The Slaves of the Padishah Part 7

The _bunda_ never budged.

The Kurd flew into a rage, dismounted from the horse, seized his spear, and climbing down into the ditch, viciously plunged his spear into the sleeping form before him.

But how great was his consternation when he discovered that what he had looked upon as a man in the darkness was nothing but a propped up stick, on which a _bunda_ and a hat were hanging! While he had been staring at Kokenyesdi, the latter had crept from out of the _bunda_ beneath his very eyes and hidden himself in the ditch.

The Kurd had not yet recovered from his astonishment when he heard the crack of a whip behind his back, and there was Kokenyesdi sitting already on the back of Haly Pasha's charger, Shebdiz, and the next moment he had leaped the ditch above the Kurd's head, shouting back at him:

"The trench is not broad enough for this horse, my son!"

Master Szenasi was one of those who had been sent to find Kokenyesdi, and he now arrived at Demerser, the famous robber's most usual resting-place in those days, and pushing his way forward told him that the gentlemen of Szathmar had sent him to ask him, Kokenyesdi, to a.s.sist them in their expedition against the Turks.

Kokenyesdi, who was carrying a sheaf on his back, looked sharply at the magister, who dared not meet his gaze, and when he had finished his little speech he roared at him:

"You lie! You're a spy! I don't like the look of your mug! I'm going to hang you up!"

Szenasi, who was unacquainted with the robber chief's peculiarities, was near collapsing with terror, whereupon Kokenyesdi observed with a smile:

"Come, come, don't tremble so, I won't eat you up at any rate, but tell the gentleman that sent you here that another time he mustn't send a spy to me, for to tell you the truth I don't believe in such faces as yours.

You may tell the gentleman, moreover, that if he wants to speak to me he must come himself. I don't care about making a move on the strength of idle chatter. I am easily to be found. Go to Puspok Ladanya, walk into the last house on the right-hand side and ask the master where the Baratfa hostelry is, he'll show you the way; and now in G.o.d's name scuttle! and don't look back till you've got home."

The magister did as he was bid, and on getting home delivered the message to his masters, whereupon they immediately set out; Raining going on the part of the military, Janos Topay on the part of the Hungarians, together with Ladislaus Rakoczy himself and the captain of the gentry of Barodsag.

The gentlemen safely reached Puspok Ladanya, where they had to wait at the magistrate's house till night-fall, although Raining would have much preferred to meet Kokenyesdi by daylight, and Rakoczy was burning to carry through his enterprise as soon as possible.

While they waited Raining could not help asking the magistrate whether it was far from there to the Baratfa inn?

The magistrate shook his head and maintained there was no such inn in the whole district, nor was there.

Raining fancied that the magistrate must be a stranger there, so he asked two or three old men the same question, but they all gave him the same answer: there might be a _baratfa puszta_[9] here but there could be no inn on it, or if there was an inn, the _puszta_ itself did not exist.

[Footnote 9: Common.]

"Well, if they don't know anything about it at the last house we had better turn back," said Raining to himself; and, when it had grown quite dark, he approached the house and began to talk with the master who was dawdling about the door.

"G.o.d bless thee, countryman! where's the baratfa inn?"

The man first of all measured the questioner from head to foot, and then he merely remarked: "G.o.d requite thee! over yonder!" and he vaguely indicated the direction with his head.

"We want to go there; can't you show us the way?" asked Topay.

The man seized the questioner's hand and pointed with it to a herdsman's fire in the distance.

"Look; do you see the shine of its windows there?"

"Which is the way to it?"

"That way 'tis nearer, t'other way it's quicker."

"What do you mean?"

"If you go that way you'll go astray the quicker, and if you go t'other way you may plump into a bog."

"You lead us thither," intervened Rakoczy, at the same time pressing a ducat into the man's fist.

He looked at it, turned it round in his palm and gave it back to Rakoczy with the request that he would give him copper money in exchange for it.

He could not imagine anyone giving him gold which was not false.

When this had been done he neatly led the gentlemen through the mora.s.s--wading in front of them, girded up to his waist--through those hidden places where the water-fowl were sitting on their nests, and when at last they emerged from among the thick reedy plantations they saw a hundred paces in front of them a fire of heaped up bulrushes brightly burning, by the light of which they saw a horseman standing behind it.

Here their guide stopped and the three men trotted in single file towards the fire, which suddenly died out at the very moment they were approaching it, as if someone had cast wet rushes upon it.

Topay greeted the horseman, who lifted his hat in silence and allowed them to draw nearer.

"There are three of you gentlemen together," he observed guardedly; "but that doesn't matter," he continued. "It would be all the same to me if there were ten times as many of you, for there's a pistol in every one of my holsters, from which I can fire sixteen bullets in succession, and in each bullet is a magnet, so that even if I don't aim at my man I bring him down all the same."

"Very good, very good indeed, Master Kokenyesdi," said Topay; "we have not come here for you to pepper us with your magnetic globules, but we have come to ask your a.s.sistance for the accomplishment of a doughty deed, the object of which is an attack upon our pagan foes."

"Oh, my good sirs, I am ready to do that without the co-operation of your honours. In the courtyard of a castle in the Baborsai _puszta_ there is a well some hundred fathoms deep and quite full of Turkish skulls, and I will not be satisfied till I have piled up on the top of it a tower just as high made of similar materials."

"So I believe. But you would gain glory too?"

"I have glory enough already. I am known in foreign countries as well as at home. The King of France has long ago only waited for a word from me to make me chief colonel of a long-tailed regiment, and quite recently, when the King of England heard how I bored through the hulls of the munition ships on the Theiss, he did me the honour to invite me to form a regiment of divers to ravage the enemy under water. And I've all the boys for it too."

"I know, I know, Master Kokenyesdi, but there will be booty here too, and lots of it."

"What is booty to me? If I choose to do so, I could bathe in gold and sleep on pearls."

"Have you really as much treasure as all that?" inquired Raining with some curiosity.

"Ah," said Kokenyesdi, "you ought to see the storehouse in the Szilicza cavern, where gold and silver are filled up as high as haystacks. There, too, are the treasures dug up from the sands of the sea, nothing but precious stones, diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, and real pearls. I, myself, do not know how many sackfuls."

"And cannot you be robbed of them?"

"Impossible; the entrance is so well concealed that no man living can find it. I myself can never tell whether I am near it; the shifting sand has so well covered it. Only one living animal can find it when it is wanted, and that is my horse. And he will never betray it, for if anyone but myself mounts him, not a step farther will he go."

"And how did you come into possession of these enormous treasures?"

asked Raining with astonishment.

"G.o.d gave them to me," said the horse-dealer, raising his voice and his eyebrows at the same time.

"Very edifying, no doubt, my friend," said Topay; "but tell me now, briefly, for how much will you join us against the Turks of Grosswardein?--not counting the booty, which of course will be pretty considerable."

"Well--that is not so easily said. Of course I shall have to collect together my twelve companies, and it will cost something to hold them together and give them what they want and pay them."

"At any rate you can name a good round sum for the services you are going to render us, can't you? Come! how much do you require?"