Hira Singh by Talbot Mundy (page 4)

like Tugendheim?”

“If what the Germans in Stamboul said of him is only half-true,” he answered, “we shall find him hard to catch. Wassmuss is a remarkable man. Before the war he was consul in Bagdad or somewhere, and he must have improved his time, for he knows enough now to keep all the tribes stirred up against Russians and British. The Germans send him money, and he scatters it like corn among the hens; but the money would be little use without brains. The Germans admire him greatly, and he certainly seems a man to be wondered at. But he is the one weak point, nevertheless–the only key that can open a door for us.”

“But if he is too wary to be caught?” said I.

“Who knows?” he answered with another of those short gruff laughs. “But I know this,” said he, “that from afar hills look like a blank wall, yet come closer and the ends of valleys open. Moreover, where the weakest joint is, smite! So I shall ride ahead and hunt for that weakest joint, and you shall shepherd the men along behind me. Go and bring Abraham and the Turk!”

I went and found them. Abraham was already asleep, no longer wearing the Turkish private soldier’s uniform but his own old clothes again (because, the Turkish soldier having done nothing meriting punishment, Ranjoor Singh had ordered him his uniform returned). I awoke him and together we went and found the Turk sitting between a Syrian and Gooja Singh; and although I did not overhear one word of what they were saying, I saw that Gooja Singh believed I had been listening. It seemed good to me to let him deceive himself, so I smiled as I touched the Turk’s shoulder.

“Lo! Here is our second-in-command!” sneered Gooja Singh, but I affected not to notice.

“Come!” said I, showing the Turk slight courtesy, and, getting up clumsily like a buffalo out of the mud, he followed Abraham and me. Some of the men made as if to come, too, out of curiosity, but Gooja Singh recalled them and they clustered round him.

When I had brought the Turk uphill to the fire-side, Ranjoor Singh had only one word to say to him.

“Strip!” he ordered.

Aye, sahib! There and then, without excuse or explanation, he made the Turkish officer remove his clothes and change with Abraham; and I never saw a man more unwilling or resentful! Abraham had told me all about Turkish treatment of Syrians, and it is the way of the world that men most despise those whom they most ill-treat. So that although Turks have no caste distinctions that I know of, that one felt like a high-caste Brahman ordered to change garments with a sweeper. He looked as if he would infinitely rather die.

“Hurry!” Ranjoor Singh ordered him in English.

“HURRIET?” said the Turk. HURRIET is their Turkish for LIBERTY. All the troops in Stamboul used it constantly, and Ranjoor Singh told me it means much the same as the French cry of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” The Turk seemed bewildered, and opened his eyes wider than ever; but whatever his thoughts were about “HURRIET” he rightly interpreted the look in Ranjoor Singh’s eye and obeyed, grimacing like a monkey as he drew on Abraham’s dirty garments.

“You shall wear the rags of a driver of mules if you talk any more about loot to your men or mine!” said Ranjoor Singh. “If I proposed to loot, I would bury you for a beginning, lest there be nothing for the rest of us!”

He made Abraham translate that into Turkish, lest the full gist of it be lost, and I sat comparing the two men. It was strange to see what a change the uniform made in Abraham’s appearance–what a change, too, came over the Turk. Had I not known, I could never have guessed the positions had once been reversed. Abraham looked like an officer. The Turk looked like a peasant. He was a big up-standing man, although with pouches under his eyes that gave the lie to his look of strength. Now for the first time Ranjoor Singh set a picked guard over him, calling out the names of four troopers who came hurrying uphill through the dark.

“Let your honor and this man’s ward be one!” said he, and they answered “Our honor be it!”

He could not have chosen better if he had lined up the regiment and taken half a day. Those four were troopers whom I myself had singled out as men to be depended on when a pinch should come, and I wondered that Ranjoor Singh should so surely know them, too.

“Take him and keep him!” he ordered, and they went off, not at all sorry to be excused from other duties, as now of course they must be. Counting the four who guarded Tugendheim, that made a total of eight troopers probably incorruptible, for there is nothing, sahib, that can compare with imposing a trust when it comes to making sure of men’s good faith. Hedge them about with precautions and they will revolt or be half-hearted; impose open trust in them, and if they be well-chosen they will die true.

“Now,” said he to me when they were out of hearing, “I shall take with me one daffadar, one naik, and forty mounted men. Sometimes I shall take Abraham, sometimes Tugendheim, sometimes the Turk. This time I shall take the Turk, and before dawn I shall be gone. Let it be known that the best behaved of those I leave with you shall be promoted to ride with me–just as my unworthy ones shall be degraded to march on foot with you. That will help a little.”

“Aye,” said I, “a little. Which daffadar will you take? That will help more!” said I.

“Gooja Singh,” he answered, and I marveled.

“Sahib,” I said, “take him out of sight and bury his body! Make an end!” I urged. “In Flanders they shot men against a wall for far less than he has talked about!”

“Flanders is one place and this another,” he answered. “Should I make those good men more distrustful than they are? Should I shoot Gooja Singh unless I am afraid of him?”

I said no more because I knew he was right. If he should shoot Gooja Singh the troopers would ascribe it to nothing else than fear. A British officer might do it and they would say, “Behold how he scorns to shirk responsibility!” Yet of Ranjoor Singh they would have said, “He fears us, and behold the butchery begins! Who shall be next?” Nevertheless, had I stood in his shoes, I would have shot and buried Gooja Singh to forestall trouble. I would have shot Gooja Singh and the Turk and Tugendheim all three with one volley. And the Turk’s forty men would have met a like fate at the first excuse. But that is because I was afraid, whereas Ranjoor Singh was not. I greatly feared being left behind to bring the men along, and the more I thought of it, the worse the prospect seemed; so I began to tell of things I had heard Gooja Singh say against him, and which of the men I had heard and seen to agree, for there is no good sense in a man who is afraid.

“Is it my affair to take vengeance on them, or to lead them into safety?” he asked. And what could I answer?

After some silence he spread out his map where firelight shone on it and showed Abraham and me where the Tigris River runs by Diarbekr. “Thus,” he said, “we must go,” pointing with his finger, “and thus– and thus–by Diarbekr, down by the Tigris, by Mosul, into Kurdistan, to Sulimanieh, and thence into Persia–a very long march through very wild country. Outside the cities I am told no Turk dare show himself with less than four hundred men at his back, so we will keep to the open. If the Turks mistake us for Turks, the better for us. If the tribes mistake us for Turks, the worse for us; for they say the tribes hate Turks worse than smallpox. If they think we are Turks they will attack us. We need ride warily.”

“It would take more Turks than there are,” I said, “to keep our ruffians from trying to plunder the first city they see! And as for tribes–they are in a mood to join with any one who will help make trouble!”

“Then it may be,” he answered quietly, “that they will not lack exercise! Follow me and lend a hand!” And he led down toward the camp-fires, where very few men slept and voices rose upward like the noise of a quarrelsome waterfall.

Just as on that night when we captured the carts and Turks and Syrians, he now used the cover of darkness to reorganize; and the very first thing he did was to make the forty Turkish prisoners change clothes with Syrians–the Turks objecting with much bad language and the Syrians not seeming to relish it much, for fear, I suppose, of reprisals. But he made the Turks hand over their rifles, as well, to the Syrians; and then, of all unlikely people he chose Tugendheim to command the Syrians and to drill them and teach them discipline! He set him to drilling them there and then, with a row of fires to see by.

In the flash of an eye, as you might say, we had thus fifty extra infantry, ten of them neither uniformed nor armed as yet, but all of them at least afraid to run away. Tugendheim looked doubtful for a minute, but he was given his choice of that, or death, or of wearing a Syrian’s cast-off clothes and driving mules. He well understood (for I could tell by his manner of consenting) that Ranjoor Singh would send him into action against the first Turks we could find, thus committing him to further treason against the Central Powers; but he had gone too far already to turn back.

And as for the Syrians-they had had a lifetime’s experience of Turkish treatment, and had recently been taught to associate Germans with Turks; so if Tugendheim should meditate treachery it was unlikely his Syrians would join him in it. It was promotion to a new life for them–occupation for Tugendheim, who had been growing bored and perhaps dangerous on that account–and not so dreadfully distressing to the Turkish soldiers, who could now ride on the carts instead of marching on weary feet. They had utterly no ambition, those Turkish soldiers; they cared neither for their officer (which was small wonder) nor for the rifles that we took away, which surprised us greatly (for in the absence of lance or saber, we regarded our rifles as evidence of manhood). They objected to the dirty garments they received in exchange for the uniforms, and they despised us Sikhs for men without religion (so they said!); but it did not seem to trouble them whether they fought on one side or the other, or whether they fought at all, so long as they had cigarettes and food. Yet I did not receive the impression they were cowards– brutes, perhaps, but not cowards. When they came under fire later on they made no effort to desert with the carts to their own side; and when we asked them why, they said because we fed them! They added they had not been paid for more than eighteen months.

Why did not Ranjoor Singh make this arrangement sooner, you ask. Why did he wait so long, and then choose the night of all times? Not all thoughts are instantaneous, sahib; some seem to develop out of patience and silence and attention. Moreover, it takes time for captured men to readjust their attitude–as the Germans, for instance, well knew when they gave us time for thought in the prison camp at Oescherleben. When we first took the Syrians prisoner they were so tired and timid as to be worthless for anything but driving carts, whereas now we had fed them and befriended them. On the other hand, in the beginning, the Turks, if given a chance, would have stampeded with the carts toward Angora.

Now that both Turks and Syrians had grown used to being prisoners and to obeying us, they were less likely to think independently–in the same way that a new-caught elephant in the keddah is frenzied and dangerous, but after a week or two is learning tricks.

And as for choosing the night-time for the change, every soldier knows that the darkness is on the side of him whose plans are laid. He who is taken unawares must then contend with both ignorance and darkness. Thieves prefer the dark. Wolves hunt in the dark. Fishermen fish in the dark. And the wise commander who would change his dispositions makes use of darkness, too. Men who might disobey by daylight are like lambs when they can not see beyond the light a camp-fire throws.

But such things are mental, sahib, and not to be explained like the fire of heavy guns or the shock tactics of cavalry–although not one atom less effective. If Ranjoor Singh had lined up the men and argued with them, there might have been mutiny. Instead, when he judged the second ripe, he made sudden new dispositions in the night and gave them something else to think about without suggesting to their minds that he might be worried about them or suspicious of them. On the contrary, he took opportunity to praise some individuals and distribute merited rewards.

