“Who are these who wish to kill him?” said they.  “Let there be court martial and a hanging!”

“Nay,” said I, “let there be a silence and forgetting, lest too many be involved!”

They nodded, knowing well that not one man of us all would escape condemnation if inquiry could be carried back far enough.

“Let there be much watchfulness!” said I.

“Who shall watch Ranjoor Singh?” said they.  “He is here, there and everywhere!  He is gone before dawn, and perhaps we see him again at noon, but probably not until night.  And half the night he spends in the saddle as often as not.  Who shall watch him?”

“True!” said I.  “But if we took thought, and decided who might—­ perhaps—­most desire to kill him for evil recollection’s sake, then we might watch and prevent the deed.”

“Aye!” said they, and they understood.  So I arranged with Ranjoor Singh to have them transferred to Gooja Singh’s troop, making this excuse and that and telling everything except the truth about it.  If I had told him the truth, Ranjoor Singh would have laughed and my precaution would have been wasted, but having lied I was able to ride on with easier mind—­such sometimes being the case.

We had little trouble in keeping on the horizon whenever we sighted Turks in force; and then probably the distance deceived them into thinking us Turks, too, for we rode now with no less than five Turkish officers as well as a German sergeant.  And in the rear of large bodies of Turks there was generally a defenseless town or village whose Armenians had all been butchered, and whose other inhabitants were mostly too gorged with plunder to show any fight.  We helped ourselves to food, clothing, horses, saddlery, horse-feed, and anything else that Ranjoor Singh considered we might need, but he threatened to hang the man who plundered anything of personal value to himself, and none of us wished to die by that means.

We soon began to need medicines and a doctor badly, for we lost no less than eight-and-twenty men between the avenging of those Armenians in the desert and reaching the Kurdish mountains, and once we had more than forty wounded at one time.  But finally we captured a Greek doctor, attached to the Turkish army, and he had along with him two mule-loads of medicines.  Ranjoor Singh promised him seven deaths for every one of our wounded men who should die of neglect, and most of them began to recover very quickly.

If we had tried merely to plunder; or had raided the same place twice; or, if we had rested merely because we were weary; or, if we had once done what might have been expected of us, I should not now sit beneath this tree talking to you, sahib, because my bones would be lying in Asiatic Turkey.  But we rode zigzag-wise, very often doubling on our tracks, Ranjoor Singh often keeping half a day’s march ahead of us gathering information.