ds prefer to fight mounted and have far less confidence in
themselves on foot. Ranjoor Singh, with our men, all mounted, and
our Kurdish friends, were after them--although our friends were too
busy burdening themselves with the rifles and other belongings of
the fallen to render as much aid as they ought.

I left my horse, and climbed a rock, and looked for half a minute.
Then I knew what to do; and I wonder whether ever in the world was
such a running fight before. I had only lost one man; and it was
quite another matter driving the Kurds' horses up the valley in the
direction they wished to take, to attempting to drive them
elsewhere. Being mounted ourselves, we could keep ahead of the
retreating Kurds very easily, so we adopted the same tactics again
and again and again.

First we drove the horses helter-skelter up the valley a mile or
two. Then we halted, and hid our own horses, and took cover behind
the rocks to wait for the Kurds; and as they came, making a good
running fight of it, dodging hither and thither behind the boulders
to try to pick off Ranjoor Singh's men, we would open fire on their
rear unexpectedly, thus throwing them into confusion again,--and
again,--and again.

We opened fire always at too great distance to do much material
damage, I thinking it more important to preserve my own men's lives
and so to continue able to demoralize the Kurds, and afterward
Ranjoor Singh commended me for that. But I was also acutely aware of
the risk that our bullets might go past the Kurds and kill our own
Sikhs. I am not at all sure some accidents of that nature did not
happen.

So when we had fired at the Kurds enough to make them face about and
so expose their rear to Ranjoor Singh, we would get to horse again
and send the Kurdish horses galloping up the pass in front of us.
Finally, we lost sight of most of the Kurdish horses, although we
captured one apiece--which is all a man can manage besides his own
and a rifle.

By that time it was three in the afternoon already and the pass
forked about a dozen different ways, so that we lost the Kurds at
last, they scattering to right and left and shooting at us at long
range from the crags higher up. We were all dead beat, and the
horses, too, so we rested, the Kurds continuing to fire at us, but
doing no damage. They fired until dusk.

Our own three hundred Kurdish friends were not very far behind
Ranjoor Singh, and I observed when they came up with us presentl