“A good plan,” said Ranjoor Singh.

“And on the strength of an empty boast am I to eat bread and salt with you?” the Kurd asked.

“If you wish to hear the plan,” said Ranjoor Singh.  “To my enemy I tell nothing; however, let my friend but ask!”

The Kurd thought a long time, but we facing him added no word to encourage or confuse him.  I saw that his curiosity increased the more the longer we were silent; yet I doubt whether his was greater than my own!  Can the sahib guess what Ranjoor Singh’s plan was?  Nay, that Kurd was no great fool.  He was in the dark.  He saw swiftly enough when explanations came.

“I have three hundred mounted men!” the Kurd said at last.

“And I near as many!” answered Ranjoor Singh.  “I crave no favors!  I come with an offer, as one leader to another!”

The Kurd frowned and hesitated, but sent at last for bread and salt, for all our party, except that he ordered his men to give none to our prisoners and none to the Syrians, whom he mistook for Turkish soldiers.  If Ranjoor Singh had told him they were Syrians he would have refused the more, for Kurds regard Syrians as wolves regard sheep.

“Let the prisoners be,” said Ranjoor Singh, “but feed those others!  They must help put through the plan!”

So the Kurd ordered our Syrians, whom he thought Turks, fed too, and we dipped the flat bread (something like our Indian chapatties) into salt and ate, facing one another.

“Now speak, and we listen,” said the Kurd when we had finished.  Some of his men had come back, clustering around him, and we were quite a party, filling all the shadow of the great rock.

“How much of that gold was to have been yours?” asked Ranjoor Singh, and the Kurd’s eyes blazed.  “Wassmuss promised me so-and-so much,” he answered, “if I with three hundred men wait here for the convoy and escort it to where he waits.”

“But why do ye serve Wassmuss?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

“Because he buys friendship, as other men buy ghee, or a horse, or ammunition,” said the Kurd.  “He spends gold like water, saying it is German gold, and in return for it we must harry the British and Russians.”

“Yet you and I are friends by bread and salt,” said Ranjoor Singh, “and I offer you all this gold, whereas he offers only part of it!  Nay, I and my men need none of it—­I offer it all!”

“At what price?” asked the Kurd, suspiciously.  Doubtless men who need no gold were as rare among these mountains as in other places!

“I shall name a price,” said Ranjoor Singh.  “A low price.  We shall both be content with our bargain, and possibly Wassmuss, too, may feel satisfied for a while.”

“Nay, you must be a wizard!” said the Kurd.  “Speak on!”

“Tell me first,” said Ranjoor Singh, “about the party who went through this defile two days ahead of us.”

“What do you know of them?” asked the Kurd.