raid 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 susp