“We must get into the cave before it is full light,” I said. “We had better draw lots for the two to go.”
The choice fell on one of the Companions and Blenkiron. “You can count me out,” said the latter. “If it’s your wish to find a man to be alive when our friends come up to count their spoil, I guess I’m the worst of the lot. I’d prefer, if you don’t mind, to stay here. I’ve made my peace with my Maker, and I’d like to wait quietly on His call. I’ll play a game of Patience to pass the time.”
He would take no denial, so we drew again, and the lot fell to Sandy.
“If I’m the last to go,” he said, “I promise I don’t miss. Stumm won’t be long in following me.”
He shook hands with his cheery smile, and he and the Companion slipped over the parapet in the final shadows before dawn.
Blenkiron spread his Patience cards on a flat rock, and dealt out the Double Napoleon. He was perfectly calm, and hummed to himself his only tune. For myself I was drinking in my last draught of the hill air. My contentment was going. I suddenly felt bitterly loath to die.
Something of the same kind must have passed through Blenkiron’s head. He suddenly looked up and asked, “Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?”
I stood close to the parapet, watching every detail of the landscape as shown by the revealing daybreak. Up on the shoulders of the Palantuken, snowdrifts lipped over the edges of the cliffs. I wondered when they would come down as avalanches. There was a kind of croft on one hillside, and from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to curl. Stumm’s gunners were awake and apparently holding council. Far down on the main road a convoy was moving—I heard the creak of the wheels two miles away, for the air was deathly still.
Then, as if a spring had been loosed, the world suddenly leaped to a hideous life. With a growl the guns opened round all the horizon. They were especially fierce to the south, where a rafale beat as I had never heard it before. The one glance I cast behind me showed the gap in the hills choked with fumes and dust.
But my eyes were on the north. From Erzerum city tall tongues of flame leaped from a dozen quarters. Beyond, towards the opening of the Euphrates glen, there was the sharp crack of field-guns. I strained eyes and ears, mad with impatience, and I read the riddle.