For instance, he promoted the two naiks, Surath Singh and Mirath Singh, to be daffadars on probation, to their very great surprise and absolute contentment. The four who guarded Tugendheim he raised to the rank of naik, bidding them help Tugendheim drill the Syrians without relaxing vigilance over him. Then he chose six more troopers to be naiks. And of the eighty mounted men he degraded eighteen to march on foot again, replacing them with more obedient ones. Then at last I understood why he had chosen some grumblers to ride in the first instance–simply in order that he might make room for promotion of others at the proper time, offsetting discontent with emulation.

Then of the eighty mounted men he picked the forty best. He gave Abraham’s saddle to Gooja Singh, set one of the new naiks over the left wing, and Gooja Singh over the right wing of the forty, under himself, and ordered rations for three days to be cooked and served out to the forty, including corn for their horses. They had to carry it all in the knap-sacks on their own backs, since no one of them yet had saddles.

Gooja Singh eyed me by firelight while this was going on, with his tongue in his cheek, as much as to say I had been superseded and would know it soon. When I affected not to notice he said aloud in my hearing that men who sat on both sides of a fence were never on the right side when the doings happen. And when I took no notice of that he asked me in a very loud voice whether my heart quailed at the prospect of being left a mile or two behind. But I let him have his say. Neither he, nor any of the men, had the slightest idea yet of Ranjoor Singh’s real plan.

After another talk with me Ranjoor Singh was to horse and away with his forty an hour before daybreak, the Turkish officer riding bareback in Syrian clothes between the four who had been set to guard him. And the sound of the departing hooves had scarcely ceased drumming down the valley when the men left behind with me began to put me to a test. Abraham was near me, and I saw him tremble and change color. Sikh troopers are not little baa-lambs, sahib, to be driven this and that way with a twig! Tugendheim, too, ready to preach mutiny and plunder, was afraid to begin lest they turn and tear him first. He listened with both ears, and watched with both eyes, but kept among his Syrians.

“Whither has he gone?” the men demanded, gathering round me where I stooped to feel my horse’s forelegs. And I satisfied myself the puffiness was due to neither splint nor ring-bone before I answered. There was just a little glimmer of the false dawn, and what with that and the dying fires we could all see well enough. I could see trouble–out of both eyes.

“Whither rides Ranjoor Singh?” they demanded.

“Whither we follow!” said I, binding a strip from a Syrian’s loin- cloth round the horse’s leg. (What use had the Syrian for it now that he wore uniform? And it served the horse well.)

A trooper took me by the shoulder and drew me upright. At another time he should have been shot for impudence, but I had learned a lesson from Ranjoor Singh too recently to let temper get the better of me.

“Thou art afraid!” said I. “Thy hand on my shoulder trembles!”

The man let his hand fall and laughed to show himself unafraid. Before he could think of an answer, twenty others had thrust him aside and confronted me.

“Whither rides Ranjoor Singh? Whither does he ride?” they asked. “Make haste and tell us!”

“Would ye bring him back?” said I, wondering what to say. Ranjoor Singh had told me little more than that we were drawing near the neighborhood of danger, and that I was to follow warily along his track. “God will put true thoughts in your heart,” he told me, “if you are a true man, and are silent, and listen.” His words were true. I did not speak until I was compelled. Consider the sequel, sahib.

“Ye have talked these days past,” said I, “of nothing but loot– loot–loot! Ye have lusted like wolves for lowing cattle! Yet now ye ask me whither rides Ranjoor Singh! Whither SHOULD he ride? He rides to find bees for you whose stings have all been drawn, that ye may suck honey without harm! He rides to find you victims that can not strike back! Sergeant Tugendheim,” said I, “see that your Syrians do not fall over one another’s rifles! March in front with them,” I ordered, “that we may all see how well you drill them! Fall in, all!” said I, “and he who wishes to be camp guard when the looting begins, let him be slow about obeying!”

Well, sahib, some laughed and some did not. The most dangerous said nothing. But they all obeyed, and that was the main thing. Not more than an hour and a half after Ranjoor Singh had ridden off our carts were squeaking and bumping along behind us. And within an hour after that we were in action! Aye, sahib, I should say it was less than an hour after the start when I halted to serve out ten cartridges apiece to the Syrians, that Tugendheim might blood them and get himself into deeper water at the same time. He was angry that I would not give him more cartridges, but I told him his men would waste those few, so why should I not be frugal? When the time came I don’t think the Syrians hit anything, but they filled a gap and served a double purpose; for after Tugendheim had let them blaze away those ten rounds a piece there was less fear than ever of his daring to attempt escape. Thenceforward his prospects and ours were one. But my tale goes faster than the column did, that could travel no faster than the slowest man and the weakest mule.

We were far in among the hills now–little low hills with broad open spaces between, in which thousands of cattle could have grazed. Only there were no cattle. I rode, as Ranjoor Singh usually did, twenty or thirty horses’ length away on the right flank, well forward, where I could see the whole column with one quick turn of the head. I had ten troopers riding a quarter of a mile in front, and a rear- guard of ten more, but none riding on the flanks because to our left the hills were steep and impracticable and to our right I could generally see for miles, although not always.

We dipped into a hollow, and I thought I heard rifle shots. I urged my horse uphill, and sent him up a steep place from the top of which I had a fine view. Then I heard many shots, and looked, and lo a battle was before my eyes. Not a great battle–really only a skirmish, although to my excited mind it seemed much more at first. And the first one I recognized taking his part in it was Ranjoor Singh.

I could see no infantry at all. About a hundred Turkish cavalry were being furiously attacked by sixty or seventy mounted men who looked like Kurds, and who turned out later really to be Kurds. The Kurds were well mounted, riding recklessly, firing from horseback at full gallop and wasting great quantities of ammunition.

The shooting must have been extremely bad, for I could see neither dead bodies nor empty saddles, but nevertheless the Turks appeared anxious to escape–the more so because Ranjoor Singh with his forty men was heading them off. As I watched, one of them blew a trumpet and they all retreated helter-skelter toward us–straight toward us. There was nothing else they could do, now that they had given way. It was like the letter Y–thus, sahib,–see, I draw in the dust–the Kurds coming this way at an angle–Ranjoor Singh and his forty coming this way–and we advancing toward them all along the bottom stroke of the Y, with hills around forming an arena. The best the Turks could do would have been to take the higher ground where we were and there reform, except for the fact that we had come on the scene unknown to them. Now that we had arrived, they were caught in a trap.

There was plenty of time, especially as we were hidden from view, but I worked swiftly, the men obeying readily enough now that a fight seemed certain. I posted Tugendheim with his Syrians in the center, with the rest of us in equal halves to right and left, keeping Abraham by me and giving Anim Singh, as next to me in seniority, command of our left wing. We were in a rough new moon formation, all well under cover, with the carts in a hollow to our rear. By the time I was ready, the oncoming Turks were not much more than a quarter of a mile away; and now I could see empty saddles at last, for some of the Kurds had dismounted and were firing from the ground with good effect.

I gave no order to open fire until they came within three hundred yards of us. Then I ordered volleys, and the Syrians forthwith made a very great noise at high speed, our own troopers taking their time, and aiming low as ordered. We cavalrymen are not good shots as a rule, rather given, in fact, to despising all weapons except the lance and saber, and perhaps a pistol on occasion. But the practise in Flanders had worked wonders, and at our first volley seven or eight men rolled out of the saddles, the horses continuing to gallop on toward us.

The surprise was so great that the Turks drew rein, and we gave them three more volleys while they considered matters, bringing down a number of them. They seemed to have no officer, and were much confused. Not knowing who we were, they turned away from us and made as if to surrender to the enemy they did know, but the Kurds rode in on them and in less than five minutes there was not one Turk left alive. My men were for rushing down to secure the loot, but it seemed likely to me that the Kurds might mistake that for hostility and I prevailed on the men to keep still until Ranjoor Singh should come. And presently I saw Ranjoor Singh ride up to the leader of the Kurds and talk with him, using our Turkish officer prisoner as interpreter. Presently he and the Kurdish chief rode together toward us, and the Kurd looked us over, saying nothing. (Ranjoor Singh told me afterward that the Kurd wished to be convinced that we were many enough to enforce fair play.)

The long and the short of it was that we received half the captured horses–that is, thirty-five, for some had been killed–and all the saddles, no less than ninety of them, besides mauser rifles and uniforms for our ten unarmed Syrians. The Kurds took all the remainder, watching to make sure that the Syrians, whom we sent to help themselves to uniforms, took nothing else. When the Kurds had finished looting, they rode away toward the south without so much as a backward glance at us.

I asked Ranjoor Singh how Turkish cavalry had come to let themselves get caught thus unsupported, and he said he did not know.

“Yet I have learned something,” he said. “I shot the Turkish commander’s horse myself, and my men pounced on him. That demoralized his men and made the rest easy. Now, I have questioned the Turk, and between him and the Kurdish chief I have discovered good reason to hurry forward.”

“I would weigh that Kurd’s information twice!” said I. “He cut those Turks down in cold blood. What is he but a cutthroat robber?”

“Let him weigh what I told him, then, three times!” he answered with a laugh. “Have you any men hurt?”

“No,” said I.

“Then give me a mile start, and follow!” he ordered. And in another minute he was riding away at the head of his forty, slowly for sake of the horses, but far faster than I could go with all those laden carts. And I had to give a start of much more than a mile because of the trouble we had in fitting the saddles to our mounts. I wished he had left the captured Turkish officer behind to explain his nation’s cursed saddle straps!

We rode on presently over the battle-ground; and although I have seen looting on more than one battlefield I have never seen anything so thorough as the work those Kurds had done. They had left the dead naked, without a boot, or a sock, or a rag of cloth among them. Here and there fingers had been hacked off, for the sake of rings, I suppose. There were vultures on the wing toward the dead, some looking already half-gorged, which made me wonder. I wondered, too, whither the Kurds had ridden off in such a hurry. What could be happening to the southward? Ranjoor Singh had gone due east.

It was not long before Ranjoor Singh rode out of sight in a cloud of dust, disappearing between two low hills that seemed to guard the rim of the hollow we were crossing. At midday I let the column rest in the cleft between those hills, not troubling to climb and look beyond because the men were turbulent and kept me watchful, and also because I knew well Ranjoor Singh would send back word of any danger ahead. And so he did. I was sitting eating my own meal when his messenger came galloping through the gap with a little slip of twisted paper in his teeth.

