"The Turks are in Hadarabad," he said. "They are attacking the rear of
the procession."
"It seemed," said Mrs. Shedd, "as if at any moment we should hear the
screams of those behind, as the enemy fell upon them."
The wagons hurried on to the next town called Memetyar and there Dr.
Shedd waited, lightening his own wagons by throwing away everything
that they could spare--oil, potatoes, charcoal, every box except his
Bible and a small volume of Browning's Poems.
Then they started again, along a road that was littered with the
discarded goods of the people. Then they saw on the road-side a little
baby girl that had been left by her parents. She was not a year old
and sat there all alone in a desolate spot. Left to die. Dr. Shedd
looked at his wife and she at him.
He pulled up the horse and jumped down, picked up the baby and put her
in the wagon. They went along till they came to a large village. Here
they found a Kurdish mother.
"Take care of this little girl till we come back," said Dr. Shedd,
"and here is some money for looking after her. We will give you more
when we come back if she is well looked after."
III
Suddenly cannon were fired from the mountains and the people in
panic threw away their goods and hurried in a frenzy of fear down the
mountain passes. They passed on to the plain, and then as they were
in a village guns began to be fired. Three hundred Turks and Persians
were attacking under Majdi--Sultana of Urumia. Dr. Shedd, riding his
horse, gathered together some Armenian and Assyrian men with guns and
stayed with them to help them hold back the enemy, while the women
drove on. He was a good target sitting up there on his horse; but
without thinking of his own danger he kept his men at it. For he felt
like a shepherd with a great flock of fleeing sheep whom it was his
duty to protect.
Panic seized the people. Strong men left their old mothers to die.
Mothers dropped their babies and ran.
"One of my school-girls," Mrs. Shedd says, "afterward told me how she
had left her baby on the bank and waded with an older child through
the river when the enemy were coming after them. She couldn't carry
both. The memory of her deserted baby is always with her."
The line of the refugees stretched for miles along the road. The enemy
fired from behind boulders on the mountain sides. The Armenians and
Syrians fired back from the road or ran up the mountains to chase
them. It was hopeless to think of driving the enemy off but Dr.
Shedd's object was to hold them off till help came. So he went up and
down on his horse encouraging the men; while the bullets whizzed over
the wagons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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