“Let’s chase the next batch, too, and give the kahveh gang an ear-full!”

“I rather think not,” said Monty.  “They’ll say we’re Armenian criminals.  Let’s not be the spark.”

He was right, so we behaved ourselves, and within an hour we had trouble enough of another sort.  We began to meet dogs as big as Newfoundlands, that attacked our unmounted Zeitoonli, refusing to be driven off with sticks and stones, and only retreating a little way when we rode down on them.

“Shoot the brutes!” Will suggested cheerfully, and I made ready to act on it.

“For the lord’s sake, don’t!” warned Monty, riding at a huge black mongrel that was tearing strips from the smock of one of our men.  The owner of the dog, seeing its victim was Armenian, rather encouraged it than otherwise, leaning on a long pole and grinning in an unfenced field near by.

“The consul warned me they think more of a dog’s life hereabouts than a man’s.  In half an hour there’d be a mob on our trail.  Take the Zeitoonli up behind us.”

Rustum Khan was bitter about what he called our squeamishness.  But we each took up a man on his horse’s rump, and the dogs decided the fun was no longer worth the effort, especially as we had riding whips.  But skirmishing with the dogs and picking up the Armenians took time, so that our muleteers were all alone half a mile ahead of us, and had disappeared where the road dipped between two hillocks, when they met with the scare they looked for.

They came thundering back up the road, flogging and flopping on top of the loads like the wooden monkeys-on-a-stick the fakers used to sell for a penny on the curb in Fleet Street, glancing behind them at every second bound like men who had seen a thousand ghosts.

We brought them to a halt by force, but take them on the whole, now that they were in contact with us, they did not look so much frightened as convinced.  They had made up their minds that it was not written that they should go any farther, and that was all about it.

“Ermenie!” said Ibrahim.  And when we laughed at that he stroked his beard and vowed there were hundreds of Armenians ambushed by the roadside half a mile ahead.  The others corrected him, declaring the enemy were thousands strong.

Finally Monty rode forward with me to investigate.  We passed between the hillocks, and descended for another hundred yards along a gradually sloping track, when our mules became aware of company.  We could see nobody, but their long ears twitched, and they began to make preparations preliminary to braying recognition of their kin.

Suddenly Monty detected movement among the myrtle bushes about fifty yards from the road, and my mule confirmed his judgment by braying like Satan at a side-show.  The noise was answered instantly by a chorus of neighs and brays from an unseen menagerie, whereat the owners of the animals disclosed themselves—­six men, all smiling, and unarmed as far as we could tell—­the very same six gipsies who had pitched their tent in the midst of the khan yard at Tarsus.