“Bring them along,” said the message. “Don’t halt again until you overtake me.”

So I made every one of the mounted men take up a man behind, and the rest of the unmounted men I ordered into the carts, including Tugendheim’s Syrians, judging it better to overtax the animals than to be too long on the road. And the long and short of that was that we overtook Ranjoor Singh at about four that afternoon. Our animals were weary, but the men were fit to fight.

Ranjoor Singh ordered Abraham to take the Syrians and all the carts and horses down into a hollow where there was a water-hole, and to wait there for further orders. Tugendheim was bidden come with us on foot; and without any explanation he led us all toward a low ridge that faced us, rising here and there into an insignificant hill. It looked like blown sand over which coarse grass had grown, and such it proved to be, for it was on the edge of another desert. It was fifty or sixty feet high, and rather difficult to climb, but he led us straight up it, cautioning us to be silent and not to show ourselves on the far side. On the top we crawled forward eighteen or twenty yards on our bellies, until we lay at last gazing downward. It was plain then whence those half-gorged vultures came.

Who shall describe what we saw? Did the sahib ever hear of Armenian massacres? This was worse. If this had been a massacre we would have known what to do, for our Sikh creed bids us ever take the part of the oppressed. But this was something that we did not understand, that held us speechless, each man searching his own heart for explanation, and Ranjoor Singh standing a little behind us watching us all.

There were hundreds of men, women and little children being herded by Turks toward the desert–southward. The line was long drawn out, for the Armenians were weary. They had no food with them, no tents, and scarcely any clothing. Here and there, in parties at intervals along the line, rode Turkish soldiers; and when an Armenian, man or woman or child, would seek to rest, a Turk would spur down on him and prick him back into line with his lance–man, woman or child, as the case might be. Some of the Turks cracked whips, and when they did that the Armenians who were not too far spent would shudder as if the very sound had cut their flesh. How did I know they were Armenians? I did not know. I learned that afterward.

Some wept. Some moaned. But the most were silent and dry-eyed, moving slowly forward like people in a dream. Oh, sahib, I have had bad dreams in my day, and other men have told me theirs, but never one like that!

There was a little water-hole below where we lay–the merest cupful fed by a trickle from below the hill. Some of them gathered there to scoop the water in their hands and drink, and I saw a Turk ride among them, spurring his horse back and forward until the water was all foul mud. Nevertheless, they continued drinking until he and another Turk flogged them forward.

“Sahib!” said I, calling to Ranjoor Singh. “A favor, sahib!”

He came and lay beside me with his chin on his hand. “What is it?” said he.

“The life of that Turk who trod the water into mud!” said I. “Let me have the winding up of his career!”

“Wait a while!” said he. “Let the men watch. Watch thou the men!”

So I did watch the men, and I saw cold anger grow among them, like an anodyne, making them forget their own affairs. I began to wonder how long Ranjoor Singh would dare let them lie there, unless perhaps he deliberately planned to stir them into uncontrol. But he was wiser than to do that. Just so far he meant their wrath should urge them–so far and no further. He watched as one might watch a fuse.

“Those Kurds of this morning,” he told me (never taking his eyes off the men) “hurried off to the southward expecting to meet this very procession. Kurds hate Turks, and Turks fear Kurds, but in this they are playing to and fro, each into the other’s hands. The Turks drive Armenians out into the desert, where the Kurds come down on them and plunder. The Turks return for more Armenians, and so the game goes on. I learned all that from our Turkish officer we took this morning.”

While he spoke a little child died not a hundred yards away from where I lay. Its mother lay by it and wept, but a Turk spurred down and skewered the child’s body on his lance, tossing it into the midst of a score of others who went forward dumbly. Another Turk riding along behind him thrashed the woman to her feet.

“That ought to do,” said Ranjoor Singh, crawling backward out of sight and then getting to his feet. Then he called us, and we all crawled backward to the rear edge of the ridge. And there at last we stood facing him. I saw Gooja Singh whispering in Anim Singh’s great ear. Ranjoor Singh saw it too.

“Stand forth, Gooja Singh!” he ordered. And Gooja Singh stood a little forward from the others, half-truculent and half-afraid.

“What do you want?” asked Ranjoor Singh. “Of what were you whispering?” But Gooja Singh did not answer.

“No need to tell me!” said Ranjoor Singh. “I know! Ye all seek leave to loot! As sons of THALUKDARS [Footnote: Land holder]–as trusted soldiers of the raj–as brave men–honorable men–ye seek to prove yourselves!”

They gasped at him–all of them, Tugendheim included. I tell you he was a brave man to stand and throw that charge in the teeth of such a regiment, not one man of whom reckoned himself less than gentleman. I looked to my pistol and made ready to go and die beside him, for I saw that he had chosen his own ground and intended there and then to overcome or fail.

“Lately but one thought has burned in all your hearts,” he told them. “Loot! Loot! Loot! Me ye have misnamed friend of Germany– friend of Turkey–enemy of Britain! Yourselves ye call honorable men!”

“Why not?” asked Gooja Singh, greatly daring because the men were looking to him to answer for them. “Hitherto we have done no shameful thing!”

“No shameful thing?” said Ranjoor Singh. “Ye have called me traitor behind my back, yet to my face ye have obeyed me these weeks past. Ye have used me while it served your purpose, planning to toss me aside at the first excuse. Is that not shameful? Now we reach the place where ye must do instead of talk. Below is the plunder ye have yearned for, and here stand I, between it and you!”

“We have yearned for no such plunder as that!” said Gooja Singh, for the men would have answered unless he did, and he, too, was minded to make his bid for the ascendency.

“No?” said Ranjoor Singh. “‘No carrion for me!’ said the jackal. ‘I only eat what a tiger killed!'”

He folded his arms and stood quite patiently. None could mistake his meaning. There was to be, one way or the other, a decision reached on that spot as to who sought honor and who sought shame. He himself submitted to no judgment. It was the regiment that stood on trial! A weak man would have stood and explained himself.

Presently Ramnarain Singh, seeing that Gooja Singh was likely to get too much credit with the men, took up the cudgels and stood forward.

“Tell us truly, sahib,” he piped up. “Are you truly for the raj, or is this some hunt of your own on which you lead us?”

“Ye might have asked me that before!” said Ranjoor Singh. “Now ye shall answer me my question first! When I have your answer, I will give you mine swiftly enough, in deeds not words! What is the outcome of all your talk? Below there is the loot, and, as I said, here stand I between it and you! Now decide, what will ye!”

He turned his back, and that was bravery again; for under his eye the men were used to showing him respect, whereas behind his back they had grown used to maligning him. Yet he had thrown their shame in their very teeth because he knew their hearts were men’s hearts. Turning his back on jackals would have stung them to worse dishonor. He would not have turned his back on jackals, he would have driven them before him.

It began to occur to the men that they once made me go-between, and that it was my business to speak up for them now. Many of them looked toward me. They began to urge me. Yet I feared to speak up lest I say the wrong thing. Once it had not been difficult to pretend I took the men’s part against Ranjoor Singh, but that was no longer so easy.

“What is your will?” said I at last, for Ranjoor Singh continued to keep his back turned, and Gooja Singh and Rarnnarain were seeking to forestall each other. Anim Singh and Chatar Singh both strode up to me.

“Tell him we will have none of such plunder as that!” they both said.

“Is that your will?” I asked the nearest men, and they said “Aye!” So I went along the line quickly, repeating the question, and they all agreed. I even asked Tugendheim, and he was more emphatic than the rest.

“Sahib!” I called to Ranjoor Singh. “We are one in this matter. We will have none of such plunder as that below!”

He turned himself about, not quickly, but as one who is far from satisfied.

“So-ho! None of SUCH plunder!” said he. “What kind of plunder, then? What is the difference between the sorts of plunder in a stricken land?”

Gooja Singh answered him, and I was content that he should, for not only did I not know the answer myself but I was sure that the question was a trap for the unwary.

“We will plunder Turks, not wretches such as these!” said Gooja Singh.

“Aha!” said Ranjoor Singh, unfolding his arms and folding them again, beginning to stand truculently, as if his patience were wearing thin. “Ye will let the Turks rob the weak ones, in order that ye may rob the Turks! That is a fine point of honor! Ye poor lost fools! Have ye no better wisdom than that? Can ye draw no finer hairs? And yet ye dare offer to dictate to me, and to tell me whether I am true or not! The raj is well served if ye are its best soldiers!”

He spat once, and turned his back again.

“Ye have said we will have no such plunder!” shouted Gooja Singh, but he did not so much as acknowledge the words even by a movement of the head. Then Gooja Singh went whispering with certain of the men, those who from the first had been most partial to him, and presently I saw they were agreed on a course. He stood forward with a new question.

“Tell us whither you are leading?” he demanded. “Tell us the plan?”

Ranjoor Singh faced about. “In order that Gooja Singh may interfere and spoil the plan?” he asked, and Ramnarain Singh laughed very loud at that, many of the troopers joining. That made Gooja Singh angry, and he grew rash.

“How shall we know,” he asked, “whither you lead or whether you be true or not?”

“As to whither I lead,” said Ranjoor Singh, “God knows that better than I. At least I have led you into no traps yet. And as to whether I am true or not, it is enough that each should know his own heart. I am for the raj!” And he drew his saber swiftly, came to the salute, and kissed the hilt.

Then I spoke up, for I saw my opportunity. “So are we for the raj!” said I. “We too, sahib!” And it was with difficulty then that I restrained the men from bursting into cheers. Ranjoor Singh held his hand up, and we daffadars flung ourselves along the line commanding silence. A voice or two–even a dozen men talking–were inaudible, but the Turks would have heard a cheer.

“Ye?” said Ranjoor Singh. “Ye for the raj? I thought ye were all for loot?”

“Nay!” said Gooja Singh, for he saw his position undermined and began to grow fearful for consequences. “We are all for the raj, and all were for the raj from the first. It is you who are doubtful!”

He thought to arouse feeling again, but the contrast between the one man and the other had been too strong and none gave him any backing. Ranjoor Singh laughed.

“Have a care, Gooja Singh!” he warned. “I promised you court martial and reduction to the ranks should I see fit! To your place in the rear!”

So Gooja Singh slunk back to his place behind the men and I judged him more likely than ever to be dangerous, although for the moment overcome. But Ranjoor Singh had not finished yet.

