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;