on our way. "For," said Ranjoor Singh, "how should the
hostages and my prisoners return to you safely otherwise?"

So we kept two chests of gold, and found them right useful
presently. And we said good-by to him and his men, and put out our
own fires and rode eastward. And of the next few days there is
nothing to tell except furious marching and very little sleep--nor
much to eat either.

Once we were well into Persia we bought food right and left, paying
fabulous prices for it with gold from our looted chests. Here and
there we traded a plundered rifle for a new horse, sometimes two new
horses. Here and there a wounded man would die and we would burn his
body (for now there was fuel in plenty). Day after day, night after
night, Ranjoor Singh kept in the saddle, hunting tirelessly for news
of the party of Germans on ahead of us. Their track was clear as
daylight, and on the fifth day (or was it the sixth) after we
entered Persia he learned at last that we were only a day or two
behind them. Like us, they were in a hurry; but unlike us, they had
no Ranjoor Singh to force the pace and do the scouting, so that for
all their long lead we were overtaking them.

Like us, they seemed wary of the public eye, for they followed
lonely routes among the wooded foothills; but their Kurdish horsemen
left a track no blind man could have missed, and although they
plundered a little as they went, they spent gold, too, like water,
so that the villagers were in a strange mood. Most of the plundering
was done by their Kurdish escort who, it seemed, kept returning to
steal the money paid by the Germans for provisions. Sometimes when
we offered gold we would be mocked. But on the whole, we began to
have an easy time of it--all but the wounded, who suffered tortures
from the pace we held. We secured some carts at one village and put
our wounded in them, but the carts were springless, and there were
no roads at all, so that it was better in those days to be a dead
man than a sick or wounded one! There was no malingering!

After a few days (I forget how many, for who can remember all the
days and distances of that long march?) Abraham got word of a great
Christian mission station where thousands of Christians had sought
safety under the American flag. He and his Syrians elected to try
their fortune there, and we let them go, all of us saluting Abraham,
for he was a good brave man, fearful, but able to overcome his fear,
and intelligent far