“Then, on one point we are agreed,” he said. “We will make the most of that. Let us salute our own loyalty to India, and the British and the Allies, with determination to give one another credit at least for that in future! Pre–sent arms!”

So we presented arms, he kissing the hilt of his saber again; and it was not until three days afterward that I overheard one of the troopers saying that Gooja Singh had called attention to the fact of its being a German saber. For the moment there was no more doubt among us; and if Gooja Singh had not begun to be so fearful lest Ranjoor Singh take vengeance on him there never would have been doubt again. We felt warm, like men who had come in under cover from the cold.

It was growing dusk by that time, and Ranjoor Singh bade us at once to return to where the horses and Syrians waited in the hollow, he himself continuing to sit alone on the summit of the ridge, considering matters. We had no idea what he would do next, and none dared ask him, although many of the men urged me to go and ask. But at nightfall he came striding down to us and left us no longer in doubt, for he ordered girths tightened and ammunition inspected.

The Syrians had no part in that night’s doings. They were bidden wait in the shadow of the ridge; with mules inspanned, and with Tugendheim in charge we trusted them, to guard our Turkish prisoners. Tugendheim bit his nails and made as if to pull his mustache out by the roots, but we suffered no anxiety on his account; his safety and ours were one. He had no alternative but to obey.

Before the moon rose we sent our unmounted men to the top of the ridge under Chatar Singh, and the rest of us rode in a circuit, through a gap that Ranjoor Singh had found, to the plain on the far side.

The Turks had driven their convoy into the desert and had camped behind them, nearly three hundred strong. They had made one big fire and many little ones, and looked extremely cheerful, what with the smell of cooking and the dancing flame. Their horses were picketed together in five lines with only a few guards, so that their capture was an easy matter. We caught them entirely by surprise and fell on them from three sides at once, our foot-men from the ridge delivering such a hot fire that some of us were hit. I looked long for the Turk who had fouled the water, and for the other one who had lanced the child’s body, but failed to identify either of them. I found two who looked like them, crawling out from under a heap of slain, and shot them through the head; but as to whether I slew the right ones or not I do not know.

Three officers we made prisoner, making five that we had to care for. The other officers were slain. We never knew how few or how many Turks escaped under cover of darkness, but I suspect not more than a dozen or two at the most. Whatever tale they told when they got home again, it is pretty certain they gave the Kurds the blame, for, how should they suppose us to be anything except Kurds?

We took no loot except the horses and rifles. We stacked the rifles in a cart, picked the best horses, taking twenty-five spare ones with us, and gave our worst horses to the Armenians to eat. We sent a few Syrians in a hurry to warn the Armenians in the desert against those Kurds who had ridden to the south to intercept them, and tipped out two cartsful of corn that we could ill spare, putting our wounded in the empty carts. We had one-and-twenty wounded, many of them by our own riflemen.

Then we rode on into the night, Ranjoor Singh urging us to utmost speed. The Armenians begged us to remain with them, or to take them with us. Some clung to our stirrups, but we had to shake them loose. For what could we do more than we had done for them? Should we die with them in the desert, serving neither them nor us? We gave them the best advice we could and rode away. We bade them eat, and scatter, and hide. And I hope they did.

We rode on, laughing to think that Kurds would be blamed for our doings, and wondering whether the Armenians had enough spirit left to make use of the loot we did not touch. Some of us had lances now; a few had sabers; all had good mounts and saddles. We were likely to miss the corn we had given away; but to offset that we had a new confidence in Ranjoor Singh that was beyond price, and I sang as I rode. I sang the ANAND, our Sikh hymn of joy. I knew we were a regiment again at last.

CHAPTER VII

Since when did god take sides against the brave? –RANJOOR SINGH.

Did the sahib ever chance to hear that Persian proverb–“DUZD NE GIRIFTAH PADSHAH AST”? No? It means “The uncaught thief is king.” Ho! but thenceforward that was a campaign that suited us! None could catch us, for we could come and go like the night wind, and the Turks are heavy on their feet. We helped ourselves to what we needed. And a reputation began to hurry ahead of us that made matters easier, for our numbers multiplied in men’s imagination.

The Turks whom we had recently defeated gave Kurds the credit for it, and after the survivors had crawled back home whole Turkish regiments were ordered out by telegraph to hunt for raiding Kurds, not us! We cut all the wires we could find uncut, real Kurds having attended to the business already in most instances, and now, instead of slipping unseen through the land we began to leave our signature, and do deliberate damage.

None can beat Sikhs at such warfare as we waged across the breadth of Asiatic Turkey, and none could beat Ranjoor Singh as leader of it. We could outride the Turks, outwit them, outfight them, and outdare them. As the spring advanced the weather improved and our spirits rose; and as we began to take the offensive more and more our confidence increased in Ranjoor Singh until there might never have been any doubt of him, except that Gooja Singh was too conscious of his own faults to dare let matters be. He was ever on the watch for a chance to make himself safe at Ranjoor Singh’s expense. He was a good enough soldier when so minded. All of us daffadars were developing into very excellent troop commanders, and he not least of us; but the more efficient he grew the more dangerous he was, for the very good reason that Ranjoor Singh scorned to take notice of his hate and only praised him for efficiency. Whereas he watched all the time for faults in Ranjoor Singh to take advantage of them.

So I took thought, and used discretion, and chose twelve troopers whom I drafted into Gooja Singh’s command by twos and threes, he not suspecting. By ones and twos and threes I took them apart and tested them, saying much the same to each.

Said I, “Who mistrusts our sahib any longer?” And because I had chosen them well they each made the same answer. “Nay,” said they, “we were fools. He was always truer than any of us. He surrendered in that trench that we might live for some such work as this!”

“If he were to be slain,” said I, “what would now become of us?”

“He must not be slain!” said they.

“But what if he IS slain?” I answered. “Who knows his plans for the future?”

“Ask him to tell his plans,” said they. “He trusts you more than any of us. Ask and he will tell.”

“Nay,” said I, “I have asked and he will not tell. He knows, as well as you or I, that not all the men of this regiment have always believed in him. He knows that none dare kill him unless they know his plans first, for until they have his plans how can they dispense with his leadership?”

“Who are these who wish to kill him?” said they. “Let there be court martial and a hanging!”

“Nay,” said I, “let there be a silence and forgetting, lest too many be involved!”

They nodded, knowing well that not one man of us all would escape condemnation if inquiry could be carried back far enough.

“Let there be much watchfulness!” said I.

“Who shall watch Ranjoor Singh?” said they. “He is here, there and everywhere! He is gone before dawn, and perhaps we see him again at noon, but probably not until night. And half the night he spends in the saddle as often as not. Who shall watch him?”

“True!” said I. “But if we took thought, and decided who might– perhaps–most desire to kill him for evil recollection’s sake, then we might watch and prevent the deed.”

“Aye!” said they, and they understood. So I arranged with Ranjoor Singh to have them transferred to Gooja Singh’s troop, making this excuse and that and telling everything except the truth about it. If I had told him the truth, Ranjoor Singh would have laughed and my precaution would have been wasted, but having lied I was able to ride on with easier mind–such sometimes being the case.

We had little trouble in keeping on the horizon whenever we sighted Turks in force; and then probably the distance deceived them into thinking us Turks, too, for we rode now with no less than five Turkish officers as well as a German sergeant. And in the rear of large bodies of Turks there was generally a defenseless town or village whose Armenians had all been butchered, and whose other inhabitants were mostly too gorged with plunder to show any fight. We helped ourselves to food, clothing, horses, saddlery, horse-feed, and anything else that Ranjoor Singh considered we might need, but he threatened to hang the man who plundered anything of personal value to himself, and none of us wished to die by that means.

We soon began to need medicines and a doctor badly, for we lost no less than eight-and-twenty men between the avenging of those Armenians in the desert and reaching the Kurdish mountains, and once we had more than forty wounded at one time. But finally we captured a Greek doctor, attached to the Turkish army, and he had along with him two mule-loads of medicines. Ranjoor Singh promised him seven deaths for every one of our wounded men who should die of neglect, and most of them began to recover very quickly.

If we had tried merely to plunder; or had raided the same place twice; or, if we had rested merely because we were weary; or, if we had once done what might have been expected of us, I should not now sit beneath this tree talking to you, sahib, because my bones would be lying in Asiatic Turkey. But we rode zigzag-wise, very often doubling on our tracks, Ranjoor Singh often keeping half a day’s march ahead of us gathering information.

When we raided a town or village we used to tie our Turkish officers hand and foot and cover them up in a cart, for we wished them to be mistaken for Kurds, not Turks. And in almost the first bazaar we plundered were strange hats such as Kurds wear, that gave us when we wore them in the dark the appearance, perhaps, of Kurds who had stolen strange garments (for the Kurds wear quite distinctive clothes, of which we did not succeed in plundering sufficient to disguise us all).

In more than one town we had to fight for what we took, for there were Turkish soldiers that we did not know about, for all Ranjoor Singh’s good scouting. Sometimes we beat them off with very little trouble; sometimes we had about enough fighting to warm our hearts and terrify the inhabitants. But in one town we were caught plundering the bazaar by several hundred Turkish infantry who entered from the far side unexpectedly; and if we had not burned the bazaar I doubt that we should have won clear of that trap. But the smoke and flame served us for a screen, and we got to the rear of the Turks and killed a number of them before galloping off into the dark.

But who shall tell in a day what took weeks in the doing? I do not remember the tenth part of it! We rode, and we skirmished, and we plundered, growing daily more proud of Ranjoor Singh, and most of us forgetting we had ever doubted him. Once we rode for ten miles side by side in the darkness with a Turkish column that had been sent to hunt for us! Perhaps they mistook our squeaky old carts for their cannon; that had camped for the night unknown to them! Next day we told some Kurds where to find the cannon, and doubtless the Kurds made trouble. We let the column alone, for it was too big for us– about two regiments, I think. They camped at midnight, and we rode on.

We gave our horses all the care we could, but that was none too much, and we had to procure new mounts very frequently. Often we picked up a dozen at a time in the towns and villages, slaying those we left behind lest they be of use to the enemy. Once we wrought a miracle, being nearly at a standstill from hard marching, and almost surrounded by regiments sent out to cut us off. We raided the horse- lines of a Turkish regiment that had camped beside a stream, securing all the horses we needed and stampeding the remainder! Thus we escaped through the gap that regiment had been supposed to close. We got away with their baked bread, too, enough to last us at least three days! That was not far from Diarbekr.

