aid, "whose scouts would probably shoot him on sight
in any case?" So we laughed, and let him rest among our wounded and
be one of us,--aye, one of us; for who were we to turn him away to
starve? He had served us well, and he served us well again.

Has the sahib heard of Bakhtiari Khans? They are people as fierce as
Kurds, who live like the Kurds by plundering. The Germans ahead of
us, doubtless because Persia is neutral in this war and therefore
they had no conceivable right to be crossing the country, chose a
route that avoided all towns and cities of considerable size. And
Persia seems to have no army any more, so that there was no official
opposition. But the Bakhtiari Khans received word of what was doing,
and after that there were new problems. But for the fact that
Tugendheim was with us in his ragged German uniform we should have
had more trouble than we did.

At first the Khans were content with blackmail, holding up the
Germans at intervals and demanding money. But I suppose that finally
their money all gave out, and then the Kahns put threats into
practise. But before actual skirmishing began the Khans would come
to us, after getting money from the Germans, and it was only the
fact that we had Tugendheim to show that convinced them we belonged
to the party ahead. Ranjoor Singh claimed that our transit fee had
been paid for us already, and the Khans did not deny it.

But they caught up the Germans again and demanded money from them
because of us who were following, and I have laughed many a time to
think of the predicament that put them in. For could they deny all
knowledge of us? In that case they might he denying useful allies in
their hour of need. If the Bakhtiari Khans should annihilate us
their own fate would not be likely to tremble in the balance very
long. Yet if they admitted knowledge of us, what might that not lead
to? And how was it possible for them to know really who we were in
any case?

Finally, they sent one of their Kurdish servants back to find us and
ask questions. And to him we showed Tugendheim, and spoke to him at
great length in Persian, of which he understood very little; so that
when he overtook his own party again (if he ever did, for the Khans
were on the prowl and very cruel and savage), they may have been
more in the dark about us than ever.

At last the Bakhtiari Khans began guerrilla warfare, and the Kurds
who were escorting the Germans retaliated by burning and plunderin