks trudged in unattacked! Two-thirds of the officers were dead, and the remainder were too cowed and spent to think of disputing her usurped command. They knew that she had authority from somewhere, and of some kind; and Russians are taught early in official life not to ques- tion orders from above, whoever hands them on. They had heard of the Okhrana, that gives erders to the Czar; they suspected she was of that secret government. They guessed that her voice—her account of things, and no one else’s—would be listened to in Russia, where the secret strings are pulled. It seemed better to them to march sullenly beside their men, and not call at- tention to themselves. “Open!” she ordered; and the gate swung wide. Harridan, more beautiful than even their Moslem dreams of houris in Moham- med’s paradise, astride like a man, but in very feminine attire, knout-armed, and the knout’s lash bloody, helmetless, her hair streaming over her charger’s flanks in five- foot-long chestnut streams, obeyed — by men who two hours gone were utterly be- yond obedience—almost a girl in years, but one whose eyes blazed and whose soft red lips moved silently in a rage too wild for words, that most un-Persian of all women dazed the lean riflemen who held the gate, appalled them, refilled them with fear of Russia and a quick resolve to run no risks. So she rode in at the head of little more than two half-regiments, reckless of the dead and dying on the plain outsideand thoughtful only of Russia’s grip that must be reclenched on Northern Persia. Gone was her passion for Dick Anthony—gone up in a blaze of anger, and replaced by a hate for him that was inhuman in its devil- ish determination. Gone was the thought of serving Dick by playing the Okhrana false—gone any hope of seeing him a king. She wanted him dead now—a dead, dis- figured Dick whom she could spurn and Adventure spit on. In her imagination she could see him dead—still proud, still smiling that disdainful, resourceful smile of his; and she knotted up her fingers in an ecstacy of wickedness, gloating over the thought of how her whip would slice the smile into red unrecognition. Not a minute did she waste. The wires were down and the Caspian cables cut; she had the field all clear, and none now would be likely to oppose her orders. She seized new buildings for the Cossacks, raided the bazaars and seized an ample store of food, arrested twenty of the leading citizens, and whipped them—set Astrabad a-thunder with the preparation for new, resolute be- ginnings. At first she imagined Dick would attack the city, and she started to fortify the place. The flogged inhabitants soon brought out cartridges that Dick’s quick foray had over- passed, and the provisions that she plun- dered were enough to feed her men until relief could come. But then, looking out toward the foothills from a high muezzin’s tower, she saw Dick’s line of wagons and believed that he proposed to entrench him- self in that position. ‘Idiot!’ she laughed, gazing through binoculars. ‘‘He waits for more men! He will wait an hour or two too long!”’ It was useless, yet, to try to send her Cossacks out against the wagon-barricade. They could loot the bazaar, but_ their fighting pluck was gone. “Guns!” she muttered. ‘I must smash that wagon barricade with guns!”’ But the guns had been sent to harry Dick in his former fastness up in the El- burz Mountains. First had gone half the available infantry to hunt him from the hills, and the guns had followed later to pound him and his men to fragments when they broke for open country. It had been that expedition she inveighed against, for she believed they could reach Dick and smash him; and then she had loved him. But Dick stole a march on infantry and guns alike; he had burst on Astrabad un- heralded and unexpected. She blenched, now, at the thought of how he had ridden in and had carried her out again for his own honor’s sake. Contemptuously he had set her in a safe place and had ridden off, so, she cursed him through set teeth and cursed again because the guns were not there to pound him into bits. MICLOOOK (©