By the time we reached the Tigris and crossed it near Diarbekr we were happy men; for we were not in search of idleness; all most of us asked was a chance to serve our friends, and making trouble for the Turks was surely service! One way and another we made more trouble than ten times our number could have made in Flanders. Every one of us but Gooja Singh was happy.

We crossed the Tigris in the dark, and some of us were nearly drowned, owing to the horses being frightened. We had to abandon our carts, so we burned them; and by the light of that fire we saw great mounds of Turkish supplies that they intended to float down the river to Bagdad on strange rafts made of goatskins. The sentries guarding the stores put up a little fight, and five more of us were wounded, but finally we burned the stores, and the flames were so bright and high that we had to gallop for two miles before we could be safe again in darkness. So we crossed at a rather bad place, and there was something like panic for ten minutes, but we got over safely in the end, wounded and all. We floated the wounded men and ammunition and rations for men and horses across on some of those strange goatskin rafts that go round and round and any way but forward. We found them in the long grass by the river-bank.

At a town on the far side we seized new carts, far better than our old ones. And then, because we might have been expected to continue eastward, we turned to the south and followed the course of the Tigris, straight into Kurdish country, where it did us no good to resemble either Turks or Kurds; for we could not hope to deceive the Kurds into thinking we were of their tribe, and Turks and Kurds are open enemies wherever the Turks are not strong enough to overawe. They were all Kurds in these parts, and no Turks at all, so that our problem became quite different. After two days’ riding over what was little else than wilderness, Ranjoor Singh made new dispositions, and we put the Kurdish headgear in our knapsacks.

In the first place, the wounded had been suffering severely from the long forced marches and the jolting of the springless carts. Some of them had died, and the Greek doctor had grown very anxious for his own skin. Ranjoor Singh summoned him and listened to great explanations and excuses, finally gravely permitting him to live, but adding solemn words of caution. Then he ordered the carts abandoned, for there was now no road at all. The forty Turkish soldiers (in their Syrian clothes) were made to carry the wounded in stretchers we improvised, until some got well and some died; those who did not carry wounded were made to carry ammunition, and some of our own men who had tried to disregard Ranjoor Singh’s strict orders regarding women of the country were made to help them. That arrangement lasted until we came to a village where the Kurds were willing to exchange mules against the rifles we had taken from the Kurds, one mule for one rifle, we refusing to part with any cartridges.

After that the wounded had to ride on mules, some of them two to a mule, holding each other on, and the cartridge boxes were packed on the backs of other mules, except that men who tried to make free with native women were invariably ordered to relieve a mule. Then we had no further use for the forty Turks, so we turned them loose with enough food to enable them to reach Diarbekr if they were economical. They went off none too eagerly in their Syrian clothes, and I have often wondered whether they ever reached their destination, for the Kurds of those parts are a fierce people, and it is doubtful which they would rather ill-treat and kill, a Turk or a Syrian. The Turks have taught them to despise Armenians and Syrians, but they despise Turks naturally. (All this I learned from Abraham, who often marched beside me.)

“Those Turks we have released will go back and set their people on our trail,” said Gooja Singh, overlooking no chance to throw discredit.

“If they ever get safely back, that is what I hope they will do!” Ranjoor Singh answered. “We will disturb hornets and pray that Turks get stung!”

He would give no explanation, but it was not long before we all understood. Little by little, he was admitting us to confidence in those days, never telling at a time more than enough to arouse interest and hope.

Rather than have him look like a Turk any longer, we had dressed up Abraham in the uniform of one of our dead troopers; and when at last a Kurdish chief rode up with a hundred men at his back and demanded to know our business, Ranjoor Singh called Abraham to interpret. We could easily have beaten a mere hundred Kurds, but to have won a skirmish just then would have helped us almost as little as to lose one. What we wanted was free leave to ride forward.

“Where are ye, and whither are ye bound? What seek ye?” the Kurd demanded, but Ranjoor Singh proved equal to the occasion.

“We be troops from India,” said he. “We have been fighting in Europe on the side of France and England, and the Germans and Turks have been so badly beaten that you see for yourself what is happening. Behold us! We are an advance party. These Turkish officers you see are prisoners we have taken on our way. Behold, we have also a German prisoner! You will find all the Turks between here and Syria in a state of panic, and if plunder is what you desire you would better make haste and get what you can before the great armies come eating the land like locusts! Plunder the Turks and prove yourselves the friends of French and English!”

Sahib, those Kurds would rather loot than go to heaven, and, like all wild people, they are very credulous. There are Kurds and Kurds and Kurds, nations within a nation, speaking many dialects of one tongue. Some of them are half-tame and live on the plains; those the Turks are able to draft into their armies to some extent. Some of the plainsmen, like those I speak of now, are altogether wild and will not serve the Turks on any terms. And most of the hillmen prefer to shoot a Turk on sight. I would rather fight a pig with bare hands than try to stand between a Kurd and Turkish plunder, and it only needed just those few words of Ranjoor Singh’s to set that part of the world alight!

We rode for very many days after that, following the course of the Tigris unmolested. The tale Ranjoor Singh told had gone ahead of us. The village Kurds waited to have one look, saw our Turkish prisoners and our Sikh turbans, judged for themselves, and were off! I believe we cost the Turkish garrisons in those parts some grim fighting; and if any Turks were on our trail I dare wager they met a swarm or two of hornets more than they bargained for!

Instead of having to fight our way through that country, we were well received. Wherever we found Kurds, either in tents or in villages, the unveiled women would give us DU, as they call their curds and whey, and barley for our horses, and now and then a little bread. When other persuasion failed, we could buy almost anything they had with a handful or two of cartridges. They were a savage people, but not altogether unpleasing.

Once, where the Tigris curved and our road brought us near the banks, by a high cliff past which the river swept at very great speed, we took part in a sport that cost us some cartridges, but no risk, and gave us great amusement. The Kurds of those parts, having heard in advance of our tale of victory, had decided, to take the nearest loot to hand; so they had made an ambuscade down near the river level, and when we came on the scene we lent a hand from higher up.

Rushing down the river at enormous speed (for the stream was narrow there) forced between rocks with a roar and much white foam the goatskin rafts kept coming on their way to Mosul and Bagdad, some loaded with soldiers, some with officers, and all with goods on which the passengers must sit to keep their legs dry. The rafts were each managed by two men, who worked long oars to keep them in mid- current, they turning slowly round and round.

The mode of procedure was to volley at them, shooting, if possible, the men with oars, but not despising a burst goatskin bag. In case the men with oars were shot, the others would try to take their place, and, being unskilful, would very swifly run the raft against a rock, when it would break up and drown its passengers, the goods drifting ashore at the bend in the river in due time.

On the other hand, when a few goatskin bags were pierced the raft would begin to topple over and the men with oars would themselves direct the raft toward the shore, preferring to take their chance among Kurds than with the rocks that stuck up like fangs out of the raging water. No, sahib, I could not see what happened to them after they reached shore. That is a savage country.

One of our first volleys struck a raft so evenly and all together that it blew up as if it had been torpedoed! We tried again and again to repeat that performance, until Ranjoor Singh checked us for wasting ammunition. It was very good sport. There were rafts and rafts and rafts–KYAKS, I think they call them–and the amount of plunder those Kurds collected on the beach must have been astonishing.

We gave the city of Mosul a very wide berth, for that is the largest city of those parts, with a very large Turkish garrison. Twenty miles to the north of it we captured a good convoy of mules, together with their drivers, headed toward Mosul, and the mules’ loads turned out to consist of good things to eat, including butter in large quantities. We came on them in the gathering dusk, when their escort of fifty Turkish infantry had piled arms, we being totally unexpected. So we captured the fifty rifles as well as the mules; and, although the mule-drivers gave us the slip next day, and no doubt gave information about us in Mosul, that did not worry us much. We cut two telegraph wires leading toward Mosul that same night; we cut out two miles of wire in sections, riding away with it, and burned the poles.

After that, whenever we could catch a small party of men, Turks excepted (for that would have been to give the Turks more information than we could expect to get from them), Ranjoor Singh would ask questions about Wassmuss. Most of them would glance toward the mountains at mention of his name, but few had much to tell about him. However, bit by bit, our knowledge of his doings and his whereabouts kept growing, and we rode forward, ever toward the mountains now, wasting no time and plundering no more than expedient.

We saw no more living Armenians on all that long journey. The Turks and Kurds had exterminated them! We rode by burned villages, and through villages that once had been half-Armenian. The non-Armenian houses would all be standing, like to burst apart with plunder, but every single one that had sheltered an Armenian family would lie in ruins. God knows why! On all our way we found no man who could tell us what those people had done to deserve such hatred. We asked, but none could tell us.

One town, through which we rode at full gallop, had Armenian bodies still lying in the streets, some of them half-burned, and there were Kurds and Turks busy plundering the houses. Some of them came out to fire at us, but failed to do us any harm, and, the wind being the right way, we set a light to a dozen houses at the eastward end. Two or three miles away we stopped to watch the whole town go up in flames, and laughed long at the Turks’ efforts to save their loot.

As we drew near enough to the mountains to see snow and to make out the lie of the different ranges, we ceased to have any fear of pursuit. There was plenty of evidence of Turkish armies not very far away; in fact, at Mosul there was gathering a very great army indeed; but they were all so busy killing and torturing and hunting down Armenians that they seemed to have no time for duty on that part of the frontier. Perhaps that was why the Germans had sent Wassmuss, in order that the Turks might have more leisure to destroy their enemies at home! Who knows? There are many things about this great war to which none know the answer, and I think the fate of the Armenians is one of them.

But who thought any more of Armenians when the outer spurs of the foot-hills began to close around us? Not we, at any rate. We had problems enough of our own. What lay behind us was behind, and the future was likely to afford us plenty to think about! Too many of us had fought among the slopes of the Himalayas now to know how difficult it would be for Turks to follow us; but those mountaineers, who are nearly as fierce as our mountaineers of northern India, and who have ever been too many for the Turks, were likely to prove more dangerous than anything we had met yet.

We had enough food packed on our captured mules to last us for perhaps another eight days when we at last rode into a grim defile that seemed to lead between the very gate-posts of the East–two great mountains, one on either hand, barren, and ragged, and hard. We were being led at that time by a Kurdish prisoner, who had lain by the wayside with the bellyache. Our Greek doctor had physicked him, and he was now compelled to lead us under Ranjoor Singh’s directions, with his hands made fast behind him, he riding on a mule with one of our men on either hand. By that time Ranjoor Singh had picked up enough information at different times, and had added enough of it together to know whither we must march, and the Kurd had nothing to do but obey orders.

