eir hostages; on the third day
we would give them Tugendheim, to trade with Wassmuss against the
Kurd's brother (thus keeping Ranjoor Singh's promise to Tugendheim
to provide for him in the end); on the fifth day we would give them
our Turkish officer prisoners, to trade with the Turks against
Kurdish prisoners; and on the seventh day we would give them the
gold and leave to go. We ate more bread and salt on that, and then I
went to tell the men.

But I scarcely had time to tell them. Ranjoor Singh had out his map
when I left him, and he and the Kurd were poring over it, he tracing
with a finger and asking swift questions, and the Kurd with the aid
of Abraham trying to understand. Yet I had hardly told the half of
what I meant to say when Ranjoor Singh strode past me, and the Kurd
went galloping away between the boulders to warn his own men,
leaving us not only the hostages but the ten guides also.

"Make ready to march at once--immediately--ek dum!" Ranjoor Singh
growled to me as he passed, and from that minute until we were away
and well among the hills I was kept too busy with details to do much
conjecturing. A body of soldiers with transport and prisoners,
wounded and sick, need nearly as much herding as a flock of sheep,
even after months of campaigning when each man's place and duty
should be second nature. Yet oh, it was different now. There was no
need now to listen for whisperings of treason! Now we knew who the
traitor had been all along--not Ranjoor Singh, who had done his best
from first to last, but Gooja Singh, who had let no opportunity go
by for defaming him and making trouble!

"This for Gooja Singh when I set eyes on him!" said not one trooper
but every living man, licking a cartridge and slipping it into the
breech chamber as we started.

We did not take the track up which the Kurdish chief had galloped,
but the ten guides led us by a dreadful route round almost the half
of a circle, ever mounting upward. When night fell we camped without
fires in a hollow among crags, and about midnight when the moon rose
there was a challenge, and a short parley, and a Kurd rode in with a
message from his chief for Ranjoor Singh. The message was verbal,
and had to be translated by Abraham, but I did not get to hear the
wording of it. I was on guard.

"It is well," said Ranjoor Singh to me, when he went the rounds and
found me perched on a crag like a temple minaret, "they are keeping
faith. The Wassmuss men a