acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

108 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
an eye on horsemen coming up behind,—for such I
generally waited, facing them from the roadside.
Just how these precautions served ine there could
be no saying, except by presumption in the long-run,
but on this road I shall always think it served me
well. Looking back I saw two Circassian horsemen
coming up, one behind the other, the distance separating
them about the same as that between me and
the araha—a matter of a hundred yards. No one
else Avas in sight. It seemed like the real thing,—the
thing of which I had often heard. 1 watched them
go by from the roadside with my hand on the Browning
in my jacket pocket, and each as he passed
glanced at me furtively, knowing that I suspected
him. In Tokat the next day I saw these men
together.
A few miles farther the dusty road entered the
walled orchards of Tokat. They were dotted with
yailas— usually a single room raised six or eight
feet above ground and opening to a wide balcony.
In these places the owner and his family live
during the fruit harvest, and even throughout the
summer ; and the weather being still so hot many
were occupied now, and over balcony railings hung
fluttering white garments and gaily striped shawls.
Men were pruning with axe and saw, children were
playing, and women busy at household work outdoors.
There was laughter and chattering, the sound of axes
and falling boughs. Tokat is largely Armenian, and
most of these orchard folk were of that industrious
but unhappy people. In their own ancient homeland
they live upon sufferance, and are massacred from
time to time as an "administrative necessity"—so
I have heard it called. And yet with it all you see
them between massacres, as here, apparently blind or
indifferent to their daily risk. They remind you of
those who hasten back to their old fields and village
sites on the slope of a volcano, hoping for the best,
for another run of quiet profitable years, after each
eruption.