We had scarcely ridden three hundred yards into the defile of which I speak, remarking the signs of another small body of mounted men who had preceded us, when fifty shots rang out from overhead and we took open order as if a shell had burst among us. Nobody was hit, however, and I think nobody was intended to be hit. I saw that Ranjoor Singh looked unalarmed. He beckoned for Abraham, who looked terrified, and I took Abraham by the shoulder and brought him forward. There came a wild yell from overhead, and Ranjoor Singh made Abraham answer it with something about Wassmuss. In the shouting that followed I caught the word Wassmuss many times.

Presently a Kurdish chief came galloping down, for all the world as one of our Indian mountaineers would ride, leaping his horse from rock to rock as if he and the beast were one. I rode to Ranjoor Singh’s side, to protect him if need be, so I heard what followed, Abraham translating.

“Whence are ye?” said the Kurd. “And whither? And what will ye?” They are inquisitive people, and they always seem to wish to know those three things first.

“I have told you already, I ride from Farangistan, [Footnote: Europe] and I seek Wassmuss. These are my men,” said Ranjoor Singh.

“No more may reach Wassmuss unless they have the money with them!” said the Kurd, very truculently. “Two days ago we let by the last party of men who carried only talk. Now we want only money!”

“Who was ever helped by impatience?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

“Nay,” said the Kurd, “we are a patient folk! We have waited eighteen days for sight of this gold for Wassmuss. It should have been here fifteen days ago, so Wassmuss said, but we are willing to wait eighteen more. Until it comes, none else shall pass!”

I was watching Ranjoor Singh very closely indeed, and I saw that he saw daylight, as it were, through darkness.

“Yet no gold shall come,” he answered, “until you and I shall have talked together, and shall have reached an agreement.”

“Agreement?” said the Kurd. “Ye have my word! Ride back and bid them bring their gold in safety and without fear!”

“Without fear?” said Ranjoor Singh. “Then who are ye?”

“We,” said the Kurd, “are the escort, to bring the gold in safety through the mountain passes.”

“So that he may divide it among others?” asked Ranjoor Singh, and I saw the Kurd wince. “Gold is gold!” he went on. “Who art thou to let by an opportunity?”

“Speak plain words,” said the Kurd.

“Here?” said Ranjoor Singh. “Here in this defile, where men might come on us from the rear at any minute?”

“That they can not do,” the Kurd answered, “for my men watch from overhead.”

“Nevertheless,” said Ranjoor Singh, “I will speak no plain words here.”

The Kurd looked long at him–at least a whole minute. Then he wiped his nose on the long sleeve of his tunic and turned about. “Come in peace!” he said, spurring his horse.

Ranjoor Singh followed him, and we followed Ranjoor Singh, without one word spoken or order given. The Kurd led straight up the defile for a little way, then sharp to the right and uphill along a path that wound among great boulders, until at last we halted, pack-mules and all, in a bare arena formed by a high cliff at the rear and on three sides by gigantic rocks that fringed it, making a natural fort.

The Kurd’s men were mostly looking out from between the rocks, but some of them were sprawling in the shadow of a great boulder in the midst, and some were attending to the horses that stood tethered in a long line under the cliff at the rear. The chief drove away those who lay in the shadow of the boulder in the midst, and bade Ranjoor Singh and me and Abraham be seated. Ranjoor Singh called up the other daffadars, and we all sat facing the Kurd, with Abraham a little to one side between him and us, to act interpreter. That was the first time Ranjoor Singh had taken so many at once into his confidence and I took it for a good sign, although unable to ignore a twinge of jealousy.

“Now?” said the Kurd. “Speak plain words!”

“You have not yet offered us food,” said Ranjoor Singh.

The Kurd stared hard at him, eye to eye. “I have good reason,” he answered. “By our law, he who eats our bread can not be treated as an enemy. If I feed you, how can I let my men attack you afterward?”

“You could not,” said Ranjoor Singh. “We, too, have a law, that he with whom we have eaten salt is not enemy but friend. Let us eat bread and salt together, then, for I have a plan.”

“A plan?” said the Kurd. “What manner of a plan? I await gold. What are words?”

“A good plan,” said Ranjoor Singh.

“And on the strength of an empty boast am I to eat bread and salt with you?” the Kurd asked.

“If you wish to hear the plan,” said Ranjoor Singh. “To my enemy I tell nothing; however, let my friend but ask!”

The Kurd thought a long time, but we facing him added no word to encourage or confuse him. I saw that his curiosity increased the more the longer we were silent; yet I doubt whether his was greater than my own! Can the sahib guess what Ranjoor Singh’s plan was? Nay, that Kurd was no great fool. He was in the dark. He saw swiftly enough when explanations came.

“I have three hundred mounted men!” the Kurd said at last.

“And I near as many!” answered Ranjoor Singh. “I crave no favors! I come with an offer, as one leader to another!”

The Kurd frowned and hesitated, but sent at last for bread and salt, for all our party, except that he ordered his men to give none to our prisoners and none to the Syrians, whom he mistook for Turkish soldiers. If Ranjoor Singh had told him they were Syrians he would have refused the more, for Kurds regard Syrians as wolves regard sheep.

“Let the prisoners be,” said Ranjoor Singh, “but feed those others! They must help put through the plan!”

So the Kurd ordered our Syrians, whom he thought Turks, fed too, and we dipped the flat bread (something like our Indian chapatties) into salt and ate, facing one another.

“Now speak, and we listen,” said the Kurd when we had finished. Some of his men had come back, clustering around him, and we were quite a party, filling all the shadow of the great rock.

“How much of that gold was to have been yours?” asked Ranjoor Singh, and the Kurd’s eyes blazed. “Wassmuss promised me so-and-so much,” he answered, “if I with three hundred men wait here for the convoy and escort it to where he waits.”

“But why do ye serve Wassmuss?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

“Because he buys friendship, as other men buy ghee, or a horse, or ammunition,” said the Kurd. “He spends gold like water, saying it is German gold, and in return for it we must harry the British and Russians.”

“Yet you and I are friends by bread and salt,” said Ranjoor Singh, “and I offer you all this gold, whereas he offers only part of it! Nay, I and my men need none of it–I offer it all!”

“At what price?” asked the Kurd, suspiciously. Doubtless men who need no gold were as rare among these mountains as in other places!

“I shall name a price,” said Ranjoor Singh. “A low price. We shall both be content with our bargain, and possibly Wassmuss, too, may feel satisfied for a while.”

“Nay, you must be a wizard!” said the Kurd. “Speak on!”

“Tell me first,” said Ranjoor Singh, “about the party who went through this defile two days ahead of us.”

“What do you know of them?” asked the Kurd.

“This,” said Ranjoor Singh. “We have followed them from Mosul, learning here a little and there a little. What is it that they have with them? Who are they? Why were they let pass?”

“They were let pass because Wassmuss gave the order,” the Kurd answered. “They are Germans–six German officers, six German servants–and Kurds–twenty-four Kurds of the plains acting porters and camp-servants–many mules–two mules bearing a box slung on poles between them.”

“What was in the box?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

“Nay, I know not,” said the Kurd.

“Nevertheless,” said Ranjoor Singh, “my brother is a man with eyes and ears. What did my brother hear?”

“They said their machine can send and receive a message from places as far apart as Khabul and Stamboul. Doubtless they lied,” the Kurd answered.

“Doubtless!” said Ranjoor Singh. By his slow even breathing and apparent indifference, I knew he was on a hot scent, so I tried to appear indifferent myself, although my ears burned. The Kurds clustering around their leader listened with ears and eyes agape. They made no secret of their interest.

“They said they are on their way to Khabul,” the Kurd continued, “there to receive messages from Europe and acquaint the amir and his ruling chiefs of the true condition of affairs.”

“How shall they reach Afghanistan?” asked Ranjoor Singh. “Does a road through Persia lie open to them?”

“Nay,” said the Kurd. “Persia is like a nest of hornets. But they are to receive an escort of us Kurds to take them through Persia. We mountain Kurds are not afraid of Persians.”

“Which Kurds are to provide the escort?” Ranjoor Singh asked him, and the Kurd shook his head.

“Nay,” he said, “that none can tell. It is not yet agreed. There is small competition for the task. There are better pickings here on the border, raiding now and then, and pocketing the gold of this Wassmuss between-whiles! Who wants the task of escorting a machine in a box to Khabul?”

“Nevertheless,” said Ranjoor Singh, “I know of a leader and his men who will undertake the task.”

“Who, then?” said the Kurd.

“I and my men!” said Ranjoor Singh; and I held my breath until I thought my lungs would burst. “Persia!” thought I. “Afghanistan!” thought I. “And what beyond?”

“Ye are not Kurds,” the chief answered, after he had considered a while. “Wassmuss said the escort must consist of three hundred Kurds or he will not pay.”

“The payment shall be arranged between me and thee!” said Ranjoor Singh. “You shall have all the gold of this next convoy, if you will ride back to Wassmuss and agree that you and your men shall be the escort to Afghanistan.”

“Who shall guard this pass if I ride back?” the Kurd asked.

“I!” said Ranjoor Singh. “I and my men will wait here for the gold. Leave me a few of your men to be guides and to keep peace between us and other Kurds among these mountains. Ride and tell Wassmuss that the gold will not come for another thirty days.”

“He will not believe,” said the Kurd.

“I will give you a letter,” said Ranjoor Singh.

“He will not believe the letter,” said the Kurd.

“What is that to thee, whether he believes it or not?” said Ranjoor Singh. “At least he will believe that Turks brought you the letter, and that you took it to him in good faith. Will he charge you with having written it?”

“Nay,” said the Kurd, nodding, “I can not write, and he knows it.”

“Do that, then,” said Ranjoor Singh. “Ride and agree to be escort for these Germans and their machine to Afghanistan. Leave me here with ten or a dozen of your men, who will guide me after I have the gold to where you shall be camping with your Germans somewhere just beyond the Persian border. I will arrange to overtake you after dusk–perhaps at midnight. There I will give you the gold, and you shall ride away. I and my men will ride on as escort to the Germans.”

“What if they object?” said the Kurd.

“Who? The men with the box, or Wassmuss?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

“Nay,” said the Kurd, “Wassmuss will be very glad to get a willing escort. He is in difficulty over that. There will be no objection from him. But what if the men with the box object to the change of escorts?”

