said Ranjoor Singh. "Keep
the bargain and you are free as far as I am concerned to do what you
like when you get there."

So we had a doctor again at last, for the German agreed to the
terms. Not one of us but needed medical aid, and the men were too
glad to have their hurts attended, to ask very many questions; but
they were certainly surprised, and suspicious of the new
arrangement, and I did not dare tell them what I had overheard for
fear lest suspicion of Ranjoor Singh be reawakened. I refused even
to tell the other daffadars, which caused some slight estrangement
between them and me. However, Ranjoor Singh was as conscious of that
risk as I, and during all the rest of the long march he kept their
camp and ours, their column and ours half an hour's ride
apart--sometimes even farther--sometimes half a day apart, to the disgust
of the doctor, who had that much more trouble, but with the result
of preventing greater friction.

To tell of all that journey across Persia would be but to remember
weariness--weariness of horse and men. Sometimes we were attacked;
more often we were run away from. We grew sick, our wounds festered
and our hearts ached. Horses died and the vultures ate them. Men
died, and we buried or burned their bodies according or not as we
had fuel. We dried, as it were, like the bone-dry trail we followed,
and only Ranjoor Singh's heart was stout; only he was brave; only he
had a song on his lips. He coaxed us, and cheered us, and rallied
us. The strength of the regiment was but his strength, and as for
the other party, who hung on our flank, or lagged behind us or
preceded us by half a day, their Kurds deserted by fives and tens
until there was scarcely a corporal's guard remaining.

They must have been as weary as we, and as glad as we when at last
at the end of a long drawn afternoon, we saw an Afghan sentry.

Has the sahib ever seen an Afghan sentry?

This one was gray and old and sat on his gray pony like a huddled
ape with a tattered umbrella over his shoulder and his rifle across
his knees. He looked less like a sentry than like a dead man dug up
and set there to scare the birds away. But he was efficient, no
doubt of that. He had seen us and passed on word of us the minute we
showed on the sky-line, and the hills all about him were full of
armed men waiting to give us a hot reception if necessary and to bar
farther progress in any case.

So there we had to camp, just over the Afghan bor