ur 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 g