“We be over two hundred, and they thirty!” answered Ranjoor Singh, and the Kurd nodded.

“After all,” he said, “that is thy affair. But how am I to know that you and your men will not ride off with the gold? Nay, I must have the gold first!”

Ranjoor Singh shook his head.

“Then I and my men will stay here and help seize the gold,” the Kurd said meaningly.

“Nay!” said Ranjoor Singh. “For then you would fight me for it!”

“Thou and I have eaten bread and salt together!” said the Kurd.

“True,” said Ranjoor Singh, “therefore trust me, for I am a Sikh from India.”

“I know nothing of Sikhs, or of India,” said the Kurd. “Gold I know in the dark, by its jingle and weight, but who knows the heart of a man?”

“Then listen,” said Ranjoor Singh. “If you and your men seize the gold, you must bear the blame. When the Turks come later on for vengeance, you will hang. But if I stay and take the gold, who shall know who I am? You will be able to prove with the aid of Wassmuss that neither you nor your men were anywhere near when, the attack took place.”

“Then you will make an ambush?” said the Kurd.

“I will set a trap,” said Ranjoor Singh. “Moreover, consider this: You think I may take the gold and keep it. How could I? Having taken it from the Turks, should I ride back toward Turkey? Whither else, then? Shall I escape through Persia, with you and your Kurds to prevent? Nay, we must make a fair bargain as friend with friend–and keep it!”

“If I do as you say,” said the Kurd, “if I take this letter to Wassmuss, and agree with him to escort those Germans across Persia, what, then, if you fail to get the gold? What if the Turks get the better of you?”

“Dead men can not keep bargains!” answered Ranjoor Singh. “I shall succeed or die. But consider again: I have led these men of mine hither from Stamboul, deceiving and routing and outdistancing Turkish regiments all the way. Shall I fail now, having come so far?”

“Insha’ Allah!” said the Kurd, meaning, “If God wills.”

“Since when did God take sides against the brave?” Ranjoor Singh asked him, and the Kurd said nothing; but I feared greatly because they seemed on the verge of a religious argument, and those Kurds are fanatics. If anything but gold had been in the balance against him, I believe that Kurd would have defied us, for, although he did not know what Sikhs might be, he knew us for no Musselmen. I saw his eyes look inward, meditating treachery, not only to Wassmuss, but to us, too. But Ranjoor Singh detected that quicker than I did.

“Let us neglect no points,” he said, and the Kurd brought his mind back with an effort from considering plans against us. “It would be possible for me to get that gold, and for other Kurds–not you or your men, of course, but other Kurds–to waylay me in the mountains. Therefore let part of the agreement be that you leave with me ten hostages, of whom two shall be your blood relations.”

The Kurd winced. He was a little keen man, with, a thin face and prominent nose; not ill-looking, but extremely acquisitive, I should say.

“Wassmuss holds my brother hostage!” he answered grimly, as if he had just then thought of it.

“I have a German prisoner here,” said Ranjoor Singh, with the nearest approach to a smile that he had permitted himself yet, “and Wassmuss will be very glad to exchange him against your brother when the time comes.”

“Ah!” said the Kurd, and–

“Ah!” said Ranjoor Singh. He saw now which way the wind blew, and, like all born cavalry leaders, he pressed his advantage.

“Do the Turks hold any of your men prisoner?” he asked.

“Aye!” said the Kurd. “They hold an uncle of mine, and my half- brother, and seven of my best men. They keep them in jail in fetters.”

“I have five Turkish prisoners, all officers, one a bimbashi, whom I will give you when I hand over the gold. The Turks will gladly trade your men against their officers,” Ranjoor Singh assured him. “You shall have them and the German to make your trade with.”

It was plain the Kurd was more than half-convinced. His men who swarmed around him were urging him in whispers. Doubtless they knew he would keep most, if not all, of the gold for himself, but the safety of their friends made more direct appeal and I don’t think he would have dared neglect that opportunity for fear of losing their allegiance. Nevertheless, he bargained to the end.

“Give me, then, ten hostages against my ten, and we are agreed!” he urged.

“Nay, nay!” said Ranjoor Singh. “It is my task to fight for that gold. Shall I weaken my force by ten men? Nay, we are already few enough! I will give you one–to be exchanged against your ten at the time of giving up the gold in Persia.”

“Ten!” said the Kurd. “Ten against ten!”

“One!” said Ranjoor Singh, and I thought they would quarrel and the whole plan would come to nothing. But the Kurd gave in.

“Then one officer!” said the Kurd, and I trembled, for I saw that Ranjoor Singh intended to agree to that, and I feared he might pick me. But no. If I had thought a minute I would not have feared, yet who thinks at such times? The men who think first of their charge and last of their own skin are such as Ranjoor Singh; a year after war begins they are still leading. The rest of us must either be content to be led, or else are superseded. I burst into a sweat all over, for all that a cold wind swept among the rocks. Yet I might have known I was not to be spared.

After two seconds, that seemed two hours, he said to the Kurd, “Very well. We are agreed. I will give you one of my officers against ten of your men. I will give you Gooja Singh!” said he.

Sahib, I could have rolled among the rocks and laughed. The look of rage mingled with amazement on Gooja Singh’s fat face was payment enough for all the insults I had received from him. I could not conceal all my merriment. Doubtless my eyes betrayed me. I doubt not they blazed. Gooja Singh was sitting on the other side of Ranjoor Singh, partly facing me, so that he missed nothing of what passed over my face–as I scarcely intended that he should. And in a moment my mirth was checked by sight of his awful wrath. His face had turned many shades darker.

“I am to be hostage?” he said in a voice like grinding stone.

“Aye,” said Ranjoor Singh. “Be a proud one! They have had to give ten men to weigh against you in the scale!”

“And I am to go away with them all by myself into the mountains?”

“Aye,” said Ranjoor Singh. “Why not? We hold ten of theirs against your safe return.”

“Good! Then I will go!” he answered, and I knew by the black look on his face and by the dull rage in his voice that he would harm us if he could. But there was no time just then to try to dissuade Ranjoor Singh from his purpose, even had I dared. There began to be great argument about the ten hostages the Kurd should give, Ranjoor Singh examining each one with the aid of Abraham, rejecting one man after another as not sufficiently important, and it was two hours before ten Kurds that satisfied him stood unarmed in our midst. Then he gave up Gooja Singh in exchange for them; and Gooja Singh walked away among the Kurds without so much as a backward look, or a word of good-by, or a salute.

“He should be punished for not saluting you,” said I, going to Ranjoor Singh’s side. “It is a bad example to the troopers.”

“KUCH–KUCH–,” said he. “No trouble. Black hearts beget black deeds. White hearts, good deeds. Maybe we all misjudged him. Let him prove whether he is true at heart or not.”

Observe, sahib, how he identified himself with us, although he knew well that all except I until recently had denied him title to any other name than traitor. “Maybe we all misjudged,” said he, as much as to say, “What my men have done, I did.” So you may tell the difference between a great man and a mean one.

“Better have hanged him long ago!” said I. “He will be the ruin of us yet!” But he laughed.

“Sahib,” I said. “Suppose he should get to see this Wassmuss?”

“I have thought of that,” he answered. “Why should the Kurds let him go near Wassmuss? Unless they return him safely to us we can execute their tages; they will run no risk of Wassmuss playing tricks with Gooja Singh. Besides, from what I can learn and guess from what the Kurds say, this Wassmuss is to all intents and purposes a prisoner. Another tribe of Kurds, pretending, to protect him, keep him very closely guarded. The best he can do is to play off one tribe against another. Our friend said Wassmuss holds his brother for hostage, but I think the fact is the other tribe holds him and Wassmuss gets the blame. I suspect they held our friend’s brother as security for the gold he is to meet and escort back. There is much politics working in these mountains.”

“Much politics and little hope for us!” said I, and at that he turned on me as he never had done yet. No, sahib, I never saw him turn on any man, nor speak as savagely as he did to me then. It was as if the floodgates of his weariness were down at last and I got a glimpse of what he suffered–he who dared trust no one all these months and miles.

“Did I not say months ago,” he mocked, “that if I told you half my plan you would quail? And that if I told the whole, you would pick it to pieces like hens round a scrap of meat? Man without thought! Can I not see the dangers? Have I no eyes–no ears? Do I need a frog to croak to me of risks whichever way I turn? Do I need men to hang back, or men to lend me courage?”

“Who hangs back?” said I. “Nay, forward! I will die beside you, sahib!”

“I seek life for you all, not death,” he answered, but he spoke so sadly that I think in that minute his hope and faith were at lowest ebb.

“Nevertheless,” I answered, “if need be, I will die beside you. I will not hang back. Order, and I obey!” But he looked at me as if he doubted.

“Boasting,” he said, “is the noise fools make to conceal from themselves their failings!”

What could I answer to that? I sat down and considered the rebuff, while he went and made great preparation for an execution and a Turkish funeral. So that there was little extra argument required to induce one of our Turkish officer prisoners–the bimbashi himself, in fact–to write the letter to Wassmuss that Ranjoor Singh required. And that he gave to the Kurdish chief, and the Kurd rode away with his men, not looking once back at the hostages he had left with us, but making a great show of guarding Gooja Singh, who rode unarmed in the center of a group of horsemen. That instant I began to feel sorry for Gooja Singh, and later, when we advanced through those blood-curdling mountains I was sorrier yet to think of him borne away alone amid savages whose tongue he could not speak. The men all felt sorry for him too, but Ranjoor Singh gave them little time for talk about it, setting them at once to various tasks, not least of which was cleaning rifles for inspection.

I took Abraham to interpret for me and went to talk with our ten hostages, who were herded together apart from the other ten armed Kurds. They seemed to regard themselves as in worse plight than prisoners and awaited with resignation whatever might be their kismet. So I asked them were they afraid lest Gooja Singh might meet with violence, and they replied they were afraid of nothing. They added, however, that no man could say in those mountains what this day or the next might bring forth.

Then I asked them about Wassmuss, and they rather confirmed Ranjoor Singh’s guess about his being practically a prisoner. They said he was ever on the move, surrounded and very closely watched by the particular tribe of Kurds that had possession of him for the moment.

“First it is one tribe, then another,” they told me. “If you keep your bargain with our chief and he gets this gold, we shall have Wassmuss, too, within a week, for we shall buy the allegiance of one or two more tribes to join with us and oust those Kurds who hold him now. Hitherto the bulk of his gold has been going into Persia to bribe the Bakhtiari Khans and such like, but that day is gone by. Now we Kurds will grow rich. But as for us”–they shrugged their shoulders like this, sahib, meaning to say that perhaps their day had gone by also. I left them with the impression they are very fatalistic folk.

There was no means of knowing how long we might have to wait there, so Ranjoor Singh gave orders for the best shelter possible to be prepared, and what with the cave at the rear, and plundered blankets, and one thing and another we contrived a camp that was almost comfortable. What troubled us most was shortage of fire-wood, and we had to send out foraging parties in every direction at no small risk. The Kurds, like our mountain men of northern India, leave such matters to their women-folk, and there was more than one voice raised in anger at Ranjoor Singh because he had not allowed us to capture women as well as food and horses. Our Turkish prisoners laughed at us for not having stolen women, and Tugendheim vowed he had never seen such fools.

But as it turned out, we had not long to wait. That very evening, as I watched from between two great boulders, I beheld a Turkish convoy of about six hundred infantry, led by a bimbashi on a gray horse, with a string of pack-mules trailing out behind them, and five loaded donkeys led by soldiers in the midst. They were heading toward the hills, and I sent a man running to bring Ranjoor Singh to watch them.

It soon became evident that they meant to camp on the plains for that night. They had tents with them, and they pitched a camp three- quarters of a mile, or perhaps a mile away from the mouth of our defile, at a place where a little stream ran between rocks. It was clear they suspected no treachery, or they would never have chosen that place, they being but six hundred and the hills full of Kurds so close at hand. Nevertheless, they were very careful to set sentries on all the rocks all about, and they gave us no ground for thinking we might take them by surprise. Seeing they outnumbered us, and we had to spare a guard for our prisoners and hostages, and that fifty of our force were Syrians and therefore not much use, I felt doubtful. I thought Ranjoor Singh felt doubtful, too, until I saw him glance repeatedly behind and study the sky. Then I began to hope as furiously as he.

The Turks down on the plain were studying the sky, too. We could see them fix bayonets and make little trenches about the tents. Another party of them gathered stones with which to re-enforce the tent pegs, and in every other way possible they made ready against one of those swift, sudden storms that so often burst down the sides of mountains. Most of us had experienced such storms a dozen times or more in the foot-hills of our Himalayas, and all of us knew the signs. As evening fell the sky to our rear grew blacker than night itself and a chill swept down the defile like the finger of death.

“Repack the camp,” commanded Ranjoor Singh. “Stow everything in the cave.”

There was grumbling, for we had all looked forward to a warm night’s rest.

“To-night your hearts must warm you!” he said, striding to and fro to make sure his orders were obeyed. It was dark by the time we had finished, Then he made us fall in, in our ragged overcoats–aye, ragged, for those German overcoats had served as coats and tents and what-not, and were not made to stand the wear of British ones in any case–unmounted he made us fall in, at which there was grumbling again.

“Ye shall prove to-night,” he said, “whether ye can endure what mules and horses never could! Warmth ye shall have, if your hearts are true, but the man who can keep dry shall be branded for a wizard! Imagine yourselves back in Flanders!”

Most of us shuddered. I know I did. The wind had begun whimpering, and every now and then would whistle and rise into a scream. A few drops of heavy rain fell. Then would come a lull, while we could feel the air grow colder. Our Flanders experience was likely to stand us in good stead.

Tugendheim and the Syrians were left in charge of our belongings. There was nothing else to do with them because the Syrians were in more deathly fear of the storm than they ever had been of Turks. Nevertheless, we did not find them despicable. Unmilitary people though they were, they had inarched and endured and labored like good men, but certain things they seemed to accept as being more than men could overcome, and this sort of storm apparently was one of them. We tied the mules and horses very carefully, because we did not believe the Syrians would stand by when the storm began, and we were right. Tugendheim begged hard to be allowed to come with us, but Ranjoor Singh would not let him. I don’t know why, but I think he suspected Tugendheim of knowing something about the German officers who were ahead of us, in which case Tugendheim was likely to risk anything rather than continue going forward; and, having promised him to the Kurdish chief, it would not have suited Ranjoor Singh to let him escape into Turkey again.

The ten Kurds who had been left with us as guides and to help us keep peace among the mountains all volunteered to lend a hand in the fight, and Ranjoor Singh accepted gladly. The hostages, on the other hand, were a difficult problem; for they detested being hostages. They would have made fine allies for Tugendheim, supposing he had meditated any action in our rear. They could have guided him among the mountains with all our horses and mules and supplies. And suppose he had made up his mind to start through the storm to find Wassmuss with their aid, what could have prevented him? He might betray us to Wassmuss as the price of his own forgiveness. So we took the hostages with us, and when we found a place between some rocks where they could have shelter we drove them in there, setting four troopers to guard them. Thus Tugendheim was kept in ignorance of their whereabouts, and with no guides to help him play us false. As for the Greek doctor, we took him with us, too, for we were likely to need his services that night, and in truth we did.

We started the instant the storm began–twenty minutes or more before it settled down to rage in earnest. That enabled us to march about two-thirds of the way toward the Turkish camp and to deploy into proper formation before the hail came and made it impossible to hear even a shout. Hitherto the rain had screened us splendidly, although it drenched us to the skin, and the noise of rain and wind prevented the noise we made from giving the alarm; but when the hail began I could not hear my own foot-fall. Ranjoor Singh roared out the order to double forward, but could make none hear, so he seized a rifle from the nearest man and fired it off. Perhaps a dozen men heard that and began to double. The remainder saw, and followed suit.

The hail was in our backs. No man ever lived who could have charged forward into it, and not one of the Turkish sentries made pretense at anything but running for his life. Long before we reached their posts they were gone, and a flash of lightning showed the tents blown tighter than drums in the gaining wind and white with the hailstones. When we reached the tents there was hail already half a foot deep underfoot where the wind had blown it into drifts, and the next flash of lightning showed one tent–the bimbashi’s own–split open and blown fluttering into strips. The bimbashi rushed out with a blanket round his head and shoulders and tried to kick men out of another tent to make room for him, and failing to do that he scrambled in on top of them. Opening the tent let the wind in, and that tent, too, split and fluttered and blew away. And so at last they saw us coming.

They saw us when we were so close that there was no time to do much else than run away or surrender. Quite a lot of them ran away I imagine, for they disappeared. The bimbashi tried to pistol Ranjoor Singh, and died for his trouble on a trooper’s bayonet. Some of the Turks tried to fight, and they were killed. Those who surrendered were disarmed and driven away into the storm, and the last we saw of them was when a flash of lightning showed them hurrying helter- skelter through the hail with hands behind their defenseless heads trying to ward off hailstones. They looked very ridiculous, and I remember I laughed.

I? My share of it? A Turkish soldier tried to drive a bayonet through me. I think he was the last one left in camp (the whole business can only have lasted three or four minutes, once we were among them). I shot him with the repeating pistol that had once been Tugendheim’s–this one, see, sahib–and believing the camp was now ours and the fighting over, I lay down and dragged his body over me to save me from hailstones, that had made me ache already in every inch of my body. I rolled under and pulled the body over in one movement; and seeing the body and thinking a Turk was crawling up to attack him, one of our troopers thrust his bayonet clean through it. It was a goodly thrust, delivered by a man who prided himself on being workmanlike. If the Turk had not been a fat one I should not be here. Luckily, I had chosen one whose weight made me grunt, and because of his thickness the bayonet only pierced an inch or two of my thigh.

I yelled and kicked the body off me. The trooper made as if to use the steel again, thinking we were two Turks, and my pointing a pistol at him only served to confirm the belief. But next minute the lightning showed the true facts, and he came and sat beside me with his back to the hail, grinning like an ape.

“That was a good thrust of mine!” he bellowed in my ear. “But for me that Turk would have had your life!”

When I had cursed his mother’s ancestors for a dozen generations in some detail the truth dawned on him at last. I took his weapon away from him while he bound a strip of cloth about my thigh, for I knew the thought had come into his thick skull to finish me off and so save explanation afterward. I would gladly have let him go with nothing further said, for I knew the man’s first intention had been honest enough, but did not dare do that because he would certainly suppose me to be meditating vengeance. So I flew into a great rage with him, and drove him in front of me until we found a dead mule– whether killed by hail or bullet I don’t know–and he and I lay between the mule’s legs, snuggling under its belly, until the storm should cease and I could take him before Ranjoor Singh.

I did not know where the gold was, nor where anything or anybody was. I could see about three yards, except when the lightning flashed; and then I could see only stricken plain, with dead animals lying about, and fallen tents lumpy with the men who huddled underneath, and here and there a live animal with his rump to the hail and head between his forelegs.

When the storm ceased, suddenly, as all such mountain hail-storms do, I ordered my trooper in front of me and went limping through the darkness shouting for Ranjoor Singh, and I found him at last, sitting on the rump of a dead donkey with the ten boxes of gold coin beside him–quite little boxes, yet only two to a donkey load.

“I have the gold,” he said. “What have you?”

“A stab,” said I, “and the fool who gave it me!” And I showed my leg, with the blood trickling down. “I had killed a Turk,” said I, “and this muddlehead with no discernment had the impudence to try to finish the job. Behold the result!”

He was one great bruise from head to foot from hailstones, yet with all he had to think about and all his aches, he had understanding enough to spare for my little problem. He saw at once that he must punish the man in order to convince him his account with me was settled.

“Be driver of asses,” he ordered, “until we reach Persia! There were five asses. One is dead. It is good we have another to replace the fifth!”

There goes the trooper, sahib–he yonder with the limp. He and I are as good friends to-day as daffadar and trooper can be, but he would have slain me to save himself from vengeance unless Ranjoor Singh had punished him that night. But my tale is not of that trooper, nor of myself. I tell of Ranjoor Singh. Consider him, sahib, seated on the dead ass beside ten chests of captured gold, with scarcely a man of us fit to help him or obey an order, and himself bleeding in fifty places where the hail had pierced his skin. We were drenched and numbed, with the spirit beaten out of us; yet I tell you he wiped the blood from his nose and beard and made us save ourselves!

CHAPTER VIII

Once in a lifetime. Once is enough!
–HIRA SINGH.

Well, sahib, our journey was not nearly at an end, but my tale is; I can finish it by sundown. After that fight there was no more doubt of us; we were one again–one in our faith in our leader, and with men so minded such a man as Ranjoor Singh can make miracles seem like details of a day’s work.